Today we are spotlighting a very special 9 year old girl by the name of Amber Minter.

On February 7, 2009, Amber's wish for her birthday wasn't for new clothes or toys like many children her age. Instead, Amber asked her family and friends to bring a gift to her party that she could donate to the dogs at Hearts for Hounds.

Amber beautifully decorated a box for the monetary gifts and delivered that along with other gifts of doggy beds, toys and treats to the adoption site at the marina. Everyone who witnessed this gesture was genuinely moved by Amber's love of these dogs.

Hearts for Hounds used the birthday money that was donated by Amber to rescue a 2 year old pregnant terrier mix from the shelter. The dog was named Amber in honor of the thoughtful girl that saved her.

Amber, the terrier mix, gave birth to 5 healthy male puppies on February 14, 2009. An act of kindness from 9 year old Amber made it possible to save not only the life of the terrier mix mom but the lives of her 5 puppies as well. It was a generous gift that kept on giving.

Update 02/02/2009:

Planting Day at the Adoption Center

We are moving forward on the final touches for the new adoption center. Once it is complete we will notify everyone of the date of our grand opening. We appreciate the overwhelming support and want to express our thanks to all of you who have had a part in making this dream a reality.

A special thanks to each and every one from the garden club who donated to the Dog Rescue Planting Day at the adoption center this past Saturday and to Pam King who organized it! The volunteers generously donated their time fixing up the garden area and the doggie play yard. They came with their tools and supplies which included mulch, plants, paving stones and a wooden bench, all of which were donated by the members of the garden club.

We had a nice mix of volunteers from kids on up who came out and tirelessly moved mulch and planted. When the dogs were let out into their new and improved play yard ..Talk about fun! Those pups were running and rolling in it. They had sticks in their mouths like they had found a treasure. That was the reward of the day for everyone, to see how much good was done by giving them a clean and fun environment to run in.

Everything you donated or did for the dogs was much needed. You can be proud that your efforts really made a difference!




Here are a few photos taken last Saturday of the garden club, the volunteers, and the dogs hard at work.

Update 10/01/2008:

Our charity fashion show was a big success! 116 guests showed up to support Hearts for Hounds dog rescue and Meals on Wheels of Long Beach. The silent auction ran smoothly. Everyone bid on the donated items ranging from Lakers Tickets to spa certificates.

We want to thank Rachel Perlmutter from The Greater LA Woman for putting together the luncheon and fashion show. We're sure she's taking a 7 day cat nap right now. We also want to thank Susan & John Sabo for donating their Sunday shooting the fashion show, and our wonderful supporters like artist: Jerry Howell, beautician: Paulina Alvarado, trainer: Jamye Rogers for donating gift certificates for the silent auction. Lucia & Co. Catering donated yummy cookies for the event. Guests raved about them at the show. And of course, our friends at It's a Grind who donated 120 bags of coffee for guests to take home. There are many many of you who have helped us pull this thing together. We thank you all!

Special thanks to Pam, our devoted volunteer. She stayed up every night for a whole week baking shortbread so we can make gift packs for the guests. Her love for the dogs is unbeatable. She also managed to get her art gallery to donate some artwork that generated close to a thousand dollars at the silent auction. That will definitely pay for a few spay and neuter surgeries and bail out more dogs at the shelter. Lots of love to Pam!

Jille, another long term volunteer at HFH, jumped in the last minute to help us finish stuffing gift bags. Without her, we're not sure we would have finished on time. On top of it all, she also got us lunch so we didn't end up munchin' on kibble.

Wonderful news about the new commercial facility: We have found a place we can lease in the city of Long Beach. We will be having a giant dog potty (get it? potty=party) soon. We will need all the support possible right now. There will be much needed renovations to be made. We have a volunteer that can get us donated construction help but we'll need funding for the material. Please check back for more info.

As always...we thank everyone for the loving thoughts for the animals in the world. Without your love, rescues like us cannot go on. Sincere gratitude from the bottom of our hearts.

Update 08/26/2008:

We kept the design pretty much the same but was able to complete Phase I of the transformation last night. We added a lot more information for our supporters and site visitors. Check out our new FAQ page where you can find answers to a lot of often asked questions. We also added 99 ways to help on our donations page. And of course, we have changed the Our Process and Our Team page as well. This will allow you to get to know our board of directors and advisory board members (photos will be added in the near future so you can really get to know us). Oh, there are more before/ after photos too! There are many new photos to look at throughout the website and all are Hearts for Hound volunteers and doggies. Aren't we cute?

