pet connection

It struck me as odd that so many animal control agencies in different parts of the country were responding in the same way to public calls for reform: by shooting the messenger.

From my column in SFGate.com:

There’s an epidemic spreading through the nation’s animal control shelters, and it’s not something a vaccination can prevent. It’s an epidemic of secrecy.

Consider this: Animal control is a government function, paid for with your tax dollars. It’s work done on behalf of the public; shouldn’t the public have some way to ensure it’s being done appropriately?

But in communities all over the country, including here in California, calls for animal control reform have been met with the sound of a door slamming in the public’s face.

[....]

The Central California SPCA, a private organization that holds the animal control contract for the city of Fresno, recently closed its board meetings to the public, sparking a wave of protests, including a July 19 demonstration organized by FixFresno.org, an advocacy group aimed at ending the killing of healthy and treatable pets in the city’s shelters.

It’s not surprising that citizens want to reform how Fresno’s homeless animals are treated; the CCSPCA kills around 80 percent of the pets it takes in, one of the worst kill rates in California and far above the national average of 50 percent.

Recently, animal rescuers in the community have also been alleging mismanagement, abuse and neglect at the shelter.

Until last month, the CCSPCA’s board meetings were open to the public, but on June 16, the president of FixFresno.org, Melissa McDonald, received a letter from the shelter’s attorney, Jeffrey M. Reid, advising her that the meetings were now closed and members of FixFresno.org would no longer be allowed to attend.

Attendance by FixFresno.org members had been permitted previously, he said, after the group asserted that the board meetings were subject to the Brown Act, California’s open meetings law. However, Reid told them this interpretation of the law was incorrect.

He pointed to what is essentially a loophole in the law, which calls for open meetings of private organizations contracted to do government work only in cases where the organization was created specifically to do that work, or if a member of the government sits on the organization’s board. Neither of those provisions applies to the CCSPCA.

Members of FixFresno.org showed up at the next board meeting anyway, only to be met at the door by Reid.

“He said that having us there was too ‘intimidating’ for the board to function,” McDonald told me. “It is sad that they chose to hide what is going on instead of addressing the problems.”

I called CCSPCA spokesperson Beth Caffrey, and asked what prompted the organization to contact an attorney on this matter in the first place.

“We want our board meetings to be productive,” she told me. “We couldn’t be productive because of the disruptive behavior of people who were there.”

In the rest of the article, I update the situation in Memphis and New York City, and have a great wrap-up commentary from FixAustin.org’s Ryan Clinton. It’s all here.

Photo: Courtesy of Celeste Pryor.

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Do you dread hearing your veterinarian tell you to give pills to your dog or — even worse — your cat? Dr. Marty Becker and Gina Spadafori tell you how to make it as easy for you as it is for the vet  in this week’s Pet Connection newspaper feature:

Your veterinarian makes it look so easy: Pill. Pet. And like a magic trick, suddenly the pill is inside the pet, and the pet seemingly none the wiser.

If only it were that easy for you.

You go home, and you can’t even find your cat when it’s time for medication. Under the bed? Maybe. Behind the couch? Maybe not. How does the cat know, and how is he able to disappear as if by another talented magician?

Your dog is only marginally easier, maybe. Not quite as fussy as your cat, he’ll eat the pill if it’s hidden in something yummy, or so you think. But later you find the pill on the kitchen floor, and you realize he was somehow able to extricate the yummy stuff from the medicine and hide the pill in his jowls for spitting out later. Outsmarted again!

You figure it’s a victory if you get half the pills in for half the number of days they’re prescribed, and you hope that’s good enough.

Problem is, it’s not. One of the biggest problems veterinarians have in helping your pet get better is … you. If you aren’t able to follow through with medications, your pet will likely be back at the vet.

Do you dread walking out of your veterinarian’s office with pills? Here are some strategies to make the pill-popping easier. (Read more…)

And from Dr. Marty Becker and Mikkel Becker:

New guidelines recently issued by the U.S. Army in Afghanistan alert military doctors on how to provide medical care to military dogs injured in combat. There are seven teams of military veterinarians in Afghanistan and two veterinary clinics. Since May 2010, six dogs have been wounded and 14 dogs have died in combat.

