Meet Princess Eloise Blueberry! No I had no say in the name she was given, my children alone get that credit! I have no idea what breed she is, but she’s an incredibly sweet girl with lots of love. Right now she’s asleep about three feet from me and looking happy and content. She’s a rescue dog, so I was able to do my part to save one animal from the needle. It’s super important to remember that if you’re looking to get an animal, there are thousands of waiting animals at your local shelters waiting and waiting for a new home. Many if not all of them will end up being euthanized due to the extreme overpopulation and irresponsibility of owners who surrender their dog when they become inconvenient. Don’t add to that statistic!

This is not a story that should be imitated, as a general rule. Impulse acquiring a living being nearly always leads to suffering for that creature, and humans should be better than that. My only justification is that at least I accept the lifelong responsibilities from my impulse decisions.

Has your work been giving you a lot of stress lately? Do you feel the need to have someone to come home to? Consider adopting a pet! There is no better stress buster than playing with a pet. A lot of pet parents would agree that adopting a pet has made their lives so much fun.

When you hear about people adopting pets you start thinking about shelters and how much better the life of the animal will be now that it has a home, but most people don't actually think about adopting a pet. Most people think about going through breeders, which I am not putting down as it is another way of getting a beautiful animal in to your life but going through a breeder is so expensive! Yes, you get the breed you were looking for and there is the anticipation of choosing your animal and waiting until they are able to come home but there are many other animals that do not have a home and are being put down due to over crowding shelters.

The water lapped up underneath my chin and was beginning to cool off, giving me a chill. I reached up with my big toe and turned on the hot water, a tear rolling down my face when I thought about my puppy Holbrook. He was a rotty, but was also mixed with something else much bigger, making him a very formidable sight, but he was a lover. My chin began to quiver and I wanted to duck under the water until I quit blowing bubbles, anything to end the gripping pain I felt inside.

When our dog, Cole died in 2014, my husband and I were devastated. He was such a great dog. He was a black mutt, part border collie, part lab, maybe some chow chow or some cocker spaniel, who knows? My husband and his youngest daughter found him in a box of other puppies in a Safeway parking lot with a sign that said, “Free Puppies”.

In May, I started a new job at Pawsafe Animal Rescue as the kennel manager. Very quickly, it became a dream come true. I got to spend my days with puppies, and I got to help them find their forever home. It was such a fulfilling feeling, and it honestly helped shape my life and help narrow down the path I want to take for the rest of my life.

When Cpl. Matt Foster left Afghanistan after his tour of duty in 2013, he didn’t know whether he would ever see his K-9 partner again.

Grady was, when I first saw him, less than a year old. He was tall and slender, waving his half-length stump of a tail behind him, and he stared at me through the pane of glass that separated us, keeping me from laying my hands on his black-and-tan bespeckled coat and him from engorging his nose with the pungent scents I had no doubt tracked into the shelter. His concrete kennel was barren except for a tarnished blanket crumpled in the corner. It was the fifth blanket they’d tossed to him since he arrived less than a week prior. Had we not left with him — my mother and I — there would have been a sixth, and a seventh, and an eighth, until someone else snatched him up. But no one else was going to snatch him up. Despite his unremitting wag and his half-erect ears, Grady had an intensity to him that would have made White Fang think twice before squaring off. It was his eyes.

"What is your purpose?!"

Excuse me? What do you mean my cat got out?” The words I asked my step-dad as he gave me the weekly (or more or less daily) report on my cat.