pet connection

The first paragraph of KC Dog Blog‘s recent post caught my attention:

From July 2007, to December 2010, the city of Derby, CT took in 94 dogs. Of those dogs, they killed 43 of them (48%). Derby, Connecticut’s second smallest city, has a population of 12,536 people…. and was taking in roughly 1 dog every two weeks into the shelter. In spite of extremely low intake rates, they were still killing half of the dogs.

Half. In just the 2008-2009 time frame, the kill rate was 68 percent. It made no difference if the dogs were young, healthy or adoptable. Today, Derby is much closer to a true no-kill philosophy. Where did the change come from? First, clearing out the old guard; second, committing to doing a better job of paperwork; and finally, following the model of nearby communities such as Ansonia, with kill rates below four percent. It can be done.

Senior dog food: When you go to your local pet store and buy something labeled “senior pet food,” what is it you expect? Lower calories? Low fat? Would it surprise you to learn that none of that might be true? Dr. Lisa Freeman co-authored a research study appearing in The International Journal for Applied Research in Veterinary Medicine. It says, in essence, that nutrition numbers for pet food labeled for seniors are likely to be all over the place.

The manufacturers “might be increasing protein, decreasing protein or keeping it the same,” said Freeman, who is professor of nutrition at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University in North Grafton, Mass. “That emphasizes to us to look at the individual animal, and not all aging animals need a different diet. It’s much, much more important to look at individual dogs.”

The term ‘senior’ may be dramatically different, depending on the breed. A Saint Bernard might be quite senior at six or seven, whereas a Jack Russell Terrier at that age is a long way from being considered a senior citizen. In any case, check the ingredients to make sure you’re getting what your pet needs. And talk to your veterinarian.

Patrick’s Law: I very rarely discuss animal abuse stories. This one, though, may make a big difference. The details are grisly. A woman in Newark, New Jersey starved her pit bull puppy, then dumped him down a garbage chute. The dog, who wasn’t expected to live past St. Patrick’s Day, was nicknamed Patrick. From the horror of the incident grew a movement to pass “Patrick’s Law,” which will set standards punishing animal abuse as felonies. (Tip of the cap to Nanci Hanover)

Look who’s opposing TX 3450? No kill and animal welfare organizations everywhere are lining up to support the Texas Companion Animal Protection Act. Nathan Winograd notes one remarkable exception –  the ironically-named Texas Humane Legislation Network. Of course, as YesBiscuit points out, there’s still a deafening silence from what she terms “The Big Three.”

Pit bull therapy: Very nice piece by John at Ohmidog discussing Pit Bulls as effective therapy dogs. Breaking down stereotypes can be a long, slow road, and every little bit helps.

In the driver’s seat: Glenye and the gang at Full Cry: a Hound Blog own permanent slots on my ‘must-read’ list. This post will be near and dear to Gina’s heart, since her favorite of the Iroquois hounds, Driver, gets some special attention.

NCAA animals: (putting on my sports reporter cap) What’s your preference? Huskies? Bulldogs? Wildcats or Rams? By this time next week, one of those four mascots will be celebrating in a big way, when his team is crowned the 2011 NCAA Mens Basketball champions in the Final Four. I’m rooting for the Huskies.

Dude, you’ve got a dog on your roof: In Greeley, Colo., Dubi isn’t like most dogs. He’s definitely not an inside dog, and he isn’t all that interested in hanging out in the front or even the back yard. For him, the best vantage point to keep an eye on his neighborhood requires some altitude. He likes the roof. (thanks to the Greeley Tribune)

Snake on the town: Best story of the week is still going on in New York, New York (a city with a name so nice they named it twice). If you’re on Twitter, you should be following the escaped @BronxZoosCobra. Hashtag #snakeonthetown. My favorites among his tweets:

• Rise & Slither.
• Getting my morning coffee at the Mudtruck. Don’t even talk to me until I’ve had my morning coffee. Seriously, don’t. I’m venomous.
• Getting on the ferry to Ellis Island. Let’s hope this goes better than that time on the plane.
• On top of the Empire State Building! All the people look like little mice down there. Delicious little mice.
• Gonna listen to some Jazz tonight. You know I love some great flute work. Do they provide it or is it bring your own basket?

