About Gen Wags
Passion Meets Purpose
Gen Wags is about hopefully making a difference by sharing a perspective about the connection of pet ownership and parenting and the shelter/rescue system.
We believe that this connection is overlooked in terms of education pet owners how they can take steps to address the growing crisis in pet homelessness.
We can’t adopt our way out of the homeless pet crisis.
Starting as Generation Wags in 2014, the site’s name and look has been refreshed to Gen Wags, but the heart of the site remains the same. To educate and hopefully inspire through stories and resources to enhance the bond of pets and their people, and to help reduce pet homelessness.
The issues are complex. Not easy to resolve. But we must all do what we can, where we can to address this epidemic.
We believe that you can’t fix what you don’t know. That’s behind the WHY of Gen Wags.
Current initiatives!
In addition to our website that offers resources and helpful info for pet parents, future pet parents or simply those who want to be advocates for our companion animals, Gen Wags has two community related efforts!
The Heart of Gen Wags …
Founder Debby Hartten launched Generation Wags (now Gen Wags) as the outgrowth of a personal passion. That journey continues to expand to continually unfold the diverse issues contributing to pet homelessness and related topics within our society.
She believes that “you can’t fix what you don’t know.”
What started as a personal journey of learning led her to share what she learned (and continues to learn) in hopes of helping create change.
An Evolution
It all began when Debby reached out to help local animal rescues in her community in Maryland by establishing a donation drive affectionately named “Warm Hearts Happy Paws” where she reached out to stores around her area and asked them to host a donation box Each location hosted a box for a different area rescue. At the end of the season, she picked up and distributed the donations to each rescue.
Little did she know that by doing so, she would learn so much about the world of rescue, the commitment of volunteers and the complex issues they deal with related to the rescues in their care.
As her knowledge grew about why and how homeless pets fell into the system, Debby decided to take her communications background and develop a platform to try to help educate others to effect change.
On the original site, for a full year, she created reunion stories from around the country called “Monday Microchip Miracles”. These reunion stories of dogs and cats reunited days, months and even years shared how the pet got lost and how their reunion happily unfolded! Debby learned about and was able to reach out to the owners of reunited pets through her interaction with the many amazing volunteers at Lost Dogs of America page and their State Facebook Pages volunteers who work daily to assist owners looking for their lost pets.
Debby has also spoken with individuals and staff at organizations in rescue who are on the ground doing the hard work every day. THANK YOU for all you do!
Their efforts should be celebrated and supported, and she hopes to spotlight them with future stories and posts.
Gen Wags will continue the work to be a source of education, engagement, and inspiration to help reduce our homeless pet population.
Where will your individual journey begin?
We hope some of it is inspired by the insight and resources we provide. We ALL can make a difference.
Contact us if you’d like to share a story for us to consider sharing as inspiration.