pet connection

After the Ellen DeGeneres tug-of-war with a pet rescue group over a little dog, I decided to write a column for our syndicated newpaper pet-care feature on my adoption of Pippin from German Shepherd Rescue of Northern California as a lead-in to the whole issue of pet adoption policies and getting more pets into more homes.

Of course, this dovetails pretty nicely with all the thinking I’ve been doing on the building of no-kill communities, and on working with animal lovers to get pets placed and retained in good homes rather than constantly blaming them for the lack of effective programs and services from shelters.

Christie had conducted long, long interviews with both Richard Avanzino and Nathan Winograd (the transcripts run 50 pages), so we decided to make it a two-part series: Part one on adoption policies and part two on the growing interest in building no-kill communities.

Those columns will be out in the next couple of weeks — and I’ll link to them when we can release them online — but in the meantime you’re welcome to add to the discussion page we’ve put up on adoption policies. It’s here, and we hope to get a lively group of comments going.