antifreeze, tragedy and a girl's mission

The following true story of genuine evil and tragedy is shared by Ginni Ham, in no small part because of the tremendously courageous response it prompted in her daughter Haley:

Sam came to live with us in 2003 when he was only 8 weeks old.  The memory of my daughter Haley holding this soft, furry bundle is so clear.  She was seven at the time.  Sam's head was tilted back and his puppy eyes, round and brown, were looking adoringly up at her.  It was as if he knew this was his girl.  And in that moment I knew these two had formed a bond that was unbreakable.

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seven times seventy: a collie named Max

The following is a beautiful reminiscence of dog fostering by Cindy Crosby, originally featured on Today's Christian Woman's Kyria blog and scheduled to be published next summer in a collection by Revell tentatively titled Great Dog Stories:

I’m a good hater and a slow forgiver.  It took a dog to show me I was wrong.

He was a tri-color, collie-shepherd mix whose whole world was a cardboard refrigerator box with a short kennel run, tucked behind a seedy motel.  A Rottweiler shared the same space.  As the bitter months of winter bore down on Illinois, the two huddled together for warmth.  But a cardboard box isn’t much protection against the cold.

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wobbly grace

The Burnside Writers Collective is "an online magazine for Christians looking for a connection with the world outside of franchise Christianity," originally founded in part by Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz).  Last Fall they published a touching reflection by Matt Cannon about an elderly and somewhat ornery three-legged, visually impaired hound dog his wife brought home from a shelter shortly before she was due to be put down.

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the trucking duck

I'd like to thank my mother-in-law Laural Hudgin, an avid duck afficionado, for passing this video along.  It's one of the best I've seen all year, about a relationship that's as oddly comical as it is affectionate: "One morning last Spring, Frank followed Joe across the yard to his truck, and hasn't missed a day of work since."

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a good, good cat (pt. 2)

This is the second part of an inadequate tribute to our beloved Bubba, who passed away abruptly four weeks ago today.  The first post described how Bubba came into our lives, but this part of the story is running even longer than I expected, so a couple more installments are forthcoming.  Thank you for bearing with me ...

In all honesty, I don’t remember many specifics about Slugger’s first few months with us.  I know the girls (Baby and Missy) weren’t particularly thrilled to have a male intruder tracking them into their hiding places all of a sudden, or invading their sanctuary, period.  Neutered though we were assured he was, sometimes it was hard to tell, the way he acted when the mood struck him from time to time!  Needless to say, there was a lot of prissy hissing going on, most of it from basic annoyance though.   

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a good, good cat

Three weeks ago, the first of October, our beloved cat Bubba suddenly and unexpectedly passed away.  It’s taken me a while to have the courage to tell hardly anyone outside of immediate family, or to write this post in honor of him.  Because it’s running rather long, as I knew it would, I’ll post it in three parts (perhaps four): how we found Slugger, his time with us, and his passing …    

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the shelter pet project

At least three million healthy, treatable and lovable pets are put down each year in the U.S., simply for lack of homes.  In covering this staggering breach of trust which companion animals have placed in us, I wrote in a previous post that the thought of such persistent and gratuitous waste of precious lives, each and every one of them, makes my own mind race and my heart sick.  And I know I'm not alone.

Perhaps you can relate.  And perhaps you too have wondered what can be done, urgently, to prevent one more dog or cat, no different than the ones beloved in our own homes, from suffering the same fate (see the touching video "In Hope, An Animal Shelter Story" by Brightlion).  Well, even a tragedy on this staggering a scale can only be overcome by one life being rescued at a time.  And while no doubt many of us are already involved in the heroic effort, we all intuitively know the rest of mainstream society needs to be on board.

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the good and the bad from Deurne

I spent five of my teen years in the Netherlands where my parents were missionaries.  We lived in a homey little town called Deurne in the southern province of the country, Brabant.  Recently, I came across a couple of videos from Deurne which I wanted to pass along.  The first is a sad story about an attack on a family's animals about a year ago (no explicit images, translated transcript follows):

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kids at play

I couldn't resist passing along this adorable video from Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary in New York.  It features Fern the goat kid, who was rescued this past Spring by a caring passer-by from a goat milk and meat farm, suffering from bad frostbite and a broken leg which the farmer was unwilling to treat:

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adopt-a-less-adoptable-pet day

Thank you to Stephanie Ernst of Change.org for passing along that today, August 12th, has been designated "Adopt-a-Less-Adoptable-Pet Day" by Petfinder.  Petfinder is a North American database which has helped thousands of shelters and rescue efforts find homes for millions of companion animals, and today's focus seems to be expanding their commendable service even further.

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