The 3 day GREAT IDEAS FOR GIVING LOCAL blog - Day 3

Last but definitely not least, here is the third idea for giving local and making a difference.  This one will have you coming away with a deep sense of "fullness".

Event #3

What: Spayghetti Dinner
When: Monday April 18, 2011 5-8pm
Where: Wagon Wheel Restaurant, Madison, Ohio
To Benefit: The Ashtabula County Animal Protective League

This is one is a no-brainer.  We all have to eat, right?  What better than to have a great spaghetti dinner and raise money for the local animal shelter!  I have been to a couple of these and they are VERY well attended and for good reason.  The food is great.  The homemade desserts are great.  The atmosphere is great.  The people are great.  Oh I could go on and on.  They always get a bunch of great donations for a Chinese auction and have a 50:50 raffle.

The Ashtabula County Animal Protective League is the largest shelter in our county.  When you call the dog warden to pick up a stray dog, this is where they go.  The people who work and volunteer at this shelter are saints!  Really!  They have such a hard job to do caring for all these animals and they do it with such compassion.  A truly amazing group of people.  But once again, this is an organization that relies HEAVILY on donations in order to take care of all those animals. 

I know times are tough and money is tight, but like I said in the opening paragraph, we all have to eat.  Tickets are $8 and $7 of that goes to the ACAPL.  You cannot beat that!  For more information head over to the ACAPL web site.  You can even purchase tickets online.  Can it be any easier?  Dinner, dessert, fun! 


Thanks again to flickr's creative commons for providing the pictures.

The 3 day GREAT IDEAS FOR GIVING LOCAL blog - Day 2

Here is the next idea for helping local animals and you can even help your own dog or cat out in the process!

Event # 2

What: Rabies vaccination clinic

When: Saturday April 30, 2011 from 1-4pm

Where: Ashtabula County Humane Society, Austinburg, OH

To Benefit: Ashtabula County Humane Society

This event just has all sorts of good written all over it. First and foremost is the public health aspect of vaccinating pets for rabies. If you have been paying attention, you know that after quite a few years of not having a wild animal test positive for rabies in our county, we have had 3 raccoons in the eastern part of the county test positive. This is a big deal folks. Rabies kills. It kills thousands of wild animals, hundreds of domestic animals and a few people every year in the United States. And every year, I read stories in the national news of someone's beloved pet that got in a scuffle with a rabid wild animal and had to be euthanized because the pet did not have a rabies vaccination. How sad! I cannot for the life of me fathom why someone with a dog or cat would not get it vaccinated for rabies. Seems as though when you acquire a dog or cat, you should budget in a rabies vaccination, if not for the pet, then for the health of your family. And for those of you with indoor cats, they are not exempt from this. I remember a case quite a few years back of an indoor only cat whose family did not get it a rabies shot because the cat never went outdoors. One day a bat got into the house and the cat did what cats do and caught the bat. The bat turned out to be rabid and the cat had to be put to sleep. All the family's heartache could have been prevented by simply getting their cat vaccinated. End of the vaccinate your pet sermon.

The second part of this is that the rabies vaccination clinic serves to raise a little bit of money for the Ashtabula County Humane Society. They are not as big or as well known throughout the county as the APL is, but they are equally important. They serve a very different function too. The APL is an animal shelter that houses our county's stray and unwanted dogs and cats. The Ashtabula County Humane Society are the folks who investigate cases of abuse and neglect toward animals. They have a shelter too where they house dogs and cats and adopt out animals to new homes. And these are the folks that get to see the worst of the worst of animal abuse/neglect. I've seen some bad stuff in my time, but nothing compared to what the humane agents get to see. And remember, local Humane Societies are just that LOCAL. If you think giving to a big national organization like The Humane Society of the United States helps your local humane society in any way, then think again. The two have no affiliation with each other. HSUS is a multi-million dollar lobbying group that gives less than 1% of its budget to help animals in shelters. I will blog more on this in the coming weeks, but just remember if you want to help abused animals, keep your donation dollars local.

