The Grand Prize winner is Legacy Boxer Rescue, which serves the Dallas/Forth Worth area of Texas. They’ll receive $20,000 worth of prizes donated by our wonderful sponsors! The photo of some Legacy volunteers was taken in Dallas, when they all turned out for the last stop on the BIG Bus Tour to say hello! Congratulations to a great organization!

Winner of the Second Prize was Villalobos Rescue Center, a rescue, rehabilitation and placement facility for abused and abandoned pit bulls located in Canyon Country, Calif. They’ll receive $5,000 worth of donated prizes (with an extra wag of the tail from my own rescued pit bull mix, Gracie!).

The group with the third-highest number of votes, and winner of  the Third Prize, is Great Lakes Bengal Rescue, a non-profit Bengal cat rescue within the Great Lakes region serving Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, and Wisconsin. They maintain a network of over 25 foster homes, and will be receiving $4,000 worth of donated prizes. Great work, friends!

Winning the Fourth Prize is Blind Cat Rescue and Sanctuary, a North Carolina-based organization that provides a safety net for blind cats who are homeless. They will receive $3,000 worth of donated prizes, which we know will be put to great use!

Our Fifth Place winner is Detroit Dog Rescue, which saves abused, abandoned, injured and starving dogs off the streets of Detroit. They are in the process of fundraising to build a no-kill shelter in the city, and already let us know that whatever they win will be given to to members of the Detroit community as part of a “Free Dog Food Day” giveaway of their own. That’s something I’m proud to be part of!

Now for some more exciting news: Every single one of the rest of our 50 finalists will receive at least $1000 in donated prizes! I’ll post later this week about just how that was made possible, and thank the donors who came through for us.

I want to take this opportunity to thank our prize donors, everyone who nominated rescue groups and shelters in the contest — more than 13,000 of you! — as well as thank all the dedicated rescuers and shelter volunteers and workers who do so much for the cats and dogs every day!

I am proud and honored to be able to support you in any way possible, my friends!

Here are the rest of the finalists who will each receive at least $1000 in prizes, under the jump:

“It’s a great way for the families and the pets to brighten each other’s day while they are here. Family members come down and walk their dogs or hug their cats anytime they want and it just gives both of them a sense of familiarity and calmness in the chaos,” says HSM’s Corrie Kahl, shelter manager for the emergency shelter in Joplin and for the HSM shelter in St. Louis.

Racquetball courts and offices in the basement of the student center have become the temporary housing units for the animals. Kennels and blankets and play toys fill the rooms. But most of the pets don’t have much time to use them since staff and volunteers from the HSM spend most of their time holding and babying about 14 animals belonging to the families in the shelter.
The safe-keeping of victimized families’ pets is only one part of the HSM’s activities in Joplin. The HSM Disaster Response Team goes where it is needed throughout the state and neighboring states to execute animal search and rescue efforts. As though to drive that point home, Corrie’s walk talkie crackles with a DRT member from the devastated Joplin suburb, saying, “We do have evidence that the cats are still alive; they are using the litter box. We’ll continue our search.”

Meanwhile, not far from campus, the Joplin Humane Society Animal Adoption and Resource Center’s facility is fulfilling another service: keeping the pets that have been found safe and providing flexible hours for people to come, look and, hopefully, identify their pets. While the facility is open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., they are also using social media tools, posting pets’ pictures and date they were found on its Web site.

The Joplin Humane Society (JHS) also has an active Facebook site, too. On that site, there is an Amazon link that lists the product and supplies needed for the shelter that can be shipped. Pet owner Randy Resler is just one person depending on the services of the Society’s AARC. His home was one of the lucky ones; it was not totally destroyed. In fact, he and his wife stayed in it after the storm. His two cats and Pomeranian named Lilly were in crates in the garage out of harm’s way from the debris. While he and his wife were in their house sorting through things, someone apparently found the animals in the garage at the back of the house and did not realize anyone was home and took them. Randy hopes it was a rescue team that found the animals and he is confident that once the JHS has time to process more found animals, he will find his. He was heading that day to the shelter to take another look. As of Saturday, he was still looking.

