Dogged Blog

Alley Cat Allies asks: Could you save this cat?

My mother once adopted the feral kitten of a Golden Gate Park feral cat. Her name was Misty and she lived to be 22 years old, and loved my mom and pretty much no one but my mom until the day she died -- held at the very end in my mother's arms.



Probably at least in part because of Misty, I've admired the work done by Alley Cat Allies for a long time. If you're not familiar with them, they are a national group seeking non-lethal means of reducing feral cat population numbers. You can read more about them and the good work they do here.



In the last year the group has raised their profile quite a bit, and have been coming out with some very hard-hitting informational pieces.



One of the projects they've recently come up with is a video that says it so much better than I ever could:

I Miss Jon Stewart

I miss Jon Stewart so much. The writer's strike, which I fully support, is hurting me this country.

Before it began, I started researching two articles, one on the Daily Show's Best Gay Moments, and the second on the Daily Show's Best Lesbian Moments. The first one came out a month or so ago, and I linked to it at that time. The lesbian version just came out a minute ago.

Literally.

And here it is:

When it comes to fodder for scathing political comedy, lesbians aren't the first group that comes to mind. That's because powerful, closeted lesbian conservatives rarely get arrested in public restrooms or are exposed as prostitute-soliciting, meth-using televangelists. No, that ground definitely belongs to the guys.

So where did all that lesbian material come from? A big hunk of it comes from one of the longest-running displays of political hypocrisy in the history of American government, Mary Cheney.

Mary Cheney is, of course, the out lesbian daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, or as Stewart describes him: "Dick Cheney: Conservative. Draconian. Drinks the blood of puppies."

So just what bugs Jon Stewart about the vice president and his daughter? Maybe it's the way he claims to love her and support her while his political party devotes vast amounts of energy to making sure she never gets better than second-class citizenship. Or the way questions about the Republican Party's policies on LGBT issues are somehow an invasion of Cheney's family's privacy — even though Mary Cheney is out, lives with her partner, and wrote a book about being the out lesbian daughter of the vice president.

Lesbian political content on The Daily Show doesn't end with Mary Cheney, however. From same-sex marriage to right-wing values pundits like William Bennett and Dr. Laura, there's a whole lot of lesbian gold to be mined in the Daily Show's brand new clip archive.

Read the rest here. Laugh. Think good thoughts for the writers. Make fake news come back. We need it.

Katrina's Lessons Learned

My friend and colleague Liz Palika lives in the area that was threatened by the fires in San Diego earlier this fall, and was involved in rescuing and sheltering many pets and animals including dogs, horses, small critters, and a number of reptiles and amphibians.

I interviewed her for a story on how differently pets are handled during disasters in post-Katrina America. It was a wonderful interview, and I'm really happy at how the story turned out -- even though it awoke some painful memories:

Marie Knoblock loved her dogs, a Lab named Herman and a chow chow named Jimmi. She became a friend of mine through an online dog forum and when I went to work for a pet community Web site in 2000, she happily gave me photos of her dogs to use. Jimmi's smiling face greets the visitors to the DogHobbyist.com Chow Chow Forum to this day.

But Jimmi smiles only in photos now, because he, along with Marie and Herman, drowned when Hurricane Katrina drove flood waters into their home in Bay St. Louis, Miss. Marie was riding out the storm with her daughter, Kim, and Kim's two dogs, as well as an elderly houseguest and her poodle. When a disaster team showed up to evacuate the three women, they told them they had to leave their dogs behind.

All three made the decision to stay with their dogs, but when water came pouring down their street like a river, they were trapped in the house, the floodwater steadily rising. Kim left the dogs with Marie and swam underwater to the attic stairs, and was able to break out a ventilation panel and escape to the roof. Although she managed to get their houseguest and her poodle out alive, Marie, 63, as well as Jimmi, Herman, and Kim's two dogs, didn't make it past the second floor, and drowned.

