Dogged Blog

Reality bites: Is " Greatest American Dog " good or bad for dogs?

People do all kinds of things for money and for fame in the world of reality TV. They get in vats of worms, spend weeks on an island eating insects, and live in a big house with a bunch of people with deep psychological issues. Watching those shows isn't my favorite form of entertainment, but hey, to each his own, right?



Until you get your dog involved, that is. Then, I have issues.



Which is the case with a reality competition series called "Greatest American Dog" that's been airing on CBS for the last six weeks. Twelve dog owners and their dogs take up residence in a mansion, dubbed the "Canine Academy." Each week they compete in challenges to earn the title "Greatest American Dog" and a $250,000 prize. The challenges test the human/dog teams' ability to work with each other, along with the dogs' obedience, trainability, and agility, and the owners' skill.



The challenges are judged by a team of experts, comprised of British celebrity trainer Victoria Stilwell, Dog Fancy editor Allan Reznik, and Wendy Diamond, founder of Animal Fair magazine. Each week, they single out a winner and three losers, and send the bottom contestant, and his or her dog, home.



Of course we all have to jump in here and explain how we would never watch reality TV and we don't watch this show, but we just caught a few minutes and happened to see... and of course, I believe you. I believe you all. And yet... there are some beautiful moments on GAD, such as pretty much every single scene showing the rough-hewn Bill and his Brittany, Star, who have one of the loveliest dog-human relationships I've ever seen. Watching them work together is worth the price of admission for any loss of urban street cred I'm going to suffer from admitting I've been watching this show.



Unfortunately, it hasn't all been pretty. Which is what my column is about on SFGate.com this week:

(T)he challenge was this: Each handler was given a word and told to train his or her dog to express that word in some way. At the end of the training period, they'd have one hour with a professional pet photographer to capture the results of the training on camera. Some handlers were given words such as "lazy" or "joyous," but contestant Teresa and her border collie Leroy got the word "angry."



Now, border collies are the most intelligent of dog breeds. That might mean they're not the best family pets, because number one, they need a lot of exercise and mental stimulation to keep them occupied, and number two, it can be demoralizing to have a pet who is smarter than you. But trainable? Look up the word in the dictionary, and you'll see a picture of a border collie.



Which makes it hard to understand why Teresa didn't realize she could have spent her two days of training time teaching her dog to look angry on cue for the upcoming photo shoot instead of actually trying to piss him off. I do know that not even a quarter of a million bucks could have induced me to do what she did, which was to repeatedly spray lemon juice in her dog's face and then shove a dryer hose into his mouth until he bit her. Then she had the nerve to call him "you bastard," and comment that she expected more cooperation in the future: "You just bit me; I would think I deserve a little more from you."

Things went from bad to worse, including a little bit of extremely upsetting Stockholm Syndrome action when Leroy sought comfort from Teresa for what Teresa was doing to him. I admit I was traumatized. But what I really couldn't understand was how the judges let her get away with it. They'd been really good at pointing out far less upsetting handler mistakes, and warning the contestants when they were doing things that might create problems with or for their dogs.



So I contacted CBS and asked to interview judge Victoria Stilwell, host of the BBC series "It's Me or the Dog," and an adamant proponent of positive training. I also interviewed famed positive trainer Terry Ryan, and the folks at the American Humane Association's Film and Television Unit.



The article is here... let me know what you think CBS should do next.

What's really behind forced spay/neuter laws?

[Update: The California State Senate adjourned on Monday without voting on AB 1634. They'll be back in session 10 a.m. Tuesday morning. If you're in California, call and fax all the Senators and let them know you want real solutions for animals, not the empty promise and punitive measures of AB 1634. Be sure to tell them you're a California voter, and that the AKC's shift to neutral does NOT address the problems with this bill.  JenniferJ posted a list of phone and fax numbers here. ]

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There's a definite place in the dialog on animal welfare for civil discourse. We're all different people, coming from different places, and we can learn a great deal from considering each other's points of views, and exploring the nuances of our differences.

But sometimes what we need is someone to stand up and point out that the emperor is buck-naked, and oh yeah: it ain't pretty.

And that, my dear readers, is when and why we need Nathan Winograd.

This week, Nathan's got mandatory spay/neuter, and California's AB 1634, in his sights.

