Dogged Blog

AB 1634: Are they even pretending anymore?

I was literally speechless when I read the recent revisions made to AB 1634, a proposed California law that would mandate spaying and neutering all dogs and cats by the age of 6 months (previously 4 months).

My fundamental contention is that the proposal is flawed at its core and no amendments, revisions and exemptions can "fix" it, because it won't reduce shelter deaths, which is what it's supposed to do.  And these actual revisions and exemptions only make that more clear.

First, it now specifically allows everyone to let their pets have one litter before being altered. Since the AKC reports that the majority of people who register litters with them never have another litter -- are, in other words, not people with an ongoing breeding program or part of the fancy --  and  (I choke when I type this, but it's true) puppy mills, pet stores, and mass commercial breeding facilities have always been, and still are, exempt from this bill's provisions, the vast majority of breeding that results in California pets will be unaffected by this bill.

In addition,  those who breed pit bulls for dog fighting, as well as people who just don't care about their pets or the laws and ignore licensing and leash laws now, will ignore this law. As will unowned cats, who in some areas are the majority of the animals euthanized in shelters.

So, who's left? Absolutely no one but small hobby breeders, who are the only kind of breeder you should be giving your money to in the first place, and who can never meet the least-discussed but most "poison pill" provision of this bill: the requirement that they obtain a business license.

Currently, small hobby breeders are treated like any sort of very occasional seller, such as someone who holds one or two garage or yard sales each year. They don't have to get licensed as a business, because they aren't a business, any more than someone who has a yard sale is.

Small hobby breeders, those who maintain breeding programs to preserve and improve their chosen breeds, who participate in showing and training their dogs, almost always have their dogs living in their homes and don't have kennels or any kind of commerical facilities, nor do they live in commercially or business zoned areas. They shouldn't be required to get a business license because they are not a "business" in that sense of the word.

The real problem with this bill continues to be that it won't work to accomplish its stated goal. The influx of irresponsibly bred dogs will continue to flow into California, over the Mexican border, from puppy mills, over the Internet, from the black market of dog fighters and irresponsible owners and  allowed "one litter" breeders, and out of the pet stores.

And that tiny portion of dog owners who don't contribute to the problem in the first place, the serious small hobby breeders, are the only ones who will get squeezed out of existence. And dogs and cats will continue to die in shelters just as they do today, because there is nothing at all in this bill to stop that.

Way to go, California.

Sex, boys, and video clips

Since apparently AfterElton.com has decided I'm the world's leading lesbian expert on gay male sex scenes, they assigned me to do a movie version of my earlier piece on the most groundbreaking gay male sex scenes on television.

I had a lot of fun with this, and am kind of amazed at how much ground I covered in the piece:

Once upon a time, there were no gay and lesbian sections in the video stores, no queer film festivals, no debates over whether or not showing gay men having sex was good for the gay community's image. There were definitely no major theatrical releases of big-budget films in which gay men had sex, and certainly no one ever dreamed a film like that could ever be nominated for an Oscar.

[....]

In the mid-'80s a kind of sea change hit American theaters. Far from being art house and gay film festival exceptions, foreign films with gay male protagonists and overt depictions of gay male sexuality began filling theaters in cities across the United States, earning rave reviews and doing well at the box office.

This "golden age" had its roots in the post-Code, post-Stonewall days of the '60s, when a number of films with gay male sex scenes were made. And prior to the late '80s, when the AIDS epidemic and the changing political scene sent many gay films back into the film festival closet, we saw a high watermark in terms of gay sex on screen.

It's all here. Have fun!

Good breeders, and how to know

My pet column this week over on SFGate.com is about how to find a good breeder:

What's most important are not the questions you ask the breeder but the ones breeder asks you.

Being grilled about your suitability as a pet owner is the single best indicator that you're dealing with a reputable breeder. Why? Ask yourself this: Would you really want to bring a living, breathing creature into your home, to become a part of your family, who was born and raised in the hands of someone who didn't give a damn what happened to that animal?

