BOOKS: The Pawprints of History:

October 2, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2003:

The Pawprints of History:
Dogs and the course of human events
by Stanley Coren
The Free Press (1230 Avenue of the Americas,
New York, NY 10020), 2002. 322 pages. Hardcover, $26.

Documentation of dogs’ roles in the
course of human events rarely appears in school
history texts.
Stanley Coren establishes in The
Pawprints of History, however, that dogs have
been enormously influential, not only in helping
humans to survive in prehistoric times and
perhaps in shaping our social structure, but
also through interventions of various sorts in
political and military affairs.
For example, dogs saved the lives of
people of historical stature including Napoleon,
the Fifth Dalai Lama, and Alexander the Great.
Dogs also provided emotional support and
encouragement at critical times to Abraham
Lincoln, Isaac Newton and Mary Stuart, Queen of
Scots.

REVIEW: Cull of the Wild: The Truth Behind Trapping

October 2, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2003:

Cull of the Wild: The Truth Behind Trapping
Animal Protection Institute (POB 22505, Sacramento, CA 95822), 2003.
Video offered on each cassette in both 27-minute and 10-minute versions.
$10.00 each [$7.50 each for 10 or more copies.]

For 12 winters, 1977-1989, I was volunteer assistant to a
now deceased Quebec deputy game warden in a rural township whose
farmers had virtually all posted their land against trapping. I
combined my morning crosscountry runs with patrolling between 50 and
60 miles per week of woodlots, streams, and riverbanks, scouting
for illegal traplines. The region was rich in fox, coyote,
raccoon, muskrat, and sometimes beaver, and pelt prices were at
their 20th century peak. Thus the farms continually attracted
trappers, despite the posting signs. The trappers appeared to
consider their trap losses to my patrols a routine cost of doing
business.
Over the years I became familiar with standard trapping
methods and equipment–and found that the cruelty of trapping was
actually understated by animal rights literature. The late Animal
Welfare Institute founder Christine Stevens, for example, claimed
that cable snares are less cruel than leghold traps, having probably
never seen real-life cable snaring.

Obituaries

October 2, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2003:

Sonora Webster Carver, 99, died on September 21 in
Pleasantville, New Jersey, one day after her lifelong friend
Josephine K. DeAngelis, 92. Sonora Carver’s father-in-law, W.F.
Carver, started the diving horse act at the Steel Pier in Atlantic
City, with her husband Al as one of the riders, but the act
lastingly captured public interest only after Sonora Carver rode the
horse through the 40-foot plunge in 1924. DeAngelis and Sonora
Carver’s sister Arnette Webster French then joined the act, which
became a resident attraction at the Steel Pier in 1929. In 1931
Sonora Carver was blinded by detached retinas in a bad fall into the
water with a horse named Red Lips, but continued to ride the diving
horses for 10 more years. Her 1961 memoir A Girl & Five Brave Horses
inspired the 1991 Walt Disney Inc. film Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken.
The Carver act ended in 1978 when the original Steel Pier was closed.
A parallel act at the Lake Compounce Amusement Park in Bristol,
Connecticut, used a riderless horse. That act reportedly ended long
before the park itself closed, after 146 years, in 1991. A similar
riderless act started in 1977 at Magic Forest in Lake George, New
York, and is now the target of protests led by Equine Advocates.

Obituaries

Pet Friendly Inc. royalty claim halts Illinois “pet friendly” license plate plan to fund sterilization

October 2, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2003:

SPRINGFIELD–Sales of “pet friendly” license plates to raise
funds for dog and cat sterilization remain suspended in Illinois due
to a claim of trademark infringement made by the rope toy maker Pet
Friendly Inc., and may be in “legal limbo” in several other states,
American SPCA Midwest representative Ledy VanKavage told ANIMAL
PEOPLE shortly before the October 2003 edition went to press.
Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White confirmed on August
26 that sales of the Illinois plates reading “I am pet friendly” were
halted after his office received a demand for $563,000 in
authorization fees and royalties from Pet Friendly Inc. vice
president Charles W. Weinacker Jr.
Pet Friendly Inc. claims to have about 80 employees and sales
of approximately $10 million per year.
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office records “show that the Alabama
company applied for three trademarks in 1995, but the applications
were abandoned,” wrote Dana Heupel of Copley News Service. “The
company applied for a combined trademark for clothing, pet toys,
and pet food in 1997. The mark was registered on January 8, 2002.”