At a recent California State Senate hearing on AB 1634, the bill that started out as mandatory spay/neuter law but has since devolved and been amended into oblivion, a Senator asked Ed Boks, the General Manager of Los Angeles Animal Services (LAAS) and one of the bill’s chief proponents: “Mr. Boks, this bill doesn’t even pretend to be about saving animals, does it?”

To which Boks responded: “No Senator, this is not about saving dogs and cats.”

Ed Boks should know. Since passage of his local version of AB 1634, impounds and killing have skyrocketed at the Los Angeles pound he oversees, exactly as concerned animal lovers feared. In fact, the increased killing was the first at LAAS in over a decade.

As seen time and time again, mandatory sterilization laws are largely a distraction, increasing the power of animal control to impound and kill yet more animals, while they divert resources from programs that do work so that agencies can hire yet more officers to write yet more tickets and impound more animals—or threaten to do so—to no avail. So if it is not about saving dogs and cats, what is it about?

Good question, and one I wish more mandatory spay-neuter advocates, and the lawmakers they keep lobbying, would be faced with -- and answer -- more often. Because unlike Boks, most of them insist their efforts are, indeed, about saving animals, despite the absolute dearth of any evidence that forced sterilization of pets has ever reduced shelter killing anywhere it's been tried.

So what's it really about?

It is about taking the pressure off of their own failures. As the chorus of voices about the killing in California shelters and their own inability or unwillingness to do anything substantive about it grows, so do their attempts to divert attention elsewhere. For a diversion to work, you need someone to blame. And blame needs a boogeyman to be effective. The boogeyman here is that the shelter is merely doing the dirty work of an “irresponsible public” and all those who stand in their way are labeled animal haters.

This approach takes its cues from Karl Rove’s post 9/11 three-step strategy:

1. Invoke 9/11
2. Do whatever you want
3. Silence concerned critics by claiming they don’t care about protecting Americans

The proponents of AB 1634 have tried to sell it in much the same way:

1. Invoke 9/11 pet overpopulation
2. Do whatever you want
3. Silence concerned critics by claiming they don’t care about protecting Americans animals

That explains the true believers, but Nathan also points out that there's something darker at play here: the desire to punish "bad" pet owners.

While they claim to be motivated by saving lives, there is something much more powerful driving them: the desire to punish. An activist truly focused on lifesaving, who subsequently learns that punitive legislation is not only a dismal failure, but that it has the opposite results (more impounds, more killing), would end their support of such methods and begin to push for more compassionate leadership at animal control or the programs and services of the No Kill Equation.

In an article I'm writing on how the growing housing crisis in America is affecting pets and pet owners, I'm seeing this in play again and again: shelter directors and animal workers who implement policies and perpetuate attitudes that actively harm pets, simply to punish their owners for not living up to their lofty standards of "responsible pet ownership."

So, as we watch the advocates of the gutted-and-amended-and-amended-and-amended-again AB 1634 make one more grab at the brass ring in California's senate this week, I can't help but ask: what if we'd spent all this time and money and energy in trying to achieve a better future -- and life -- for the state's dogs and cats by implementing the programs and policies that have worked in communities all over the country (including in California) to bring shelter live release rates above the 90 percent that is the goal of the no-kill movement?

Of course, that wouldn't have taught those rotten irresponsible pet owners anything, would it?

In the last two decades or so, the number of dogs and cats being killed in shelters has dropped from 23 million to less than 4 million. The number of dogs and cats adopted from shelters rose from 17 percent to 23 percent. As Rich Avanzino from Maddie's Fund has pointed out, simply bumping that up to 25 percent would cover the number of dogs killed for population control in American shelters. And nearly all dogs and owned cats are already sterilized -- voluntarily. And yet the demonization of American pet owners continues, and is even on the rise.

Check out Nathan's blog post here...

Taking away my rights is wrong

I answered the door this morning, and a man smiled at me from my porch. "I'm here from Yes on Proposition 8," he said. That's the evil-spirited California proposition to amend our constitution to strip same sex couples of the right to marry legally in the state, which we currently have.

I smiled back at him, and said, "Oh, well then I hope you go to hell. Now get the fuck off my property." (I really did say that. I have witnesses.) And then I slammed the door.

A minute later I thought I'd tell him that I'd be following him up and down the block as he spoke to my neighbors, making sure they all understood that, if they bought the shit he was selling, it was me whose rights they'd be taking away. And my neighbor, who was outside washing his car, was laughing. "I almost told him not to go up there," he said. "But I'm glad I didn't, because that was great."

