Animal obits

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2006:

Squeak, 14, the Jack Russell terrier who on March 18, 2002
defended Zim-babwean farmer Terry Ford from land invaders, and
refused to leave Ford’s side after Ford was killed, died on May 9,
2006 at the home of Ford’s son Mark. The North Shore Animal League
America and ANIMAL PEOPLE honored Squeak with the July/August 2002
Lewyt Award for Heroic & Compassionate Animals.

Lynn, Marty, and Arthur, three ex-laboratory chimpanzees
who were longtime residents of Primarily Primates, all in their
mid-thirties, died in May from causes respectively identified as
osteomyelitis, a neurological disorder, and acute peritonitis.
Their deaths followed the deaths soon after arrival of former Ohio
State University chimps Kermit, 35, and Bobby, 16. “Chimps have
been known to live to 50,” Prmarily Primates president Wally Swett
told Susan Pagani of the San Antonio Current, “but even though that
is quoted a lot, it’s very rare. “Chimps who have been used in
research are much more susceptible to disease than those that have
not, because of the stress and isolation they have endured.”

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BOOKS: Wildlife Demography

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jine 2006:

Wildlife Demography: Analysis of Sex, Age, & Count Data
by John R. Skalski , Kristen E. Ryding, & Joshua J. Millspaugh
Elsevier Academic Press (30 Corp. Dr., Suite 400, Burlington, MA
01803), 2005. 656 pages, hardcover, $69.95.

As the ANIMAL PEOPLE statistician as well as the editor, I
jumped at the chance to review Wildlife Demography: Analysis of Sex,
Age, & Count Data, for two reasons.
First, at times I feel as if I spend half my life explaining
to people in humane work and animal control the basics of animal
population analysis. Humane workers and animal control officers have
a constant need to estimate and compare populations of street dogs,
pet dogs, feral cats, pet cats, raccoons, deer, nonmigratory vs.
migratory Canada geese, et al.

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Obituaries

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2006:

Trina Bellak, 47, died on May 28, 2006, from
complications arising from cancer. “I have been involved with horses
for over 35 years,” Bellak told California radio station KWMR in
July 2005. “My interest was sparked at the age of two when I was
read Black Beauty,” by 19th century horse advocate Anna Sewell,
“and insisted on being read the story weekly for years. At age nine,
I began riding classes, which led to participation in many different
types of competitions and shows. At age twelve, I was horrified to
learn that the federal government was rounding up and killing our
wild horses. With several close friends I held bake sales and used
book sales to raise money to help pass the Wild Free-Roaming Horse
and Burro Protection Act. This experience developed my interest in
horse and animal welfare, and taught me that animals can suffer at
the hands of the government.” Bellak was associate director of
federal affairs for the Humane Society of the U.S. for six years in
the 1990s, then formed the American Horse Defense Fund in 2000. She
counted as her most distinguished achievement winning passage of the
Humane Transport of Horses to Slaughter Act, which took effect in
February 2002. Bellak relocated to Captain Cook, Hawaii, in 2003.

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Books: One Day With a Goat Herd

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2006:

One Day With
A Goat Herd
by C.J. Stevens
John Wade, Publisher (P.O. Box 303, Phillips, ME 04966), 2005.
100 pages, hard cover. $15.00.

This concise little book offers an hour-by-hour description
of a day in the life of a herd of domestic milk goats in California.
It will encourage people, especially children, to look at goats in
a different light.
Of most interest to me is the history included about how
goats became domesticated and began to interact with humans.
I would prefer to have become better acquainted with the
goats as individual personalities. –Bev
Pervan

BOOKS: Caribou Rising

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2006:

Caribou Rising by Rick Bass
Sierra Club Books (85 Second Street, San , CA 944105), 2004.
164 pages, hard cover. $19.95.

Rick Bass is a hunter. He sees the natural world through the
crosshairs, but considers himself an ethical hunter, as opposed to a
slob hunter, because he measures the success of a hunt by his
“quality of experience,” rather than by the volume of dead meat he
recovers. He thereby considers himself a conservationist, though
the relationship of hunting fraternity notions of fair chase to
protecting biodiversity is at best indirect.
On a hunting trip to Alaska, Bass finds an indigenous native
American community, the Gwich’in, living off a herd of caribou
whose numbers have fallen from nearly 200,000 to about 129,000 in
recent years.

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BOOKS: The Price of a Pedigree

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2006:

The Price of a Pedigree:
Dog Breed Standards & Breed-Related Illnesses
Advocates for Animals (10 Queensferry Street, Edinburgh, EH2 4PG,
Scotland, U.K.), 2006. 25 pages, paperback, no price listed.

Members of the dog and cat fancies, as breeders and
exhibitors of purebreds style themselves, like to pretend that there
was a time when the humane community endorsed their obsession with
“improving” dogs by selective inbreeding. Yet there has always been
tension between those who recognize a moral obligation toward all
animals and those who would distinguish between upper and lower
classes, based on pedigree.
From the beginning of humane involvement in animal control,
some fanciers have adopted prime specimens of their favorite breeds
from death row in shelters, while humane workers have struggled with
conflicting emotions–grateful that some animals are saved, but
frustrated that even a biting purebred will almost always have a
better chance of rescue, as a presumed “better” animal, than the
nicest large mongrel or domestic shorthair.

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BOOKS: Falcon, Bee & Parrot

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2006:

Falcon by Helen MacDonald
Bee by Claire Preston
Parrot by Paul Carter
Reaktion Books Ltd. (33 Great Sutton St.,
London, EC1V 0DX), 2005. 208, 224, and 224
pages,
paperback. $19.95 each.

Reaktion Books’ new natural history book
series explores not only the natural history of
animals, but also their places in human history,
culture, and current affairs. The authors
discuss the differences between the real-life
behavior of each animal and the behavior
attributed to the animal as used in political,
military, and commercial symbolism.

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BOOKS: A Shepherd’s Watch

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2006:

A Shepherd’s Watch:
Through the Seasons with
One Man and His Dogs
by David Kennard
St. Martin’s Press (175 5th Ave.,
NY 10010), 2005.
184 pages, hardcover. $30.00.

On turning the first pages of A Shepherd’s Watch and looking
at the pictures of the faces of five happy sheep dogs, we knew
intuitively that we would enjoy this book. As animal rights
activists, we were pleasantly surprised to read how author David
Kennard admired for her beauty and cunning a fox he saw trying to
hunt a lamb, instead of shooting her on sight. Here in South
Africa, such an attack would most likely have resulted in the fox
being shot, under an official declaration that foxes are a problem
species, to be exterminated or risk prosecution.

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BOOKS: Cairo Cats: Egypt’s Enduring Legacy

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2006:

Cairo Cats: Egypt’s Enduring Legacy
Photos by Lorraine Chittock
Camel Caravan Press 1999, reissued 2001, 2006.
Order c/o <www.CairoCats.com>. 96 pages, paperback. $18.95.

Itinerant photographer and animal welfare volunteer Lorraine
Chittock has sold out two editions of Cairo Cats during the past
seven years, donating part of each press run and some of the
proceeds as well to the Egyptian Society of Animal Friends.
This is the third edition.
The content consists chiefly of photos of Cairo street cats,
captioned with appropriate quotes from Islamic literature. The
photos illustrate that while Cairo street cats often lead hard lives
and die young, they are at home in their native habitat, with
little evident sense that they are “suffering” by mostly living
outdoors on birds and mice. Many seem to see themselves as the
rulers of their domain.

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