Maxxamillion

Welcome to Maxxamillion's ASPCA lens. It all started when I was 7 weeks old on December 1995 that's when I met my human parents for the first time. I was considered a pet store reject and would have been put down just because I was not perfect to some humans. I don't get it! because I love all humans. My parents saved me and took me to my new home in Chicago IL. I quickly settled into my new home and was instantly spoiled rotten with a lot of love, affection, and toys, which continues to this day. I consider myself one of the lucky ones. I soon started going for walks with my pops around our neighborhood and to our local park.

We have gone to Portage Park every day for twelve years now, rain, snow or shine. I love that park, and I have made a lot of friends over the years, some of which are in doggie Heaven now. I have also made a lot of friends on our many vacation travels, which have included South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Texas, and Oklahoma, just to mention a few. I love the cold states the best because of my God given thick fur coat.

While at home I would watch Leo LaPorte and Patrick Norton on cable with my pops. These guys don't know it but dogs could understand them -- hmmmmm. I learned a lot from that show, and it motivated me to paw my first web page.

I started to paw together Maxxamillion's Dog House (tm) in 1997 in order to bring my internet friends information about dog organizations and adoption resources that would be of great benefit to my fellow canines and their humans. It can at least help my brothers and sisters in some way to get a chance for life too. Every time a dog is put down earth loses an angel. I also wanted to share information about my vacation stories and maybe just motivate a few humans to take their dogs with them on vacation. We don't like being left behind, we love to be close to our humans! In the beginning my website was just one page with a few links to some local dog shelters and a few photos.

A no-kill shelter is an animal shelter where animals are only euthanized if they are too sick to be treated or too aggressive to be suitable for adoption. No-kill shelters reject euthanasia as a means of population control.

Approximately three to four million pets are killed yearly in shelters across the United States.HSUS Pet Overpopulation Estimates The Humane Society of the United States The no-kill movement is trying to end this killing by increasing the demand for shelter dogs and cats and reducing the supply. The no-kill movement hopes to reduce the number of animals born and thus the number of animals which end up in shelters through increased spay/neuter, including low-cost/free help for low-income people. Coupled with increasing the number of adoptions through various techniques the no-kill movement hopes to ultimately end the killing of homeless pets.

The no-kill concept received a legal boost in 1998 when the state of California passed three pieces of legislation directed to reduce animal suffering at shelters in California: the Vincent Law, the Kopp Law and the Hayden Law.No-Kill Legislation Maddie's Fund The Hayden Law was enacted to help reduce the killing of animals in shelters and as a result many California communities have made significant progress in increasing their live-release rates and no-kill goals

The No-Kill Movement received a financial boost with the establishment of the $250 million Maddies Fund. A number of communities in the United States have significantly increased their live-release rate and gotten closer to their no-kill goals with the help of Maddies. Maddie's Fund

The No-Kill Movement has also been promoted with the No-Kill Declaration.No-Kill Declaration, No-Kill Declaration It has been signed by over 10,000 groups and individuals.

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An animal shelter is a facility that houses homeless, lost or abandoned animals; primarily a large variety of dogs and cats. The animal is kept at the shelter until it is either reclaimed by an owner, adopted to a new owner or placed with another organization. In the past, they were more commonly referred to as "dog pounds", a term which had its origins in the pounds of agricultural communities, where stray cattle would be penned up until claimed by their owners. Some animal shelters euthanize animals that are not adopted within a set period of time, others have a policy of only putting down animals that are in distress due to age or illness.

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According to the American Humane Association, an estimated 9.6 million animals are euthanized in the United States every year. Out of 1,000 shelters responding to a survey, 2.7 million of 4.3 million animals or 64% were euthanized. 56% of dogs and 71% of cats that enter shelters were euthanized. 15% of dogs and 2% of cats were reunited with their owners; 25% of dogs and 24% of cats were adopted. The majority of these are euthanized at animal shelters, typically after a standard period of time (ranging from several days to several weeks for unclaimed stray animals).

"No kill" shelters exist, some run by private animal welfare organizations, while others are subsidized wholly or in part by local government agencies or private donations. These shelters make it official policy never to euthanize animals for non-medical reasons.

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When we brought Maxxamillion home we were in the process of remodeling our home. One of the the first rooms we did was the kitchen. While taking the sink apart, we left the old sink lying by one side of the kitchen out of the way. Well Maxxamillion decided this was a good spot for snoozing. We would laugh because he would fall asleep for hours in the sink. Yes he had a fluffy comfortable pillow and bed, but he loved that sink instead. We ended up leaving the sink there for him for a while. What was so funny was that he was growing rapidly and could not fit in the sink the way he did a few weeks earlier so his head would hang out.

From the beginning Maxxamillion would check out any bag that came into the house or car. He would put his head in the bags one by one searching for toys. We would get such a laugh out of it every time we went shopping, he had to inspect each and every bag with such a big smile on his face as if to say, where's my toy mom? We would always take him with us shopping whenever possible, and he was always the first one out the door and into the car the minute he heard the jingle of keys. So we started to buy him a small toy just so he could have something to find in the shopping bags too. The buying of one toy started to add up over the years. It wasn't until about three years into buying him toys that it hit us, hey we have to get this boy a bigger toy box! The toys began to add up and we could not stop buying him toys. These toys ranged from a simple tennis ball to larger squeaky toys, his favorite. We found ourselves sometimes going to the stores and asking ourselves, does he have this one? In retrospect this went on for twelve and a half years. He would never destroy his toys like my other dogs. Maxxamillion truly loved to play with all of his toys.

Have you taken the Pledge to Fight Animal Cruelty from the ASPCA "Take The Pledge" button and get startted today!

A round the 4th of July week the amount of fire works going off around our home has just gotten to be too much for Maxxamillion over the years. His bearing of the sound of fireworks is getting worse the older he gets. He goes crazy and physically gets as close as possible to us and although he has never liked getting on the furniture -- on this day he does. We are aware that some folks have their dogs sedated to calm them down around this time of the year. Sedating Maxxamillion was not an option for us because of his illness, and the less chemicals in his body the better for his overall health. What we found that would help him, was to put a set of my old headphones on him (remember the big ones before Walkmans). He would sit with us on the sofa for hours with the headphones on and the TV volume turned up loud to try and muff out the firework explosions going on outside. The following year we plugged the headphones to an iPod with the volume set low so as not to hurt his super hearing. He left them on and actually lied down and fell asleep. The music that put him to sleep was Julio Iglesias greatest hits.

No Humans were hurt in the making of this lens. Woof! Woof!