Dogged Blog

It never changes

I'm a fairly eloquent person. I've been known to change people's minds with my words. There are those who consider me pretty persuasive.

But every single time I try to write about how I feel as a lesbian American in a country full of people who have rights I'm denied, and who feel perfectly justified in pontificating about the wrongness of all the ways that I'm going about getting my rights, I lose my ability to articulate my beliefs in one gigantic explosion of FUCK YOU.

I don't know how to end this post.

HSUS and USDA: Which one works for you?

Whose job is it to make sure animals are treated humanely? Whose job is it to make sure the food supply is safe?



Those are really good questions, and "the USDA" is a good answer. However, not so much with that.



As everyone who reads any blog even remotely related to animals probably knows, the Humane Society of the United States shot an undercover video showing cows being kicked, sprayed with water, and otherwise treated abusively so they could get up and walk to slaughter on their own -- since "downer" cattle aren't supposed to end up in the food supply as they might be ill. This in turn led to the largest beef recall in history.



HSUS, as is their mission, was more interested in the humane issues than the food safety issues. And while they brought the video tape immediately to local law enforcement, they didn't make it public for months. Why didn't they notify the USDA? Why didn't they reveal the footage sooner?



Critics contend it's because they wanted to use the tape when the timing would be most advantageous to HSUS -- critics who include members of Congress. From the Feb. 27 New York Times:

At a hearing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Representative Michael C. Burgess, Republican of Texas, assailed the Humane Society for waiting to inform the federal government.



“Why wait until February to release the video?” Mr. Burgess demanded of a Humane Society representative. “Why wait until now to bring this to our attention?”



His criticism echoed a point made last week by Ed Schafer, the secretary of agriculture, who said he was “extremely disappointed” in the Humane Society. He complained that “for four months, theoretically, animals were not being properly treated, and the Humane Society stood by and allowed it to happen.”

This criticism has been echoed, somewhat disingenuously, by agribusiness and meat industry apologists. What's the story?



HSUS contends they were asked by law enforcement not to release the tape publicly while they conducted their investigation. But why not turn it over to USDA? From the Times:

“First and foremost, the U.S.D.A. should not be relying on a private animal welfare charity to do its job for them,” said Paul Shapiro, who oversees issues involving farm-animal abuse for the Humane Society. He said there was little incentive to go to the Department of Agriculture anyway because the agency often ignores abuse allegations.

Now, I actually think HSUS should have released that tape sooner, and the big issue to me personally in this specific incident is the humane treatment of the animals and not food safety, since I suspect the risk to the food supply is no bigger than the risks we all face everyday -- which aren't negligible, as the pet food recall and subsequent events taught us, but still... if you're going to eat factory farmed hamburger, this is what you get, folks.



But you don't have to eat cows who have been kicked, hosed, and hoisted to their feet with a forklift. And your and my tax dollars pay government inspectors, not HSUS, to make sure that doesn't happen. And they didn't, and that's a much, much bigger problem than this one incident, because that same glued-together, tied-with-string, haphazard system that somehow missed these acts despite that fact that there were five investigators on site that day is part of a huge web in which your dinner, and mine, and my dogs' dinner, too, are all trapped:

Dr. Michael Greger, director of public health and animal agriculture for the Humane Several members of Congress on Tuesday bemoaned what they described as an underfinanced and antiquated food-safety system.



Robert E. Brackett, who served as director of the Food and Drug Administration’s food-safety unit until last year, criticized both the Bush administration and Congress, saying they failed to provide enough money to the agency to protect the food supply.

Although this all sounds eerily familiar, on Thursday, the Department of Agrigulture vowed to do better. From a Feb. 29 article in the New York Times:

Senator Herb Kohl, Democrat of Wisconsin, demanded to know how the animal abuse occurred when five inspectors were assigned to the plant. He called for continuous monitoring of live animals at slaughterhouses and suggested that the Department of Agriculture use video cameras.



Mr. Kohl also demanded audits in the next month of every slaughterhouse in the country supplying meat for federal programs like school lunches. The Agriculture Department promised more random inspections of those slaughterhouses.



Noting that the abuse was uncovered by a charity, rather than government inspectors, Mr. Kohl asked the agriculture secretary, Edward T. Schafer, “Why don’t you have a system that uncovers this inhumane treatment of animals?”



