pet connection

Nearly every morning Heather and I go get coffee. Or groceries. Or breakfast. She’s the queen here, and rank has its privileges. She trots to whatever car we’re test-driving that week for DogCars.com, I hold the door open for her and she jumps into the shotgun seat.

It’s my only exception to the rule that dogs be harnessed or crated, and I figure it’s a low-risk endeavor.

Little traffic at that time of morning, and we’re not going very far. Plus, there’s this: She’s closing in on 12, and her morning errand makes her very happy. And that makes me very happy.

A couple days ago about 7:30 a.m. , with the temperature around 55 degrees, she and I went to pick up a few items at the store. The sun was low, the parking lot shaded. I opened the moon roof and dropped the windows a couple inches, although honestly, it was plenty cool.

I came back to find a flier on my windshield.

“YOU ARE BREAKING THE LAW!” it screamed. “YOU ARE KILLING YOUR DOG!”

I look in the window. Heather smiles. Hmmmm.

I turn my attention back to the flier. The rest explains how in California, it’s illegal to leave your dog in the car “in hazardous conditions.” Yes, well, I know that, and I wouldn’t have taken her out if the conditions were hazardous. I didn’t need a law to keep me from doing it either.

Gawd, I hate California.

It’s not really a bad thing that it’s now specifically illegal to leave a dog in a hot car, but it was illegal before, in a more generalized way, under animal cruelty laws.

What bugged me was the smug superiority of the person who left the flier there, who thought I was a “bad” dog owner for … what? Making an old dog happy in a situation with little to no risk at all?

In fact, the conditions were pretty darn nice in front of the Whole Foods, where the yoga babes were coming in for their post-meditation goji berry juice and the lobbyists from the multimillion-dollar riverbluff homes were queuing up in the Starbucks drive-though in the parking lot.

I crumpled the flier. In a fit of civil disobedience, I was tempted to put it not in the bin marked “recycling” but rather in the one marked “trash.” But of course, I didn’t.

Dear Anonymous Nanny-State Ninny: Leaving fliers on luxury SUVs in an affluent neighborhood (Note: Not my car, not my neighborhood) at a time when the dog in question was not at all at risk marks you as a gutless worm with the common sense of a snail. (Apologies to worms and snails.)

Hey, maybe you should run for office!

… to announce that my dog McKenzie (a/k/a McKutie), last seen on this blog feigning innocence over a missing yogurt container, is now:

Ch. Windfall’s McKenzie.

Her show career is now over, and she can now get as stinking, muddy and wet as she wants whenever she wants, and the baths that follow will no longer be with the fancy soap followed by a blow dry and brushing. (Now, it’ll be more of a spray-off with the hose.)

Regular programming may now resume. That is all.

Oh, P.S. … McKenzie is named after Christie’s mom (whose last name is McKenzie) and her brother (whose first name is McKenzie). I had to come up with an “M” name and thought McKenzie was really interesting and distinctive. Later, my brother the high school teacher informed me he had no fewer than five girls in his classes named either MacKenzie or McKenzie. So much for distinctive, but I still love the name! (Even though I usually call her McKutie.)

“[S]tudies have shown the catastrophic injury rate in Thoroughbred races typically hovers between 1.6 and 2.03 per 1,000 races.” — Daily Racing Form, May 5, 2008

***

Signs that the horse-racing industry doesn’t get it, even now:

On the Bloodhorse Web site, Steve Haskin dismisses the concerns of horse-lovers after the death of Eight Belles as being all about the folks at  PETA (”[E]nough of PETA, protests, and poppycock”), shows a complete misunderstanding of the history of PETA, suggesting it started out an animal-welfare group, when it never has been anything but an animal rights group  (”PETA began as a well-intentioned organization, and any lover of animals had to embrace their cause”) and then goes on to talk about how the Derby horses performed relative to their odds and their breeding.

In other words: Tough break on the filly, but let’s get back to business, shall we?

Oh, and he gave horse-racing a big and utterly undeserved pat on the back: “If [PETA] bothered to do their homework and joined together with Thoroughbred racing in its never-ending quest to provide the ultimate in safety for the horses …”

Yeah, right. Tell it to the Jockey Club, which has formed a committee to ”look into” the Derby Disaster, comprised of a group of the industry insiders. Uh-huh. I’d be surprised if the report offered anything earth-shaking, and even more surprised if it ended up anywhere except a file cabinet. Please, just this one time, prove me wrong for my cynicism. (NewYork Times horse-racing blogger Alex Brown calls for an independent panel, and I agree.)

And by the way, I’ll respect Big Brown’s Derby victory when drug-testing is industry-wide and when the horse is healthy and winning at four years of age and more after months of clear drug tests. But we won’t see that, most likely: Already, the Bloodhorse reports a stud deal is in the works.

Better get him off the track fast, boys, so he can pass those bad feet along. Get a fast profit, flip the asset and run like hell. What would you expect from Wall Streeters who are building a horse-racing investment empire and a trainer with a history of drug suspensions?

Mr. Haskin, you and the editorial staff at the Bloodhorse may kid yourself all you want, but it’s not just the folks at PETA who think racing is on the wrong track. It’s also the dwindling fan base you have left, and you’d better not keep dismissing us, along with the people within the industry who have been sounding the alarm all along. (Again, I called this tragedy the day before the Derby.)

