pet connection

From the L.A. Times celebrity crap I don’t care about blog:

At a suite this week run by gifting guru GBK Productions, Globe nominees and presenters are expected to receive swag including trips and electronics. They will also receive truffle salt and truffle oil. To highlight the truffly goodness, GBK has also partnered with a company called Patty’s Royal Dandie Miniature Pet Pig, which breeds tiny pet pigs, to offer the animals as yet another gift.

The pet pigs usually sell for about $5,000, the suite people tell me, but the visiting celebrities would be able to get one for free. All they’d have to do is complete a one-hour course on how to treat the li’l porkers and present a certificate of completion. The tiny pig will then be hand-delivered to the celebrity.

Here’s the rest. Yes, all the animal advocacy groups are appalled, and rightfully so.  Wouldn’t it be great if some of these fluffy headed idiots started modeling responsible behavior for a change?

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Nathan Winograd starts the new year noting that although many of us consider the last few years to be pretty crappy, one good thing was the growth of the no-kill movement.  It’s now a force to be reckoned with, one that’s challenging the status quo in groups large and small — and ringing true with an animal-loving population. Winograd writes:

As the decade opened ten years ago, the humane movement was (erroneously) united in its perception of who was to blame for the killing and the hopelessness that it would ever end. But the truth came out, and splintered the movement—dividing us into two opposing camps: those who embrace the No Kill philosophy, its achievability, and the great promise held out by the American public’s great love for companion animals; and those who cling to the old paradigm of killing and blaming, on which their hold on power is based.

Here’s the rest. We don’t need new laws. We need new leaders.  And now, they are stepping up.

Must-read update: The year in review by the KC Dog Blog. With links. Great work, B!

More, grab tissues first: Happy ending for three rescued dogs. Heather, they look wonderful.

Image: Ilario, who says this blog has too many dog pictures.

Bringing up from comments (thanks, Elaine) with a h/t to Brent at the KC Dog Blog …

Fay, the fight bust dog whose lips were sliced off by a worthless scum dog-fighter, lost her battle for a new life. The dog was the topic of much discussion not only for her horrific man-inflicted injuries but also because she was the centerpiece of a HSUS fund-raising pitch to raise a million bucks for dogs “like” her, even though the national organization wasn’t paying a dime to care for her until bloggers pitched a bloody fit.

More information on the Mutts-n-Stuff Web site. I think perhaps Fay is in a better place, free of pain and fear, and I am so happy she knew love and caring before she died. I cannot say enough good about people like Gale, who give of their time, money and hearts to care for and heal the broken animals among us, especially those like Fay who are victims of such horrific abuse.

These volunteers and the pets they serve deserve awards, not sociopaths like Michael Vick and his brothers in slime who would do something like this to a living being.

I admit it.  Before I click on my browser’s bookmark for Pet Connection each day, I click on ESPN.com.  I’ve been a sports nut longer than I’ve been pretty much anything else.  This morning, a sports headline nearly knocked me out of my chair.   Michael Vick has been voted the Philadelphia Eagles’ recipient of the 2009 Block Courage Award.

The Block Award is named after Ed Block, who was a well-known humanitarian and former head athletic trainer of the Baltimore (now Indianapolis) Colts.    Quoting from their own website:

The Ed Block Courage Award Foundation is dedicated to improving the lives of neglected children and ending the cycle of abuse.  The purpose is to raise Awareness and Prevention of child abuse.  That objective is coupled with the Foundation’s commitment to celebrating players of inspiration in the NFL.

This is, basically, the NFL’s lower-profile version of baseball’s Clemente Award, named for Roberto Clemente, who played for the Pittsburgh Pirates until he was killed in a plane crash on New Year’s Eve 1972 while delivering relief supplies to victims of a Nicaraguan earthquake.  The Block Award exists to recognize and celebrate notable good works off the field more than on-field performance.  Even more importantly, you should know it’s voted on by each team’s players, not front office, fans or media.

This means Vick’s teammates decided he was such a good guy, such a role model for his public works on behalf of others, that he deserved to be lauded as their own community role model.   Going back to the mission of the Block Award “…dedicated to improving the lives of neglected children and ending the cycle of abuse.  The purpose is to raise Awareness and Prevention of child abuse.” Abused children and abused dogs have a lot in common.  Neither are able to defend themselves against marauding people bent on causing them harm, and neither deserve the horrors visited upon them.   The Block Courage Award is dedicated to ending the cycle of such abuse.  Michael Vick perpetuated, and indeed encouraged the abuse, going so far as to slaughter dogs himself, according to eyewitness reports (from his own former employees).

In the past year since he was released from prison and reinstated by the NFL, I’ve lost count of how many interviews I’ve read and seen from players, his colleagues, who have said substantially  “Look, the guy was punished for his crimes.  He did his time.  He gets to resume his life now, so back off, leave him alone, and let the man earn a living.”

He isn’t a star, and in fact Vick’s only played an ancillary role in the Eagle offense this year.  I don’t like his presence in the NFL, but that’s not my call.  Now, though, he’s lauded by his teammates as a role model?  How have we gotten to the point where we not only celebrate poor behavior (i.e. the movie “Mean Girls,” the ongoing fascination with stories such as Jon vs. Kate and balloon boy, etc.) but now the convicted felons receive prestigious awards? 

Fine, he’s earning a living.   But calling him a “player of inspiration” is beyond the pale.   The memories of the dogs in whose slaughter he assisted are again insulted.  The award, and the other 31 (more worthy) 2009 NFL recipients are also duly insulted.  Vick shouldn’t be mentioned in the same breath as Mike Furrey of the Cleveland Browns, who truly is a good citizen, or Shawntae Spencer of the San Francisco 49ers, who returned from a devastating knee injury in 2008 to become a team leader and star.