Phase II of the revision will consist of statistics of fund allocation and a success stories page. Hummmm, we think we will also put up new videos! This will be an ongoing process until we have everything just right! We'd love to get some feedback. And please be patient during this process. There will be some changes but we promise...all good!

We have been very consistent in our adoptions in the past few weeks. And of course, we found another 16 homes this past Sunday. Bonnie has been working really hard during the week getting the dogs ready and answering phone calls. And our dedicated volunteers have been working tirelessly at our adoption events. We thank all the volunteers! Without them, we couldn't have achieved finding so many great homes!

By the way, September 2008 will be our 10 year anniversary at the Alamitos Bay Farmer's Market. We're putting out a press release in local newspapers to celebrate the entire month of September. We are also meeting with local media to raise awareness on pet population control. Check back to see the articles!!! We will have them on our website.

As always, please say a little prayer for all in need before you go to bed tonight! We thank you for your ongoing support!

Update 07/30/2008:

Hi! Happy summer! We have been busy getting more dogs out of local shelters. With people going on vacation and foreclosures at an all time high, local shelters are packed with loving pets; many familiar with home environments and miss it terribly. If you're in search for a new friend, please visit your local shelter. We'd love to help you find a companion if you don't have the time. Please call Bonnie and tell her what you are looking for. She'd be happy to keep her eye out when she visits local shelters. Her number is 562-597-7137.

We also just passed our kennel license inspection on the doggy ranch for 2008-2009. Many delayed repairs were done this month as well, thanks to the extra donations received. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Keep them comin'. The dogs need it! We continue to save funds for our commercial facility. We still have a ways to go but getting there, little by little! The important thing is we are getting there!

We thank all the kind folks that have been stopping by and donating can food, blankets, and towels for the dogs. Every little bit helps! It really helps us in allocating funds elsewhere, like being able to bail more dogs out of shelters and pay for medical procedures.

Hummmm...what else? We have a calendar coming soon, a cookbook project with all natural recipes and remedies in print (again, all donated time and material of course). I'd encourage everyone to stock up for the holidays coming up. They also make great birthday presents. Giving something special to your friends and helping us save another life, what's better than that? Okay, maybe a real dog would be better, but a cookbook would have to do for now for some folks... =)

Rachel at The Greater L.A. Woman is doing a benefit fashion show for us and Meals on Wheels. She has adopted 2 dogs from us and knows the importance of supporting local charities. We would appreciate lots of support from our community. More will be posted on our home page soon about this highly publicized event in Long Beach. We've been invited on some local cable shows besides the Newport Beach Pick a Pet Show. Our dogs will be local celebrities. Look out for them on T.V. We are spending a lot of time on networking and learning about fundraising! Any ideas or suggestions, please contact us at 562-597-7137.

This past weekend, we were able to place 12 dogs at the Long Beach mobile adoption. We also had a second crew of volunteers that went to the annual Irvine Super Adoption Event. We placed 7 dogs there and met many that will be contacting us for future adoptions. So, that's 19 successful happy homes and more to come! Not bad for a "lazy" Sunday! Like Bonnie says, God watches out for these little creatures!

Please send positive thought/ energy for all those in need in the world! We're truly lucky! We are lucky to have our family, friends, and a home! The most awesome thing is.that we have the love of our little animal friends at home greeting us when we come home from work!

Irvine Super Pet Adoption Event

Update 06/16/2008:

Wow! It's been a month since we updated our Dog Blog! Sorry ‘bout that! The dogs have been busy looking for a loving home and we've been busy driving them!

We continue to do extremely well with our adoptions at the Farmer's Market on Sundays. During our short 3 hour adoption, we were able to find permanent homes for 18 dogs (with careful screening of course) on 06/08/2008; and yesterday, 15 dogs. This is just the beginning! Wait ‘til we have our 7 day facility up and runnin'. We can't wait! Our goal is to find at least 50 loving homes for our dogs a week when we have our adoption center. That's 200 dogs a month! And 2400 lives you can help us save every year! We need your support more than ever! Please donate to our facility fund. We need $400,000 for our down payment on the new facility. We're asking for everyone to chip in $10.

You'd be surprised how far we can stretch a dollar. If you can do more, that's wonderful and we all thank you for it!

