An invitation to join the Tanner Brigade

I know many of my friends in the blogger community who have read my blog have noticed me reference the Tanner Brigade and may wonder what it is.  The Brigade is an invitation only Ning social network.  It has about 150 close knit members.  We stick by each other in good times and bad.  When one of us is sick the others rally for us, pray for us, give us advice, and most of all support.  We share the best health advice we can, the best information about food, updates about recalls, work on placing homeless dog with no families, do transports, basically everything done here in the blogger community.  We constantly make each other laugh with great blogs.  And when we're lonely all we need to do is go online and see all our friends.

We have a number of friends in the blogger community who are members of the Tanner Brigade.  Erin of Freedom to Bark is one of our administers and does all our layouts.  We have, without a doubt, the prettiest dog site, or human site, on the web.  Kolchak and Felix from Kol's notes are very active in helping dogs with heath and food treats.  Jan Cabral who writes The Dogs of Brazil blog, Smoochy, who writes the brilliant Smoochy's Observations Blog, Abby the Yorkie who writes My Life in the Dog Lane, Silvie from the Silvieon4 blog, Nadia Rosin from the Healing Art of Pet Parenthood blog, Shiloh, our astrologer dog, who authors Shiloh's Space, and Hobo Hudson, who writes a blog at newsandtales are all valued members. 
We have Zoe Boe and her mother Connie Gross who does the best pet portraits I have ever seen.  For an example take a look at the drawing of Kolchak on Koli's Notes.

Our divas:  the adorable Hattie Mae and Sydney can make you the best dressed dogs in town.  Luca and Junior do wonderful writing contests, Ruggie Ruger and Cocoa do our graphics contests, and we do weekly beat this caption contests, plus we pick pups of the week, and ask questions of the week to help us either understand our dogs or learn how to better their lives. 

There is a long story of how we came together as the Tanner Brigade.  If you haven't read my last blog, which covers the history of the Brigade, and if you're interested, you can read it here.  Some of our members still belong to big groups like Doggyspace, and others are just happy to be in a our small quiet village.  Truly, some of my closest friends are here, and I have only met one:  Laura, the mother of Pokey and Maggie, and who does many rescue transports on the 95 corridor.  

Some members of our group are on site every day, some once a week, some once a month, and some pop in and out to check on their buddies.   The Brigade is built on wood cut from the same tree.  It's a tree just south of Rainbow Bridge.  It's the tree where the humans meet their pets living at the Bridge when they pass from this world.  The Tanner Brigade is built from the tree of Unconditional Love between humans and dogs; and the unconditional love we have for our friend's dogs, and their delightful owners.


We don't recruit members to be part of the Brigade.  We only want members who reflect our views:  that dogs, cats, any household pet that look at you with eyes filled with love, are one of our most precious resources, and together we need to explore how to make these little angels from heaven lives as perfect as possible while they are with us.  They know, somehow, how to be the perfect companion to each of us, no matter how difficult we can be.  The folks who hold this view a very select slice of the world's population.  But I have found many of these people in the Blogging and Twitter communities.

So I am inviting my blogging friends and my Twitter friends to join the Tanner Brigade.  Please don't think you are under any obligations to do so. Social communities are not for everyone.  And I am sure some of you belong to other groups, and, as much as we would like to, we can't spend all day on the computer talking about dogs.


But if it sounds like this might be your brand of kibble then you can leave your e-mail in the comments section of this blog, or send me a message on Twitter with your e-mail, or e-mail me at Foleymonsterandpocket@gmail.com. We will send you an invite and you can take a look around.  If you like the place you can set up a profile and play in our playground.  While Ning is a pay site we are paid until July of 2012.  After that we ask for a $5.00 contribution a year.   And if you can't pay one of our friends would be more than happy to sponsor you. 

So, if you would like to join, what us Tanner Brigade members believe is the best doggy social network on the net, let me know.  And if not then keep us in mind.  We'll leave the light on for you.