Marie's story is not unique. During and after Katrina, I read dozens of stories on pet e-mail lists and forums about people who died, or nearly did, because they refused to leave their pets behind when ordered to evacuate without them. The AARP reported that many of the confirmed Katrina deaths were among senior citizens who would not abandon their pets, although exact numbers are not known.

Nightly newscasts were full of images of pets swimming forlornly after the boats that took their owners away from them. A post-Katrina poll found that 61 percent of pet owners would refuse to evacuate in the face of a disaster if it meant leaving their animals behind. For those people, "animal disaster preparedness" meant nothing more than being prepared to choose between abandoning their pets and death.

Today, it's much less likely that pet owners will have to make that terrible choice. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, disaster response agencies realized that, if human lives were to be saved, the bond between humans and their animals couldn't be ignored. Agencies such as the Red Cross worked with government departments like Homeland Security and private animal groups to develop disaster sheltering and rescue procedures that take companion animal ownership into consideration.

The recent San Diego fires put these new procedures to the test, and for the most part, proved hugely successful. Southern California evacuation facilities had accommodations for animals or arrangements with shelters to care for people's pets and livestock. In addition, businesses, including the Veterinary Clinics of America and a number of hotels, opened their doors to the pets of evacuees. So did many individuals and small business owners.

Pet author and dog trainer Liz Palika was one of those who opened not just the doors of her business but her home to animals in need. Horses and dogs were cared for at her dog training facility, located safely outside the fire area, while many small and unusual pets that local shelters were ill-equipped to handle were boarded by Palika, an experienced keeper of reptiles, amphibians and small pets.

Palika, who is the author of more than 45 books on animal care, agreed that things have changed since the days of Hurricane Katrina. "I know one of the visions I had after Katrina was the little boy with his little fluffy dog that was ripped from his arms," she told me. "And the dog that was chained on the bridge in the sun with no food, no water, and nobody there. That one just tore me up, too, as bad as the little boy losing his dog."

The full article is here -- it also includes an interview with Dr. Jeff Werber, Lassie's veterinarian, on the importance of identification for pets in case of disaster.

AKC wants your dog to be a PAL

I never know from day to day which American Kennel Club I'm dealing with, the one that drives me insane with its inability to perceive that we live in a new millennium and they need to change with the times, or the one that does things that make sense -- and make the lives of dogs and their owners better, too.



Earlier this year, the AKC board seemed to think it would be a good idea to make common cause with pet store chains that sell puppies to anyone with enough room on their credit card, only to be told in no uncertain terms by an outraged room full of parent club delegates that they didn't think so, thank you very much. Delegates 1, Board 0, and the idea was scrapped -- but not before the board let the delegates know that the club was having some financial problems related to decreasing registrations, and if they didn't want to start paying forty billion dollars for show entries, they needed to come up with some other ideas.



I don't know who came up with this one, but I like it. A lot.



For many years now, the AKC has had a special registration program for dogs who were recognizable purebreds but didn't have registration papers. It was called, unimaginatively, the "Indefinite Listing Program," or ILP. This listing enabled dogs to be entered in AKC performance events -- obedience, coursing, hunt tests, agility, and all the rest.



The only two things it didn't do was allow the dog to be shown in conformation, and allow the offspring of the dog to be registered. In fact, one requirement is that the dog be spayed or neutered.



Well, the AKC finally jazzed the program up with a new name and a snazzy new outreach program. It's now the Purebred Alternative Listing, or PAL. Dogs will now get their PAL number, along with most of the perks of AKC registration. From their media release:

PAL enrollees will receive a copy of Family Dog Magazine, a subscription to AKC’s e-newsletter “Your AKC,” a flyer from the breed’s Parent Club and an attractive certificate denoting their dog’s place in the PAL program. Also included will be information on AKC Pet Healthcare and AKC Companion Animal Recovery enrollment.



