Last month, my wife and I adopted a new puppy, Bailey. She’s a rat terrier/chihuahua mix, but everybody mistakes her for a baby lab. Bailey and our 10 year old bichon, Jake, are quickly becoming best friends.

The organization we adopted her from, PAWS New England, sent me an email this morning to let me know about a crisis they and many other rescue organizations are facing.

Heartworm Crisis

Heartworm disease is a parasitic infection transmitted by mosquito. It’s easily prevented with a monthly pill, but 1 out of every 4 dogs rescued by PAWS has the disease. It’s treated with a toxic injection called Immiticide. The effects are a lot like chemotherapy.

Immiticide is the only approved treatment for heartworm disease, and the company that makes it faced a shortage over the last month or two. As a result, there’s a backlog of dogs who are waiting to be treated. While the shortage is over, rescue dogs are not adopted out until they have been treated.

Because of this shortage, euthanasia rates are skyrocketing. Rescue organizations cannot take in any new dogs until their currents ones are adopted into homes. Spring is normally “puppy season” and one of the peak adoption periods. Many puppies are being put down because there’s no where for them to go.

The shelter Bailey was rescued from (and that PAWS partners with) has a 90 percent kill-rate. She’s the only one from her litter to survive.

Keep reading…

Pops. Photo by me.

My senior year in high school, I had the privilege of interviewing Pops, a homeless from Rhode Island.

When I met him, Pops had been living on the streets for about three years. He was holding a sign that read, “HOMELESS: Please Help. Will Work. Thank you + GOD BLESS.”

This hole… you can’t dig yourself out of this hole. It’s almost impossible, and I accept that. If God can give me just one more day, something good may happen. You never know.

We chatted for an hour. Throughout our conversation, I was stuck by how upbeat and optimistic Pops was. As we parted ways, he turned around and shouted back at me, “Don’t give up!”

I haven’t seen him since.

Every time I see a homeless person, I think of Pops and wonder what I can do to help. I’ve considered giving people Subway gift cards, but it doesn’t feel like enough.

Kristen Jacoway has written a fantastic, short article on things you can do right now to help the homeless.

Kristen has some great ideas. Help her spread them!

Image by Zach Schwoebel

Have you ever been asked to plan the company party? For someone reason, that seems to be an “HR thing” at a lot of organizations.

Yesterday one of my coworkers sent me this (joke) email, and I thought I’d pass it on.

If you’ve ever had to plan the company holiday party, I’m sure you can relate!

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Image courtesy of Tim Brown

Garr Reynolds over at Presentation Zen has a great article today on the power of play at work. Garr’s article gives a rundown on a recent talk by Tim Brown, the CEO of Ideo about how acting like a child can actually help you produce better results at work.

Definitely worth checking out if you have a few minutes today.

Image courtesy of Lumaxart

I hate meetings. I’d say that around 90 to 95 percent of them don’t need to happen in the first place – a few phone calls or emails would achieve the same result in far less time. And when the occasional meetings that do need to happen occur, they’re usually too long. Inevitably, someone goes off on a tangent or talks for way too long, and an hour or three of your day that you’ll never get back is gone forever.

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Fast Company has a great article on how innovation led to the creation of the first phone to run a Google-based operating system. A quick teaser:

Inside Magic Labs there are people from a diversity of different backgrounds. We of course have software magicians, hardware magicians, electrical people, people with mechanical engineering backgrounds, graphic designers, usability experts. One of the magicians used to design jewelry in New York. The whole organization is designed to fail.

Fast Company: What do you mean by designed to fail?

The way to get a great idea is to have many ideas. By definition, most of your ideas will fail. You want to be able to generate ideas very fast, very cheaply and fail very often but at very low cost. Magic Labs is optimized for the efficiency of failure. Among the many ideas, there will be great ideas that bubble up and then we will invest R&D efforts to cultivate the great ideas.

Definitely a worthwhile read, with some interesting ideas on how innovation becomes part of a culture. Check it out, and let me know what you think – leave a comment below.