So if you have a dog or cat or ferret that needs a rabies vaccination, come out to the AC Humane Society on Saturday April 30th and get your pet vaccinated and help out your local humane society at the same time. For more information click on this link: ACHS Annual Rabies Vaccination Clinic.

The 3 day GREAT IDEAS FOR GIVING LOCAL blog - Day 1

Normally I like to put up blog postings that have some lasting value: something that can be referred back to from time to time. But I am going to stray from that for the next three days.  My usual M.O. is to put upcoming event postings up on the Country Doctor Facebook Page or my Twitter feed instead of in my blog.  But there are 3 events in the next couple months that deserve some special mention and give Ashtabula County residents a great chance to help animals and keep donation dollars local.  So I will highlight 1 event per day for the next three days.  All 3 events benefit local Ashtabula County animals that really need our help.  Each event helps a different group so you have a chance to go to 1, 2 or all 3 events and do multiple good deeds.  And everyone of us (me included) need a little prodding and a little cheerleading to get motivated to do something for a good cause so let the cheerleading begin...........

Event #1

What: Family Fun Dog Show
When: Sunday May 22nd starting at 1pm
Where: Ashtabula County Fairgrounds Sheriff Station
To Benefit:  local police and sheriff working canine units

I cannot say enough good about our county's K-9 units.  Trained police dogs are such an invaluable part of our local law enforcement.  Because of them and the officers who train and work with them, we are a much better off community.  From drug detection to apprehension to search and rescue, these dogs are amazing.  The K-9 unit departments do have quite the challenge though when it comes to budget.  It takes quite a bit of money to keep these units up and running and we all know how bad the budget situation is in our county.  So being the best staff on the planet, the women who work at the Country Doctor decided they wanted to come up with a fund raiser to help out the K-9 units.  The dog show is 100% their idea and I think it is great!  Giving back to the community is what this life is all about.  Making a difference.  I've said it before and I'll say it again, I am blessed to be working with such generous and caring people.

Now on to the dog show details...............

In case you think that your dog can't enter a dog show because it is not a show dog, not in this case.  This is a fun show!  You can find the complete flyer and the dog show registration form over at the County Doctor web site by clicking on the hot links.  Here is a list of classes that you and your dog can enter:

Best Tail Wagging

Best Under bite

Crazy hair do's

Pet and owner look alike

Cutest eyes

Best pet trick in 60 seconds

You can enter for only $5 per class.  There is something for every dog.  There will be guest judges (including me and if you really want to know, my weakness is chocolate frosted brownies *wink,wink*)  Several of the K-9 units will be at the event so you can meet them.  We are going to have a bake sale too so if you can't find a dog to enter, you can at least come over and eat.

Since this our first Family Fun Dog Show, we need folks to sign up by early May so we can plan.  If you need more info you can visit the Country Doctor web site at http://www.countrydrvet.com/  and look for the show flyer in the "Patient Center" tab and then go to "events".  OR you can email us at info@countrydrvet.com.  We would love to see everyone there and help us raise money for the dogs who do so much to make our communities a safer place to live.

And thanks to Flickr's creative commons for helping me fill in a few pictures.

First hard frost and blanket month

What the heck does the first hard frost in the fall have to do with veterinary medicine?  Well not much except that it helps explain the absence of this blogger.  Unlike my early days just out of vet school, I actually have some semblance of balance in my life which means that sometimes I actually do things that aren't associated with veterinary medicine.  The biggest chunk of time outside of medicine revolves around the farm business that my husband and I own.  Most of you already know I raise meat chickens and laying hens although that is a very small part of the farm.  Most of the farm income comes from raising vegetables.  My husband is really the force behind the farm, but there are times during the height of the picking season that I will pitch in.  I've spent more than one evening after work helping the guys pack boxes of produce.  And as a by-product of living on a vegetable and poultry farm, I am in charge of food preservation for the family.  Eating fresh, locally grown, healthy food is very important to me.  So during the months of August, September and October, many of my days off from the clinic are earmarked for preserving food for the winter.  Of course we have butchering day for our meat chickens.  Then I'll spend a day blanching and freezing sweet corn.  Green beans get a day for canning.  Apples get made into applesauce and frozen.  Pumpkin gets made into pumpkin puree and frozen.  Broccoli blanched and frozen.  Tomatoes get canned.  Each of these is done on separate days and takes up much of my free time during the late summer and early fall.  Combine that with a very hectic schedule at the clinic and something has to give and it has been my blog.  So now the first hard frost has finally killed the garden.  The chickens are all butchered.  Only some winter squash is left to put up for the winter.  I can actually do some other things on my days off and maybe leave myself a little time to blog.

