Review- For The Animals

I wear a necklace almost every single day and have several that say "vegan" on them that I wear quite often. It's a nice, positive way to show the world that you're vegan and it also generates some discussion. So, naturally, I was thrilled when I found For The Animals.
The best part about purchasing from For The Animals is that all proceeds go to their sanctuary, For The Animals Sanctuary and the anti-fur group that Debbie runs, Caring Activists Against Fur. Here is some information about the sanctuary that Debbie wrote-

My dream was to save a cow and her baby (son) from being exploited and murdered. I met my Vegan husband who also felt the same desires. We saved our $$ bought a house and built a barn and waited. Then we saw Herbie on the news (one week before Xmas) running for his life in Brooklyn. I cried. I called all the sanctuaries to see if he was being saved. Thankfully WFAS was rescuing him but they didn't have the room so we stepped in. At the same time Kevina was born in a dairy farm. The farmers thought she was a boy and they were drowning all the boys. Lucky for Kevina a girl that worked there brought her to WFAS. I named her Kevin (thinking she was a boy) now she is Kevina. Herbie and Kevina just got married on May 31 2008. We had about 65 guests and tons of Vegan food.

Our sanctuary is 8 acres. We are small guys but we do a lot for the Animals!! We just rescued 8 goats. 3 of the goats were really sick needing critical care treatment i.e. blood transfusions, injections and forced oral meds and were separated for 4 weeks from the rest of the goat sisters. They were scouring (massive diarrhea). They are all better now YUPPIE. Our goal for 2009 is to rescue some chickens and focus on Vegan outreach. We have an abolitionist approach to Veganism.

FTA has no volunteers. My husband and I do all the work around the farm. We both work full time in order to keep it running. I am a critical care nurse and my husband works in NYC (5 hour commute every day). We also rescue 11th hour dogs and cats. We lost 6 dogs and one cat over the past year due to health reasons (all old dogs that were going to be euthanized in a shelter). We currently have a 5 dogs one of which is blind. We recently had to put my old boy Corki (blind and had massive cardiac issues) down. That was and still is devastating I miss him so much. We have 8 cats 4 of which live out in the barn. I also run an anti fur group called Caring Activists Against Fur (caaf) www.caafgroup.com . We protest fur in NYC/NJ.

We received our 5013c in July 2008. This will make it much easier to fundraise. Our focus for 2009 will be on fundraising and finding volunteers to help us out on the farm. Its very very hard to find reliable animal loving people. Its also hard to compete with the larger sanctuaries. We try and make it fun to come over i.e. Vegan potlucks with themes like the wedding we had a baby shower when they arrived.....If anyone has ides please share. The more donations we get the more we can do out here in NJ farm land. The awesome thing is i am a nurse in the local hospital. I do Vegan outreach every day I am at work. I wear my jewelry and it get the conversation started. Its awesome.

As you can see, Debbie and her husband are wonderful, compassionate people! If you'd like to make a donation to their sanctuary, please do so through their site. You can also watch some videos of Herbie & Kevina here.

I have now purchased three beautiful necklaces from her shop and will proudly wear each one every chance that I get. The first one that I purchased was a sterling silver drop pendant with a heart-

Nature is as important to me as animals, so I loved that it has a little flower on it, too. The heart brings my two loves all together in one gorgeous little package! Her shop is a regular one I stop by to see what's new, and recently she listed some that I fell in love with, so I just purchased these a few days ago-


I'll be wearing both of these a lot! She also has bracelets, buttons and rings in her shop, all in a variety of designs. There's something for every compassionate vegan out there!