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Raise money for Critters For The Cure every time you shop.  All you have to do is click on the search engine below and you will be transferred directly to the iGive.com website.

When you shop through iGive.com’s 700+ participating online stores, CFTC gets a percentage of your total purchase.  Enjoy free shipping deals and no hidden catches.  A win/win for everyone.  The retailers pay iGive to advertise so there is no catch for you the shopper.  Just enjoy shopping as usual and Critters For the Cure benefits too.  Retailers include Banana Republic, Gap, Macy’s, Nordstroms, Pet Smart.  Choose from 700+ stores in their network.

I just tried it and it’s easy and safe to use.  I ordered a birthday present.  So cut and paste the above web address to your dashboard and use it every time you shop online.  You solve your shopping needs and CFTC gets a percentage of all your purchases.  How great is that?

We feel tremendous love for our dogs, and our dogs sure seem to love us. But is a dog really capable of emotions? Or are we just projecting our feelings onto our dogs?

Scientists avoid the subject because part of what sets humans apart from the animals is our ability to experience feelings. To say that animals actually have feelings, in the same way we do, would change everything – perhaps disrupt our entire position and standing in the animal kingdom.

However, any dog owner knows that dogs love completely and have a greater capacity for love than most people. If one were to describe the main characteristics of a dog, they would have to be:
1. strong affection
2. warm attachment
3. unselfish loyalty and benevolent concern for others

Wait a minute – those are the Merriam-Webster Dictionary definitions of love. Probably why the author of Dogs Never Lie About Love, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson writes, “dogs are love.” So there isn’t a question of whether dogs love, the mystery is how they have such an enormous capacity for it. Dogs who are neglected or abused still show love for their human and wag their tails in hope of a little affection.

Dogs taken from abusive situations hold no grudges toward the human race. A half an ounce of kindness from a new person results in an abundance of affection from the formerly mistreated dog. Humans rarely have the capacity to so completely forgive and love under those circumstances.

Probably the biggest reason the dog has become man’s best friend is because we know that when it comes to love, a dog can always outdo us. The highest form of love, agape love, which is completely unconditional, is something that people often have to work at or grow into. Agape love seems to come naturally between parent and child, but it’s more difficult between husband and wife, and harder still between friends. To love someone regardless of what wrongs they have done you is very difficult for humans.

A dog, however, is born with an endless capacity for agape love, and doesn’t even have to work at it. You can be a complete grouch, ignore your dog, and refuse him your love. When you decide you’re ready to be sociable again, your dog doesn’t pay you back by ignoring you too. He’s just happy you’re there. More amazing still, is that the love that dogs and owners feel for each other lasts a lifetime. This is the ideal love humans strive for, but often fail at.

As Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson so beautifully writes in Dogs Never Lie About Love, “Learning to know somebody intimately is often the beginnings of dislike, sometimes even of contempt. Among humans, love often does not survive a growing acquaintance, but in a dog, love seems to grow with acquaintance, to get stronger, deeper. Even when fully acquainted with all our weaknesses, our treachery, our unkindness, the dog seems to love strongly – and this love is returned by most dog-loving humans. We, too, seem to love our dogs the more we get to know them. The bond grows between us and our dogs.”

This is why we need dogs. They do something for us that rarely a human companion can do. No matter how much you mess up your life, or how much wrong you do, no matter how many mistakes you make or how often you make them, regardless of your looks, income or social standing, your dog never judges you. He always thinks you are wonderful and loves you with all his heart.

Story from Petcentric.com
Nestle’ Purina Petcare Company

Picture the look on Mary’s eyes when she was told that she had to go home with the drains, new exercises and no breast. No amount of begging could convince Mary’s insurance provider to allow her to stay in the hospital longer. Mary’s doctor’s hands were tied. So there the nurse sat with her patient, giving Mary the instructions she needed to take care of herself, knowing full well that Mary didn’t grasp half of what was being said, because the glazed, hopeless, frightened look spoke louder than the quiet ‘Thank You’ that was muttered.

A mastectomy is when a women’s breast is removed in order to remove cancerous cells/tissue. If you know anyone anyone who has had a Mastectomy, you may know that there is a lot of discomfort and pain afterwards. Insurance companies are trying to make mastectomies an outpatient procedure.

Let’s give women the chance to recover properly in the hospital for 2 days after surgery. Please take the time and ask others you know to do the same. If there was ever a time when our voices and choices should be heard, it is now.

There’s a bill called the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act which will require insurance companies to cover a minimum 48-hour hospital stay for patients undergoing a mastectomy. It’s about eliminating the ‘drive-through’ Mastectomy where women are forced to go home just a few hours after surgery, against the wishes of their doctor, still groggy from anesthesia and sometimes with drainage tubes still attached.

Lifetime Television has put this bill on their web page with a petition drive to show support. Last year over half the House signed on. Sign the petition by clicking on the link above. You need not give more than your name, state, and zip code.

CFTC’s 2nd Annual Doubles Tennis Tournament took place on Saturday, October 2nd.  Our tournament was held at the Aspen Hill Tennis Club in Silver Spring, MD.

We had a perfect day for outdoor matches as it was warm and sunny.  The top three teams were able to select their prizes from several donated from Tennis Warehouse, Holabird Sports, as well as area retailers.

Following the final match, we launched our 2011 Critters For The Cure “Until We LICK Women’s Cancer” Calendar.  Rhonda Hartzel was selected for the cover and Evelyn Ross was pictured on the back cover.  Long Nguyen was selected as the photographer for this years calendar.  Kate Kress assisted, and Jason Kress was the Art/Production Director. Many thanks to  everyone involved in this project, as we could not provide such a quality product without their donated time, talent and efforts.

