pet connection

From The Mail (UK), a strange “could it be?’ moment:

‘Bernann McKinney’ had saved tissue from the ear of her beloved ‘Booger’, which was frozen after the dog died, and then used as DNA source material to produce five pitbull pups.

[...] But as the eccentric Miss McKinney beamed joyfully from the world’s television screens on Tuesday, vague bells began to ring. [...] The face was familiar, albeit older and heavier. The surname was the same.

Surely it wasn’t? Could the new owner of the world’s first commercially cloned pups be the same woman who had gone on the run from British justice 30 years ago?

Elsewhere: Prince Chunk, the near-record 44-pound cat, has a new home. I trust he also has a good veterinarian, because putting a cat on a diet is a very tricky and potentially deadly affair. (Christie’s guidelines for feline weight-loss are a must-read on the subject.) … on SmartDogs, more icky-icky tick news. It’s true: The little creeps are everywhere, and there’s not enough soy sauce in the world to do them in. I hate ticks. … Hat tip to Nadine for noting the opening of a new business in Redmond, Wash., that sells freshly made pet food daily, made from sustainably raised meat. Interesting!

Hat tip to straybaby for the link to the Illinois State Veterinary Medical Association, opposing forced spay-neuter for Chicago. From the ISVMA:

The Illinois State Veterinary Medical Association (ISVMA) opposes the mandatory spay/neuter ordinance being proposed for the City of Chicago.  Although the ordinance’s stated goals to reduce the number of unwanted pets and gang activity are laudable, the reality is that it will have no effect on these problems. Instead, it will create some serious public health concerns, cause many animals to be denied necessary health care, and will trample on the personal property rights of conscientious pet owners. 

The ISVMA opposes this proposed ordinance for the following reasons: (explanations below)

• The ordinance implies that dog bites will vanish because of a simplistic, and non-scientifically based assumption that only intact animals bite.

• There is no conclusive evidence that mandatory spay/neuter programs work.

• This mandate would discourage pet owners from seeking rabies immunization if they are opposed to neutering/spaying and fear they will be reported.  Currently, we struggle to ensure the proper safeguards are in place to protect the public from rabies.  Rabies is essentially a 100% fatal disease to humans, dogs and cats.

• There are not enough resources in Chicago to enforce this law in a meaningful way.

• With regard to creating a healthier pet, there are both positive and negative affects accrued from sterilization. It appears that benefits outweigh risks; however, there are many breed and individual dog variants, suggesting that professional judgment is required to determine whether and when to neuter/spay pets.

Read the entire document; it’s well worth your time.  Should we paying attention to a retired TV game-show host or the detailed explanation of peer-reviewed work of general practice veterinarians, public-health veterinarians and veterinary behaviorists? Let’s put a cork in Bob Barker’s forced spay-neuter “tsunami” and work on community-wide, progressive, carrot-not-stick approaches to getting pets into homes and keeping them there.

I take back what I wrote yesterday. Illinois does have more common sense than California. The best the California Veterinary Medical Association could do on forced spay-neuter here (AB 1634, in its new and arguably worse incarnation coming to the California State Senate floor as early as Monday) is back away from “support” to “neutral”  after its members went ballistic.

At least in Illinois, they’ll look at the issues, the facts and the science and speak up for what works … and what doesn’t.

When you’re right, you’re right: Bob Barker is right about one thing … forced spay-neuter laws are indeed a tsunami, as in a wave that wipes out and kills everything in its path. Check out the killing and the costs that come in the wake of forced spay-neuter legislation, most recently in L.A. (Thanks to SaveOurDogs for the research and for putting it all in one place.)

Why is this even being discussed anywhere?

Gina, ask and ye shall receive. I’ve been looking into dog theft recently. The American Kennel Club sent out a press release in April suggesting that dog theft is on the rise, based on the number of news reports they’ve seen about it this year. More than 30, so far, compared to 10 in 2007.

Now, there’s no way of knowing whether dog theft is really on the rise. No one keeps track of how many dogs are stolen each year, and in many cases there’s no way of knowing whether the dog was really stolen or just strayed away. The Newport Beach Police Department web site has a press release about three stolen Bulldog puppies, but officer John Lewis says it’s not really a common crime in the area. The Beverly Hills cops say it doesn’t happen much there, either.

Nonetheless, based on a totally unscientific Google search, there are certainly quite a few “stolen dog” stories out there: thieves walk out with puppies from pet stores and kittens from shelters, they break into cars and homes and take dogs, or they walk off with dogs tied up outside coffee shops or stores. And then there are the people who find lost dogs and simply decide to keep or sell them, despite knowing that someone is looking for the dog (see last week’s The Ethicist in the NYT magazine).

