pet connection

The Pet Connection team has a notable presence in the new issue of The Bark magazine.

Christie on the realities of no-kill today: Yes, our very own Christie Keith has a feature article in the current issue on the no-kill movement, which is both the hottest, most controversial  issue in sheltering today and the most promising. Since the magazine’s articles are not available on Teh Interwebs, you’ll just have to go to your newsstand and pick up a copy, or better yet, do what I’m doing: Get yourself a subscription!  To whet your appetite, I’ll give you a snippet of Christie’s piece:

For decades, the dream of a no-kill nation was considered exactly that: a dream. Yet today, communities across the country are closing in on the promise of saving all their healthy and treatable dogs and cats. Almost all organizations involved in tracking shelter data, including the Humane Society of the United States and Maddie’s Fund, estimate that the number of animals killed annually in shelters has plummeted from more than 25 million in the 1970s to around four million today. The United States has never been closer to becoming a no-kill nation than it is at this moment. But will we ever get there?

Best, brightest … and here: But wait, there’s more.  Our own Gina Spadafori gets a mention in this issue, as well.  She has been named one of the 100 best and brightest figures in the dog world, as well as Pet Connection’s Dr. Narda Robinson, of Colorado State University.  Now how totally cool is that?  Brava Christie, Dr. Narda and Gina!  Other names on the list most likely to be familiar to Pet Connection readers include:

• Nathan Winograd, no-kill movement trailblazer
• Dr. Kate Hurley, shelter medicine pioneer
• Dr. Robin Downing, pain medicine expert
• Dr. Nancy Kay, internal medicine specialist and author of the  Speaking for Spot blog
• Dr. Paul Pion, world-famous veterinary cardiologist and founder of the Veterinary Information Network and the  VIN News Service
• Dr. Donald Strombeck, who wrote the book on home-prepared diets
• Dr. Marion Nestle, truth-teller, food industry expert and author of the Food Politics blog
• Dave Duffield, founder of Maddie’s Fund
• Richard Avanzino of Maddie’s Fund
• Wayne Pacelle of the  HSUS

It’s not the first time Dr. Pion and Gina Spadafori have been on a magazine’s “Best of” list, by the way: Cat Fancy magazine named their book “Cats For Dummies” as one of the top 100 events of the 20th century for cats.

The pet beats the honey: If you’ve walked past any card store, flower store or jewelry store in the past week, you know that Valentine’s Day will soon be upon us.  I’m not a big fan of the “holiday” for my own reasons, but MSNBC.com warmed my heart with the assertion that one in every five adults would rather spend Feburary 14 with their pet.

The survey of 24,000 people in 23 countries found 21 percent of adults would rather spend February 14 with their pet than their spouse, although the French were least likely to choose a furry friend over a human, with only 10 percent taking that option.

Bayer allows Advantage and K-9 Advantix to be  sold via retail: Edie Lau at the VIN News Service says we can expect to see wider retail sale of some flea-and-tick products from here on in.    Although you’ve been able to buy Bayer’s Advantage and K-9 Advantix through some online vendors and feed stores (which use legitimate but murky “gray market channels”), far more retail and internet outlets have been kept out of the selling of these products.  Some veterinarians aren’t pleased with the development.

Expressing a resentment shared by others, Dr. Carl Darby, a practitioner in Seneca Falls, N.Y., wrote in an online discussion on the Veterinary Information Network (VIN): “I hope that Bayer understands that losing their highly educated, motivated and dedicated free sales force may have long-term impacts on their business, and it may be difficult for them to regain the trust of the profession.”

It’ll be interesting to see if other companies follow Bayer’s lead.

Teen kidnaps puppy to save it: Bronson Stewart is 19 years old and lives in New Zealand.  His puppy was hit by a car and badly injured.  When the family couldn’t pay for the surgery, they elected for euthanasia to end the dog’s suffering.  Bronson wouldn’t accept that.

“I just knew I had to get my dog back. He’s like my brother,” Stewart told TV One’s “Closeup” program Wednesday.

“They can’t just kill him because I haven’t got any money.”

Stewart went to the veterinary clinic last Friday and asked to see Buck, grabbed the little dog and ran home.

Things got dicey after that, but it has a happy ending, promise.  Go read.