Vick has done nothing laudable, courageous or even exemplary.  He’s a convicted felon whose crimes are often minimized by some as “just a part of his upbringing in a tough neighborhood.”   Instead of a cautionary tale, today I can imagine kids in Vick’s hometown of Newport News, Va.,  saying to themselves “Hey, no matter what we do wrong, no matter how much trouble we get into, we can still play in the NFL, and our teammates will say we’re OK.”

To Vick’s teammates on the Eagles who voted for him, all I can do is quote Joseph Welch in front of the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954.  “Have you no sense of decency sir[s], at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

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Image by Greyhound Rick, whose Flickr photostream of greyt dogs in action can be seen here.

Greyhound racing is something I never think about much, except when I write to promote the adoption of ex-racers. The sport has never been legal here in California, at least not in my lifetime, and I’ve never taken the opportunity to see it elsewhere.

That last thing? Getting harder every year, with tracks closing for good one by one, most recently Phoenix Greyhound Park, which had been open since 1954.

Animal advocates, driven by regular reports of unwanted track-bred greyhounds illegally disposed of like trash, a bullet to the brain and a mass grave for the body, no doubt had some impact on the sport’s dwindling popularity. But more likely it was just a matter of the changing times. It’s easier if you want to gamble to go to an Indian casino, zone out and push a button on a slot machine — hell, that’s so easy you don’t even have to go to the effort of pulling a handle anymore.

Winning a bet at the races — horse or dogs — is about luck, sure, but it’s also about study, and nobody much can be bothered about that when the promise of effortless wins — even if the house is the only one who really wins — seems a better deal. People actually do make a living betting on racing — not me, I don’t gamble, horse racing is not about that for me — but I don’t know anyone who can say the same about the lottery or casinos. The “gaming industry” is all about sucker bets, a de facto government-sponsored tax on the poorer among us, for the most part.

In a way, it’s a shame about greyhound racing, because the industry long ago cleaned up its act in significant ways (excepting the rogue operator here or there), working more or less happily with adoption groups to get failed racers into forever homes as pets. (And by the way, they make great — oops, I mean greyt — easy-going companions, quiet, sweetly funny and low-energy almost all the time, unless given the opportunity to open up and flyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.)

Horse racing, of course, is also in trouble, and for many of the same reasons. (And without nearly as much effort to find homes for its “losers,” who are, as horses, infinitely harder to place.)  But while horse tracks are also closing,  the industry is still blessed with the patronage of the super-ultra-mega-richer-than-God rich (greyhound racing is a blue-collar game) and the continued popularity of its marquee events like the Kentucky Derby and its stars like Zenyatta (at right, with her jockey, Hall of Famer and Nice Guy Mike Smith) or the late Barbaro (can anyone name a famous greyhound race or a top-winning greyhound?).

The horse-racing industry will survive, albeit likely in a much smaller way and, I hope, a more humane one. That’s a short-odds bet, although of course nothing is certain in this world, not even an odd-on favorite.

Greyhound racing? It’s a goner, on life-support now.

Greyhound Rick’s photos, so rich with affection for the dogs and the people of the Arizona tracks, have made me think that when the last track goes and the last racing greyhound becomes a “40 mph couch potato,” something valuable will have been lost — another group of dogs with a job. (And yes, I do know  there’s a very small group of people who really do hunt with sighthounds, but they’re probably not a heckalot bigger than the number of  those who really do hunt with terriers. Gundogs — retrievers, pointers, spaniels, setters — are probably by far tops in terms of sheer numbers of real working dogs, but believe me, that’s just a guess undoubtedly skewed by the fact that I know a lot of people who hunt gamebirds.)

But then, sighthounds themselves aren’t exactly popular, even as pets.

The whippet is the top breed on the AKC registrations list, at No.  61, if you jump over the Rhodesian Ridgeback, only arguably a sighthound, and the Italian Greyhound, which is really a lapdog. Even the dog-show folks aren’t that taken with sighthounds, aside from the Afghan, who can be Barbie-dolled into a top attention-getter. Most sighthounds look extremely uncomfortable in a show ring, showing something on their faces that’s rather like the expression most people have when enduring  “those” medical tests involving the probing of nether regions.

The scarcity of really fast dogs with double-suspension gallops is one thing that just made me wince when Christie decided to move back home to San Francisco from her rural property, with the now-departed Rebel in tow as the end of a well-respected breeding program. I’m happy to know she’ll have a Deerhound again some day, but  it’s unlikely she’ll ever resume an active breed-preservation  program, at least not unless she gives up the city.

But what of the racing greyhounds? My neighbor has a greyhound, Lizzie (that’s her at right), a sweetheart from top show lines who has never stretched out at full gallop — that’s right, never.  A long-retired show-bred sighthound who has never been off-leash in an area big enough to run.

Why not? Because … she might get hurt.

It makes me hurt to think about it. Preserving our heritage working dogs  — especially the rare ones — is about more than breeding and showing them. It’s about working them, or at the very least, showing they can do something like the work they were developed to do.

Which is why I find myself today mourning the loss of a dog track — a strange feeling  that I’m actually surprised to have — even as I encourage dog-lovers to snap up these lovely hounds to fill your couches and your hearts.

But by damn, once you have  a retired racer, don’t take advantage of their willingness to veg out for the rest of their lives. Go, please, and find some place to let them fly.

They deserve to do so — and you deserve to see them do it. You’ll never, ever regret or forget it.