We need YOUR help!!!

California AB 1634 has passed out of the Assembly Business and Professions Committee. The bill is now before the Assembly Appropriations Committee, the same committee before which we successfully defeated SB 1548, which would have criminalized ear cropping, in 2004.

AB1634 would mandate that all California cities and counties force castration and hysterectomies of dogs and cats at four months of age, whether those cities and counties wanted to do so or not. The legislation would create a new form of license – a breeder’s license – that must be obtained by any person in California who wishes to own a dog or cat with reproductive organs intact. The purpose of the license is to be able to take it away – if it were readily available at all.

This draconian bill is the work product of radical animal extremists, who count among their members the prime sponsor of the bill. AB 1634 is entitled “The Healthy Pets Act,” although it makes no effort to address the health of pets at all.

Make no mistake about it. The passage of AB 1634 sounds the death knell for dog and cat breeders in the state of California, and is the beginning of the end of pet ownership in the United States.

This bill must be stopped. Now.

The DPCA Legislative Committee has activated the DPCA LobbyNow Tool.

For DPCA members who live in California, please click this link to send your customized e-mail to all of the members of the California Assembly Appropriations Committee now:

If you do not live in California, do not use the Tool yet!

If you are not a DPCA member but are a concerned dog or cat owner and you live in California, you may access the LobbyNow Tool using the following hyperlink:

http://dpca.lobbynow.com/issues?AB1634

Please forward this link to all California dog and cat clubs and all AKC parent clubs.

Please remind them to ask that only California residents use the LobbyNow Tool at this time. We want the Assembly Appropriations Committee members to see that the first batch of e-mails come from California residents. At an appropriate time, very shortly, we will notify you as to when non-California residents should use the LobbyNow Tool to demonstrate the scope of the opposition on a national level.

Thank you for your cooperation and assistance. Together we will prevail.

Very truly yours,

Jeffrey P. Helsdon
Legislative Director
Doberman Pinscher Club of America

… in the yard! Alllllllllllllllllll weekend long! Just got back in and OMG! The weeeeeeeeds!! I LOATHE chickweed!!!

And due to me being lazy allll spring long … that stuff had taken over my backyard. I have all these welts and scratches all over the insides of my arms. Owieee!!

But we got SO MUCH done! I am so proud!! We had so much trash and old broken coolers, bbqs, chairs, tools just cluttering up the yard …. and knowing that the puppy would be into ALL of it meant it simply HAD to be dealt with and dealt with now!

So all the trash and broken things are gone. Now we have the “flowerbed of doom” (which I mentioned in the previous post, LOL) to grapple with, an old wicker shelf to destroy, and then work on the yard itself.

We need to find a push mower somehow too … we will need to start cutting the grass regularly.

But wow! A huge hurdle is almost over with! Yay!!!

But my poor poor back … lol!!

What we will do for our little ones, huh? hehe!!

We took a picture of the yard and “flowerbed of doom” as it is today for the “Before” shot, lol.

Facing our apartment and the sliding glass door:

Facing the back of the yard:

… is playing with puppies! Thursday night we got a chance to visit with the puppies again and really spend some good time getting to know them and seeing how their little personalities have blossomed over the past week.

And OMG! Talk about CUTE. And vivacious! Those little furballs were just hopping and brimming with energy. There is one that we had been leaning towards, but there were two that were really vying for our hearts, one in particular with a happy little tail and a licking machine, lol!

That pup really seemed to show a real interest in both of us and everytime we put him back in the pen he’d stay a little bit asking for us to take him out.

We’ve got good placement, and we are excited by that … we get 4th pick … so we’ll have 5 to choose from and with any luck one of the pups we like will be left, hehehehe!!

I’ve been taking pains to make sure that my cat’s scent is all over me everytime I’ve visted the puppies, as I want that to be a familiar scent for the one that comes home with us, so that he will hopefully have a good start on seeing our cat as a family member since they’ve been scenting him early on. Plus then we make sure the cat smells us after we get back from a visit so that he is also familiar with the scent of the puppies, hopefully that will help him adjust and have less of a shock as well, lol.

We are so excited that it’s just silly lol. We have the crate already and some beginning toys. We are reading every book and good website and articles that we can. We are looking for a trainer for helping us make sure he is socialized really well as well as getting the basic obedience commands started and reading all sorts of training guides trying to see what things we find we connect to.

We even have a leash already LOL. We aren’t getting a collar or harness (not a pulling harness mind you, just a regular one) or a bed until we are actually bringing him home, lol. And I’m saving up for a second crate for work … several co-workers bring their dogs to work with them and I am hoping that I will get permission to at least see if things can work with me bringing mine to work too. ::crosses fingers::

We are already starting to build up a health care fund as well so that we can be prepared for any emergency. We still have a lot to do to prepare for the puppy coming home though!

This weekend we will be de-weeding the entire backyard, and then cleaning all the junk that’s collected over the years out out out!

Plus we will be moving this “flowerbed of doom” that some former tenant has built that is taking up about a ¼ of our patio … and moving all the dirt back into the dirt part of our yard. We’ll need to get some little fences to at least mark the areas we’d prefer the dog not venture into (we’ll see how long that lasts LOL!) and then re-seed the yard again so we can get some grass started.

And we have what … 3 weeks to get all this done. LOL! We must be insane, heehehe!!

Yayyy!!! We have launched our little online gushing page for our future fur-kid! Please keep checking back!