Note: This is where I usually remind you to send links or tips for stories to me, but I’ll be out of town for a few days, and Gina will be pitching in for Monday’s column, so send tips and links to petconnection@gmail.com.  See you next week.

Photo credit: Millie, thebark.com.

To debark or not to debark.  That’s only one of the questions: Last week I posted a New York Times story that discussed debarking.   The article spawned more than 400 comments (so few?  Must have been a big vacation week for NYT readers).   Following up the questions raised, Dr. Sharon Vanderlip had answers. One of Dr. Vanderlip’s most salient points:

Among the many options that may be pursued to manage excessive barking problems are social enrichment, training classes and behavior modification methods. These require time and dedication. Many dog trainers offer these services, as do veterinarians specializing in animal behavior. The success or failure of behavior modification techniques varies among individual animals, trainers, behavioral counselors and the dedication of the owner.

As with any behavior problem, prevention is much easier than correction or modification.

A dog’s view of a blizzard: Mid-Atlantic states from Virginia to New Jersey were clobbered with up to 30 inches of snow (and more) over the weekend.   Even here in New England that’s a lot.  But Maryland and Virginia aren’t Maine, Wisconsin or Idaho.  When you’re used to less than a foot of snow the entire year, it does become Snowmageddon.    John from ohmidog has a terrific report on what the historic snowfall was like — from a canine point of view.    Hint:  you want to see a dog have a great time?  Watch him romp around after a big snowfall.  The pictures are priceless, too.

Even among more elderly dogs at the park, the snow seemed to have made them young again, bringing more spring to their steps, more sparkle to their eyes. It made me reflect back to my New Year’s resolutions – to look at things, including burdensome ones like two feet of snow, and see the joyous opportunities they present.

Like dogs do.

A modest proposal for PETA: I never cease to be amazed by what PETA will come out with next.  Last week’s Groundhog Day gave us a wonderful piece of comedy:  Punxutawney Phil should be replaced with a robot.  Loyal reader Valerie Hayes, in response, submits a modest proposal.  I’m not quoting any of it because I’d prefer you read the whole thing.  Thanks, Valerie!

You’ve got to love when karma stands up and takes a bow: Our friend Maria Goodavage at Dogster has a story from WDIV in Detroit that gives new meaning to rescue dog.

Dog pack attacks gator in Florida: And finally, I absolutely have to share an email sent to me by a dear friend (thanks, Lynn).

At times nature can be cruel, but there is also a raw beauty, and even a certain justice manifested within that cruelty

The alligator, one of the oldest and ultimate predators, normally considered the “apex predator”, can still fall victim to implemented ‘team work’ strategy, made possible due to the tight knit social structure and “survival of the pack mentality” bred into the canines.

See the remarkable photograph below, courtesy of Nature Magazine. Note that the Alpha dog has a muzzle hold on the gator preventing it from breathing, while another dog has a hold on the tail to keep it from thrashing. The third dog attacks the soft underbelly of the gator.

Got a tip?  Got a story?  Don’t keep it to yourself.  Send it to me at davidsgreene@gmail.com or give me a shout in the comments.

Photo credits: Dogs in snow, John Woestendiek

There are days when I wish I could rinse my brain out. I had several of them while working on my current column for MSNBC.com. I won’t sully your morning with the stories I heard–you probably are familiar with them already or have heard worse–suffice it to say that the column is about trends in animal cruelty laws.

For the past four years, the Animal Legal Defense Fund has ranked states based on the strength and quality, if you will, of their animal protection laws. Turns out you don’t want to be a pet in Kentucky, North Dakota, Hawaii,Idaho or Mississippi. It’s not that people in those states are cruel to animals, but their laws protecting animals are the weakest in the nation, based on ALDF’s criteria.

Where do they go wrong? The ALDF says for starters they don’t have good definitions or standards of care, they don’t require mental health evaluations or counseling for people convicted of neglect or cruelty, and cruelty, neglect and abandonment are considered misdemeanors, not felonies.

The organization looks at 14 different categories of animal protection laws to determine its rankings: general prohibitions, penalties, exemptions, mental health evaluations and counseling, protective orders, cost mitigation and recovery, seizure/impound, forfeiture and post-conviction possession, non-animal agency reporting of suspected animal cruelty, veterinarian reporting of suspected animal cruelty, law enforcement policies, sexual assault, fighting, and offender registration.

