Games That Vegan Kids Play!

  At VegaNation this week, we have been very moved by the efforts of lots of good, caring people in the U.S.who are working very hard to get animals out of shelters with very high kill rates. We have contributed to several ChipIn funds to sponsor pups so that they can be rescued from the shelters where they are in imminent danger of being destroyed, and then we have been waiting anxiously for news of the pups, waiting for someone to volunteer to collect them, and foster or adopt them. These dogs are at shelters in the U.S where they will be killed just to make room for fresh intake. They are sweet, friendly, eminently adoptable dogs (really virtually any animal is adoptable- you just have to find the right home for them) who have just had the misfortune to be dumped in a shelter whose policy is to kill them rather than to find homes for them, even tho' the work of all these good people working hard to save them shows that there are good loving homes out there.
   Benji, a lovely black sheepdog in Bulgaria who needed an operation on the savaged stump of his leg, is one of the dogs to whose ChipIn funds we donated, and we were very relieved to learn that Harvey and Haley, two sweet pups we donated for will not now be killed this week but will be starting their new lives this weekend!
  We try not to expose our children to too much scary and upsetting information- they are very young and care very much about animals, so we don't want them to be distressed; it's easy enough for adults to feel overwhelmed and helpless in the face of animal suffering. The children know that we've been donating to help dogs in shelters in the U.S. and they know that the dogs are in danger but they're hazy on the details. They don't know about the gas chambers, or the dog in a U.S. shelter that was given a supposedly lethal injection and then taken to the dump WHILE STILL ALIVE (later apparently given more 'medicine' and finished off), or the dog that was given a lethal injection and then put into the freezer while he was alive- this one was given a second chance. They don't know about the dog killed NINE minutes after entering a shelter (not likely to find a loving new home in THAT time, was he?) or all the cats killed on entry for no other reason than because they were BLACK. They don't know about the dogs who are killed because they guard their food; food which in many cases is the first meal they've had in days. Or all the thousands of cats killed simply because they are older or shy or feral.

   But they do know about compassionate caring animal shelters because our family volunteers to spend time with the cats at a wonderful shelter called Feline Care (www.felinecare.org.uk ); they do know about feral cats- there are lots at Feline Care, and they know about spaying and neutering.. and fleas!
   Ourr children are very impressionable and, sooner or later, anything with which we are involved shows up in their games. Today, they have been playing 'Animal Rescue': there are vets and quad bikes and land rovers and cat baskets and feeding bottles all over the living room floor. I keep hearing stirring tales about puppies with sore paws rescued from 'bad' shelters and taken to safety, a cat flown in a plane to a new home (www.pilotsnpaws.org)  and ''a cat with only one eye which has been rescued and taken to a rescue centre where she has been de-flea-ed (sp?) and spayed and 'de-feralled' and then found a lovely new home!''.
  All the vet dolls are busily involved, although some of them keep sneaking off and reappearing with increasingly wild and wacky hairstyles; supervet Dandelion Blogstar's latest hairstyle is my favourite: she has a unusual 'messy up-do' secured with a safety pin and with what might appear to be a bone running through it, Pebbles Flintstones-style, but is, apparently, ''a syringe so that if she finds a little kitten that needs a feed she can give it a feed, and then put the syringe back in her hair''! Great idea- we should all do that!
  If you have any money left after donating to Marion County puppies' ChipIn funds, and Pilots N Paws (you MUST watch some of their videos!), then please visit VegaNation, our 100% vegan shop, www.veganation.co.uk - we have marshmallows!