Vote for Your Favorite Famous Dog!

From crime fighting dogs to presidential pooches.... that sometimes got more press than their owners,... one look at popular culture proves that dogs have always had a profound influence on our daily lives. But which well-known canine is the most famous? Continuing the celebration of its 125 Anniversary and quest to find the top 125 Dogs in Pop Culture, the American Kennel Club and partner AOL’s PawNation.com ask America to weigh in this week on their favorite famous dog. This week’s choices include:

• Richard Nixon’s Cocker Spaniel “Checkers"
• Bill Clinton’s Labrador Retriever “Buddy”
• Paris Hilton’s Chihuahua “Tinker Bell”
• FDR’s Scottish Terrier “Fala”
• Obama's’s Portuguese Water Dog “Bo”
• "McGruff" the Crime Dog and
• "Tryumph" the Insult Comic Dog.

Leave your paw print on the poll! VOTE HERE!

The Perks of PetLynx (For Pet Families)

Whether they operate as part of a municipality or are non-profit agencies, animal shelters are busy places! While it can be a challenge, it is important that adoption staff and volunteers using PetLynx take a few minutes to explain the "perks" of registration that is part of the pet adoption package given to each new pet family. What's in for me, you might ask? When pet guardians regularly update their PetLynx profile they help animal service providers (that's you!) get lost pets HomeSafe faster! With the PetLynx DataSketch system, lost and found matches can be made using only a physical description. With the quick and easy AutoMatch recovery system, fewer animals are brought to animal shelters... saving valuable time, resources and, ultimately, lives. Benefits of PetLynx for pet families:

• Instant access to pet's ID and medical records 24/7.

• In an emergency, veterinarians, shelter workers and animal control personnel have access to information 24/7.

• Lifetime access to National Automated Pet Recovery Service, should the animal become lost. Includes ability to quickly and easily create and print "Lost Pet" posters.

• DataSketchTM and AutoMatchTM combine to enable real time automated matching of lost and found pets, with or without ID, to help get pets HomeSafeTM!

Pet families should be advised to:

• Upload a new photo of the pet immediately. Update at least annually.

• Update contact info immediately, whenever anything changes. No fee for updating or changing information.

• Double-check pet(s) listing(s) at least once a year, ideally when dog/cat licenses are renewed or when the pet has an annual physical.

• Update medical information. This is especially important as your pet ages or if there has been a change in medication or treatment protocols.

• Update the profile if there has been radical change in your pet's description. (Such as shaving, spaying or neutering.)

Want to know more? Check out our Q & A section. Not a service provider? Want to register your pet with PetLynx? Pre-register your pet for one low lifetime fee

A heart-warming tale for a cold winter night

'Buckley's Story: Lessons from a Feline Master Teacher In the spring of 2005, author Ingrid King met Buckley. All it took for King, a long-time veterinary hospital manager, was one look at the small homeless cat, and she fell in love. Hard. And fast. Soon, her life was transformed. In King's warmhearted memoir, Buckley's Story: Lessons from a Feline Master Teacher, she shares the story of how -- rather unexpectedly -- one tortoiseshell cat touched her life forever. Buckley's presence in King's life leads the author to make major changes in her own life, inspired by the lessons this little cat taught through her joyful spirit and huge heart -- universal lessons that readers can apply to their own lives. But after only a few years, Buckley is diagnosed with advanced cardiac disease. In the following chapters of Buckley's Story, King tells of the sometimes heart-wrenching, sometimes joyous, final months of Buckley's life. The human-feline bond is an unbreakable one, and King retells the story with poetic grace. This book is a celebration of life and a reflection of the never-ending love that anyone who has ever loved and lost a pet can surely relate to.

Rally to Rescue Across America

Purina Pro Plan is taking its message of pet adoption across America in a customized motor home. And they are also asking animal ambassadors to participate by hosting their own events.

Since the inception of Rally to Rescue® in 2005, more than 227,000 pets in the United States have found loving, forever homes. But there is still more work to do! Rally To Rescue® encourages everyone to help their Ambassadors reach the grand total goal of 300,000 adoptions by the end of 2009. Rally To Rescue® is traveling to eight areas across the country with the Rally Across America 2009 tour.

Follow the Rally To Rescue® team and get ideas for adoption events in your community as they host hundreds of events nationwide.

H1N1 Confirmed in Canadian Ferret & American Cat

November 6, 2009: Yesterday, PIJAC Canada received notice that the first confirmed case of H1N1 in a ferret was reported to the Nova Scotia Veterinary Medical Association. In addition, the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) put out a press release yesterday stating that there has been one confirmed case of a cat in Iowa contracting the H1N1 virus from the owners. Please take notice of this PIJAC Canada bulletin to learn more on what you should do. The Canadian Veterinary Medical Association has also posted an information sheet on their website for pet owners. Questions for PIJAC Canada? (p) 1-800-667-7452 or 1-613-730-8111 (e) memberservices@pijaccanada.com.

