How Bloggers Can Be the Change for Pets
One thing most pet bloggers have in common: A passion and true concern for animals. BlogPaws encourages everyone to "Be the Change for Pets."
Together with Skye Kilaen and Jamie Smith, Joy Ward will be sharing how bloggers can get involved and through their efforts, make a change, be a voice, and get paws on with helping pets in their area. You can join in by attending our 2012 BlogPaws conference and learning how you, too, can help. How so? Well…
"This is my first time to BlogPaws." Those are words yours truly uttered in Ohio in 2009, dog by my side. Now, as I approach my fourth BlogPaws conference, I so very enjoyed Joy Ward sharing her thoughts on coming to the yearly conference.
"I’ve been out a great deal to other events supporting my canine science fiction novel, Haint: A Tale of Extraterrestrial Intervention and Love Across Time and Space, and the book I co-authored with animal translator Missa Dixon, Interviews from the Ark but this is my first time to BlogPaws," she says.
Be the Change: Advocating for Animal Welfare is Joy's session with Jamie and Skye. She imparts, "I want people to see beyond the obvious sources of support, both political and financial, for animal issues. Too often those of us fighting for animals miss opportunities to help animals because we get stuck in our mental ruts. We can make some serious inroads into attitudes and ultimately increased concern for animals if we can identify other groups and/or individuals interested in causes or issues that border our own."
So in addition to sharing her expertise and knowledge, what is Joy most anticipating? Why meeting animal bloggers, lovers, and activists, like the majority of our other speakers said in our BlogPaws Speakers Series."One of the things I learned in my two plus years as the first Editor of Dogster’s For Love of Dog Blog is that animal people are THE BEST PEOPLE! I LOVE meeting and learning from other animal people! I can’t wait," she reports.
Does she have pets and what types? "I have a LARGE pack! I volunteer with Wonder Weims Rescue so I have two Weims I fostered (you know how that goes…) Daisy and Midas. Beatrice the Beagle found me outside a restaurant in Hannibal, Missouri and joined the family. Then Jersey, a Lab/Coonhound mix, needed a quick home and the rest of the pack liked her so they adopted her. All of the dogs range between five and eight years old except for Jersey who is about three.. I don’t know exactly because all of them came to me through some version of rescue. My fiancé Walt is involved in Corgi rescue so he has three Corgi boys –Ned (12), Bear (12) and Toby (6). He also has a wonderful 16 year old cat named Tinkerbell. We are looking forward to integrating our two packs. I expect there will be a book in that…
In the past I’ve lived with horses, goats, birds, turtles and other animals. I am fascinated by all kinds of animals and love learning from them."
Catch up with Joy at: "Sunbearblogsquad.org. I’m on Facebook and my web site is www.joyward.net. I’m terrible at keeping it current so my apologies that it’s a bit out of date."
Fun fact about Joy: "I cry when I write fiction like Haint and my short stories like the one on the Sunbear blog, “Last Walk.” I write from my emotions so when I’m writing my strongest stuff I cry. It doesn’t get any better over time. I was doing a reading at a conference of a short story that was published in a collection last year. The story, “Sometimes Nature Smiles,” is about a beagle, a dragon and a young girl who find each other. I had trouble finishing the reading because I started crying near the end of the story."
Catch up on our BlogPaws Speaker Series in the BlogPaws Community.
