aishamusic / CC

On-again, off-again fur flaunter Lindsay Lohan recently tweeted that her fur is faux:

We loved the thought of Lindsay going from fur hag to faux fab, but it looks like the tweet from this twit might have just been a passing fancy. We called a rep from her much-ballyhooed (and widely panned) fashion line to see if she's ditched fur there too. Unfortunately, the rep confirmed over the phone that those tasteless stoles in LiLo's collection have, in fact, been ripped from the bodies of animals. So it looks like Lindsay's fashion sense probably is still as dead as her career.

It just doesn't make much sense to stop wearing fur if you still peddle it, Lindsay. If your tweet means that you've turned a new page and are going to trim the fur off your back completely so that you can join the ranks of the stylish women who always forgo fur, please let us know.

Posted by Liz Graffeo

fortheloveofthedogblog / CC

This is one of those stories that starts off sad, but gets better—I promise!

Earlier this summer, a man in Louisville, Kentucky, threw a puppy off a bridge and into the Ohio River. Kelsey Westbrook, a college student who works part-time at a riverfront restaurant, saw the dog swimming in circles and immediately raced down to the water's edge and helped nearby firefighters guide the dog to safety.

Although Kelsey had originally planned to find a good home for the dog—whom she named Sunny for her loving disposition—the bond between them grew, and Kelsey soon realized that Sunny had become part of her family. So, Kelsey and her other dog—a 2-year-old rescue mix—asked Sunny to stay.

The warm-fuzzies don't stop there. Kelsey has decided to turn the attention she's receiving towards the issue of cruelty to animals. She's organizing a fundraiser at the restaurant next month, and the proceeds will go to local low-income spay-and-neuter clinics. Now that's compassionate. And because Kelsey keeps going that extra mile to help animals in need, we're happy to be sending her a Compassionate Action Award—along with some treats for Sunny, of course.

Posted by Amanda Schinke

This week, we received a tip that Brookstone's district managers and vice presidents were gathering in the Manchester, New Hampshire, area, where their headquarters is based, for corporate meetings and store visits.

While they were going over new store layouts and new bonus packages for selling killing as many frogs as possible, our larger-than-life "frog" was following them wherever they went. Our frog wanted to remind them of the one thing that Brookstone executives have clearly left out of their training manuals: compassion.

We stood outside their headquarters …

We followed them on their tour of New Hampshire Brookstone stores …

We even followed them to the restaurant where they ate dinner!

We're not going to let Brookstone forget about the thousands of frogs who are dying on their store shelves, while shipped across the country, and in the homes of people who do not have the ability to care for them. Until Brookstone ends the sale of Frog-O-Spheres at its stores nationwide, it can consider our "frog" its permanent shadow.

Posted by Liz Graffeo

Delia's clothing company used to be one of several retailers that sold Ringling Bros. T-shirts.

I say "used to be" because today, the company's CEO contacted us to say that Delia's will be pulling the shirts from its Web site, its stores, and its October catalog by this Friday, September 11.

Thanks to the countless concerned people who took the time to write and call the company to ask it to stop promoting Ringling's cruel treatment of animals.

We hope that you'll take a second to write to Delia's and thank it for making the compassionate decision.

Posted by Shawna Flavell

parentdish / CC

Most of us are feeling the strain of the recession, but schools seem to be among the hardest hit. Teachers are left struggling to put together lesson plans and scrape up materials on a tight budget. Enter TeachKind, a humane-education resource for teachers, administrators, and librarians who want to help students become kinder, more compassionate individuals.

Now I may be a bit biased—I am the TeachKind coordinator, after all—but this is a program that no educator can afford to miss. Our TeachKind Web site offers free lesson plans and materials, including books, DVDs, videos, magazines, comic books, posters, stickers, and more. And as if that weren't enough, we offer step-by-step advice on how to combat issues involving cruelty to animals, and we have a new program that helps educators form effective animal rights groups at their schools.

I could go on about TeachKind for hours, but if you have any questions, e-mail us at Info@TeachKind.org. And if you know any teachers, be sure to tell them about TeachKind and encourage them to sign up for our Teacher's Network, which features new lesson plans, ideas for incorporating animal rights issues into the classroom, and information about exciting contests and giveaways.

Oh, and because you're probably wishing that you had become a teacher right about now, check out this video to get you through to 5 p.m.

Posted by Liz Graffeo

flickr / CC

Long before I kicked animal flesh out of my diet, I celebrated my birthdays by eating lobster.

As in, let me celebrate my birth by paying a cook to throw a fully conscious, feeling being into a pot of boiling water to scald to death for my dinner. Ugh.

No wonder my heart skips a beat whenever I read about a caring person who liberates a lobster from a filthy lobster tank so that the animal can be returned to the sea. So my heart nearly burst out of my rib cage when I read that a Slovenian tourist and his daughter bought 30 lobsters for 1,300 euros (more than US$1,860) from a Croatian hotel-restaurant called Hotel Niko in order to free them.

Thirty lobsters have been spared excruciatingly painful deaths and have been returned to the ocean.

Tonight, I'll be celebrating their release with some "Mock Lobster."

Posted by Karin Bennett