Zoey has really taken to blogging. She asked me to help her create a blog just for and about her and other canines. She says she wants to spotlight dogs like her. So there is no time like the present to start the New Year off with www.Zoeytherescue.blogspot.com


Zoey wants to remind you that there are tons of animals that need a FUREVER home. Also shelters need donations not only monetary but many other items too. She says to take in consideration that there are lots of humans who donate to wonderful, much-needed causes to help humans but there is not enough humans that donate to help save animals.


Disclaimer: All content provided on this blog is for informational/entertainment purposes only. I make no representations as to the accuracy or completeness of any information on this site or found by following any link.


Sunday, January 29, 2017

Make NJ a No-Kill State

My Mama just signed the petition,

“New Jersey Governor: Make NJ a No-Kill State.”
I think this is important. Will you sign it too?
Petitioning Governor of New Jersey Chris Christie



About 1.2 million dogs are killed each year because the maximum capacity of dogs in shelters and adoption centers are exceeded. Some of them are abused, thrown out of a house like garbage. Runaways that starve to death, some owners don't even have the time to train or take care of them.
People bring them to pounds or shelters and they look for hope that these animals are adopted in time. Many of them that do not get placed in an adoption agency or with a good family and have been there for more than 72 hours are killed/euthanized.
It is totally a cruel act to kill these voiceless beings. That’s why, we need to stand up and raise awareness for these innocent souls.
Our plan is to get 20,000 signatures by late June. When we reach this goal, we will contact the New Jersey’s lawmakers and Governor Christie and ask them to recognize and consider putting the problem on a ballot. The ballot will then be on the next voting section. We are positive, that we will win the vote.
Our next plan is to be involved in making the law and have provisions that help us exceed the limits of dogs in the adoption centers and shelters and ensure some of our tax money is sent to  adoption centers around New Jersey.
Please vote to make NJ as a NO KILL state and save these innocent souls!
Dont forget to spread the word on FaceTime, Instagram, Twitter and Musically. Use the hashtag #MakeNjANoKillState
This petition will be delivered to:
Woof, woof, please sign the petition to save my fellow canines' lives. My life was saved!


Zoey Elizabeth

Saturday, January 14, 2017

It’s Creepy, But Not Illegal, For This Website To Provide All Your Public Info To Anyone

I am posting this from Mama's blog because she thinks it is important. Us canines don't have to worry about our personal 
information but our guardians do. Just another benefit of being a dog. 


Woof, woof, pay attention humans....


Zoey Elizabeth

Reprinted from FB:

Consumerist / January 13, 2017 / By 

This week, the social media world has been alight with warning about a “genealogy” site that makes just about anyone’s information — addresses (current and former), age, family members, possible associates — available for free to any user. While this has caused a minor uproar, with concerned folks telling each other how to opt out of having their data shared by this site, this sort of data-aggregating service isn’t exactly anything new — and while what this site is doing might seem remarkably creepy, it is, in fact, completely legal.


The Latest Thing

The furor this week started when Twitter user and writer Anna Brittain sent out a lengthy thread of tweets imploring everyone to immediately go to the site FamilyTreeNow.com, search for their name, view the data, and then opt-out.

The site is, indeed, unsettling. Using only a first name, last name, and state, millions of users — including most of team Consumerist — have been able to look themselves up and find a significant volume of data available on demand and available to anyone.

The site claims to have access to “billions of historical records, including census (1790-1940) records, birth records, death records, marriage & divorce records, living people records, and military records.” That’s pretty par for the course for any genealogy site, with one glaring exception: the “living people” records.

Users have expressed shock and dismay at finding incredible volumes of their personal data available for the asking on FamilyTreeNow.

For many folks, the list of possible known relatives and associates is indeed filled entirely with family members and former roommates. Various users report finding all of their full addresses going back to childhood, their siblings’ addresses, and information for their ex-spouses and former partners.

Others found that the accuracy of the records is… mixed. Users with common names, for example, may find their data chaotically intertwined with other, similarly-named folks of about the same age. Yours truly, for example, has never had family in Alabama — but some deep-south connections were suggested, by virtue of sharing names, birth months, and birth years. Whether your records are eerily accurate or bizarrely wrong appears to be hit-and-miss across users.

