Author: Dylan Forest

BOOKS: Wild Dogs: past & present

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1995:

Wild Dogs: past & present
by Kelly Milner Halls
Darby Creek Publishing
(7858 Industrial Parkway, Plain City, OH 43064),
2005. 64 pages, hardcover, illustrated. $18.95.
ddressing children, Kelly Milner Halls in W i l d
Dogs pleads for appreciation and tolerance of coyotes, dingoes,
dholes, foxes, wolves, and other wild canines. Often persecut-
ed as alleged predators of livestock, each in truth preys much
more heavily on rodents and other so-called nuisance wildlife.
Wild Dogs is overall a unique and fascinating look at
dogs and dog relatives who predate humanity. Tracing the evo-
lution of dogs, Milner Halls points out that each variety of liv-
ing wild dog is a remnant of the evolution of current domestic
pet dogs, and observes that contrary to stereotype, not all
primitive dogs are ferocious carnivores. Many routinely con-
sume some plant food. The mild-mannered maned wolf of
southern South America is especially fond of fruit.

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BOOKS: Animals: Why They Must Not Be Brutalized

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1995:
Animals:
Why They Must
Not Be Brutalized
by J.B. Suconik
Nuark Publishing (30 Amberwood
Parkway, Ashland, OH 44805),
2002. 160 pages, hard cover. $28.00
Suconik’s book is basically a
moral treatise against the arguments com-
monly used to support vivisection. Give us
the whole balance sheet, he implores vivi-
section apologists, not just an item from the
profit and loss account. Then we can accu-
rately determine the legitimacy of the whole
enterprise.

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BOOKS: Meat Market: Animals, Ethics & Money

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1995:

Meat Market:
Animals, Ethics & Money
by Erik Marcus
Brio Press (244 Blakeslee, Hill Road,
Suite 5, Newfield, NY 14867), 2005.
273 pages, hardcover. $21.95.
Erik Marcus writes crisply in this
book about the evils of factory farming. He
disposes of common misconceptions and
exaggerated arguments, frequently
employed both by industry apologists and
Animal Rights activists. His logic is clearly
expressed and his prose flows tightly. In
fact the book is so easy to read that it would
make an excellent text book for humane
education and animal law courses.
Marcus examines the transforma-
tion of animal agriculture since 1950 and
analyses the growth of factory farming at
the expense of small family-owned farms.
Aiming squarely at urban activists
who have no clear understanding of farming
methods, he introduces us to the life of a
layer hen, describing in harrowing detail
her tortured life. Then he does the same for
broiler chickens, pigs, dairy cows, and
beef cattle.

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BOOKS: One Small Step: America’s First Primates in Space

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1995:

One Small Step:
America’s First
Primates in Space
by David Cassidy
& Patrick Hughes
Penguin Group (375 Hudson Street,
New York, NY 10014), 2005.
135 pages, paperback
plus DVD documentary. $19.95.
One Small Step presents the history of the
early U.S. space program, focusing on the “chimpo-
nauts,” who preceded humans into orbit.
Then-U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower
had one question, according to David Cassidy and
Patrick Hughes: “If I put humans in space, are they
going to die? Will their hearts stop beating? Will
their blood stop flowing? Or will they be so sick that
they just can’t do anything?”
Video documentarian Cassidy’s investiga-
tion, turned into a book by Hughes, reveals not only
how many animals were sacrificed in the cause of
space exploration, but also how carefully their suffer-
ing was concealed from the public. Chimpanzees gri-
macing in agony were depicted by the Air Force-com-
pliant media as “smiling with enjoyment.”