“What these states have in common is overall lack of meaningful laws in most of these areas: soft penalties or weak or nonexistent penalties; no legal tools to recover costs of care of abused animals that are housed in shelters; limited or no restrictions on animal ownership for people who are convicted of animal cruelty. These are all types of things that states in the upper tier have done or are doing,” says Stephan Otto, ALDF’s director of legislative affairs and author of the report.

So why should states spell out standards of care? Isn’t that a little nanny-stateish?

Otto says that states with care guidelines make it easier for law enforcement officials to determine whether a crime has been committed. When a state such as Kentucky simply defines cruelty as–among other things–failing to provide adequate food, drink, space or health care, well, those things can be a matter of opinion. In Vermont, on the other hand, the terms “living space,” “adequate food” and “potable water” are all defined. “Food” is not spoiled or contaminated and it’s of sufficient quality and quantity to meet the normal daily requirements for the condition and size of the animal. Oregon’s law notes that access to snow and ice do not qualify as access to potable water. Just in case you weren’t sure.

The good news is that people in those states are working to improve the laws. Otto says that throughout the country, people are supportive of strong laws to protect animals. One of them is Tiffani Frautschi, president of MS-FACT (Mississippi-Fighting Animal Cruelty Together). We talked yesterday about legislation introduced in Mississippi last month to make animal cruelty a felony. The bill has passed the state senate’s judiciary review committee and goes to the senate floor for a vote later this week.

“We definitely expect it to pass the senate,” Frautschi says. “We know that it’s going to be a fight in the house, but we think this is the first year this legislation has been introduced that we actually have a chance. There have been some horrendous cases in the last six months in Mississippi, just so many gruesome acts of violence against dogs and cats. And the mental health community has come out very strongly to back animal cruelty legislation as a way of finding these people before they escalate to violence against humans.”

Frautschi says one of the problems in getting legislation passed is that people don’t know that animal cruelty isn’t a felony.

“We went out and talked to more than 25,000 people and got over 25,000 signatures from Mississippi residents asking for a first-offense felony law for cruelty to dogs and cats and everyone was shocked that we didn’t already have this. No one knew.”

Agricultural interests opposed to the legislation cited “slippery slope” arguments, but Frautschi points out that Mississippi’s law against maliciously injuring livestock is already much stronger than that against maliciously injuring dogs and cats.

And there’s simple fear of change.

“I actually had someone say to me, ‘Well, if I hit a dog with my car, am I going to be a felon?’ I said, ‘Are you kidding me? Right now, if you hit a dog with your car, do you get charged with a misdemeanor?’ I think there is just a lot of nervousness, and I think it’s like anything new, people are fearful and there are always groups out there who try to drive that fear. We’ve tried to do a lot of public relations work, talking to folks and saying ‘Hey, we aren’t looking to come after your agricultural enterprise and if a dog breaks into your chicken coop and is massacring your chickens, we aren’t going to be upset with you for doing something about that.’ “

Frautschi says the bill protects people as well as animals, citing research linking cruelty to animals with violence toward people.

“People have a right to be protected from violent individuals. If you can light a dog on fire, you should not work in a school. They shouldn’t work in schools, they shouldn’t work in nursing homes, they shouldn’t work in hospitals, and a felony conviction is what will ensure that. We think it’s time for Mississippi to do the right thing.”

In case you were wondering, the five best states for animal protection are Illinois, Maine, Michigan, Oregon and California. If you want to check your state’s laws, take a look here.

Baltic’s remarkable journey: This is not the kind of story that usually ends well.   Poland is in the middle of an uncommonly cold winter.   A dog became stranded on ice in the middle of the Vistula River, then started floating out to sea on a fast moving current. At that point, you’d expect the worst, right?    Not this time.  After more than 100 miles on the ice, the dog was picked up.   It gets better.  Dogster reports the Polish crew members  are adopting their furry castaway.

Poland’s President, Lech Kaczynski, known as a dog owner, sent the crew a letter of praise.

“Such gestures make our world a better one,” Kaczynski wrote.

The dog has been named “Baltic,” after the sea on which he was found, and after the research vessel, the Baltica, where he will be spending his days.