October was a very fun month for us at the clinic.  Everyone at work has expressed a desire to reach out to the community with various projects. (Do I not work with the greatest people on the planet!)  So October was Blanket Month.  We collected blankets to give to the Ashtabula County Animal Protective League and the Ashtabula County Humane Society and Dr. C. agreed to donate $1 for each blanket that was donated and the amount would be divided equally between our two local shelters.  The end result was so much more than I expected.  It was so fantastic.  We took in 249 blankets total. One of clients that works at one of the schools got the students involved and they brought in 182 blankets.  Now you have to understand that we have a kind of small building at the clinic.  There is no wasted space.  The doctor's office was already being taken over by bags and bags of blankets, so when Shannon dropped off 182 blankets, well, we were at a dilemma on where to store them.  My car got to be the designated storage location.

I now have an appreciation for people who hoard and their cars are full of stuff.  I drove around like this for two days before making it to the shelter to drop off my "treasures".  Unfortunately I never did make it up into town with my car looking like this.  I thought I could start some crazy rumor about why Dr. Di. has a car full of stuffed full trash bags.  Maybe my husband kicked me out of the house and I had no place to live.  It was close to Halloween, so maybe it could have been some creepy spooky rumor.  But no, just home, back to work, home, back to work and to the shelter with no chance for anyone to make up some juicy gossip.

Well we are doing a canned food drive at the clinic in November.  Maybe I'll get another chance.   

Support your local animal shelter

I'll admit up front that I've been kind of busy and very deficient in the blog department. Part of my being busy leads right into today's blog topic. I am fortunate to be able to spend one or two days a month at the Ashtabula County Animal Protective League spaying and neutering dogs and cats that are being adopted. My schedule worked out this month that I did two weeks back to back. So two Mondays ago with the help of Ashley from Country Doctor and Jeremy from the APL, we spayed or neutered 22 animals. Then last Monday with the help of Katelyn from Country Doctor and Jammie from the APL, we spayed or neutered 19 animals. Most of these animals had already been adopted and are now in their new homes. That is a good feeling. I am so blessed to have such talented people working with me. These past two surgery days went so smoothly and it is all due to Ashley, Katelyn, Jammie and Jeremy. Thanks to all!

Since the APL is on my mind, the timing is right to encourage everyone to support their local animal shelter wherever that may be. There is a lot of work to do. Adopt an animal. Donate money. Donate supplies. Donate time. We can all help out in some way or another.

This fall, the Ad Council and the Humane Society of the United States are gearing up for an advertising campaign to encourage adoption of pets from local shelters. I am very excited about this and looking forward to see where the ads turn up. I believe this link takes you to where the campaign starts: http://www.theshelterpetproject.org/index.asp There is a cool little video about the filming of the TV ads.

The Ashtabula County APL is also gearing up for lots of fun events this fall. They will be at the Grape Jamboree this coming weekend (Sept 26 and 27, 2009) and the Covered Bridge Festival (Oct 10 and 11). The big event of course is the annual Boo Wow Walk on October 17th. Country Doctor will be there again this year because we had so much fun last year!!!!! You might also get to meet Gabby the beagle I adopted from the APL two years ago. Also on tap this fall is a book signing at Ashtabula Towne Square on Oct 24th, Reverse trick or treat at the shelter on Oct 29th and one of MY favorites, the Spayghetti dinner on November 2nd. Visit the APL web site for more details: http://acapl.org/news.html

One more picture of Gabby doing what beagles do. Caught in mid "bow woooooooo" on the trail of a rabbit.

There are so many animals in need of homes. If you are considering getting a dog or cat, I'd encourage everyone to look no further than their local animal shelter. There are so many beautiful animals that just want a home of their own.