Dogged Blog

Rest in peace, Eight Belles. Farewell, Kentucky Derby.

Although I have read a hundred books about racing and its most legendary horses, I don't follow horse racing at all, although Gina (my editor and friend at Pet Connection) does. But I always watch the Kentucky Derby, and I imagine there are a lot of viewers like me, for whom the Derby is everything we know of horse racing.

And I am not the only one I've seen today who's written these words: I'm done with the Kentucky Derby.

Watching Eight Belles, the first filly to start the Derby since 1999, who came in second to winner and favorite Big Brown, go down with two broken ankles and be euthanized where she fell, is more than I can stand. So I'm done.

Guamentum!

I took the Daily Kos link off my browser tool bar or whatever the heck you call that little space at the top. Just for the weekend, in the hope of getting something vaguely like balance back in my life.

I actually find the cable news idiots more annoying, but since I don't watch TV, they're easily avoided. What I find either amusing or annoying, depending on my mood, is the see-sawing of the concern trolls pretending to be all worried about poor widdle Obama who clearly needs all of us to [fill in the blanks] and stop his catastrophic collapse in support, or the sky is falling little bloggers who believe that Obama once had good ideas but now needs to [fill in the blanks] because clearly those idiots in his campaign have no clue what they're doing.

All of them, of course, missing the truly important issue, which is that Obama has taken the Guam primary and as well all know, as Guam goes, so goes the nation, yo.

Oh blogosphere how I love thee.

Anyway, I have a little bit of work to do today, and a few personal issues that I've let slide for too long, so I decided to test my internal fortitude and try to avoid the political interwebs until Monday. None of us is doing anything except driving ourselves stark raving insane, anyway.

I have a post up at Pet Connection about my dog Kyrie's battle with a multi-drug resistant staph infection -- it's here, and contains the latest news for those who have been following the story.

Two hours of work, then I have to watch a video for an article I'm writing for AfterElton.com. (Yes, I get paid to watch television.) Oh, and assuming our media credentials come through, KT and I will be covering the GLAAD Media Awards next weekend for AfterEllen.com/AfterElton.com.  Do you see how exciting life can be when you delete DKos from your bookmarks?

Rough life for pets in King County shelters; pet meds

You know you're not cut out for politics when watching the Daily Show and the Colbert Report becomes too stressful.

Of course, not as stressful as life seems to be for animals in the troubled shelter system in wealthy King County, Washington. Shelter consulstant and no-kill activist Nathan Winograd was brought in to evaluate the shelters earlier this year, and what he found confirmed earlier reports of widespread animal suffering and systemic problems. His report was dismissed by some as "biased," but an evaluation by the UC Davis shelter medicine team that the County released yesterday, confirms that things are dire indeed:

When King County, WA, announced last week that it was embarking on a nearly-one-million dollar upgrade of its animal shelter system, it was clear that such an effort was long overdue. It was particularly hard to understand just why these changes were so long in coming, given the history of troubling reports from volunteers, veterinary staff, and the county’s own citizen advisory committee.

The county brought in two organizations to evaluate the shelter system and its operations. One was shelter consultant Nathan Winograd, who issued a report consistent with problems identified by the advisory committee but that caused some volunteers and staffers to protest.

Another was the team from the UC Davis Koret Shelter Medicine Program, which visited the facilities in January.

Their report, released today by the county, is 151 pages of observations, some extremely troubling and some hopeful, as well as recommendations to turn around what they call “a breakdown in care leading to animal suffering, illness, and likely un-necessarily high levels of euthanasia and death, as well as creation of significant public health and safety risks for staff and shelter visitors.”

I have a lengthy discussion of the 151-page report, including photos, over on Pet Connection; the Seattle Times also covered the report this morning, here.

In my column on SFGate.com, I look at the rapidly changing world of veterinary drug prescribing... not the drugs themselves, but the laws, customs, regulations, and economic realities of today's often-confusing, rapidly-changing pet med marketplace:

I hear it all the time: Pet owners grousing that their vets are ripping them off with high prescription drugs prices, and veterinarians worrying that the shift to Internet and chain pharmacy use by their clients is threatening their ability both to survive economically and to protect their patients' health.

