8 posts tagged “dogs”

Once again I need to point out a cute, cute canine - one of many looking for homes at Stray.gr:

Sweet Steven

This is Steven, but I think I would call him "Stevie" after a couple of my favorite artists, poet Stevie Smith, and musician Stevie Ray Vaughan. I love the subtle colors of his coat. If you are interested in adopting a dog in or around Athens, Greece and would like more information about Stevie, look here, and contact the people at Stray. They are very helpful about providing details regarding the personalities and characteristics of their foster pets.

Say hi to Haris

I adore a dog with a speckled muzzle. This fine-looking fellow is named Haris, and he's one of the many sweethearts available for adoption from stray.gr in Greece. Stray.gr is an animal rescue group in Athens, Greece (and outlying areas) that finds foster care and adoption families for homeless and abandoned dogs and cats, and the kind people who saved our Sky from the streets and made it possible for us to adopt her. If you live in Greece and are thinking of adopting a rescue animal, check them out here. To learn more about Haris, look at this page.

Some velvet morning when I'm straight
I'm gonna open up your gate
And maybe tell you 'bout Phaedra

Phaedra2

How adorable is this little girl? I swear on my honor I don't have a bias towards girl dogs, or Si-Husky-eyed dogs, but she is just too irresistible, isn't she? Hello? Dog lovers in Greece? Any Greek person out there, especially in or around Athens, who is looking for a wonderful pet and would like to save one from a homeless existence - please think about getting a rescue dog or cat from stray.gr or another rescue organization. To find out more about Phaedra, in Greek and English, see this stray.gr page. And if you have questions of any kind, you can email them for information - they are very responsive, and know a lot about the personality of the animal, and try to find as much information as they can about their history. They'll also help you out with problems and questions after the adoption, so you aren't all on your own.

Phaedra

Also, here's the song that I referenced in the first paragraph. Nice song! Nice name! Nice dog! Click the arrow below to hear the song - one of my favorites. (or if you have trouble, go here.)

Some-velvet-morning

Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood

Another dog is killed by "stray voltage" in NYC in one of a series of incidents in which several dogs - and one person - have been killed or injured around Con Ed light poles. New York dog owners should beware, and the rest of us might want to avoid lampposts as well, wherever we are, just to be cautious. 

• Every tire has been peed on. Yep. Pretty much every single one. You really start to notice brand new tires when you walk a dog, because those are the ones they aren't interested in smelling.
• Dogs apparently have computer brains housing huge databases of every single pee site they've sniffed out, so when you walk down a familiar street, they only check out the new posts... apparently they have the rest stored in some kind of doggy RAM. When you walk down a new street there are approximately 7,890,356 peepee spots that need to be catlogued. *Need*.
• When you walk a dog, suddenly your personal threat level to random cats drops to code yellow, or maybe beige. Cats that used to skitterskatter and run under cars when they saw me walking down the street (not that I'm mean to cats, but hey - they don't know that) now couldn't care less about me; all feline eyes are on my terrifying, terrifying dog (also a cat-lover, btw).
• There are invisible dog people whom you only see when you get one yourself. Suddenly I'm a debutante in the secret society of dog people who nod and greet each other, and you learn their dog's names though you don't always learn theirs... and they're everywhere. Dog people would make the perfect sleeper agents.

Clonez-R-Us

Biotech Company to Auction Chances to Clone a Dog: "A California company is planning a string of online auctions next month to clone five dogs, with the bidding to start at $100,000."

So instead of saving a wonderful homeless animal, or using some of that cash to reduce suffering for people or animals in the world, a few lucky rich people will get to "replace" their irreplaceable pet. Would you do this? I wouldn't clone my pet, or my child, or my husband... because, guess what: it's still not the same animal/person. You adore your husky/border collie mix beyond all reason? I sympathize... but why not adopt one that already exists, and needs you? Different joy, but still joy.
 
I don't like this version of the future... the one where critically ill Fluffy is spirited away during the night, and when your child wakes up the next morning, new, improved Fluffy has been inserted in his place. Despite the SciFi coolness factor (and I'm a huge fan of all things SciFi and FX), I say Boo.Hiss. Snarl.

picfromstray.jpg

This is putting the blog before the dog, which is another way of saying putting the cart before the horse. Except it’s a dog, and a blog. At any rate, I am only hoping for Sky, the dog, right now (see left), and I had this idea that, in case we got her, I would make a blog all about her, with photos so my friends and family elsewhere, and her foster family and the other people who operate stray.gr could see how she is doing, and along the way also perhaps raise some awareness for that wonderful group.

So I am putting together a blog for Sky, in the hopes that we adopt her. While I'm waiting, let me tell you about Sky: She was abandoned by the family who owned her who moved, and left all on her own in the yard at their old house in a suburb of Athens. She escaped the yard (or was thrown out by neighbors - not too clear on this) and was wandering the streets for a few weeks. A woman who fosters pet for adoption with stray.gr found her, fed her, and took her in, then was able to find a family for her... but they brought her back after a week or two, because they left her in a yard with chickens - and eventually she attacked one of the chickens. So she was abandoned, then adopted, but brought back to the rescue organization once again. Which is bad and sad. But might ultimately be good ... if she can come to live with meeeeeeeeee! No chickens at my house, baybee.

So, Sky is a rescue dog, and I want us to be her rescue peeps. I also want to get out the word about stray.gr, because it took me some time to find their great site, which is in Greek, English, and German, by searching for English terms like “adopt a pet, athens greece”; “rescue dogs, athens”; “animal shelters, athens”, etc. So I want anyone in or around Athens who is looking for a pet to check them out, and I also want everyone to know that they can use whatever help or financial assistance anyone can provide... it’s not easy to feed all those hungry, homeless mouths while waiting for families to adopt them, or to provide the medical care so many of the these lost creatures require.