We managed to raise just under $3,000 for this event.  CFTC believes that this year’s tennis tournament and our 2011 CFTC Calendar were our best to date.  Thanks to the participants who came from all over the area and our ZTA interns for helping.  Many women in our community will receive financial assistance because of your participation.

Discovery Health Channel and Del Monte Foods partnered together to create The Power of Paws™ to educate consumers about the mutual health benefits that both pets and pet parents enjoy and motivates them to spend time together and connect.

“Studies show there are significant physical, mental, and emotional benefits for both pets and pets parents,” said Bill Pearse, Chief Marketing Officer of Del Monte Foods. Researchers say you’ll walk farther with your pet than you would if you walked alone – activity that benefits you both.

Discovery Health Channel created a 55-minute documentary (see the Critters’ for the Cure segment here) which premiered on Sunday, July 20, 2008. Pets and People hosted by Animal Planet’s Jeff Corwin, the documentary explores the impact pets have on blood pressure, how assistance and therapy dogs can help wounded veterans and autistic children and the unwavering social support pets give their breast cancer survivor owners without asking for anything in return except love and affection.

Critters For The Cure™ was honored to be asked to participate in this amazing project. Encore airings are scheduled through September. Check www.DiscoveryHealth.com for listings for Pets and People.

Scully is our new addition – a therapy puppy in training. Scully is a yorkie-poo who completed his first round of training classes.  By the time he is 1 year old, he will be able to take the required tests to qualify as a certified “Therapy Dog.’ who will then be able to visit cancer patients at NIH, Suburban Hospital, and Shady Grove Adventist Hospital.  Scully was donated to us by dcdogfinders.com because they are a tremendous supporter of breast cancer.

Critters for the Cure was recently featured in a Washington’s Finest article by Ryan Staton.  Excerpt:

Clancy Kress runs a 501 (c)(3) non-profit that benefits women with breast cancer, and as you can imagine, she’s heard some incredible stories about women and their amazing critters.

One of her favorites was from a survivor whose dog started licking her repeatedly in one particular spot, and when she went to wipe off the slobber, she felt the lump.

The fact that this woman was a breast cancer survivor is only half the story; equally important was her relationship with her dog, who quite probably saved her life in more ways than one.

Women now have another drug option post-breast cancer surgery.  The Food and Drug Administration approved a new use for FEMARA, a drug already used for treating advanced breast cancer. It  can now be given to women past menopause who have early breast cancer.

Femera has been reported to be more effective at preventing recurrences than Tamoxifen.

Femara and Arimidex, a similar drug, are aromatase inhibitors, which block the production of estrogen, a hormone that fuels the growth of tumors that develop after menopause.  Tomoxifen blunts the ability of estrogen to enter cells. Femara is made by Novartis.

Each year, approximately 800,000 women around the world are diagnosed with early breast cancer.  Most of these women are of the type that would benefit from these drugs.

Statistics given through the National Cancer Institute state that approximately 211,240 women in the U.S. will be diagnosed with invasive breast cancer in 2005.

A woman’s chance of developing breast cancer increases with age.  In the U.S., a woman has a 1 in 7 chance of developing breast cancer in her lifetime.

Over 40,000 women will die of breast cancer this year.  A woman’s chance of dying of this disease is 1 in 33 or 3%, a rate that is fortunately on the decline.

Women are most likely to develop breast cancer; every year around 41,000 new cases of breast cancer are diagnosed in women (men can also suffer from breast cancer, and although it is rare, approximately 300 men are diagnosed each year).

Age is the single most important factor in influencing breast cancer risk – the older a woman is the higher her risk of developing breast cancer.   80 per cent of all breast cancers occur in post-menopausal women (based on the average age of menopause being 50).

Women who have previously had breast cancer face an increased risk in developing the disease again.

Women with a hereditary genetic susceptibility account for between five to 10 per cent of all breast cancer cases. They tend to have a strong family history of breast or ovarian cancer and these cancers usually occur in close family members, such as their grandmother, mother, aunt or sister, at an early age.

Hormones play an important role in the development of breast cancer:

• Not having children – The risk of having breast cancer is reduced by having children at a younger age–the more children a woman has, the lower the risk.
• A late first pregnancy – A woman who has her first child in her thirties is 63 per cent more likely to develop breast cancer before menopause and 35 per cent more likely to develop the disease afterwards than a woman who has her first child at 22.
• Breastfeeding – Breastfeeding helps protect against the disease. The longer a woman breastfeeds her children, the more she lowers her risk.

Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) causes a small increase in risk. But the risk gradually returns to normal after the woman stops taking hormones.

Overweight – Being overweight after menopause increases the risk of breast cancer.

Hereditary – A small number of women are at especially high risk because of faulty genes they have inherited. However, faults in known high-risk breast cancer genes such as BRCA1 and BRCA2 account for fewer than 1 in 20 breast cancer cases.

Alcohol – Regularly drinking large amounts of alcohol slightly increases the risk of breast cancer.

Mammographically dense breasts, or the pattern of a woman’s breast tissue on a mammogram, is associated with an increased risk of disease (the more dense the mammogram, the higher the risk of breast cancer).

Benign breast disease – Certain types of benign breast lumps increase risk of breast cancer. Benign breast disease can be classified as nonproliferative breast disease, proliferative breast disease without atypia, and proliferative breast disease with atypia. The latter two conditions increase risk of breast cancer.

Radiation – Long-term exposure to radiation, or moderate to high levels of exposure, increases the risk of breast cancer.