I laughed, but then I held out my hand. "I'm shaking, though." And I was.

He shook his head. "He must not know where he is."

Well, he was definitely at the liberal end of the block, because all my immediate neighbors felt the same way, but I'm sure plenty of the folks he called on were somewhat receptive to his message. I know, because while I'm a lesbian living in San Francisco, I'm also a fourth generation native San Franciscan, and I know my City... and my neighborhood... very well. I grew up here.

Although I'd signed up to phone bank against Prop 8 already, I'd passed on going door to door. First off, it kind of scares me, and secondly, I figured, what's the point? San Francisco's certainly not going to go for this thing.

But I'm looking at it differently now. It's not like San Francisco will be winner takes all on Prop 8; every single vote matters, and there are people here who will vote for this thing. Many of them will do it because they believe outright lies, such as the one I keep hearing that if this right isn't taken away from us, churches will be forced to marry same sex couples. I think I, who was raised Irish Catholic here in the City, attending parish schools and growing up in the neighborhood where I now live, can do some good there by looking them in the eye and pointing out that the Catholic Church doesn't recognize marriages performed anywhere other than at their altars, and doesn't recognize divorce, and yet, no one has ever tried to make them marry divorced couples or recognize the marriages of those wed at City Hall or at the local Lutheran church.

I'd already donated to Equality for All, and am phone banking for them tomorrow night. If you're reading this, please donate to them, too. This is a fundamental matter of equality and civil rights. And taking away people's  rights? It's wrong.

AKC throws California dog owners under the bus

(Update from Gina: The California State Senate has adjourned for the day without voting on AB 1634. They will reconvene on Sunday. And thanks to reader Jennifer for putting together a PDF list of AKC e-mail contacts.)



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In a stunningly stupid PR move, the American Kennel Club has once more demonstrated just how tone-deaf they can really be, by going neutral on Lloyd Levine's multiply-gutted-and-amended-and-amended-again bill to turn what should be a private decision between a pet owner and his veterinarian into a state-mandated punishment for being bad.



That's right. Today, while California's state senate is supposed to be discussing AB 1634, the AKC reversed its opposition to the bill, choosing to characterize its position now as "neutral," but approving some of the new language.



Gina has already blogged about why this bill, amended or not, is a bad idea for dogs and cats. In addition to all those reasons, most of which are completely unaffected by these amendments that made the AKC so happy, there's the fact that they just gave Lloyd a big ole' cookie and "Good dog!" to reward him for nearly crushing the life out of the dog fancy in California -- those of us who are supposedly AKC's constituency. Does that seem like a good idea to anyone? That in the end, Lloyd gets to say he got even the AKC to sign onto his feel-good, do-nothing legislation?



Why would the AKC seem to be warming up to an animal rights cause when they're the same folks who brought us the infamous Petland agreement, the one that prompted all the AKC parent club delegates, even some judges and a former president of the AKC, to revolt and put an end to it? How do you support commercial breeding -- and the registration dollars it brings you -- on one hand, and also support, or at least, not oppose, a piece of legislation like this?



I mean, no matter how you stand on either of those issues, they're not exactly coming from similar philisophical places, are they?



But the more I thought about it this afternoon as I chased down the rumors that AKC was going to go neutral on the bill, the more it started to make sense to me. It's about creating a position that doesn't threaten people's mainstream, middle of the road, uninformed beliefs. Sure, they say, you can get a nice dog at a pet store at the mall -- and be sure to send in your AKC registration papers!



You can pay lip service to spay/neuter, looking good for your photo ops and sound bites while behind the scenes propping up the commercial dog breeding industry for your own financial gain.



And in the middle are the "responsible hobbyists" who are being squeezed at both ends, hated by the animal rights folks who say we're greedy breeders, and hated by the commercial breeders because we believe what the AKC has been telling us for all these years, that there really is something different and special about small, home-based, serious hobby breeders, and those of us who are dedicated to improving and preserving our heritage breeds.



And who are apparently being abandoned by the AKC while they nonetheless trade on our existence to justify theirs.

Needling your pet, with acupuncture

This is how it was: My chow mix, Colleen, had something really wrong with her leg. This was a long time ago, when I was less pet health-savvy than I am today, and when the use of specialists was far less common in vet med than it is today. It was also a time when many of the sophisticated surgical techniques we use on pets today had yet to be developed at all.