The JHS’s Facebook postings say more volunteers are not needed at this time at the JHS, but to check back in several weeks. However, there are always unforeseen expenses creating a need for monetary donations now more than ever. Donations can be made through the JHS’s Website.

While some animals are just waiting to get back home, there are some canines with jobs to do. News reports Saturday stated there were 600 volunteers and 50 dog teams out again across the city in search and recovery mode. One organization is Gateway Search Dogs, Inc. of St. Louis.  Kathy Roeder, president of Gateway, was there Thursday with her Australian Shepherd, Cooper. The nonprofit organization provides trained canines and personnel to locate lost, missing and deceased persons. It serves all cities, county, state or national search-and-rescue agencies at no charge.

Updates about Joplin are provided on Web sites like the City of Joplin’s Facebook site where information is immediately posted. Go here for more information. The Web site for the city of Joplin is here and includes links to donations sites and important phone numbers. A volunteer coordination center is manned on the campus of Missouri Southern State University at 3950 Newman Road, Joplin, MO 64801. During the week, the number to call is 417-625-3543 for individuals and groups.

Please do not come from out of town unless you call first to find out if there is anything you can do. Police and fire officials are strongly encouraging anyone who does not have a home in the affected area to please stay clear of the damage site. There will be plenty of time for many months to come to help locally.

Image credit: All photos courtesy of Kathie Kerr.

Nevertheless, miraculous stories are emerging from the rubble. One particular bit of news has brightened everyone’s spirits. A rescue dog named Javier alerted his handlers that he detected someone who might be alive. The team heard moaning, and started frantically digging through the debris, eager to pull out any survivors. As it turned out, Javier was right. He had found….a fellow dog! A very relieved yellow Lab was pulled from the wreckage, and gave everyone new hope that miracles are always possible, even in the worst catastrophes. KABC has the video story. Please remember to come back to Pet Connection a little later today for another story out of Joplin.

A new twist on “Where’s the beef?”: If you sell a product and promise it contains (let’s say) shrimp, by law it actually has to have shrimp in it. If it doesn’t, that’s not just deceptive advertising, it’s illegal. Hence, the warning letter sent by the FDA recently to Evanger’s Dog and Cat Food Company. The Lamb and Rice dog food contains no discernable traces of lamb, though there is “bovine material” (I don’t want to know, truly). Additionally, the Grain Free Duck pet food has the same problem. From the FDA letter:

(T)he analytical sample results did not detect the presence of duck in the product.

That’s a problem, wouldn’t you say? There’s a bit more, as the FDA alleges Evangers failed to provide requested processing and production records for 2009. the letter is just a warning, putting the company on public notice. They’re not alleging that the food is unsafe, though there is a mention of the products being “adulterated” (which is a definite no-no), only that it isn’t what they claim it to be. By extension, you could correctly infer the FDA is calling into question how the food could be priced and sold while not containing the lamb and duck it purports to include. This isn’t Evangers’ first rodeo with the feds, and you can bet this story isn’t over. Stay tuned.

Did Hepatitis C come from dogs? Dr. Amit Kapoor, an investigator with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health‘s Center for Infection and Immunity, has made a claim that could change the way we look at hepatitis, a deadly liver ailment: Hepatitis C could have “jumped” from dogs to people more than five hundred years ago. The virus, also known as HCV, affects more than two hundred million people around the world and still has no known cure. Dr. Kapoor is quoted in HealthDay explaining how his team discovered the link.

“[W]hile we were analyzing samples from dogs involved in outbreaks of respiratory disease, we came upon a virus that was more similar to HCV than other viruses of the same family. So far, we have only detected [the virus] in sick animals, a few of which had died of unknown causes. Because of its close genetic similarity to HCV, we suggested the name of canine hepacivirus.”