Opting Out

Here’s the good part: opting out appears to work… at least, more or less.

If you, too, want your “living people” data to be made unavailable from the FamilyTreeNow database, you can visit their privacy policy and then follow the directions on the opt-out page to make your data disappear.

The site may occasionally be slammed with traffic; since Jan. 10, Brittain’s tweets have since traveled far and wide, leaping off the service and making the rounds on Facebook and Tumblr as well. Every time a warning about the site hits a new node of high popularity, it ends up getting a lot of opt-out requests at once. Just wait a few minutes, refresh, and try again.

The site requests up to 48 hours to scrub living-person records from the site after an opt-out has been requested. The first big warning worked its way around the world during the day on Jan. 10; two days later, on Jan. 12, users who had opted out confirmed that they no longer see their records when they search the site. Those users likewise no longer see themselves listed as possible family members or known associates of family who do still have profiles on the site.

There are, however, some catches. One user was completely scrubbed from the site 24 hours after requesting an opt-out; another day later, their full name was again showing up in a search but clicking it leads to an error saying, “The resource you are looking for has been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.”

Another user reports opting several members of a single family out of appearing on the site — but says that two days after, while search results for a pair of brothers no longer yield their names, searching for their third brother brings up a list of suspected family members that includes full, clickable profile information for both of the unsearchable brothers who have been opted out.

Adding to the chaos? Some people have multiple profiles on the site, pulled together from disparate sources of information that can’t seem to peg for sure whether or not two “John A Does” with the same birth date and address are the same person or not. If you want to opt yourself out, you’ll need to make sure you catch every profile associated with you.

More often than not, opting out appears to work successfully. But speaking with several different users who have opted out of having their data appear on the site does not reveal a clear pattern to where errors might occur, so if you want to opt out you’ll have to keep following up every 24 hours or so for a few days to make sure your own information is hidden.


Why This Site Is Different
Information about you has been available on the internet for decades. The Crash Override Network — dedicated to helping prevent internet-generated abuse, and helping its victims mitigate the effects — has links to several sites and lists that aggregate public records info that users afraid of having it intentionally leaked (or who simply value their privacy) can opt out of.

Generally speaking, sites that exist to help users compile family trees work to protect the privacy of persons who are still living. FamilyTreeNow has no such protection built in. Instead, it touts its access to your data as a selling point.

“Our living people records are some of our most in-depth,” FamilyTreeNow promises on its search page. “They have been compiled from hundreds of sources going back over 40 years. They include current and past addresses, possible aliases, all known relatives, and phone numbers. There is no other database like this on any other genealogy sites. If you need to find someone that’s currently alive or recently deceased, they will be in this database. It contains over 1.6 billion records.”

Compare that to what is arguably the best-known genealogy site, Ancestry.com, which includes language in its privacy statement that users might post information about living individuals, but are supposed to do so only with consent.

Ancestry.com also notes that some of the records included in its databases “may contain personal information that relates to living individuals, which may include you or your family members, usually from public record sources.”

But Ancestry is at least aware there’s an issue with that: “Ancestry and its affiliates and agents take reasonable steps to assure that the documents do not include sensitive, personal information about living individuals,” it continues.

The company also promises transparency, choice, and good data stewardship — “managing your data in a principled fashion that follows clearly stated policies and applicable laws” — all over. Those laws and policies may not mean much (more about that in a moment), but Ancestry at least does make a token effort.

Another place where FamilyTreeNow stands out? Its stated commitment to remaining 100% free to use. Most similar sites start charging for access to anything other than the most basic data, or after a certain number of searches.

“Other ‘get public records’ sites at least charged something before they gave out the info,” one concerned user told Consumerist. “That is some sort of gatekeeping.”

And it’s true: a fee is minimal gatekeeping, though that won’t block a determined stalker or harasser. It does, at least, make your information slightly less low-hanging fruit for targeting by the general public. Charging a fee to sign up for a site will deter many idle minds from bothering, because a hurdle is a hurdle.

