Help Stop Puppy Mills (petition)

Pet stores that care about puppies don't sell them (unless the store is a re-homing shelter for rescued dogs). That's because the majority of pet stores that sell puppies carry dogs from cruel and inhumane puppy mills.

Puppy mills are like dog-making factories with the mother dogs spend their entire lives in cramped cages or kennels with little or no personal attention or quality of life. When the mother and father dogs can no longer breed, they are discarded or killed using barbaric means. Consumers who purchase puppies from pet stores or over the Internet without seeing a breeder's home firsthand are often unknowingly supporting this cruel industry.

Help stop this cycle of cruelty by:
1. Choosing not to buy your next pet from a pet store or Internet site.
2. Refusing to buy supplies from any pet store or Internet site that sells puppies.
3. Always considering adoption of rescued animals from animal shelters first.


Sponsored by: Humane Society of the United States
Sign the pledge to stop puppy mills.

Help Save the Hawaiian Monk Seal (petition)

"Endangered monk seals have only just started to recover from near extinction, but they're still in danger. They continue to be killed by the most dangerous species on earth: humankind." You can help to save these gentle creatures. Be a voice for the voiceless...

The Amazing Prairie Dog (includes video)

Recent research has shown these animals use descriptive terms in their communication! Article by Stephen Messenger courtesy of Care2.com "You might not think it to look at them, but prairie dogs and humans actually share an important commonality — and it’s not just their complex social structures, or their habit of standing up on two feet (aww, like people). As it turns out, prairie dogs actually have one of the most sophisticated forms of vocal communication in the natural world, really not so unlike our own."

After more than 25 years of studying the calls of prairie dog in the field, one researcher managed to decode just what these animals are saying. And the results show that praire dogs aren’t only extremely effective communicators, they also pay close attention to detail.

According to Dr. Con Slobodchikoff, who turned his vocalization analysis on the Gunnison’s prairie dog of Arizona and New Mexico, the chirps these animals use as ‘alert calls’ are actually word-like packages of information to share with the rest of the colony. Amazingly, these unique sounds were found to both identify specific threats by species, such as hawks and coyotes, and to point out descriptive information about their appearance.

And, when they’re talking about humans, that might not always be flattering.

“For example, a human alarm call not only contains information about the intruder being a human, but also contains information about the size, shape (thin or fat), and color of clothes the human is wearing,” says Dr. Slobodchikoff.

“When we do an experiment where the same person walks out into a prairie dog colony wearing different colored t-shirts at different times, the prairie dogs will have alarm calls that contain the same description of the person’s size and shape, but will vary in their description of the color.”

While there’s still much to learn about how other animals use organized vocalizations to communicate, Dr. Slobodchikoff has been a pioneer in the field — discovering complex language systems in a variety of other species as well. And with that, perhaps we humans will begin to change our perspective on our place in the world, knowing now that ours is not the only voice to be heard.

This post was originally published by TreeHugger.

Here’s a remarkable video detailing what the researcher discovered:


Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/prairie-dog-language-decoded-turns-out-theyre-talking-about-us.html#ixzz2Tek2sX2g

Help Stop Sea Otter Slaughter (Petition)

Alaska's curious and charming sea otters are finally on the path to recovery after being pushed to the brink of extinction by over-hunting. Under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, Alaska Native hunters alone are allowed to kill sea otters -- and they can only do so to create "authentic native handicrafts."

Unfortunately those protections could be weakened if the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service collapses under the greedy pressures of the commercial fishing industry -- rules may be expanded to include nearly unaltered sea otter pelts under the "handicrafts" definition.

Sea otters play an important role in Alaska's coastal ecosystems by encouraging the growth of kelp beds, which serve as nurseries for fish and create important carbon dioxide sinks. But sea otters also eat some species that are targeted by commercial fishers, so the fishing industry is pushing to control sea otter populations.

Please take action now to tell the Fish and Wildlife Service to protect Alaska's sea otters.

Three true stories (videos) of two legged dogs

that show us what it means to have courage, and live joyously! First Faith, who learned to walk on her two back legs like a human.


A sweet little Chihuahua with no front legs


Granny Jin rescues dog with no front legs. One winter's day when Granny Jin was walking her two Pekingese dogs alongside a pond in Xinxiang, Henan, China, she came a across a black puppy, a few days old. The puppy had been dumped by its previous owner because it was born without its two front legs. Granny Jin took the pup back home and named it "Xiao Hei" (Little Blacky). Eight months on, under the love and care of Granny Jin, Xiao Hei has turned into a healthy dog.