Category: Companion Animals

Alfred the Great

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2006:

Alfred the Great, 17, named for his political wisdom, was
euthanized due to incurable suffering from conditions of age on March
30, 2005.
While removing a poacher’s snares set for fox or coyote from
an abandoned junkyard near Brigham, Quebec, in December 1988, at
twilight, in a blizzard, ANIMAL PEOPLE editor Merritt Clifton found
hints that a kitten had been used as live bait but escaped. Amid the
snow, in the gathering dark, among countless hiding places, the
kitten could not be found.
“I reluctantly hiked home,” Clifton recalls, “and was just
shaking the snow off my coat in the woodshed, when my landlady,
Lorna Kemp, came out and pointed to a tiny gray-and-white kitten
stumbling up the road behind me, looking like a moving snowball.

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BOOKS: Cesar’s Way

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2006:

Cesar’s Way by Cesar Millan with Melissa Jo Peltier
Harmony Books ( 231 Broad St., Nevada City, CA 95959), 2006.
304 pages, hard cover. $24.95.

Dog behaviorist Cesar Millan’s weekly show The Dog Whisperer
airs on the National Geographic Channel. His Dog Psychology Center
in Los Angeles, California, enjoys a celebrity clientele. His book
Cesar’s Way is about dogs, but is also the autobiography of a poor
Mexican who came to America as an illegal immigrant.
We have had family dogs all our lives, yet only after
reading Millan’s book did we realize how many mistakes we made in
training and understanding them. If we were to get another dog, it
would only be after anxious consideration of our responsibilities:
Would we commit ourselves to taking the dog for a long, tiring walk
for at least an hour every morning, and another half hour every
evening? Every day?
Millan believes that when one understands the evolutionary
needs of dogs, one realizes that draining off energy by hard
exercise is essential to their health.

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Risk of cats giving H5N1 to humans is small, says Euro Centre for Disease Prevention & Control

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2006:

ROTTERDAM, STOCKHOLM, LONDON– “Cats could fuel bird flu
pandemic,” headlined the April 5 edition of The Times of London,
sparking similar headlines worldwide–but the risk is small,
responded the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control in
Stockholm, Sweden, after reviewing the evidence.
“A distinction needs to be made,” reminded the European
Centre, “between species which can occasionally be infected by a
particular influenza, but who rarely transmit it,” such as cats,
“and those species in which it seems that the viruses are better
adapted and transmitted,” such as birds.
Cats were first known to be vulnerable to H5N1, the European
Centre response continued, in December 2003, “when a few leopards
and tigers died in a zoo in Thailand after being fed infected
poultry.” Later came “a much larger H5N1 outbreak in zoo tigers,
also in Thailand, who had been fed chicken carcasses. Over 140
tigers died or were euthanised. There was convincing evidence of
tiger to tiger transmission.

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“Sylvester & Tweety” go global

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2006:

Robben Island Museum, responsible for managing Robben
Island, South Africa, is again trying to eradicate feral cats.
Sharpshooters killed cats on the island in 1999 and 2005, when 58
cats were shot, but as many as 70 cats remain, environmental
coordinator Shaun Davis recently told Cape Argus reporter John Yeld.
The shooting was suspended for a time to allow animal advocacy groups
including Beauty Without Cruelty/South Africa to trap the surviving
cats and take them to mainland sanctuaries. BWC/ South Africa
spokesperson Beryl Scott told Yeld that the initial effort was “not
that successful,” partly through lack of official cooperation, but
on April 24 Davis announced that the number of traps set for cats
would be expanded from 10 to 50, and that no cats would be shot
before June. The cats are blamed by University of Cape Town avian
demographer Les Underhill for killing all but three of the fledgling
population of about 60 endangered African black oystercatchers during
the past breeding season. Allan Perrins, chief executive officer of
Cape of Good Hope branch of the South African National SPCA,
suggested that the actual culprits might have been some of the feral
rabbits on the island, who might have turned carnivorous and become
nest predators. Seals are also blamed by some observers. Seals have
been kept from re-establishing haulouts on Robben Island in recent
years to protect seabird colonies, but on April 21, 2006 “Both
Robben Island and the department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism
agreed to allow the return of Cape fur seals,” e-mailed Seal
Alert/South Africa founder Francois Hugo. Robben Island, designated
a World Heritage site by the United Nations Environmental Program,
provides habitat to 132 bird species in all.