Mr. Schafer said his agency was still investigating the incidents at Westland/Hallmark to determine how inspectors missed the abuse, and whether abuse was occurring at other plants. He said his agency was also considering using cameras to keep watch on cows held in pens for slaughter.



For all the graphic images in the videotape, the secretary said there was no evidence that sick cows made it into the food supply. He said the cows had passed an inspection by a veterinarian trained to look for signs of illness.



“We do not believe this is a food safety issue,” he said. But Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, repeatedly challenged the secretary’s assertion that the meat from Westland/Hallmark was safe.



“We don’t know if these animals portrayed on this videotape were sick or not,” he said. “We can’t keep saying these things if we don’t really know.”

By all means, if you believe HSUS was hypocritical, cynical, manipulative, say so. Tell them so. I'm not thrilled with their decision to hold the tape back, either. But don't let expressing that concern serve as a distraction from the central issue, which is the breakdown in the systems that are meant to ensure that animal welfare and food safety laws and regulations are followed. Because HSUS doesn't work for me; the government does. I don't give money to the HSUS; the government takes money from me every day to pay for its programs.



Shoot the messenger for being late if you must. But still: pay attention to the message.

Queer little wrap-up

Wow, right now both articles at the top of AfterElton.com are by me. I don't think that's ever happened before!

One is, of course, my Project Runway recap. It's a heartbreaking story of an injustice so vast, an offense to taste so great... well, you'll just have to read it.

The other is one of those political/entertainment hybrid articles my editor Michael Jensen keeps making me convincing me to write. I'm pretty proud of this one, and it got picked up by Gawker, too, which makes the gossipy bitch in me happy:

(Neil Patrick) Harris was yet another public figure who was "out in the community, but not in the press." In other words, gay fans knew, along with varying numbers of other people, but it hadn't been reported in the media, and mainstream America was perfectly free to ignore it if they wished. In fact, most of mainstream America isn't ignoring the existence of queer celebrities; thanks to close-mouthed celebrities and a complicit media, they really don't know.

That system works because these days many of the queer and famous don't come out – they inch out. And it's not hard to figure out why. They get to socialize in the gay community, be out to their immediate friends and family, and live with their same-sex partners without having to go through the media circus of an official come-out. But here's a question: What's in it for us?

Other than any thrill it might give us to get the joke when Anderson Cooper laughs that fellow CNN anchor Erica Hill's husband doesn't have anything to worry about from him, or when Jodie Foster thanks her "beautiful Cydney" at a Hollywood event, not much. That's because it's not inside jokes and white-lipped references to privacy that advance GLBT equality and civil rights; it's visibility.

And that doesn't mean visibility to each other, but mainstream visibility. There is nothing more strongly correlated with increased support of gay rights among straight people, from marriage to adoption to opposing a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, than one simple thing: knowing someone who is gay.

Anderson Cooper (l), Jodie Foster & Cydney Bernard (r)

The bottom line is that coming out as gay – actually saying the words clearly, and for the record – is the single most powerful tool we have to achieve equality. "Inching out" might make gay celebrities' lives easier, and they have every right to do it if they want to. But as a community, we also have the right to examine the impact of that choice on us.

And it does have one. It perpetuates the one thing that has done more harm to gay rights than any other institution: the closet. Because even if a public figure is "out in the community," until they're also "out in the press" – until their coming out statement is on the pages of People magazine – mainstream America will continue on, blissfully unaware that their favorite actor, a powerful politician, or a respected business leader is queer.

Read the whole thing here.

Reflections on the Los Angeles pet sterilization law

This is how stupid it gets.



A law signed into effect today in Los Angeles requires that all pet dogs and cats be surgically sterilized. Why? Well, according to L.A. Councilman Tony Cardenas, so Los Angeles can become no-kill, of course.



And they make it sound like a very reasonable concept, exempting, they say, animals in competition (show dogs, for instance, although the dogs would have to be being shown by the age of 4 months, and you can't show a dog until he's 6 months old, but hey -- it makes a nice sound bite) and dogs being used as guide dogs or police dogs (although the actual way that works would eliminate the breeding stock from which many of those dogs come).



But then we get the one that makes my head explode: it exempts "professional breeders."



That's right, it exempts not the small, home-based hobby breeders we all mean when we discuss "responsible breeders," those who by and large are trying to preserve and improve their chosen breeds, and who provide a lifetime safety net for their puppies and kittens.



