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On the Internet, everyone helps your dog

By Christie Keith, Special to SF Gate
Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Suzie is a little white dog, cute and fluffy like all little white dogs
should be. But just a little over two months ago she was sitting
in a pool of bloody urine in a shelter in Ontario, Canada.

Even though the shelter veterinarian had put her on antibiotics, she
wasn't getting any better. A volunteer who had become very fond of
Suzie asked what they were going to do next, and found out they
planned to euthanize her on Christmas Eve. They didn't have the
time, staff or money to figure out what was wrong with her, let alone
to fix it.

But that wasn't the end of Suzie's story. Instead, that volunteer did
what a lot of pet owners do these days: she posted to an e-mail
list about canine health, asking for advice.

With the support of the other list members, she signed Suzie out of
the shelter and took her to her own veterinarian. The little dog was
diagnosed with a stone one-third the size of her bladder, requiring
surgery and follow-up treatment. Price tag: $900.

What followed next will be familiar to anyone who watched Barack
Obama's masterful use of social media to drive the best-funded,
most grassroots-powered political campaign in history. Dozens of
people took advantage of blogs, secure instant fundraising sites,
PayPal, Facebook and e-mail lists to spread the word about Suzie.

In less than five hours, contributors from five countries raised over
$1,100, more than enough to cover Suzie's medical bills. A few days
later she had surgery, received some new, more effective antibiotics
and even had her teeth cleaned. And instead of being euthanized,
she's romping in the Canadian snow with her foster mom's other
dogs, healthy and happy.

People helping pets

Suzie's life wasn't saved by Web 2.0 any more than Obama won
the White House because he had a great social media campaign.
Compassion and love of animals fueled the first, and a desperate
desire for political change the second.

But where do compassion and charity come from? They're the
result of, not just information, but of experiences that touch the
heart and inspire the imagination. And that's exactly what all that
video and photo sharing, linking, networking and friending were
designed to do: make you feel it, and make you care.

Take a person who grew up with a certain type of dog. Maybe she
has one sleeping at the foot of her bed even now. Thanks to the
Internet, she can find out the minute a dog of that breed ends up
in a shelter on the other side of the country. She can see the dog's
picture, read his story and even watch a video shot by a shelter
volunteer.

By the end of the day, that dog can be brought into the care of a
breed rescue organization that might be located thousands of miles
away or be nothing more than a digital safety net with no physical
location, made up of animal lovers sitting at their computers all over
the country.

The combination of instant, widespread communication with powerful
images and stories delivered by people with whom we feel some kind
of community or connection has empowered hundreds of thousands
of online groups dedicated to causes like bringing home the pets of
soldiers in Iraq, maintaining a globe-spanning network of animal
rescue transporters, helping pet owners pay their veterinary bills,
saving pets caught in the foreclosure crisis, and providing a searchable
database of more than 271,000 dogs and cats from 12,000 shelters
and rescue groups all over the country for those looking to adopt a pet.

Those tools don't just empower compassion, however. They've
facilitated the sharing of information and advocacy in a way the
animal welfare world couldn't have imagined just a few years ago.

What you don't know can kill your pet

During the 2007 pet food recall, the FDA's phone lines were completely
overwhelmed. Even veterinarians weren't able to get information that
might have saved the lives of their patients. Meanwhile, people bought
pet food that had already been recalled because they didn't know better.

If only they'd gone to the Internet they would have found several pet
sites and bloggers who were providing updated recall information
that was days, and sometimes weeks, ahead of any other source.

Pulitzer-winning reporter Abigail Goldman wrote in the Los Angeles
Times, "Bloggers and owners of sites such as Itchmo, Pet Connection,
Howl 911, The Pet Food List and Pet Food Tracker have been deluged
by millions of pet owners who are grieving or railing or both -- and
digging for answers. Their online barking is being heard in Washington's
halls of power, including the Food and Drug Administration and Capitol
Hill."

Goldman was right. In a congressional hearing on April 12, 2007, Sen.
Richard Durbin (D-IL) asked why pet websites and bloggers were able
to keep up with the information flow, but the FDA couldn't.

Today, they can. In the latest series of recalls of both human and pet
foods made with salmonella-tainted peanut products, the FDA launched
a Twitter feed and real-time updating blog widgets, all designed to use
communications technology to inform consumers about important health
issues for people and their pets.

Pit bull reality check

It's hard to imagine an animal that's benefited more from the power of
social media than the pit bull. How many people would have believed
that the Michael Vick pit bulls weren't the savage monsters of urban
legend if they hadn't seen for themselves just how many of them turned
out to be loving and friendly family pets and even therapy dogs like
Jonny Justice, Ernie, and Uba? The most famous of all, Hector, even
has his own YouTube show, What the Hector.

Earlier this year, when 146 dogs were killed in Wilkes County, N.C.,
after being "saved" from a dog fighting ring, it was only a few hours
before Bay Area Doglovers Responsible About Pitbulls (BADRAP), a
rescue group for pit bulls, observed on its blog that the Internet was
"on fire" about the killings.

And it was. Hundreds of blogs, forums and e-mail lists began protesting
not just the killings themselves, but the Humane Society of the United
States' apparent support of those killings despite the fact that none of
the dogs, not even the puppies born after the bust, was evaluated for
temperament or behavior.

The outrage was such that later that night, the Humane Society agreed
to meet with Best Friends Animal Society, the organization giving
sanctuary to some of the Vick dogs, and other animal welfare groups
to discuss its policy on pit bulls. They also issued a statement that pit
bulls seized from fighting situations needed to be evaluated on an
individual basis before a decision is made about their future.

All that happened in a single day.

And that brings us back to Suzie. The social media revolution that has
changed everything from how we buy books to who sits in the White
House quite literally saved her life, because without it, not only would
you never have known she was alive -- she wouldn't be.

Christie Keith is a contributing editor for Universal Press Syndicate's Pet
Connection and past director of the Pet Care Forum on America Online.
She lives in San Francisco.

Posted on SHARE Yahoo group - March 3, 2009