Note: Effective next week, the news wrap will move to a once-weekly format. Every Monday morning, I’ll have the roundup of the big stories in the world of pets ready for your perusal.

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 credits: Derby GSD, Jodie Mozdzer

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Think what you want about his training methods, but there’s one thing no one can argue: Cesar Millan cares about dogs being part of the family. Well, maybe two things everyone can agree on: There’s no getting away from the fact that the man is a sensational salesman.

Well, first, let me back up and describe where I am writing. I’m here in Orlando at Global Pet Expo, in one of the world’s largest convention centers, and it’s packed, with nowhere in the hall more crowded then where I am right now. I am near Cesar Millan. Buyers, TV crews, journalists, manufacturers reps and just plain fans, they’re all going gaga over Cesar as he debuts a line of products focused on dog-grooming, but more on that in a second.

While I am more a fan of Victoria Stilwell in the celebrity-dog-trainer genre, I try to look for the good in all people. And agree with Millan that educating ourselves, our children, and (for pet-writers) other pet-owners is the biggest responsibility we have in caring for our dogs.

Bob Aniello, the president and executive director of Cesar Millan Inc, spent a lot of time with me reviewing the Millan Foundation‘s goals. From this new product line Cesar debuted at Global Pet Expo, 10 percent of the sales go to the foundation. Through this charitable foundation, he has partnered with Yale University to work with 1,600 elementary schools to educate children on pet ownership and responsibilities. This initiative not only gives education tools to students, but it also guides teachers on the best ways to teach empathy and education related to dogs.

He is promoting awareness about dogs. I like that. I liked the product line as well. Very much.

If you are a frequent reader of this blog, you know I am a design lover, and the grooming products Millan delivered in this debut scored high for me in shape and colors. The fragrances are pleasant;  the grooming tools look sturdy and ergonomic. I have not had a chance to review them on a dog nor test or hold a brush, but upon viewing they look very nice.

But … what was the highlight of the interview for me? When I met Junior, one of Cesar’s dogs. What a gorgeous Pit Bull. and he was very friendly, basically licking the make-up off my face in three seconds. It was worth it. In the middle of a enormous trade show, interviewing people, meeting manufacturer reps… the bottom line is I do all this because I love dogs.

Having a few minutes of private “dog-time” was appreciated and gave me renewed energy. It is really all about the pets and what drives us all to do what we think is right by them.

P.S. Why was the Subaru there? They are a sponsor of Millan’s TV series. What can I say? Millan has an amazing marketing team.

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It’s that time of year again! No, not spring — that’s not here for weeks yet. I mean PetHobbyist.com’s annual “Chat Month”!

I’ve been producing this event for ten years now, but it’s actually in its thirteenth year. Last year, we started using streaming Internet radio instead of text-based chat, although we run a real-time chat room so listeners can talk with each other, make comments, and ask the guest questions.

We’re kicking it off tonight with an interview with Nathan Winograd, one of the most controversial and inspiring figures in the no-kill movement. I’ll be interviewing him about the raging-hot issue of laws that give rescue groups the right to take dogs and cats slated for death from shelters. Laws like California’s 13-year-old Hayden Law, the recently passed Delaware shelter standards law, and the current battle over proposed shelter access laws in New York State, including Oreo’s Law — a topic I know many of you here have strong opinions on.

If you want to ask questions on that topic, be sure to drop by the chat, or post them here. And yes, they do have to be on that topic — I know there are lots of other issues you might want to question our guest on, but this is the one we’re looking at now.

The interview is this evening, Friday, March 4, at 9:30 PM Eastern. Click here for more details.

On Saturday at 5 PM Eastern, my PetHobbyist.com colleague and PetConnection reader Cindy Steinle will be interviewing Jennie Erin Smith about her new book, “Stolen World: A Tale of Reptiles, Smugglers and Skullduggery.”

Then on Sunday at 8 PM Eastern, we’ll be welcoming Andrew “Roo” Yori and Marthina McClay to talk about their dogs Hector and Leo, two of best-known of all the former Vick dogs. Cindy will be joining them, talking about her own fight-bust rescue dog, Cleo — less famous, but no less awesome!

