pet connection

Richard Avanzino of Maddie’s Fund, a self-described “recovering attorney” and former head of the San Francisco SPCA, says it was his goal while running the shelter to “sue or be sued every three weeks.”

One of his most famous lawsuits was that involving his fight to save Sido, an 11-year-old dog whose owner killed herself, leaving behind a will that called for her dog, Sido, to be killed and buried with her. (more…)

I told you about the impressive response to the crisis in Polk County, Fla. over Memorial Day weekend. Suddenly, the county shelter had 748 dogs on its hands — in a facility designed to accommodate 375. Sheriff Grady Judd could have taken the easy way out and done away with some of the dogs. Did he? Nope. Change.org details what he did do:

On Thursday, Sheriff Judd put out a plea to rescue organizations. Rescue groups showed up from all over the state to take dogs, plus 18 went to a shelter in Broward County and another dozen to the Orange County SPCA. He temporarily dropped the adoption fee to $5 and extended the hours of operation. While the cruelty case dogs were getting all the attention, there were already dogs and cats who needed homes. The response was overwhelming. “It was like Black Friday the day after Thanksgiving,” said Sheriff Grady.

But what do you do about the 100 new animals who continue to enter the shelter each day? The numbers are still out of hand, right? Nope.

Sheriff Grady got creative there, too. In addition to the outpouring of volunteers from the community, he enlisted non-violent jail inmates to help out. The shelter already had a work program in place, which has saved the county an estimated $250,000 in labor each year. With more animals, they needed more help, and the inmates were willing volunteers. Cornelius Williams said, “I get away from the jail, you know, and I get to do something that I like to do anyway.”

Williams and the inmates get something else out of the deal, too. When they complete their sentence, they get to adopt an animal. Williams has already picked out a corgi named Watson. They’ll be released on the same day to start to their new life together.

On Friday, there were no adoptable animals left.  None. And through it all, no kill rules remained in effect. It’s this kind of creative thinking and energy that’s ended the killing of healthy and treatable shelter pets in several communities in the United States, and with responses like these, it looks like Polk County, Fla., is on its way to join them.

The thunderstorm is coming.  What do I do? As I’m sure you’ve noticed, thunderstorm season has started.  That means a lot of anxious animals. Some dogs do just fine. Others get mildly anxious. Still more completely freak out.  AAHA, the American Animal Hospital Association, has a great, readable fact sheet on thunderstorm phobia.   Yankee Golden Retriever Rescue has some good natural ideas, and our BFF Dr. Patty Khuly starts the discussion here on whether or not to sedate.

Cats obsess over Obsession: We all know that animals react to scent, right? Some they like, some they don’t. Our own Dr. Tony Johnson forwarded this Wall Street Journal article about how zookeepers at the Bronx Zoo keep the big cats occupied. Pat Thomas, the zoo’s general curator, decided to see what the cheetahs liked.

The results left barely a whiff of a doubt. Estée Lauder’s Beautiful occupied the cheetahs on average for just two seconds. Revlon’s Charlie managed 15.5 seconds. Nina Ricci’s L’Air du Temps took it up to 10.4 minutes. But the musky Obsession for Men triumphed: 11.1 minutes. That’s longer than the cats usually take to savor a meal.

“Oh, yeah, he loves that scent,” Mr. Thomas said as Sasha blissfully cuddled up to a tree sprayed with Obsession for Men. “Just look at him.”

Dear Dr. Tony: this still doesn’t mean you should bathe in the stuff, ok?

Serious strangeness in China: I admit that I don’t understand a lot of the trends I read about these days, but this one stopped me in my tracks. Some dog owners in China don’t want their dogs to look like dogs. If the Daily Mail’s article didn’t come with pictures, I’d never have believed it. To be honest, I’ve seen the pictures and I still don’t believe it.

If this strange creature growled at you, you wouldn’t know whether to run from his sharp claws or pat him on the head and give him a biscuit. From a distance, its striped orange and black coat makes it look like a particularly odd tiger. But it’s actually a retriever, the victim of the latest craze among some dog owners in China to dye their pets to look like other animals. The Chinese are always quick to embrace bizarre trends, and it is not unusual for owners to take their dogs to grooming parlours where they are not only given a shampoo and trim, but a multi-coloured dye job as well.

