I went to Los Angeles to visit my daughter and she treated me to a unique and fun experience. It involved puppies and you can’t get much better than that as far as I’m concerned! We spend the afternoon taking three pit bull puppies to a shoot for a live podcast at a local digital media company.
My daughter, Sarah, volunteers for a local dog rescue group called Angel City Pit Bulls (Angelcitypits.org). Rescue groups pull dogs from shelters and place them in foster homes until they are adopted. This increases their chances of adoption because they are socialized and trained by the fosters and also have a chance to recover from the PTSD they suffer from being abused, abandoned, or caged in a shelter.
Angel City is 100% volunteers and is very well-organized. They are also very hands on with their foster families and dogs. They cover all medical costs, pay for all food, and provide logistical help for the fosters. For example, they will get other volunteers to take foster dogs to vet appointments, obedience classes or just on walks when fosters can’t. Angel City also helps get the dogs adopted and follows up with adoptive families and their new pits.
Another part of Angel City’s mission is to counter the misinformation that has recently given pit bulls a bad reputation. Pits are actually smart, loyal, loving and eager to please. In fact, they are rated on a breed scale for aggressiveness in the middle range, between golden retrievers and yellow labs.
This shoot came about because one of Angel City’s fosters works at a digital media company that was looking for puppies for a live podcast. The foster knew that Angel City was working with a mother and her litter of eight puppies. It was a match made in heaven. Angel City uses themes to name its puppy litters and this was the Harry Potter Litter. So we had to go pick up Harry, Hermione and Dumbledore for their film debuts. The hard part was tearing ourselves away from the other adorable puppies!
We put the puppies into a crate and took them to the Awestruck TV office for the shoot. When we arrived, the office practically shut down as everyone crowded around to play with the puppies. The show is geared to Millennial Moms so the host and her actress guest were going to talk about taking care of young children and dogs. The guest even brought along her 2 ½ year old daughter to hang out with the puppies. The two women also talked about adopting puppies and specifically about Angel City. This was great PR for the group.
When it was time for the live show, the puppies were ready for their close-ups. They played the classic “cute puppy” roles perfectly. Hermione found a giant stuffed raccoon and started dragging it around the room. Harry grabbed the raccoon too and they started an adorable tug of war. Meanwhile Dumbledore kept stepping in the water bowls and splashing water all around.
You can watch the podcast on Facebook
At the end of the day we were tired, but not as exhausted as the puppies!.