Ten years ago, while a doctor handed patients a prescription to take to the drugstore, a veterinarian sold drugs for pets directly. But things are different now. "I write prescriptions left and right. I must have written five prescriptions today," Florida veterinarian Dr. Patty Khuly told me. "That never used to happen."

Behind the change is an explosion of new places to buy both human and veterinary drugs: Internet pharmacies, 800 numbers, catalogs and chain stores that offer some drugs free or for a few dollars just to get you in the door. Those changes have left many veterinarians overwhelmed and pet owners confused.

It's here.

Will California's Ferrets Ever Get to Come in from the Cold?

I can almost never read the comments to my SFGate.com pet columns anymore, because it seems like half the people who respond just want to spew hate and violence at pets, and I can't take it. They also tend to act like the existence of a pet column is some sort of plot by the SF Chronicle against them.

But still, I write the darn things. I must be a masochist.  And this week is probably one of my most masochistic efforts, as I deliberately step on the third rail of California pet politics, the issue of ferret legalization.

Let me say right now that I think the current state policy on ferrets is idiotic, a blunt statement my editor saw fit to jettison but that I affirm here. I'm a columnist, so I get to have opinions. It's what they pay me for.

But that doesn't mean my opinions are plucked out of the air. I have reasons for them, and that is, of course, what the article is all about:

They're cute, affectionate, furry and playful. There are tens of thousands of them in California, and they're allowed as pets in most countries and every state except Hawaii.

So why are ferrets illegal in California?

It's an old story, characterized by battling sets of statistics and interpretations of natural history. To the California Department of Fish and Game and some environmentalists, ferrets are wild animals with the potential to establish feral colonies and wreak havoc on native species if they escape from captivity.

But as Jeanne Carley of Californians for Ferret Legalization has pointed out, the ferret has been classified "as domesticated by the United States Department of Agriculture, Smithsonian Institute, Museum of Natural History, the Humane Society of the United States and 150 zoos, zoological societies and other authorities."

I interviewed David Gaines of the legal and legislative affairs committee of the American Ferret Association for the piece, and he was terrific:

"The bottom line, from what I've been able to determine is that it's just a very fierce environmental debate," said Dave Gaines, of the legal and legislative committee of the American Ferret Association, "But ferrets are thoroughly domesticated. There are no feral colonies that are going to form in California and destroy endangered species. There's no evidence of that ever happening in the United States."

Then I   take on what I call the Godwin's Law of the ferret legalization battle, the New Zealand experience with feral ferrets, after which I get into the double standard ferrets face in California:

In fact, the CDFG document also points out that cats cause more environmental harm than ferrets do, and the Sierra Club said in 1997 that the only reason they were opposed to pet ferrets but not pet dogs and cats was that "dogs and cats are already legal." What kind of backward logic is that? If ferrets are illegal, shouldn't dogs and cats be, too? Their waste contaminates the soil and water. Dogs bite and bark. Cats poop in vegetable gardens and eat birds. No one can deny any of that.

The problem is, when you start down that road, there are a heck of a lot of species that need to be banned, and the one that most deserves it is good old homo sapiens. There's never been an animal yet — not even rabbits in Australia — that's done more damage to the environment than we have.

So where do you draw the line?

Apparently in California we draw it at a little, pointy-faced, whiskered furry creature that rarely lives even a decade, doesn't make noise, doesn't use public parks, cannot run free, doesn't poop on the sidewalk, has a hard time surviving unaided in the wild and, compared to many other pets, isn't that popular even where legal. (The APPMA says there are 1.9 million ferrets in the United States; compare that to 88.3 million cats and 44.3 million dogs.)

There's a lot more, including an update on the next step in the battle to liberate the state's pet ferrets, here.