Seriously … why?

A rescue guy changes his tune on breeders: This is the most fascinating blog post I read this week.   John Sibley is a devoted champion of rescues who never had much use for dog breeders in general.  John’s a reasonable guy, though, and after careful thought (as well as paying close attention to my buddies Gina and Christie), he’s adjusted his thinking a bit.  Actually, a lot.

We’re not doing ourselves any favors by alienating good breeders. I’m talking about the ones who do extensive genetic screenings on dogs they breed, who raise them in their homes with love and care and attention, who follow their progress over their lifetimes and always take them back rather than ever letting them enter the shelter system. Many of these breeders also do rescue work (quietly, quietly!) for their chosen breed(s), applying their knowledge to help those animals who do end up in shelters. By vilifying breeders as a whole, we’re driving away these people who love animals and dogs and want to help them as much as anyone.

Bravo, John!

The divine life of animals: Ptolemy Tomkins has great name, but he’s also an author who’s just come out with a book called The Divine Life of Animals. In it, Mr. Tomkins ponders a simple question: do animals have souls? And if so, do they go to heaven? In this interview with Peggy Frezon, he takes the second question head on.

Ptolemy- Yeah they do, to my thinking. But we need to rethink what heaven is, because our conceptions of it are too simplistic. We need to conceive of a heaven big enough to accommodate the world in all its dimensions. Not just a little room with some harps and halos and a “no pets” sign at the door!

Needless to say, Mr. Tomkins’ book has been added to my Amazon wishlist.

I always like to hear from readers, especially if you have tips, and links for interesting stories.  Give me a shout in the comments, or better yet, send me an e-mail.

Photo credits: Shelter Dogs, FEMA photo library. DogCat thing, China Foto Press/Barcroft Medi.

I’m at Omnivore Books in San Francisco, liveblogging Marion Nestle and Mal Nesheim’s reading of their new book, “Feed Your Pet Right.”

Reminder about liveblogging: This is really live, so there will be typos. Only things in quotation marks are direct quotes; everything else is a paraphrase or close approximation. I’ll come back later and add links.

I’ve also created a Twitter hashtag for the event, #feedyourpet. You can watch that for my Tweets and probably other people’s, too.

This is being done in real-time, so hit refresh to see the newest material. When I’m done I’ll go back and tuck this all behind a jump, so as not to mess up the blog.

Here we go!

(more…)

It was a long, exhausting campaign, but Grace’s Law, which will outlaw gassing to kill pets  in Georgia, passed the state legislature just before the lawmakers adjourned for the year.  All that’s required now is the governor, Sonny Perdue, who happens to be a veterinarian, to sign the bill into law.   Valerie Hayes has watched every step of the process, and looks back on what it all means:

This day has been all about time and what transpires in that time–from the hellish half hour or more an animal struggles to survive in a gas chamber, to the race against the legislative clock, to the length of the delay between passage and effectiveness of a law, to the price of a moment’s hesitation, and to the long hours in committee. Time means everything in matters of life and death, and delays mean more suffering and a greater body count. Time also marches on, and we are headed inexorably towards a No Kill nation. The gas chamber ban is a necessary step towards that.

One of the weirder steps on the campaign trail was a state legislator musing on his own accidental near-death by gas and his fear of needles. YesBiscuit picks up the tail, er, tale.

Boil water alert in Boston critical for pets, too A break in the massive water main that supplies all of metropolitan Boston with its drinking water burst yesterday morning. Thirty communities, including the city of Boston, are under a boil-water order until further notice. The Boston Globe reminds readers this crisis affects pets as well as people. I’m grateful to still have clean water coming out of my tap, as I live just a few miles west of where the break happened.

