Houd1n1

The other day I came out of a supermarket and was approached by two men. They were both dressed in ACUs without name tags or rank, and they were holding buckets. They claimed to be soliciting money for the "Veterans in Need Foundation", which was an organization that provided housing and counseling to military veterans. The back of their ACU blouses had the organization name stenciled in green.

When I got home I did a search on their website. The site was still "under construction", but it offered an address and a paypal link for people to send in money. The organization claimed to have non-profit status. The site did not offer veterans services, but it claimed that 67% of all money collected is turned over to local VA clinics and hospitals.

When I contacted the VA, they said that they never heard of the organization and suggested that I contact local law enforcement (which I did). I also checked with the Better Business Bureau and the Combined federal Campaign roster, but neither source had a record of this foundation.

Have any of you run into this group? Can you help shed some light on them?

I have a 7 year old Samoyed who is house trained and crate trained. We've had him for 6 years. In the last few months, whenever we'd leave the house we'd come home to find piles of crap or pools of urine in the house. We started putting him in the crate when we'd leave, and for a while that seemed to work. Now we come home to find urine in his crate.

My wife stays at home except for errands, so he isn't left alone for long periods of time. We also take him outside for a nature call before we go out. Up until the last few months he wasn't a problem at all. Now it seems that he does it because he's mad that we left him alone. Do any of you have a recommendation so we can correct this?