Petfinder Blog

Here's another great lost-dog reunion story from our partner HomeAgain. You can help lost pets get home again: Sign up to receive lost pet alerts when a dog or cat goes missing in your area.

Chen was running down a busy street -- by Jen in Jacksonville, FL
My husband had accidentally left our front door open and I didn't notice that our Shih Tzu-Poodle mix, Chen, was missing for probably ten minutes. After panicking and calling for her on our street, I realized she was nowhere near and jumped in the car. I was terrified I'd find her injured or dead since there is a lot of traffic near our home.

Thankfully, after another ten minutes of fruitless searching, I received a call from HomeAgain -- they were connecting me with a man who had found her running down the middle of a busy street.

I met John and thanked him profusely. John said he also used a pet recovery service for his two dogs and that it had helped him in the past. I am so glad that I started the HomeAgain service and have been renewing. It only takes one time for it to be completely worth it!

It didn't take Rita Sears long to realize Trigger was the dog for her. The Eaton Rapids, MI, woman saw him just one day after he was posted on Petfinder by South Bend Animal Care and Control in Indiana.

"I contacted the shelter on the phone and later that day was on the road to a whole other state to adopt this wonderful guy," she says.

Trigger would call the Sears' family wonderful, too. He had been found in an abandoned house by an animal control officer and weighed a mere 66 pounds, had fleas and hip problems that caused him pain when he walked any distance. The officer turned him over to the shelter so the staff could find him a loving home.

Maintaining your pet's weight is an important part of keeping him healthy. But, with more than half of U.S. pets overweight, some of us need a little help. On Wednesday, May 16, join us from 12-2 p.m. ET for our live Facebook Q&A on keeping you and your pet in shape. Dr. Ernie Ward, veterinarian, founder of the Association of Pet Obesity Prevention and certified personal trainer, will be answering your questions live. Don't miss it!

How to participate:

• "Like" Petfinder on Facebook for updates and reminders
  
• Visit our Facebook page on May 16 from 12-2 p.m. ET
• Ask your questions about how you, your pet or both of you can get in shape and more!

About our expert:
Dr. Ernie Ward is a 1992 graduate of the University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine, founder of the Association for Pet Obesity Prevention (APOP), and author of Chow Hounds: Why Our Dogs Are Getting Fatter - A Vet's Plan to Save Their Lives. Dr. Ward is also a founder and board member for the International Veterinary Senior Care Society and member of many veterinary organizations, including the American Academy of Veterinary Nutrition.

Dr. Ward has authored over 60 veterinary journal articles, texts, and four veterinary training videos. His works have been published in the US, Canada, Japan, England, Spain, France, China, Taiwan, Hungary and Portugal. He is a popular lecturer, was voted "Speaker of the Year" for the North American Veterinary Conference, and has been the resident veterinarian for the Rachael Ray Show since 2007. Dr. Ward has been a spokesman for the profession on Animal Planet beginning in 2003, CNN, NBC Nightly News, Today, Good Morning America, and Nightline as well as all of the nation's major newspapers and pet and health magazines.

Dr. Ward founded APOP in 2005 after witnessing the growing number of obese pets and the impact it had on his patients. APOP's mission is to raise awareness of pet obesity in both pet owners and veterinary healthcare providers, monitor the prevalence of overweight pets, and to create parallel weight loss programs for pets and people.

In addition to being a veterinarian, Dr. Ward is a personal trainer and triathlon coach. Dr. Ward is an avid surfer and competitive triathlete and has completed two full Ironman triathlons and over a dozen half-Ironman competitions in addition to countless other races.

Dr. Ward hopes to bring to Petfinder.com his experience and knowledge in assisting both humans and pets achieve their optimal health through natural, integrative and preventive measures. Dr. Ward has been very active in the areas of senior pet care, general and weight-loss nutrition, and preventive care. For more information, visit www.DrErnieWard.com and www.PetObesityPrevention.org.

Katherine Heigl's Jason Debus Heigl Foundation and the Petfinder Foundation have awarded San Bernardino City Animal Control $7,000 to vaccinate shelter dogs against bordetella, often called kennel cough.

"We are very pleased to work with the Petfinder Foundation in our common mission to improve the lives of homeless pets," Heigl says. "The Petfinder Foundation's generous grant to San Bernardino Animal Control is a lifesaver because vaccinations are vital for shelter pets' health."

San Bernardino City Animal Control takes in about 900 dogs and puppies a month, but only adopts out about 200, due in part to disease. The bordetella grant will dramatically impact those numbers.

"To give a dog a chance at finding a forever home is our ultimate goal," says Ryan Long, a kennel supervisor and registered vet tech at the shelter. "[The vaccination grant] provides the animals at our shelter a much better chance for a happier and healthier life. Reducing or even eliminating the outbreaks of bordetella in the shelter also helps in reducing our euthanasia rate, because those [healthy] animals are more likely to be adopted."

After the jump: Learn more about Katherine Heigl's mission to help pets -- and fight balls (and watch her hilarious "I Hate Balls" PSA video).

Want expert advice for keeping both you and your pet fit and healthy? Join our live Q&A on Facebook on Wednesday, May 16, from 12-2 p.m. ET. Like us on Facebook for updates and reminders!

Pets can improve our health -- lowering our blood pressure, providing unconditional love and forcing us to get out and get moving. But turn about is fair play. How do we keep our pets fit and healthy? That's the question we posed to you in our April newsletter.

Many of you mentioned walking your pets, making sure they stay active. Kathy, for instance, hits the pavement with her dog twice a day.

