PG Desert, and Weekly Round-Up

Last week saw several notable events hereabouts.

First, a new blog was launched on the Upper Marlboro Patch.  The first post covers the recent NO KILL CONFERENCE and PG County's role there.  The annual event hosted people from across the globe, and took place near the end of July in Washington, DC.  If you missed the conference, be sure and read and subscribe to the new blog!

Also afoot is a court case, to litigate the confiscation of a beloved and necessary service dog for a person with disabilities who lives in PG County.  That story is both heartbreaking and infuriating.  And litigating against an entrenched bureaucracy in PG as you may know, ain't easy! Read about the journey here.

And finally, do we live in the desert?  You may be  a food desert-dweller, according to the USDA's new map.  Food deserts, where people have no, or limited, access to grocery stores with fresh, non-pre-processed food, exist in the County.

You can learn a lot more about it, from USDA.

Back from the Future: No Kill Conference 2012

I'm just back from the No Kill Conference on a University campus in Washington DC over the weekend.  It's wonderful to have an annual big meet-up with tons of other people working to connect our love of animals with policies and programs involving those animals.  Social media is a great thing but there is still, something ineffable and crucial about making face-to-face contact.  There is nothing quite as easy as grabbing a beer with the media analyst and exploring what we read and what we hear.  It makes connections spark much more easily than the comparatively laborious exchange of emails.

It is sort of stunning when you realize how animal issues are administered down at the local and county levels, mostly, and yet, how very identical the approaches to animal issues have been when it is up to government agencies to define them.  How unimaginative people can be when they have no reason to question what they do or whether they could do better.  And then how elegant programs can be that save lives and improve communities, when people simply use common sense and a bit of human ingenuity and apply that to changing the status quo.

I'll be debriefing on some of the sessions at the Conference over the next few posts.  If you attended, let me know what you think would be interesting to blog about now!

Also, go and see what liveblogs YesBiscuit! collected, here.

Blogs I Learned about at the No Kill Conference

Check out the blog list over on the left-hand side there today, friend.  I learned about a number of fresh blogs over the weekend, and realized as I added them that some of the local news blogs seem to have quieted down a lot.  How do you keep track of local news these days?  And do you have a blog that is a favorite that you don't see here?  Tell me about it in a Comment post!  And check out some of my favorites too!

What is a 'pit bull' anyway?

Seventy five percent of shelter dogs are mixed breeds.  We really don't "know" what a pit bull  means.  This morning No Kill Conference attendees can hear about Turbocharging adoptions of so-called pit bulls.  When we
are labelling a dog a pit bull, we are actually claiming to be able to predict behavior, and that isn't really possible to any real extent.

Social media goes public

Alan Rosenblatt, PhD is talking now at the No Kill Conference about how even Congress has begun to attend to Tweeple and FaceBook commentary - even if we don't live in their districts.

The 'Why' of No Kill sheltering efforts

Mike Fry  writes right here about the No Kill Conference 2011 and why it sold out in just six short weeks this year, again!  Americans -- and all people on earth -- want the killing stopped.  Now.

NO KILL Bloggers sharing tips and tricks at GWU

Shirley and Brent talking about being a credible network to save the lives of shelter animals, using web logs or 'blogs' as part of the strategy.

Big crowd of animal advocates are sharing blog addresses, ideas on how to gather and become sources,comparing analytics, and more!

No Kill Comes to the Metro Area

The No Kill Conference, a national gathering of advocates and practitioners of an approach to animal welfare that harks back to the time of Henry Bergh, lands in D.C. again this year THIS WEEKEND.  Attendees have already started arriving from distant locations.  I'll be trying my wings tweeting just a bit from the Conference, and will hope to have some tidbits here on the blog during and right after the event.  There will be sessions on legislation, some on how to structure programs, and on specific issues that can be sticking-points for shelters or communities that want to stop killing most of the animals that are impounded.  Several of the blogs we follow here at George of Denmark will also cover the Conference, so check those out on the sidebar!