Here's something else we've been working on. We're asking for dog lovers who'd like to invest in real estate to contact us. You can reach us at 562-597-7137 for more information. The idea is to own real estate while supporting our rescue efforts. We're also asking real estate investors and business partners who have a passion to support animal welfare to participate in our plan to create a community hangout for all dog lovers. See our flyer for more details. You'll receive long term investment returns, tax incentives/ write-off's, and best of all, help us save lives! As always, please consult your tax professionals (don't you just LOVE disclaimers?).

Dr. Sam has also offered to let us set up an office at Ambassador Dog & Cat Hospital in Long Beach. We'll be able to arrange for meetings with potential families during the week, have a place for volunteer orientations and office work, and best of all, host get-togethers to show you what our goals are and how you can help save another life!

We're also actively looking and interviewing for foster homes and volunteers. Please fill out a volunteer form and mail it to us. We'll contact you ASAP. Many volunteer programs are being developed. A teen volunteer program will be available within the next couple of months. Limited space is available so please send in your applications.

Oh, our dogs will have a regular spot on the “Pick-a-Pet” show on NBTV. We just taped our first show a couple of weeks ago. We will continue to give updates on our new facility goals on the show and feature dogs looking for a home. The show is on once a month. Our dogs are going to be TV stars! Celebrities have been adopting from us (Out of respect for their privacy, we will not mention names)! TV producers have been contacting us! Watch out, world...here we come. Please check back for “Rags to Riches” stories on Hearts for Hounds Dogs! See how they go from “The List” to loving arms with hugs and kisses!

Update 05/13/2008:

“Howie Do” from the Doggy Ranch! Being back in Long Beach is so awesome! Our first day back, we wanted to do Sunny California "dirt angels" on the ground. We're finding homes for the dogs again! Our first weekend back started out a bit slow but word is getting out we're back. We're getting our weekly visit from our friends again. The dogs are happy. They seem to know they're back "home", as strange as it sounds. It was very touching to see that rain or shine, there were people waiting for us at the Farmer's Market every Sunday until we got back. Can you believe it? Every weekend for 6 weeks! That's incredible! Yes! We feel the love! And we're soaking it all in...every bit of it. =)

Long Beach Animal Control continues to be very supportive. John Keisler came to visit on our first weekend back with his family. I'm sure we will have a great working relationship going forward. We're working really hard at building a facility for the dogs and creating a community "hang-out" for all dog lovers (Oh, pssssss...we think we found a couple of potential properties... cross your fingers)! As always, please call Bonnie if you have any fundraising ideas. 562-597-7137. We desperately need funds for our new facility. To see our potential sites: look here and here.

On a different note...we want to thank Pam King, a HFH volunteer, for getting people to donate towels and blankets for the dogs! We also want to show our appreciation to Jille Lucier, another HFH volunteer dear to our hearts. She heard about our need for a park bench for the dogs a couple of weeks back. Something we've been wanting for 2 years now but can never seem to justify the expense when the dogs need medicine and food. The dogs love them, we know the dogs love them, but there's never money for something like that in our budget. Anyhow, Jille's family asked her one day what she'd like for her birthday this year. She said she'd love to have everyone pitch in a few dollars to buy a couple of benches for the dogs. One by one, they all mailed her a check knowing it's going to a good cause. Jille also arranged to borrow her brother's truck and drove 2 hours to deliver the benches to the dogs on her day off from work! Forget the time and expense of gas now a days, Jille's love for the dogs really touched our hearts! We want to thank her family (Phil & Drew- the dudes we go to when we need to borrow a truck now, Janine & Franny, Jocelyn, Pat, Linda, Kelly, & Katelyn.) We thank you soooooo much! And of course all the dedicated volunteers we have throughout the years. We challenge everyone to give big like Jille and her family. You'd be surprised! It's not the dollar amount. IT REALLY IS THE THOUGHT THAT COUNTS!

Update Tuesday, 04/29/2008:

WE'RE BACK!!! After weeks of leg work and phone calls, we received the blessing and approval from Long Beach Animal Control to hold our weekly mobile adoption event in Long Beach again. We will be receiving our Transfer Permit this week and will resume our mobile adoption at the Alamitos Bay Farmer's Market on Sunday, 05/04/2008, at 10:30 a.m. Please come out and visit! We will be celebrating our homecoming all month! Please tell everyone you know...