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Breed bans hit court opposition; anti-tethering laws gain favor

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2006:

TOLEDO, TIPTON (Pa.)–A three-judge panel of the Ohio Sixth
District Court of Appeals on March 3, 2006 struck down as
unconstitutional both the Toledo ban on pit bull terriers, in effect
for more than 20 years, and the parts of the Ohio Revised Code on
which the ban was based.
The 2-1 opinion, written by Judge William Skow with assent
from Judge Arlene Singer, reversed a 2004 ruling by Toledo Municipal
Court Judge Francis Gorman.
Lucas County dog warden Tom Skeldon reluctantly instructed
his staff to stop citing Toledo residents for possession of multiple
pit bulls, not carrying dog bite liability insurance, and not
keeping pit bulls under close control.
“We’re not in the pit bull business any more. We’re not in
the vicious-dog business any more,” Skeldon told Erica Blake of the
Toledo Blade. “They’ve taken away our ability to enforce
containment, whether of a German shepherd or a pit bull, whether
the dog has bitten someone or not.”

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BOOKS: Why The Tail-Docking Of Dogs Should Be Prohibited

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2006:

Why The Tail-Docking Of Dogs Should Be Prohibited
and Cephalopods & Decapod Crustaceans:
Their Capacity To Experience Pain & Suffering

Advocates for Animals (10 Queensferry Street, Edinburgh, EH2 4PG,
Scotland, U.K.), 2005.

Rule #1 for headline writers is that brevity is the soul of wit.
Rule #2 is, “Never use a word that your readers will not
instantly recognize.”
Bad titling unfairly handicaps Why The Tail-Docking Of Dogs
Should Be Prohibited, which would be both more succinct and
grammatically correct without either “the” or “of.”
Bad titling outright sabotages Cephalopods & Decapod
Crustaceans: Their Capacity To Experience Pain & Suffering.
If you know what a cephalopod is, raise a tentacle. If you
know what “decapod crustaceans” are, raise a claw.
At 16 and 20 letter-sized pages, respectively, these new
Advocates for Animals handbooks are exactly what activists need when
urging lawmakers to ban tail-docking, or are speaking up for octopi,
squid, crabs, lobsters, and crayfish.

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BOOKS: Making health decisions on behalf of our animal companions

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2006:

Making health decisions on behalf of our animal companions
by Shannon Fujimoto Nakaya, DVM

New World Library (14 Pamaron Way, Novato, CA 94949), 2005.
155 pages, paperback. $13.95.

Have you ever wondered how a veterinarian
feels when a someone rushes in with an animal and
screams for help, then expects an instant and
accurate diagnosis without giving any relevant
patient history?
Veterinarian Shannon Fujimoto Nakaya
emphasizes that, “Making health decisions on
behalf of our animal companion begins with
noticing when things are differentŠ” She lists
questions that should be asked of a vet when
seeking a diagnosis. She notes that it is not
unreasonable to ask your vet to explain things in
terms that you understand, and also not
unreasonable to get a second opinion.

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A little girl who loved her chickens

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2006:

An irony of the H5N1 global epidemic is that many of the
youngest human victims are those with the most positive attitudes
toward poultry–like Sumeyya Makuk of Van, Turkey.
“Sumeyya Mamuk considered the chickens in her yard to be
beloved pets. The 8-year-old girl fed them, petted them, and took
care of them,” wrote Benjamin Harvey of Associated Press. “When
they started to get sick and die, she hugged them and tenderly
kissed them goodbye.
“The chickens were sick. One had puffed up and she touched
it. We told her not to. She loved chickens a lot,” said her
father, Abdulkerim Mamuk. “She held them in her arms.”
Continued Harvey, “Her oldest brother Sadun said Sumeyya
loved animals and took care of puppies and kittens.
When her mother saw Sumeyya holding one of the dying
chickens, she yelled at her and hit the girl to get her away.
Sumeyya began to cry. She wiped her tears with the hand she’d been
using to comfort the dying chicken,” and fell ill herself.
Prompt treatment at the Van 100th Year Hospital saved Sumeyya
Mamuk, Harvey reported.

Jail time for cruelty in Croatia

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2006:

ZAGREB–A Croatian court for the first time jailed an animal
abuser, Animal Friends Croatia e-mailed on January 27, 2006, after
Judge Jasna Zoretic gave Ostoja Babi five months, one month less
than the maximum, for severely beating his dog in December 2004. A
police officer shot the dog to end her suffering.
“Animal Friends Croatia staged a demonstration in front of
Babic’s house and collected more than 2,400 petition signatures in
less than a week,” demanding the prosecution, the AFC e-mail said.
Animal Friends Croatia is now seeking to increase the
Croatian penalties for extreme animal abuse, and bar persons
convicted of extreme abuse from ever again keeping animals.

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