Follow @WeCare & Help @AmazonCares Earn Funds #MillionDimes

On January 7th at 12PM PST, We-Care.com will launch the Charity Challenge to give away $100,000.00 to registered nonprofit organizations, ten cents at a time. It is up to you, the Twitterverse, to decide which charities receive all the Charity Challenge donations. Starting January 7th, vote for your charity +Amazon CARES on Twitter. Every qualifying tweet counts as one vote and earns your charity $.10, up to a $1,000 per charity!   Each account can tweet up to 5 times per day, which means you can support 5 different charities per day, or cast 5 votes for Amazon CARES daily.

A sample tweet would be @WeCare will donate $.10 to @AmazonCares | Up to #MillionDimes.  5 votes per day & RT's count!  Must follow @WeCare. 

Or support two charities at a time in a tweet similar to above:

@WeCare will donate $.10 to @aspca and @AmazonCARES | Up to #MillionDimes.  5 votes per day & RT's count! PL RT & must follow @WeCare.

In order to vote, your Twitter account must be a USA based account, and you must follow @wecare on Twitter.

Speed is key. The faster the tweets come in, the faster we can earn the individual cap of $1,000 (10,000 valid tweets). Charities with slow tweets may not be able to reach their cap before the million dimes have been distributed, so we need to make sure to get as many tweets sent as quickly as possible.

We-Care.com has proven that pennies, dimes, and dollars add up by generating and donating over $4,600,000 to charity using our cause marketing platform. Help us prove it again by giving away $100,000 to your favorite charities, one dime at a time!

As many are aware, Amazon CARES has suffered financially during 2012.  $1000 goes a long way in Peru.  It would pay for 3 months of dog food for our shelter dogs!

We hope any animal supporters on Twitter will help us earn this donation!!

2012 Top Blogs: Senior Dogs: When to Say Goodbye, with Update!

My love of animals, and my desire to rescue animals, is definitely inherited.  I wrote about this similarity in DNA in a blog post last year, in which I named my parents, Bob and Betty Mednikow, Featured Activists.  That blog including a touching letter from my father about the rescue of a senior dog, Loxley.  Read it here.

Below is a post about their newest rescue dog, Hannah, so named because my father found her wandering down their street on Rosh Hashanah……she has gained 10 pounds since then and is getting stronger, but still has trouble walking and standing, and doesn’t have complete control of her systems…..still, she has the ability to love, and does that as well as she can.

Here is an email my father shared with me recently:

"Yesterday I made an appointment with our vet, Dr. Faircloth, to put Hanna to sleep this morning.  Last night I brought a big meat covered bone home from Houston’s Restaurant and gave it to her and watched her enjoy it like never before.  Perhaps she knew it was her last meal…..then mom gave her a whole handful of treats, which she gobbled down.

I got up early this morning, drove to the gym,  exercised as I always do, then came home.  Sure enough, there was a “pile” in her doggie bed because she doesn’t have control of her rear legs and couldn’t go outside like the other dogs,  but it wasn’t messy and I cleaned it up as I often do, then helped her stand so she could go outside and finish her business………

She seems to have known it was her time to go. Her hearing is gone, and  she has limited vision,  but I could feel  her love and appreciation for the good food and warm bed  for the last weeks of her difficult life we will never know about.  She stuck her head between my legs and wagged her tail.  That was unusual, because her tail has always been tucked, and  seldom moves…….but this morning she was trying to love me in the only way she knew.  She sometimes loses balance and falls, and can’t always get up, but she was standing then, ready to go with me.

I took photographs so I could remember the smile on her face, then put on a rain jacket to take her for our final ride together, remembering the old Jewish saying that when someone dies, and  it is raining, it is a sign that God is crying too. 

So I turned around, and told Hanna that I couldn’t say good-bye to her today.  I took my coat off, and called Dr. Faircloth and cancelled the appointment.  When Hannah’s time comes because she is in pain, or cannot eat, or cannot love us any longer, I will make a new appointment and let her go.  I think it will probably be raining that day too."

Dad

P.S.  The time came when my father decided that Hannah's quality of life was too poor for her to continue. He made an appointment with the Veterinarian to put her down on a Tuesday.  Miraculously, on Monday, a person spoke to my father at his place of business, and he mentioned that one of our family dogs was missing.  The woman commented that her dog had passed away.  During the conversation, they realized that her missing dog that she assumed to be dead was actually Hannah!  I'll never forget the moment when she and her husband came to our door and were reunited with their beloved Nikki.  They were incredulous that the Veterinarian had not found Nikki's micro-chip.  In a final, sad chapter, the husband accused my family of stealing their family pet and re-naming her with malicious intent.  I do not know how Hannah / Nikki is now, but I was so thrilled that she was reunited with her true family. - Molly Mednikow

2012 Top Blogs: Volunteer Adventure in the Amazon!

Photo by Alexandra Schroth

Dr. Sean Pampreen:  This Trip Was an Absolute Adventure.  from Oct. 2012

I traveled to the Amazon with Amazon CARES for several reasons.  I love to travel, love adventure, and enjoy volunteering.  This trip definitely satisfied all of these for me.

I was definitely bitten by the travel bug early on.  My dad loved to travel.  As a family growing up, we traveled to most of the United States, parts of Canada and Mexico.  Always traveled by car and always camped so that we could see everything.  Since then I have been able to travel the world with various veterinary groups, still trying to see everything.

As a Scout I had the opportunity to explore and take part in other types of adventure and learned the value of community service.  Since then I have continued to explore the world and volunteer for my community.  Now, as a Scout leader I try to teach my Scouts by example the Venturing oath, “to help others, and to seek truth, fairness, and adventure in our world.”

Thank you to Embrace Pet Insurance for many
pharmaceutical donations.  Photo by dancingdogblog.com

This trip was an absolute adventure.  It was not a leisurely vacation, but a trip of a lifetime.  You had to adapt to “Peruvian time” and adjust to different people, different foods and different types of accommodations.  But, you also were able to see and learn a different culture.  These things are not always met on a tourist vacation.  On those trips, you are typically taken to see the “local villages” to buy their goods and then back to your fancy hotel.

In the Amazon, the work was hard.  The days were long, hot and humid.  Supplies were limited.  The surgical area conditions were no where close to ideal.  The food on the road was often times  ok at best.  The travel conditions between villages or sites was often “snug” and uncomfortable.  Most of the villagers live in exteme poverty.  There is little or usually no contact to the outside world.  But with all this, the trip to the Amazon was an awesome experience.  

2012 Top Posts: Animal Abandonment

"Cruelty and Indifference I Will Never Accept" from March 20, 2012

"I just found these 8 new-born kittens on the sidewalk. Left in the burning sun to die. Bystanders looked on and did nothing. They just shrug; it´s not my problem! The umbilical chords were still attached; these babies are less than a day old. They can´t survive, but I took them to my friends at Amazon CARES anyway. But all they can do is give them a more humane death.

I hope one day someone will be able to explain it to me in a way I can understand: how can someone take away these kittens from their mother and dump them on the sidewalk like trash? It doesn´t cost anything to just leave them with the mother and give them a chance at survival. Maybe one day I will be able to understand the cruelty and indifference many people harbor. Understand, maybe, but I will never accept it."

Commentary by Gart Van Gennip

Gart Van Gennip is the manager of the San Pedro Lodge near Iquitos, Peru.  He was featured in our previous blog about Martin the Monkey, who still needs help to live a better life.

Editorial Note:  There is left than a week left in our "Month of Compassion & Giving."  We have generated nearly $2000 in donations through various channels.  Please support us with any donation that you can afford.  Molly Mednikow