Ike’s wild week: One of the most riveting stories in Chicago last week was about a commuter. Big deal, you say, tens of thousands of commuters go in and out of the Windy City each day. True enough, but this one had four legs and a tail. On both Wednesday and Thursday last week, a dog was seen darting in and out of traffic, seemingly on his way somewhere, on Chicago’s Eisenhower Expressway. So, when he was picked up, the cops nicknamed the little guy Ike. From the Sun-Times:

“I didn’t say anything,” said Broadview police officer Antonio Santucci, who caught the dog. “I was just hoping he wasn’t going to turn violent and bite on me.”

After hours of running, Ike had no more fight left in him.
“He was very tired and happy somebody finally got to him,” Santucci said. “As soon as he lay down in the back of my car, he fell asleep.”

Don’t you dare steal my joy: Hands down the best piece of pet-related writing I encountered this week was courtesy of FrogDog Blog.  It reminded me how our immense pride in our pets (and ourselves) can harm how we relate to others.   They’re good words to live by.

Pet landmarks around the world: Maybe you’ve been to the top of the Eiffel Tower, stood on the Great Wall of China and motored by the Sydney Opera House (I’ve only done one of those three), but have you ever seen Dick Whittington’s cat in London?  How about Balto in New York’s Central Park?  MSNBC.com tempts you to hop on a plane with an irresistible slide show of some of the world’s best pet monuments in public spaces around the world.  And just when I’ve given up air travel…

PETA’s at it again, sans shame: Just when you thought you’d seen every story illustrating how low PETA can go, they stoop even further (AP report).

Enrichment advice for parrot owners:  Best in Flock was in Ashville, NC for the Phoenix Landing Seminar last week and took great notes in a session with noted author Kris Porter on parrot enrichment.

Kris Porter started off emphasizing that it’s critical to provide choices to our parrots. Enrichment allows our pet birds to make choices. (She even cited a study that showed providing enrichment opportunities and stimulating exercise can reduce stereotypic behavior like feather plucking! That not only makes sense and jives with the common wisdom, but it’s also good to see scientific evidence backing what we’ve been saying for a long time.)

Some birds don’t know how to forage, so you may need to work up to full-blown foraging. If you make it too hard to begin with, your bird won’t know how to start (and if you make them forage for all their food right away, they’ll go hungry!).

Indecency is in the eye of the beholder. Yes, ma’am.  I’ll remember that.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

For Thursday’s news roundup, Gina will be filling in for me. See you a week from today.

Photo credits:  Dick Whittington’s Cat, Paul Segner/MSNBC.

In 1991, Americans wagered $3.5 billion on greyhound racing in the United States.  A decade and a half later, the number had dropped to $1.1 billion, a 68% decline. You don’t have to be an economist to draw the conclusion: Dog racing in America is in a rapid, inexorable death spiral.    The Las Vegas Sun highlighted the industry’s plight this week as the American Greyhound Track Owner’s Association (AGTOA) met for their annual convention there.

Each year attendance drops at the convention. This year’s gathering is expected to draw about 120 people. Fifteen years ago the tally was upwards of 400. The industry is in such rapid decline that a growing number of dog track owners are finding common ground with animal-rights groups hoping to put live dog racing out of its misery.

In Iowa, for example, Harrah’s Entertainment is trying to outlaw part of its gambling business and is willing to pay the state $7 million a year for the privilege.

Just to reiterate that last line: Harrah’s is willing to pay Iowa $7 million NOT to support dog racing? That’s saying something. While I hate to see hard-working Americans lose their jobs in a down economy, this is a case of economic Darwinism I can live with. (Thanks to schnauzerfan for the tip.)

If you’ve ever thought about adopting a retired racer, there has never been a better time.

Unclear on the concept of charitable fund-raising: In St. Louis, the Animal House Fund has been working hard to raise money for a new city pound. Wait, let me back up. They’ve been working hard to raise money. The whole city pound part of the equation seems to be less of a priority than originally believed. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, almost $500,000 has been spent by the Animal House Fund so far, and they’ve raised $600,000 since 2004. That means it cost them 83 cents to raise a dollar, with no dollars ever having been spent to start building the pound they were tasked with funding. To be sure, there were plenty of high profile, gala black tie affairs, oh yes.