Ethical, caring breeders want to know about your living situation, your past experience with pets, how other family members feel about a new dog or cat and if they can contact your veterinarian. Breeders are likely to want to know how extensive your knowledge of the breed is, and some of them have multipage questionnaires.

Those frustrating restrictions and contracts, and those intrusive questions, are your guarantee that the breeder of your pet is an ethical one. Or to put it more bluntly, the easier it is for you to get that puppy or kitten, the less careful the breeder of that puppy and kitten is.

Which is also why reputable breeders, those who are committed to improving and preserving their chosen breeds and bringing the healthiest possible puppies and kittens into the world, would never consider letting a third party, such as a pet store, place them in new homes. They care far too much about what happens to those puppies and kittens to let anyone else, let alone a stranger, take that decision out of their hands.

The whole thing is here. And you can now leave comments on my articles, so I have a new obsession to worry about... that's just great... eeek.

Does this count as a blog post?

Sorry for being absent. I took the weekend off to get my Pride on, and had deadlines Thursday, Friday, and today that ate my life otherwise. I promise to do better the rest of the week, in order to earn this:

86%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Boys who should be dykes

My fellow bloggers at AfterElton.com are doing a gay male companion piece to the Top Lesbian One Hundred at AfterEllen.com, and since I'm not allowed to nominate anyone due to the fact that I'm not a gay boy, I have to do it here. I was very amused by the fact that most of my nominations, except for George Clooney who I chose because my  mom and my friend Ginger find him hot and I love his politics, are also on AfterEllen.com's list of men who look like lesbians.  

If you're a gay or bi man, go nominate your favorite guys here, if you're not, well, ummmm... just jump under the cut and see which guys I think would make a good dyke are cute.

Stuff I Like

I decided to start a totally random series of reviews of stuff and companies I like. I don't sell these products or have any affiliation with these companies, so this isn't just random, it's altruistic.

Today, one of each.

Stuff: Parissa Face and Bikini Wax Strips

I used to get my brows and the odd stray hair on my lip waxed at the salon, which I hated and wasn't exactly convenient. Then I found Parissa Wax Strips at Whole Foods Market and I never left the house again switched to that. It's easy to use, extremely gentle, less painful (although that's probably psychological, especially for a control freak like me), and they have this nice soothing blue stuff you put on your tenderest skin after using it that works really well.

If you depillate, try it.

Company: Zappos.com

If you are already an initiate into the wonder and glory that is the "Web's largest shoe store," then you don't need to read this. If not, welcome to my world.

Zappos not only has pretty much every fabulous shoe, boot, and sandal ever made in every size and color, they also have the best customer service of any company I've ever dealt with.

Shipping is free. Return shipping is free, using a label you print out from their site. They frequently upgrade orders to overnight shipping. Free. They are friendly and helpful online and on the phone. They let you return purchases, no questions asked, for a year. Free.

Once they sent me something I hadn't ordered. It had my address on it, but someone else's name, and the packing slip had an address in another state. It was just the package label that had my address on it. I had not been billed or anything.

I called them, and they agreed I hadn't ordered it. They arranged for UPS to come pick it up, and just to thank me for taking the time to call them and let them know, they put a $25 credit on my account.

Their website is not very pretty, but they make up for that with the prettiness of their shoes, which they display in a format that enables you to see them from the top, both sides, the bottom, the front, and the back. There's nothing like it, not even at Nordstrom.com, the second best place online to get shoes.

It's true I have an unnatural love for shoes. I do not deny it. But Zappos transcends normal love and approaches being something like true love or even universal divine love. It's just that good.

When you want a puppy and you want one now... why you should wait

I hear from a lot of people who are steaming mad that good breeders, rescue groups, and shelters have too many restrictions and too long a wait for the kind of puppy they want. And I understand, because we all want what we want and we want it now. That's human nature.

But it's worth waiting, and not just because patience is a virtue. If all you need to do to get a puppy is cough up the money, and the person selling the dog to you doesn't give a damn where that puppy is going, it's a really good sign they also don't care where that puppy came from. And that where that puppy came from is not the kind of business you want to be giving your money to.