In a moment of sad irony, my box seats for our Del Mar weekend have been confirmed and should be in my mailbox any day now. I wonder if I’ll still  feel like going come August. My Breeder’s Cup World Thoroughbred Championships ticket order form sits in the middle of the dining room table (they’re being held in Southern California this year, at Santa Anita). I haven’t decided what to do, but with races for 2-year-olds on the program, I’m thinking of giving it a pass. Most tellingly, I haven’t been able to stomach one minute of the horse-racing cable channel since Saturday. (I usually have it on in the background on the weekends as I write, to watch the stakes races at the good tracks.)

More: Another difference between European and American racing is that in America, jockeys use the whip much much more. Noted horseman Monty Roberts (”The Horse Whisperer”) and track announcer Trevor Denman (who calls the races at Santa Anita, Del Mar and was the race-caller for last year’s Breeder’s Cup) have both criticized the use of the whip in American Thorougbred racing. Guess that’s just more poppycock, though.

The death toll in Myanmar may top 100,000. We don’t usually write about non-pet issues here, but … 100,000 dead, how can we not mention it?

Doctors Without Borders already had people in Myanmar, and that’s one possibility for your donations. Please feel free to add other links to relief groups you trust in the comments. Ilario says thank you, because he’s a caring kitten.

I don’t have a problem with PETA advocating for animal rights, although I do not agree with their agenda which, if followed to its simple, logical conclusion, would mean the eventual end of all domestic animals, including pets.

This is America, after all, and you can advocate for any point of view you want. What I have long had a problem with is PETA jumping into every animal-related issue and neglecting to mention that agenda, which is, in PETA’s words, that “animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on or use for entertainment.”

That’s why, like Pet Connection BFF Dr. Patty Khuly, I have a problem with PETA demanding the reform of horse-racing, when in fact what they surely want is abolition. I felt the same way when PETA showed up in support for the Michael Vick dogs, even though PETA’s Ingrid Newkirk has written in favor of pit bull bans. Again, she’s entitled to her opinion, but her organization needs to be consistently open about these views in their outreach to animal lovers, especially the majority of us who don’t share them. This is even more important when fund-raising is involved.

As it stands, what PETA has put out regarding horse-racing is disingenuous.

On Dolittler, Dr. Khuly writes in response to a PETA e-mail (which she reproduces in her post):

1-How does sanctioning the jockey fit into this? Since Sunday when this news broke (sans e-mail), I’ve been marveling at PETA’s dumbfoudingly ridiculous jab at the jockey. What’s that all about? Almost all those jockeys whipped their horses. Why not call for a uniform suspension of all jockeys?

2-And the trainer? Show me one that bests Big Brown’s for his well-documented, disgusting, horse-doping behavior. After examining this guy’s pedigree, you’ll never convince me that Eight Belles’ trainer deserves a special sanction over all the other guys in his field—just because his horse was the one to go down.

3-And finally, am I really to believe that PETA seeks to reform the sport? If their approach to pets is any measure, it’s clear to me they’d love nothing better than to see the entire shebang shut down overnight and its animals summarily dispatched by a bevy of vets wielding pink juice.

But they don’t say so. Nope—they won’t. They’d rather have you believe their aims are to make the sport safer. Their target? The average animal lover who wants to believe they’re helping animals wherever they can…even if it takes sending PETA a few bucks to help make it happen.

Look, horse-racing has had years — decades, really — to work on its downward spiral, and it hasn’t. Let’s take it all the way back to the first time it lost lots of fans: The day Ruffian died. And then … Go For Wand in the Breeders Cup (worst catatrophic breakdown I’ve ever seen) … more fans gone, unable to stomach the carnage. Barbaro, of course, and now Eight Belles. Plus thousands and thousands of cheap claimers no one ever paid attention to, dying on the days when you could count track attendance in the hundreds, not the hundreds of thousands as on Derby Day.

Instead of reforming, American horse-racing chose to look the other way on rampant drug use that keeps horses who shouldn’t be running on the track. It chose to embrace and accelerate the “quick return on investment” trends by concentrating faster, more fragile breeding lines, and by pushing young horses to the breaking point, literally. It stuck to its BS traditions instead of actively seeking changes that would make the sport safer for horses and jockeys alike, such as moving away from fast, hard dirt tracks towards more racing on turf and synthetic tracks.

Instead of working to keep or even grow a base of fans, racing decided to double-down on a losing bet, chasing a smaller and smaller pool of dying off horse-racing gamblers (younger gamblers play online poker or go to casinos) and demanding of state legislatures that racetracks be allowed to put in slot machines to prop up the falling profits.

Much as I loathe PETA’s opportunistic concern for race horses — where were they the day before the Derby, when I was writing about these issues? — horse-racing brought this on itself. They had a chance to make changes after Barbaro, but they haven’t done much. (Especially with regard to drug use … nada.)

Horse-racing is not getting it even yet, but they’d damn well better, and soon.

Unlike PETA, Dr. Khuly and I truly are calling for reform, not secretly hoping for an end to horse-racing. You can start by refusing to watch any more Triple Crown races. And letting the tracks, the networks and the sponsors know why.