"Play It Again God"

Good Deeds, Good News, Good Times

Archive for April, 2009

‘Flyaway’ chihuahua reunited with owners

Apr 30

Posted by Ray in Uncategorized | No Comments

site_1_rand_1514916901_chihuahua_flyaway_280409_detroitnews_markhicks_b

A tiny chihuahua which was blown away by a massive gust of wind has been reunited with her owners after a pet psychic stepped in.

A tiny chihuahua which was blown away by a massive gust of wind has been reunited with her owners after a pet psychic stepped in.

Tinker Bell, a long-haired chihuahua weighing just 2.7kg, was caught in a huge storm near Detroit, in the US state of Michigan, on Saturday.

“The storm came up real bad,” devastated owner Lavern Utley told local paper the Oakland Press after the black and brown dog vanished into thin air.

“We had her on a leash connected to a cooler and the wind blew the cooler over and she just disappeared.

“We looked for Tinker Bell for hours in nearby fields and weren’t able to find her,” Mr Utley added.

Dog dirty, hungry, but unharmed

Mr Utley’s sons, grandson, and 50 other friends and relatives spent spent days hunting for the lost pet – with no luck.

But after the family’s pleas for help were published, a pet psychic told them to search for her in a wooded area nearly 1.5km from where she was last seen.

The Utleys say their tiny dog was found – dirty and hungry, but otherwise fine – just where the psychic suggested.

Dorothy Utley told The Detroit News that her cherished pet “just went wild” upon seeing her.

“That dog was so happy,” she said.
More

Tags:

Parking amnesty nets $28K and food

Apr 30

Posted by Ray in Uncategorized | No Comments

By Chris Cassidy
STAFF WRITER

SALEM — Lots of delinquent drivers redeemed themselves last month by paying off their overdue parking tickets and donating canned foods to a local food pantry.

The city’s parking amnesty program — an attempt to close a midyear budget gap and put a dent in the long list of drivers with unpaid tickets — raised $28,333 last month and filled at least one truck full of food for St. Joseph Food Pantry.

“It was amazing,” said pantry director Veann Campbell. “I can’t believe that many people had parking tickets.”
More

Tags:

Animal shelter is a winner, thanks to Amanda and Libby

Apr 29

Posted by Ray in Uncategorized | No Comments

Think one or two people can’t make a difference?

Then you don’t know about Amanda Huhman and Libby Burks.

The two animal lovers double-handedly rallied an entire community to support a cause they believe in. Because of their efforts, the deteriorating, crammed-full Central Missouri Humane Society won a nationwide shelter-makeover contest Monday worth up to $1 million in cash and services.

Did I mention yet that Amanda and Libby are 13 years old?

“When my mom told me we’d won, I was dancing around, so excited,” Amanda giggled into the phone hours after learning CMHS had taken the prize.

The seventh-graders, who have been volunteer dog-walkers and kitty-cuddlers at the shelter since age 9, got it into their heads in January that their coming-apart-at-the-seams shelter was the perfect candidate for the Zootoo makeover contest they read about in a magazine. They approached the shelter director to get her blessing and then they got to work.

The rest, as they say, is history.

But that’s not to suggest it was easy.

By the time the girls had learned about the contest, conducted by Zootoo, an online community of animal lovers, it had already been going on for months. Late-starter CMHS was in 859th place in mid-January.

Libby and Amanda — friends since third grade, animal-lovers since birth — launched a major publicity effort (local shelters won points when people signed on, posted journal entries or pictures or reviewed products). They collared folks in parking lots to ask them to go online and support the shelter, papered the city with posters and fliers, did radio appearances before school and gave speeches to civic groups. They attended fundraising dinners and went to seniors’ communities to teach residents how to go online and cast votes.

“It was a lot of work,” Libby acknowledges, but it was paying off. Within weeks, CMHS had moved up several hundred positions.

“Once we’d advanced into the top 200 or so, the girls were convinced we could win,” says shelter executive director Patty Forister.
More

Tags: ,

1-year-old boy in T-shirt, diaper survives night in woods

Apr 28

Posted by Ray in Uncategorized | No Comments

CBC News

Quebec provincial police said it’s a miracle a year-old boy was found in good health after he spent a cold night alone in a forest in the province’s Eastern Townships.

The child spent about 12 hours in the forest Saturday night wearing just a T-shirt and diaper in rainy, five-degree weather.

He was allegedly abandoned by his father Sunday morning, provincial police said.

Authorities got a call from the boy’s mother “telling us that her husband or boyfriend had left the house and was in the vehicle with the one-year-old baby, and that the man had [been drinking], police Sgt. Joyce Kemp said.
Empty vehicle found

Police found the empty vehicle a short while later, and tracked down the father at a hospital in Cowansville early Sunday morning.

That’s when authorities realized the baby was lost in the woods, Kemp said.

“We called on the dog handlers, several teams from the emergency units, and also our helicopter,” she said. Around noon [Sunday] we were able to locate the child in the forest.”

The baby is fine, Kemp said.