We also want to send a big Thank-You to Susanne Delima at the Long Beach Animal Control. She has gone the extra mile to hold our hand through the permit process. We thank her for the speedy process and patience. Please send her a Thank-You note! They are not thanked often enough for what they do. We also want to acknowledge many folks that represent Long Beach and Long Beach Animal Control. Folks like John Keisler, Roger Hatakeyama, Mark Sandoval, just to name a few. Of course, there are many local businesses, city officials, animal advocates and rescue supporters as well...too many to name them all (...and that's a good thing). Oh, can't forget about Dr. Sam. What can we say about Dr. Sam? Besides being a wonderful vet, he opened up his Whittier facility for us to meet with potential families without one bit of hesitation. That helped tremendously during the past 6 weeks while we were "homeless." We sincerely thank EVERYONE for the help and support. We couldn't have done it without all the love and support. What we got out of this is that our dogs are well loved by our community and LOVE TRULY CONQUERS ALL!

Update 04/21/2008:

A big "Hello!" from the Hearts for Hounds Dogs (and the volunteers too). We had a wonderful Pet Expo adoption event. We found 28 GREAT homes for the dogs! How cool is that? We thank all the dedicated volunteers for helping us at the event. The volunteers deserve a huge standing ovation for spending a week preparing for the event and a week after the event getting everything reorganized and back on track. The hours were long but all worth it to see these little cuties go to a good home. We thank Bonnie for giving all the dogs a cute haircut and drive all the way from the High Desert Area so the dogs can find a home. We appreciate everyone coming out and supporting us. It was so nice to see our friends.

We miss all of you in Long Beach! We are home sick and want to be back in Long Beach soon. There really is no place like home! We are still working hard on our Transfer Permit in Long Beach and should be able to give you an update by next Monday. CROSS YOUR FINGERS! Please help us by spending 5 minutes each day this week on sending positive thoughts to all the animals in the world.

Update 04/10/2008:

The Expo is a great way for us to reach potential families outside of the Long Beach area. This year is extra special to us because we have tons of support from all of you and many new volunteers. We are looking forward to finding lots of great homes this weekend for the dogs.

As far as our Long Beach permit, we've decided to put it on hold until after the Expo. With limited resources, we felt we need to remain true to our mission- to find loving permanent homes for the dogs as soon as possible. We plan on meeting with Long Beach Animal Control again and hash out the details this coming week. What will happen, we still don't know. What we do know is we need more support than ever! We have decided it's time to build a commercial facility where the dogs can look for a home 7 days a week. Are you excited yet?

We figure if we were able to place 12,000 dogs in the past 10 years with a very tight budget and only 3 hours of adoption time on Sundays, we can do so much more if we have a permanent facility for the dogs. We would also love to branch out and hold training classes, a low cost clinic, and have an on-site grooming spaw for the dogs. We can keep on rescuing but we MUST do a lot more to promote spay and neuter to prevent needless suffering of these precious animals. We believe a training/ education center is the key. We also see many dogs turned into the shelter because the dog wasn't "trainable". We think this can easily be corrected with some professional guidance. So, we have made it our goal in 2008 to search and set up a place for the dogs. It's not an easy task but we are ready for the challenge! Anything for the dogs! This facility will not just be a safe haven for the dogs but a dog lover's paradise for our community. What we are doing is just not enough anymore. It's time to take Hearts for Hounds to the next level so many more lives can be saved!

So, here's what we need from our supporters: We would appreciate all of you passing the word out and help us generate funds. Log on to our website and donate toward our facility fund! And if you can find creative ways to organize fundraising activities, we'd be very grateful! You can run a block garage sale for the dogs, or have the kids help save the planet by collecting soda cans and give the recycling money to the dogs. Anything! Every penny counts! Anyone who's willing to donate a property, a used car, or even $1, we would be one step closer to our goal this year. On our end, we are putting together a marketing group (all volunteers, of course) to get our name and mission out there. We want to pursue grants, corporate sponsors, and of course network, network, network! If you think you can help in any way, please contact us! Imagine if every one of our 12,000 HFH families donates only $10 (a cup of coffee and a muffin now a days), we would have $120,000 for a down payment on a facility. Remember, we are a non-profit organization and donations can be a tax write-off (here comes the disclaimer...consult your tax professional). What do you say? We say it's about time!

Update 03/21/2008:

Thank you! Thank you! Thank You! We thank all Hearts for Hounds supporters for being patient with us. We have received wonderful phone calls from all of you and many kind words that keep us going. We want to make sure we share good news with you, not just the bad ones.