Before being treated at military veterinary clinics, injured dogs are transported by helicopter to field hospitals. The new guidelines inform military doctors on the differences in human and dog anatomies, which include dogs’ heartbeats being about 20 beats per minute faster and their temperatures being 2 to 3 degrees warmer, with similar blood pressure. The guidelines also address post-traumatic stress disorder in dogs.

Read all that and more here!

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Imagine, if you will, that you’re at a major airport (as I was a couple times last week), and you’re about to pass through security. Which is the better and safer option: the full body scanner, or a properly-trained dog? Last week, that very question was the subject of a noisy, contentious Congressional hearing.  From CNN.com,

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, led the dog caucus, arguing that canines are cheaper and less invasive than body scanners. Dogs are exceptional at sensing explosives, do not require software upgrades, don’t depreciate with use and might even be able to detect bombs implanted under a person’s skin.
“The single best way to find a bomb-making device or bomb-making materials is the canine,” Chaffetz said.

And dogs are widely accepted by the public, he said.

“Who doesn’t like dogs?” chimed in Inspector William Parker, head of Amtrak’s K-9 unit.

Canines are missing one thing that body scanners have, Chaffetz said. Lobbyists.

“That’s what the problem is,” Chaffetz said. “If you look at those lobbyists who pushed through those machines, they should be ashamed of themselves, because there is a better way to do this and it’s with the canines.”

Transportation Security Administration Assistant Administrator John Sammon promised to look into feasible (and potentially more intelligent) alternatives to the scanners we endure today.

Oakland Zoo’s new veterinary hospital: In the past, any time the well-regarded Oakland Zoo needed veterinary care for its animals, they had to be shipped more than an hour north, to the world-class hospital at the University of California, Davis. Now, according to SFGate, Oakland will have their own facility.

The Oakland Zoo broke ground Wednesday on a state-of-the-art veterinary hospital to treat its 600 animals and help train veterinary students. When completed next summer, it will be the largest zoo veterinary hospital in Northern California, second statewide only to the hospital at the San Diego Zoo.

“This is a tremendous step up for us,” said the zoo’s director, Dr. Joel Parrott. “It’s the beginning of a new era for the zoo.”

It won’t come cheap. The hospital will cost $10.8 million, but it will be able to handle everything from the zoo’s smallest amphibians to their largest mammals.

The latest from Joplin: Our own Phyllis DeGioia reports for VIN News on the ongoing progress being made in Joplin, Missouri’s recovery from May 22′s devastating tornado.

Veterinary clinics are not quite back to life-as-usual, but they’re well on their way.

Dr. Jim Christman’s Parkview Animal Hospital is operating out of a trailer in the clinic’s parking lot. Early reports that the clinic would close permanently were erroneous; the clinic will re-open in mid-August.

“The entire inside was destroyed and the back wall and runs were torn apart, but as far as the structural part, it was okay. We had to replace bricks on the front,” said Rachel Schwartz, a receptionist at Parkview. “All of our boarders were okay. We lost some clients; we had several that passed away.”

Dr. Ben Leavens of Main Street Pet Care also lost a few clients to the tornado, though he has no tally of how many among his 15,000 patients were affected.

Work on his 10,000-square-foot clinic and 5,000 square-feet parking structure isn’t quite done – the roof was lost and water damage was extensive, and the HVAC system destroyed – but the business has been open since July 5. “We’re extra busy now that we’re open,” Leavens said. “All areas are up and running.” That includes grooming, boarding and day-care services.

In a little less than two months, Joplin has made tremendous progress.

News from north of the border: I was in Toronto all last week, and I brought back two great stories. One, sent in by reader Anne Ahiers, tells us about a blog you should read, called I Want a Pound Dog. Additionally, I found a refreshing column by Amberly McAteer in Toronto’s Globe and Mail about the heartwarming surprise of finding the right shelter pet.

Tortoise news: Good news/bad news stories in the hard shell world, courtesy of SchnauzerFan. First the good news: a reunion in Iowa that will make you smile. Sadly, we must bid a sad farewell to Methuselah (pictured at right, circa 1954), who passed away at one hundred thirty years of age.

