BOOKS: Breaking the Cycles of Violence

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

Breaking the Cycles of Violence
Guidebook and video to crosstrain child and animal protection personnel.
Latham Foundation (Latham Plaza Bldg., Clement & Schiller, Alameda, CA 94501),
1995. Text: 63 pages. Video: 28 minutes. $29.75/kit; $10.95/extra texts.
Early on June 17, Santiago
Sanguillen, 32, of Los Angeles, a 260-
pound weightlifter, severely beat his wife,
in front of her 14-year-old daughter. Waving
a loaded gun, Sanguillen then battered the
daughter’s puppy to death. On July 25, after
a three-day jury trial, Sanguillen was sen-
tenced. Perhaps because the case was moni-
tored by local humane activists, Sanguillen
drew 270 days, of a maximum 365, for
killing the puppy––but for abusing and terror-
izing the women, got just 90 days.
“We have become accustomed to
small victories,” observer Bill Dyer said.
Many such cases aren’t even prosecuted.

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Three by Joseph Cornell

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

Sharing Nature With Children (1979) 138 pages, $7.95 paperback.
Listening To Nature (1987) 95 pages, $12.95 paperback.
Sharing the Joy of Nature (1989) 166 pages, $9.95 paperback.
All from Dawn Publications
(14618 Tyler Foote Road, Nevada City, CA 95959.)
As revered scoutmaster to the
New Age, Joseph Cornell has sold more
than 300,000 copies of Sharing Nature With
Children over the past 15 years, plus more
than 60,000 copies of the companion vol-
ume for adults, Listening to Nature, since
1987. Any notion that Cornell’s third
touchy-feely nature how-to may be titled to
remind customers of The Joy of Sex is offset
by his ever-so-sincere account of taking a
young lady camping, who forgot her sleep-
ing bag. Cornell gallantly lent her his own
sleeping bag, and slept in two plastic
garbage sacks instead: one over his feet and
legs, the other over his torso, presumably
with a hole for his head. The sacks came 10
inches short of actually meeting, but
Cornell doesn’t mention what was exposed
or if it got cold.

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Book Reviews

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

CANINE CLASSICS
War Against The Wolf America’s
Campaign to Exterminate the Wolf, edited by
Rick McIntyre. Voyageur Press
(POB 338, 123 N. 2nd St., Stillwater,
MN 55082), 1995. 495 pages; $24.95
cloth.
Between the grim subject and the
brick-like heft of War Against The Wolf,
we weren’t looking forward to the
read––but it was in the office less than an
hour when we first used it as a reference.
A compendium of news coverage and relat-
ed historical documents, it doesn’t exactly
include all the best writing about wolves or
all the most important details of recent pro-
wolf campaigns. Omitted, for instance,
are any mention of either Jack London,
Farley Mowat, or Friends of Animals,
respectively wolves’ leading image-makers
past and present and the leading organiza-
tion in the defense of Alaskan wolves.
Enough important stuff is included, how-
ever, to make War Against The Wolf a
worthy addition to wildlifelibraries.

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BOOKS: When Elephants Weep

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

When
Elephants
Weep:
The Emotional
Lives of Animals
by Jeffrey M. Masson
and Susan McCarthy.
Delacorte Press
(1540 Broadway, New
York, NY 10036), 1995;
291 pages, cloth, $23.95.
If only animals d i d n t have emo-
tions! It would be a great relief to many ani-
mal lovers to imagine that nonhumans lack
the capacity to experience fear, sorrow, and
grief, even at the expense of the more com-
fortable emotional states. It might be like liv-
ing among the Vulcans: no matter what we
might do to hurt them, we would receive only
an impassive and curious stare, if they
regarded us at all. But difficult as it may be to
empathize with suffering animals, it is even
harder to understand how some people could
deny that animals do suffer.

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COURT CALENDAR

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:
Humane Enforcement
The USDA on July 14 announced penalties levied
against five Class B animal dealers and one exhibitor f o r
multiple violations of the Animal Welfare Act. Pat Hoctor,
of Terre Haute, Indiana, drew a $7,500 fine and 40-day
license suspension; Ronald DeBruin, of Prairie City, Iowa,
drew a fine of $5,000 and a 30-day license suspension; David
Kanagy of Readsville, Pennsylvania, drew a fine of $6,000
and a 60-day license suspension; Clyde and Goldie Rogers
of Rogers TLC Kennel in Gassville, Arkansas, drew a
$25,000 suspended fine and a 6-month license suspension;