Haley also includes walking on her pet-healthy agenda, but also goes to the dog park for some free play and includes backyard Frisbee in her dog's fun time. Jeanette, who says her dog is the love of her life and the beginning and end of her smile, says he is a certified therapy dog and a military working dog. He has allergies, so she makes sure he has grain-free foods to keep him in top shape.

Barrett reports, "My small dog [50 lbs.] is an avid disc golf dog. She is a Border Collie/ Lab mix (we think), and it is her job to find the discs we throw. She plays about a course a weekend, and gets catches with her disc for about 18 holes (usually about a mile)."

Mother's Day can be a minefield for those of us who have tried, in vain, to have kids. But as I get older my understanding of motherhood expands. I feel especially blessed this season to be surrounded by my step and adopted family and to watch one of my non-traditional "kids" become a foster mother herself. She is gorgeous, funny and smart, and I'm nominating her for mother of the year. She is a Wyandotte chicken, and we've renamed her "Mother."

Most chickens have had all the mothering bred out of them. I, personally, have a diverse band of fowl from all flocks of life. This year, spring on the farm delivered a special challenge and surprise. Our pretty young Wyandotte decided (against all odds) that she was to be a mom. She stockpiled eggs and puffed up like a turkey and grumpily scolded us when we came to collect. This was all in vain because none of our eggs are fertilized (we don't have a rooster). After we collected the day's eggs, she even sat on an empty nest, not eating or drinking, while she waited for her imaginary brood to hatch. Her behavior was strange and crabby and chickens like conformity. She became isolated from the group and got more and more odd.

Zach, Ginger Niles' cat, needed a buddy, so she started looking at Petfinder. "Who would have ever thought you'd find a pet online?" she says. But she saw Angelo listed by Heaven to Betsy's Rescue in Griffith, IN, and had a hunch that he was the right cat.

Angelo had been waiting for this moment for a long time. Fortunately he was in foster care where he had been placed at birth, and now he was two -- two long years without a forever home.

In January, Rescue U went to Guthrie, OK, to rebuild the City of Guthrie Animal Shelter, which had been destroyed by a tornado in May 2011. Our volunteers repaired the roof and kennels, built new storage and exercise pens, added a meet-and-greet area and more. (Read our online diary from the trip.)

Four months later, what kind of impact has the Rescue U visit had on the shelter? "It has reinforced our community to become more proactive when it comes to the animals," shelter manager and animal control superintendent Suzy Brown tells us. "The news around the [project] really raised public awareness."

The visit also improved morale among shelter staff. "Rescue U has renewed a broken shelter. [It's] given us a bright tomorrow and hope for the future," Brown says. "It is a gift that will continue to give for many years to come, and that is truly exciting. We are truly grateful."

To spread the word about the great impact a handful of dedicated volunteers can have on homeless pets and the people who care for them, the Petfinder Foundation is launching a new webisode series about Rescue U. We're kicking it off with a look back at the Guthrie trip and we'll cover our upcoming projects throughout the year. Check out the first installment after the jump, and stay tuned for more!

Donate to support Rescue U's shelter-rebuilding projects.

Today we're tackling childhood allergies to pets -- and whether those allergies can be prevented by early exposure. We touched base with Deborah Pockross, M.D., an allergist and immunologist at Kenilworth Medical Associates in Illinois to get the facts:

PETFINDER: How can parents know if their child is developing pet allergies?
Dr. Pockross: Parents should look for symptoms such as sneezing, runny nose, itchy eyes, cough, wheeze or shortness of breath that occur in association with pet exposure or close contact with pets. Sometimes a child will not experience the symptoms around his or her own pet, but will become symptomatic around a new pet or someone else's pet.

Why might a child not have as much of a reaction to his or her own pet?
With chronic exposure to a pet, a child may develop tolerance to the pet even though they are allergic to it.

Mother's Day is May 13. To thank your mother for all the ways she cared for you, why not give her a gift that cares for pets in need: a donation to the Petfinder Foundation in her honor?

The shelters and rescue groups we support really do treat their homeless pets like their own children. One grant recipient, Cheyenne Animal Shelter in Wyoming, recently wrote to tell us about how our grant helped them give lifesaving medical care to many pets, including Hope and Faith:

When a starving 4-year-old female Great Dane/Labrador mix arrived at the Cheyenne Animal Shelter, the staff and volunteers couldn't believe what they saw and felt. It didn't seem possible that they were reading only 36 pounds on the scale for a dog that should weigh 80 pounds.

It didn't seem possible that they could feel each and every bone in her body, pushing through her thin skin and black fur. And it didn't seem possible that their hearts could break any more for her -- until they looked into her eyes and saw her sweet, if somewhat untrusting, nature.

They named her Hope because it seemed she didn't have much, and because she would need it in order to survive and see how great life as a dog could really be.

Animal-control officers brought Hope to the shelter with another dog who shared her back yard after efforts to work with the owner to get the dogs to a vet failed. The second dog was a Mastiff mix and also much too thin, although not as bad off as Hope was. The staff named her Faith.

They were both immediately put on a prescription-food diet, but Hope especially had to be reintroduced to food slowly so her stomach could readjust. She was walked and fed small portions every four hours round-the-clock, rain or shine. In four short weeks, Hope gained nearly 40 pounds and was starting to rebuild the muscles that had withered away. Slowly, she was allowed larger portions of food, eventually just twice a day.

After the jump: Find out what happened to Hope, Faith and the person responsible for their condition.