But I was worried about Colleen. She went from now and then pulling up one of her rear legs, to limping, to carrying it. Her regular vet said she had luxating patellas, based on a physical examination. I took her to an orthopedic surgeon, who said there was nothing wrong with her knees at all; she had hip dysplasia.



Today I'd probably get her hip replaced, but he didn't recommend it then. Come back, he said, in a few years; we'll see how she's progressed. And that was that -- for him.



For me, it was just the beginning of trying to get my dog back on four legs. I'm still not sure about that diagnosis, but I do know what ended up being the cure, and it was something that Gina blogged about yesterday, acupuncture.



My chiropractor, who had helped me with a painful shoulder, told me about a holistic vet in nearby Oakland. "You'll love her," she said. "Her name is Cheryl Schwartz."



So I made an appointment, and took Colleen over to Cheryl's clinic across the bay. It was in a borderline industrial neighborhood, on a big lot with a huge fenced yard for the dogs to hang out in until it was their turn to see the vet. The office was full of leftist political posters, a huge tropical fish tank, and shelf after shelf of books on everything from feminist politics to herbal medicine. It was all presided over by her very glamorous cat Hollywood, John, her office manager, and later his assistant, Baci the Shih Tzu.



But that first visit, the only thing I remember is that Colleen walked into Cheryl's office on three legs, and walked out on four. For most of the rest of Colleen's life, a regular schedule of acupuncture kept her active and pain-free. In her most senior years -- she lived to be 15 -- she started having trouble with stairs, and we added Adequan injections and oral glucosamine supplements to the program.



When she was around ten or so, I took her to see the orthopedic surgeon who'd examined her all those years before. He got out her old x-rays and took new ones. He told me he had never seen a dog with so little progression of arthritis or joint changes after such a long time; the films were almost identical.



I'm not suggesting that acupuncture trumps a hip replacement. The surgery has progressed enormously in the years since Colleen's initial diagnosis. But it's very hard for those who assure me acupuncture is ineffective, just a placebo, to get me past that three-to-four leg transformation, and the fact that those needles kept my dog's pain and arthritis under control for years, without any side effects at all.



Unless you count the happy bounce she gave whenever she saw Cheryl, or the way she stretched out and napped, quietly snoring, while the needles were in.



Cheryl went on to become a teacher of Traditional Chinese Medicine to other vets, and to author a wonderful book on TCM for pets called Four Paws, Five Directions: A Guide to Chinese Medicine for Cats and Dogs, which I highly recommend. Another book about TCM, although it's not about pets but about humans, is The Web That Has No Weaver: Understanding Chinese Medicine, by Ted J. Kaptchuk.



I've gone on to write about pain control in pets a great deal. It may be the single topic on which I'm the most opinionated, and I don't shy away from the miracles of modern pharmacology, either. Pain isn't holistic, and it's certainly not good for our pets, and I'll do whatever it takes to get rid of it. And whenever possible, I'd prefer to eliminate the cause of the pain rather than just treat it.



But acupuncture is still one of the first tools I reach for when a dog or cat needs help with chronic pain. It's helped dozens of my pets since it first helped Colleen, and it's worth looking for a qualified pracitioner and see if can help your pet, too.

If this were your dogwalker, wouldn ' t you want to know?

So I'm at the park with Rebel a couple of weeks ago, and a guy comes in with a dozen dogs of various sizes, from toys to retrievers, leashes trailing. It's a designated off-leash dog play area, but it's not fenced, and it's separated from the street by only a row of trees and some shrubs.



He throws the ball for the dogs, and they race around joyfully, and Rebel and I head out towards the street, and home.



And there, in the shade of one of his tires, huddled under his SUV on the asphalt, is a little toy dog, leash trailing.



Dog walkers are a part of life in the city. I love my dog walker, Courtney Gunter, although I only use her when I'm out of town or, you know, have whooping cough. I pay her quite a bit extra, too, to give Rebel and Kyrie solo walks, and not just take them in a gang to the dog park.



I've been at the dog run in Golden Gate Park when a dog walker pulls up, unloads ten dogs, and then sits in her car drinking a latte and reading the paper while her charges race around the fenced area, doing whatever they do. I've been there when irate dog owners have marched over and hauled her out to pick up the dogs' poop or stop a dog from picking on another dog.



There are good and bad dog walkers just as there are good and bad auto mechanics and pinball machine repair people. The thing is, when my mechanic screws up my car, well, it's just a car, but when I pay someone to walk my dog and they leave him lying in the road and don't even notice he's missing from the pack?



