It’s been quite sometime since I posted anything here.  I have had a ton of projects on the go and with Christmas being hosted at my house this year, I just haven’t had to energy to sit and write.  I hope you and yours had a wonderful holiday season and wish you all great peace and prosperity in the new year.

There has been a ton of stories, issues and alerts circulating the animal cruelty area and I will updating you on those over the next few days. 

My projects for 2010 are mostly concerned with animal cruelty and welfare.  I was finally able to get my license renewed on December 1st after almost 20 years of not driving.  I didn’t like driving stick shift in the Lower Mainland so I let my license expire figuring I would never drive again anyway.  Stupid me!  Once it became clear that my husband was never going to drive again due to losing his eyesight, I was kicking my behind regularly that I had let my license slide. Now I have to go through this stupid graduated licensing that BC has…but I digress.  Long story short…hubby losing his eyesight rather quickly now so I have to be the one to drive our beautiful Jetta. Poor me. I have to admit, it was extremely liberating on December 1st when I was able to finally drive by myself. 

So one of my principle goals for after obtaining my license was to get involved as soon as possible in animal rescue transport.  It is my intention to get deeply active in this part of the rescue effort since I cannot actually provide foster for the animals being rescued. My complex restricts the amount of animals I can have along with the size of the animal.  I already have the maximum number of animals with Jazzy and Chico my beloved cats.  And Jazzy honestly does eat Pit Bulls for breakfast.  No dogs around here while she’s queen of the house. 

So other then visiting shelters and hanging with the animals, going on walks and socializing with them, transporting at risk animals from shelters to rescue to forever homes is an exciting adventure to look forward to this upcoming year. I will be blogging on that as I progress through the steps.

Another of my principle goals for 2010 is to gather data regarding British Columbia shelters.  Data such as the kill rate per shelter, the number of dogs and cats abandoned or surrendered versus the number picked up by animal control methods versus the number rescued from abusive situations. How many of these animals leave by way of the front door versus going out the back door.  These figures, available quite freely in the US, do not seem to be available for Canadian shelters. 

I contacted the professor of Animal Welfare at UBC to ask him to guide me along the way on this and Professor Fraser was very gracious in his response as well as his encouragement and advice on how to proceed. He also pretty much requested a copy of my paper when I was finished so now I feel like I’ve been assigned homework instead of initializing this project myself.  But it’s all good.  Having a paper due has always worked to motivate me into taking action.

I had a nice Christmas spending a couple of days with my sweet, “wish she was my daughter but she’s not, she’s my niece” Heather.  Her 2 year old Jaiden is quite un-likable right now and I’m hoping that will pass in a year or two.    He’s as cute as ever but…nasty, nasty, nasty. I cooked a ton of food and only a portion of it turned out worth eating.  I baked a ton and all of it came out pretty good. I’ve never baked before so that was fun to try for the first time.  All during all this, I worried about Justice.

More about Justice in my next post.  You won’t want to miss all the action on that one.  Stay tuned.

Related posts:

1. Many good reasons for animal-cruelty laws
2. Where You Been, What You Been Doing?