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Feral cats & Singapore animal advocacy

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1995:

SINGAPORE––The first feral cat in Singapore may
have been the animal for whom the island city-state is named.
He was reputedly a big one, with a red body and
black mane. When he lived and who saw him is mysterious.
Singapore in the fifth century A.D. was known to
Chinese sea farers as “Pu-luo-chung,” meaning “little town at
the end of a peninsula.” From the seventh century to the 10th
century the little town was Temasek, a Buddhist city-state.
After several centuries of obscurity, Temasek rose as
a regional power in the 14th century, passing from Buddhist to
Islamic rule, but was eventually destroyed by warfare. The
ruins were sparsely inhabited until 1819, when Sir Stamford
Raffles rebuilt the ancient palace grounds as the seat of British
government in Southeast Asia.
By then, the former Temasek was already S i n g a –
pura, meaning in Malay and Sanskrit “The lion city.”
Singapore mythology holds that the name Singa-pura
was conferred in the early14th century by the Sri Vijayan
prince Sang Nila Utama, who had sailed from Sumatra seeking
a place to build an empire.

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Shelter killing drops after upward spike

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1995:

The numbers of dogs and cats killed in U.S. animal
shelters appears to have resumed a 35-year decline after a brief
spike upward, according to the 12th annual ANIMAL PEO-
P L E review of shelter exit data. The overall rate of shelter
killing per 1,000 Americans now stands at 15.5.
Shelter killing is coming down in all parts of the U.S.,
but progress remains most apparent where low-cost and early-
age dog and cat sterilization programs started first, decades
ago, followed by aggressive neuter/return feral cat sterilization,
introduced on a large scale during the early 1990s.
Regions with harsh winters that inhibit the survival of
stray and feral kittens were usually killing more than 100 dogs
and cats per 1,000 humans circa 1970. The U.S. average was
115, and the Southern toll (where known) soared above 250.
Current regional norms vary from 3.6 in the
Northeast to 27.5 along the Gulf Coast and 29.2 in Appalachia.
The Northeast toll is as low as it is partly because
most animal control agencies in Connecticut still do not active-
ly pick up cats, although they were authorized to do so in
1991––but even if Connecticut agencies collected two or three
times as many cats as dogs, the overall Northeast rate of shelter
killing would be less than 4.5 dogs and cats per 1,000 humans.

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Indo-Canadian low-cost vets accuse British Columbia Vet Med Association of discrimination

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1995:

VANCOUVER––Alleging that they have been targeted for doing
low-cost dog and cat sterilizations, 18 Indo-Canadian veterinarians, 16 of
them members of the British Columbia Veterinary Medical Association, are
pursuing discrimination claims against BCVMA registrar Valerie Osborne.
Led by Atlas Animal Hospital owner Hakam Bhullar, the vets
have registered a lawsuit with the British Columbia Supreme Court, seek-
ing to remove Osborne from office, and have petitioned the British
Columbia Human Rights Tribunal requesting that an unusually strict lan-
guage proficiency test required by the BCVMA be repealed.
Osborne and other BCVMA representatives have said little on the
record about the Indo-Canadian veterinarians’ complaints, except to deny
that the intent of the language proficiency test is discriminatory.
Under Osborne, Bhullar told Richard Chu of the Vancouver Sun,
the BCVMA requires vets to score 92% on a standard test of spoken
English. Lawyers, medical doctors, dentists, nurses, and firefighters are
required to score only 83%, Bhullar said.

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Axed SNAP founder Sean Hawkins starts over

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1995:

HOUSTON––Either Spay/Neuter Assistance
Program founder Sean Hawkins was fired on May 26,
2005, as the June edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE
reported, or Hawkins was still CEO, as the SNAP
board claimed in a June 6 statement.
Whichever it was, Hawkins on June 20 sub-
mitted his formal resignation, and on July 5 announced
the formation of a new charity, Saving Animals Across
Borders, to carry out a mission similar to that of SNAP
but with a stronger international emphasis.
“Based in Houston, Saving Animals will pro-
mote the adoption of healthy dogs and cats,” Hawkins
said on July 5, “and will increase the availability of ani-
mal sterilization services, to ultimately wipe out animal
homelessness in communities where these programs and
services are not available.

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