http://www.doggedblog.com/doggedblog/ Blogging about pet issues, food safety, shelter reform, veterinary medicine, the no-kill movement -- and, strangely, "Glee."-Christie Keith en-US Thu, 31 May 2012 12:53:24 -0400 http://www.typepad.com/ http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification DoggedBloghttp://feedburner.google.com http://www.doggedblog.com/doggedblog/2012/05/a-blogging-decision-can-you-help.html http://www.doggedblog.com/doggedblog/2012/05/a-blogging-decision-can-you-help.html The blogging world has changed so much.... is there still room for a multi-purpose single person blog like this? Should I take my pet blogging over to Honest Dog, create a new blog for helping animal shelters, rescue groups, and shelter reform activists with their PR, communications, and social media, and just use this for bloviating -- most of which I do on Facebook now, which only my friends ever see? If you're a shelter, rescue, or animal activist, would you be more likely to follow a new blog with just one focus -- helping you with your PR, social, and communications -- or would you feel just as comfortable if all that was confined to a single category on this blog? I have added a cute photo of a kitten to make this post less stressful. Sincerely, Confused on... Stuff That Just Goes Nowhere Else Christie Keith Thu, 31 May 2012 12:53:24 -0400 http://www.doggedblog.com/doggedblog/2012/04/sometimes-we-get-better.html http://www.doggedblog.com/doggedblog/2012/04/sometimes-we-get-better.html Something weird happened to me recently. My life got better. Two and a half years ago, I lost my mother. I didn't just lose her, actually; I lost her to a long, ugly, painful battle with cancer during which I was her primary caregiver and the economy collapsed, taking her financial security with it. I knew even while still in the middle of that experience I would never be the same when it was over. Even so, I had no idea how profoundly it would change me -- would damage me, I should say, because that's the truth. I came to Michigan because staying in California where everything and everyone reminded me of my mother and her last horrible months was impossible. I knew it was pretty here, and inexpensive. I have friends here, including my dog Rawley's breeder, Paula... Michigan Stuff That Just Goes Nowhere Else Christie Keith Sat, 14 Apr 2012 15:36:15 -0400 http://www.doggedblog.com/doggedblog/2012/04/why-cant-we-bring-dogs-into-cafes-like-they-do-in-other-countries.html http://www.doggedblog.com/doggedblog/2012/04/why-cant-we-bring-dogs-into-cafes-like-they-do-in-other-countries.html A dog with her people at a British pub, re-pinned from Dr. Marty Becker's Pinterest. I so much want to live in a place where you can just hang out in a cafe with your nice dog. So civilized! Creatures Christie Keith Fri, 13 Apr 2012 10:23:18 -0400 http://www.doggedblog.com/doggedblog/2012/04/social-media-for-pet-adoption-and-adoption-events.html http://www.doggedblog.com/doggedblog/2012/04/social-media-for-pet-adoption-and-adoption-events.html Don't forget... tonight I'm doing a free webcast for Maddie's Fund on how to use social media for pet adoptions and adoption events. I'll be covering: How to put together a simple, effective social media campaign to get adopters to your events and into your shelter How to use social media to get traditional media attention How to craft promotional messages with the best potential for viral spread How to write adoption promotions that appeal to adopters you may not be reaching How to avoid common social media mistakes How to make sure your posts aren't being hidden by Facebook (Yes, they can do that, and no, you won't know.) How to prioritize your social media campaign based on your organization's available resources How and why to use Pinterest, a network optimized for the type of sharing that works for... Creatures How Writerly No Kill Christie Keith Thu, 12 Apr 2012 17:57:55 -0400 http://www.doggedblog.com/doggedblog/2012/04/dear-bloggers-stop-being-whores-part-2.html http://www.doggedblog.com/doggedblog/2012/04/dear-bloggers-stop-being-whores-part-2.html When will PR professionals stop treating bloggers like whores? When we stop acting them, I guess. I opened up a PR Daily article on how to work with bloggers, and saw this cartoon: Yeah, yeah, it was a joke. I get it. But as I read the article itself, I saw that although it was titled "6 questions to ask before working with a blogger," it was only looking at how you can run a contest or giveaway off someone's blog. If that cartoon hadn't topped the whole thing off, I'd have probably just shrugged, said, "Not for me," and not given it another thought. But that cartoon really drove home for me the huge disrespect PR professionals have for bloggers, and how easily they think they can buy us. And you know what? They're right; they can. Not a... How Writerly Christie Keith Tue, 10 Apr 2012 17:51:21 -0400 http://www.doggedblog.com/doggedblog/2012/04/how-many-social-profiles-is-just-embarrassing.html http://www.doggedblog.com/doggedblog/2012/04/how-many-social-profiles-is-just-embarrassing.html If you work in the field of social media, I'd love your thoughts on something. I'm doing what I should have done a long time ago, and building a page at my christiekeith.com domain, which I've owned and done nothing with for years now. It's just going to be a simple CV site, and I want to pull all or some of my social profiles into it. And that's my question: How many is the right amount, and how many is just embarrassing? Obviously my Facebook page, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and Pinterest (which wouldn't be obvious, but I do have a couple of boards there that are related to my work, so I'd like to include that profile). But what about Foursquare, Yelp, YouTube, GetGlue, and Instagram? I almost exclusively use those for my personal life, but I do use... How Writerly Christie Keith Mon, 09 Apr 2012 19:09:26 -0400 http://www.doggedblog.com/doggedblog/2012/03/thoughts-on-a-sign-on-a-shelter-wall.html http://www.doggedblog.com/doggedblog/2012/03/thoughts-on-a-sign-on-a-shelter-wall.html How can we deter people from surrendering their pets at shelters without giving cover to shelters that are doing a terrible job? Late last night, I saw a post come across my Facebook feed. It was by Shirley Thistlewaite at Yes Biscuit!, and it was about a new sign that had appeared near the front door of a shelter in Texas. The sign, pictured at right, reads as follows: Arlington Animal Services cannot guarantee placement of your animal. Animals turned into the shelter may be euthanized (killed) after the legal hold period. The same message is then repeated in Spanish. Now, Shirley doesn't like that sign, and I read her post and agreed her criticisms of it. I posted as much, shared it publicly on my own Facebook profile, and went to bed. I got up this morning to see... Creatures No Kill Christie Keith Sat, 24 Mar 2012 13:52:19 -0400 http://www.doggedblog.com/doggedblog/2012/03/occupy-animal-control-its-time-for-civil-disobedience-in-the-no-kill-movement.html http://www.doggedblog.com/doggedblog/2012/03/occupy-animal-control-its-time-for-civil-disobedience-in-the-no-kill-movement.html Shelter reform advocates need to take a lesson from one of the most successful protest movements in the last two decades, and occupy animal control. All over the country, bad shelters and animal control facilities are killing most or nearly all homeless pets that come in their doors. A shocking number are failing to provide even basic health care or, in many cases, food and water, to those pets. What if those of us in those communities — Detroit, New York, Fresno, Memphis, and all the rest — stopped arguing on blogs and holding poster board picket signs and forming Facebook groups and writing ten-page impassioned pleas to reporters, and instead started occupying and mic-checking animal control board meetings, press conferences, and government agency offices, and performing civil disobedience at animal control facilities and high-kill “shelters”? Read more... Creatures No Kill Christie Keith Mon, 19 Mar 2012 13:58:46 -0400 http://www.doggedblog.com/doggedblog/2012/03/how-twitter-sees-me-and-i-can-live-with-that.html http://www.doggedblog.com/doggedblog/2012/03/how-twitter-sees-me-and-i-can-live-with-that.html Clearly I am not Tweeting enough about Glee and politics. Stuff That Just Goes Nowhere Else Christie Keith Tue, 06 Mar 2012 23:09:04 -0500 http://www.doggedblog.com/doggedblog/2012/03/is-polite-and-powerless-the-comcast-customer-service-slogan.html http://www.doggedblog.com/doggedblog/2012/03/is-polite-and-powerless-the-comcast-customer-service-slogan.html I may have to start a whole new category on this blog for all the ways I hate Comcast, my Internet, cable, and landline service provider. I just discovered that people have been leaving messages on my landline voice mail., for months now. I had no idea. I don't use my landline, I just want to have it for emergencies. So I went to find out how to turn off my landline voicemail through Comcast's website, and I couldn't figure out how to do it. Turns out, you can't. The chat rep told me you can cancel the feature, or it takes messages for you. Those are your two "choices," if you can call it a choice when you have none. She couldn't tell me why this was, of course. I know Comcast never empowers its representatives to actually explain... This Is What I Think About That Christie Keith Sat, 03 Mar 2012 14:15:43 -0500 http://www.doggedblog.com/doggedblog/2012/03/send-me-the-worst-pet-adoption-ads-youve-ever-seen.html http://www.doggedblog.com/doggedblog/2012/03/send-me-the-worst-pet-adoption-ads-youve-ever-seen.html How low can pet adoption ads go in playing the tragic misery card? Pretty low. I'm putting together a program for a webcast on how to use social media to promote specific pets for adoption and also to promote adoption events. I need some terrible horrible examples of bad social media posts promoting pets for apoption. I am ONLY looking for things that were shared on social media, but the things they shared could have been links on their own webiste. In other words, what I need is a link to a Facebook post or Tweet or other socially shared item that is either a "don't do this" example in and of itself, or is once you click on the link. Although I'll be using these in my presentation, I will remove all identifying information when I do, so no... No Kill Christie Keith Thu, 01 Mar 2012 19:22:48 -0500 http://www.doggedblog.com/doggedblog/2012/02/how-peta-is-betraying-vegans-and-the-animal-rights-movement.html http://www.doggedblog.com/doggedblog/2012/02/how-peta-is-betraying-vegans-and-the-animal-rights-movement.html The annual PETA "shelter" death report is out again. Thanks to the Commonwealth of Virginia for requiring this transparency, and making the world aware that PETA has no commitment to animal life, just publicity and donations. Why is anyone still listening to PETA? I blogged about it over on Honest Dog. Check it out. Creatures No Kill Christie Keith Thu, 23 Feb 2012 12:27:45 -0500