For those of you who receive PETA's quarterly magazine, Animal Times, you're in for a treat (as always) when the latest issue hits mailboxes this month. If you haven't gotten around to subscribing (it's free with your PETA membership), here's one of the many great articles you'd find—an exclusive sneak peek at PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk's newest book, The PETA Practical Guide to Animal Rights. Don't say we never gave you anything:

Man's best friend isn't, in many parts of the world. In Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, and China, among other places, dogs are kept in the burning sun in small cages behind restaurants, often with tin cans shoved over their muzzles and their broken forelegs tied behind their backs. They are "tenderized" by being beaten while alive and then strangled to death and skinned for their flesh. In Thailand, dog-hide factory trucks prowl the streets, offering to trade plastic buckets for live dogs, who will be slaughtered and made into bags, drum skins, and golf-club covers.

I grew up in India, where—although dogs are not eaten—mange-covered and starving stray animals are so common and so pathetic that they can't help but capture your attention. In the pounds, death was courtesy of a crude electrocution machine that seared the animals' skin and often set their fur on fire or via blows from men wielding billy clubs.

In Taiwan—which has a robust economy as well as a large Buddhist population—one would think that animals would fare much better. The reality is quite the opposite. In Taiwan's pounds, death for dogs can come from live burial (digging a pit and throwing the dogs into it), electrocution, poison-laced food, starvation, or drowning. In April 1998, I rescued 11 dogs from the Keelung city pound's drowning tank and extracted a promise from the minister of the environment to immediately stop drowning animals. The city administrators have been good to their word, but all these years later, animals in Sanchung, Tu Chung, and other cities continue to suffer, confined to cramped, filthy cages at severely crowded pounds. Pressure is still desperately needed to bring about reforms.

I used to harbor the illusion that all animals in Europe and North America were well-treated. But we have plenty of room for improvement too—to say the least.

A Baltimore, Maryland, rescue group called Alley Animals has seen it all, right here in America: animals with festering wounds from slingshots and bottles, cats with elastic bands embedded in their necks, kittens blinded and used as bait in pitbull fights, abandoned Easter rabbits, a rooster wearing a broken ankle leash, and even a green iguana—now the most common exotic throwaway pet, according to news reports.

Alley Animals operates simply and on a shoestring. When dusk falls on Baltimore, the group's volunteers drive into the sprawling old city's most rundown areas. Their job is to find the animal waifs and strays who creep out from their hiding places when the city grows quiet, knowing that they are less visible to juveniles armed with free time and a rock or a firecracker.

One evening, volunteer Alice Arnold and her partner for that night's trip, Eric, were just leaving an alley after putting out food when Eric said, "Did you see that puppy?"

He pointed to an overturned reclining chair amid the trash, where a tiny head was sticking out ever so slightly, the puppy's reddish-brown fur almost blending in with the color of the old chair in the alley's black shadows. The stuffing had come out of the chair, allowing the dog to claim its interior as her shelter from a world that had rejected her.

Within a week of her rescue, it was obvious that the puppy—now known as "Stuffing"— was very intelligent and lovable. After a few weeks, Stuffing had gained weight, was paper-trained, and spent every night snuggled up in bed with her new human friend. Alice says that to look at her now, no one would ever guess that this happy little girl spent the first months of her life eating from trash cans and sleeping inside an overturned chair in a dark alley.

Most people don't think that the problems of strays and chained "backyard" dogs have anything to do with them. But they do. The biggest nightmare plaguing domesticated animals in our society does not involve the wanton acts of violence directed toward them by cruel humans. Rather, it involves thoughtlessness by otherwise intelligent and caring people who simply do not understand what or who dogs and cats really are, and what they need to thrive.

Want to read the rest of Ingrid's new book? You can order your very own copy at PETACatalog.com. In the meantime, you can find out what you can do to help strays and other neglected and abused animals here.

Posted by Alisa Mullins

Today is Gandhi's birthday, and it's also the second day of Vegetarian Awareness Month. I can't think of a better way to celebrate both than by giving a vegetarian diet a try.

googolplexideas / CC

Gandhi ardently advocated nonviolence and campaigned to end poverty, expand women's rights, encourage self-reliance, and promote peace and respect for all living beings. He believed that "the greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."

If you think about the billions of animals who suffer in America's filthy, crowded factory farms and who are cruelly killed in slaughterhouses every year, it's clear that this nation has a long way to go to become "great" and "moral."

So if PETA's sexy babes haven't yet inspired you to go vegetarian, check your pulse. Then read Gandhi's book The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism and PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk's The PETA Practical Guide to Animals Rights.

Posted by Karin Bennett

It's hard for me to think of anyone who can think bigger than PETA Prez Ingrid E. Newkirk. It's not surprising then, that you can find a number of her videos on BigThink.com. Go ahead and check out her insights on a wide range of animal rights topics, including getting our message out in the media, PETA's tactics, the use of graphic images, and more.

A quick taste: If you ever have those days when you just feel like taking the day (or week) off from working for animal rights, you'll appreciate what she has to say about the importance of gittin' 'er done:

If watching Ingrid's Big Think videos only whets your appetite, you can also order her latest book, The PETA Practical Guide to Animal Rights.

Posted by Karin Bennett

No, no, not that kind of jacket. We're talking about the jacket of PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk's new book, The PETA Practical Guide to Animal Rights:

A few select copies of the book were outfitted with covers made from real fur—pieces of the more than 20,000 fur coats that have been donated to PETA by fur-wearers who have had a change of heart. It seemed like a fitting way to illustrate how far the animal rights movement has come in the past 25 years—and the kind of change that people can bring about by putting the advice in Ingrid's book into action.

And boy, did that fur jacket ever get the attention of TV and radio producers who received complimentary copies! Many of them were so intrigued that they decided to have Ingrid come on their shows to explain why a person would put a $7,500 fur coat in a box and mail it to PETA. (Hint: This video probably plays a part.)

Of course, most of the fur coats that are donated to PETA are used in "bloody" protests outside (and sometimes inside) designers' boutiques, spooky protests at fashion shows, and slightly silly "fur is a drag" parade entries. They are also torched in fur funeral pyres, donated to wildlife rehabilitators to use as bedding for orphaned and injured wildlife, and even given away to the only humans who have any reason to wear fur—homeless people and refugees of wars and natural disasters.

Have a musty old fur cluttering up your closet? Click here to find out more about PETA's fur donation program.

Posted by Alisa Mullins