Year: 2010

Continuing from Part 4 while I thumped on about the shelter, I tried to make the point that doing volunteering of any sort can only be good for everyone involved.  I told you about another project I do regularly as well as a couple more I may get involved with through a friend here.  I want to sum up that piece quickly: it doesn’t matter what you do volunteering, just do something.

But this series is about the Austin Humane Shelter mainly and I’m going to finish up by moving (mainly) back to dogs.   Originally there was only going to be one picture but something came up as I was writing it that has modified that to two.  I’ve shown you plenty of beautiful dogs already and today is not the time for showing non-specific dogs; the two I’m going to show you are for very specific reasons.

But before we get into it.… Keep Reading

Yesterday, in Volunteering at the Austin Humane Shelter: Part 3, I talked about my general experiences at the shelter during the summer and falling in love with a dog named Babe who then got sick and adopted.   I’m going to continue in that vein and keep telling you about how the shelter really impacted on me and why I think volunteering, either at a dog shelter or elsewhere, can be a good thing to do.  I’ll wrap up tomorrow and really hit you where it hurts and I apologize for not having any doggie pictures today.  They just didn’t fit my flow.

I had ended yesterday’s piece by pointing out the flood of emotions that volunteers go through when one of their favorite (or in my case, beloved) dogs is adopted.  You’re hurt because they aren’t there anymore but you’re happy that they have a home.  You’re sad that you may never see them again and you worry that their new home won’t care quite as much as you; but you can’t think that way, the people wouldn’t have adopted your dog if they didn’t want to love them.… Keep Reading

Continuing through Part 2 I described the shelter itself, what they do there, and how the volunteer program in fairly abstract terms.  I also tortured you with dog pictures.  I know I said I didn’t want to be a general advocate for what they do but I really do feel that their program is brilliantly set up and run well and I’d thump on about it for that reason alone.

But this is a place where the shelter in general is only part of the picture.  My experience this summer at the Austin Humane Shelter was probably as responsible as anything for my recovery from my depression and it has special meaning to me for that reason. That’s what I’m going to talk about today and tomorrow.  And as I promised in Part 1, I’m going to make you cry at the end of it all.  You can fight it, but I’m going to win. … Keep Reading

In Volunteering at the Austin Humane Shelter: Part 1, I talked about the shelter itself, what it does, how adoptions work and introduced some of the volunteer programs including the BRATT (Behavior Re-homing Assessment Training Team) program I’m involved with.  I also finished by introducing the idea of different color levels for the dogs and that’s where I’ll pick up today since nothing I said yesterday can possibly have made any sense.

Level Up: Part 1

.The Austin Humane Shelter ranks dogs into different color levels ranging from green (lowest level) to blue to bb (think of it as extreme blue) to yellow to orange to red (sick dogs).  Puppies are purple and there are a couple I may be missing because I haven’t encountered them yet.

As dogs move from lower to higher levels (e.g. green to blue to yellow to orange), there tend to be more behavioral issues and they need more training and better qualified people to handle it. … Keep Reading

Having talked about training in various and sundry forms for a lot of weeks now (people still think of me as a nutrition guy), I actually sort of wanted to either do a research review or talk about fat loss or something (you know, gotta move that product) today.  But it’s the end of the season and I’m weird about cycles and I want to wrap up this weird year (I run on a sports calendar) with a series of posts that you probably never would have expected to see coming from me.  But tough, here it is.

Because, among other things, this series of articles are going to be almost universally positive, something that is rather rare for me.  Most people think of me as nothing but a misanthropic asshole who dislikes everybody and everything (that’s untrue by the way, I simply dislike 97% of everybody and everything) and in certain contexts there is certainly some truth to that.… Keep Reading