Archive for the ‘news’ Category

It’s my birthday! How time flies when you’re a rescue puppy in a forever home! I have nearly forgotten those distant memories of being dumped on the street at 4 months old, being scared about finding food and shelter, and then doing time in doggy jail including a jailhouse tattoo.

The photo below shows my new pal Beauregard met outside the groomers today on my birthday. He’s a rescue dog like me. I’m 2 today and Beauregard was born a day earlier only 3 years ago. If I’d asked “What WERE you… born yesterday?” his reply would have been “yes”.

That’s me (top left) and Beauregard (right) touching noses, and then two circle photo inserts of him showing off two more views in the lower corners with his BIG puppy eyes. He’s a rescue puppy and his parents live in Jacksonville, Florida. That’s hours and hours away yet they were in Kissimmee on business, and took Beau with them!

Besides the two puppy birthday boys, @PrincessGwenie my Twitter puppy gal pal and cutie patootie was 3 today! Happy Birthday to Beau and Gwenie!

The photo collage below shows 24 thumbnail photos of Corky the Shelter Dog on Flickr. Dad upgraded his Flickr account which allows unlimited uploads PLUS the range of sizes includes the largest original version. Download the big ones for desktop wallpaper!

Follow this link to Corky photographs on Flickr and then look for the other new sets with lots of pix of my favorite park that include the Dogs at Fleet Peeples Dog Park and the Fleet Peeples Dog Park Scenery.

The thumbnail at the lower right is a video! Yup. I have a mini-video on Flickr, too. The new Corky photo set on Flickr means I’m one step closer to “almost famous”. Thanks, Dad.

Earlier today my life story on video continued as Corky Trip to the Groomers became the newest Corky video released. This is #7 and the last video of January 2009 (yes, 18 months ago) which featured 6 other early videos including my capture and doing time in doggy jail before becoming adopted. Playtime (02:39 min./sec.)

The Life with Corky the Shelter Dog video series and format shown on my main website includes the transcript of each video and narration for the benefit of hearing impaired persons, or others who just want to read along.

In addition, the life story series in video is on YouTube, plus my channel has exclusive YouTube Corky videos not shown on my website.

Tomorrow marks Memorial Day in the USA as a day to remember those in the military service who gave their lives for our country. The sacrifices of many for the freedoms we enjoy are reason enough for remembering Memorial Day in the USA, and the men and women who were willing to lay down their lives for us, the living.

America was born out of war, survived a civil war, and then came WWI and WWII, plus Korea, Vietnam, and more recently wars in the Middle East. There were many other conflicts that could have been listed though not mentioned. Whether you agree or disagree with the decisions involving war, the intentions of those who served and paid the ultimate sacrifice was loyalty towards protecting our rights to freedom.

Take a moment this Memorial Day to remember the brave citizens who died including those allies who likewise paid the price of losing their lives while standing by us in times of war, as well.

Free Download Note: Corky fans may download the Corky blue sky wallpaper 1200x900px version of this blog illustration, too.

Twitter pals had fun in March 2010 getting an anipal to number one in an online contest at one of the voting walls for faxo.com.

For Best of Twitter the winner was @MattieDog by a landslide. He promised stuff for your vote like genuine knockoff bacon beer, tickets to go bowling, and other smooth lies that you might expect from a real politician. Congrats, Mattie!

At the end on March 31st, out of the top 25 he was #1 and the ONLY pawpal in that group. In April the Twitter critter corner came out in droves in a winner take all free for all lusting for a top spot in the online poll. March madness to get Mattie a win became all out bedlam in April.

With less than a week left in the contest the TOP 50 for Best of Twitter were ALL animals.

As a result of all that fun turning to stress, I decided I would no longer participate and tweeted my “Down with the Wall” sermon. You are welcome to use that and these other tweets for your followers if you regret being involved. Copy/paste these to tweet:

“Down with the Wall” sermon: I decided to stop visits to enter or vote on the wall.

Wall voting 10 min/day is 60 hrs/year. Time better spent: [fill in the blank]

VOTE at the wall for 1 minute and just 10 times a day? In 10 years you waste 25 days.

10 minutes a day voting is 60 hours per year or a 10 day vacation if you work 40 hours.