No, it's exempting, as did a proposed statewide bill before it, the very factory-farm-modeled puppy breeding facilities that do no genetic testing, no temperament screening, no screening of potential owners, and provide zero in the way of a backup plan if the dog doesn't work out in the home, thus increasing the chances that dog will end up in the shelter.



Which is exactly, of course, what this type of legislation is supposed to avoid. Even though it never once has anywhere it's been tried, and the programs and policies that do work have never involved the forced sterilization of family pets.



Does anyone ever wonder why it is that a failed model is being flogged so mercilessly as the answer to shelter deaths? Could it possibly be because these laws aren't being proposed despite the way they virtually eliminate the small-scale breeding and showing of dogs but because of it?



They say never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity, and I'm sure the vast majority of people who support this type of legislation honestly believe it will accomplish its goal, despite the fact, as I said, that it never has. So for them, it's not stupidity, but ignorance and a lack of awareness of the facts.



But the people who promote it? That one's malice. How else to explain them going after the powerless, mostly-keeping-their-heads-down, hobby breeders instead of the big, powerful, lobbied-up, USDA-licensed, government-approved, big business puppy farmers? I mean, it's not the agility lobby or the Scottish Deerhound lobby or the huge marketing machine behind the mass-production of guide dogs for the blind they have to worry about, is it? Because you can crush those people pretty easily, and get a win in your column, even though you won't save the life of a single shelter dog by doing so.



Of course, I've come to realize you won't save shelter animals' lives by stamping out puppy mills, either, even though I still oppose them on other grounds. There's no evidence people who get their dogs at pet stores give them up to shelters any more easily than people who get their dogs from a neighbor or a newspaper ad or, for that matter, the shelter in the first place.



You'll only save shelter animals' lives by reforming the animal control and shelter management system in this country. And the huge gaping divide that's grown up between the people who think you can fix things by doing what they've always done, only harder, and those who want to abandon a broken system is a sign that the moment to do that is really here.



What Los Angeles has done is not something new, brave, and bold, nor is it salvation. It's a step back, a diversion of resources in exactly the direction that will do nothing to stop the flow of dogs and cats in body bags out the back doors of the shelters of Los Angeles. Nor will it ease that flow if it's adopted statewide.



Calling this a step towards "no kill," as Councilman Cardenas did in a press conference today, is the worst kind of propagandizing, because it co-opts a goal everyone desires -- ending the use of killing as a tool of animal population control -- and attaches it to a system that has never once reached that goal, while turning its back on the only systems that ever have.

How a burned-out rescuer got her groove back

It's been a rough few days, with Gina sick and me having my life eaten, as it always is in February, by Chat Month at PetHobbyist.com. But hey... only one more week!



This year, the event was opened with a chat with Nathan Winograd, author of "Redemption: The Myth of Pet Overpopulation and the No Kill Revolution in America." (The transcript of that chat is here for those who missed it.)



I've been following the media and blog coverage of the No Kill movement for several months now, and have seen many reviews, both professional and grass roots, of Nathan's book. I've also seen a lot of people find new hope and heart in their struggle to save animal lives from reading it and being exposed to his ideas, and I've seen some who bitterly oppose the message of the book, and "No Kill" in general. Some truly believe it can't work; some truly don't want it to, mostly for reasons I wish I didn't understand.



I rarely blog these little snippets of reaction to the book or the movement. Gina and I have written extensively about the book, No Kill, and Nathan, so much so we actually thought we'd cool it for a while. Until tonight, when I sent Gina a link to a blog post that came in with my latest Google alerts. And she agreed it was something a bit different than we've read before:

I am a veteran rabbit rescuer and have also done bird and cat rescue and we have 3 rescued dogs (and one who was a stray) and I was burnt out and ready to retire rescue until I read this book.

She goes on to outline many of the challenges of doing rabbit rescue, including finding low-cost spay surgeries, given the special challenges of spaying rabbits. Then she tells us that she went looking for a blueprint for running a no-kill shelter, but didn't find it in the pages of "Redemption." She found something else:

I was chagrined to read in this book a quote from my own dog trainer claiming that the shelter where Winograd and company had achieved 100% no kill was fudging the numbers and that this wasn't really true.



