Let’s Work Together

One of the best parts about reading a blog is finding other blogs. Looking at the blogroll of a site you enjoy visiting often leads you to corners of the internet you would never have found otherwise. Soon you start commenting, then you’re going back and forth on Twitter, and before you know it it’s 11 at night and the dog’s still waiting to be fed. Not that I know from personal experience or anything. Point is, it’s a community.

Certain specialized blog niches- parenting bloggers, for example, and food bloggers- have vast networks that promote, support, and encourage their colleagues in a sort of collective Blog Borg. Pet bloggers, as far as I can tell, have not reached that level of organization yet. Why we persist in being the sad scruffy little cast-aside group in the vast world of bloggers is beyond me.

It’s not that pet bloggers are insular or antisocial- quite the opposite, as far as I’m concerned. The care and concern I have seen and experienced, the willingness to step in and help one another with no link aside from a common love of animals, is nothing short of astounding. We are amazing. We just need a little help figuring out how to share that news with everyone else. 😉

I’m dipping my toe in and doing what I can to help promote the wonderful world of animal blogs through the Brody Awards. The banner at the left will take you to the nomination page.Voting will begin by the end of the month, but the whole point of the exercise is to get us exposed to new bloggers, which you can do right now.

My hope and wish is that the pet blogging world will continue to grow and grow together. We have SO much to accomplish. 🙂

For example, if we we had a strong community to network with, it would be a lot easier to organize a cross-blog effort to raise funds for victims of the Haiti tragedy.

I have had one of the worst weeks of my professional career. It’s not something I feel comfortable talking about, unfortunately- I’ll probably laugh about it someday, but right now I’m angry and hurt.

But when I turned on the news, all that frustration evaporated as I was confronted with true suffering. None of this stuff we muck around with in our day to day lives seems as important when you realize how fortunate you are to be safe and warm, tooling around on the internet feeling sorry for yourself. And if you allow yourself to lose sight of that perspective, of your obligation to help your fellow creatures while you drown in your own self-importance, then you’ve missed the point entirely.

We’ve made our donation to the Red Cross, but I’d like to do something else to fundraise. (NO, not another blogathon!) Since we don’t have a central place to go and spread the word, it’s going to have to be a solo operation yet again. I don’t know what form that will take, if I should do a special item on Zazzle or auction something on ebay or what.

If any pet bloggers out there want to do this with me, please let me know. Whether you fundraise for Red Cross or one of the animal groups who will be called in once the human tragedy is a little more under control, any bit helps.

Ideas and suggestions are welcomed- begged for, really.

ETA: How about something like this? A silent auction where the donors each send the items themselves directly. I am happy to cover Paypal fees as well.