There Were Other Pets Before Me

I am not the only pet my owners have had...they've had gerbils, ferrets, a cat, box turtles, and other animals while their children were growing up.  One of those "other animals" was pet hamsters.  So this week, when my owner took part in a challenge on Squidoo about pets, she didn't pick me to talk about, but teddy bear hamsters.

She even said that she'd like to get another one...now that is something she's going to have to think about a bit, because it comes natural to us Yorkies to want to catch mice, and hamsters are in the rodent family.

If you want to see what she wrote, visit Cute Fuzzy Teddy Bear Hamsters.

Attended My First Twitter #pawpawty

Today when my owner was on her twitter account, we noticed that #pawpawty was in the list of trending topics (visit the twitter link to learn more about twitter if you're clueless) and so she decided to let me twitter.  We do that a lot lately.  She changes her picture to mine, and I tell her what to type for me.  Today I'll be taking over for the day since it's a monthly "PawPawty" day.

This is a special day that takes place once a month, here is the information that someone shared on www.examiner.com explaining the event:

So far, these fund raising virtual parties have raised more than $5,000 for organizations such as The Humane Society, Kitten Rescue of Los Angeles and Orphans of the Storm in Illinois. The next pawpawty is scheduled for May 2-3 to benefit the Margaret Green Animal Rescue.

For each pawparty, a theme is chosen and "party-goers" are encouraged to change their Twitter default pictures to something theme-related (see the slideshow below for some cute examples). Prizes are given away for various contests such as trivia and scavenger hunts – all the while people are encouraged to donate even just $1 to the featured charity.

Who can attend the #pawpawty?

The pawpawties are open to anyone with an interest in raising money and getting the word out to friends about the fund raising efforts. Many of the party-goers are animals, or people who tweet as their pets. There are thousands of Twitter Critters online, ranging from dogs and cats to hamsters, gerbils and even a moose!

It is not necessary to be an "animal" to attend these virtual fundraisers, however. Everyone is welcome – the more attendees, the more opportunity to raise as much money as possible for animal charities.

If you decide to join in, be sure to follow us and say hi, I share my owner's account and we trade off regularly - http://twitter.com/happynutrition.  And if you click on this #pawpawty link, you'll be taken just to the search results for pawpawty, and see only the "tweets" related to the event. See you there, I hope!

Next Week It's My Turn on Twitter

On friday my owner does something called "followfriday", that means you suggest people that you know and like to other "followers" on Twitter.  You do that by sending a message that has this word and symbol - #followfriday in your "tweet" and then you put the user names of people who follow you in the "tweet" with @ in front of it, for example, my owner is @happynutrition.

NEXT WEEK we are going to tweet about our dog and pet loving followers on "follow friday" so if you aren't following us yet, please do!  Click here to follow me and my owner, I share my owner's account.

Traveling With Your Dog

Traveling with a dog can be challenging, that is why some people like to put their dogs in kennels when they go away.  I used to like to travel with my owners when I was younger. They have a dog carrier that they can put me in to carry me around, a lot like a big pocket book, which is something that is pretty popular in "the City".

One of the big challenges is finding hotels that will let you have your pet with you when you travel.  We thought we'd take a look and see what we could find in New York, so went to HotelsCombined.com, then we went down and "clicked" on the "New York" link in the box. A long list of hotels in New York appeared, and under the name of each, there is a link that says "Hotel Features". When you click on it there is a list of features, including "pets allowed", if the words have a line through them, then pets are not allowed.

For example, we went to the very first hotel listed, Excelsior Hotel New York, and pets were not allowed, but we saw a few that did allow pets. You can sort the list by price, but be careful of the less expensive ones, make sure they have good reviews. I am not as good at traveling as my friend at Travels with Bob who talks about staying at The Comfort Inn in Little Rock, Arkansas, but it's good to know that there's a place like hotelscombined.com to search for hotels that will let you bring your pets.

Maybe I'll have some more travel tips for you soon, you can also "click" on the "Yorkie Travel" or "Travels" category and see what comes up!