Free Republic

HARTWELL, Ga. | A pet care company is investing $320 million and will create as many as 240 new jobs in a manufacturing facility and distribution center in Georgia’s Hart County. Gov. Nathan Deal announced Nestlé Purina PetCare Co.’s plans Wednesday. Purina’s vice president of manufacturing, John Bear, in a statement said the Hartwell site is “an excellent location” for the company’s first new U.S. factory in 20 years.....

What new Fox Sports analyst Michael Vick really did Leave a comment By Friendly Curmudgeon, September 5, 2017 at 12:43 pm Fox Sports announced August 27 that it has hired former NFL quarterback Michael Vick as a studio analyst for its NFL Kickoff program that immediately precedes NFL Sunday on the Fox network. The news release announcing the hire was hilarious in the way it avoided the elephant in the room; namely, Vick’s 2007 felony conviction for operating an illegal dog-fighting ring and subsequent year-and-a-half stint in federal prison. As mostly everyone knows, Vick was a successful quarterback for the...

snip... That’s why I am proud to join the majority of my fellow veterans and other Americans who support Congress’s bipartisan work to defund painful and inefficient dog experiments at the VA. This legislation is truly a light among the gloomy partisan clouds surrounding D.C. these days. With all of D.C.’s political gridlock, my dear friend and fellow double amputee and bomb technician Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va., and other House members deserve applause for unanimously passing legislation this summer to prohibit taxpayer funding for questionable VA research that causes dogs significant pain and distress. [puppers act...

Hurricane Irma Florida House Call It was definitely in a “glad-I’m-still-here-to-see-for-myself” mood that Doug Bronson ventured outside early this morning to see what kind of damage Hurricane Irma left on his multi acre farm, near Haines City, Polk County, Florida. Doug, known fondly as “Dub” had spent Sunday at his house, hunkering down with neighbors and friends listening to the shrieking winds, house pounding and lashing rains of Hurricane Irma. He was pretty sure that his 45 KW, 30 HP diesel generator would keep the electricity running, and it did.

As everyone here knows, I hit the road last month with my dogs Kyrie and Rawley, to spend the summer in Michigan. Our 2,400-mile trip wasn’t without its challenges, many of them due to the fact that Kyrie, at 12 years old, is not handling stress the way she used to. In my column today for SFGate.com, I talk about the lessons I learned from our trip, and what dog-owners can do to make travel easier on senior pets: 1. Listen to your dogThe biggest mistake I made was thinking I could set a schedule to exercise, feed, walk and...

The disaster in Texas brought out the best in us this week. These 24 moving photos prove it:

Chewy will create a customer service hub in Hollywood and hire 1,100 people, a move that will make the online pet product retailer the largest private employer in the city, it was learned today. Expected to be up and running by October or November, the new customer service outpost will be in the Hollywood Mall at the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Park Road, according to Hollywood Mayor Josh Levy. “[1,100 new jobs] is huge, for any city,” Levy wrote in a Facebook post making the announcement. “I am very excited for the surrounding restaurants and businesses who will benefit...

Like they say, when it rains it pours. Had to retire this year because of a recurring injury. Now I've had to spend over $1200 in the last week for surgeries on both my cats. Louie had to have 5 rotten teeth extracted and Snooki developed a wound abscess after Louie bit her. Looks likes it time to take out health insurance for my furbabies. Mom has to rely on Cobra til Medicare kicks in. Another headache but oh, well:)

Fido and Fluffy are to blame for Global Warming, according to UCLA study First it was the cows of the fields being blamed for global warming/climate change by the more-bovine-than-them environmental activists. The United Nations targeted belching and gas-passing cattle as the world’s biggest source of ruining the environment. Their methane, the UN loudly lamented, gave them the biggest global warming footprint of them all.

SILOAM SPRINGS, Ark. (KATV) — Simmons Feed Ingredients, an affiliate of Simmons Foods Inc., is opening a 72,000-square-foot ingredient facility in Siloam Springs, a move that represents a $30 million company investment. The site is expected to create 78 new jobs at the facility, where they will produce fresh and frozen meat ingredients for pet food manufacturers. “This wet ingredient facility is a model for the future of high-quality ingredient production for pet food manufacturers,” said Todd Simmons, CEO at Simmons Foods. “This new facility enables our team here to safely and reliably produce the highest quality, customizable ingredients for...