Worse: To maintain its free-to-use status, FamilyTreeNow is plastered in ads — and many of them are both misleading and misleadingly placed. For example, on the people results page, there’s an ad box immediately under the actual “edit search” box, placed in such a way that many users could easily mis-click and find themselves giving their names to less-than-aboveboard sites:

Two sample screenshots of the "edit search" box and the ads that show immediately underneath it.
Two sample screenshots of the “edit search” box and the ads that show immediately underneath it.
Those ads lead to a whole web of data brokerage sites, some of which are more legitimate than others — but all of which, even the non-scam ones, are out to make a buck off you.

But FamilyTreeNow has quietly been giving away your data for free for years. A commenter to the company’s largely-quiet Facebook page posted in October 2014 — well over two years ago — that she was dismayed to find “the information of living people, names, addresses, etc” available and would not be using the site because of it.

And in so doing, they are not violating a single law.

What “Personal” Means
In the days since her multi-part tweet toured the world, Brittain has written a blog post about it reminding users that this is only one very tiny slice of an overall whole.
Brittain wisely observes the catch-22 about opting out in her blog post: “The frustrating thing about these kinds of sites are two-fold,” she writes. “One, new ones pop up all the time as people become aware of the old ones and opt out. Two, your information can apparently reappear places like Spokeo after a certain period of time.”

Lee Tien, senior staff attorney at the privacy-minded Electronic Frontier Foundation tells Consumerist that FamilyTreeNow hadn’t been on anyone’s radar at the EFF until reporters started to ask about it this week, but he wasn’t surprised to hear about it.Data aggregators, while not usually free, “are very common,” Tien confirmed.

And it’s inevitable because public records are, well, public, Tien continued. All that public records data is, every day, easily and readily available to police, governments, marketers, and even journalists. Millions of employees at thousands of public and private entities can, usually through paid means, quickly assemble profiles and dossiers about basically anyone.

To point the blame at FamilyTreeNow is effectively a case of blaming the messenger, Tien tells Consumerist, adding that users are largely “all deluded” into thinking that this data isn’t readily available.

Every single state has its own public records laws, and more exist at the federal, county, and city levels. By law, some information — including information about births, deaths, marriages, divorces, property ownership, voting history, and more — will basically always be available for the asking.By merely existing in this world, you are going to continue to generate records. Your life, legally lived, is traceable. Your information is known and recorded, and what can be put in a database can be accessed. Until or unless the law changes in a significant way, nothing is going to alter that.

And on top of that, Tien added, is “all of the information that people volunteer.” Connections you put into a site like Facebook are purchasable and traceable — “it’s there, and it’s sensitive,” he added.

Most folks, at least, don’t have too much to worry about, Tien continued. He conceded that, “one of the threat models is the stalker, [or another] non-authority person with evil intentions.”

Those evil intentions can be part of group harassment, such as the hate mobs that coalesce around women, people of color, and LGB or transgender writers and activists in many public fields. For many public-facing workers with a Twitter presence, the discovery of easily-queried address and network information like this leads to an instant panic moment.


Even for those who are not concerned about roving digital hate mobs, the data can be a problem. One user, in a Facebook comment, initially said she didn’t see the harm in FamilyTreeNow listing off all her past known addresses, until others pointed out that these are exactly the kinds of questions credit reporting agencies use to suss out if you are actually the person you claim to be. Having data like that readily accessible in the public sphere increases the risk of successful identity theft for, well, basically everyone.

Tien is right that FamilyTreeNow is just the messenger — and as far as he or we could tell, it’s not in violation of existing law.

Rules governing your personally identifiable information — PII — are widely varied, depending not only on what the data is but also who holds it and through what means they gathered it. Information that may seem sensitive to you, like your year of birth, address, or phone number, is largely not considered proprietary or sensitive under most existing laws, and is basically fair game across the board — including for data aggregators like FamilyTreeNow to use.

There also is no overarching federal law governing privacy policies. FamilyTreeNow can state basically whatever it wants in its, with one important caveat: anything it states, it must hold to.

Although there are some errors, for the most part users who want to opt out report that doing so under the terms provided by the FamilyTreeNow privacy policy has proven largely effective — so it appears, from a first, casual look, as though the site is abiding by its stated terms.

If you’re terrified, though, you’re not alone.

“Consumers typically understand that public records exist about them, but they are usually unaware of the scale of that data and the ease with which it can be accessed,” Stacey Gray, policy counsel at the Future of Privacy Forum, told Consumerist.