Don't care? Maybe not. A lot of people seem to have itchy fingers when it comes to ordering up a puppy on the Internet these days, and can't resist popping a furry little bundle of joy into their online shopping cart, just like it was a book or an electronic game.

The thing is, that mass-produced book or piece of software doesn't have a mother living her entire life in a cage only a few inches bigger than she is, being used to crank out litter after litter for the puppy mill industry. And your "no questions asked" puppy does.

So meet your puppy's mother, or a dog just like her. Meet Sunshine, the golden retriever so scared of humans she shook. Or Savannah, a miniature dachshund who should have weighed 12 pounds but only weighed 6 and a half, and was coated with liquid diarrhea and loaded with worms.

If you were with me and Pet Connection director of photography Morgan Ong on Memorial Day weekend, you've have met them and 47 other dogs, rescued by a crusading group of vets, vet techs, and volunteers from a dispersal auction run by a puppy mill going out of business.

You'd have met dozens of Pugs with a painful genetic eye disorder – the dogs who are the fathers and mothers of uncountable puppies sold in pet stores and online, who are at risk to have the same genetic condition as their parents.

You'd have also met Gabriel and Carmella, two Italian Greyhounds with what one vet described as the worst dental health she’d ever seen – Carmella had to have 12 teeth removed, and also had an infected uterus; she has since been spayed. Gabriel’s mouth is worse than Carmella’s, and they’re looking for a veterinary dentist who will donate the surgery he needs.

You'd have met a Boston Terrier named Butters, who had a deep ulcer in one of her eyes that had received no care and was about to rupture. Blue, a one-year-old Chihuahua, missing an eye. Boris, an 8-month-old Pug with demodetic mange, for which he is now being successfully treated. A Standard Poodle dubbed “Hamilton” whose coat was completely matted on his body. Once shaved, they found him literally crusted with ticks. There were several Beagles and Shih Tzus with a variety of eye problems and old, untreated wire injuries and bite wounds.

Want to help these dogs, and the people trying to rescue them? Want to find out more about what they're doing, and why?

It's the subject of my column this week at SFGate.com.

"There are thousands of dogs that run through the auction. You can only buy a few," Hamilton admitted. But that's not really the point, she said.

"Of course, we want to get the dogs out and get them in loving homes. But the real point of doing this is to draw attention to the lives these dogs live, so that someone who feels the impulse to get a puppy on the Web, or whose eye is caught by a cute puppy in a pet store window, will stop and think, not about that cute puppy but about his mother and father back at the puppy mill. Those dogs are spending their entire lives in tiny cages and cramped, filthy runs."

If you want to help the dogs brought out of Oklahoma, or offer one of them a home, you can contact Dr. Hamilton's hospital at 510-657-9151. But the most important thing you can do to help all the Sunshines and Savannahs that didn't make it out of the puppy mills, she said, is simple: Stop buying their puppies.

"It's a money-driven industry, and the only way to stop it is when people become educated not to buy puppies from these sources," she said. "You have to cut off the demand so that they'll breed less and fewer dogs will suffer."

Full article here. You can also contact Boulevard Pet Hospital, where most of the animals are being boarded and rehabilitated, at 408-379-5554.

Photo by Morgan Ong/Universal Press Syndicate.

It's all about ME

So, I have been having computer problems, but they seem to be fixed now, although some of my email is apparently lost and gone forever. If you emailed me in May and I didn't respond, please try again -- it's history, babe.

My interview with HGTV's David Bromstad is out on AfterElton.com today:

Whether they're demonstrating their willingness to eat worms, whip up a soufflé, get a makeover, or have their living room redecorated with items currently languishing in their own garages, reality TV has always been a pretty good place for the gays. Striking a note more of gentle subversion than in-your-face sensationalism, most of the home decorating, cooking and fashion makeover shows treat queer guests and contestants pretty much just like everyone else. 

The Home and Garden Network is no exception, regularly fixing the severe organizational problems and real-estate woes of same-sex couples without batting an eye. And when they decided to do a home decorating reality competition show called Design Star, they didn't bat an eye that one of the contestants — and its ultimate winner — was David Bromstad, an out gay designer from Miami.

