The Blog Pound

Submit your animal shelter adoption tales

If you’ve got a heart-warming tale about a pet you adopted from a shelter (or rescued from, for example, your front porch), there are two writing opportunities waiting for you.

The first one is Hopeful Tails, a compilation of rescue and adoption stories from around the United States. It’s being published by the ASPCA in conjunction with Borders and Howell Book House, and will be available this fall. If you have a story about one of your pets you’d like to submit, you have until March 31st to do it (I know, that’s not a lot of time, but I just found out about this today). The official website for the project is at BordersPetProject.com.

The second opportunity is my personal favourite. Mutts’ artist Patrick O’Donnell is looking for stories and photos to feature in a new collection of his “Shelter Stories” comics. The book will contain old comic strips from “Shelter Stories” series, plus new ones based on pet owners’ submissions. The only requirement is that you have to have formally adopted your pet from a shelter, animal control agency, or rescue group. The lucky winners will have their pet’s shelter story immortalized in an original comic strip drawn by Patrick. Pets that don’t make it into the book may still be featured on an upcoming Mutts calendar. If you want to know more, visit Shelter Stories: Call for Entries. Although I don’t feel like I have any free time, I’m going to make some so I can submit our dog Phoenix’s story. She was sick, full of infection, smelly, and thirty minutes away from her execution date. The shelter workers tried to convince us not to adopt her… in fact, they were sort of rude about it. The shelter’s vet told us horror stories about how sick she’d be all her life, about how she’d be blind and miserable, and she turned out to be the happiest little dog I’ve ever known. Sure, she has a few health issues, but nothing life-threatening, and nothing which we can’t control. Her biggest problem was food allergies, which we’ve been able to fix. I’d love to see her journey immortalized in shelter stories and hope someone from that shelter sees it and remembers her. She’s a great dog who deserved a hell of a lot better than she got from our animal control system. In any case, the Mutts people have taken pity on my busy schedule, because their final submission date is May 1st.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 03/24 at 06:40 PM

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About Me

My name is Leigh-Ann, I'm Canadian, and I live in the United States. This gives me great insight on cross-border issues, like American vs. Canadian candy bars, and curling vs. golf. I enjoy coffee but not caffeine, as I like to think I'm agitated enough already. I think a day without Starbucks is a day without sunshine (there are no Tim Hortons here, so I make do with what I've got). I love animals and birds and fish and even most of the creepy crawlies on the sidewalk and in the garden, but I prefer it when they stay out of the house. I'm a veterinary technology student at Penn Foster, and I'm the Director of Wee Paws Animal Sanctuary. I bottle-feed lots of kittens, and try to find homes for society's less fortunate felines. If you'd like to make a donation to Wee Paws, click the button below, or click here for more options and ways you can help.

My partner is the fantabulous Flippy. I write a blog about fibromyalgia at Tired Girls. Feel free to check out the photo gallery if you want to see 500 pictures of my dogs, cats, birds, etc. Get in touch with me via the "contact" link above - I'm actively seeking work, and specialize in Internet/social media marketing (but I don't blog about it). My background is in radio and television. One more thing: this blog was designed to be displayed at 1280 x 1024 in IE, because that's just the kind of girl I am.

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