pet connection

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.

Greetings from a very snowy New England.   Each and every one of today’s stories is designed to combat the holiday shopping/cold weather/high stress/Monday morning I don’t want to go to work blues.  Not a depressing or frustrating one in the lot.  I’ll even offer a money back guarantee.  Such a deal!

Flying Chihuahuas! California, as you may know, has way too many of the little guys (and girls) with the tiny paws and big ears.   The rest of the country, particularly the east coast, doesn’t have enough.  Don’t ask me why we’re short (pardon the pun) on chihuahuas, I don’t know.  Perhaps we don’t watch enough Reese Witherspoon movies. Anyway, thanks to Project Flying Chihuahua, Mexican dogs will be warming hearts in New Hampshire, New York, and elsewhere.

Saving Keystone Wallis: If it were fiction, it would be rejected as too hokey, especially at the holidays.  Good thing this story is absolutely true.  A  gray mare in western Pennsylvania enjoys a successful harness racing career, earning $600,000.  She then breeds 14 foals who sell for a combined $300,000.  She subsequently comes within a hair of being slaughtered.  The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette picks up the story from there…. (Hat tip to Mary Mary)  I want to fly out to Crafton, Penn., and meet this horse.

Faith walks: Have you heard about Faith?  No, not Gina’s FayBee, but the famous Faith.  She’s a 7 year-old lab-chow mix, and she only has two legs.  But, she walks just fine.  On two legs.   She also has a job  these days, which is to visit disabled Army vets. This is a great dog doing important work for heroes.  Doesn’t get any better than that!  (Hat tip to Snoopy’s Friend for this story, and the one to follow)

Guido’s pacemaker: If you’re a person in Guido’s situation, your cardiologist would recommend a pacemaker, assuming you could find a cardiologist while you’re in a no-kill sanctuary.  Guido now has a pacemaker.

Although not widely known, the concept of implanting pacemakers in dogs is hardly new. The first time it was done was 1968. Today hundreds of similar operations on dogs are performed in the U.S. every year.

Maxine Mager owns Creative Acres, a no-kill animal sanctuary in Brighton.

“We do everything we can for all the animals,” she said.

Guido’s procedure won’t be cheap. The operation will cost up to $4,000. Mager says anyone interested in making a donation can check out the Web site.

A Hound’s Blog:  Finally, this last cite isn’t news, it’s simply the best blog post I’ve read all week, and sometimes I’m going to offer a post just because it’s worth reading.   Here, you’ll get  Scottish deerhounds, whippets, PBGVs, and  Molly the pony.    Enjoy, and thanks Glenye.

Note: Most of today’s sites were recommended by loyal, eagle-eyed readers.  Thank you to them, and please, if you find something of interest,  send it to me. Or put it in the comments.

photo credits: Chihuahua: AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes. Keystone Wallis: Hogan Equine at Fair Winds Farm.  Molly the Pony: Glenye Oakford

Lot of red ink in 2009, let’s get that out of the way. It belongs in the Blue Christmas post. But funny how so much of what has helped me through the kidney stone year that was 2009 seems to have something to do with the color red.

Like Faith. The One Who Chose Me was originally “the Red Puppy” — absolutely by chance.

Like the Red Sox. My dad signed with them in 1954, and I gotta tell you, after dad died we heard from a lot of people who played with him in the Red Sox minor leagues or remembered watching him play. Diehards never forget.

Like the Red Truck. After my van decided he like getting visits from the tow-truck driver and spending expensive quality time with the mechanic, I filched my brother’s 1986 Mazda pickup for my daily driver. But that meant replacing his truck with something newer.

Just about then, my former boss decided to retire, and as part of that he also decided to sell his 2005 low-mileage Nissan Frontier pickup. We bought that for my brother to drive, and although he was initially not so much in love with its fire-engine red color, he has since come to love it, color and all. Not the least of which is because bright flaming red is the primary color of the high school where he’s one of the football coaches.

So we bought it, and that very night I went to the grocery store, only to turn the corner on an isle and run smack into a display of Red Truck wine, two bottles of which I then had to buy that very second, one for me and one for my brother.

Then …

Our latest blogger, my friend David Greene, was 3,000 miles away from home doing some consulting work at the University of California, Davis. David came over to see the Red Puppy (and others) and brought with him a CD with a red truck on the cover — “”Sweet Ride,” by his wife, Perry Desmond-Davies.  (Click on the image to hear and buy it.)

Of course, David went home with my bottle of Red Truck wine, which I’ve subsequently replaced twice over.

