Interesting Links

Interesting Links

Here are some links that we think you'll enjoy. Some pertain to adopting, some to Anguilla, some to the world, and some we just think are interesting.

Anguilla Guide Forum

The Guide's main page is at anguillaforum.com. This is a forum where people with participation of Anguillians and people from all over the world (often those who have visited Anguilla in the past).

Besides having many interesting discussion threads about all things Anguilla (travel, hotels, entertainment, food, and more), the Guide has its very own AARF forum section.

To get to the AARF section visit the forum, scroll down to “Local Stuff” and look for the section called “Anguilla Animal Rescue Foundation”. You'll find many different discussions related to AARF activities.

Bookmark the site and make sure to visit often.

Many, many thanks go to JoAnne for passing along time–critical postings about adoptions and other messages, which directly helps animals needs.

Anguilla Hotel and Tourism Association

The AHTA site, for those unfamiliar, can be found at www.anguillahta.com. This is a beautiful site. It is loaded with excellent information about upcoming events, news articles, information for visitors, and more (including valuable information for those in the tourism business). Definitely: check it out regularly. We think it's a site you will want to bookmark as a favorite.

The AHTA has been helping AARF spread the word by publishing AARF article announcements, for which we are grateful. This takes time and effort to do; they stepped up and decided to help out Anguilla's animals on their own.

Anguilla Life

Anguilla Life is a convenient portal to interesting Anguilla web sites. It is located at anguillalife.com

Anguilla Lifestyle Guide

Anguilla Lifestyle is another web site that contains loads of interesting facets of Anguilla: things like events, recipes, news, education, heritage, charities, real estate, photos, sailing and other sports, and lots, lots more. It's all presented in a very clean, nice looking and easy to read blog format.

The site is located at anguillalifestyle.com. Look for the Anguilla Animals section under Categories on the left.

Mary's Boon Hotel in Sint Maarten

Mary's Boon is a pet–friendly resort on Sint Maarten very close to the Princess Juliana Airport. Raul the owner and the staff staff are open and friendly and the resort has a white sandy beach along with a restaurant and all the amenities.

We covered the resort in a previous newsletter as part of two great Happy Tail stories.

WSPA

The World Society for the Protection of Animals is a global organization that promotes animal welfare. Headquartered in London, WSPA has 15 regional offices, with Member Societies belonging to those offices. It is, in fact, active in 150 countries with 900 Member Societies. AARF is a Member Society, under the umbrella of the regional office responsible for Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean .

Other Member Societies close to Anguilla include St. Martin, Sint Maarten, Saba, St. Kitts and Jamaica.

WSPA has developed a set of core principles, called the ‘Five Freedoms’. The freedoms can be summarized by this concept: animals need to be able to engage in natural behavior.

The five freedoms focus specifically on various forms of traditional animal suffering. Along with the freedoms, solutions are given to show how to achieve the freedoms and avoid the suffering.

Animals should have:

1. Freedom from Hunger and Thirst. Animals should have ready access to fresh water and a diet to maintain full health and vigor.
2. Freedom from Discomfort. They should be provided with an appropriate environment including shelter and a comfortable resting area.
3. Freedom from Pain, Injury or Disease. This can be accomplished by prevention or rapid diagnosis and treatment of ailments
4. Freedom from Fear and Distress. Animals should experience conditions and treatment which avoid mental suffering.
5. Freedom to Express Normal Behavior. Providing sufficient space, proper facilities and company of the animal's own kind help animals realize this freedom.

WSPA has a focus on farm animals as well as domestic pets. That is, the five freedoms are meant to be included in animal husbandry practices as well as to domestic pets. The theory is that people depend on farm animals for their livelihoods; the goal is to have people understand that the ethical treatment of even farm animals benefits people as well as the animals.

(Californians see TV ads with the slogan: “Great cheese comes from happy cows. Happy cows come from California”. While meant to be a humorous ad campaign for the California Milk Advisory Board, unwittingly, the folks at the CMAB may have stumbled onto the right concept.)

WSPA also has a large focus on Disaster Management and sends responders (veterinarians and volunteers) to disaster areas to help with the animals. This is vitally important because the afflicted country’s focus is generally on people and infrastructure first. Generally, relief organizations respond to disasters with help for humans first. Animals come later.

WSPA believes: if the animals get help, that helps the people. In turn, that will enable them to treat the animals better.

They have responded to areas hit by volcanoes (lava and dust cover the grass), floods, hurricanes and earthquakes. For example, they were very active in the Haiti and Chili earthquakes of early 2010. (To see more about the Haiti relief efforts for example, go to WSPA's web site and enter Haiti as a keyword).

Along with Disaster Management, disaster preparedness is also important to WSPA, which conducts seminars to promote thinking and planning ahead. Having a plan and hopefully some stockpiled food, water and medicine is recommended.

Finally, WSPA assists with concepts related to animal survey and communications techniques and assists Member Societies with organizational tips relating to mission statements, goals, and working with local governments.

Anguilla Weather Sites

Steve D., on the West End has set up a great site at anguilla–weather.com; it has real time updates from an automated weather station and other great links to weather sites of interest to Anguilla.

The best weather site we've found for hurricane information is run by Jeff Masters at Weather Underground (Wunderground). You can also subscribe to his RSS feed.

Note that Wunderground is a great site; it has links, tracking information, discussions, official advisories and more.

Storm Pulse has excellent graphics and maps. We bookmark directly to their Atlantic storms page, but you can customize your bookmark to your own area of interest by going to to the StormPulse main page. Drag the map around (or use the arrows at the top, bottom, left and right edges of the map) and zoom in and out (double clicking anywhere on the map should zoom in) to better see Anguilla or a storm.

Success Stories and Interesting Pets We've Met

We cover many of our success stories in our Newsletters. Every once in a while, we'll set up a temporary page to highlight a pet who has touched us. Sometimes we put up a page because we want someone to adopt a particular special pet. After the adoption has occurred, we may take the link off our main page. We'll preserve interesting pages here.

• Allie. A great dog that was shy while in the shelter, but grew to be more friendly as the shelter volunteers paid attention, and even took her home for fostering for a couple of weeks. She wound up going to the Boston area. As the owner sends updates, we'll announce them!

 

Interesting Links