“In an era of ‘democratized’ data,” Gray continued, “it is easier and cheaper than than ever to aggregate information from the public domain.”

That information is not protected under the law, Gray told us, because it’s the same data anyone could always get by haunting a county courthouse or vital records bureau and asking for documents. Today, though, basically anyone can access it online for free — no matter what their intent or how they plan to use it.

“There’s no doubt that this will upset many people,” Gray continued. But FamilyTreeNow, is really only shining a light “on something that was always possible, but has never been so easy.”

Perhaps the key takeaway, she concluded, is as a warning to the businesses that aggregate and sell data: “Companies should understand that we are in a world where privacy can no longer be considered binary, and respect for other values, such as ethics and fairness, will be equally critical for the industry to succeed.”

Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Why Pet Owners Should Care About Banfield & VCA Animal Hospitals Coming Under Same Corporate Umbrella

Consumerist (Reprinted from Twitter)
January 9, 2017 By 

A pending merger will put a number of the nation’s biggest veterinary care chains — VCA Inc., Banfield Pet Hospital, and BluePearl Veterinary Partners — under the ownership umbrella of candy and packaged foods giant Mars Inc. This deal will add VCA’s nearly 800 hospitals into what some critics say is a one-size-fits-all medical assembly line.
Why does Mars––a company more associated with Snickers and Twix than with veterinary care––want to be so heavily involved in animal hospitals? Pet care is becoming a big business, as pet owners increasingly treat their dogs and cats like family members, paying top dollar to keep them healthy and extend their lives. At the same time, chain clinics are replacing smaller, independently owned clinics.
Mars Inc. bought the Banfield chain in 2007. The clinics, conveniently connected to Petsmart stores, sell their wellness plans as something that isn’t quite health insurance, but that spreads a pet’s medical costs throughout the year. Since 2008, we’ve shared consumers’ problems with these plans.
Pet owners are often shocked to learn that they have to keep paying for the plan for the rest of the year after their pet dies, since the plans sound like health insurance to the average consumer. Hospital employees have told consumers that they can “cancel at any time, leaving owners on the hook for another year of payments when they don’t want to continue the plans.
In a recent, lengthy piece that every pet owner should read about the rise of Banfield, Bloomberg Businessweek heard from former Banfield vets and patients that the wellness plans include services that a pet might not necessarily need and that could put it at risk, like an annual teeth cleaning under general anesthesia, and annual doses of vaccines that aren’t scaled to a pet’s size and that animals don’t need every year to maintain immunity.
Now Mars will be adding nearly 800 VCA hospitals to its existing 900 or so Banfield clinics, raising concerns that these problematic plans will be the norm for thousands of additional pets and their owners.
At the same time, the sheer size of the Mars Inc. animal care business raises questions about the future about the veterinary care industry. This same sort of rapid consolidation has already occurred in certain niche care businesses, like funeral homes, where bereavement Voltrons like Service Corporation International are allowed to gobble up independent, traditionally family owned funeral homes as the owners of these smaller businesses retire or sell out.

Monday, January 9, 2017

Meet my cousin...

Lady Luck is a rescue from Dallas Pets Alive.  

Three cheers for Dallas Pets Alive rescue for all the work they do to find homes for fellow canines and kitties too. http://dallaspetsalive.org. They found a good home for Lady Luck. 

I am officially welcoming the newest member to the Jenkins family...Lady Luck! 

I believe she is now my cousin because her mommy, Tara, is my mom's cousin. Unfortunately, we will probably never meet because she is a Texan and I am a Jersey Girl. I am about a year older than her and I could probably teach her a few things (especially about ball). Although, I see from the pictures she doesn't need any help in the LOVE department! You are a cutie cousin! 

Congrats to the Jenkins family--wishing you lots of happiness together and may your Lady always be lucky.






Woof, woof till later, 
Zoey Elizabeth

Sunday, January 8, 2017

Pack Leadership Technique 5: Read your dog's body language

Reprinted from FB / January 8 2017

Cesar's Way
https://www.cesarsway.com/dog-psychology/five-techniques/body-language/read-your-dogs-body-language

Zoey. Pictures are mine, not from Cesar's Way
Dexter & Zoey


Who wants to play ball, please, please...

