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Ricky Gervais is such a great comedian. And his dog is really cute. But it’s not all fun and laughs, all the time. He’s found a cause that brings out his serious side, and I’m sharing that with you today.

Someone tipped me off to this video, made by the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA), because today is World Rabies Day.

It has nothing to do with horses. It’s about dogs. But mostly it’s about the misinformation that exists in the world about the terrible disease of rabies. I know how much confusion there is about rabies in horses here in the United States, and I know we need to work on that, but I can’t believe that ignorance about the disease in other parts of the world. Or the impact that that ignorance has on the life of innocent dogs.

I know the video is hard to watch. It’s also hard to understand that somewhere on the earth, a human dies of rabies every ten minutes.

It’s the disease that seems shrouded in myths and superstitions and old wives’ tales. And it’s time we did something about it.

A place to start is by educating yourself. Go the WSPA Red Collar Campaign web site and learn about the problem of rabies in places like Asia. Start thinking about what we can do to have a world without rabies…but with dogs at our sides.

In a few hours, World Rabies Day will be over and we’ll might forget about rabies for another year. But maybe with someone like Ricky involved in the Red Collar Campaign, it will stick in our minds. And maybe some of us will do something about it. Because that’s what it takes to get something done.

Thanks.