Petfinder: 15 years of helping pets find homes

March 11, 2011

Petfinder turns 15 years old on Tuesday, and all they want for their birthday is for homeless pets to take over the Internet.

In the decade and a half since Petfinder first assembled its pixels and bites and turned adopting a pet from a shelter or rescue pet into something you could do from your chair while wearing fuzzy slippers, the face of pet adoption in this country been revolutionized. Petfinder has been a big part of that change, with around 350,000 animals from around 13,000 shelters and rescue groups available for adoption on the site today.

In celebration of their 15 years of pet-person matchmaking, Petfinder is asking that its supporters help spread the world about adoptable pets by talking about them on Facebook and Twitter, blogging about them, decorating your blog or website with their widget, and several other fun ideas for spreading the Petfinder adoption message.

The date is next Tuesday, March 15, and the place to get more information is here.

Happy Birthday, Petfinder!

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Man Could Get 9 Years For Killing Dog in Front of His Kids

Michael Tessmer

As the prosecution tells it, Michael Tessmer, of Oconomowoc, Wis., came home with his two kids in February 2009 and found that their 3-year-old labradoodle had urinated and defecated on the floor. Instead of feeling bad that the dog couldn’t get outside when she needed to go, he kicked her — 10 times — in front of his then 11-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter. The dog died.

It wasn’t until the boy wrote “My dad is a killer,” for an after-school program assignment that the authorities investigated. The defense for Tessmer, now 54, says it was not his intention to kill the dog, and that the dog could actually have died from rat poisoning, which also causes hemorraging. (What a coincidence that would have been!)

The defense also claimed that the boy did not really suffer mental harm from seeing his dog kicked to death. But the prosecution  says the boy could not sleep at night for months after the incident, and had nightmares about it when he did sleep. (And what about the girl? I can find nothing of her in any stories.)

According to WHLB Radio, A jury on Monday found Tessmer guilty of both killing the animal and causing mental harm to a child. He is scheduled to be sentenced on May 9. He faces up to nine years in prison. (Sounds like he has a different set of people looking into his future than the man who threw his neighbor’s dog onto a busy highway near Chicago and got off with a $100 fine…) I’ll keep you posted.

A Labradoodle, like the one who died at the other end of her owner's foot (Photo: Flickr photostream of Estoril)

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Dog: It’s What Was for Dinner in Texas 9,400 Years Ago

The oldest domesticated dog in the Americas was probably very similar to this modern-day Peruvian dog, say scientists

The partial skullbone of a dog much like the Peruvian breed above wound up in somebody’s dinner in Texas 9,400 years ago, according to new research. Scientists recently found the bone and identified it as being part of the oldest domesticated dog yet found in the Americas.

“Not only were (dogs) most likely companions as they are today, they served as protection, hunting assistants, and also as a food source,” said bone discoverer Samuel Belknap III, a University of Maine researcher in the Department of Anthropology and Climate Change Institute.

Belknap didn’t set out to find the oldest dog in the New World. That was just a lucky fluke he discovered when examining someone’s fossilized waste. (Yum!)

“I started out trying to understand human diet in southwest Texas. It so happens that this person, who lived 9,400 years ago, was eating dog,” Belknap said in a press release.

He surmises that dogs were eaten in times of desperation or celebration, according to an interesting article in Discovery. If you want to know more, check it out. It’s worth a little visit if you’re interested in dog history.

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Who Would You Rather Kiss on New Year’s Eve: Your Dog or Brad Pitt?

Angelina Jolie might prefer to kiss Brad Pitt, but dog owners in an AKC survey would rather pucker up to the family dog ((Photo: Getty Images)

Move over, Brad Pitt. Most dog owners in a new AKC survey would rather pucker up to the family dog on New Year’s Eve than to Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie.

How about you, Dogsters? Come New Year’s Eve, who would you rather kiss? Brad/Angelina or your best four-legged pal?

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New reviews: Too late for Christmas, but there’s always New Year’s

December 24, 2010

Our new product section is humming along nicely, and I know review coordinator Ericka Basile has quite a few more reviews in the pipeline, including another popular review where the PetConnection team each takes one of a class of products — like time it was vacs — and tries it out for a compare-contrast with others. Phyllis DeGioia is taking over coordinating book reviews, so we’ll have a lot more of them. And even though we had to say good-bye to our DogCars.com website in 2010, we’re hitting the accelerator pedal again on vehicle reviews, which will now be in our general reviews section.

Here’s what’s over there now:

Jill Fisher Gibbs reviews MuttMops:

MuttMops are sturdy fleece toys that captivate and entertain.  They come in six different flavors, er, colors, including Wintergreen, which I kind of expected would smell like Lifesavers, but it didn’t. Bright color, though, which is helpful to spot in the snow.

Isabeau, one of my two Flat-Coated Retrievers, wanted it right out of the envelope, and she got it. Took off running, she did, which is a positive review from her.

These toys are 11 inches in diameter and are made with a 100 percent polyester fringe around a solid rubber ring that creates a very floppy toy.  Floppy toys make for the best “toss into the air and catch” fun.

Henry, my Golden Retriever, seemed to have the most fun with it.  Running, tossing, catching, running, tossing and catching.

Next up: Ericka Basile with Ramps4Paws, reviewed with assistance of Golden Retriever Rescue of Southwest Florida:

I asked Dennis Guyitt, with Golden Retriever Rescue of Southwest Florida, to bring a few dogs to my house so we could test out the ramp on larger and senior dogs. My 9-pound Chihuahua, Roxi, was miffed, but she is recovering from the hit to her small-dog ego.

[...]

You’ll see in the video  how well-designed the ramp is. It comes in a carrying case, weighs about 15 pounds, and rolls out to make a ramp almost anywhere. We tested the large version.

Amber, 8, and Wiley, 2, were our canine testers. In the video you will see I chose to leave in the first attempts the dogs made at using the ramp (even the FAIL), because I want to show real-world trial and error of using a ramp for the first time. It only took two tries and six liver treats to teach these  beauties how to use the Ramp4Paws.

Ericka gives cat-owners some love with her other two reviews: One for the Magneticat toy and and then with reviews of some lovely beds.

Click over to our product reviews section and check them all out. You can also find out how to get a product to us for review, and what happens to products after we review them.

Big thanks to Ericka for her work on the product reviews. You’ll be seeing a lot more of them in 2011, now that we have our own section for them.

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