Jaded humpmasters turn to women

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1998:

SYDNEY––Australian Camel Racing
Association president Kevin Handley on February
5 reportedly failed to win an exemption from the
Equal Opportunity Act which would have allowed
ACRA to recruit “young attractive female riders”
to race camels in the United Arab Emirates––at
invitation, Handley said, of the UAE ambassador.
According to Manika Naidoo of the
Sydney Morning Herald, UAE embassy officials
had “hand-picked” 20 Australian women, most
with no previous camel-riding experience, and
hope to recruit up to 40 more within two years.
“Handley told the Anti-Discrimination
Tribunal that applicants had to be attractive and
female because the idea behind the scheme was to
promote women jockeys and counter camel racing’s
male-dominated image,” Naidoo wrote. “He
said if spectators saw pretty young females riding
camels, it would destroy the popular view of the
animals as ‘untrustworthy, stinking, and arrogant,’
and of riders being ‘bearded and backward
beer-drinking boozers.’”

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O’Barry probes Latin whale-jails

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1997:

MARACAIBO, Venezuela––
Working undercover for the World
Society for the Protection of Animals,
Ric O’Barry of the Dolphin Project
suspected he might be in trouble with
Colombian cocaine kings, whom he
alleged had invested in a traveling
marine mammal act, but was more
concerned with Pepsi Cola than coke
when he called ANIMAL PEOPLE
to share information.
Pepsi and Polar Beer, O’Barry
said, were evidently major sponsors
of a Latin American tour by WaterLand/Mundo
Marino, of Cali, Colombia,
which O’Barry and colleague
Helene Hesselager in a November 13
report to WSPA termed “probably the
last traveling dolphin show in the
world, and clearly the most abusive.”

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BOOKS: The Man Who Listens to Horses

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1997:

The Man Who Listens to Horses
by Monty Roberts
Random House (201 E. 50th St., New York, NY 10022), 1997.
258 pages, hardcover, $23.00.

The term “horse whisperer” was coined over 100 years ago, but
never before has it enjoyed as much popularity as today. A 1995 novel of
that title by Nicholas Evans touched readers around the world––both
those who love horses, and those who just love a good story.
The Man Who Listens to Horses, the autobiography of real-life
horse whisperer Monty Roberts, is nonfiction with the same potential. At
the local bookstore the other day, I saw stacks of The Man Who Listens to
Horses right beside the cash register, not buried in the “horses” section
where only equestrians might find it––the only non-fiction horse book I
have ever seen placed in such a sales-friendly location. It deserves the
same treatment in other stores across the country.

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Big Muddy murk

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1997:

NEW ORLEANS––Mule carriage
driver Milton “Patch” Oliney, 58, of
New Orleans, was charged September 31
with second degree murder for allegedly
knifing George Languirand, 51, in a French
Quarter dispute over how Oliney bitted his
mule. Co-workers said Languirand apparently
intervened after an unidentified
woman hurt the mule, who reportedly suffered
a three-inch cut. Others said the
woman accused Patch of bitting the mule
painfully, and tried to refit the bit herself.
In January 1997 the Louisiana
SPCA reportedly cited the stable for which
Oliney drives––one of two that serve French
Quarter tourists––for alleged unsanitary conditions
and improperly harnessing.

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Sick circus elephant dies in hot truck

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

ALBUQUERQUE––King Royal Circus employee
Derrell Benjamin Davenport, 23, of Laredo, Texas, and John
Davis, 19, of Champaign, Illinois, were cited for alleged cruelty
and a variety of Animal Welfare Act and vehicular offenses
on August 7, after an African elephant named Heather died in
an overheated, poorly ventilated trailer that Davenport left in
the parking lot of a hotel where by fluke the Albuquerque Zoo
was holding its annual meeting.
A police bicycle patrol noticed the truck swaying and
investigated circa 9 p.m..
Two other elephants and eight llamas survived.
“That trailer was not made to carry anything with a
heartbeat,” said Albuquerque police officer Duffy Ryan.
The interior temperation of the truck was reportedly
120 degrees Fahrenheit. But a preliminary necropsy indicated
Heather died of an intestinal infection, rather than of heat
stress, as animal control officers initially suspected.

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Horseracing heads for the barn

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

“There is trouble here: the stench of a sport
that is dying,” pronounced the June 7 edition of
Newsweek, looking at the decline of horseracing. The
U.S. gate fell from 75 million to 39 million, 1980-
1995, while TV ratings for the Kentucky Derby,
Belmont, and Preakness dropped from 40-60% in
1960 to just 10-20% this summer despite Silver
Charm’s narrowly thwarted bid for the Triple Crown.
The New York-based Center to Preserve
Racing and track owners either blame simulcasting
and casino gambling for outcompeting live racing, or
look toward them for help, but the most evident factor
is that horseracing doesn’t attract enthusiasts
younger than the eldest Baby Boomers––who grew up
before the rise of the animal rights movement made
abuses better known than top jockeys and mounts.

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Sexually exploiting horses for fun, profit, and advancement of science

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

WAUPACA, EL CAJON––
The rare sentencing of two serial
sexual assailants of mares in less
than six weeks leaves horse people
less relieved than fearful.
Found not guilty by reason of
insanity or mental defect of sexually
assaulting a pregnant mare on June
1, 1996, Sterling Rachwal, 33, of
Weyauwega County, Wisconsin,
was on May 13 sent to a state mental
institution for up to 18 and a half
years––two thirds of the 28-year
maximum for conviction.

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BOOKS: Mules In Court

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

Mules In Court by Hank W. Hannah
Order c/o Hannah, Sr. Clr., Texico, IL 62889. 1996. 73 pp., cloth, $16.20.

Early in the history of pioneer settlements,
lawyers had so little to do that
they had to clear land and homestead.
Business picked up considerably with the
arrival of mules. Mules, it seems, spark a
range of court cases. Once before a judge,
mules have influenced everything from a
misunderstanding of genetics to the rights of
women.
Mules In Court reflects author
Hannah’s years of farming with mules, raising
mules (which is why he knows “some of
the lies about mules are true”), observing
gypsy horsetraders, witnessing the use of
mule paratroopers while commanding the
506th Parachute Infantry Regiment during
the 1944 Normandy invasion, practicing
and teaching veterinary law in Illinois and
abroad, and founding the American
Veterinary Medical Law Association.

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PINIPEDS & SEA OTTERS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1996:

Alaskan tour boat operators are
reportedly lobbying the Alaska Sea Otter
Commission, a native-run board set up to
supervise “subsistence” hunting exempted
from the Marine Mammal Protection Act, to
prevent repetition of an August 22 incident in
which several Anchorage residents shot as
many as 50 sea otters in front of tour vessels
in Kachemak Bay, but retrieved just 14.
Publicity over the sea otter massacre may have
helped encourage the Bristol Bay Native
Association and state and federal agencies to
divert funding from other programs to closely
supervise the October native killing of 10 walruses
at Round Island, within the Walrus
Islands State Game Sanctuary. In a fit of
pique at Friends of Animals for documenting
native walrus poaching and opposing wolfkilling
to make more moose and caribou available
to human hunters, the Alaska Legislature
axed funding of the sanctuary last spring.

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