Help a Soldier Get a Service Dog with a Click of Your Mouse

Imagine you're a war veteran who needs help getting around because of a combat injury. You know a service dog could make your life easier, restoring much-needed independence and normalcy, but most service dogs are out of reach for you financially.

Or imagine you're a veteran with PTSD, and you can't function in crowds or when you can't see clearly around you. So you stay home, so you don't have to face the panic attacks at the store or the movies. You've heard about the tremendous help a service dog can be, but you don't have the resources to get one.  

Now imagine you can help these veterans, and not by donating money. All you have to do is click, and a deserving war veteran is one step closer to a life-changing companion. For every 1,000 new Likes on the wonderful Facebook page of organization Dog Bless You gets between Memorial Day and July 4, the nonprofit will donate a service dog to a war veteran.

I've spoken with veterans whose service dogs have given them their lives back. It's so easy to make a huge difference in the lives of these wounded warriors. All it takes from you is one tap of the mouse on the "Like" button of Dog Bless You's Facebook page during its Dog Bless USA Spirit of '76 campaign. (The group will donate up to 76 dogs!) 

I wish I could participate in this social media challenge grant, but I Liked them long ago. This almost makes me want to have many Facebook alter egos so I can Like them all over the place.

The campaign also applies to Dog Bless You's Pinterest and Tumblr pages. For every 1,000 followers on each site, Dog Bless You will donate a dog. 

As of last night, there were enough Likes for five dogs to be trained by excellent nonprofits that specialize in this kind of training. How many lives of wounded warriors will Dogster readers help change? Let's get clicking now! We can make a real difference here. 

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Canine Movie Star Uggie to Retire; Click for Hugo Dobie to Get a Nod for a Golden Collar Award

Uggie's days on the red carpet are numbered, but he'd rather be lounging by the blue pool.

(Update below)

Uggie, the adorable canine big-screen star whose role in The Artist has catapulted him into the limelight, will be stepping away from his feature film career to spend more time just kickin’ back.

“Uggie’s still enjoying it, but he’s getting up there and he’s slowing down a little,” trainer Sarah Clifford told the The Hollywood Reporter of the 10-year-old Jack Russell terrier, who also recently costarred in Water for Elephants. “He’s at the stage where he just says, ‘I think I want to go and lay in the sun by the pool.” (And his other trainer and “dad,” Omar Von Muller, does indeed have a pool.)

The little dog with the big ‘tude will still take on minor roles, but there will be no more of the months of long workdays required by feature films. Uggie’s protégé, a Jack Russell named Dash, will be taking over the big roles. He has been waiting in the wings for this opportunity, backing up Uggie for minor scenes, learning the ropes before his older “brother,” as Von Muller calls him, stepped aside. (The two are not actually related, except that Von Muller calls himself “dad” to both.)

One of Uggie’s final red-carpet appearances will be on Feb. 13 at the Golden Collar Awards in Los Angeles. He and Dash will grace the stage as their own perky selves. “From what I gather, one of his last hurrahs will be at the Golden Collar Awards,” says Alan Siskind of Dog News Daily, which is putting together the gala event.

After the Golden Collars, all that stands in the way of chillin’ by the pool all day is a little event known as the Academy Awards. The Artist, which cleaned up during the Golden Globes earlier this month, is up for 10 awards. Unfortunately there still isn’t a category for animal actors, but that’s what the Golden Collars are all about.

I’m delighted that I will be at the Golden Collar Awards in a couple of weeks, bringing Dogsters exclusive coverage of the event. It should be quite the scene. There’s even some excitement going on ahead of time, with Martin Scorsese, whose film Hugo has 11 Oscar nominations, pushing for the canine costar of that film to be entered in the Golden Collars. He thinks the regal Doberman, Blackie (Maximilian), deserves to be in the running for top dog in the category of Best Theatrical Film.

Blackie, in Hugo. (Photo: Jaap Buitendijk/GK Films)

The director wrote this in an editorial in the Los Angeles Times:

“Okay, let’s lay all our cards on the table. Jack Russell terriers are small and cute. Dobermans are enormous and — handsome. More tellingly, Uggie plays a nice little mascot who does tricks and saves his master’s life in one of the films, while Blackie gives an uncompromising performance as a ferocious guard dog who terrorizes children. I’m sure you can see what I’m driving at.”

