According to statistics gathered in 2007 by the American Veterinary Medicine Association, there appears to be 81.7 million cats in 37.5 million households, and 75.9 million dogs in 43.0 million households. Dogs, cats, fish, birds, and horses were listed, in that order, as the top 5 most popular household pets.

Facebook blogs about pets: 150,000,000 and counting! Yahoo blogs about pets: 10,400,000! YouTube blogs about pets: 57,300,000! Google blogs about pets: 35,700,000! Those figures don’t count the sub-blogs to those main pages, branching off to discuss specific issues and experiences, photos and videos, and expanded research on such subjects as the human-animal bond, health, laws and news worthy stories about pets.

Some blogs are designed by pet food and accessories vendors, animal welfare organizations, veterinarians and other professionals, but most are by ordinary people who want to share their dog’s (or cat’s or other pet’s) life with others who understand the pride and passion we have for the 4-legged members of our family.

When everybody around us, family, friends and co-workers, run out of patience with our incessant comments and stories about our pets, we turn to the blogs on the internet to exchange photos, information, and stories about them. With hundreds of millions of blogs about pets, there is no shortage of conversants.

And just as we learn from hearing about the experiences of others in many other areas of our daily living and interests, we learn from those other bloggers. Race car and boat enthusiasts do the same thing. Hunters, fishermen, cooks, bakers, mothers with new babies, and hobbyists have their own blogs. There is absolutely no information that we cannot find on the internet, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out how to find what we’re looking for, or how we ‘word’ what we want to find in the Search block.

Connecting with other people in the same community for a mutual cause or concern is a powerful tool. Such is the purpose of F.A.S.T.: Fannin Animal Services Team, connecting the Fannin County Community to help a distraught owner find a lost animal, or finding the owner of an animal that has been found or sighted. And yes, FAST has a blog on FaceBook: FAST – FANNIN ANIMAL SERVICES TEAM.

ThinkFastHelp@aol.com is the email address from which FAST ALERT messages are sent to those who have signed up to receive them. They are asked to forward the FAST ALERT to their own email addresses and ask those to forward it to theirs. Within hours, hundreds of local people can be made aware of an animal or its owner is in crisis with the expectation that someone among those hundreds will see the animal or know who its owner might be.

The colorful logo for F.A.S.T. was designed and donated by noted artist and national award-winning iconist, Jim Allison. It features a magnifying glass searching for a lost dog and cat for the Animal Search and Rescue arm of F.A.S.T.