The problem with physicians who diagnose their pets: Pet Connection’s BFF Dr. Patty Khuly addresses a problem that really gets to veterinarians:  Physicians trained to care for people may — and on occasion do — impede the care of their own pets.  The problems arise when their pet’s symptoms lead them to treat as they would a human patient.   However, people aren’t cats or dogs, and treatments aren’t automatically transferable from one species to another.  The consequences can be tragic, as Dr. Khuly’s anecdotes in her USA Today column illustrate:

A cat’s lethargy prompted her pediatrician-owner to assume his cat had a fever. Baby Tylenol twice daily for three days led to an irreversible blood disorder called methemoglobinemia. She died less than 24 hours after her owner brought her in for the “fever” he was still trying to treat with acetaminophen. (Her body temperature was actually five degrees too low when she arrived, but who’s counting?)

The moral of the story is uncomplicated.  Even if you graduated from Harvard Medical School, let your veterinarian take care of your pet.  In return, your vet promises not to diagnose your patients.

The scourge of pet obesity: Last week I mentioned it can be difficult to find reliably labeled, low calorie pet food.   Nevertheless, the statistics on pet obesity are daunting.    Half of all dogs and cats in the United States today are overweight or obese.  Julie Brayton, writing for NBC Los Angeles, makes the point.

But like people, pets could get some serious health problems if they continually carry around too much weight. They could have difficulties with their joints, develop arthritis, have metabolic problems like diabetes and heart problems.

So if your pet is getting a little rotund around the middle, it might be a good idea to get your pet out and start exercising, but start slowly.

“If you’ve got a couch potato dog, you can’t just go jogging for a mile because that’s going to exacerbate all of the problems that are already going on, joint injuries and problems that can be intensive and expensive to fix,” according to Dr. Mark Stickney, veterinarian.

But if you and your pet work together, perhaps you can both shed some of those extra inches before you’re done.

A kitteh to whom I can relate:

Thanks to the good people from icanhascheezburger.  See more Lolcats and funny pictures

Got a tip?  Got a story?  Don’t keep it to yourself.  Send it to me, or give me a shout in the comments.

Photo credit: Baltic, Maciej Czoska/AP

Blogger and novelist John Scalzi’s “Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008” was a great antidote for me this week when the haters seemed to fixate on our blog. Y’all never see the majority of our hate-spam, of course, because first-time hit-and-run haters land in the moderation queue, and the repeat haters get themselves permanently banned PDQ. We just don’t waste our time on them — or yours, either.

This last week, the LAFD’s daring and heroic rescue of a drowning dog triggered a lot of the hate mail. My response, outlined in this blog post, was a Facebook fan page to thank firefighter Joe St. Georges that now has more than 5,000 members. The L.A. Times poll says 98 percent agree with what the LAFD did, and firefighter St. Georges himself has been buried in appreciative cards and letters, including these abso-freakin’-lutely adorable ones from second-graders in Northern California, picture sent to me by their teacher, Kerry Forni, who also has flat-coated retrievers, which is how she knew where to send the shot.

All this pro-pet news really drove the haters nuts, to judge from the volume of hate we vaporized this week.

The rest of the hate I figure is a full moon thing. Love the ones that say, “All you people ever write about is pets.” Hello? Look at the top of the page. “Pet Connection.” What on earth did you expect to find here? An historical analysis of the Nazi occupation of Poland?

But here’s what has really made me guffaw — what a great word, huh? — this afternoon: There’s one regular hate-spammer who lands in our spam filter at least three-four times a day. His ho-hum refrain, coming from different e-mail addies but always the same IP address (and the same misspelled words)  is this: Pets are stupid. People who love pets are stupid. People who love pets hate people. Blah blah blah blah blah.

You never see this nut-case’s comments, because they go straight into the spam filter, as I said. Every few days Christie or I glance through all the spam for porn and mail-order pharmaceuticals looking for real, on-point comments that have accidentally landed there. We liberate those, and then we  hit “delete all” and zap the rest.  We barely glance at what this dope writes. Frankly, his comments are worse than stupid:  Stupid can be amusing, but boring never is.

And yet, he keeps on writing it, apparently never, ever noticing that no one ever sees it.

Seriously, dude, not even the stupidest pet is that stupid.