Pet Food Recall, One Year Later

I'm back from SXSW, and I spent most of the last three days sleeping and trying to find some tiny little spark of energy. So far, not so much, although I got the dogs out for a long, long walk yesterday -- the first since I came home. I guess tramping all over Austin wore me out, along with the massive sleep deprivation and oh yeah, did I mention not being able to get or stay online? /whine

This is nothing, of course, compared to what happened the day after I got home from Austin last year, which was the first in what turned out to be dozens of pet food recalls due to contamination with melamine and cyanuric acid.

My article on this for SFGate.com actually ran in the San Francisco Chronicle on Saturday, and now it's on their site in two locations, which is a bit confusing, even to me. But here it is:

I didn't guess when I began covering this story with Gina Spadafori at Pet Connection that it would turn into the largest consumer recall in history, trigger an international trade scandal, launch congressional hearings, spur proposed legislation on food safety and get both American and Chinese businesses owners indicted. I couldn't have foreseen that the incident would put a spotlight on Chinese imports which would eventually reveal lead in children's toys and toxins in toothpaste, and prompt the recent recall of the drug heparin.

But it's equally hard to believe that after all that, the answer to the question "Could it happen again?" is probably "Yes."

Full story here.

My Pet Connection colleague Kim Campbell Thornton also did an excellent story marking the sad anniversary on MSNBC.com:

One year after contaminated pet food killed potentially thousands of dogs and cats, few safety measures have gone into effect.

While pet food safety legislation has been passed and an industry commission has made recommendations to improve the safety and quality standards for pet food, some critics say the efforts, even when they are fully implemented, may not amount to much more than the fox guarding the hen house.

Full story here.

Pet blogging: Not a fluffy puppy story

I'm heading out for Austin not, like Gina, to visit a cattle ranch, but to lead a discussion on "Pet Blogging: Not a fluffy puppy story" at the South by Southwest Internet, Film, and Music Festival. (I'll also be covering the Internet and Music parts as part of my other life.) Joining me will be my friend and PetHobbyist.com colleague Therese Kopiwoda, who did such great work on the pet food recall at PetSitUSA.com and thepetfoodlist.com.

The talk will, of course, discuss last year's pet food recall, but it's mainly going to be on the diversity and depth of blogging about pets. There was a time when Gina and I weren't really sure that we could find enough hard-hitting subjects to blog about, but with all the international trade scandals, food safety issues, medicine and science stories, puppy mill rescues, pet sterilization laws, and the growing movement for shelter reform and no-kill, that certainly hasn't turned out to be the case.

I can't liveblog a panel I'm actually on, but I'll certainly write about it after the fact. I also believe a podcast will be available on the SXSW website, and if so, I'll link to that, too.

And if you're in Austin, come by! The discussion is on Sunday, March 9, from 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM. More info here.

Xena and the superbug

The article I wrote based on the interviews I did at the Xena convention went up today at AfterEllen.com. And I'd have posted this sooner but I was up all last night with a sick dog, and spent most of the day at the vet and the rest of the day trying to catch up.

First, the Warrior Princess:

Viewers never had to look too hard to find the lesbian subtext in Xena: Warrior Princess, but that's still what it was: subtext. And while lesbian fans in the 1990s might not have had any choice but to settle for that, would things be different if the show were being made — or remade — today? When I attended the Xena convention in Burbank, Calif., at the end of January, I asked the show's creators, producers, writers and stars if the world is ready for an openly lesbian relationship between Xena and Gabrielle.

"To me it was main text," said Renee O'Connor, who played Gabrielle, in an exclusive interview with AfterEllen.com. "And even if it was subtext, it was very clear that we were together. They are so in love with each other, they love each other so dearly; there's no way you can say that's not true. Anyone can see that from watching the show."

I asked her if she thought that relationship could be openly acknowledged if the series were being made today. "I don't know," O'Connor answered. "Maybe there's a little bit more hint of acceptance today. Maybe, maybe not. You can only put it up and see what would happen. I guess we could do anything, just get it out there and see how it affects people."