HSUS and other groups, and many animal shelters have been put on notice because of this book. My own shelter claims a 99% adoption rate but that is only for animals who reach the adoption floor. Nearly 50% of the animals who come in the back door end up in the freezer. Their claim of a 99% adoption rate is propaganda - a practice now being utilized all across the country to escape scrutiny from groups and individuals seeking to espouse Winograd's new No Kill Equation. That is fine, fudge your numbers, spew your propaganda but it won't work. You can only do that for so long. The traditional media and the blogosphere will expose the real story. Propaganda is only a delay tactic.

I've actually been somewhat demoralized by the ugliness of many of the things I've read about Nathan and the very concept of no-kill, but she found a silver lining even there:

An interesting phenomenon has sprung up like a giant behemoth since the publication of this book and that is a great number of people who attack Winograd and his philosophy in favor of killing animals. This debate, or rather, this WAR between KILLERS and NO KILLERS is a healthy development in the long stagnant animal rescue/welfare arena.



KILLER advocates cite instances of rescue groups gone bad where animals are neglected and suffering in poor conditions. This anomaly in animal rescue is just that, an anomaly. The poorly run kill shelters of the nation far outnumber the poorly run animal rescue groups and WHAT'S MORE, the rescues gone bad often are exposed MUCH MORE OFTEN than poorly run KILL SHELTERS who practice inhumane methods of KILLING such as gassing or just taking the animals out back and shooting them (yes they do that). As a matter of fact, those kill shelters often get very little if ANY negative publicity.



The KILL SHELTERS who practice these inhumane methods have been known about for years and are the inspiration for action of most rescue groups. These horrible kill shelters are not making the headlines among the propaganda of the Winograd naysayers and yet, I would bet you a million dollars that the places where the rescues gone bad exist are right next kill shelters who do gassing and shooting and the people who are part of the rescue gone bad are simply desperate and unprepared psychologically to battle against that.

[....]

This country needs to wake up. It needs to rise up out of the ashes and say, hey if there is ANY POSSIBILITY that no kill might work then we should all be trying it.

This is the Roe v. Wade of animal welfare.

Except it should be called Kronos v. Winograd. The death addicts and pain junkies need to heal. They are human after all but part of their humanity has been trampled and stomped upon by their own love for animals and feelings of helplessness.

It's time to wake up! Never hold so tightly to an opinion that is completely defeatist and negative and violent (killing is violent). There is always hope and even if you don't believe in the NO KILL EQUATION - honestly, what is wrong with trying to make it work?

Yeah. I want to know that, too. When you have a system that does not work, that kills animals daily even though you swear you don't want to do that, why keep working that failed system harder and harder? Why not try another way?



Check out her whole post here... and keep asking why.

The Clinton Conundrum

A number of my friends have asked me recently, in frank bewilderment, why I don't support Sen. Clinton. And in trying to figure out why they are surprised by that, I finally asked the magic question: Did you also support or like Bill Clinton?

Of the three I asked, all three said yes, and looked at me like I had two heads.

I don't know if this would hold true if I asked more of them, but if it does, it explains a great deal to me. Because I never voted for Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton has  always been representative of what I hate about the Democratic Party: How it panders to the middle, climbs happily into bed with whatever corporate interest waves a big check in its face, the whole favor/payback/buddy-buddy system of making deals, the Washington-centric view of America.

I felt protective of Bill Clinton during the whole impeachment thing, but it was more that the Republicans were dragging the nation into turmoil out of partisan loathing of the man, rather than that I liked him any more than before.

After Bush took the White House, I missed the hell out of Bill Clinton, and even felt fondness for him in the intervening years. That lasted until he hit the campaign trail for Sen. Clinton, when it took him about ten minutes to burn up any goodwill I had for him with his pugnacious attitude.

Of course, I  judge Sen. Clinton separately from her husband. I think she is head and shoulders above him, and while she doesn't appeal to me on a personal level and I would never get excited about her as a candidate, I don't think she'd be a bad president -- certainly better than the last two four six eight.

But it's irrelevant to me whether I "like" the president of the United States or not. I would say that either Obama or Clinton would allow me not to cringe in shame in front of the world everytime either one opened their mouth, and that's a good thing.

But just as I never voted for Bill Clinton, I'll only give my vote to Hillary Clinton if she is the nominee and my state is genuinely in play. But that's very usual for me; I have almost never voted for a major party candidate at all -- the last time was Mondale and Ferraro, until I voted for John Kerry in the last election, and even then, I only did that because Howard Dean asked his supporters to do so, and because I liked John Edwards. I'm not a major party, mainstream kind of voter. And the Democractic party has always been too conservative, pro-big-business for me.

