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.

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'm going to do something in my blog this week that I normally avoid and that is scraping along the edge of politics. My mama always told me "if you don't have something nice to say about something, then don't say it". Good words to live by. And although I am certainly far from perfect, I really try to look at the positive side of issues. That is why I try to avoid politics like the plague. Sometimes the truth just needs to come out and be told. And the truth is that animals need our help. Specifically, the thousands and thousands of animals that end up in animal shelters in this country every year. Now all of you who know me, know that I am a HUGE adopt a pet from a shelter fan. The people who run these shelters are such good people. They work hard. They love caring for the animals. And it's a tough job because most local animal shelters struggle with funding. But for those of us who love animals, there is not a better cause than supporting your local animal shelter.

So where's the part about politics and the truth? Well, it has to do with the Humane Society of the United States. Now, if you are in favor of what this organization stands for and how they operate then by all means support them. They are a lobby group. They are strongly entrenched in the animal rights movement that would love to see the end of things like ALL livestock farming, not just the large commercial farms. All livestock farming. Period. And realize this: the Humane Society of the United States is a very wealthy political action group. They are NOT the parent organization for your local humane society or animal shelter. They give only a very small percentage of the money they raise to animal shelters. I LOVE this HumaneWatch.org advertisement that ran in some national publications some months back. I think it says so much.

I guess what bothers me the most about HSUS is they love to place pictures of forlorn puppies and kitties in their literature soliciting for donations. It makes people think they are helping the local animal shelters when the fact is the money raised is all about supporting a big political action group. It's just deceiving and that is what gets my goat. Well, if I had a goat. Of course the HSUS is probably thrilled that I don't have a goat. Check out the information at HumaneWatch.org. It may be a little eye opening for some.

Here in Ashtabula County, we have two larger organizations, the Ashtabula County Animal Protective League and the Ashtabula County Humane Society (they are not and I repeat NOT NOT NOT affiliated with the Humane Society of the United States) plus several smaller privately run animal rescues. They all need our help. So as the saying goes "Donate, Volunteer, Adopt". There are so many good people out there doing the hard work for all the homeless dogs and cats. Let's all donate locally to make sure the money gets to where it needs to go.