Regulations regarding dog & cat freedom

October 2, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2003:

Persuaded by testimony from Peaceable Kingdom founder Liz
Jones, plus about 20 other neuter/return practitioners, the
Pennsylvania Game Commission on October 8, 2003 voted unanimously to
drop a proposal to amend a regulation forbidding the “release of
house cats” so as to prohibit the release of any dogs or cats,
including ferals, “into the wild.” The amendment was pushed by the
American Bird Conservancy.

Palm Beach County, Florida, on August 19 adopted a bylaw to
prohibit tethering dogs outside from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., effective on
September 1 and subject to review in early 2004 by the county animal
control advisory board–which reportedly plans to recommend a total
ban on tethering.

Wichita, Kansas, in early September became at least the
28th U.S. municipality to restrict dog tethering, adopting a bylaw
that limits tethering to no more than one hour at a time.

Yellowknife and Connecticut incidents feed the “humane relocation” debate

October 2, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2003:

YELLOWKNIFE, Northwest Territories, Canada–Overcrowded
with 64 dogs seized by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police from
itinerant rescuers Harry and Pat Shermet, the 12-cage Yellowknife
SPCA on September 16, 2003 sent 25 puppies to the Edmonton SPCA.
First Air donated the 650-mile flight. The Great Slave
Animal Hospital donated the required vaccinations.
“We’re glad to help,” Melissa Boisvert of Edmonton SPCA
told Nathan VanderKlippe of the CanWest News Service.
The Edmonton SPCA had only six dogs in its 60 kennels before
the puppies arrived, a legacy of successful pet sterilization and
rehoming.
The Yellowknife rescue exemplified both the promise and the
problems associated with transferring shelter animals to match supply
to demand. The Shermets actually had almost the same idea, after
they were evicted from the cabin where they had amassed 66 dogs in
three years. Loading all the dogs into a trailer on September 5,
the Shermets hoped to find homes for them in Manitoba, but were
intercepted by the RCMP in Rae, just 100 miles down the road. Six
dogs escaped and two were shot during the ensuing chaos.

Hong Kong evicts big dogs from public housing

October 2, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2003:

HONG KONG–The Hong Kong Housing Authority on September 25,
2003 approved new rules, recommended by the regional government,
that will ban from public housing any dogs weighing more than 40
pounds and any dogs acquired after August 1.
Possession of the dogs prior to August 1 must be verified by
licensing, vaccination, or sterilization certificates. All dogs
must be licensed, vaccinated, sterilized, and registered with the
Housing Authority by the end of November.
Dogs will be excluded from elevators from 7 a.m. until 9
p.m., and will be evicted if they occasion two verified complaints.
Pigeons, wildlife, and domesticated farm animals remain
excluded, as under the previous regulations.
Cats, cage birds, rabbits, turtles, and fish continue to
be permitted.
About 30% of Hong Kong residents live in public housing.
Heatedly debated since May, the new rules represent the
first significant update of the Housing Authority provisions
pertaining to animals in 40 years, Hong Kong legislator David Chu
Yu-lin told the Asia for Animals conference in early September.

China may push vaccination

October 2, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2003:

BEIJING–Appalled by the dog-killing they recently witnessed
in eight provinces of southern China, officials of the China Health
Ministry and Agriculture Ministry are recommending that future rabies
control efforts should focus on vaccination, a well-placed source
told ANIMAL PEOPLE on October 10, 2003.
The China Daily on September 3 blamed “the increasing number
of dogs and mismanagement of the canine population, including
insufficient and improprer vaccination against rabies” for the
deaths of 550 people in the first six months of 2003, 90 more than
in the first six months of 2002.
The most rabies deaths occurred in Guangdong: 74 total, 46
of them in the Maoming area. As many as 60,000 dogs were reportedly
killed in a futile effort to contain the outbreak, which closely
followed the SARS panic. At least 12 more Guangdong residents,
including six children, died from rabies in August.

Palau bans shark hunting at request of divers

October 2, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2003:

KOROR, Palau–Shark-hunting of any kind is illegal within 50
nautical miles of any part of the western Pacific island nation of
Palau, effective since mid-September 2003.
The shark-hunting ban is part of a new national marine
conservation law that also “protects reef fish, sea turtles, rays,
and any marine mammal from foreign fishing,” Agence France-Press
reported.
“A bold move for a developing nation struggling to balance
generating tax revenue with environmental protection,” Agence
France-Press observed, the new law may prove difficult to enforce.
Whether Palau has enough patrol boats and aircraft to intercept
alleged violators remains to be seen.
However, the new law is a sweeping first victory for the
Micronesian Shark Foundation, formed in April 2003 by Boston
University marine biologist Philip Lobel in partnership with Fish ‘n
Fins, a Palauan firm that outfits diving expeditions and promotes
diving tourism.

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