Hello,

I am a new member to Pet Talk, but have been helping animals as best I can for some time - Recently, I put my passion for writing into action by forming a group called Pens4Paws -

We are a small - all volunteer - advocacy group which employs responsible letter writing to address any issues of Animal Cruelty. We only focus on animal cruelty, and base our decisions upon the definition of "cruelty" as supplied by the Humane Society of The United States -

We have taken several actions in the short 4 months we've been around, and have had some shockingly good results

The way the process works is like this, we have an Issue Admin who collects varying incidents of animal cruelty and posts them to our discussion forum. A schedule of "alerts" is created based upon the IA's recommendations and a weekly template letter is written and posted to the forum for all to use - This includes the necessary contact information -

Once a week an "Alert" is issued. Each alert has a brief summary of the incident, links to at least two sources of verifiable news sources, contact information, and a template letter/outline for all to use as a guide. The goal is to have members speak or write in their own "voice" but we are sensitive to the fact that some people are simply not comfortable doing so.

We sell nothing, there are no membership fees or dues - I have paid for the domain name of our website out of my own pocket and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future - We do, however, have a graphic artist who has graciously donated her talent and her time to develop T-shirts, Sweatshirts, and other clothing with the P4P logo on it to spread the word.

I have not posted many replies or threads on Pet Talk as I am a very new member, but I have read a good number of posts and have found this board to be, by far, the friendliest and most sincere forum for pets yet - It would be an honor and an asset to have you join our cause.

We have recently experienced several organizational changes and have a new discussion forum located at:
http://s3.invisionfree.com/Pens4Paws/index.php?act=idx

I do not want Pet Talk members to think I am trying to direct your attention away from this board, but if you think you might be interested in lending your voice and your words to animal welfare, please check us out.

While we have made these organizational changes we have halted issuing alerts for the last 3 weeks. Our current membership is anxious to back to doing what we do, but I hope to increase our membership and effectively "start new" -

Sincerely,

Bill