After many phone calls and a lot of leg work, Bonnie was able to work out the permit issue with Long Beach Animal Control. She will be meeting with them on Wednesday, 03/26/2008, to finalize the permit process. We're hopeful that we'll be back on track on Sunday, 03/30/2008, at the Alamitos Bay Farmer's Market (awwww...home sweet home). Cross your fingers! And have your little pet buddies cross their paws for us too!

We do sincerely thank Long Beach Animal Control for working with us. A special thanks to Susanne Delima at Long Beach Animal Control for being so patient in answering our questions and concerns. They were able to waive the permit fee for us as well since we are a non-profit rescue.

Please come back for an update next week. We hope you have a wonderful weekend and look forward to seeing all of our Long Beach friends next weekend!

Update 03/18/2008:

We have temporarily found a new place for our weekly adoption. It will be at Whittier Dog & Cat Hospital. Our vet, Dr. Sam, has opened up his facility in Whittier to host our weekly adoption until we have the Long Beach issue resolved. It will be held on Saturdays from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Thanks again for everyone's patience.

Special Notice 03/14/2008:

Hearts for Hounds is moving to a new adoption site starting immediately. Please continue to come and visit the dogs every week to support our rescue. We will have the new location posted shortly.

First of all, we want to apologize to all the lovely folks we see at the Alamitos Bay Farmer's Market on Sunday mornings. We have grown to love each one of you for visiting with us every week and playing with our dogs. Your bright smiles and kind words have kept us going in trying times throughout the years. Your love and support for our dogs made us feel at home in the city of Long Beach for the past 10 years. We're truly sorry we will no longer be holding adoption events in the city of Long Beach. We haven't quite figured out if we're feeling sad for the folks who come and visit our dogs every Sunday morning or feeling sad because we won't be able to see our Long Beach friends on Sundays now...

A big thank-you to all the volunteers, supporters (you know who you are), and the Alamitos Bay Farmer's Market for helping us. A special thank-you to Mark Sandoval, who has fought hard to keep our rescuing efforts alive in Long Beach. A big kiss to all the staff at the SEAACA shelter, where we rescue most of our little furry friends. We appreciate everyone's love and support! We are very grateful to have all of you in our lives!

As many of you know, on Sunday, 03/09/2008, we were asked to leave the Farmer's Market by Long Beach Animal Control. We were told that we cannot do adoptions on public property in the city of Long Beach. We MAY be able to do so on a private property if we obtain a "Transfer Permit," which will cost $500. We trusted that it was a big misunderstanding since we've been there for years and it would all resolve during the upcoming days.

On Wednesday, after many calls, Mark was able to help us in getting special permission to keep our adoptions going out by the Farmer's Market (a public area) instead of looking for a new location that is considered "private-property". The catch is we still have to apply for the permit.

We happily went to the Animal Control Department the next day to find out the application is pages long and takes 30 days to process. Our initial application fee is a non-refundable $200 and more to pay later; which we all know can pay for A LOT of stuff at Hearts for Hounds. We were ready to proceed but come to find out there's no guarantee the application will be approved in the end.

There are also many regulations that come with the permit. Although we appreciate the fact that Animal Control wants to keep tabs on all the dogs to make sure everything is kept in neat order, we find it impossible to have the man power to keep up with their policies.

At this point, we are choosing to leave the city of Long Beach. We see it potentially becoming an uphill battle with no end in sight. One rescue we talked to this week said they had to go to court to stay in Long Beach. Further, we cannot and will not waste an application fee on something that's not a guarantee. Our final deciding factor was that we won't be able to rescue more dogs and find them homes for at least 30 days until the application is approved- IF it ever gets approved. Until then, we will have little donations to survive on and pay our bills with, risking closing our doors for good.

Our main focus has ALWAYS been putting the dogs' well-being first, and it will ALWAYS remain so. Putting our emotions aside, the dogs are our top priority. We are choosing to spend our limited resources on making sure our dogs are healthy and find them loving homes. Our goal is to make our community a better place one dog at a time!

Let's help another child get their first puppy on Christmas morning, see an elderly woman feel 10 years younger after adopting an older dog that otherwise would have never found a home, or share a family's joy they haven't felt since their dog Snoopy passed on.

Again, we thank everyone! Please be patient with us while we make our transition. We will be updating as soon as we can on upcoming events. Please come back to our website often for updates.

For information on any of our dogs, please contact Bonnie at 562-597-7137

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Update 03/24/2009:

An Act of Kindness