“We currently enroll over 3,000 dogs per year in the ILP/PAL program. It is our hope that we can expand this number and the overall appeal of the program by offering added benefits and renaming the program with this more creative and friendly acronym,” said Assistant Vice President of Customer Service, Mari Beth O’Neill. “Welcoming more ILP/PAL dogs to the world of AKC events and privileges can only benefit both dogs and owners by providing educational resources and also exposing them to the joys of competing with your dog.”

Sure, it's designed to increase revenue. I have no problem with that. I have my issues with them, but AKC does a lot of good work, too -- including funding the AKC Canine Health Foundation, which is supporting research into canine diseases that have affected my own dogs. And doing it by bringing people into the world of purebred dogs in a sense of fun and inclusion, which can also only be good for the sport.



The full release is here.

Vick ' s dogs: Background on the evaluation process

While I was sucked into the vortex of deadline hell (and it's still not over; I have two long pieces due tomorrow) Gina blogged about the court's disposition of Michael Vick's dogs. I just stumbled across the actual court document, and it has a lot of fascinating information about the individual dogs and their evaluations.

An allocation of $5,000 per dog was made if based on the evaluations and information available, it appears reasonably likely that after a period of time in a foster home where behavior could be assessed and training would occur, these dogs could be adopted by members of the public.



An allocation of $20,000 per dog was made if based on the evaluations and information available, a dog is likely to spend a significant amount of time, if not the dog’s remaining lifetime, in an environment that will control the dog’s interaction with people or other animals while it receives necessary socialization and training. The environment may consist of a foster home or sanctuary environment depending on the needs of the dog. The need to control a dog’s interaction with people is to make certain that a dog that is shy or withdrawn has only positive interactions with people. After meeting certain standards of behavior and a period of time in a foster home where behavior can continue to be assessed and training could occur, most of these dogs could be adopted by members of the public.



The agreement that each rescue organization would enter into with the USDA-OIG would set out the circumstances under which the rescue organization may either adopt the dog to a member of the public or transfer the dog to another rescue organization. In addition, the agreement would contain language that provides that the organizations may only euthanize a dog under certain specified circumstances. Due to the ongoing criminal proceedings, each of the rescue organizations has agreed not to disclose anything about the dogs unless prior approval of such disclosure has been granted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. After the final sentencing in the federal proceedings, the organizations would be allowed to discuss the dogs as they would any other dogs under their care unless the dogs’ safety would be compromised.

Read the whole thing here (PDF file).

Birding: Everybody's doing it

Recently, I noticed a trend among my friends. They were starting to get interested in birdwatching, or "birding" as it's called by those in the know. But it's not just my friends -- look what Salon had to say about it (if you're not a subscriber, you can sign up for a free day pass to read it):

The love of bird-watching works a bit like a virus. Some contract it in early childhood, perhaps when nursing a downy chick back to health or when a grandmother points out a black-capped chickadee at the backyard bird feeder. Others catch it through contact with other birders, who tend to gaze off into the sky as you talk to them, mumbling something about wishing they had their binoculars. Either way, the epidemic is on the rise as more and more people get hooked on the simple pleasure of identifying and watching birds.

One of the people who's caught this virus is my friend Terri Campbell, who lives up in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. And since I'm nothing if not a rank opportunist, I convinced her to share her newfound passion with the world by doing a "Beginner Birding Blog" over on PetHobbyist.com, where I'm an editor. Please drop in at Terri's birding blog... you might catch something you'll like!

And if you do, or even if you don't but you want to give science a hand, consider participating in the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology's Project FeederWatch and the Audubon Society's Christmas Bird Count. These two winter projects have been running for years now, and let "citizen scientists" do their good deed for the birds of the world and those who study them.

And let me suggest a great book, too, which is also recommended highly in the Salon article I linked to:  "Of a Feather: A Brief History of American Birding" by Scott Weidensaul. I'm not a birder, but I found this story of how birding grew in America from the days of the Pilgrims to today as compelling as a good novel. That guy can write.

And all this makes me wonder -- have we got any birders out there? I'm curious if this phenomenon is growing as much as it seems to be.