Want out? Follow @VoteWall. They follow back. DM them to be taken off the wall. Voila.

To my surprise you do not have to enter to be in the contest. I first discovered my spot on page 12, or the top 300 out of over 600 contestants, because a friend tweeted that they had voted for ME, and I never chose to be there.

The system allows you to vote again every 20 minutes for as many entrants as you want. Thus, vote for yourself, and you could return once their timer expired in 20 minutes to vote again, and again, and again. At last check I was in the Top 100.

The ego inflation and voting frenzy did get out of hand. Imagine pressuring yourself to vote every 20 minutes. Yikes. Some people did. As a result, claims of voting fraud, vote bots, and worse got tweeted back and forth. Early on in April that Twitter vote wall just for fun became a battleground. Catfight. Dogfight. Cat-dogfight.

Read that last tweet suggestion again. You can easily be removed from the wall contests if you notice people voting for you. Defining time better spent means feeding ME (treats) not the ego.

The next Life with Corky video episode “First Doggy Store Shopping Trip” was released earlier on YouTube as well as in the shelter dog video story section of this website. Watch this new episode here or visit Corky’s channel on YouTube to see this plus exclusive Corky videos NOT on this website. (Playtime 01:32 min/sec)

Some visitors may wonder why the site includes a different version with our custom video player in the story section. Those videos have a text transcript of the narration for hearing impaired persons so they may read the story while they watch.

You are welcome to comment here on the blog or follow the link in the right column and comment on YouTube, also.

The critter corner of Twitter is filled with pawty (lolspeak for party) animals each month for the benefit of animal rescue. Donations during the online events are given to a different rescue organization each month as selected in advance by the participants. It’s a fun way to help rescue pets in need.

Sometimes other special events are held and at 2pm US Eastern today a pretend adventure over Area 51 in the Nevada desert began with tweeting animals worldwide. Here’s an illustration of Corky and his pal squirrel in his attack helicopter. View a different large wallpaper Corkster Copter here.

Want to follow real time or review results later? Use the online resource at TweetGrid for #Area51 to see all tweets. To participate just add the #Area51 hashtag to your tweets for other pals to follow. Note: Pet owners often tweet in first person as their pet (like me), so take no offense to the silliness, okay?

Earlier this week my email included a pawpal ecard sent to Corky as shown below. The St Patty’s Day card was from a special Twitter doggy pal who also lives in Florida. His name is Buddy and he tweets as @WhereIsBuddy. Follow him on Twitter to see what he’s doing!

The writing says “May the luck of the Irish be with you!” and the red arrow points to “Buddy (@WhereIsBuddy)”. The illustration shows me looking at the card and reading it to two very cute kittens.

Why cute kitties? BOL! People can’t resist cute little kittens so even MORE pals will look at my card. Haha.

The photo here is me, Corky the shelter dog, exploring rocks and showing off my summer doggy haircut in winter.

Spring is ony a couple weeks away, yet because of a problem with matting the groomer needed to clip my fur down to 3mm (1/8th inch).

Attempts to leave the fur a little longer didn’t work because the clippers pulled and hurt (so I tried several times to b-i-t-e the groomer). They had to call my parents for permission to give me the buzz cut. At least they left some fur on my head and bushy tail.

Okay, so a summer doggy haircut in the spring may make sense, but in the winter? Thankfully, I live in Florida so a summer haircut should work year around.

This winter has been especially cold with temperatures staying 15-20 degrees below average, so here’s the good news! I got clothes! I have a blue fleece jacket with high collar, and a purple down hooded coat to keep me cozy when it’s really really cold.

Pictured here is a new doggy park pawpal met recently. Have you ever seen a bigger doggy grin?

On Sunday my parents took me to visit a flea market in Kissimmee, and discovered only service dogs were allowed. With a fresh bootprint on my butt we moved on to Plan B, and went to Partin Triangle Dog Park for the first time. The park is just outside the city limits of St Cloud Florida on Neptune Road, and is divided into sections by size.

The one acre park opened in 2009 and has a small dog area with a separate entrance marked “Up to 30 lbs Only” and the other for larger dogs. As usual Dad was a picture taking machine so a new gallery of photos will be added to my website “soon” displaying the dogs I met at Partin Triangle Dog Park.