David was a great interview, and I had a lot of fun talking to him.

And I was in USA Today this morning... me me me! And of course, Gina, Ben Huh from itchmo.com, Therese from PetSitUsa.com, and Kim from petfoodtracker.blogspot.com. Elizabeth Weise did a couple of pieces on the pet food recall and the pet power bloggers -- that's us, apparently -- and she singled me out not for my brilliant political commentary and powers of analysis, but my ability to type really really fast while liveblogging. Woe. Still, fame is fame:

Early on, there was extreme confusion about the number of pets that had been sickened or killed. The Food and Drug Administration had been reporting fewer than 20, while anecdotal reports indicated numbers well into the hundreds, if not thousands. In human cases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would track such numbers. But there is no such reporting system in place for animals.

To fill the gap, the Pet Connection team created an online database where owners could list their pets, symptoms, outcome and veterinary information. The numbers stand at 2,527 cats and 2,365 dogs dead.

Because no "official" number has ever been released, their figures became the only ones available, and are likely to remain so until academic veterinarians begin publishing their research, which could take another year.

The site also started an innovation that became surprisingly popular — live transcripts of FDA phone news conferences. It was something of a shock to people listening in when they began getting e-mails about something a federal official had just said seconds before.

Pet Connection, it turned out, had elected its fastest typist, contributing editor Christie Keith, to "live blog" the teleconferences. She was typing a verbatim transcript onto the site as the officials spoke.

Thousands now log in for every press conference, Spadafori says.

Full article here, sidebar here.

I was also in the LA Times, which I didn't mention before because... ummm... well, I could lie and say modesty but I think it was more like exhaustion and overwork:

The pet food campaign has the hallmarks of other big blog-driven news stories, with dedicated crews of site owners highlighting, commenting on and linking to media reports and official statements. The bloggers dig out and post documents, such as the FDA's missive advising that pregnant investigators not examine human foods that the FDA has said repeatedly are safe, and they e-mail reporters, government officials, company executives and anyone else who might have a part in the story.

They listen in on FDA conference calls, patiently awaiting the rare chance that the agency's public relations staffers will call on them, and some "liveblog" their own running transcripts.

"I don't know of a comparable case," said Jay Rosen, a New York University journalism professor who writes the media criticism blog PressThink. "It shows what's possible when people get outraged and they ask themselves, what's happening here? They actually have the tools to start finding out."

[...]

Pet Connection, one of the larger sites that has devoted itself to recall issues, has the advantage of being organized by trained journalists who also write a syndicated pet column for newspapers around the country.

Their work now is a long way from what Gina Spadafori, the site's executive editor, and Christie Keith, a contributing editor and blogger on the site, were doing before the recall hit.

"In February, we were covering the latest in litter boxes at Global Pet Expo," Spadafori said. "And in March, I'm suddenly embroiled in an international trade story."

And my head is still spinning from that one. Full article by Pulitzer-prize winning reporter Abigail Goldman here.

It isn't that I don't love Gina

I love Gina, I do. I would walk through fire for her. I would crawl over broken glass. I'd throw my body in front of a speeding bullet for her.

Apparently I'd do just about anything for her except return her beautiful wonderful tiny little laptop to her.

I have had it since January, and other than sending it home for one brief visit, it hasn't left my hot little hands, despite her repeated reminders that she needed it back. I had it all packed up to go when she had to cancel her out of town plans due to a looming book deadline, so I immediately saved it from a fate worse than Sacramento death and clutched it to my loving bosom once again.

Tonight my strategy finally paid off and she said I can keep it forever and ever! Oh, oh, Gina's tiny laptop and I will be so happy together for all eternity! We are like Wesley and Buttercup! Xena and Gabrielle! Oh tiny laptop how I love thee!

Thank you, Gina!

In other news, my desktop got very very sick and was in the hospital this weekend. It's home now, recuperating. I have lost at least one month's worth of email, probably for all time. Sob.