Embrace Pet Insurance Blog

Paws for Japan Day today

If we'd seen a movie of what is now going on in Japan, we'd say it was too far-fetched, to incredible to be believed. An earthquake, a tsunami, and a nuclear event at 4 reactor in the quake zone. What next - Godzilla and a meteor?

But we're seeing and believing it now as the awful events unfold with perfect clarity and horror. One minute, life is normal; the next, nothing will ever be the same again.

There are so many worthy charities to support at this time of need for Japan but there are three in particular I wanted to bring to your attention if you wished to support those that are pet focused:

World Vets - World Vets responders are on the ground in Japan working with Japanese animal welfare groups

Search Dog Foundation - six SDF Canine Disaster Search Teams are on the ground in the Tsunami zone looking for survivors and bodies

Japan Earthquake Animal Rescue and Support - a coalition of HEART-Tokushima, Animal Garden Niigata and Japan Cat Network, three groups that have been rescuing and rehoming animals in Japan for many years.

Thank you for chipping in what ever you can. Every little bit helps.

Guest Blogger: Lea on what dog mom geeks do on lunch!

While on the phone with a pet parent client recent, one of our office dogs barked or whined, and when she heard the noise in the background she asked "Are you working from home?" She was quite surprised when I told her that no, we just bring our dogs to work.

Embrace is just one of many employers that encourages friendly dogs to visit the office.  Google lists dogs at work as a perk of employment and Chipotle has a webpage dedicated to their office dogs.  It's great therapy during a long day, it encourages you to take a walk on your lunch, and certainly helps a dog release some of that extra energy.  There's not a dog here everyday, and we do rotate, so that everyone gets a turn and special attention each visit.

Today Belinda's little Yorkie, Daisy came in to meet my foster dog, Otis.  It could have gone a little better, but it made for cute videos...

Kind words from a friend

Andrea Learned is always has something valuable to add on any topic, but in particular on marketing to women, and she has a great book that she co-wrote called Don't Think Pink. So, I was so pleased to see that she wrote up an article on pet insurance and had lots of kind words to say about Embrace.

Embrace Pet Insurance is one such company that I've been watching, mainly because of the personal friendship I've built with one of its co-founders, Laura Bennett.  She knew, early on, that women were the key to the business and so, even as the underwriting process has taken way longer than she and co-founder Alex Kooglick might have hoped - they have finally launched their company.  Interestingly, I remember way back when being part of their survey on possible logos, and then later a survey of web site templates. They have been so-wisely building community and involving their likely customers for years in advance of this launch.

Check out A Women's Market Insight: Pet Insurance at Andrea's blog, Learned on Women.

Thanks Andrea. Big hugs to you and Hilde.

Introducing Sparkle and Punch

We love our new office but since it's a shared space with some other firms, we can't really bring our cats and dogs to work. The neighboring workers might not be so OK with Lily sitting on their keyboard or Tahlula curled up under the desk.

But we still wanted some animal friends around the place so Lea brought in her two dwarf hamsters, Sparkle (the white blur) and Punch (sitting in his dinner), who give us our animal fix when we need it.

We're thinking of doing a hamster cam but hamsters are nocturnal so you wouldn't see much during the day. It might be fun to see what antics they get up to when we're all out of the office. We shall see...

The smallest police dog?

On CNN's website, there was an article today "Tiny drug dog sniffs out big career - Ohio pooch trains to be one of nation's smallest law enforcers", which is about Midge, a tiny 6-pound Chihuahua-rat terrier mix, that is a drug sniffing dog from Chardon, Ohio. Chardon is just down the road from the Embrace HQ so we say hooray for such great publicity for a sister town in our area.

Midge has the heart of a lion and the nose of, well, a dog sniffer extraordinaire and she is an extremely capable dog that can get into all sorts of small places other larger drug-sniffing dogs can't reach.

Her handler takes her around to different people, including school children.

On visits to school classrooms, Midge gets passed among tiny hands. And McClelland offers a lesson:

"I tell the kids, 'Even when you're small, if you take a stand you can make a difference.'

I think that would be a pretty effective lesson, don't you?

Big dogs that likely don't need pet insurance

The movie The Terminator comes to a pet store near you? Robots in the form of dogs are being developed for military purposes.

They're a bit creepy without heads don't you think - but then again, I don't think they were ever meant to be cute!

Link to Robo-Doggie's New Pal

Hat tip to Doug the Infoman for the story.

Mold-sniffing dogs

I couldn't believe it when I heard about mold-sniffing dogs but there are such animals and they are highly accurate at sniffing out mold in our homes. In a recent article in the Conneticut Post:

"Because of a dog's excellent sense of smell, they can pinpoint where mold is located in a building," said Carl Massicott, the co-owner of Advanced Mold Detection on Mark Street. "A trained mold professional is usually about 35 percent accurate, while a dog is more than 97 percent accurate."

It takes over 1,000 of training to be certified as a mold-detecting dog but given the amount success rate the dogs have compared to human inspectors, it's well worth it.

Check out the mold dog website to learn more, including Top 7 Reasons to Use a Mold Dog.