Dogged Blog

Why all your special modern pet-hair targeting vacuum cleaners suck

Look, a vacuum cleaner just shouldn't be this complicated.

A few months ago, I purchased a Panasonic JetSpin Cyclone based on a review I read on the old Pet Connection. I knew the Dyson Animal was supposed to be the pinnacle machine for pet owners, but $500 for a vacuum cleaner? Just no. But the Cyclone had good reviews on Amazon as well as the one on Pet Connection and was a fraction of the price, so I bought it.

The reviews may be accurate, but I have to assume the people who wrote them grew up in a different era than I did. Every vacuum I've ever used has worked just fine in picking up dog hair, cat hair, and whatever else was on my rugs. I haven't experienced all these clogs and suction-failures the TV ads wax dire over, and all I ever had to do was change the bag every few uses and, once or twice in the lifetime of the vacuum (which would run into decades) change a belt.

My new vacuum was so freaking complicated that I had to get out the instruction manual just to emtpy it. It has multiple filters and I can't even figure out how to get half the attachments off the machine or onto the wand. Hell, I don't even understand how the wand works at all. I hate it so much I'm giving it away, and I went to Amazon and ordered an old-fashioned bagged upright Hoover with hundreds of rave reviews that cost even less than the Cyclone (around $125).

Keep your stupid high tech vacuums and their bagless, filtered, super-magical special pet hair sucking technology. I'm going back to the kind of vacuums that had a one-page instruction manual. And if you want the Cyclone, it's yours.

Thirty percent of the top ten stories shared on Facebook were about animals

From Schools.com as reported by PRDaily, an infographic showing that of the top ten stories shared on Facebook in 2011, three were about animals:

Still think animal journalism is just fluff and filler? I'd argue it's at the heart of how a very large chunk of the population relates to news, politics, social change, current events, and their personal lives.

Maybe this will mean PR people are going to stop sending me so many releases about new puppy purses and focus on the authentic role animals play in our lives. Hey, I can dream, right?

Failing shelters dodge blame. News at 11.

Take a look at these two photos of puppies in an animal shelter. Which photo would you think would be more effective in getting homes for those pups?

I was giving some assistance to a rescue group in another state that was dealing with a particularly difficult rescue situation. After looking over their proposed adoption listings, complete with all the details of their tragic story and gory photographs of the hellish animal control facility they'd been rescued from, I told them their approach, and in particular those photos, were not going to be effective in marketing those pets for adoption.

I got back a blistering tirade over how I shouldn't "accuse" or "blame" the shelter (words I never used, by the way), but rather blame the people who "forced" the shelter to treat animals this way because they wouldn't spay and neuter or be responsible.

Now, my point was about marketing, not shelter reform, but it was clear I hit a nerve. And guess what, rescue person? You hit one right back -- the one where I'm so sick and tired of this blame-shifting that I'm ready to scream.

No one is forcing anyone to kill or mistreat animals, not in your state nor any other. (In fact, I'm not sure you understand the meaning of the word "force." The people who work in the shelter in question do not have a gun held to their heads.) They may be killing these animals, and caring for them so badly, because they believe they have no choice, but they're wrong. And in this day and age, with progressive and proven sheltering practices spreading across the continent and even beyond, to hide behind that tired old whine is even less believable than it ever was.

If people mired in this old-school, ineffective, failed paradigm would step out of it for a few minutes, they'd realize how bad they're making themselves look every time they, always predictably, trot it out. "It's not our fault we do what we do," they say. "It's all the bad people! Blame them! We're just helpless victims!"

You people really need some new material.

My suggestion that you get new photos will help get those pets into homes. Think about that while you continue to enable your community's filthy high-kill shelter to fail the animals inside its walls.

Then go get a freaking camera. Because after all, everyone wants to adopt puppies who are smeared with feces and looking out through rusty cage bars, right?

Photo on left from Nevada  Humane Society presentation on increasing pet adoptions. Photo on right courtesy of Nathan Winograd.

Why Greyhounds wear pajamas

For those who think I make up the stories about how my Greyhounds shiver if they sleep without their pajamas... even WITH her jammies, Stella is still mostly buried in blankets and pillows. And no, I didn't do this. She did it all on her own.

Speak up before the Internet dies

Not blogging today. This is why.

Could Scruffy's Law have saved Lucy the Lab?

The Kansas Humane Society took about ten minutes to kill a young, healthy Lab named Lucy after her owner surrendered her -- just enough time for the owner to break down in the parking lot, change her mind, and come back in to get her back. From Yes Biscuit:

Ms. Nott went to her car in the pound’s parking lot and called her sister, sobbing.  Together, they decided that Ms. Nott should go back and get Lucy and they would “figure something out”.  But when she returned to the pound’s lobby, she learned the Kansas Humane Society had already deemed Lucy unadoptable – due to the description of the inappropriate chewing behaviors – and had killed her.

