Results tagged “entertainment” from Petfinder Blog

Are you thinking about adopting a dog from a shelter or rescue group? Animal Planet's Underdog to Wonderdog is now casting adopters for its second season!

Here's the announcement we've been asked to share by the show's production company, Sharp Entertainment:

Sharp Entertainment is casting for the second season of the ambitious television series that pairs abandoned shelter dogs with loving and deserving families.

Guided by the expertise of our Wonder Team, these once-neglected and forgotten shelter dogs will be transformed and given a second chance at life by being placed in loving and caring homes.

Not only will the pooches undergo an amazing transformation - so will the families and their homes, with a special doggie makeover that ensures the home and family are ready to welcome their new canine member.

Wyatt, an Airedale mix, is currently in "Two Gentlemen of Verona" at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis.

His pet parent, Cindy Jensen of Burnsville, MN, saw a casting call and took Wyatt in for an audition, and he was selected from among nine dogs.

Cindy adopted Wyatt after seeing him on Petfinder almost three years ago. He came from Crossroads Animal Shelter in Buffalo, MN.

The play closes March 29. You can see a video preview of his performance on Facebook. Wyatt does a great job! Who knew this former homeless pet had theater in his blood?

Anyone who thinks you can't get an A-list dog from a shelter or rescue group hasn't been to the movies lately.

As Julia Szabo points out in her New York Post column, the star of the new movie Hotel for Dogs, a terrier named Cosmo, was surrendered by a family who couldn't handle his high energy, and his double, J.R., was "discovered" at a Northern California animal shelter.

The movie also features a pair of rescued pit bulls (one of them a three-legged tripod), and as it turns out, the film's producer insisted as much. Check out this great article on BestFriends.org, which reports:

Movie producer Ewan Leslie is a devout pit bull lover who works with Karma Rescue in Los Angeles. Says Leslie, "When we started working on the movie, I told Mark Forbes, our head trainer from Birds and Animals, Unlimited, that we had to have some pits in the movie."

The article also says the cast and crew found homes for seven dogs, six of them pit bulls (three of those pits were adopted by crew members, including Pearl, a blue pit who'd been abandoned in a parking lot and who can now be seen on the movie's poster. And as if that weren't enough, the movie's site, hotelfordogsmovie.com, even links to Petfinder!

You may have seen ads on Petfinder for the movie All Roads Lead Home, which is available on DVD tomorrow, Jan. 13. This sweet, PG-rated film is about a 12-year-old girl named Belle (Vivien Cardone) who loves animals, and it will appeal to any kid who feels the same way.

But I'm excited about this movie for other reasons as well. Number one: One of the main characters, Belle's father Cody (Jason London), is an animal control officer in their Kansas town. He brings stray and neglected animals to the local open-access shelter, staffed by his friend Milo (Patton Oswalt).

Cody and Milo love animals but, as much as it saddens them, sometimes have to euthanize pets for illness, behavior or space. I've never seen such a sensitive portrayal of animal control officers, particularly in a kids' movie, where the neighborhood "dog catcher" is almost always the bad guy.

Reason number two: The film's distributor, Anchor Bay Entertainment, is putting its money where its mouth is to support pet adoption and animal shelters, first by advertising on Petfinder (thank you!!) and second by donating $3,000 to the Petfinder.com Foundation, money that will go directly to our rescue group members to help them save, care for and find homes for pets in need. Finally, Anchor Bay is also donating 200 free copies of the DVD to rescue-group staffers and volunteers attending our Adoption Options training workshops.