The Fido Awards announce their nominees

The 2009 Fido Awards has teamed with Dogs Trust, the largest dog charity in the United Kingdom, to present the nominees for the third annual Fido Awards. The Fido Awards are for canine excellence on the big screen. The winner will be announced on November 22 at BFI Southbank in London.

And the nominees are:

Historical Hound - for period drama excellence

The Young Victoria

Dean Spanley

W.

Taking Woodstock

Rom-Com Rover - for romantic-comedy companionship
The Proposal
Marley & Me
My Best Friend's Girlfriend
I Love You, Man

Comedy Canine- for outstanding comedic contribution
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Beverly Hills Chihuahua
Hotel for Dogs
Bolt

Blockbuster Bowser - for event-movie performance of the year
Gran Torino
Inglorious Basterds
Coraline
Up

Mutt Moment - for a single, stand-out canine moment
Wendy and Lucy
Fish Tank
Let the Right One In
Sleep Furiously

Dogs Trust has its own category as well, the ‘Dogs Trust Star of Tomorrow’ where people can nominate their pups to attend the awards ceremony and have their dog featured as the cover dog for their magazine, Wag!

For more information about the Fido Awards visit their website.

For more information about Dogs Trust visit their website.

HSUS Kleenex ads: Please make it stop (for a while, anyway)

Another holiday season, another so-sad-I’ll-start-crying-if-I’m-anywhere-near-PMS-time ad from the Humane Society of the United States. Their latest campaign features Wendie Malick at the plate, an actress I love dearly for her incredible comic timing and charm.

This rant has nothing to do with her and her good-heartedness at helping out the HSUS. This rant is about the sheer number of impressions of suffering animals the HSUS seems to want us to wade knee-deep through in an effort to part us from our money. And I say this as someone who actually likes the organization.

Enough already with the sad, starved, wounded creatures in need of my (financial) support. I have friends who won’t even open the envelopes from several animal agencies anymore. Not because they don’t believe in the mission, but because they can’t stand to see the abused creatures or read the heart wrenching stories. Rather than guilt my friends into donating, you’ve shamed them into tossing your appeals into the garbage, unseen and unanswered.

Can’t you try something a little different? How about rows of happy, healthy puppies and kittens along with a message of how for only $10, ten kittens were vaccinated against deadly diseases. Or a photo montage showing people who adopted pets from the shelter, along with the message that donations allowed these pets to be vaccinated, altered and housed until the met the loves of the life? Something that makes me want to join in the good vibes going around from helping pets find forever homes, rather than reach for a tissue box and the remote control?

Stella & Chewy's Fresh From the Farm

I've long been intrigued with the thought of a raw food diet for my pets. Several of the magazines I read and a few sites I regularly peruse have touted the benefits of the raw food regimen and I've met a couple of people who swear by the diet for their dogs and cats. Yet I have never been brave enough to try it myself, mostly because I've felt fairly confident that at some point I'd inadvertently poison my critters which, despite my occasional frustrated threats, I never want to actually do. With my luck they'd all be ill for several days and I'd end up in debtor's prison from the vet bills and I'd still be stuck cleaning up behind their sicky selves.

Apparently I'm not the only person with a phobia like this, because along came Stella and Chewy's, a company that makes all-natural, raw, frozen fresh and freeze-dried pet food products. If you're interested in moving your pets to a raw food diet but are afraid you won't get the proportions right, or are concerned about possible health hazards if you do it yourself, this is the company for you.

I was given a sample of their freeze-dried Chicken Dinner. Let me say right up-front that I'm a HUGE fan of freeze-dried foods for pets. The day whomever came up with the brilliant idea of freeze-drying salmon chunks as pet treats should be honored as a national holiday for pet lovers, because we finally had a terrific cat treat that wasn't full of fillers. I love freeze-dried products so much that I'd buy a machine if I could, just so I could expose other people to how cool freeze-dried products are. Whew --- glad I got that out of my system.

All of this matters for naught if I can't get Darby, one of the world's pickiest dogs, to eat it.I needn't have worried. I couldn't even get the package all the way open before he was at my side, working his "best-dog-ever" routine like a pool shark hustles the new guy in a bar. He was serious about getting a taste for himself.

The dinners are freeze-dried into patties, making proper portion size easy to figure out. It's also wonderfully easy to break off small chunks to use as training treats or as toppers for dry food meals. I pulled off a few small pieces and put Darby through his admittedly limited paces, which he was more than happy to perform in exchange for some of that chicken goodness. These are near-perfect training treats, but if you don't enjoy doing the breaking yourself, there are several items available in a smaller chunk size as well.

Stella & Chewy's uses grain-free, free range, human grade ingredients with organic fruits and vegetables in all of their products. The meat and poultry is free of hormones and antibiotics, and there are no dyes, preservatives, sugar or salt added to their products. This truly is "the good stuff".

The freeze-dried varieties of Stella & Chewy's dog food (and a bit of their cat food) can be found at one of my favorite online retailers, SitStay.com.