The Columbia study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Bad Newz turns to good: A small animal rights group in Tipton, Penn., called Dogs Deserve Better just bought a five-bedroom mansion for $600,000. That’s an unusual purchase, no? Yes, it is, but there’s a reason you should care about it. The home was the former headquarters for Bad Newz Kennels. That’s right. SickVick’s former house of horrors will forever more be used as a rehabilitation center for dogs who have been chained and penned. The new owners plan to balance the karmic scales. From NBC Sports:

“I think by us overtaking this property we are winning for the dogs. We are, in essence, giving this property back to the dogs that were abused there by using it to help other dogs just like them,” said Tamira Thayne, the group’s founder.

The organization paid for the house with a 30 percent down payment secured through donations and a loan. An anonymous donor has agreed to make payments for the next ten years, but Thayne said fundraising will continue.

Ultimately, the group wants to raise $3 million to fully pay for the site, install fencing and build a facility for the dogs. The house will serve as the group’s new headquarters and Thayne said she or another staff member will live there to monitor the dogs.

This is how it should be, don’t you agree?

Surreal story out of D.C.: Video surveillance in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of Washington, D.C showed a woman allegedly attempting to poison stray cats earlier this month. She was arrested, charged with animal cruelty, and faces up to six months in jail and a fine of up to $1,000 if guilty. I’d never bother to report such a run-of-the-mill story, except the woman is a researcher working for the Smithsonian Museum’s Migratory Bird Center at the National Zoo. What’s more, the Smithsonian has no intention of suspending her while the case is investigated. Your tax dollars at work. Alley Cat Allies is on the case.

What happens when you tease a dog: I love this YouTube video about a guy with too much time on his hands, and his dog, who deserves a big ol’ steak.

And to finish off this week’s column, I give you a total “awwww” moment: Sleepy kitten and her snuggly mom.

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 credit: Video screengrab from KABC.

But a string of particularly horrific stories of abuse and neglect in our nation’s shelters, as well as watching our economy crash and burn because we’d gotten to the point where we were basically letting Wall Street “regulate” itself, have combined to turn me into a shelter reform flip-flopper.

That’s why I’m now strongly supporting passage of laws based on the model “Companion Animal Protection Act” (CAPA) in every state in the U.S. From my column today on SFGate.com:

It’s more than a little disturbing to consider how little actual “shelter” homeless pets receive in some agencies bearing that name. Take Tennessee’s Memphis Animal Shelter, for example.

Conditions there were so bad that they prompted a high-profile sheriff’s raid on the facility in 2009. Investigators found animals starving to death and going without water; there were even allegations of dog-fighting going on at the agency

After the raid, the city installed webcams inside the facility so citizens could see what was going on behind the scenes, but even then, conditions didn’t improve all that much.

Blogger Shirley Thistlewaite, who has been covering the situation in the Memphis shelter for more than a year, posts webcam images from MAS several times a month.

Some of the images show dogs being dragged, terrified, to the kill room. Others show cats being poked with sticks by staff members. There are examples of workers violating city policies, of pets escaping from kennels and cages, even of a puppy being hauled to his death, dangling from a worker’s hand that was holding a fistful of the loose skin on the puppy’s back.

If you’re tempted to dismiss the situation at MAS as an aberration, think again. Other animal control facilities may not have webcams in their backrooms, but volunteers and animal rescuers frequently report abuse and neglect in shelters all over the country.

[....]

I don’t normally get on board the legislative express when it comes to reform. I think that education and advocacy are the best approaches to take when trying to change things. In fact, when (CAPA author Nathan) Winograd proposed that San Francisco adopt its own version of CAPA at a meeting of the city’s Animal Welfare Commission two years ago, I didn’t agree. I thought it was micromanagement. I thought it was government run amuck.

I’ve changed my mind. There are simply too many abuses going on in too many shelters, and too many of them are going unpunished or even uninvestigated. The provisions of CAPA are not outrageous, and most of them are being used already by the best shelters in the country, including animal control agencies in Reno, Nev., Charlottesville, N.C., and Ithaca, N.Y.

Read the complete article, including about the launch of Rescue-50, a joint project of Winograd’s No Kill Advocacy Center and the Florida organization No Kill Nation, to pass CAPA nationwide, here.

