Other Blogs Worth Checking Out

Today's the last day of May, which means that it's the last day of the Blogathon that I've been participating in (and successfully completed, by posting every day this month)!

I will still post on my blog, but it will probably be more like once or twice a week instead of everyday.

If you're worried about going into withdrawals you are welcome (and encouraged) to visit old blog posts. But some of you have already read them all (several times and commented) thank you!

So I wanted to end this month with links to some blogs that I follow that write about similar topics.

Extraordinary Dogs and Extraordinary Horses are two blogs written by the same person. They are full of resources: research to back it up, grants in case you're interested in working with those animals, and charities if you're looking to sponsor someone else. The author of the blogs is a fabulous person that helped me get set up on linkedin and offered me practical advice for my blog.

Animal Friends is a great blog for cat and dog owners looking for more information about their pets. They've posted about such topics as wet food vs dry food, animal allergies, and understanding cat behavior. They also often post about animals that are up for adoption if you are looking for a new pet.

I stumbled across Coop and Cottage when I was doing research for my Respect for Chicken Day post. And I am so glad that I did! The author is a wonderful writer that shares her stories about her chickens, her children, and most recently some horses. You should definitely check her blog out!

If you want to know what it's like owning a service dog, Life With a Hearing Dog is a good blog to read. This is another blog that I discovered while looking for information for one of my posts (Hearing Ear Dog). I appreciate that she writes as herself and not her dog so you really get to know what it's like.

Assistance Dog for Autism is a fun blog by the mother of a young boy with Autism. She writes about her son and his dog's adventures. I think I also enjoy this one so much because they live in Ireland so I get to learn about what it's like there.

Dog Nerd 101 is written by a woman that trains her dogs so it's a good resource to learn about training behaviors beyond the normal "sit. stay. roll over." She also is a psychologist so she goes into some of that as well.

Do you have any cool animal blogs that you follow?

The Gentle Barn

If you haven't heard of The Gentle Barn before, you will know all about it after watching this TV special.

I find the story incredibly inspiring. Ellie Laks found a way to accomplish her dream of working with animals as healers while they are receiving healing themselves. And she was able to do it with no business background or even a well thought out plan (at least initially). Not only has she been able to accomplish this, but she's been extremely successful. The Gentle Barn will be celebrating it's 12th birthday this summer.

I want to do something similar and I've felt that my dream is out of reach because I don't have any business or entrepreneurial experience. Ellie Laks gives me the motivation to keep on believing in my dream, and more importantly, to actually jump in and get it started.

Autism Service Dogs

Autism is something that's been making the news a lot recently and today's National Dog Day hero is Yori, an Autism Service Dog.  Watch his video:

Yori was trained through Canine Companions for Independence which gives dogs to people with disabilities at no cost.  I have to say, that really makes me think highly of this group!  The only problem with that is CCI potentially has to turn people away because they can only accept a limited number of applicants each year.

While I was doing research for today's group I came across another group that also trains Autism Service Dogs, 4 Paws for Ability.  They differ in that, they don't give the dogs "for free" because it really costs $22,000 to raise and train these service dogs.  Instead, 4 Paws for Ability asks the family to help raise $13,000, which allows the families to potentially get the dogs quicker than waiting years to be accepted into another program.  On their website they mention that the fundraising generally takes 3-9 months.  Below is a video from someone working on fundraising for an Autism Service Dog for their son.  The video helps explain how Whit would benefit from the dog.  

I learned a lot from the video about what a parent to an autistic child has to deal with.  Having an Autism Service Dog could definitely give the parents some peace of mind.