Congratulations Memphis PD! Here's your newest member. http://www.malinoisranchrescue.com/happy-tails?lightbox=dataItem-j5alujny Background on Mambo: four months ago Mambo and four litter mates were saved by the German Shepherd Rescue of Orange County. They were being used as breeding dogs and turned into a local shelter in early 2017. http://www.gsroc.org/dogs/mambo-2/ Mambo was transported 2500 miles to TN by GSROC volunteers in May from Orange County as he was not suitable as a pet (his litter mates are more docile and were and will be adopted as pets). He was evaluated by law enforcement agencies in TN this month and was accepted into their training...

A prominent Black Lives Matter activist accused of punching a police horse will remain behind bars for at least two more days after being arrested on her way to court earlier this month. Shere Dore, 41, was a passenger in a car pulled over for an expired inspection sticker in her Fort Bend County neighborhood on July 6, her attorney said Tuesday. That led to her continued confinement without bail in Harris County. "I think they're trying to wear her down," attorney Jolanda Jones said. "I think her First Amendment rights are being criminalized." Dore was arrested July 6 for...

Officer James Givens has served with the Cincinnati Police Department for over 26 years, but has never quite experienced anything like this before. He was sitting in his patrol car in a parking lot when he got an unexpected visitor. A goose came up to his car and started pecking on the side of it. He threw food out for her, thinking that’s what she wanted, but she didn’t take it.

A 16-year-old was killed by a black bear on a organized race in Alaska yesterday, on 19 June, 2017.  The runner had plenty of time to use a defensive firearm.  He had called family members to text them that he was being chased by a bear. From adn.com: The runner had apparently made it to the halfway point turnaround and was on his way down when he used his phone to text a family member at 12:37 p.m. that he was being chased by a bear, Precosky said. The family member approached Precosky, who was then in the middle...

Valerius Geist is a Professor Emeritus of Environmental Science at the University of Calgary, Canada.  He believed in the myth of the "Harmless" wolf until he personally experienced evidence to the contrary, four years after he retired.  In this heavily documented paper, written in 2010, He explores how the mythology came to be. From wolfeducationinternational.com: Valerius Geist November 26th 2010 The effects of thousands of impoverished trappers and wolf bounties in northern Alberta early in the 20the century on predators, and its relation to the myth of the harmless wolf. Dear Colleagues, I have been digging into historical literature in...

PETA's silence in the face of undeniable evidence of horrific cruelty toward cats and dogs by Muslims is cowardly, hypocritical, and in itself cruel. By remaining quiet about such torture they are in effect sanctioning it “I’ve seen cats being played football [soccer] with. I have seen cats with their legs torn off and their eyes gouged out. We see cats that have had their heads torn off, and ones that had skin ripped away, or had their legs and back broken. ...The worst thing I saw was a bunch of kittens crawling around with their bowels hanging out because...

On 10 May, 1953, a front was passing through Slave Lake, a village on the South shore of Lesser Slave Lake in  Alberta, Canada.  It was cool, cloudy, and windy. A 63-year-old Cree grandmother and her partner were hunting small game near Florida Lake.  The wind was from the NE, at 12 to 24 mph. At dawn, the temperature had been 40 degrees F. On the morning of the 11th it would be 35 degrees F.  The high for the 10th was 58 degrees. Bella Twin and her partner Dave Auger were going to make hunting history. They were...

In case you needed more proof that dogs are some of the most loyal, loving creatures on the planet, here you go. Actor and filmmaker Easton Dufur used to have two yellow Labradors — Cookie and Stitch. The dogs had always shared one food bowl, Easton said in a statement posted on Twitter. My dog Stitch trained my other dog Cookie to only eat half the food that’s in the bowl. So ever since she was young she knew to leave half the food so Stitch can have some (he liked to make sure she would eat,)” Easton wrote.

A female appearing as a skinhead with the group Antifa faces charges of attacking a police horse while protesting against the “March Against Sharia” activists with ACT for America in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Saturday morning. The attack unfolded while Harrisburg police and Pennsylvania State Police Troopers on horseback assisted with crowd control as demonstrators made their way from the steps of the capital through the midtown area.

Least terns. A federal lawsuit. Greenpeace. Vandals. Industrious beavers. Angry homeowners. Bureaucratic delays. These were among the obstacles and setbacks that had to be overcome before the Creek Turnpike was built. At one point, the chairman of the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority declared it a “total disaster” and exclaimed: “The Creek Turnpike in Tulsa, God only knows when that’ll be completed,” John Kilpatrick said, as reported by the Tulsa World’s Wayne Greene on Oct. 19, 1990. “If we had it to do all over again, we wouldn’t do that project,” the exasperated Kilpatrick said after federal bureaucrats held up construction of...