Pets Are Family Too

We, all at one time or another, have visited pet shops and stores that sell puppies and want to take all of them home with us. The innocent yips from the cages or glass, or the curled up sleeping beauty makes you want to melt. Admit it, we love puppies.

As a child growing up, I thought that you got a puppy from a friend or family member whose dog had given birth to a litter, which is how I got my puppies. Of course this sounds like a long time ago, but there were not that many pet shops in malls at the time.

Now, there are many pet shops and stores that sell puppies from  puppy mills. What is a puppy mill you may ask? According to ASPCA a puppy mill is defined as the following;

A puppy mill is a large-scale commercial dog breeding operation where profit is given priority over the well-being of the dogs. Unlike responsible breeders, who place the utmost importance on producing the healthiest puppies possible, breeding at puppy mills is performed without consideration of genetic quality. This results in generations of dogs with unchecked hereditary defects.

Puppy mill puppies are typically sold to pet shops—usually through a broker, or middleman—and marketed as young as eight weeks of age. The lineage records of puppy mill dogs are often falsified.

Puppies are almost the cutest, and one of the most precious things to have, next to babies of course. The puppies sold by puppy mills are not so happy. Read the rest of this entry »

After months since President Obama announced that he will allow his daughters, Sasha and Malia, to get a dog in the White House. Speculation on the type of dog and when it will arrive has been burning up the media waves from the internet to mainstream media, world wide. Bo Obama, a Portuguese water dog, is the latest addition to the White House.

Bo Obama is a black-and-white 6-month-old Portuguese water dog got his name from the First Daughters according to the Washington Post,

The girls named it Bo — and let it be noted that you learned that here first. Malia and Sasha chose the name, because their cousins have a cat named Bo and because first lady Michelle Obama’s father was nicknamed Diddley, a source said. (Get it? Bo . . . Diddley?)

Controversy swirled wildly whether or not the First Puppy would come from a breeder or a shelter.  Dog lovers were drawing their lines in the sand and lobbying why a shelter dog would be more appropriate than a dog from a breeder. Guess who won? Read the rest of this entry »

Are you tired of hearing about our economic condition? Need a jolt of happiness for the new year? If so, have I got a movie that will simply take you out of the doldrums. Who else but pet family members to the rescue to cheer us up! Opening on January 16, 2009, DreamWorks Pictures debuts the family fun movie “Hotel For Dogs”. What better way to get the new year off than to see “man’s best friend” in a fun packed movie.

Hotel For Dogs is a comedy adventure starring Emma Roberts, Jake T. Austin, Kyla Pratt, Lisa Kudrow, Kevin Dillon,  and Don Cheadle. Two orphaned kids cannot keep their dog with them and set out to find him a home, but a home not just for him. Take a sneak peek at the Hotel For Dogs trailer.

If your pet is a rock star, dress them up like the rock star they are and head on over to the Independent Film Channels’ Dress Your Kid/Pet Like A Rock Star site and you may win some cash!

To get your Rock Star on the road to fame at the IFC site, take a snap shot of your little star in their favorite costume and upload it to the site. There has to be a guitar hero or a music maker inside your pet family somewhere. Prizes for the runners up is $500 each and the grand prize winner earns a cool $5000. If you are the highest rated photo each week, you can win a $50 iTunes gift certificate. You can enter one photo each day, so start putting that Rock Star garb together, head on over to the IFC Dress Your Kid/Pet Like A Rock Star site, and let your little pet star shine!

Take a look below at some of the competition .

  Go have some fun! Here are just a few of the Pet Rockers at the IFC Dress Your Kid/Pet Like A Rock Star contest.

It’s official, Menu Foods settlement for their contaminated pet food of the largest pet food recall in 2007, is almost final! The  United Sates District Court of New Jersey, has issued a final approval for Menu Foods settlement agreement plans for United States pet owners whose pets were killed or sickened from Menu Foods’ poisonous pet food. In order for the settlement agreement to be completed, Canadian Courts have to also sign off on the plan since Menu Foods is a Canadian Company, and pet owners in Canada were also affected by the tainted pet food. The Menu Foods pet food recall case spanned both countries requiring the settlement plan to approved in both The United States and Canada. The scheduled hearing date for the Canadian Courts is November 3, 2008. If there aren’t any objections or appeals to the motion for final approval in the Canadian Courts, then processing of the settlement claims can begin shortly after, and the money payouts begin.

The Menu Foods pet food recall settlement is a result of hundreds of pets being sickened or killed in 2007 due to their contaminated pet food sold in stores in the U.S. The Ontario, Canada company is one of the largest pet food manufacturers with some of the most notable brands that we buy for our pets. A brief list of the recalled pet food is here.

As a recap here are some particulars of the Menu Foods Settlement Agreement;

The Settlement Agreement would resolve more than 100 class action lawsuits filed in U.S. and Canadian courts relating to the recall of pet food and would be binding on all members of the Settlement Class, except for those individuals who have validly opted out of the settlement.

As previously disclosed, the Settlement Agreement creates a Settlement Fund of US$24 million that will allow a potential recovery of up to 100% of all economic damages incurred by pet owners, subject to certain limitations. The Settlement Fund, administered by a neutral claims administrator, will be available to persons in the United States and Canada who purchased or obtained, or whose pets used or consumed, recalled pet food.

If you think that you may have a claim against Menu Foods, Read the rest of this entry »