Photo: Puppies in a feces-smeared cage in a “shelter,” courtesy of Nathan Winograd.

The contest received more than 13,000 nominations, and 50 finalists have been selected at random from among them, and will go on to the voting round.

To vote, just go here (you have to have a Facebook account to vote).

The 50 finalists are under the jump….

1. Animal Friends of the Valleys
2. ARME (Animal Rescue, Media & Education)
3. Blind Cat Rescue & Sanctuary
4. Central Brevard Humane Society
5. Charm City Animal Rescue
6. Chicago Pet Rescue
7. Clinton County Humane Society
8. Dane County Humane Society
9. Detroit Dog Rescue
10. Exeter Animal Shelter
11. Fallbrook Animal Sanctuary
12. FOWA Friends of Wayne Animals
13. Found Chicago
14. Furry Friends Refuge
15. Genesis Animal Rescue
16. Goliath and Bebe’s World
17. Great Lakes Bengal Rescue
18. Heartland Animal Shelter
19. Heartland Lab Rescue
20. HELP
21. Help Humane
22. Helping Paws Pet Rescue
23. Homeward Trails Animal Rescue
24. Hound Haven
25. Humane Society of Dallas County
26. Humane Society of West Alabama
27. Humane Society of Yuma
28. Itty Bitty Kitty
29. Lab Rescue of the LRCP
30. Legacy Boxer Rescue
31. Lifeline For Pound Buddies Rescue
32. Long Island Bulldog Rescue
33. Marley’s Mutts Dog Rescue
34. Midwest Rabbit Rescue and Rehome
35. New Rattitude
36. OK Yorkie Rescue
37. Partners4pets
38. Paws and Prayers Pet Rescue
39. Perfect Pets Rescue
40. Pets Unlimited
41. Precious Secrets Sheltie Rescue
42. Ruff Love Rescue
43. Sacramento County Department of Animal Care and Regulation
44. Save1Pet
45. Save-A-Pet
46. Southern California Pomeranian Rescue
47. Take Me Home Rescue
48. Valley of the Sun Giant Schnauzer Rescue
49. Villalobos Rescue Center
50. Woodruff County Animal Rescue Friends

Read the full contest details here. Vote here.

CARDA is a group of volunteers with specially trained dogs dedicated to assisting in the search for missing persons. The non-profit organization is the oldest search dog group in the nation and has participated in over two thousand searches since 1976.

CARDA volunteers and their dogs will be at each of the ten Pet Food Express stores tomorrow, and they’d sure like your support. These people (and their dogs!) are amazing. They take time off work, travel where they’re needed, and spend up to 100 hours per month on training and searches.

Natural Balance is also helping out. They’ll be donating a portion of their sales at Pet Food Express tomorrow as well.

As Heather Houlan put it in a recent blog post,

So, if you live in California, go to Pet Food Express this Saturday, meet some of the search dogs who are ready to save your bacon, and get your dog washed. Buy tokens and use them later. Buy tokens and donate them. Buy some of that Natural Balance dog food — it seems like a good brand. Just donate to CARDA outright.

For more information, see the CARDA website.

photo: California Rescue Dog Association (CARDA)

Brewster belongs to Sandy Hall, a determined pet cancer awareness advocate from northern California. He is also the nephew of Hall’s previous famous Great Dane named Gibson, deemed the World’s Tallest Dog by the officials from “Guinness Book of World Records.” Gibson stood 42.2 inches high at the shoulders and soared more than 7 feet high when standing on his hind legs. Sadly, Gibson died from osteosarcoma two years ago.

In his memory, Hall is touring the United States with Brewster throughout the entire month of May in hopes of raising $1 million in donations to be made to the Morris Animal Foundation to fund research to find a cure for cancer. The tour is funded by Petco and Blue Buffalo pet food. Back to the backyard, though. The combined weight of my four pets (two cats named Murphy and Zeki and two dogs named Cleo and Chipper) barely tips the scales at 90 pounds. So all of them put together are less than half of Brewster’s weight. Despite being a mere 60 pounds, Chipper, my golden retriever-Husky, needed to do a parallel walk with Brewster and Hall down my street to silence what I refer to “doggy air guitar” and calmly transform into a polite canine host. The mutual side-by-side walk worked.