Now, the very last of the “red” stuff:

This morning I’m listening to National Public Radio, and there’s a piece on the artist Nellie McKay, who has done a new collection of Doris Day songs. Doris Day! How perfect, since she was not only a ray of upbeat perkiness but also the founder of her own animal group and a hotel that welcomes pets and turned Carmel-By-The-Sea, Calif, into one of the most dog-friendly of get-aways.

So I pop over to Amazon and not only is Ms. McKay wearing a red dress on the cover of her Doris Day CD, “Normal as Blueberry Pie: A Tribute to Doris Day,” but she’s posing on a couch with pit bulls in pearls!

That’s two must-buy CDs and a bottle of wine for your antidote to a Blue Christmas.

The Red Puppy, you cannot have.

It’s been a while since my head exploded, but all that just ended. Thanks, as usual, to the animal-haters at PETA.

I’ve been following the story of Tom Skeldon, dog warden of Lucas County in Ohio, mostly over on Brent Toellner’s KC Dog Blog:

Skeldon has been coming under increased fire over the past year.  Most of the roll against Skeldon began last winter after one of Skeldon’s staff shot a tranquilizer into a small dog that was “loose” on his own porch — with enough of a dosage that the dog died.

As people began investigating Skeldon, they found the shelter to continue to operate with a very high kill rate (77%) and an extremely low 13% adoption rate. They found a dog warden that was unwilling to work with rescue groups. And dogs were dying.

A committee was assembled to provide recommendations on improvements to be made at the shelter — improvements that Skeldon, throughout, has been reluctant to even admit were problems.  The Toledo Blade continue to run editorials and editorial cartoons calling for Skeldon’s dismissal.  The committee recommended some strict new rules last week one of which was to cease the killing of puppies.   Skeldon responded by killing 10 healthy puppies after holding them for only one day.

When the Lucas County Commission voted to retain Skeldon anyway — the tie-breaking vote being cast by Skeldon’s cousin — the Toledo Blade had this to say:

Faced with a mountain of evidence that grows higher with each dog killed at the county animal shelter, commissioners Pete Gerken and Tina Skeldon Wozniak voted no on a motion by Commissioner Ben Konop to dismiss Mr. Skeldon.

We believe the commissioners had plenty of cause to fire Mr. Skeldon. With a horrific 77 percent kill rate at the pound, and the warden’s obstinate refusal to cooperate with animal rescue groups on adoptions that would at least slow the slaughter, what more do they need?

[....]

Tom Skeldon no longer deserves the job of dog warden. Failure of his officials bosses to get rid of him only prolongs the agony, not just for the animals on his death row but for the entire community.

Today, however, the pressure finally got to Skeldon, and he resigned. And that’s good, but it’s not the story, and it’s not why my head exploded.

This is: What do you think the fine folks at PETA had to say about our trigger-happy dog warden?

We thank Lucas County Dog Warden Tom Skeldon and his staff for putting animals’ best interests first by not haphazardly adopting out dogs just to make the pound’s euthanasia statistics look better.

No one wants to end the need for euthanasia more than the brave people who hold the syringe, but pushing dogs out the door like clearance merchandise or releasing vulnerable breeds into a world that holds only suffering and death for so many of them isn’t the way to do that. Until the number of homeless dogs is reduced through spaying and neutering, euthanasia will stay a heartbreaking necessity.

Those upset about the number of dogs euthanized for lack of homes should direct their anger at those who are directly responsible: breeders, pet stores, and people who don’t spay or neuter their animals. Animal care and control professionals should be supported in their daily fight to do the right thing for animals and for the important work they do to protect animals and the community.

Jennifer Brown

Animal Sheltering Adviser
People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals
Norfolk, Va.

Understand that Skeldon was not just killing pit bulls — as if that would make PETA’s bloodthirst okay, but at least we already knew they hated pibbles. No, in their obsessive hatred of anything that could ever suggest that all humanity is not hopelessly evil and incapable of actually stopping killing animals in our shelters, and of the no-kill movement in particular, PETA has set itself up as a champion of egregious wholesale dog slaughter.

Why is anyone still listening to PETA?

It’s not often the death of a dog gets covered in the New York Times. But when the very organization that “rescued” her is the one that kills her, that’s a story.