And despite a full calendar of trivia nights, cocktail functions and other soirees, not a single brick was laid for the new pound. Organizers acknowledge that most of the money raised went into overhead and administrative fees. Political missteps — such as choosing a location that was later opposed by residents — also caused long delays.

Mayor Francis Slay, saying the city can no longer wait as animals suffer, earlier this month ordered the current pound closed. He has instructed the city to seek outside help for shelter services, in effect ending Animal House’s effort to build a new pound.[...] “So many good people were involved and nothing was happening,” said Suzanne Phelan, a former Animal House board member. “I got more and more frustrated.”

As well you should, Ms. Phelan. You, the good people and the animal community of greater St. Louis, were the victims of an old-fashioned boondoggle.

Lojack® for dogs: Do you have AT&T? Do you have a dog? If so, listen up. Our pal omidog says that AT&T is introducing collars that will track your dog, and send the pooch’s location to your wireless AT&T device. I use Verizon Wireless, so I’m outta luck, but all you iPhone and other AT&T aficionados, please feel free to supply a product review.

Let us define some terms, shall we? I loves me some YesBiscuit, and no more so than when Shirley puts on her language cap and stands on her little soapbox. From here on in, when I use the terms she mentions, you may assume that I mean them the way she defines them. Brava, Shirley. I am excerpting one of the (but perhaps not the) most wonderful snippets. You, gentle reader, must head over to YesBiscuit to savor the rest. The only thing I didn’t like about the post was that I didn’t write it myself.

Getting rid of pets – I am not the mob. I don’t get rid of my pets. I may place a pet in a new home with screened applicants but this is intended to be an “upgrade” for the pet by placing him in a more fitting situation. I’m not snuffing him out or even putting him out of sight, out of mind. I am hoping to improve the pet’s quality of life by placing him in an environment where he is more likely to thrive than if he stayed in my home. This is a good thing, not a cement-shoes-and-a-river thing.

Phatman on the road: You’re familiar with phatman, from badrap, right?  He’s an irresistibly cute pit bull terrier, and he’s got a report from the road (well, technically, Cindy’s the reporter).  We have pictures. I am envious of phatman for many reasons.   First off, he’s more photogenic than I am.  Also, he met some gorgeous horses on his trip, but mostly, in one of the pictures he’s posing in front of the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory in Louisille, Kentucky.  You see that big yellowish brown thing on the left side of the picture?  That’s an enormous baseball bat (you can see it better here). I’ve always wanted to go there.  Baseball season is about to start, and he was in Louisville, at a true baseball mecca (yes, also the home of Churchill Downs).  He’s a lucky dog, is all I’m saying.

The coolest, furriest dog to have in Beijing: Quick quiz:  What’s the trendy dog to have today in China’s growing community of the super rich?  I’ll give you a few hints: it’s big.  Actually, it’s huge.  It’s very, very slobbery.  It’s not known for being lovable.  And it’s got more hair than any ten people you know.  Give up?  The Tibetan mastiff.

After splurging on real estate in Australia, American thoroughbreds and European designer fashions, China’s rich see the Tibetan mastiffs as a new status symbol. China is now home to an estimated 825,000 millionaires, its most in modern history, and its luxury goods market is one of the fastest growing in the world. Among the must-haves for rich men in northeast China, the official Xinhua News Agency recently said was a young beautiful wife, a Lamborghini and a Tibetan mastiff, “the bigger and more ferocious the better.”

Careful, though.

Passers-by were told only to admire the dogs from afar and not get near them because they’re hostile to strangers — all the better for protecting flocks and herders on the isolated Tibetan plateau, where they originated.

Yeah, don’t sign me up for one, thanks.  However, thank you to Susan Fox for the story.

Note: Your trusty reporter is headed out on the road for the weekend.  I’ll be meeting up with Dr. Becker, Gina, Liz and a few thousand of my closest new friends in the pet product community at the Global Pet Expo in sunny Orlando.    Expect to hear from one or all of us at some point over the weekend, blogging on what we’ve found and especially like.   Stay tuned.

Photo credits:  Dogtrack art: Chris Morris, Las Vegas Sun.  Phatman: badrap.com.