In a lot of ways, Xena flew under the radar during the '90s. Viewers who didn't perceive (or didn't like) the lesbian subtext could see it simply as a story about heroic friends righting wrongs and battling villians. If the show were being produced in today's post–L Word television landscape, it's hard to believe that audiences would be quite as oblivious.

But O'Connor doesn't think that a more overt presentation of Xena and Gabrielle's relationship would have changed the moral heart of the series. That's because she sees those two things — the love between Xena and Gabrielle and the series' focus on the fight against evil — as inextricably combined. 

"If we were just starting Xena right now, I know what the relationship of the two characters is," O'Connor said. "So even though we wouldn't blatantly talk about all the issues involved, because I don't think that's what the show is about, it's still about defeating oppressors and wanting to do the right thing for the world. And that comes down to these people and how they love each other."

It's all here.

Now the part about the dog and the superbug, from where I posted about it in more detail on Pet Connection:

And you thought spider bites were bad enough. Welcome to the brave new post-drug resistant superbug world — and meet the latest staph infection poster child, my Borzoi, Kyrie.

Wednesday night, she had a small, quarter-sized red patch on her hip that seemed to hurt her terribly. I got her into the vet the next day, and she diagnosed a spider bite, shaved and cleaned the area, and put her on antibiotics, pain meds, and gave me lydocaine spray to numb it. She predicted Kyrie would feel better in around 48 hours.

By Saturday, Kyrie had an 8 inch by 8 inch patch of infected, oozing, red, raw skin. It was swollen and blistered. I spoke to my vet, who told me to take her off the antibiotic and bring her in today for a skin culture.

But Kyrie spent all last night huddling next to me on the bed whimpering, so this morning I canceled the visit to my local vet, and headed off to see a specialist.

I had a fairly good idea what was going on, and my vet agreed with me: what we know in human medicine as methicillin-resistant staphylocuccus aureus, or MRSA.

In dogs and cats, a more typical finding is methicillin-resistant staphylococcus intermedius, MRSI, but it’s otherwise pretty much the same problem: a common bacteria, found in and on most dogs, people, and surfaces, has evolved to be able to resist the antibiotics we normally use to treat it.

Full story and gruesome photo, here.

Doggedly liberal. Deal.

I was amused to read the Pet Connection this morning and see Gina waxing political. She had a nice gloss of non-partisanship all over it, but yo, Gina, I'm so onto you. She's an Obama fangirl, just like me.

She linked to Terrierman, who is competing with me for leader of the Cranky Dog Bloggers for Obama political club. He's currently winning because, as usual, Chat Month is eating my soul, and I'm not free to blog as much as I'd like to. In fact, I just woke up from 13 hours of sleep, the first good night of sleep I've had in more than a week. I'm completely exhausted.

I'm tired of something else, in addition to, you know, sleep deprivation. And it ties in with what Gina was saying.

It's the assumption that people who believe in preserving heritage dog breeds, support the right of people to own, show, and breed dogs, and who want to hold government, including animal control, accountable for its actions on their behalf must also be Republicans.

I'm not. As you have probably previously noticed.

There's also something of an assumption that anyone who fights against mandatory spay/neuter laws will also support a whole host of other things, none of which I do... like the mass commercial breeding of dogs, selling puppies and kittens through third parties, whether brokers, websites, or pet stores, factory farming, or fur ranching.

I not only refuse to get in bed with the Hunte Corporation in order to preserve my right to own intact purebred dogs, but I think the argument that I have to do that is bullshit.

That's because just because I advocate for something, write persuasively about it, and believe it myself, does not mean I think it's a good idea to make it mandatory. I believe in people making up their own minds.

I also believe in speaking mine, and yes, I try to be persuasive when I do. That's my form of advocacy.

I will not sacrifice one right -- the right to speak freely about what I believe -- for another -- the right to preserve the Scottish Deerhound. In fact, with all due respect to my beloved breed, if it's a contest between the two, I'll pick the first.

