Looking to gain some veterinary experience while traveling abroad and helping animals in need? Then this is the opportunity for you! Join World Vets for our International Veterinary Medicine program in Granada, Nicaragua this summer. This is our student program that offers an exciting opportunity for pre-vet students, technician students or those planning for a career in veterinary medicine. Openings available in June and July 2015. Spots are filling fast! If you are veterinarian or LVT/RVT, we are also looking for a few volunteers to help out on the program too. Please share with anyone who may be interested!
A Florida firefighter has taken in a kitten she rescued from inside a home’s walls, and it is not the first time she has taken home a pet she saved. Tara Holcomb, 30, a seven-year veteran of the Mount Dora Fire Department, responded to a call March 30 from homeowners who thought there was a cat in their home’s chimney. “We got there and the homeowners had tried to get the cat out because they heard it crying but couldn’t find it,” Holcomb told ABC News. “They had cut a little inspection hole in the wall of an upstairs bedroom next to the chimney and used a flashlight to look in but couldn’t see anything.” Holcomb says she could not see anything inside the hole either so she stuck her hand in and originally thought she had found something much worse: a rat. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh,’” Holcomb recalled. Instead, Holcomb had found the newborn kitten that had fallen into a void space in the wall. “I pulled it out and it was just a tiny kitten that didn’t have its eyes open or anything,” she said. How the kitten got into the home’s structure remains a mystery because the homeowners do not have any pets. “We’re not positive, of course, but we’re thinking the mom was in the attic and the baby was in between the drywall and just couldn’t get out,” said Holcomb, who said she and her colleagues searched and found no evidence of more kittens or the mom cat in the home's attic or walls. Holcomb says animal control officers instructed the homeowners to put the cat on their back porch – with a heating pad and some milk – to see if its mother would return. When the mother did not return, the homeowners, who are allergic to cats, searched for a home for the kitten. “Originally they thought they found a home with a friend but as I was leaving work the next day, they called and told me it fell through and asked if I would want the cat,” said Holcomb. “I said, ‘Yes,’ and turned around and got him.” Holcomb, appropriately, named the kitten, a boy, Wall-E. Wall-E is now being taken care of by Holcomb along with another cat the firefighter rescued nearly two years ago. “We had a cat that was stuck in a tree and when we were trying to get it out it fell and was limping,” Holcomb said. “I took that one home and adopted it.” “So they’re all laughing at me that whenever we go on a pet rescue you’re going to adopt it,” Holcomb said of her fellow firefighters.
Life in the Dog House’s Chris and Mariesa give some recipes from Mr. Mo’s Cookbook. This is a special cookbook where not only are there many healthy options for your furry family members, but with each one sold, the proceeds goes to helping out senior dogs. All of the delicious doggy treats in the cookbook were gathered from fellow dog lovers via Facebook. People were encouraged to submit a recipe along with a photo of their dog. Many entries were received, and even though they all sounded great, they had to narrow things down until a useful cookbook was born. The recipes had to also be relative simple to do. They had to consist of things that most people already have in their kitchen or pantry. This way you can make something tasty and healthy, without a ton of extra shopping necessary. Some of the recipes look and sound so good, some of them might be tasty to us humans, as well as our dogs! It would also seem that dogs are actually very handy to have around in the kitchen. They are always ready, willing and able to assist with cleaning up. Especially if when you cleaning up, you mean eating any leftovers or scraps of food you didn’t use! If you’d like to get your hands on a copy of the cookbook, and help keep some senior dogs out of shelters, you can go to www.blurb.com and searching for the Mr. Mo Cookbook, or you can click HERE.
Fort Pierce, Florida- A man said he captured a remarkable wildlife encounter Monday: a bobcat emerging from the surf near Sebastian Inlet with a shark in its jaws. But the photo that made the evening news before spiraling onto the Internet inevitably raised questions over its authenticity. “I can appreciate that,” said John Bailey, a Fort Pierce sales rep who said he initially thought he’d walked up on a dog in the surf as he was strolling down the beach between 6:30 - 7:00 p.m. Monday. Bailey said he watched the bobcat wade through the water, then pounce and stride out of the water with the shark in its mouth. Using his iPhone, he said he was able to snap one quick picture before the bobcat dropped the shark and took off for nearby brush. The entire encounter lasted just seconds, he said. Florida wildlife officials who looked at the picture said they had no reason to suspect it was fake. But in several Internet postings, people asked: Real or Photoshop? And long shadows also raise questions. Bailey, in a phone interview with the Miami Herald, said he couldn’t remember exactly where he was in Sebastian Inlet State Park, an area just north of Vero Beach with a long ocean-side sandy beach. The angle of the strong shadows suggest that for the picture to have been shot in the evening at sunset, the bobcat would have to have been on the western, Indian River side of the park. But that inland area has only a few patches of sandy beach along the inlet and the river. Bailey said he couldn’t recall if he was walking north or south, just that the beach was on his left. “Had I realized I was going to stumble onto something like that, I probably would have been aware of my surroundings,’’ he said. Bailey said he had gone to the beach “just to clear my head.” Bobcats, the closest relative of the Florida panther but far smaller and with a namesake bobbed tail, have been spotted near area beaches in the past. But the normally shy felines typically move about at night and are notoriously elusive. They don’t fear water, unlike some wild cats, and have been known to take a dip in search of food. They typically eat small mammals like rats and rabbits, but wildlife biologist Robert King said increasing development in the area may have driven out prey, forcing the cats to expand their menu. “Would they go into the surf and pull out a shark? Darn right they would,” said King, who studied bobcats in the Everglades in the 1980s. “Unless it’s been photo-shopped, I believe it.” Bailey said he never imagined the shot would turn into Internet fodder. “It’s kind of been a shock,” he said. “I didn’t think it was that rare, but I guess it is.”
