Accountant follows her passion for animals

Like many people who love animals, Sue James' childhood dream was to become a veterinarian.

"I looked into going to vet school but my parents, they wanted me to pursue a more traditional career," said James, a Danville resident who grew up in a house in New York state where the family pets included dogs, rabbits -- even a monkey.

After a long stint in the corporate world at accounting giant Ernst & Young, working with some of Silicon Valley's leading high-tech companies, James found an outlet for her lifelong love of animals at Tri-Valley Animal Rescue, an all-volunteer group founded in 1992 whose mission is to prevent the unnecessary euthanasia of shelter animals.

The group finds foster homes for adoptable dogs and cats at the East County Animal Shelter in Dublin and other area shelters until permanent homes can be found at adoption events. Last year, the group found homes for 980 cats and dogs through its foster programs.

Besides her love for animals, James found she had a penchant for numbers. After teaching math and science in New York, she decided to make a career change and moved to California in 1969.

"Accounting is a natural adjunct to math, so I went back to school and got my degree in accounting, and then I went into public accounting," she said.
She started volunteering in 2005 as she was winding down a long and successful career as a partner at Ernst & Young.

Working at the firm, she learned the importance of teamwork to meet the needs of clients. That focus also carries over to her volunteer work. "It's about the cats and dogs," she said. "But also, for me, it's how can we work effectively as a team."

Tony Owens, animal control supervisor at the East County shelter, which is run by the Alameda County Sheriff's Office, praised James. "She's here all the time, almost every day, doing anything from helping to facilitate adoptions to coordinating fostering. She's definitely an instrumental volunteer and a great coordinator between us and Tri-Valley Animal Rescue."

Aside from her volunteer work, she also serves on the boards of Yahoo (YHOO), Applied Materials and Coherent.

"For a corporate board, our goal obviously is to represent the shareholders and to get the returns for the shareholders. With a nonprofit board, it's to further the mission, which in our case is rescuing adoptable animals," she said. "Most of the people on the TVAR board are actively involved in managing TVAR operations. On a corporate board, that's not the case, you are not managing, you're there for oversight."

While some nonprofit boards are more advisory in nature, TVAR is a hands-on board, she said.

James' first assignment as a volunteer with the rescue group was to walk dogs at the East County shelter.

While a few volunteers such as herself were providing a needed service to get the restless shelter dogs out for walks, James decided she wanted to do more. So, she started the shelter dog program. The idea was to encourage more adoptions of shelter dogs by providing incentives such as free dog training lessons and pet supplies with each paid adoption fee.

"The dog walkers were dedicated people, but it was not an organized endeavor," she said.

After the program was launched, the rescue group began hosting occasional adoption fairs for the dogs at the shelter and brought in dog trainers to work with volunteers.

"We thought if we hook a trainer up with the new adopters, it would help the dogs and help the adopters. We found that adoption returns went way down," James said. "So the dogs learned, and the volunteers learned to be better handlers. I used to tell volunteers that while correcting them or trying to get them to behave sounds like tough love, euthanasia is a lot tougher."

Of course, not all of the animals can be saved, she said.

"One of the things about volunteering that is critical is that you need to be realistic. There are some you will save, and without that effort none would be saved," said James, who became president of the group's board of directors this year. "Without the volunteers, we can't save any animals. It's just that simple."

It's always hard to find enough people who will provide foster homes.

"It is a big commitment," said James, who has taken in several foster dogs. "That dog or cat is in your home 24 hours a day, and we ask the fosterer to show the dog or cat at adoption events. We supply everything a fosterer needs, including telephone help, but it is still opening your house to a new animal. But it's how we save lives."

Cindy Churchill is a fellow volunteer and rescue board member who runs the shelter dog program that James helped launch.

"Sue does not ask any volunteer to do anything she wouldn't do. She takes the time to let them know how much their work helps the animals," Churchill said.
While James is fond of cats, she is allergic to them. When she met the man she later married, he happened to have a cat. So James ended up getting allergy shots.

The couple now have a dog named Ozzie, an 18-month-old Spaniel-pit bull mix adopted from the East County Animal Shelter last year.

"He's very, very cute but he's a handful," she said.

By Eve Mitchell
Contra Costa Times

How to tell which dog got in the trash

Dogged Determination

"Dogs are man's best friend," Porter said to the Herald Sun. "We felt we owed it to her. The easiest thing to say was the dog would die or we could say let's give her a good hard go. And we did. We rallied together and we said 'We can do this."Where there's hope, there is life." Jessie, their a 4-year-old Jack Russell terrier was trapped for seven days under nearly 50 tons of rock and was successfully freed. Steve Porter, Jessie's owner, never gave up and spent more than $2,000 just to rescue Jessie.

Jessie chased a feral cat and became trapped beneath two boulders. Jessie and Porter were rabbit hunting when the accident happen. Porter, his son and two neighbors tried to free Jessie from getting stuck in the hole. When their efforts was unsuccessful they asked State Emergency Service to lend a hand.

After a week's efforts of trying to help Jessie they decided to hire a rock-breaking truck from Melbourne which finally freed Jessie from captivity. She immediately run into Porters arms and gave him "a big lick." According to the vet Jessie is in good health despite being stuck in the hole for days.

video from Herald Sun

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Dog finds owner after storm

I really find this news i stumbled from yahoo news. Yes, we sometimes read news like this but what makes this story interesting is the miracle how the dog survived from the storm and crawled back to his home days after even though two of its legs were broken.

A scruffy Alabama terrier mix named Mason was whisked away by fierce twisters last month, prompting his owners, who lost their home in the storm, to fear the worst. But the redoubtable mutt apparently crawled back to his home days later with two broken legs in a remarkable tale of survival.

Local news outlet WBRC reports that Mason was blown away by the storm from the garage in Birmingham where he was hiding on April 27. His owners looked for him everywhere but couldn't find him. Two and a half weeks later, though, they found Mason waiting for them on their front porch when they returned to the house to look through the debris.

Workers at the Birmingham Jefferson County Animal Control shelter are now caring for Mason, since his owners say they can't take care of him while they piece their lives back together after the storm. "This is probably the most dramatic we've seen as far as an injury in an animal that's survived this long. It's kind of tapering off, the amount of animals we're seeing because of the storm. For an animal just to show up on someone's porch after this time was pretty remarkable, especially with the condition he's in," shelter worker Phil Doster told the news station.

Mason is "doing fantasic" after his May 20 surgery where metal plates were attached to his bones so they could heal, Doster told The Lookout in an email. "We are excited that he will be going back to his family and to the home where he finally returned after 3 weeks," he wrote. Mason is expected to be able to walk completely normally after he recovers in about six weeks, though his front legs will be a bit shorter than his back legs. Mason's family has requested to not be named in the media, Doster added, but they are "very excited" for Mason to come home when their house is again habitable in about five weeks.

Pets are often forgotten victims of natural disasters such as the fierce storms and tornadoes that have battered the Midwest the past few months. The Human Society of the United States has sent rescue teams to find pets in Joplin, Missouri, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and other hard-hit areas.

source: yahoo news