(Ottawa Dog of the Week for September 3rd, 2012)

“Roxy is a loving, outgoing pup who was abandoned to a shelter late last year. The moment we met her, we fell in love. She is full of affection and bouncy energy, a pup we could not walk away from. Roxy came for a visit at our house and we knew right away that this was her forever home. She loves going for hikes on the nature trails, playing fetch and having puppy play dates. You can’t come in our house without getting a warm welcome kiss from Roxy, she is excited to see you every time you walk through the door! I can’t think of a better way to be greeted after a long day at work. She is a huge cuddle monster, and loves playing dress up with us (sometimes). If you want to win her over, give her a kong full of peanut butter and she is in love for life! We are so lucky to have such a fun loving, spunky, affectionate puppy – she is the most wonderful addition to our household.”

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(Ottawa Dog of the Week for April 2nd, 2012)

“This is Liberty named for the Freedom dogs that were rescued in a PRU Pupymill bust. We fostered her for Under My Wing Pug Rescue and could not let her go. Liberty is a very loving little girl and loves to give kisses!!! Glad she is finally home. The last picture is of Piper and Liberty at Pug Thaw 2012 hosted by Under My Wing. We got our first Rescue dog Phoebe on Valentines day 2009. The three of them make our Valentine’s day.” Libery’s Humans, Leonard and Tauney.

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I heard this song the other day and I realize it’s supposed to be about people, but it really spoke to me about rescuing.

I created a video using this beautiful song by Christina Perri to spread the word about rescues and adoption. Take a look here, and please share. There are so many amazing dogs who are still looking for their family.

I will be launching a new website very soon which will be a personal project by me to spread the word about rescues. Please check out be-loved.ca soon.

All images in this video were taken by me, and each of them is a rescued dog. It’s not an easy journey, but it is worth every step.

This video features: our own dog, Wellie, as well as Penny, Charly, Barley, Willow, Newman, Millie, Jazz, Bailey, Tina, Scruffy, Percy, Aura, Blaze, Eclipse, Sahara, Kobalt, Nakia, Skye, Layla, Dolly and Lexi.

Firstly I must apologize for being over a week late with this post, but we’ve been busy getting ready for the holidays and finishing up everything that needed to be done this time of year.

We celebrated Wellie’s 2nd birthday this month and I made her a snazzy hat as well as amped up a few of her muffins to be some delicious pupcakes. I added bananas and extra blueberries (Wellie’s fave!) and of course, peanut butter icing. The dogs obviously LOVED them and ate them up probably a bit too fast!

We had some setbacks this month and I think it may have had something to do with the fact that Wellie was given up this time last year. She was given up on December 6th, three days before her 1st birthday in 2010. She remained at Animatch for three months before we brought her home and I think this time of year may have brought some feelings of stress and maybe even fears of abandonment back. I’m not sure what triggered them, but she ended up reverting back and was being really bad – peeing inside again, beating up Paddington, barking at everything, getting into things and the list went on. I’ll be honest, it was really tough for us as well and we were wondering what we did wrong.

We soldiered through and decided to tackle the housetraining issues with putting a bell on a string on the back door so she could tell us when she wanted to go out. The problem was that she was barking downstairs while we were upstairs and we thought it was just her barking at random things, but it was actually her telling us she wanted to go out. Not wanting to encourage the barking, we thought the bells may be a better alternative. And boy were we RIGHT!

Wellie, the smartypants that she is, only took 30 minutes to learn how to use them. Each time we let her out, we would take her paw and hit the bells and say “outside”. She figured it out so quickly and we haven’t had an accident inside since we put them up! Continue reading →

(Ottawa Dog of the Week for December 19th, 2011)

“We adopted Lola about 6 years ago from a rescue organization Ottawa near Manotick. She is a shepherd mix. approximately 7-8 years old. She had been a stray pick up in Cornwall. She was terrified of everything when we got her, scared of traffic and noise. We had to show her how to use stairs. Her personality slowly came out. My husband Kevin and I have not looked back since. Lola is now a happy well adjusted dog, loves to go camping, swimming and walks with her pack.” Lola’s Humans.

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