Need Your Help!

Hi guys. I don't typically get my blogs mixed together - waymarking is for waymarking and the dog blog is, well, for the dogs. But I could use a little help.

Many of you out there know that I am really active in dog rescue. I am the grant coordinator and a foster parent for New Rattitude, a national rat terrier rescue non-profit. With the hit that the economy has taken, it is meaning a big increase in the number of dogs that are being surrendered to shelters. On top of that, many puppymills are being shut down (a great thing). Just a couple weeks ago, two operations that shut down created close to 300 rat terriers that needed immediate rescue or they would be put to sleep - that takes a lot of money and a huge volunteer force. On top of all this, charitable foundations have had big losses in the stock market this year which means less grant monies being made available to animal welfare groups.

Here's the easy way to help (unless you have some spare cash lying around that you could flip into the New Rattitude Paypal account. :) Two animal welfare Websites are holding contests right now and the winning group gets a $25,000 grant in one contest and a $10,000 in the other. In the first contest at the Animal Rescue Site, they are also giving the top vote getter in each state $1,000. In this contest people vote daily for their favorite animal shelter/rescue group. Voting continues through December 14th. All you have to do is save the link in your favorites and go to the site at least once a day. Some folks say you can vote on every computer in your house, a few times a day (you know, so everyone in the family has a chance to vote), but you didn't hear this from me. Right now New Rattitude is 1st in the state of Georgia (where we are incorporated) and 28th nationally. This is down from the 17th place position we held for quite awhile, so we can use more voters.

Just type New Rattitude in the "shelter name" line and choose GA for the state (no city is necessary.) This will bring up the shelter's name and a vote button. Vote daily! Please!!

The second Website with the $10,000 grant is Care 2. They are also randomly drawing shelter names weekly for a $1,000 prize. This one is even easier, because you only have to vote once.

So there's my waymarking pitch for the dogs. If you want to learn more about Team Hikenutty's crazy fostering adventures, be sure to check out our dog blog. Heck, one waymarker has even adopted one of our foster dogs so who says waymarking and fostering can't mix!

Dog-Marking

No, not that kind of marking!! Waymarking with dogs, silly. My two blogging worlds are colliding today and an online waymarking friend, Team Mindawg, is flying out to Seattle to pick up one of our rescue dogs that she is adopting. They have been waiting patiently for Suki to heal up from her mange so she can be spayed and after 5 months of treatment, Suki is now spayed and ready to head to Denver to join Team Mindawg on their waymarking and geocaching adventures.

Team Mindawg will be staying with us for a couple days of waymarking and geocaching in the Seattle-Tacoma area before flying back to the Rockies on Sunday. And after months of gray skies we will be having our first warm weekend with temperatures reaching the mid 80's. Yahooo!! I can just feel my waymarking backlog growing as I type.

Anyhow, the photo is of little Suki, the newest Team Mindawg member, who will have many happy years of waymarking and caching ahead of her. When she was first flown to us she was such a sick little girl covered with mange and fighting an intestinal infection, but now she's a typical, spunky little terrier. She was going to be put to sleep because she had mange and wasn't considered adoptable! Can you imagine that! Now when people at the off-leash park find out that she is a foster dog they are ready to take her home and I have to let them know that, nope, she's already got a family waiting.