I want to believe in change, because I don't like what we've had in my adult life. From the Reagan years to today, I feel betrayed by and ashamed of every president this country has had. By supporting Obama, I feel I'm making a huge vote for something else, something not within that framework. The fact that people respond to Obama matters more to this country than his presidency would, although there's the added bonus that he might actually do some of the things he wants to do. But even if he doesn't, the most important thing to me is not what happens to him, or to Washington, DC, but what happens to Americans, in our hearts and minds, in our daily lives.

I don't necessarily support Obama because I'm convinced he can effect the changes he wants to, although I think it's possible that he can. I support him because the groundswell of support for him, and its passionate nature, send a strong message that Americans can still be galvanized by hope, can still care about the political process, that something unexpected can still make us catch fire and fight for our country and our heritage as Americans.

Now, I suppose that fifteen of my friends who like Sen. Clinton will post or email telling me they hated Bill Clinton, and my whole theory will fall apart, but right now I'm thinking their surprise at my lack of support for her candidacy comes because they don't understand what I want from a presidential candidate, and for America. They are more mainstream Democrats, liberal but not at all independent/ornery in their politics, and as far as I can tell, they supported Bill Clinton.

And there's nothing wrong with that. This is their country and they should fight to make it be the nation they want it to be. But if they really understood my politics, and the candidates I've supported in the past, they'd never be surprised I'm not in Sen. Clinton's camp. It would be very odd if I were.

And how was Las Vegas? Exhausting but good.

Honeys I'm home.

I've already said my piece on Las Vegas as experienced by someone there on business rather than pleasure, which is that it sucks. Gambling in your face everywhere you turn, pre-fab indoor "streets," "village squares" and "neighborhoods" with an international orgy of restaurants -- some of them admittedly quite good, hello Rumjungle, but still -- you get to them without going outdoors, and the windows look out only on what is essentially a high-ceilinged, slot-machine-littered mall.

Or, if you're really lucky, you get a restaurant with a view of the resort's landscaping and swimming pools.

Day One was a bust because my flight was delayed and I got in too late to attend the scientific sessions that afternoon. I also had a murderous headache, and even with both Tylenol and aspirin, tossed and turned all night long. I woke up feeling worse than when I went to bed.

The hotel was an unalloyed pleasure though. It was the Marriot Courtyard South, part of a Marriott-owned cluster of non-gaming hotels (plus one Holiday Inn Express). I guess a lot of conventions use these hotels for their attendees like me who don't want to sleep in a casino, in both the English and Italian senses of the word, LOL.

I had a great impression of Marriotts in the past, from when Raven had her leg amputated. This didn't rise to those levels because I hadn't sunk to those levels, either. But the staff was uniformly helpful and friendly, from the front desk folks  to the waitress who gave me my morning coffee to the guy who drove me to the airport. The room was beautiful and quiet, the bathtub was big, the hotel had computers and printers in the lobby as well as free broadband in the rooms and free wifi in the public areas of the hotel. And, you know -- no slot machines or big animated signs telling me to go see Mamma Mia.

The conference was fantastic, of course -- well organized, full of interesting information, and most of the best minds in veterinary medicine under one roof.  I got to catch up with old friends, saw some people I'd only "met" online or over the phone, heard some fascinating scientific presentations, talked in the halls with a lot of vets, and realized Pet Connection's profile has exploded in the last year, since virtually everyone I spoke to knew who we were (a first for me, and apparently going on down at Global Pet Expo, where Gina was, as well).

I did a few interviews I'm very excited about, saw some advances in veterinary medicine that excited me a lot for their potential for improving quality of life in our pets, and was struck, not for the first time but possibly the most profoundly, with the commercialized nature of science in this country.

The drug companies were omnipresent -- banners and ads everywhere you turned, their logos on every single piece of swag and the bags in which it came, on our lanyards, on the programs. The rooms where the presentations were held were branded with their sponsors' logos, and virtually everyone who spoke had financial ties to industry, even though few of them disclosed those ties.

I'll save more thoughts on that for Pet Connection.

So, guess who was the first person to call me when I got home? My editor from AfterElton.com. He always dangles little bits of political content in the entertainment coverage, knowing I'm like a poor innocent fish about to get caught on his hook. If you're reading this, Michael, I love ya man. But don't think I don't know you're playing me.