I have to wonder how many people, if they secretly followed their dog walker one day, would be both surprised and disturbed at what they saw.

Renee!

My interview with Renee O'Connor just went live on AfterEllen.com...

Renee O'Connor Saves the World... Again!

The Big O

I could march around being all militant about not watching the Olympics because of China's human rights, animal welfare, environmental, and other issues, but there would be two problems with that.

One, while I do love my poor beleagured country, America hasn't been doing too well on most of those things lately itself.

Two, even if the Olympics were being held in Left Blogistan, let's face it, I wouldn't watch them, because I can't stand watching sports on TV.

I bring this up because I was over at AfterEllen.com seeing if my interview with Renee O'Connor was up yet -- it's not, and I wish it was because, well... it's Renee O'Connor, yo -- and they have this really long long long article about the Olympics. So even the fact that I don't watch television isn't going to save me, is it? Meep.

Speaking of television, allow me to recap.

I recapped Design Star's third season on AfterElton.com, and when that was done, I did some interesting interviews with almost-winner Matt Locke, last season's fan fave Josh "Sparkle" Johnson, too. And I've got more... some of which might surprise you... coming out next week.

I also wrote an article on whether or not the Repubs will take the anti-gay attack machine out for a spin in 2008, and if they do, if it will get the job done for them like it is has before. I posted my interviews with Congressman Barney Frank and AMERICAblog.com's John Aravosis already, and a round-up of comments from other pundits interviewed for the piece is here -- including Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, Joe Scarborough, and Karl Rove.

Which leaves me sitting here hitting "refresh" 3579866 times a minute at AfterEllen.com, waiting and waiting for my Renee fix.

Interview: Congressman Barney Frank

In an article running today on AfterElton.com, I disscuss the right's use of anti-gay attacks in the 2008 election. For this piece, I spoke to Congressman Barney Frank, one of the most powerful gay figures in American politics. This is the transcript of that interview.

Christie Keith: We asked Karl Rove about the elections in 2000 and 2004 and how gay issues -- same-sex marriage and gay rights in general -- were being used as helpful to President Bush in winning elections, helpful to the Republicans –

Barney Frank: What did he say?

Christie Keith: He specifically said, “I think it was more in 2004 than it was in 2000.  I think it entered into force simply because it was not introduced by the political actors themselves; neither by the Bush nor Kerry campaigns, but brought forward by a Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts.  It sort of exploded on the scene and got a life of its own.” Then he goes on to say that he doesn’t think that’s happening in California and he’s not sure if it will.  Do you have anything to say about that?

Barney Frank: The general sense was that it was very helpful to them in 2004.  They obviously believe that.  Of course they went into 2005 determined to ride those issues.  Schiavo was an example, by the way, of that same thing.

But they forced several votes on the Constitutional amendment.  I think what he’s telling you now reflects that fact that he and the President and their political people tried very hard to whip up any gay marriage sentiment in 2005 and 2006 by forcing several votes on the Constitutional amendment, and it blew up in their face.

So, as I said, the most relevant election year is 2006 because the 2005/2006 Republicans had forced several votes on the Constitutional amendment.  Do you know how many people who for it? One. And he was a Republican in a Republican primary.  On the other hand, I think about two dozen people who voted for the amendment were defeated by people who were against it. So it was the 2006 election that made it clear.

What Rove is telling you is probably true now, but he forgot to add that he’s very disappointed because he tried very hard to exploit it for the 2006 election and it had no impact

Christie Keith: So you feel that this is probably not something that’s going to get a lot of traction in the current election.

Barney Frank: Right.  I think, by the way, even in 2004 and 2002, the two elections they won, it was really more the national security issue.  I think the air is substantially out of this balloon.

I get that from talking to members of Congress.  Meanwhile we passed an anti-discrimination bill by a large majority.  We passed the Hate Crimes bill.  I think the fear is out of that one. It was the 2006 election results that demonstrated it.  Okay?

Christie Keith: Thank you so much. 

Interview: AMERICAblog.com's John Aravosis

I wrote an article, running today on AfterElton.com, on the right's use of anti-gay attacks as a wedge issue in the 2008 election. I spoke with AMERICABlog.com's John Aravosis, and this is the transcript of that interview. It's long, even though I didn't include the part about Battlestar Galactica, so I've put it behind a jump.