While humans primarily use words to communicate, dogs use energy to communicate, expressing it through body language. To communicate with our dogs, we need to learn and adopt their 'language' rather than expecting them to learn ours.
One way to decode a dog's language is to remember that Energy = Intention _ Emotion. A dog's energy ' his intention and emotions, working together ' are communicated by his body language.
A dog's play bow to another dog illustrates how this works. The motion is forward, but the front of the dog's body is low to the ground. The intention (the forward movement) is excitement but the emotion (the low body) is friendly, so the energy is playful.
Related: Principle 1 for Achieving Balance: Be aware of your energy.
That means that similar behaviors can mean different things. For example, a happily excited dog and an aggressive dog may both move forward toward a person or other animal ' but one of them is playful and the other one is threatening. Likewise, a dog may run away in fear or it may run away to start a game of chase with another dog.
The important parts to watch are the head, ears, tail, and back. The higher these are, the more dominant a dog is feeling, and the lower they are, the more submissive or uncertain her feelings. Look also for tension in the dog's body, particularly in the back and legs. The more tense a dog is, the higher its energy level.
It can be easy to misinterpret a dog's energy, so develop a habit of close observation of their body language. For example, many people are afraid when a dog shows its teeth ' but an astute observer knows that when the teeth are together, with the ears pulled back along the head, eyes squinting, and the body is lowered and leaning away, the dog is actually showing submission. Likewise, a dog may come charging at you, but if its body is relaxed, its tail is level and wagging, and there's no tension in the body, then it is showing excitement, not aggression.
Dogs can't tell us in words what they're thinking and feeling because they don't have to. They're expressing themselves constantly through body language. Once we learn how to understand this, a whole world of communication with our dogs opens up.

Saturday, January 7, 2017

Pack Leadership Technique 4: Master the walk


Reprinted from FB / January 7, 2017

Cesar's Way

https://www.cesarsway.com/dog-psychology/five-techiques/the-walk/master-the-walk?utm_content=sf49820516&utm_medium=spredfast&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=Cesar%27s+Way%2C+Inc.&sf49820516=1



Pack Leadership Technique #2 reminds us to provide exercise, discipline, and affection in that order. And the absolute best way to provide exercise and discipline for your dog is through the walk. Here's what you need to master it.

Pack Leadership Technique 2 reminds us to provide exercise, discipline, and affection in that order. And the absolute best way to provide exercise and discipline for your dog is through the walk.
To make the walk productive and bonding, you have to be the leader. This means that you're in front, not your dog. It helps to use a short leash with the collar up at the top of the dog's neck, where you have the most control. Keep your leash arm down and relaxed, with the leash loose. Don't grip tightly because that sends tense energy down the leash to your dog.
Avoid harnesses for the walk, because they tend to encourage dogs to pull. And take a pass on any kind of variable-length lead, as these put your dog, not you, in control.
Related: How to be the pack leader
The most important tool for the walk, though, is your calm, assertive energy. It's a transformative attitude that actually encourages your dog to follow you. This means being fully present for your dog. The walk isn't a time for texting or chatting on your phone.
Your dog must also be present for you. Sniffing and peeing are rewards your dog needs to earn ' so during first part of the walk, keep in constant motion, mimicking the forward movement of the pack in search of food. After establishing a good balance of leadership (you) and calm, submissive walking (your dog), you can relax a bit and let your dog sniff or mark the landscape.
Another skill for mastering the walk is reading other dog walkers from a distance. If their dog is out in front and pulling, and the person's energy seems anxious with weak and uncertain body language, it's possible their dog could exhibit some undesired behavior should you meet. It's better for you and your dog to avoid such encounters.
The walk is the perfect way to give your dog exercise, discipline, and some affection, as well as to establish rules. When you master it, you will have discovered the most rewarding and productive way to improve your relationship with your dog.


Friday, January 6, 2017

Pack Leadership Technique 3: Establish rules, boundaries and limitations.