The biggest surprise meet-and-greet, however, occurred between Brewster and Zeki, my 9-pound Turkish Van mix. I adopted Zeki about a year ago after she survived a brutal knifing as a stray and then endured eye-related health issues in a foster home. She has every right to be a nasty, anti-social feline, but she has yet to meet a stranger, and that includes the many dog visitors who come into my home. Brewster’s only cat experience sparked a swat and hiss from a less-than-welcoming cat, according to Hall.

Zeki, relaxed and cradled in my arms, leaned over to a weary Brewster and delicately touched noses. Size wasn’t an issue for this confident cat. She was more focused on getting turkey treats than fussy about this giant canine in her backyard. Zeki has proven to be an excellent feline ambassador who is always up to meeting people and traveling to new places.

Brewster and Hall will be covering thousands of miles throughout the month of May inside a bus that gets a whopping eight miles to the gallon. I don’t even want to calculate that hefty bill at the pump, but you can’t put a price on the damage cancer causes. Cancer claims about as many dogs and cats at the same rate as people, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association. The Morris Animal Foundation officials drive it home with the sobering statistic that one in every four dogs die of cancer.

May is Pet Cancer Awareness Month. You can help by rounding up your receipts at Petco or making donations online at Pet Cancer Awareness. If you want to learn more about Brewster, billed as the World’s Tallest Puppy (yet to be officially sanctioned by the Guinness guys), just dash over to his site.
Brewster’s arrival drew curious interest from my neighbors, many of
whom were wowed by his towering stature. The most heartfelt response came from my neighbor, Flo Frum. Nearly 87 and possessing the same energy and wit as another senior (Betty White), Flo lost her husband Frank to lung cancer just six months shy of their 60th wedding anniversary six years ago. Her home is now shared by a spirited miniature Schnauzer named Buddy. She eyed Brewster, gave him a big hug, dismissed the drool he deposited on her pant leg and then hugged Hall.

“I hate cancer,” she quietly told Hall. “I love dogs. Thank you for making this trip. I just wish Frank was alive to see it.”

Photo credits: Arden Moore

A bill before the Iowa legislature would make it a crime to produce, distribute or possess photos and video taken without permission at an agricultural facility. It would also criminalize lying on an application to work at an agriculture facility “with an intent to commit an act not authorized by the owner.”

While the laws are meant to keep animal activists from revealing some farming practices (like shocking treatment of dairy cattle exposed in recent years), the proposals will also help keep puppy-mills behind the curtain of secrecy. They  could even protect poorly run shelters from being exposed (cough cough, Memphis, cough cough), argues the website care2.com:

The legislation proposed in Minnesota attempts to crack down on activists who have exposed repeated animal welfare violations. Among its provisions, the bill targets anyone who documents an “image or sound” of animal suffering in a sweeping list of “animal facilities,” including factory farms, animal experimentation labs, and puppy mills.

According to Will Potter, author of “Green Is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Movement Under Siege,” Minnesota’s House File No. 1369 goes even further.

The bill, introduced by six Republicans, also includes a number of other provisions that have popped up in “eco-terrorism” bills and “animal enterprise terrorism” laws over the years. Similar legislation has also been introduced in Florida and Iowa to target undercover investigators.

The Minnesota bill includes a number of dangerous parts. Among the most important:

1. “Animal facility interference.” This provision targets those who, without the owner’s consent, “produce a record which reproduces an image or sound occurring at the animal facility.” Even worse, it targets those who “possess or distribute a record which produces an image or sound occurring at the animal facility.”

Translated: Taking pictures and videos is illegal, but so is uploading them to YouTube for public consumption. Anyone else have a problem with this?

Community supported agriculture for pets! I have friends from Maine to California who participate in community-supported agriculture (CSA) programs. Perhaps you do it in your area. But here’s a new wrinkle: CSA for dog food. Kim Thornton sent me this link from the Village Voice, about Jake Dickson of Dickson’s Farmstand Meats in New York.