Not a pretty story, in this case. One where a pit bull named Oreo gets “saved” from her abuser and then given a shot of Fatal Plus on the order of Ed Sayres, director of the ASPCA in New York — even though a sanctuary that is already a rescue partner and fellow member, with ASPCA, of the Mayor’s Alliance for Animals offered to give her a lifetime haven and appropriate care (although ASPCA animal behavior expert Stephen Zawistowski told Cristian Salazar at the Huffington Post that “the ASPCA was unfamiliar with Pets Alive.”) From Nathan Winograd:

Facts are troubling things. Facts get in the way of a contrived story. And there is one troubling fact that all of Ed Sayres’ double-speak simply cannot overcome. Try as the ASPCA might to argue that Oreo’s death was unavoidable, Sayres’ misrepresentation has one fundamental obstacle: Oreo had a place to go. The issue doesn’t turn on the real extent of Oreo’s aggression. The real issue is that a No Kill shelter and sanctuary, with experience rehabilitating aggression in dogs, which works with area shelters that could have vouched for their credibility, which enjoys wide community esteem, and which is only a short drive outside of New York City, offered to give her lifetime sanctuary, and was refused.

They called and left a voice mail message on Sayres’ telephone. They called his secretary. They called the ASPCA Press Office. They contacted everyone on the ASPCA website contact page. And they were ignored, hung up on and lied to.

Pets Alive in Middletown, New York, is not only a member of the Mayor’s Alliance for New York City animals, of which the ASPCA is also a member, they are not only an Alliance-approved rescue partner, they not only have had experience with aggressive dogs, but they agreed to take responsibility for a dog the ASPCA was committed to putting in a body bag and then dumping in a landfill. Even though Pets Alive is already an approved rescue partner, the fact that Oreo may have presented a special case didn’t mean the offer should have been rejected out of hand. The ASPCA could have visited Pets Alive; they could have checked veterinary references, community references, could have insisted on specific precautions and liability waivers. But instead, early that morning, before the “media circus got out of hand,” Ed Sayres, willfully, neglectfully, cruelly, and dishonestly, chose to kill Oreo instead. That is the true face of the ASPCA. And that is intolerable.

I’m not saying no dog alive isn’t just too unhappy and dangerous to live. I am saying that I have absolutely no confidence at all that Sayres and the ASPCA are qualified to unilaterally make that determination. And part of why I feel that way, and so strongly, is the self-pitying, self-serving email sent out by the ASPCA’s communications department after this incident blew up into a PR firestorm:

While Oreo’s plight has garnered a plethora of media attention due to the sensational nature of her injuries, the decision to euthanize her is not a novel one.  These are decisions that we have had to make before—and will undoubtedly have to make again.  And as painful as these choices are, they are the same ones that face dedicated shelter workers throughout the country each and every day.   However, these outcomes are made all the more tragic because they are often preventable.

Yes, they are, Ed. You can decide not to kill them.

Animals that suffer cruelty at the hands of their owners often face tragedy beyond that which they have already endured.

[....]

Animals like Oreo are abused every day. Sometimes these animals are fortunate enough to escape the confines of their abuse and are placed in loving homes.  Sometimes, they die as a result of the abuse.

And sometimes they’re killed by people whose mission is supposed to be to save animals.

And now the part that really makes my skin crawl:

We have done everything humanly possible to save Oreo’s life; yet, as a result of the abuse she suffered at the hands of Mr. Henderson, or for other reasons we may never know, she has come to a place where she can no longer be around people or other animals.  We make this decision—and others like it– with a heavy heart and a complete understanding that had she been treated with love and respect, Oreo’s fate would be much different.

People know that the ASPCA is in the business of saving animals’ lives– it serves as the very core of our 143 year-old mission.  Yet, the moment this statement is picked up, we will feel the repercussions of the difficult decision we know had to be made.  We will receive angry phone calls… profanity-laced e-mails… and we will likely be vilified by tweeters and bloggers across the country.  And the rallying cry of these missives will all be the same: the ASPCA failed this animal.  If the ASPCA has failed at anything, it is shielding America from the true face of animal cruelty for far too long.  Animal cruelty isn’t pretty and doesn’t always have a happy ending—it is ugly and sad and, ultimately, tragic.  As a community of individuals committed to the welfare of animals, we have to be more proactive and insistent in raising our voices against cruelty—and hope that the nation is ready to listen.

Does anyone really think that this kind of whining and finger-pointing is a good PR move? You bet your butt this blogger is going to vilify you, ASPCA, because you’re a huge, wealthy organization that had options that you didn’t even explore. Because you killed this dog when it wasn’t necessary. Because you raise money off of rescuing abused dogs and then you kill them. Because Oreo is a victim, first of her abuser and then of you.

And you want us to feel sorry for you, and the burden you bear?

No sale.