New year, new you: Go vegan!

Happy New Year! Day one of Animal Defense League's Top Ten New Years Resolutions!


For the first day of the new year, we're asking you to go vegan! Stay vegan! Talk about veganism to your family, friends- everyone!


If you’re not vegan, you’re not doing the single most powerful action you can to boycott animal cruelty. Think about it- every time you sit down to eat (or grab something to go), you can make a difference!

Do you still eat or use animal products, and/or participate in animal exploitation in other ways? We suggest you educate yourself about what you’re doing. Here are some very introductory resources.


ARTICLES, Specific-Focus

What About Fish?

What’s Wrong With Cheese?

What’s Wrong With Honey?

What About Humane or Organic Animal Products?


BOOKS, General

Generation V: The Complete Guide to Going, Being, and Staying Vegan as a Teenager by Claire Askew

Vegan Freak: Being Vegan in a Non-Vegan World by Drs. Jenna and Bob Torres.

(both books can be ordered here for 15% off the cover price)

Becoming Vegan: The Complete Guide to Adopting a Healthy Plant-Based Diet by Brenda Davis & Vesanto Melina

Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog? by Gary L. Francione

Redemption: The Myth of Pet Overpopulation and the No Kill Revolution in America by Nathan J. Winograd


FILMS, General

Earthlings (sometimes it is available on Google Video or You Tube, but please, support this amazing documentary!)

A Life Connected (free to watch!)


WEBSITES, General

Go Vegan Now

Peaceful Prairie Blog

(both of the above websites are run by Peaceful Prairie Animal Sanctuary)

An Animal Friendly Life

Animal Emancipation

Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach

Vegan Frequently Asked Questions

Vegans of Color

F/U on Micheal Vick's Dogs...

Quite possibly the only time you'll see me link to a Sports Illustrated article in a good way...

THE DOG approaches the outstretched hand. Her name is Sweet Jasmine, and she is 35 pounds of twitchy curiosity with a coat the color of fried chicken, a pink nose and brown eyes. She had spent a full 20 seconds studying this five-fingered offering before advancing. Now, as she moves forward, her tail points straight down, her butt is hunched toward the ground, her head is bowed, her ears pinned back. She stands at maybe three quarters of her height.

She gets within a foot of the hand and stops. She licks her snout, a sign of nervousness, and looks up at the stranger, seeking assurance. She looks back to the hand, licks her snout again and begins to extend her neck. Her nose is six inches away from the hand, one inch, half an inch. She sniffs once. She sniffs again. At this point almost any other dog in the world would offer up a gentle lick, a sweet hello, an invitation to be scratched or petted. She's come so far. She's so close.

But Jasmine pulls away.

Read the rest here.

Girl rescues tortured puppy

By the time Calli Vanderaa discovered the seven-week-old puppies in the garbage dumpster stationed behind her house, the fourth grader had spent two years soaking up ample evidence of society’s dark underbelly. She’d already seen more than most people witness in a lifetime.

The little girl was tossing away grass clippings with her dad last summer when they turned to walk away. She stopped in her tracks, ears instinctively tuned to the pleading cries coming from the big brown bin. The sounds were faint but unmistakably alive.

“I asked him, ‘Did you hear that?’”

“No,” he said.

“Well, come here.”

Her father Corey found a stool to boost himself up into the tall steel structure. Thankfully Calli stayed behind.

“He said I didn’t want to see what was inside there,” she told me.

The incident of cruelty made an impression on Calli. Last month, she wrote a letter to her local newspaper, the Winnipeg Free Press, detailing what had happened. A poem she had composed was also enclosed.

Dear Sir
My name is Calli Vanderaa.
I’m 9 years old and I live with my daddy.
One day we found a little puppy in the BFI bin in our lane. Somebody had put 3 puppies in there and set them on fire.
Two of the puppies died but daddy and I saved one that was sitting in the corner crying.
We took her home and named her Jessie. She is happy and growing bigger every day.

Full article here, with pictures

Restoration

It's like the pitter-patter of rain, the sound of their small feet rhythmically tapping, patting, stamping the ground, stirring up dirt in their enthusiastic rush to greet you and follow you around – a soothing, rustling, living sound. They follow you excitedly, flapping their wings, fluffing their feathers, craning their necks the better to behold you.

If you stop, they stop too and, with them, the sound. They surround you in expectant silence, their befeathered selves all aflutter with curiosity and excitement, billowing around you like a cloud – a radiant cloud of waking minds, throbbing hearts, hankering souls, living memories, passionately lived lives – riveting you at the center of their focused attention, lifted on almost tiptoes by the sheer force of their fascination with this new, rich feast of scents, sounds, shapes, colors, textures, thoughts, rhythms, and inner weather that you are to them.

It's hard to believe that these vibrant birds, crackling with life and wonder, are the same "free-range" hens who arrived at the sanctuary one year ago, bruised, battered, bewildered, disconnected from the world around them and from their own selves, unable or unwilling to inhabit their own lives (what was there to inhabit?).

Read the rest.

Happy Feral Cat Day!

Feral Cats
Feral cats are the same species as companion cats—but they have no desire to snuggle with you on your couch. Feral cats aren’t socialized to people, and so they are fearful of humans and are not adoptable. They live healthy, natural lives on their own, content in their outdoor home. Well-intentioned citizens might think they should call animal control when they spot a feral cat.

Here’s the catch: In the current animal control system, the only happy ending for animals is adoption. So what happens to animals who aren’t adopted? In today’s system, animals who are not placed in homes are killed. This includes feral cats – and they don’t even belong in the shelter system.

Feral cats live outside, but are killed in pounds and shelters. Think twice before you call your local animal control.

The Reality of the Animal Control System
Over 70% of cats who enter our nation’s animal control pounds and shelters are killed—feral, stray, and companion cats. That number jumps to virtually 100% for feral cats.

Talking the Talk
Animal control pounds and shelters might call it “euthanasia.”

But an animal is euthanized when she is hopelessly sick or injured. A healthy animal is not euthanized. She is killed. For feral cats, its called “catch and kill”—and your tax dollars and donations are funding it. Catch and kill is an endless, costly, and cruel cycle.

The Vacuum Effect
Feral cats choose to reside in locations for a reason: there is a food source (intended or not) and shelter. When a portion of the cats are removed from a location, survivors breed to capacity. When all of the cats are removed, new cats move in to take advantage of the available resources. It’s a documented phenomenon called the vacuum effect, and it’s one reason that catch and kill is so ineffective.

Trap-Neuter-Return
Trap-Neuter-Return is a humane approach for feral cats. Through this program, outdoor cats are humanely trapped, brought to a veterinarian to be evaluated, spayed or neutered, vaccinated, and eartipped. Cats that are friendly to humans and kittens are adopted into homes. Healthy adult feral cats are returned to their outdoor home.

Want more information? Read up here.

From Peaceful Prairie Animal Sanctuary...

Could you kill this cat?