Their defense of this turbo-charged timeline is that her behavior problem -- excessive chewing and destructive behavior when alone -- would have precluded her from being adopted, and they wanted to spare her the stress of being in the shelter by killing her.

The ASPCA, a national organization that runs a shelter in New York City, weighed in, saying that the onus of Lucy's death is really on her owner, who should have known better than to have brought her to an "open-admission" shelter -- by which they mean "kill shelter," since there are plenty of open-admission shelters that would not have killed Lucy or a dog like her.

Now, maybe Lucy's owner really sucked. I don't know. Mostly I find that people who sob in the parking lot after surrendering their dog, and who surrender her with her toys, treats, brush and special food, as Lucy's owner did, don't actually suck. They're just at the end of their personal resources.

But let's say she sucks. Let me tell you why this is still the fault of the Kansas Humane Society and its defender, the ASPCA.

Lucy the Lab was not owned by someone who raised money by saying they were there to help animals. She did not  have the word "Humane" in her name, nor the phrase "Prevention of Cruelty to Animals." She was not a non-profit charitable organization. She did not have as her stated mission the protection of pets.

Lucy's owner told the Wichita Eagle:

I think the public needs to know what really goes on out there.... It is the Humane Society, after all. Whatever happened yesterday was not humane.

Animal shelters exist because some pet owners suck, and because even those who don't suck get into situations where they can't keep their pets. Blaming that predictable, eternal reality (being "overburdened," in the ASPCA's words) for an organization killing healthy young animals because they don't know what else to do with them is not just a failure of compassion and morality, it is a form of deceit being perpetrated on every person who donates a dollar to those organizations.

The Kansas Humane Society should not have accepted Lucy if they were going to kill her.

The ASPCA should not have defended them for doing so.

Perhaps Lucy's owner should have had her change of heart ten minutes earlier. Since she's not out there running ads on late night TV asking me to send her money to take care of "dogs like Lucy," that's between her and her conscience.

Scruffy's Law wouldn't necessarily have saved Lucy's life. But it would probably have turned down the flow of revenue to the Kansas "shelter" by forcing them to remove the word "humane" from their name as long as they were killing young healthy dogs like Lucy. Perhaps that threat would have been enough to push them to comply with the requirement that they have to earn that designation by saving at least 90 percent of the pets who come in their doors.

Read more about Scruffy and Scruffy's law here. And don't donate to organizations that use the words "humane," "shelter," or "prevention of cruelty to animals" unless they've earned them.

 

Scruffy's Law: Making animal organizations tell the truth

Here's a law I can get behind.

That's because it's not an unfunded mandate, and it's not micro-management. It's just truth in advertising.

We need to pass a law that animal organizations that kill more than 10 percent of the animals that come in their doors may not use the words "humane," "shelter," or "prevention of cruelty" in their names.

I suggest we call it "Scruffy's Law," after the bottle-fed kitten killed by the Arizona "Humane" Society the other day, after they refused to provide emergency medical care for a cut that needed stitches unless her owner signed her over to them -- even though his mother was ready and able to pay for the care immediately with a credit card over the phone. From Yes Biscuit:

A 49 year old Phoenix man named Daniel Dockery bottle fed a kitten from birth whom he named Scruffy.  He raised enough money to get her spayed when she was old enough, fed her tuna, and slept next to her on the pillow at night.  Mr. Dockery credits Scruffy with helping him to remain sober for one year after battling a lifelong addiction illness.

Earlier this month, 9 month old Scruffy apparently cut herself on fencing and Mr. Dockery took her to the Arizona Humane Society for treatment.  Unable to come up with $400 on the spot, Mr. Dockery asked if the facility would accept his mother’s credit card by phone (she lives in MI) or be willing to accept payment the next day after his mother wired him the cash.  The Arizona Humane Society would do neither.  In fact, they reportedly advised Mr. Dockery that the only way for Scruffy to receive treatment was for him to sign over ownership.  He reluctantly complied.

For the next 3 weeks, Mr. Dockery searched area shelters and repeatedly asked staff about Scruffy.  He kept getting the runaround.  Finally this week, Mr. Dockery learned that Scruffy had been killed shortly after he signed ownership over to the Arizona Humane Society...

Their explanation? They lacked the resources to treat Scruffy, because they took in too many animals that day.

Why did they take her, then? Beats the hell out of me, and anyone else with a lick of sense or ounce of compassion. Scruffy had an owner -- an owner apparently quite willing to suffer for the sake of his pet, and a family member willing to pay for her care. 

