Pet Photo Contest

Well first off, I hope your Holidays were spectacular. I hope your guests were polite and gentle with your four legged roommates. There were some two legged guests who came over to our house that we had to speak with - sometimes they can be so pushy and rude! The two legged ones often forget that the four legged ones live here and thus should be accorded the same sort of deference as my husband

Featured Rescue Followup!

Well, I've been posting for a few months now and thought I'd put a follow up post about the Featured Rescues that I've blogged about. I'll try to remember to do this periodically.

Pepper the Border CollieStatus: ADOPTEDFeatured on October 14, 2008Follow blog link here to read.

Edwin the Labrador RetrieverStatus: ADOPTEDFeatured on October 17, 2008Follow blog link here to readEdwin had 10

Lazy Owner Rant? Or Concerned Parent? Re: Allergies

I like to keep an eye on Craigslist to see what's going on in my local area. I also check out other major cities just in case I find something of interest. I found this posting and it made me think a lot about allergies and how it has become a big problem but also a convenient excuse.

Before I go further, here's the post from CraigsList. For your ease, I have made a screen-cap of the posting.

Training Rant - Further to the Dog Walkers Rant ...

So, further to my rant a few days ago, I found this post on CraigsList after putting together my previous training post. I thought I'd follow up with it. An interesting look at Dog Walkers.

Here's the link to the CraigsList posting. It's too long to Screen-Cap, so I copied and pasted instead. I have not edited this posting, nor have I removed the name of the Dog Walking company mentioned.

Featured Rescue - Dharma the Dachshund

When I went looking for a Dachshund in rescue to post as the Featured Rescue for today, I hadn't prepared myself for the alarming numbers of this breed to be listed as "No Kids, No Cats"! Does anyone have experience with these dogs who can tell me why this is found more often with this breed than others? My initial reaction is the "Small Dog Syndrome". I have never owned one myself so therefore

News Reel - Shelter Fire Kills 150

150 Cats Killed in Animal Shelter Fire

Here's the link. An Ontario Shelter in the Durham region caught fire yesterday in the wee hours of the morning. News articles have only given us estimates on the numbers affected ... 150 cats. 5 dogs.

Training Rant - Dog Walkers?

I have read many things about dog walkers, and I often see many advertisements for them. I view them with mixed emotions.

On the one hand, they can be a valuable resource for the busy person. They will take your dogs and walk them daily for a fee. This may offer an outlet for extra energy as well as bathroom breaks to your dog. They will also likely have other dogs with them which may offer your

New Search Feature

Just a quick sidebar note - I have created a Google Search Feature. This allows you to search my blog for keywords. (It uses the Google Search Engine, but will not search Google - only dogsdeservefreedom.blogspot.com)

From my testing, it seems that it will NOT pick up keywords in the titles - only the body of the posts. Hopefully this will allow for easier navigation through older posts.

Rescue Numbers - Curiousity Killed the ...?

Sorry for not posting for a few days - busy times around the holidays! Also, I was asked to start working another dog (there are 5 actually, but I am starting with 1 - they learn in stages and I can only have 1 dog in stage 1 at a time otherwise I couldn't work my full-time paying job!). BYBer GSDs ... nice dogs, but scaredy cats right now - if they're not developed properly, they'll turn into

Featured Rescue - Tahne the Cocker Spaniel

This is going to be a short and sweet post today. Went searching through the adoptables and came up with this little gal.

Today there are 2,279 Cocker Spaniels available for adoption. The one I chose to feature is located in OH.

She is a 4-5 year old red and white Cocker. She was a puppy mill dog and as such is still very shy. Her foster home is working to bring her out of her shell.

http://

Asshat Rant - Think we could spay/neuter the asshats?

I received this ad from a concerned reader. It was inspiring ... it inspired me to roll my eyes, call out obscene words to my computer monitor (much to the amusement of my coworkers), and generally think terrible things about the world's asshat population. I just wanted to bang my head to my ... oh what the he11 ... *headdesk, headdesk*

Here's the link:http://reddeer.kijiji.ca/

News Reel - Strategies when you're attacked

Sorry for posting two news reels in a row, but I found this one and thought it builds somewhat off the discussion we were having earlier this week. Here's the link to the news article:

Strategies When You're Attacked
http://www.thestar.com/comment/columnists/article/547299
(What to do when you're out with your dog and are attacked by an agressive dog)

It is sound advice. Doesn't touch on what

News Reel - Why anthropomorphize dogs?

One of my pet peeves is when people anthropomorphize dogs. They are dogs. They are not humans. Sure, they think, but they don't think like humans - they think like dogs. I don't know why it irritates me, but it does. Probably bothers me because those people who anthropomorphize dogs are also the ones that have dogs that are 'uncontrollable'.

A dog was caught on video surveillance in Chile. They

Holiday Cheer - I Rescued a Human Today

It's been over a week since I posted the last bit of mushy stuff for the Holiday Season. I thought I would post another. This one circulated around an email list that I receive. I didn't write this, but figured I'd post it for something good to read while I'm working on my next rant. :)

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Source unknown.

I rescued a human

Training Rant - Alpha Roll or Omega Roll?

In one of the comment threads I mentioned that I'd post a blog entry about why I don't think that Cesar using the "Alpha Roll" is good - regardless of what "Zone" they are in. Cesar is not the only trainer that uses the "Alpha Roll", but he is probably the most popular one. This blog is not about Cesar, but about the Alpha Roll (or as I call it, the Omega Roll). Because Cesar has become such an

Training Tools - Prong Collar

I know I've already posted about the choke chain and this is a variant of that, but I REALLY want to put up a posting about this. For those of you who are not familiar with it, this picture is a prong collar.

The way it fits is it goes around the dog's neck like a choke chain. The martingale will tighten as the dog pulls and the prongs push on the dogs neck. In theory, it is supposed to teach a

Featured Rescue - Kobe Swims ... GSD or Kelpie?!

Ok, so I couldn't resist. I thought I'd find and list a nice looking GSD (German Shepherd Dog) today, but when I was looking, I stumbled over this guy. I thought "why not?"


He's listed as a rottweiler GSD mix ... Now, I don't know about you guys, but I really think he looks like an Australian Kelpie!

Here's the link for his petfinder profile:

http://www.petfinder.com/petnote/displaypet.cgi?

Training Rant - Snapping rewarded with a hit?

I have a poll to the right of the page asking everyone what they would like to see more 0f. The first two answers I received were Training Rants, so I thought I'd oblige (please vote to add your opinion so I can work with what you want). This one is one I've been stewing over since I ran into it in the summer while working with a dog that was housed at a boarding facility.

A comment was made

Another Puppy Mill Seizure and Closed Down

Ok, so I've been trying not to post more than once per day, but I couldn't pass this one up. I flew through the roof this morning when I saw it on the news. Here's the link to the news article about yet another puppy mill being shut down in my area. The basics are:

- 100 dogs seized from puppy mill in deplorable condition
- The breeds seized included Bichons, Pekingese, Papillons and Lhasa Apso

Movie Day! Today's Special? Dog Fighting

So have you ever taken a few days off and deemed one day as "Movie Day"?? We do on occasion (like twice in the winter...) provided the weather is too rough to be out. On those -40C days here, we don't go outside for long. Just long enough for a quick run for the dogs, feed the animals in the barns, and do any other quick chores there are to do.

So, in honour of "Movie Days", this is my first

May as well call the collectors ...

The following ad was sent to me by a reader who thought it was somewhat odd. It is a bit OT, but I thought I'd post it anyway since it is an interesting topic that I'd like to comment on. First, here's the ad:

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Free Kittens
Price: Free
Location: Red Deer Date Listed: 01-Dec-08
We have three 9 week old kittens to give away,

Something mushy for the Holiday Season

Ok, so it's December. Therefore it's time to spread a little good cheer. I will, for my part, try my best not to mention anyone specific Holiday because I don't believe this is the right place for that discussion. However, at this time of year, I'm always looking for something nice and mushy to warm my heart. Especially when I see the animals start piling into the pound!!

Besides, I really