Reprinted from FB / January 6, 2017
Cesar's Way
https://www.cesarsway.com/dog-psychology/five-techniques/rules-boundaries-limitations/establish-rules-boundaries-limitations?utm_content=sf47435897&utm_medium=spredfast&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=Cesar%27s+Way%2C+Inc.&sf47435897=1





Rules, boundaries and limitations can keep a dog from misbehaving because they give her something else to do. The trick is to be clear and consistent.

Because of their nature as social pack animals, dogs want us to tell them what they're supposed to do. Their goal is to help the pack survive, and they do it by following the pack leader. It's the job of the pack leaders to provide protection and direction. Establishing and enforcing rules, boundaries, and limitations is how they provide direction to the pack.
' Rules refer to what a dog is and isn't allowed to do: Stay off of my bed but sleep on yours; don't jump on people; don't pull on the walk.
' Boundaries control where a dog can and can't go: The baby's room is off-limits; don't go out the door until I say so; you can only enter my personal space when I invite you. Boundaries are about claiming territory, and they teach your dog what is and isn't his.
Related: 5 tips for building boundaries
' Limitations control the length or intensity of an activity: We stop playing fetch when I say so; you're too excited, so it's time to return to a calm and submissive state with a timeout.
Rules, boundaries and limitations can keep a dog from misbehaving because they give her something else to do. For example, if your dog has separation anxiety, create a rule that she has to lie on her bed when you're getting ready to leave. This will keep her from becoming excited because she associates the bed with being calm and submissive. She will stay in this frame of mind when you leave. If your dog is an obsessive beggar, create a boundary around the table, constraining the dog from approaching while humans are eating.
Because our dogs want to please us, their Pack Leaders, our approval becomes the positive reinforcement they need. We just have to be clear and consistent with what we want. Creating rules, boundaries, and limitations and enforcing them provides that clarity and consistency for our dogs.

Thursday, January 5, 2017

Pack Leadership Technique 2: Provide exercise, discipline, affection

Reprinted from FB / January 5, 2017

Cesar's Way

https://www.cesarsway.com/dog-psychology/five-techniques/fulfillment-formula/provide-exercise-discipline-affection?utm_content=sf47435782&utm_medium=spredfast&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=Cesar%27s+Way%2C+Inc.&sf47435782=1



The formula for a balanced dog is simple. Living it takes practice and commitment.





Pack Leadership Technique 1: Project calm, assertive energy

Reprinted from FB / Jan 5, 2017
Cesar's Way
https://www.cesarsway.com/dog-psychology/five-techniques/calm-assertive/project-calm-assertive-energy



It's a new year and there's no better time than now to make a resolution to become a better pack leader. There are five key techniques that I will post about here over the next few days. Here's the first one!


To dogs,' says Cesar, 'energy is everything.'
Because dogs communicate with energy, our personal energy plays a central role in our relationship with them. Dogs are our mirrors, reflecting back in their behavior the energy we express. If we are hyperactive and over-excited, our dogs will be the same; if we are tense and angry, our dogs will be anxious.
Unlike humans, dogs will not follow unstable energy. They instinctually seek and follow pack leaders who exhibit calm and assertive energy. When dogs live with a human who does not fill this role, they will attempt to correct the pack balance by filling what they see as a vacant pack leader role. This is how behavior problems develop.
Related: How to be calm and assertive
To establish yourself as the pack leader, you must project calm, assertive energy. Think of it as a perfectly balanced set of scales. On one side is your calm and assertive leadership; on the other is your dog's calm and submissive behavior. This balance nurtures stability and creates a centered and happy dog.
We can learn and practice projecting calm and assertive energy by using a natural ability that dogs don't have ' our imaginations. Think of someone who inspires confidence in you ' a parent or mentor; a famous leader or hero; even a fictional character. How do they carry themselves, and what in them inspires confidence in you? Now imagine that you are this character. Stand like they would stand. Move like they would move. Take slow, deep breaths. Relax your body, but keep your head up, shoulders back and chest out.
Note how you're feeling. Then practice capturing this state during the day with your dog. Don't be surprised if your dog spontaneously sits next to or follows behind you wherever you go. It's because you're communicating with your dog using only your energy and body language. Now you're ready to continue the 'conversation' with your dog in a balanced way.
Projecting calm, assertive energy isn't a new skill to be learned. It's a natural human trait to be remembered, and mastering it will bring your relationship with your dog to a whole new level.