I understand that some of the people I've stood with in opposition to mandatory spay/neuter laws believe they have to support the sale of puppies in pet stores in order to be "consistent," and in order to have the support of the pet industry for the cause. As I said to one of those people a few nights ago, I sat on the floor once with an Italian greyhound who had spent the 8 years of her life or so in a puppy producing facility. I would call it a puppy mill, even though it may well have been clean, USDA approved, and had its own little team of vets and vet techs supervising everything.

She didn't react when you petted her. She didn't see you when she looked at you. She didn't care about being cuddled or walked, didn't want a toy or even a treat. She wasn't curious, or interested, or aware.

When I looked in her eyes, she was dead.

And that's why I don't care how clean the mill was, and I don't care if a thousand studies say that puppies are just as healthy and loved if they come from a pet store as if they come from a home breeder. Because it's not about the puppies, it's about their mothers.

And their dead eyes.

I believe mandatory spay/neuter harms animals and the people who love them. I believe it's designed to impede pet ownership in furtherance of an anti-pet agenda, not to reduce the number of animals killed in shelters. That's why I fight it.

I believe that the way to change things is through free expression, speech, persuasion, and education, not legislation.

I believe that the only way to shut down puppy mills is to dry up the market, because there's no just way to legislate them out of business without trampling on people's freedoms, and in the end, harming the human/animal bond.

But I believe that as a liberal, and as a dog lover, and as the opponent of the mass commercial production of puppies, and someone who is against the sale of puppies and kittens in pet stores.

And I don't find any of those things a contradiction.

Is there a new strain of parvo?

I'm going crazy right now, with the hysteria on the blogs and lists about this "new strain of parvo," based on a January press release from Oklahoma State University.

The amount of bad information that's getting shot all over the Internets is scary, kids. So of course I blogged about this over on Pet Connection:

In all honesty, I’m not surprised the loaded language in the OSU press release scared people, with all the stuff about 600 puppies dying in one night and mentions of “vaccine failure” and dead adult dogs. And yet… if you really look at the various studies, what you see are the usual kinds of vaccine failure from maternal antibody interference. You see dogs who are not vaccinated at all. You see dogs who got sick so soon after being vaccinated that they were clearly incubating the disease already.

The researchers themselves say this — say there’s no evidence this strain has evolved out of the coverage from existing vaccines. The very fact that this strain is so widespread, and is being found all over the country, tells us this is just another strain of CPV that’s out there, of interest to virologists, yes, but its practical importance? Other than the fact that one of the common lab tests for parvo can miss it, not much.

So enough, already. Sure, one day we might have a strain of parvo that mutates beyond coverage by existing immunity. I’m glad that researchers are watching out for that. I certainly want labs to know when strains evolve beyond the ability of some of their tests to detect.

But all we’re doing with this hysterical “sky is falling” reaction, our insistence there’s a new strain of a deadly disease and our dogs aren’t protected against it, is spreading false information and scaring the crap out of people.

Check it out here. Please.

Someone in the government has been counting dead pets

Remember the pet food recall? I'm not likely to forget it, and neither will any of the thousands of pet owners whose dogs and cats were sickened or killed from eating pet food contaminated with industrial chemicals.

The FDA may never get around to counting how many dogs and cats died or were seriously affected by eating the contaminated foods, but another government agency at least got past the "14 confirmed deaths" crap.

In a press release proclaiming, “Thousands of pets suffered illness, death throughout the United States,” today the U.S. Department of Justice announced  that "(T)wo Chinese businesses and their top executives, along with a United States company and its owners, were indicted by a federal grand jury today, in separate but related cases, for their roles in manufacturing and importing a tainted ingredient used to make pet food, which resulted in the death and serious illness of countless pets in the United States last year."

Gina and I are blogging it over at PetConnection.com. Too bad I was up all night last night watching election returns... and now I have to watch this story and oh yeah, recap Project Runway, which amazingly I don't care much about at all right now.