Category: Companion Animals

ANIMAL HEALTH

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

Rabies update
New Hampshire state veterinarian
Clifford McGinniss warned January
15––after a rabid kitten was found in a
Merrimack College dormitory––that feral cats
must be exterminated to protect Hampton
Beach visitors. Disagreeing, Hampton Beach
is pursung a $24,000 cat control plan combin-
ing catch-and-kill with selective neuter/
release. The plan is also opposed by New
Hampshire SPCA executive director Bonnie
Roberts, who told the Boston Globe that the
feral cats “are going to tangle with rabid ani-
mals and spread the disease.” In fact, rabies
vaccination is a prerequisite of the Hampton
Beach plan, and of all properly managed
neuter/release programs. There are no reports
on record of any cat in any recognized
neuter/release program anywhere ever con-
tracting rabies, while several neuter/release
programs including one coordinated in 1991-
1992 by ANIMAL PEOPLE publisher Kim
Bartlett have been credited by public safety
officials with creating an immunized barrier
between rabid wildlife and family pets.

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L.A. earthquake aid

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

LOS ANGELES, Calif.––
The City of Los Angeles was among
the first animal control jurisdictions
to have its own disaster prepared-
ness manual, but not even manual
author Lt. Frederic Michael antici-
pated two major natural disasters
hitting the area within four months:
first the devastating brushfires of
late October and early November,
and then, January 17, a 6.6-
Richter-magnitude earthquake that
collapsed overpasses, ruptured
water mains, killed 43 people out-
right, and left more than 20,000 at
least temporarily homeless.

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Animal Control & Rescue

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

The Canadian SPCA
was stunned February 3 when it
lost the Montreal pound contract
to a private bidder, Berger Blanc,
for at least a two-month trial period.
Berger Blanc handles animal control
for several Montreal suburbs, but
has been accused of selling animals
to biomedical research. The
Montreal contract forbids such sales.
The CSPCA was nearly bankrupted
under its previous two-year pound
contract, loosely modeled after the
contract New York City has long
had with the ASPCA, under which
it was expected to provide pound
service at a substantial loss––
$450,000 in 1993––in exchange for
the proceeds from all dog licenses
sold after the first 10,000.

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Editorial: Wanted: vets on wheels at combat pay

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

Just over two years ago ANIMAL PEOPLE publisher Kim Bartlett disregarded
warnings that she was taking her life in her hands and took an experimental neuter/release
project into inner city Bridgeport, Connecticut––the city with the highest per capita murder
rate and greatest rate of drug-related violence of any in North America. Among the burned-
out, abandoned shells of factories and tenements where families lived six or eight people to
a room on welfare, Kim found a community who for the most part already knew about pet
overpopulation, were worried about the homeless animals they fed at their doorsteps, and
were readily receptive to her help in obtaining neutering and vaccination. Bridgeport had
and probably still has a high density of feral cats not primarily because anyone was ignorant
or indifferent, nor because even the poorest of the poor were unwilling to pay for neutering
their pets––albeit that most couldn’t afford to pay anything close to the going veterinary
rates. On the contrary, Kim was welcomed as “the cat lady” where even police feared to
walk. Children ran up and down the shabby side streets knocking on doors, asking neigh-
bors to bring out their animals. Elderly women without even a warm coat and third genera-
tion welfare mothers produced tattered and painstakingly preserved ten-dollar bills to make
the most generous contribution they could to assist the effort. The nun whose tiny convent
school was among the last outposts of hope in the inner city gave Kim her full support.

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New books for dog-lovers

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

Curing Your Dog’s Bad Habits: Treating
Behavioral Problems, by Danny Wilson.
Sterling Publishing Co., Inc. (387 Park Ave. South,
New York, NY 10016-8810), 1994. 108 pages,
$9.95, paperback.
Dog trainer Danny Wilson’s advice about dealing
with difficult dogs should be self-evident to any observer
of canine behavior. Yet astonishingly many people, even
purported dog-lovers, substitute a rolled-up newspaper for
good sense when it comes to enforcing canine discipline.
This isn’t hard to understand, as proper dog-training takes
at least 20 minutes a day, which many busy people just
don’t have. It is to be understood that dog-training time, a
concerted period devoted wholly to the dog, is not to be
confused with time spent in the company of both dog and
family, or jogging with the dog, or walking the dog. Any
of these occasions may be adapted into a dog-training ses-
sion, but only if there is a daily opportunity for reinforce-

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COURT CALENDAR

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

Activism
“The Animal Liberation Front planted nine incen-
diary devices in four Chicago department stores which sell
fur,” media were told in a November 28 fax communique.
“The incendiaries were designed to start a small fire which
would in turn set off the stores’ sprinkler systems and cause
water damage. This action signals the start of a new, more
intense campaign of economic sabotage.” Five of the fire-
bombs went off November 28 and 29, doing minor damage at
Marshall Field, Carson and Saks. Three more were removed
by police and FBI agents. The ninth apparently never turned
up. Copies of a British ALF manual describing how to make
firebombs arrived in the mailboxes of numerous animal protec-
tion groups during the next few days, postmarked Palatine,
Illinois––a Chicago suburb. The incident gave furriers a con-
siderable volume of media time in which to denounce the anti-
fur movement generally.

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Animal Control & Rescue

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

The value of publicity was
underscored in Cleveland, Ohio,
after county humane officer Tony
Brand rescued a pair of starving dogs
from a rooftop on December 11.
Notice of the rescue in the Cleveland
Plain Dealer brought nearly 100 calls
to the Cuyahoga County Kennel from
would-be adopters, of whom more
than 20 took dogs––five times the
usual adoption rate. Adoptions also
rose at other local shelters.

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ARM wins again

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

Animal Rights Mobiliza-
tion director Robin Duxbury, com-
ing off a successful campaign to
keep dolphins out of the Colorado’s
Ocean Journey theme park to be
built near Denver, called for a boy-
cott of the grooming salons in the
PetsMart pet supply chain last
September, following the death of
at least five dogs in five different
states when groomers––independent
of each other and of any direction
from PetsMart ––apparently tried to
perform veterinary procedures
and/or mishandled insecticides.

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Are purebreds really more prone to genetic disease?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

Purebred dogs may be increasingly susceptible
to genetic disease due to inbreeding, but one apparent
proof the Humane Society of the U.S. presented in the
September 1993 edition of its Shelter Sense newsletter
was not necessarily any such thing.
A special edition on “Purebreds and pet over-
population,” the issue featured articles by assistant editor
Julia Miller and HSUS vice president for farm animals
and bioethics Michael Fox, who backed the recent HSUS
call for a voluntary moratorium on dog and cat breeding
by linking the pursuit of breed standards to congenital
health problems. Illustrating their articles was a table
compiled by the Canine Genetic Disease Information
System at the University of Pennsylvania entitled
“Number of Genetic Disorders or Genetic Susceptibilities
to Disease Recognized in the Dog 1928-1988.”

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1 … 83 84 85 86 87 … 99