Chat Month runs every weekend this month, and we’ll be welcoming some of our Pet Connection team, including Dr. Tony Johnson on the topic, “Sewing tiny sequinned evening gowns for tarantulas,” and Dr. Robin Downing on “How to give your pets the really good drugs.”

Okay, I made those topics up. But they really will be guesting with us!

We even have a possible very exciting special guest who our own Gina Spadafori would be interviewing — wish I could say more, but you’ll be the first to know, I promise!

You can find out how to listen and participate, and keep up to date on when chats are scheduled and when new guests are added to the line-up, right here.

You can also follow PetHobbyist.com and kingsnake.com on Facebook, or follow me on my new Facebook page — I’ll post each event and each update to the schedule there, too!

“See” you this weekend!

Photo: Hector!

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Hello, gray matter all over the monitor. Have you missed seeing my head explode?

I often write about how much it annoys me when shelters and animal control agencies blame the death rate of pets in their facilities on the bad, evil, stupid, irresponsible pet owners in their communities instead of on their own policies — including failing to harness the power of animal lovers in their area.

But if I had sat down to write this story to serve as an example of what I mean, people would have rolled their eyes and sworn such a thing couldn’t ever happen in real life.

A dog owner in Charlotte, N.C., put up lost and found flyers — hundreds of them — after a phone repair person accidentally let his three-year-old dog, Diesel, out. He checked the website of his local shelter, Mecklenburg County’s Animal Care and Control, for found dogs, and went down to the shelter every day, day after day, sometimes twice a day, checking for his dog. He even put one of his fliers up in the shelter hallway.

Well, too bad so sad, because the shelter had his dog all along and then killed him. Diesel was in a kennel for sick or injured dogs that isn’t open to the public because he’d been hit by a car, and because this shelter… pardon me, slaughterhouse… has a “no pit bull adoptions rule,” they killed Diesel.

Did they say they were sorry, that they regretted not showing him the dogs in the injured kennel, that they didn’t lift a finger to see that this dog lived instead of died? From WSOC in Charlotte:

Mark Balestra, the director of Animal Care and Control, told Eyewitness News that Gibson is to blame because he never got a microchip for his dog. He said that’s a responsibility of dog owners and makes it much easier to find dogs.

Gibson said Diesel never had a microchip because he never left the house.

Balestra also said a picture of Diesel was on the website since Feb. 2 and that if Gibson pointed out pictures that could have been Diesel to employees, they would have looked into each one.

State law requires that stray animals be held for 72 hours before they are evaluated to see if they are healthy enough to be adopted. Gibson’s dog could have survived his injuries, but he was euthanized because Animal Care and Control has a policy that doesn’t allow pit bulls to be adopted out to the general public.

So, they blamed Diesel’s owner for not having had him microchipped, and not pointing out dogs on their website that could have been Diesel and asking them to check on each one individually.

Which I guess he kind of thought he had covered by scouring the stray kennels every day.

And then they killed Diesel because that’s what they do to pit bulls.

But by all means, let’s keep blaming the uncaring, irresponsible, dirty, rotten, public.

Photo: Cap from the video of the story at the link above — be sure to watch it.

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From Cindy Steinle at PetHobbyist.com (where I also contribute), news that a Dallas reporter asked Michael Vick about his dogs at a ceremony granting Vick a “key to the city.”

A reporter who said he had adopted one of Michael Vick’s pit bulls confronted Vick about his dogs at a media event in Dallas last week.

Dallas Councilmember and Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway awarded Vick the “key to the city” at a ceremony on Feb. 5. A man, who identified himself as Richard Hunter of 1190 AM radio, said he had adopted one of Vick’s former fighting dogs and wanted to ask him a couple of questions about the dogs.

Richard Hunter is the name of the man who owns Mel, one of Vick’s former dogs.

Vick refused to answer, just looked at Hunter and walked away while one of his security team says, “We don’t care about the dog.”

We’ve written about Hunter and Mel here before. Read the rest of Steinle’s post, and watch the video of the encounter, here.

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