Larry Roney of Cougar Acrews in Naubinway, Michigan,
drew a fine of $2,000 and lost his license for five years; and
Kelly Young, of Katt Chez Enterprises in Las Vegas,
Nevada, drew a fine of $8,000 and lost her license for 30 days.
Paul Nemeth, former mayor of Bethlehem
Township, Pennsylvania, was charged on August 2 with
shooting one of 11-year-old Jeanine Chiaffarino’s two
Samoyed puppies––in front of the girl––for purportedly bark-
ing too much in anticipation of her supper. The puppy who
was barking was not the puppy Nemeth killed.
Convicted in late June of cruelly neglecting 237
r a b b i t s, 200 of whom were euthanized upon discovery last
March, San Diego “Bunny Lady” Janice Taylor walked with
five years on probation, during which she may not own ani-
mals while Animal Control may search her premises without a
warrant to ensure compliance.
Rabbit and fighting cock breeders Richard and
Carol Beckwith and their daughter Lori Clay, of Scotts
Valley, Califonia, still denying any wrongdoing, drew 300
hours of community service apiece on August 2 for allowing
Clay’s three daughters, ages 7, 3, and 2, to live amid filth,
dead animals, and rodent infestation at the Beckwiths’ San
Jose farm. They were also barred from again keeping animals.
Forty counts of negligent cruelty filed in July
against cat breeder and vet tech Laura Duffy, 37, of La
Honda, California, as result of an April 29 raid, may become
a court test of the controversial San Mateo County animal con-
trol ordinance, friends told ANIMAL PEOPLE. Five people
who knew Duffy said that while she is no spiffy housekeeper,
her animals are well cared-for, and the April 29 conditions
were caused by two weeks of heavy rain that flooded her prop-
erty and mired her horses––whose plight first brought Animal
Control to investigate. There was contrastingly no controversy
over the June 29 seizure of 16 Persian cats from Pleasanton
breeder Linda Johnston, 47, who allegedly kept them in
“filthy and inhumane conditions,” nor over the order given to
Ann Mitchell of Monte Sereno to get rid of 78 cats, who took
over her 2-story home while she lived in a trailer in the yard.

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Fields hit for alleged Love & Care fraud

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

COVINGTON COUNTY, Alabama––A six-
year probe by the Alabama office of the attorney general,
assisted by ANIMAL PEOPLE, on June 26 brought
counts of fraud, deceit, and deceptive trade practices
against the no-kill shelter Love And Care for God’s
Animalife Inc., Ann P. Fields a.k.a. Ann Lagunas a.k.a.
Marjorie Jacobs a.k.a. Rebecca Garcia, her former husband
Jerry Fields, and her apparently much younger current hus-
band, Victor Lagunas.
Suing on behalf of three named creditors plus
“numerous contributors,” the complaint seeks to dissolve
Love And Care and turn the shelter facility, near
Andalusia, Alabama, over to a properly constituted non-
profit board of directors.

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New York didn’t reinstitute pound seizure

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

ALBANY, N.Y––Frantic online postings from vari-
ous activists who wanted New York governor George Pataki to
veto state bills A8002 and S3869B, together with a follow-up
posting by James Corrigan of Animal Rights America, “con-
gratulating” the American SPCA on their passage, produced a
fast-spreading rumor in mid-August that New York, at instiga-
tion of the ASPCA, had backhandedly repealed a 1977 ban on
the sale of shelter animals to biomedical research.
The rumor struck a nerve, especially among antivivi-
sectionists old enough to remember that the ASPCA supported
the institution of pound seizure, the mandatory sale of animals
to research, in the 1940s, and fought the 1977 law. A8002
pertained to the use of animals in endotracheal intubation train-
ing, further alarming those who recalled that the ASPCA
allowed cats who were anesthetized for neutering to be used in
such training until 1990, when executives and the board were
advised by counsel that this could constitute a violation of the
1977 law. Subsequently, in 1992, the ASPCA sought retroac-
tive legalization of the intubation training.

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Aquariums

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

An autopsy on a five-year-old dolphin w h o
died of lead poisoning on July 23 at the Luna Park tank
in Tel Aviv found she had ingested about 100 air rifle
bullets. X-rays found that her companion, Fiadora, 12
had also ingested several dozen bullets, and could die
soon without surgery. A third dolphin, Max, died of
unknown causes earlier in the year. All three were
imported from Russia about two and a half years ago.
Ric O’Barry, who staged an eight-day hunger strike to
get such imports stopped in early 1993, told ANIMAL
PEOPLE on August 7 that, “We will have Fiadora con-
fiscated soon, I feel. I will return to Tel Aviv to transfer
her to a sea pen at Elat, on the Red Sea. Then, when
the Sugarloaf Key project is over (page one), I will
rehab and release Fiadora back into the Black Sea off
Turkey. She will be the first Russian Navy dolphin to be
set free,” at least officially; another dolphin believed to
have been trained by the Russian Navy spent the early
summer begging for fish in the harbor at Bakar, Croatia.

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Tales from the Cryptozoologists

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

A fanged skull two boys found along a river-
bank on the edge of Bodmin Moor, England,
belonged to a leopard, but the leopard was apparently
killed and skinned years ago in India, the London Zoo
reported on August 7. The find came just a month after
an eight-month study by the Ministry of Agriculture con-
cluded that the only wild felines on the moor, contrary
to longtime rumors of black leopards on the loose, were
feral domestic cats.
Wang Fangchen, leader of a 30-member
team who spent June and July seeking a mysterious
apeman in heavily wooded Shennongjia National
Park, of central Hubei province, China, says he’ll lead a
second search perhaps as early as September, “as soon
as the rainy season is over.” All he found this time was
some unidentified hair, but a 1993 video convinced
Wang that the creature exists. “It is possible that their
numbers dwindled as the environment changed in recent
years,” he said.
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