The new “dog-food program,” Dickson explains, “allows us to close the loop completely so we’re nearing zero waste.” The parts that he doesn’t have much use for, such as the 80 pounds of beef liver he receives each week, make ideal canine sustenance. But rather than just package and sell them as is, Dickson partnered with Stacy Alldredge, a dog trainer and canine nutritionist who, Dickson says, “is a big advocate of cooking real food for pets.”

Great idea. Use naturally-grown agricultural products that would otherwise go to waste, give dogs fresh, nutritious meals, and support local farms. Everybody wins. To see how this concept works already, check out the SFRaw co-operative, to which Christie and Gina both proudly belong.  It’s a little different in operation, but the local, sustainable and humane ethic is the same.

“I’m not asking you. You’re not nice.” Dogs beg people for food. Not exactly a news flash, is it? Here’s the kicker: it seems dogs know who to ask, by paying close attention to how people interact with each other. This article from The New Scientist article on the finding is frankly scaring me. (thanks, Patti S.)

Luxury in Boston for all: The Boston Globe spotlights the trend we’re developing here in the Boston area for creating –  and supporting –  ultra-luxurious vacation spots for pets. As a Red Sox fan, I found this next snippet irresistible.

At Fenway Bark, the best room in the house, the 72-square-foot Owner’s Box, costs $150 per night. True, that’s almost as much as the $155 average daily rate for human hotels in the Greater Boston area, according to the Massachusetts Lodging Association, but it does come with unlimited dog-owner Skype sessions, bottled water upon request, and custom-made beds with 6-inch orthopedic foam.

The Skype was a perk that Tara Philbin of South Boston could not resist. Before heading off to her bachelorette party in New Orleans Saturday, Philbin downloaded the Skype app so she could chat with her boxers Declan and Kiera.

I particularly like Fenway Bark‘s website. Check it out, unless you’re a Yankees fan, in which case you should just move on to the next paragraph.

Highlights from around the Pet Connection Blogosphere. Recent posts I particularly like from our distinguished blogroll:

A shout out to Ingrid: Our own Ingrid King‘s personal blog The Conscious Cat has a post I particularly like. This one is about World’s Best Cat Litter and how they’re supporting shelter causes in Texas.

Woo Woo! Photo essay posts from Three Woofs and a Woo always make me smile.

Happy Tax Day: Love this cartoon from SmartDogs.

Finally, speshal nom from icanhascheezburger.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!

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 credit: Memphis Animal Shelter video snapshot courtesy of YesBiscuit.wordpress.com.

We not only recognize the historic anniversary, but we also note that as part of World Veterinary Year (proclaimed in January at Versailles), North Carolina Governor Beverly Perdue proclaimed 2011 Veterinary Science Year. Spotlighting the contributions of veterinarians to animal health is a major focus of Dr. Becker’s and Gina’s Big Bus Tour this spring. Along with telling people about the new book (do you have yours yet?), Dr. Becker will be repeating a four-word mantra: Healthy pets visit vets. Not a new idea, but one that bears repeating.

Update on Japan: Veterinary Practice News is staying on top of rescue efforts for animals in Japan.

The Boston-based World Society for the Protection of Animals pledged $150,000 to assist Japan’s Animal Disaster Response Team (ADRT), a group of Japanese animal groups, in providing relief to animals affected by the disasters, and the Washington, D.C.-based American Humane Association (AHA) has provided an “initial” $10,000 in cash and a shipment of animal sheltering supplies to the Japan Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Japan Animal Welfare Society, which is also part of the ADRT. Those agencies, along with the Japan Pet Care Association and the Japan Veterinary Medical Association, have formed the Headquarters for the Relief of Animals in Emergencies, AHA reported. Meanwhile, rescuers from the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), based in Yarmouth Port, Mass., have mobilized to Japan to conduct an assessment and assist with animal rescue efforts, the IFAW reported.