“I’ve known Methuselah since I was around 3 years old, so losing him is like losing an old, good friend,” said John Brockelsby, director of public relations at Reptile Gardens. “I had a lot of daily contact with him so having to say goodbye was very sad.”

By the way, the boy riding Methuselah in the picture is Mr. Brockelsby, when he was probably around three years old.

News of the weird: Once more, I must warn you the following story is not from The Onion. It was sent to me by Susan Fox, who tirelessly scours news tickers for the strangest, most head-shaking tidbits she can find, then generously forwards them to me so I can share them with you. This story is hard to stomach and even more difficult to believe (do check out the dog’s name), but I have to have faith that SFGate didn’t make it up. Nobody’s that demented.

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: Bomb-sniffing dog, cnn.com. John Brockelsby and Methuselah, RapidCityJournal.com

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Your city’s animal control shelter is involved in a high-profile animal cruelty bust, and your mayor, in a fit of civic outrage, pledges “ultimate transparency” at the agency from now on. He hires a new director and installs webcams in the back areas of the building, so the public can see just what’s going on.

Unfortunately, the public doesn’t like what it sees — animals being handled abusively and in violation of regulation, dogs and cats being hauled into holding areas and never being put up for adoption at all, pet after pet vanishing into the kill room despite rescuers clamoring to take them, and more.

That’s the situation in Memphis, Tenn., one that blogger Shirley Thistlewaite has been shining a spotlight on for more than a year. Last month, the Memphis city attorney sent her a threatening laywer letter about funds she was raising to help rescue groups treat and rehabilitate pets they pull from the Memphis Animal Shelter (MAS), apparently figuring that the best thing to do when you’re under fire is shoot the messenger and the people trying to help.

Right after local animal activists put up a billboard asking the people of Memphis to help reform the animal control agency, one of the city’s animal control agents was arrested for the suspicious disappearance of Kapone, an 11-year-old pet pit bull picked up by the officer.

So what does Memphis do? They close their shelter advisory board meetings to the public, and threaten to remove the webcams when they move to a new facility later this year. From ABC 24 in Memphis:

At a time when Mid-South animal activists are howling about more transparency at the Memphis Animal Shelter, the embattled shelter may soon be out of the public eye.

[....]

The mayor ordered cameras installed at the current shelter in 2009, after the shelter was raided by the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office. At the time, he pledged the cameras would lead to greater transparency at the shelter.

“We are going to see what the situation is going forward and then make a decision,” Wharton said.

Way to go, Memphis. Stunning example of civic leadership. Woo hoo.

One of the reasons the Mayor says he can’t move the webcams to the new facility is budget constraints. I wonder what he’d do if Shirley started raising money for that, too?

Photo: Webcam image from Memphis Animal Shelter, as published by Shirley Thistlewaite.

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Some dogs just can’t resist the water. No one knows that better than Gina Spadafori, who shares her tips on keeping dogs safe while letting them swim in this week’s Pet Connection newspaper feature.

My retrievers love to swim so much that one of them once attempted to squeeze herself through a cracked window to jump out of a moving car heading over the Mississippi River.

Heather was a smart dog, but the very sight of the Big River overwhelmed her common sense. She wanted to swim, and had it been possible, she would have.

Had she survived the fall, that is.

To be sure, most dogs aren’t so crazy about water to leap off a tall bridge, but all dogs can be at risk when water is involved. Many dogs enjoy swimming as much as people do, and cool times in the local swimming spot or backyard pool are one of the best parts of summer.

But play it safe. The keys to water safety for dogs are prevention, preparedness and awareness.

Check out Gina’s tips here.

And from Dr. Marty Becker and Mikkel Becker:

On an average weekday, Canadian pet owners spend nearly twice as much time surfing the Internet (48 minutes) and three times as much time watching television (79 minutes) as they do playing with/exercising their pets (25 minutes). The statistics come from Canada’s “Pet Wellness Report,” a research study of 1,000 Canadian dog or cat owners and 100 veterinarians conducted by the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association.

Read all that and more here!

Photo: Gina’s FayBee gets wet with friends.

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