On the rise or not, to me it seemed like a good opportunity to talk about ways to protect dogs from loss or theft and ways to get them back, and to my editors it seemed like a good commentary on the tanking economy, both subjects discussed in tomorrow’s column. Here’s a bit of a preview.

Microchipping is a given. None of the people I spoke with actually got their dogs back because of the microchip, but it’s a way to drive down the dog’s black market value, and it’s proof of ownership in the event of a dispute.

Kit Lofgren, whose 4-month-old Bernese Mountain Dog was stolen from her front yard last year, was able to access a list of Bay Area veterinarians and ask them to scan any Berner puppies brought in.

Make the theft or loss common knowledge. With the help of friends, Lofgren was able to blanket the Bay Area with flyers and posters. Friends who were driving north and to the East Coast put up flyers at every rest stop. She posted the information on lost dog web sites and Berner chat lists.

We killed his market value through exposure. There were two Berners his age that lived close to us and one of them took to wearing a sign saying ‘I’m not Kit Lofgren’s dog.’

Weed out crank calls by withholding certain identifying information. Unlike most Berners, Heikki didn’t have a lot of white on his feet. Lofgren never published any photos showing his feet, so when people called in the middle of the night claiming to have her dog, she had an easy way of knowing whether they were legit. Heikki was returned two weeks later by someone who claimed to have found him.

Barb Schaefer, whose Siberian Husky Gateway was stolen from a van in Utah and found running alongside the freeway a week later, used similar tactics in her search for him. Now when she travels with dogs, she carries a large folder with a pre-made “lost dog” flyer, a photo of each dog traveling with her, and each dog’s tattoo and microchip numbers.

I don’t count on the tattoo or microchip to get my dog back, but I count on it to be able to verify to someone that that is my dog.

Use common sense. Don’t take your dog with you on errands unless he can go inside with you (the dry cleaner and the bank, yes; Starbucks, the grocery store or Costco, no).

Don’t leave your dog alone in the car, especially if your car also contains other valuable items that might attract a thief’s attention.

Don’t answer questions about your dog’s value. I haven’t come up with a snappy response to that one yet, but I don’t care for the one that’s sometimes suggested–He’s priceless to me–since that might encourage someone to steal the dog and demand a ransom.

What’s your best advice for preventing loss or theft?

Gratuitous Cavalier blogging: I’m so excited! I finally have a dog who responds without hesitation to the Come command (not always something you can count on with a birds-on-the-brain spaniel, which is why they’re usually leashed). We were at Cavalier park day yesterday, probably the only place my dogs are allowed to play off leash. A Soft-Coated Wheaten Terrier came walking through, also off leash, and Twyla–who thinks that she is some kind of huge guard dog–took off after her, closely followed by Harper. I called Harper to come and she immediately stopped and came back to me. Yesss! The even more amazing thing is that Twyla followed her. Good girls!

How many years of work in canine health research does someone have to have under her belt before she gets a pass from the dog world on belonging to an organization some of us may not like?

Apparently more years than there are stars in the sky, if the recent reaction to a letter to PETA written by Dr. Jean Dodds is any indication.

Dr. Dodds is a regular speaker at dog clubs, including purebred dog clubs. She has assembled three decades of data on canine diseases both genetic and infectious. She operates a canine blood bank, Hemopet, and has published research on vaccination, thyroid disease, and other topics related to hematology. She is famous in the dog world for doing vaccine titer testing at a very reasonable price, as well as thyroid testing, and then getting on the phone with the dog owner to discuss the test results. Believe me, that kind of access is not typical.

Dr. Dodds is certainly no stranger to controversy. Some of her research leads to nothing much more than raised eyebrows among the veterinary community, while in other areas she’s regularly published and quoted even by skeptics. Some vets find her “too alternative” while most alternative vets find her not “holistic” enough. (more…)

So I’m innocently working away in my office when the phone rings. It’s Jeff Barringer, who runs PetHobbyist.com, where I’m an editor.

“Well,” he said, “the feds have done it this time. They’ve written a law that bans cats.”

Jeff tends to exaggerate, so I just laughed. “Yeah?”

“And cows,” he responded. “And I guess parrots, too. Snakes. Horses. And I don’t know, are dogs a native species?”

He had my attention. “What are you talking about?’

It turns out he was talking about a proposed piece of federal legislation known as H.R. 6311, written by House Delegate Madeleine Bordallo (D-Guam). I’m sure she didn’t mean it this way, but she managed to write a bill that seems to threaten the continued existence of most of the domesticated species of animal in America.

Known as the Non-native Wildlife Invasion Prevention Act, if passed the bill would create two lists onto which every species of animal on the planet would be placed, excepting only those species native to the United States. On one list, the so-called white list, would be species that had been proven not to “negatively impact the economy, environment, or human or animal species’ health.”

On the black list would be all other species — as in, literally, every other species on the planet — and no such animals could be imported into this country. (more…)