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.

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