Just today, I heard of the death of a cat who was in the custody of an AC, a death that, if if had happened while that cat was in the custody of a private person, that person would have been prosecuted and banned from ever again having an animal. I really doubt that the persons responsible for this cat’s death will ever be prosecuted or relieved of their offical duties (which involve caring for cats like this.) If anyone from HSUS wants to investigate this, please let me know (Gina has my e-mail address) and I will try to get the people who told me about this to co-operate with you. (But, be fore-warned, they do not trust HSUS.)

The cow tail-docking law is an example of this propensity of HSUS to target private people. The best way to get farmers to stop docking is to let them know that docking, despite the previous erroneous reports that they heard about, docking does NOT reduce the incidence of painful mastitis and it REDUCES milk production. It’s a no-brainer here! Let farmers know those facts and they ALL will stop docking. This kind of education is much cheaper and much more effective than legislation but it does not garner the press that HSUS, in its current incarnation, seems to crave. There was absolutely no need for a law here but HSUS decided to clog up the agenda of the California Legislature with yet another useless law.

I want my old HSUS back, an organization that focused on really helping animals and not an organization that is intent on pushing a fanatical vegan agenda with relentless legislation.

Yes. Yes it does. But at least we no longer have to yank it manually.

Plus, of course, 345,957,908 pieces of spam.

I mean, roughly.

Comment by Geraldine Clarke — November 3, 2009

Imagine how the moderators feel. :)

Well, actually, Christie and I (as the moderators) generally admire and very much appreciate the people who read and comment here. Not all of them all of the time, of course, but on balance it’s a pretty smart community, able to discuss some very hot button issues with respect for others.

That’s not always that easy to accomplish, as we all know. And I’m grateful, truly.

Update: I just checked the stats. More than 60,000 comments on 3,600 posts since we went live here in 2007.

Oh, and half a million spam comments that never got out of the filter. That’s a lot of potentially unsold Viagra and porn.

Re Message # 73:
I saw an aired version of the tape and there definitely were screams edited in. I’ve mixed a lot of soundtracks in my life so I’m pretty good at analyzing mixes. Interesting that you saw versions where you couldn’t hear them. But there were a lot of airings and a lot of copies on the internet.

And rabbits, not just hares, are definitely sighthound prey (although not in competition.) When I lived on my farm, neighbors invited my dogs to rid their pastures of the rabbits whose burrows threatened their livestock with broken legs. The chase is much quicker with rabbits than with hares and is usually lost by the rabbit unlike with hares. Those rabbits provided a large portion of my salukis’ diet and the rabbits died a much quicker death than they would have had from the horrible poison that the farmers usually used.

And you’re definitely right about Pacelle’s suit, LynnT. I’d guess about 3 thou.

Re Message #77:
EmilyS, I just outlined one type of hunting that I find totally acceptable. Natural predators have been eliminated in so many areas that hunters are absolutely necessary to keep the prey species in balance. (I also have a feral cat who lives on my property who has brought the mice, roof rats and squirrels that infested my garage under control. We’ve had an electrical fire in the past from gnawed wires and we used to frequently lose phone and cable service before the cat moved in. I really love that cat even though she is not as merciful in her killing as my hounds are.)

I have no moral qualms about vermin control (IMO, vermin = an animal that causes damage) or any form of hunting where the prey is eaten; it’s the natural order of things. That brings up another issue that sometimes prey animals that are very easily caught are found to be diseased and the hunt has done a good service by removing a source of disease from the environment.

“Do NOT pretend that the deaths dogs cause are always quick and painless.” Well, you just have not seen a good sighthound in action. Even tiny puppies instinctively know the way to jerk their toys in a neck-breaking manner although they do need to watch adults to learn how to effectively hunt prey. All prey animals can inflict severe injuries on hounds so evolution has favored those who know how to kill as quickly as possible.

“Why/when is is ok for a dog to kill a hare, or a coyote, or a groundhog, but not a feral cat … or a deer? (shouldn’t deerhounds be able to go after deer to preserve their breed character?)” In areas where, because of the lack of predators and deer die of stavation, yes, IMO deerhounds should be allowed to go after deer. I also think that it is totally ethical where people need the meat. When I lived in rural Oregon, I knew many not-wealthy families where deer provided most of the protein in their diet (although, I’ll grant you that none of them could afford to keep deerhounds and so they used rifles instead.)

Have I “explained (my) thoughts/feelings” to your satisfaction? I could go on. And on and on….

Re Message #81:
“… in most of the world, feral cats, despite anti-cat propaganda, mostly go after small and medium-sized rodents. This is why humans and cats hooked up in the first place.”

And is why, after the anti-cat pogroms in the Middle Ages, that the Black Death spread so effectively. Cats do good work! (And I love the idea of “community cats”.)