homeless

This may have started off as a joke, but Hercule Van Wolfwinkle's "rubbish" pet portraits are being sold like hotcakes and have raised over £50k for a homeless charity. Also, we want one too. 

As BBC News reports, Phil Heckels, from Worthing, West Sussex, started working until the alias Hercule Van Wolfwinkle in 2020. Jokingly, he drew his his dog and put it on Facebook, offering paid-for commissions. He was just as surprised as anyone when genuine requests started coming in. Not only that, but his drawings have gotten really popular, and as pet owners ourselves, we can totally see why. Because the volume of requests was so big, it essentially became a lottery where Wolfwinkle decides who he draws and who he doesn't.

In addition to the drawings, Wolfwinkle writes accompanying fake profiles for each pet as well as reviews from the 'customers' - also written by Wolfwinkle. Additional merchandise, such as tea towels and calendars, has also been created. 

Initially, the drawings were marketed at the joke price of £299. Later on, that became Wolfwinkle's original fundraising target. Now, "he has ambitions to reach £75,000, and has publicly vowed to get his first tattoo - his signature on his buttocks - on reaching that goal."

Wolfwinkle told BBC: "This whole thing is absolutely brilliant. To be honest it still doesn't feel real. I remember being sat on the sofa with my wife, laughing that we would never reach £299, and now we're here. I'd love to do this forever, it's just working out how we keep it going because I've basically created a second full-time job for myself. The money and publicity for Turning Tides has been phenomenal."

"[w]e definitely have angels among us," say the people at W-Underdogs in a Facebook post whose animal shelter caught fire while they were picking up supply donations. A situation that could have ended in the worst way possible ended incredibly positively, and that is because of a heroic 53-year-old homeless man named Keith Walker who ran into the smoking building and saved each and every one of the animals inside. 

Walker has been homeless ever since he was 13 years old. He had already known the founder of the shelter, Gracie Hamlin, who had let him keep his dog, a pitbull named Bravo, at the shelter every night. On his way to pick up Bravo from the shelter, Walker saw the fire and ran in, rescuing all of the animals in the shelter - 6 dogs and 10 cats.

"I was nervous as hell, I'm not going to lie. I was really scared to go in there with all that smoke. But God put me there to save those animals," Walker told in a statement to CNN. "If you love a dog, you can love anyone in the world. My dog is my best friend, and I wouldn't be here without him, so I knew I had to save all those other dogs."

Sadly, the W-Underdogs headquarters is now uninhabitable, but in another lucky turn, the shelter was just preparing to move to a different location. As they say in another Facebook post: "As fate would have it, today is the first day of our lease of a new facility we planned to be the new W-Underdogs Headquarters. While the new facility is not exactly 'move-in ready' we were able to move the animals safely into the new facility for the night. They are all happy, warm, safe, and comfortable in their new temporary home."

Hamlin told CNN: "He is my guardian angel. Even the firefighters didn't want to handle the dogs. They called animal control, but Keith was already in the building pulling out the cats and dogs until they were all safe." 

We are so, so thankful to Keith Walker and all the people who helped with the rescue and the moving of the animals, and we hope the cats an the dogs will have an easy time getting used to the new place. Good luck in the new year, guys! 

For more happy ending animal stories, click right here!

MyStetho, the Swiss-based online veterinary service founded in 2019, has recently announced the launch of its crowdfunding campaign for the dogs of homeless people in Geneva. This initiative is focused on providing these pets with access to vaccines and consultations for sick and injured dogs. The campaign will pay for pet owners in need to access online veterinary advice, medicine, medical equipment, and dog food to ensure these animals have a better quality of life. Big like from us! 

Dogs have the biggest hearts and we're not worthy of them! We hope everyone can learn something from this pup and her pure heart of generosity and love. 

What did we do to deserve dogs?

The unconditional love between a man and his furry friend. Via: Everyday Kiss

It's a story you need to read to believe...

The Purrfect book for Sunday morning

At an early age of 17 years old, Christine L. Exley saved the life of her"wiggly-butt Pit Bull", Pepper. How? Well...while volunteering at a local shelter, she learned that if no one would adopt Pepper soon, she will have to be put down. So Christine did the only thing she could think of, since she was only 17 and couldn't legally adopt Pepper...

Paul Tateosian was just doing his job one day when this golden ball of fluff walked up to him, begging for pets. The house Paul was inspecting had been vacant for awhile, so he knew he had to take this little guy home. Paul, if you're reading this, please name your new cat "Ron Swanson". It's what the internet wants.