Happy New Year! Hope you all had a great holiday season and now it’s time to get back to finding people who are up to making a difference in our world and the world of our pets. This week I’m lucky to have Emilie Buchwald on the program. Emilie is the Founder and publisher of Gryphon Press. A wonderful company that is dedicated to publishing picture books for children that explore the human-animal bond. These great books not only capture children’s imagination but impart lessons for life as well as how we should treat our animal companions. What a great conversation.

APHE, is a professional organization for people interested and supportive of humane and environmental education.

The Association of Professional Humane Educators provides professional development opportunities and networking for educators who promote humane attitudes toward people, animals and the environment. In other words, here’s a group that connects, and collaborates with schools and community organizations that teach kids about helping and understanding animals and how to make animal lives better.

We found out a great deal more about APHE when Dana Buchwald, our marketing director, attended the APHE conference in Fort Myers in late February, hosted by Florida Gulf Coast University. She found it to be a warm and welcoming group of people passionate about animal well-being.

She had a chance to listen to and meet leaders in the field. With talks, round-table discussions, a sharing corral, and dinners and get-togethers to mingle, she spoke enthusiastically about the fact that in a few days she—not a professional humane educator—expanded her understanding of the state of animal education from talks such as Incorporating Dogs with At-Risk Youth, Using For-Profit Concepts to Sell Humane Values, Expanding the Circle of Compassion, to name a few of the sessions. Next year’s conference takes place next March in Walnut Creek, California – a beautiful place to be in early March.

We were so very glad to learn about APHE at firsthand. If you want to find out more about how to help animals in your community, consider joining APHE. You’ll find a host of resources, including lessons, brochures, a directory of members around the globe, a summer camp resource manual, a community service learning manual, educational webinars such as Breaking the Cycle of Abuse, and much else.

APHE website is: www.aphe.org

This spring, my daughter Dana, Gryphon’s Marketing Director, and I flew to Nashville to take part in HSUS’s Animal Care Expo. Because of a catastrophic flood that destroyed the Gaylord Opryland Convention Center, the site was moved to the local convention center downtown with no hitches. There were inspiring sessions about “how to” help homeless animals, work on cruelty issues, get rid of puppy mills, educate people about animal welfare. In our booth, we were able to talk to visitors to the meeting as well as other participants and compare notes. There’s a lot to be said for the chance to talk face to face.We were mightily impressed by the dedicated anti-cruelty investigators who inspect awful places every day and enforce change for the better. One such investigator takes along a Boxer dog he rescued when he goes to schools. This dog’s teeth were wrecked by crunching stones and gravel to fill his empty belly. He tells the kids that if a dog in such a sad state can be rehabilitated to health and strength, any dog can.  We also appreciated talking to the humane educators who came to the conference looking for books like ours for their education programs. We left the convention heartened by the people we met and what we learned, recognizing how much there is to do for animals.