I left today a little light so I could catch up and rest and take the dogs for a long, long walk, then I have to buckle down as I have one deadline on Friday and another on Monday. Remember this when you start thinking you'd like to be a writer when you retire.

Expert says don ' t panic about new strain of parvo

I'm posting this from the Western Veterinary Conference in Las Vegas. My column on the Web site of the San Francisco Chronicle is up, and I'm writing about the "new" strain of parvo we've seen so much furor over in the last week or so:

I contacted Melissa Kennedy, D.V.M., Ph.D., a specialist in microbiology at the University of Tennessee College of Veterinary Medicine and an infectious disease and immunology consultant for the Veterinary Information Network. I asked her what the story was. Is CPV-2c a huge new risk to America's dogs, against which there's no vaccine? Is the sky falling, as everyone at my local dog park assured me?



"Relax, don't panic, don't stay home from work with your dog," she responded. "This is completely different from the emergence of CPV-2 in 1978. Then, we were seeing a truly new virus in dogs, and the population had no immunity. Thus, we saw tremendous amounts of disease and high mortality in both adults and pups. This new strain of CPV does bear monitoring, and eventual inclusion in vaccines will likely occur, but a repeat of the scenes from the late '70s and early '80s is not what we are facing. Concern and monitoring, but not fear and hysteria."

Read the whole article, including an in-depth discussion of the vaccine issue as well as some important information on how this new strain can be missed on common parvo tests in the vet's office, here.



And for those who just can't get enough, the transcript of my complete interview with Dr. Kennedy is here -- I just wish you could hear her wonderful Southern drawl!



***



Unrelated [from Gina]: The AP reports that FDA inspectors looked at the wrong plant in China for a recent recall:

U.S. health officials evaluated the wrong factory when assessing the safety of a Chinese-made drug ingredient that may be a source of problems with a blood thinner, the Food and Drug Administration said Monday.



Baxter International's heparin has been linked to four deaths and hundreds of reports of allergic reactions. An investigation will take FDA inspectors to China this week.



The Chinese manufacturer was not inspected because it was confused with another company in the agency's database with a similar name, said Joseph Famulare, deputy director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research's compliance department. The FDA evaluated that firm, which had a history of positive inspections and was not re-inspected.



The agency discovered within the past month that the wrong factory was evaluated, Famulare said, adding that as far as the FDA knows, it is an isolated incident.

"As far as the FDA knows" ... so encouraging. Get these folks an agency makeover and enough money and additional talent to do their jobs, please. (And thanks, Pat, for the link.)

Howl for dog humor with the editor of The Bark!

Gina's on her way home from Global Pet Expo, and I'm on my way to Las Vegas for the Western States Veterinary conference. And Dr. Marty's on his way from the first to the second, because he's an Iron Man!



I didn't blog today because I'm overwhelmed with work -- Chat Month is clustered on the weekends and this one was a killer!



But tonight, Sunday, February 17, while I'm in Las Vegas hanging out with veterinarians, Gina's and my friend, Claudia Kawzczynksa, editor of The Bark Magazine, will be the guest at DogHobbyist.com's Sunday night chat. It will be at 9 PM Eastern/6 PM Pacific, in the Dog Den. Claudia will be discussing Bark's newest book, "Howl":

Dogs are celebrated members of our families thanks to their capacity for unconditional love, unfaltering loyalty, and now, in "Howl: A Collection of the Best Contemporary Dog Wit," for their comedic genius. In their follow-up to the New York Times bestseller "Dog is my Co-Pilot," the editors of The Bark have returned with over seventy pieces highlighting the hilarity of dogs. Come hear more about the witty voice of today's canine culture, and the endless reasons why we love our dogs -- plus get an inside look at America's hippest dog magazine.

I hope you can stop by -- I'm sorry I won't be able to make it, although maybe I'll find a little wi fi sweet spot somewhere and sign in!

It ' s not eleven, and this isn ' t really news...

Well, I spent some time on the phone with the media relations person at Oklahoma State University Veterinary Medical Center, and she told me that the press release shouldn't have been taken down, and although she was not able to reach Dr. Sanjay Kapil, who is quoted in the release, she did speak with the Dean of the school, who said the information it contains is accurate.



It's now back up.



My thoughts stand.



I will have more for you on this after the weekend.



As to the FDA pet food recall page being updated, they got back to me to tell me they'd get back to me. I'll keep on it.