When PETA India Science Policy Adviser Dr. Chaitanya Koduri and his wife, Vidya, found Laila, she was a terrified puppy alone on the streets of Mumbai. But after the couple welcomed her into their home, giving her the care and affection that every dog deserves, Laila blossomed into, as Dr. Koduri describes, "this beautiful, naughty girl who will never get tired of playing. She needs to put her nose into anything and everything."

As you can see, Laila—showing her paws decorated with golden turmeric—gladly joined in the family festivities on Ganesha Chaturthi, which celebrates the birthday of Lord Ganesha, the Hindu deity with the head of an elephant. 

What You Can Do

As Laila's story shows, people who offer homes to animals in need not only save those animals' lives but also fill their own homes and hearts with boundless love. Please never buy from breeders or pet shops—always adopt. 

Vegan beauty Annalise Braakensiek was recently asked by Cleo magazine to offer a signed photo up for auction to raise money for her favorite charity … which just happens to be our friends over at PETA Asia Pacific. The stunning image that Annalise is donating on PETA AP’s behalf was published in Cleo magazine with a blurb about why animal rights issues are so important to her. If you’re a fan (and who the hell wouldn’t be, after seeing this pic?), you can bid for the photo on e-bay until February 8. Happy auctioning!

As of this Wednesday, it looks like Rudy Giuliani isn’t going to be getting that other job he was applying for, but that doesn’t mean he’s run out of options for serious public service, and his first exciting new employment opportunity arrived by fax today, in the form of an offer from PETA President Ingrid Newkirk to be our new Animal Emergency Response Division Ambassador. If he were to accept the offer, Rudy’s duties would include helping to get PETA’s public service announcements about animal emergencies shown on television and heard on the radio, and meeting with officials who make contingency plans for natural disasters to remind them of the importance of keeping animal-integrated families united. You can read Ingrid’s letter here, and I’ll let you know how Rudy responds.

This case has been a decade in the making, with a steady stream of complaints about substandard conditions and terrible suffering at the no-kill shelter in North Carolina, but this week, shortly after the release of a seven-months long PETA undercover investigation into All Creatures Great and Small, the animals languishing in the shelter are finally getting the help that they have desperately needed. The North Carolina Department of Agriculture has announced that it will be launching an operation to transfer the remaining animals—almost 300 of them—out of this hellhole and into pre-approved animal sheltering organizations, and closing ACGS for good due to ongoing, persistent violations of the animal welfare act.

This is a big victory for the animals who have suffered from overcrowding, disease, and untreated injuries at the shelter, and a testament to the hard work and perseverance of the undercover investigator, whose harrowing footage of conditions inside the operation broke this case wide open after seven years’ worth of red tape prevented All Creatures Great and Small from being shut down following a series of failed state inspections as far back as 2001.

We were thrilled to learn that these animals have finally gotten a reprieve, but there’s still work to be done on this case, specifically the filing of criminal charges against the operators of the facility, who have thus far not been held accountable for the shocking neglect and mistreatment of the animals in their care. You can find info to contact the Henderson County District Attorney and urge him to get on with that on this page.

And if you haven’t seen it yet, this is the video from PETA’s seven-month investigation into the shelter. Sadly, these sorts of conditions are an extremely common sight in no-kill shelters like ACGS, which take in more animals than they can manage and refuse to give suffering animals in their care a humane release.

Chrissie Hynde got married while sitting in a horse-drawn carriage in Manhattan in the '80s, but she’s changed her views on how ‘romantic’ carriage horse rides are since then. This afternoon, she led a PETA protest in Central Park to encourage tourists not to support the carriage-horse industry, which is notorious for abusing the animals it profits from, and forces them to pull heavy loads through exhaust-filled streets in all weather extremes. Here’s what she says about the whole sordid business:

And here’s what she said about her marriage:

A huge thank you to Chrissie for selflessly coming through for animals in need yet again. There are some pics from the event below, and while we’re at it, you can click here for a nice photo of Ms. Hynde at the recent opening of her vegan restaurant in Akron, Ohio. You frickin’ rule, Chrissie Hynde.

We have an urgent action alert up on our site right now, asking department store chain Lowe’s to pull the glue traps from its shelves ASAP. The deal with glue traps (as a lot of people find out the hard way when they use them) is that they’re exactly as crude as they sound. Animals trapped by glue boards generally die of starvation, dehydration, self-mutilation, or shock after they’ve finally exhausted themselves struggling to get free. The whole process, as you might imagine, is just supremely unpleasant, and not the sort of thing that any self-respecting home improvement warehouse should be endorsing.

You can make that point to Lowe’s through the handy little web form on this page.

Deflocked, baby. Deflocked.

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To check out the archives of past strips, click here.

This one’s a total winner, from the folks at PETA Asia Pacific, who want you to know that eating meat can lead to impotence. Check out the brand-new ad below, and click here to see it in context, doing its job in the men’s room of a Bangkok bar.