Bones of the Business

Tips for Working Smarter from PetSmart Challenge: PetSmart Charities has announced some changes to its grant structure. How will the adjusted application process impact your agency? Solution: Don’t panic! The PetSmart team is ready to answer questions and provide helpful resources. They have also prepared a 20-minute Webinar on their website that walks you through the challenges and the process.
 Here’s what you need to know:

• Emergency Relief grants and Canadian grants are not affected by these changes.
• Discard all old grant applications. (New application forms are on the web site.)
• Choose programs that focus on spay/neuter for free-roaming cats and targeted spay/neuter programs for cat owners.
• Start planning for next year’s funding deadline, which will be in early 2010.
• If you have a current grant with PetSmart Charities, you will need to wait until your current project is complete before applying for a new grant.
• Equipment grants for spay/neuter clinic have their own application process.

View the Fall 2009 issue of PetSmart Charities Quarterly newsletter for the complete story.

 Used by permission from PetSmart Charities, Inc. 
Learn more with free webinars.

A Measure of Performance

What is the PetLynx PetMeter™? This component of the PetLynx system lets you view the PetLynx Utility at work. The numbers are a live-to-screen generated account of active lost and found reports and, most importantly, a live glimpse of the AutoMatch™ Google-like search engine. The unique AutoMatch™ search engine performs searches for lost pets against pets admitted to any shelter or pound through AnimalTRACS™ or ShelterLynx™, as well as those from found reports and those registered in the central database, to produce a list of potential matches. The owners are then contacted automatically by email for a happy reunion. In the upper half of the PetMeter™, the Live System Snapshot refreshes every time you connect, to show the system activity in real-time. This includes the number of:

• Active Lost Reports
• Active Found Reports
• Potential AutoMatchs™.

In the lower half of the PetMetre is an estimate of the number of animals lost, found, adopted and euthanized throughout North America. These numbers are aggregated from a painstaking summary of data:

• Canadian Federation of Humane Societies [CFHS]
• Humane Society of the United States [HSUS]
• Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science
• National Council on Pet Population Study and Policy
• Animal People
• USA Today - Pet Population Study

No one is sure how accurate these numbers are, but our research has uncovered a margin of error in reported euthanasias across North America that may be as high as 30%. Wow! Can't we get a closer number than that? You bet we can! But the industry has to collect and share data in the same format. That's where PetLynx comes in. On a completely industry-neutral basis, we have developed the AnimalTRACS™ Utility to collect and present this data for everyone in the industry. As the list of contributors and therefore the accuracy grows, we all get a better understanding of the problem and the solution for each of our communities. Want to know more? Click here.

Secrets Inside a Dog's Mind

Do you ever wonder... What is my dog thinking? According to a recent article in TIME magazine, many animals have some level of social intelligence, allowing them to coexist and cooperate with other members of their species. But dogs have evolved an extraordinarily rich social intelligence as they've adapted to life with us. Perhaps understanding how (and what) our dogs think could help us be better pet guardians and, for those of us involved in animal welfare, to provide better care for abused, abandoned and stray dogs. Read the full story of the Secrets Inside a Dog's Mind.

A 'Cure' for Pet Euthanisia?

Can a $75 million program, funded by a billionaire doctor’s foundation, offer the solution to pet over population? In the September issue of Science Magazine, David Grimm reports that humane organizations throughout the United States can’t surgically sterilize homeless cats and dogs fast enough to control their numbers. Developing countries with dangerous feral dog populations – such as China and India – fare even worse. As a result, nearly four million dogs and cats are euthanized in United States’ animal shelters each year – and millions more are put to death in less humane ways around the globe. “The amount that municipalities in the U.S. spend to catch, house, and kill our pet cats and dogs is staggering,” Found Animals Foundation Founder, Gary Michelson, M.D., shared with Science. “Surely we should be able to come up with a more cost-effective and humane approach.” The solution could be a program announced last October by Dr. Michelson’s nonprofit foundation, Found Animals, the $75 million Michelson Prize & Grants in Reproductive Biology. The aim of the Program is to encourage researchers to develop a low cost, non-surgical sterilant, for cats and dogs. The Program offers $50 million in funding to approved researchers and a $25 million prize to the winning solution. “There are a lot of very bright people out there who haven’t applied their research direction to dogs and cats, in part because there’s been no money,” added Found Animals Director of Scientific Research, Shirley Johnston, Ph.D., D.V.M, a veterinarian and expert in animal reproduction. Want the full story? Click here.