What a way to celebrate two years on Dogster! As you might have noticed the For Love of Dog Blog hit two years old in March. And how are we celebrating? By blogging of course AND being featured on the PetSaleAve.com site.
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Welcome back for the last installment of the interview with Jim Willis, noted author and animal protector. You can read more from Jim at his website.
Today, Jim wraps up his interview by telling us about what he’s working on for the future.
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Welcome back for Day 4 of the Jim Willis interview! Jim is the author of best-seller “Pieces of My Heart” and he has spent a good deal of time in Europe and today he shares some of his perspective on the American and European animal protection systems.
If you have missed any of Jim’s interview, here is a link back to Day 1.
Joy: You lived in Europe – what are some of the differences between there and the USA?
Jim: Well, for instance with livestock and poultry – more attention to how the animals are housed, more humane killing practices, and rigorous requirements for transporting, including not allowing transports above or below certain temperatures.
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Thanks for joining us for the next installment of the Jim Willis interview. If you haven’t read Jim’s work AND you’re an animal person I can only tell you you’re in for a treat. Okay, a lot of his writing will make you cry but it’s the good kind of crying that makes you want to DO something positive. His “Pieces of My Heart” has inspired animal defenders all over the world.
My apologies to all for the day’s break in the interview. My computer decided to die yesterday. I’m not back up to full speed again but I wanted you to know why Jim’s interesting interview was missing from the blog yesterday.
Joy: Are you a vegetarian?
Jim: I wish I was personally, but as a consumer who has to feed rescued carnivores, I will always contribute to the meat trade. I make a homemade diet for my dogs that contains human-quality meat. I was vegetarian during my first marriage, but when that ended, I fell back on convenience and my old ways. Still, I eat little meat and prefer fish and salads. I welcome the growing move to vegetarianism and that the younger generation is more conscious of the health benefits than my generation.
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Thanks for joining us today as Jim Willis, the author of best-selling Pieces of My Heart , talks about how society looks at animals and animal “people.” Willis has been active in the animal rescue movement for decades both here and in Europe.
Joy: You seem more tolerant today of a lack of knowledge about animals in people.
Jim: I hope I am. I consider it critically important for us who know animals to pass on that knowledge, to educate children, and to encourage adults, especially legislators, to do better by them. I shudder when some extreme members of the movement for animals behave in a manner that causes the public to regard all animal-people as “crazy.” It’s also true that you “catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar” and I think we animal-people owe it to the animals – who, of course, can never speak for themselves – to convey the message in a reasonable and intelligent way.
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When I first read the overwhelming essay “How Could You?” like everyone else with a soul I cried. And cried. If you’ve read it then you’ve cried too. I know you have or you wouldn’t be reading this blog.
Then I said to myself, “I have to find out more about the person behind this moving piece.” So I contacted Jim Willis and asked him to share his life and passions with all of us.
Jim is an author as well as a rescuer. He’s never been afraid to stand up for what he believes even if he gets roughed up for doing so.
BTW, this lovely boy with Jim in the picture is his rescue Weim, Zinn.
Please join me for this five-part interview. Meanwhile, you can check out Jim’s best-selling book, “Pieces of My Heart.” I promise you’ll be crying again.
Joy: How did you get involved with animals?
Jim: As a child, I was not allowed to have furred pets. My parents were physically handicapped and didn’t want the responsibility. I made do with turtles, fish and “sea monkeys,” but I constantly complained that I wanted a dog or cat. When I was 14, my mother convinced a local shelter director in Pittsburgh to take me on as a volunteer. I worked there every weekend and school holiday for a couple of years.
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Dogster Daddy knows him as Pack Leader; the rest of us know him as Dog Whisperer Cesar Millan. Now we can all learn a little bit more about him. Caesar was nice enough to answer a few questions about his views on life and more.
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Dogster Daddy knows him as Pack Leader; the rest of us know him as Dog Whisperer Cesar Millan. Now we can all learn a little bit more about him. Cesar was nice enough to answer a few questions about his views on life and more.
Read the rest of this entry »
Dogster Daddy knows him as Pack Leader; the rest of us know him as Dog Whisperer Cesar Millan. Now we can all learn a little bit more about him. Cesar was nice enough to answer a few questions about his views on life and more.
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Welcome to Day Three of the Peter Beagle Interview!
Peter is the Hugo-award winning author of the strongest and most memorable fiction in the English language! His The Last Unicorn became an animated feature and has recently been turned into an audiobook. If you love good writing, treat yourself and read some of Beagle’s work!
Joy: You’ve been telling me about a number of the animals that you’ve known in the past. The cats, the dog. What’s the one thing you would say, or encourage people to learn, from that? Or that you have learned from that?
Peter S. Beagle: Can’t say about encouraging people — everybody takes what he or she knows he needs. I always think of Walt Whitman’s poem, “I think I could turn with animals, turn and live with animals.” You know, they’re so quiet and self-assured. They do not lie awake at night and sweat over their sins, they do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, they’re not infected with the mania of owning things. Not one kneels to another over the whole earth. The thing I’ve always admired about animals is their understanding of who they are. The pleasures sometimes seen that even a cow will take in being a cow, whether it’s scratching an itch, or, two old horses standing out in the pasture, not doing anything, just standing head to tail, keeping each other company. And not needing anything more right then than each other’s shade and each other’s tails to swish away the flies.
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