The needs in Japan continue to be daunting, but the response is ongoing. In our little corner of the world, we’ve been encouraging donations to World Vets first and foremost.  Check out this volunteer organization here.  Our Dr. Becker just cut World Vets a check for a cool $1,000 … and while few of us can do that, any amount is welcome, and it all adds up.

Hands on the patient: It is a well-known truth in health care that it’s often hard to accurately diagnose a patient without actually putting your hands on them. Our own Dr. Nancy Kay has an outstanding post in her blog Speaking for Spot, detailing what should be a matter of course in your veterinarian’s examination.

A big shout out to Dr. Robin: Dr. Robin Downing is the subject of a glowing profile in the March issue of Northern Colorado Medical & Wellness. It’s well worth reading the entire article, but one section that’s especially enlightening is the discussion of Dr. Robin’s incredible sensitivity to pain management:

She recalls a family who came to her because their normally gentle black Labrador unexpectedly bit their son when he had wrapped his arms around the dog and given him a hug. They were ready to put the dog down but hesitated, asking Dr. Downing to examine the canine. She discovered the dog was suffering from a great deal of lower back pain (an eight out of a pain scale of 10). “With just firm pressure, the dog was ready to bite the veterinarian,” she recalls. “For the child to have hugged the dog must have been excruciating.” By recognizing that the animal was in pain, and treating that pain, the ending is a happy one. The son’s interaction with the pet was carefully monitored until the dog’s pain was greatly reduced. “Eventually the dog began to ask to play and interact with the son,” says Dr. Downing. The bond was restored.

Brava, Dr. Robin!

Feline abortion, point-counterpoint:  It’s rare that two bloggers I respect take diametrically opposed positions on the same stance. However, this week Nathan Winograd makes a case against feline abortions — better known as spaying pregnant cats.  The other side of the coin is a much older post (four years, to be precise), but still eloquent. Pet Connection’s BFF Dr. Patty Khuly explained why, in her opinion, the procedure can be the best decision.

The new boss in Austin isn’t the same as the old boss: The bar in Austin, Texas, has been set pretty high now that the Texas capital has wholeheartedly embraced the No Kill philosophy. The new director of the city’s Town Lake Animal Shelter is Abigail Smith. On the heels of her success in Ithaca, N.Y., Smith sat down with the Austin Chronicle, less than two days after arriving on the job. When asked if No Kill was even possible in Austin without mandatory spay-neuter in effect,  her answer couldn’t have been clearer:

Putting a primary focus on spay/neuter as an incredibly important component of the no-kill equation, and putting resources behind public outreach and providing low-cost services, doing public education, these are critical. But I think when you mandate things and make it punitive, it doesn’t provide better results than when you provide opportunities for people to comply with what you want them to do. So I don’t think it needs to be a law. I think it needs to be an initiative effort and a primary focus of decreasing intake, but I don’t think it needs to be mandated.

We’ll check back on Austin’s new sheriff, and see how she’s doing. Meanwhile, HB 3450, the proposed Texas Companion Animal Protection Act, was introduced in the Texas Legislature. The Houston Animal Shelters Examiner details why it would be a game-changer.

Best writing of the week: Before you read the next link, please take a second and grab yourself some tissues. You’ll need them for this commentary on love and loss from Doree Shafrir in the New York Times. Thanks to my friend Melissa Tate for the tip.

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 credit: Dr. Marty Becker performing surgery at Lakewood Animal Hospital in Coeur D’Alene, ID. Abigail Smith, City of Austin, TX.

The fundraising drive got over the hump with the support of the amazing folks at World Vets — and all of a sudden, their Facebook community took on the challenge of getting us over 6,000!

Their challenge inspired me to issue one in return: If we get there by the end of the weekend, I’ll donate $1000 to World Vets, to support the great work they do for animals all over the world.

Help spread the word and support World Vets in providing veterinary aid around the globe in collaboration with animal advocacy groups, foreign governments, US and foreign military groups and veterinary professionals in 25 countries. And if you already “like” the Dr. Marty Becker page, you can always donate to them the old fashioned way.

As always, thanks to you all for your support, enthusiasm, and love of animals! You’re in my heart.

Photo: World Vets in action.