Blog the Change for Animals - Getting the word out and letting it spread

September of last year, Lisa of A Tonk's Tail, who works at Hallmark stumbled upon the results of a study on the type of content people enjoyed and trusted the most when online.

Turns out we all love funny videos. But ranked #2 are the "cause" videos: those touching, thoughtful ones that tug at your heart, that rally like-minded people who believe in - well, a cause. I'd been working on a ton of video projects for work. And they were looking for more ideas. More ways to get the word out, to build awareness about Hallmark and our products.

I'd already been jokingly labeled as "the one who will put a cat in any video she can." (Uhm, gee, I wonder why... Hey, I managed to place cats in at least 6 of them!)

So I asked The Question:

"We have this amazing partnership with Best Friends Animal Society to help find loving homes for shelter pets. One that is connected to our plush dog named Jingle, a homeless dog who found his boy. What if we reached out to people and asked them to share with us what their hopes and dreams are for the future of companion animals? What if that became a video?"

I love it when my vocation and my avocation - my passion for helping homeless animals - align."

She put forth the idea of creating a video about what pet people want and wish for in terms of animal welfare. A lot of people who heard about her idea wanted to contribute, as did I.

I sent in a few short videos of what I wished for in terms of cat care, that cats are no longer disposable, that they all find homes, and as a throw away - because the kitten I was fostering was sitting on Happy Bear - I recorded that I wished every cat could have their own Happy Bear.

Almost fifty people joined in wanting to help and twenty people from all over the US and as far away as New Zealand sent in content. They set in text, audio recordings, photos and videos. The people featured in the video are bloggers, shelter volunteers, foster moms, shelter staff, animal transport network workers, police officers, musicians, artists and even a radio personality in Las Vegas.

Lisa and her team worked long and hard with Hallmark and partnered with Best Friends to get this video made. There was about 20 GB of content to sift through and work into a single coheasive message that would be sharable. I think Lisa and her team did an amazing job getting this together. Sadly it wasn't released to the public until the 15th of December, which in the world of retail is the start of Valetine's Day season and it didn't make sense for Hallmark to promote it. See Hallmark did a tie in with their two well known animal mascotts Jingle® and Bell® which are seasoal products. Fortunately they have been around for a few years, and they'll be back next year, so the video will have another life next year, but in the mean time there is no reason we - as animal lovers - can't promote the living daylights out of this thing. Getting the message out in a friendly happy way (and not like those horrid channel changing Sarah Mclaughlin type of videos)

I am so glad that Hallmark decided to get behind this and I am so proud to have been a small part of it. I want everyone to see it. I want it to go from the third fastest orgainically shared video to Hallmark's #1 video.  So watch, share, spread the word.. and hopefully more companies will step and and pick up the mantle of animal welfare and pet adoption and get the word out to even more people.

#BtC4Animals Bear Baiting

I live in Maine.  On the fourth day of November we will be asked to vote on a referendum banning bear baiting.

Here’s the exact language: “Do you want to ban the use of bait, dogs or traps in bear hunting except to protect property, public safety, or for research.”

The animal advocate in me says YES YES YES oh heck YES!, but the blogger in me wonders why the Maine Game Wardens and Biologists are saying vote no. So I went into this hoping to find some bit of logical sense in all this for the opposition, to educate myself and maybe learn something.

Before delving into all of that, let me share with you something. There are currently only twelve states that allow bear baiting. Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Utah, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. Maine is the only state in the union that allows all three methods that they are trying to ban in this vote, baiting, trapping and using dogs.

So, to find out why I should "Vote No on One" I went to savemainesbearhunt.com. I have been extremely unhappy with the "No on One" campaign commercials in general, using a lot of fear and intimidation, implying that without bear baiting, bears will be coming up and mauling your children in your backyard

There have also been commericals implying that there will be nothing that can be done if these bears do come up into your neighborhood and are aggressive.. (except the question says you can to protect property or for public safety) (interestingly enough the No on One camp does not have it's commercials on it's website but the Yes on One does.  There are some really good ones on there, but this is an exercise in why I should vote no.)

So again, why do they oppose this?




