by jennae on December 11, 2009
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I have been wanting a dog for years. But for several of those years, our living situation didn’t make that possible. When we finally moved into our own apartment, my desire to have a dog was renewed, although my husband wasn’t too keen on the idea in such a small space. However, last week, he revealed to me that he planned to give me a dog for my birthday, which is next week. I had always wanted a Yorkie, but it was more important to me to adopt a dog than to buy one just because it was a purebred.
We wound up with the sweet little ball of fluff you see above and below, who we named Shiloh. We adopted him, though not from a shelter, and we couldn’t be happier.
The story
last Friday night, I started doing my research, trying to find a dog from a nearby shelter or rescue organization via sites like Petfinder and Petango. We did this with a couple of things in mind:
- We live in an apartment, and there are restrictions on the type of breed we can have.
- We also wanted a smaller dog for this reason.
- We wanted a medium-energy dog who would be able to live happily even without a yard to play in.
- We have a four-year old, so we had to have a dog who was good with kids and wouldn’t bite.
That wish list, small though it may be, proved to make our shelter search really difficult. What we found is that most of the rescue dogs were larger breeds, required a yard or had behavioral problems and weren’t recommended for kids. We did find one option, a Chihuahua mix named Laverne, but several other potential adopters had already filled out applications for her.
While we didn’t find our forever dog at a shelter, it wasn’t because we didn’t find dogs who were lovable. Their stories will tug at your heartstrings. There was a Chow puppy whose eye had to be removed because it was ulcerated. There was another mixed breed puppy whose owner threw him out of a moving vehicle and who, as a result, was very timid and didn’t get along well with people or other dogs. Seeing, and in some cases holding, all of them was a really heartwrenching experience.
They all really made me wish that we owned our own home so there would be fewer restrictions on the kind, and number, of dogs we could own.
We found him!
Later that day, fate would intervene though. We were on our way to go grocery shopping at Walmart, and spied a little boy holding up a sign for puppies. We headed over to him and his dad and little brother. Their dogs had six puppies, and they were trying to find a home for them. They had already found takers for three of them before we arrived, and I kept thinking I really wanted to adopt from a shelter. But when I saw the little puffballs he pulled out of the kennel, I was instantly smitten.
The puppies were Doxie-Chons, which means they were a mix between a Dachsund and a Bichon Frise. I cared little about his breed once I held him in my arms, though my husband did think to ask how big he will get (7-8 lbs. full grown). We want to be responsible dog owners, so once I got over my delirious happiness, we asked all the questions we could think of.
Was he a breeder? Are the puppies healthy? Are the puppies good with kids? Would they require a yard? Did he want an adoption fee, and if so, how much? And about a dozen other questions that escape my mind right now. Once we were satisfied that we would be doing a good thing by bringing home one of the puppies, we agreed to take one of the males, who they had dubbed Moonie for his habit of walking backwards (he looks like he’s doing the moonwalk).
Do I have any regrets? Not really, though I’d still like to go back to the shelters and perhaps become a foster parent until we’re able to own another dog permanently. But at the end of the day, I’m happy that we were able to give a dog a home without going to a pet store and who didn’t come from a puppy mill.
So next time you decide to get or give a pet, head to a shelter first, or adopt from a family who can no longer care for them.
by jennae on December 11, 2009
Photo by searchengineland
I will openly admit that I am no scientist. I don’t study temperatures or the minutia of the ecosystem, and I’ve never seen a polar bear or its habitat in person. Then again, neither have most people. That’s what makes the debate about climate change so interesting. As with all things, we are presented with the facts by the people who are supposed to know what they’re talking about and we each get to decide what we believe. And while there are many people like myself who believe not only that climate change is real, but that man is it’s primary cause, there is quite a crowd on the other side of the fence who decry the idea of global warming as little more than fear-mongering and alarmism.
And boy, did those skeptics find what they were looking for when “Climategate” broke news.
In late November, in the days leading up to the Copenhagen climate summit, a file containing more than 1,000 e-mails sent from or to members of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit in England was allegedly hacked and posted on the Internet. Many say that the e-mails, from top environmental researchers, appear to question whether humans influence climate. And they were all the ammunition skeptics needed to contend that the messages prove scientists have falsified data to exaggerate the threat of global warming.
There’s just one problem with that assumption. It completely misses the point.
Let’s assume, just for one second, that climate change is nothing more than cyclical shifts in the the Earth’s temperatures that would happen without the influence of any outside factors. Let’s assume that humans live inside a bubble that doesn’t allow carbon emissions to get to the atmosphere. Even in this scenario, humans are still wreaking havoc on the environment in so many other ways.
We are flushing medicine down the toilet, which is in turn getting into our waterways and feminizing frogs and fish. We’re causing disastrous coal flyash spills like the one in Tennessee late last year that completely change the ecosystem in the immediate area of the incident. We have caused cities to be covered in smog, which on some days requires those cities to recommend that people stay indoors. We are throwing away millions of tons of trash, 80% of which is recyclable, which will eventually have to place to go but our parks and back yards.
What is there to question about those facts? Regardless of their impact on the climate, there can be no denying that these issues are real and will have an impact on the planet and the quality of life of its inhabitants. There’s also the huge tiny fact the Climactic Research Unit is far from being the only source of the science that shows global warming is caused by man.
Those who have jumped on the Climategate bandwagon have used it as an opportunity to deflect responsibility. They prefer to drive around in their gas-guzzling Hummers and SUVs, oblivious to the fact that the emissions from their vehicles ARE affecting the quality of the air around them. They prefer to continue living disposable lifestyles in which convenience is the motivating factor for every decision. And most of all, they prefer to continue lining their pockets by doing business and managing the government in a way that is destructive to the environment and latching on to any hope that what they’re doing is OK.
What frustrates me most about Climategate is that has started confusing the public, making them question whether global warming is real and whether the actions they have been taking have made an difference. It has the potential to make us regress, rather than move forward, because most people won’t separate the cause of one environmental problem from another.
All of this makes it incredibly clear that the result of the Copenhagen climate summit needs to be a decisive plan to combat global warming and regulations that mandate action. Because clearly, there are many people, businesses and government officials who won’t make any attempt to change on their own.