Good for Scorsese for sticking up for the big guy (actually, Blackie is a gal). If you’d like to see Blackie added to the roster, go to the Dog News Daily Facebook page and nominate her. She needs 500 write-in votes by February 6. I’m heading over there right now to nominate her. (I’ll use my Soldier Dogs moniker to add some teeth. ) Not that I don’t love Uggie and the other contenders, but Blackie’s stellar performance should not be overlooked just because she was kinda big and scary. (Time has wondered if this is a form of “breedism.”) Head over to the FB page and join in if you want Blackie to have a chance to run with the little dogs.

Update 10 p.m. Jan 30: We just learned from the LA Times movie blog that there was such an outpouring of votes for Blackie that she received all the nominations she needed within a few hours of getting out the word about her! I hope she can make the awards. I’d love to see her beside her more diminutive colleagues.

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Help Veterans Get Service Dogs With a Quick Facebook Click

For veterans with PTSD, the world can become a much more livable, less stressful place with a service dog helping navigate civilian life after the trauma of war. Besides providing calming companionship, these dogs help their veterans function by performing many duties, including warning them when people are approaching so they don’t get startled.

The dogs are often called “life-changing” by vets with PTSD.

Now you can help provide a veteran with a service dog by clicking “like” on the Facebook page of a new internet campaign called Dog Bless USA. It’s never been so easy to change a life for the better. For every 5,000 Facebook “likes,” Explore.org will donate a service dog to a recent war veteran, up to 100 dogs or $500,000. The campaign runs from Memorial Day through July 4.

The Dog Bless USA program is funded through a grant from the Annenberg Foundation. Charlie Annenberg Weingarten, the founder of explore.org and Dog Bless You, is a Trustee for the Annenberg foundation.

“We want to raise awareness about the amazing role dogs can play in the lives of veterans and people who suffer from emotional and psychological damage, while giving everyone a chance to participate through a zero-cost contribution,” said Weingarten. “The ‘like’ button is akin to putting your name on a card to those soldiers. We’re excited to foster a discussion among vets and dog lovers during the campaign.”

Throughout the campaign, it will be revealed which service-dog foundations will receive the grant money to adopt or train a service dog. In the end, with lots of clicks, up to 100 former soldiers will be able to get the life-changing dog they could only dream of. So Like away!

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Click, treat, learn: Do you click with your pet?

January 25, 2011

In this week’s Pet Connection newspaper feature, Mikkel Becker wants to know: Do you “click with your pet”?

No, I’m not talking about getting along well, although I sure hope that you do. When I say “click,” I mean a training technique that’s easy and fun for all.

Clicker training is a no-force technique that works on animals of all sizes, ages and abilities. And that’s also true of the people who would administer clicker training, since it doesn’t require strength or much coordination on the part of the trainer.

A clicker is a small plastic box that fits in the palm of your hand. You press down on the metal strip inside the housing and quickly release it — click-click!

The clicker itself doesn’t have any magic powers. What it provides is timing — it allows a trainer working with a pet who understands the game to let the animal know the behavior he’s doing right now is the one that’s being rewarded. And that means the behavior will be repeated. The clicking noise becomes a reward because in the early stages of training, the sound is linked to the delivery of something a pet wants, usually a tiny but yummy treat.

Does this sound familiar? Like from a psychology class, perhaps? It should ring a bell, because the underlying principal of clicker training is scientific (Pavlov’s drooling dogs, and all). But you can be excused if you don’t want to know the ins and outs of the science and just want to cut to the chase.

So cut to the chase already — here!

And from Dr. Marty Becker and Mikkel Becker, news out of Cornell University:

To teach veterinary students to handle emergency situations without harming a pet in critical condition, the first-ever sophisticated critical care dog dummy with a software program has been developed by a veterinarian at Cornell University. Speakers and actuators within the dummy send out heart and lung signals, and a pulse can actually be felt. A balloon-like structure with air mimics breathing. The system monitors blood oxygen monitoring, blood pressure and EKG as well. Dr. Dan Fletcher, a professor at the Cornell veterinary school who teaches emergency medicine, noticed that students would freeze when first handling a critically ill pet. The dog dummy responds like a living, breathing critical pet, providing an environment in which students can learn, as well as make and learn from mistakes.

Read this week’s entire Pet Connection here!

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