Reading "savemainesbearhunt.org" (do you find that name as irritating as I do? You can still hunt bears, you just won't be able to bait them or trap them or use hounds to hunt them) They are saying that with out these 'reliable" methods of hunting, the cull of the population would go down. That it is very hard to hunt a bear with out these methods, and with an increased population you will have increased aggression in the population as they go in search of food. A quote from that website: "Consider: A year ago, hunters shot 2,845 bears in Maine. Of those bears, at least 2,633 — a whopping 93 percent of the total harvest — were shot using the methods that may be banned come November." *  Well considering these methods are legal, and cheap and easy, who wouldn't use them?? I don't think that is much of an argument.

However, reading their own website and reading the history of bear hunting, one has to wonder what the biologists and game wardens are thinking. Currently the cull is below management levels they themselves set and the population is increasing anyway. The history of bear hunting is that we used to do it twice a year, now we currently only allow it once a year. If hunting bears is so hard and getting rid of baiting would make it that much harder, why do we not allow increased time for hunts? Why are there still caps of two bears per hunter? Couldn't better management of the population occur with a fair hunt if done right?

Another reason they say we should allow baiting and trapping is because it allows for a 'cleaner kill'. I can't really fault that reasoning. Apparently a running bear is kinda hard to hit and can cause a hunter to wound the animal and not outright kill it. When this happens with a deer, it is not hard to imagine the hunter tracking the deer through the woods to either claim his deer or finish it off and then claim it. With a bear you run the risk of running into an injured bear being mauled. Okay, point to the baiting, but it also seems to be more fair to allow the bear the chance of getting away. If you want a bear sitting still when you shoot it, set up near a berry bush, or somewhere else a bear would naturally forage for food.

Interestingly enough, the Vote No on One camp admits there are no statistics on how many bears eat at traps and are never killed. They do claim that bear population isn't influenced by baiting, but I can't see how they can possibly claim that. There is a nice chart on this video showing the population waxing and waning, but would it go lower if there weren't millions of pounds of food put in the woods to 'feed the bears'? I don't know about you, but I grew up on Yogi Bear and learned from a very early age not to feed the bears. Feeding bears gets them used to people and gets them used to coming around populated areas.. They bait bears in the same area year after year, making the bears used to being able to find easy food.

So tell me again why are we baiting bears?

While looking for videos of the commercials playing on our airways on youtube, I came across this video of a fisher cat at a bait station. So how many other animals are we feeding, because no one is required to take the food up when they aren't watching it. And if you didn't know, fisher cats also prey on house cats.

Now I should probably tell you I am not a hunter (you have probably guessed that anyway) and I really abhor the idea and the practice of hunting, but I do fully accept that unless we cull the herd, the population will explode past the point of the land being able to sustain the animals and they will suffer and starve. They will also encroach on to land that is 'occupied by people' and become a nuisance (even though they were here first) and harm will most likely come to either a person or the bear. I also accept that if the hunter is going to use the animal for which he hunts and not discard it to simply display a trophy on a wall (or a rug on the floor) that the kill has a purpose. The meat can feed a family and keep a cow or a pack of chickens from being killed. Trophy hunters are abhorrent to me.

There have been other states that have banned baiting. According to one of the Yes on One commercials, when they have banned baiting in other states they were able to maintain a stable bear population.

So, voting no on one will make it easier for people to hunt by making the bears come to the people, and hopefully allowing for a cleaner shot, and they won't have to take fifteen days to find a bear to shoot.  *sarcasm on* oh yes, let us vote no on one *sarcasm off*

I really was open to finding an actual reason why we should continue to allow baiting, using dogs and traps to maintain the bear population. I don't think it would have changed my mind in voting no, but I was hoping there was something other than 'it is easier' as a reason.

(I know I'm late on BtC, but I wanted to blog about this, and it took a while to do all the reading and catch the commercial I wanted to share)

Another Fund-Free Fundraiser

well now this is fun..

In conjunction with BarkWorld, the Social Media Conference for Pet Bloggers and Industry,Petco is donating $1.00 to selected pet rescues and shelters for every Tweet or Post that helps spread the word of Be the Change for Animals from October 22-27, 2012.


So for every tweet and blog post feathring the #BTC4A hashtag during this time, Petco is donating a dollar!! I can tweet.. :)

I checked out the blog hop, and all of them were doggies - which kinda makes sense since this is happening at BarkWorld, but I felt the need to stick my kitty nose blog in there and help! :)

See the blog hop here 

or tweet this..

Rescue pets receive $1 from @Petco at @BarkWorldExpo for each#BTC4A tweet from Oct 22-27! http://ht.ly/eEls7