The father was arrested and will likely face charges connected to the incident, police said.
More

Tags:

Cleaning up in aisle 4: Gambo grocery workers share lotto jackpot

Apr 28

Posted by Ray in Uncategorized | No Comments

CBC News

Nineteen people involved in a lottery pool based at a central Newfoundland supermarket are still reeling, after learning they won $5 million in a weekend lottery.

“We got a very deserving bunch of people working here, worked themselves to the bone sometimes, and finally got a break in life,” Rick Browne, who owns the SaveEasy store in Gambo, told CBC News Monday.

Of the 19 in the lottery pool, 17 work inside the grocery. They each will pocket about $263,000, following their win in Friday night’s Super 7 draw.

The group has been chipping in together for years on lottery tickets. Browne and his wife — who also works in the store, as well as three other family relatives — will be giving money to charity, as well as to their son in St. John’s so he can buy a new house.

“Everybody has a little something they want to do with the money,” he said.

Tina Wiseman, who used to work at the store but who never stopped paying into the pool, said the win will help her make a life-long dream come true.

“I’m a barn girl,” she said.

“I have a horse, and my biggest dream ever is to have a big, beautiful barn. Everybody’s laughing at me, but that’s my dream,” she said, chuckling.

Browne said all of the pool members will continue to work at the store.

He added that the group immediately chipped in $2 each for tickets toward this weekend’s 6/49 draw.
More

Tags:

Dog Adopts Abandonded Tigers

Apr 27

Posted by Ray in Uncategorized | No Comments

Tags: ,

Dairy scheme among success stories in Afghanistan, UN reports

Apr 27

Posted by Ray in Uncategorized | No Comments

A United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) dairy project, which has boosted the incomes of 1,600 families fivefold, is among the success stories coming out of Afghanistan, the agency said today.

The FAO dairy initiative in the capital, Kabul, and the four provinces of Logar, Wardak, Mazar and Kunduz, has helped increase family incomes from $130 to $650 a year.

Further, women do the bulk of the work for the scheme and keep 95 per cent of the money.

The initiative started in 2003 and focuses on integrated elements such as improved fodder, access to artificial insemination and improved veterinary services.

“Starting from scratch, we helped [farmers] increase their milk production to 10,000 litres a day,” said FAO Dairy Officer Tony Bennett.

Agency experts showed those taking part in the scheme how to organize themselves into cooperatives to collect milk and operate plants to pasteurize milk and product yogurt, fermented milk, butter and other products.

Farmers are not the only people reaping the benefits, FAO said, with many Afghans now having access to fresh health milk products.

Additionally, the success of the dairy schemes is making it much more profitable for farmers to grow fodder and seeds which can result in profits of $900 per hectare, perhaps even competing with illicit crop production.

But the agency noted that security concerns, particularly in Afghanistan’s south, are curbing the growth of the project, which is part of larger FAO efforts to revitalize the country’s war-battered agricultural economy.
UN News Service

Tags:

Student buys African orphanage

Apr 27

Posted by Ray in Uncategorized | No Comments

A student who visited a run-down African orphanage was so moved by the children’s plight that she raised £30,000 to buy it.

Amy Lambert, 24, set about gathering funds after witnessing the horrors at the decrepit Kichijo Orphanage in Tanzania.

She spent eight weeks volunteering there last summer, when she cared for 150 boys and girls – many of whom had lost one or both parents to AIDS and HIV.

Miss Lambert found children who were starving, dangerously dehydrated and sleeping in dirty beds.

The undergraduate at Bath Spa university raised more than £30,000 in just seven months.

But rather than passing the cash to authorities, she asked them if she offered to buy the orphanage instead.

Now she plans to complete her degree in Psychology and Health Studies this July before moving out to run the orphanage full time.
More

Tags:

Mobile religion class raises money for needy animals

Apr 27

Posted by Ray in Uncategorized | No Comments

Posted by Kristen Campbell, Religion Editor

MOBILE, Ala. — When Jesus said, “What you do for the least of our brothers, you do for me,” Marsha King doesn’t think he was referring to brothers alone. “I think he means brothers and sisters and pets and everything that he cares for,” said King, an assistant religious education teacher at Our Savior Catholic Church.

Seventh-grade students in a religious education class at the west Mobile parish recently raised nearly $500 for the SPCA and collected food, bedding and bowls for animals, King said. Some of the students also worked at a SPCA fundraiser, the Mobile SPCA’s “Spay-Ghetti Dinner.”

“It’s brought a great awareness not only to our students but to all the people in our parish about the importance of making sure that we’re taking care of those animals and that we’re helping to volunteer with or donate with the SPCA,” she said.

“The adults take notice when they see a young person feel so strongly about something,” she said. “Anything that we can do to try and help the Mobile SPCA and try to help these poor, homeless pets that are out there roaming around, getting hit by cars, not being fed — heaven forbid hurting a small child just trying to protect themselves because they feel like they get cornered. That’s a problem that we need to resolve. That’s a problem the entire community needs to address.”
More

Tags:

Humanity’s Earliest Written Works Go Online

Apr 25

Posted by Ray in Uncategorized | No Comments

YouTube Preview Image

Tags: ,