I’m honored today to join CindyLu’s Muse, Talking Dog’s Blog and Pet Faves in co-hosting this month’s Blog the Change blog hop.

The quick and dirty. Blog the Change is a quarterly blog hop that takes place on the 15th of January, April, July and October. It’s a blog hop where bloggers share the causes that are near and dear to our hearts. It’s a time for sharing information and coming together to help animals.

If this is your first time hearing about BTC I’ll give you a little background. Yes they do have their own website, but sadly it was hacked a number of months ago and so far they haven’t been able to sort it out and make it right. **sigh** what is wrong with people? So that’s the reason we’re hosting it on our own blogs.

I’ve written about Just One Day before, but usually it’s a lot closer to the date than it is today, so I’m one up on it. Just One Day is a pledge made by shelters, animal control, municipalities and the likes.  Here’s what the Just One Day website says, “On June 11, we are asking animal shelters across the USA to take a pledge not to kill any savable animals. Instead of injecting pets with letal doses of sodium pentobarbital, we ask shelters to pick up cell phones and cameras, and to engage their communities in new and creative ways. Instead of going into trash bags, the animals will go out the front door in the loving arms of families. At the end of the day, the shelters will be emptier than when the day started.”

Isn’t that awesome? And in order to help make this day a success, Just One Day will help the organization that takes the pledge, with fliers explaining how they can showcase their adoptable pets either in traditional media or social media.

The goal of JOD is to show the nation that by working together, we can become a nation that doesn’t indiscriminately euthanize animals.

I follow JOD on Facebook. As shelters take the pledge to go No Kill for one day, the JOD page gets updated.

Then on June 11th as shelters and organizations report in, JOD posts the pictures of people lining up for the doors to open or row after row of empty cages. Watching it unfold in real time and realizing how many animals are saved in just one day, warms the cockles of my heart. (Whatever the hell that means.)

No kill is a cause that is near and dear to me as this little love bug was rescued from a High Kill Shelter.

Can you imagine how boring my life would be without her?

If you know of a shelter or organization whose animals could benefit from taking the JOD challenge, I’d ask you to please pass the information along.

Together we really can be the change.

If I worked on certain farms, I need blinders for my eyes to keep from seeing awful stuff.

When I think of the factory farming that goes on in this world and the way animals are raised and treated, it makes me sick. So, whenever possible I buy humanely raised, humanely handled meat, preferably from a local farm. If that’s not possible, I go for free range. I refuse to eat pork and won’t purchase farm raised fish.

I really like the idea of becoming a vegetarian, but to date I haven’t been able to pull it off, which is why I participate in Meatless Monday. Basically, I’m going meatless for almost 48 hours. Because I don’t eat meat for breakfast, and my lunch is usually what I had for dinner the night before I manage to go from tenish on Sunday night until dinnertime on Tuesday without eating any meat. Roughly that’s about 44 hours. 

When I first started Meatless Monday I was only skipping my nighttime meal with meat. I was still having meat at lunch and cold meat at snack, but I realized I wasn’t ‘meatless’. So I stopped eating meat altogether on Mondays.

In the summer it’s super easy because I make salads for lunch and dinner and in the cooler months, I love homemade veggie soups or I stir fry some veggies and put it over rice, pasta or Quinoa.

If every one of us did just one meal differently, imagine what we could do.

It’s not the end game, but it’s a start.

When I look at all the things I want changed in the animal world it can be so very overwhelming, but if we each do a small part, we can really be the change. Blog the Change is a quarterly event where bloggers from all over write about our favorite animal welfare causes.

Together WE CAN BE THE CHANGE.

Thank you to our hosts, Kim from Cindy Lu’s Muse and Sue from Talking Dogs for this awesome blog hop.