Web 2.0 & Dogs…A Blessing and A Curse

Dogs and The Internet, The Good and The Bad

The internet is an amazing tool for so many things, not least among them is saving dogs!

Recently my friend Amy found a dog at noon on Friday in Griffith Park in LA, and by 5pm after posting him on Facebook we had a home for him in Sacramento. By 7 a ride had been arranged for him through Twitter. It’s a pretty amazing story as told in this article by Jennifer Fearing on the fabulous dog blog/ pet site PetConnection.com (click here for the article.)

That all happened on Friday and I was feeling pretty good and energized about my rescue/dog networking. Unfortunately those feelings were pretty much dashed by Saturday morning upon receipt of  a nasty, borderline threatening email. It was from a woman who I had talked about on a blog post about my disdain for the current trend of designer dogs.

I didn’t mention her name, nor did I know it until I received her email. And while my post wasn’t personal, she chose to make it so. Truth be told it freaked me out. I could pretend it didn’t but it did.  I basically haven’t been much inclined to blog since then.

I just really prefer to avoid conflict and I was so taken aback when my blog, which I write as a way to give a voice to the plight of rescued dogs, turned so confrontational. It was a quite an eye opening experience. I mean not only was I upset about the interaction, but I had a new sense of the vulnerability of making my opinions and my experiences available for public consumption. It bothered me that this woman, who now hates me, and anyone else for that matter, could read extremely personal stories that I had written my blog.

This internal struggle, and the fact that I’ve been slammed with work, has made me shy away from the blog for the past couple of weeks.

But enough of that. Aside from starting this post a few times, I ended up getting the motivation I needed to blog when I received this thoughtful email:

I’m recently enrolled in a college speech class, I am currently doing a persuasive speech. I want to thank you for your site and your passion to stop puppy mills. I am doing my speech on stopping puppy mills to encourage people not to buy from private breeders, but rather adopt a doggy from a shelter. Thank you again for your website and your information. It was really helpful.

So if I have to make a choice to listen to one of these voices, it’s going to be the latter. Sorry for the lack of blog update! Hope you understand!

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