In what universe did this make sense?

Only in a universe where an organization like this gets to market itself with the word "humane" in its name.

It's a simple fix, folks. A consumer protection law that will cost almost nothing, just some signs and new business cards. Heck, it will create jobs! Talk about a win-win!

And if they don't want to change their name, that's a simple fix, too. It's called the No Kill Equation. All the cool kids are doing it!

What do you say: Are you on board with Scruffy's Law?

Comcast's horrible customer service rides again

I sometimes wonder why Comcast is still in business.

After my last go-around with them, when they randomly gave my phone number away to someone else for no reason and professed to be unable to fix it for several days, you'd think nothing would surprise me.

But after Rawley, my dog, took my remote control out into the woods in a snowstorm, I contacted them about getting a replacement, a ten buck purchase. They informed me I'd need to provide them the following to buy -- not be given, but purchase -- a replacement remote:

1. Name on the account,
2. Address,
3. Telephone number associated with the account,
4. One of the following:
4.1. Last four digits of the Social Security Number of the account
holder,
4.2. Security Code,
4.3. Account Number,
4.4. Amount and date of most recent payment on the account, or
4.5. Services that are listed on the account.

Really, Comcast? Are you out of your mind?

It's not that I don't have all that information; I do. It's that it's the most ridiculous piece of overkill I've ever seen.

And it's worth noting that the people at Comcast are all very pleasant and nice. It's not rudeness that's the problem. It's the actual systems at Comcast that are broken, and the fact that their employees are not empowered to help customers. Being polite is not a substitute for having genuine customer-friendly policies and procedures.

A Greyhound Christmas

Stella on Christmas night, saying, "What do you mean, Santa's not coming again tomorrow?"

Rawley, the little varmint, hid not just his new toy in the woods, but hers, too. I can't find either of them. He didn't have enough time to bury them... they've got to be out there somewhere...

The No-Kill Movement: We are the 71 percent

We can argue all we want about what "no-kill" really means, whether it's about shelters or communities. Whether it's impossible or provably possible. About whether it's saving 90 percent or 98 percent or some strange and complicated definition involving highly subjective concepts like "adoptable."

What we can't argue about is this: The overwhelming majority of Americans -- 71 percent -- believe that shelters should not be allowed to kill any homeless pets unless they are too sick to be saved or too aggressive to be kept as pets.

That's what an Associated Press-Petside poll conducted by GfK Roper found in October when it asked 1,118 people in 50 states to identify which of two statements matched their own view.

Seventy-one percent said they believed  "Animal shelters should only be allowed to euthanize animals when they are too sick to be treated or too aggressive to be adopted."

Only 25 percent believed "Sometimes animal shelters should be allowed to euthanize animals as a necessary way of controlling the population of animals."

I know the history of animal sheltering in this country. I know how it came about that those who should have been tasked with sheltering, caring for, and showing compassion to homeless pets became their biggest killers.

But I also know the day when society found that acceptable is over. Completely and utterly over. Outdated, unwanted, increasingly unthinkable. Seventy-one percent of Americans know it, too. And those who insist it's impossible have now officially joined the ranks of those who never thought we'd have openly gay soliders or a black president.

In the battle for hearts and minds of nearly three-quarters of the people who live in this nation, no-kill won.

 

What I did on 'Black Friday' instead of shopping

I would say giving up shopping on Black Friday was a moral stance, but the truth is, I loathe and detest crowds, malls, and above all, big box stores, so it's not something I had to give up; I've never done it and would never want to. So, my friend Dawn came over and we watched It's a Wonderful Life (#OccupyPottersville!) and decorated my tree.

I went with a tabletop tree this year, because I thought a full-sized tree, set on the floor, might have been too tempting for the dogs, and I have no way to shut them out of the living room. A really lovely day, even if it's freakishly warm and sunny.

Not exactly the obligatory pet writer Thanksgiving food warning you might have been expecting

One of the biggest mistakes people make all year is feeding their pets such a freakishly restricted diet of the same endless processed food that the pets become violently ill from eating healthful, natural food like cooked turkey.

The remedy is not to refrain from giving your dog "people food" at Thanksgiving, it's to give up the junk food diet entirely and give them FOOD all year round.

Because there is no such thing as people food; there is just good, fresh, wholesome food and processed convenience food.

In case you're not sure what I mean, this is good, fresh, wholesome food:

This is also good, fresh, wholesome food:

This is a video of dogs eating food:

 

And this is processed convenience food, a mono-diet of which can render your pet unable to eat real food without digestive distress, a condition many veterinarians will blame on the real food: