From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2007:

Tamara Monti, 37, from Lake Como, Italy, employed as a
dolphin keeper at Oltremare Park in Riccone, was fatally stabbed on
February 4, 2007 by neighbor Alessandro Doto, 35, who lived with
his parents in the flat above Monti’s. Doto, arrested at the scene
with the knife in his hand, claimed he was driven mad by the barking
of Monti’s two dogs while she was at work. Monti had worked
exceptionally long hours since September 2005, raising a grampus
dolphin named Mary G who was rescued with her mother from a June 2005
stranding. The mother died, but Mary G survived. Mary G refused to
eat after Monti’s death, however, and was in dire condition as of
February 20.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2007:

Sled dogs Jewel, 5, running for Yuka Honda, Melville, 5,
running for Brent Sass, and Hope, 6, running for Kelly Griffin,
died between February 11 and February 21 in the 1,000-mile Yukon
Quest, the first dogs to die in the race since 2002. Jewel
reportedly choked on her own vomit during a team runaway when Honda
stopped to untangle several dogs just past the Braeburn rest point,
and her snow anchors failed to hold the team. The causes of death of
the others were unclear. All three were older than most racing
huskies. Read more

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January-February 2007:
Carol Chapman, 66, was killed along with 12 cats and her
smallest dog, Zoey, on December 18, 2006 after falling and
breaking her nose and neck while fighting a pre-dawn housefire at her
home in San Jose, California. “Chapman loved cats,” recalled Scott
Herhold of the Mercury News. “She sometimes had as many as 30 or 40
of them, not to mention Buddy, her German shepherd mix, or her two
other beloved mutts, Lacy and Zoey. Before she became sick with
cervical cancer, she rescued hundreds of cats,” placing them in
adoptive homes. A retired Santa Clara social worker, Chapman
reputedly screened adopters more thoroughly than the county screened
foster parents. She “worked with a clutch of animal rescue groups,
most recently with Furry Friends Rescue,” Herhold recalled, “often
stood outside a local Petco to interest people in taking on an
unloved animal,” and “Every other week on the Greg Kihn show on KFOX
radio, gave a short blurb offering a cat or dog to a good home.”

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January-February 2007:
Roadie, 14, a double-amputee Walker coonhound recalled by
Greg Kocher of the Lexington Herald-Leader as “a symbol of
perseverance to people with disabilities,” was euthanized on
November 30, 2006 due to incurable painful conditions of age. “In
1992,” Kocher wrote, “at only nine months old, he spent spent two or
three days and nights lying between the rails of railroad track,”
near Nicholsville, Kentucky, “after a freight train mangled his
right rear leg and left front leg. A railroad employee stopped to
put him out of his misery. The gun jammed. So he went to a nearby
farmhouse and asked if the dog belonged to anyone there. He didn’t,
but the woman who lived there began making calls, including one to
the Nicholasville Police. The police called Mike Griffitt, DVM.
Griffitt checked the dog’s tags and contacted the owner. After he
realized Roadie would never hunt again, the owner said he would take
the dog home and dispose of him. When the pup was gingerly loaded
into the truck, he wagged his tail. Griffitt asked whether he could
have him.” Roadie’s rescue and recovery was subsequently featured
by radio broadcaster Paul Harvey, CNN television, Reader’s Digest,
and Dog World. He spent the rest of his life at Griffitt’s Bluegrass
Veterinary Clinic.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2006:
Peter Roberts, 82, died on Novem-ber 15, 2006. “His
concern for animals started when after World War II service, he
settled down with his wife Anna to dairy farming in Hampshire,”
recalled Compassion In World Farming ambassador and former chief
executive Joyce D’Silva. “Peter began to take his old, barren cows
to the slaughterhouse and stayed with them to the end. The couple
refused to send their surplus calves to market, fearing they might
be bought for the live export trade and end up in veal crates in
France or Holland.” Appalled by the introduction of factory farming,
first with poultry, later with other species, “Peter wrote a strong
letter to the press and it generated a huge response,” D’Silva
continued. “Realizing that there was a groundswell of feeling
against intensive farming, he approached the major animal welfare
societies, urging them to campaign against battery cages. They
declined. Peter despaired to a solicitor friend, who said: “Peter,
you’ll just have to do it yourself. Come to my office and we’ll set
up a trust. Compassion in World Farming was born,” initially called
the Athene Trust. At first, the Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries
and Food treated Peter with what he charitably referred to as ‘benign
amusement.’ But Peter had touched a chord with the public, whose
awareness had been raised by the publication of Ruth Harrison’s
seminal book Animal Machines in 1964. Now Peter provided an
organised outlet for people’s horror at keeping hens in cages and
confining calves and breeding sows in narrow crates, unable to turn
around. Peter stopped farming, and in 1978, he opened the Bran Tub
in Petersfield,” an independent health food shop. “He also set up
Direct Foods,” Silva recalled, “marketing textured vegetable
protein. He himself had become a vegetarian. For all the years that
Peter put in as director of CIWF,” D’Silva added, “he managed never
to draw a salary.” CIWF won a British ban on veal crates in 1990,
and a ban on sow gestation crates in 1999. “However, to Peter’s
regret,” D’Silva said, “he never managed to achieve a permanent ban
on the export of live animals. In 2001, Peter, by then retired due
to the onset of Parkinson’s disease, received the first ever BBC TV
award for his outstanding contribution to animal welfare.” In 2002
he was made a member of the Order of the British Empire.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2006:
Flip, 5, a Belgian Malinois police dog who once found 40
pounds of cocaine, was shot on November 18, 2006 in Jackson
Township, Ohio by a man “who apparently felt threatened” when Flip
wandered into his property on the dog’s day off, wrote Findlay
Courier staff writer J. Steven Dillon. Flip was partner of Findlay
Police Patrolman Bryon Deeter.

Dewey Readmore Books, 19, found as a kitten in the book
drop at the Spencer Public Library in Sioux City, Iowa, in January
1988, died on November 29, 2006 in the arms of librarian Vicki
Myron, who adopted him, held a contest to name him, and saw him
become one of the most famous library cats in the world, featured on
postcards and his own section at <www.spencerlibrary.com>.

Lakshmi, 43, resident elephant since 1966 at the Thekutheru
Krishnan Temple in Madurai, India, died suddenly on November 9
during one of her frequent visits to the nearby Sourashtra Higher
Secondary School. “She had been the centre of attraction at the
annual temple festival, and had attended the rejuvenation camp,
conducted by the Tamil Nadu state government at Mudumalai for the
past three years,” recalled The Hindu.

Ginny the donkey, protector of 26 goats kept by George and
Patty Coe of Spencer, West Virginia, was fatally wounded on
November 20, the first day of firearm buck hunting season.

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2006:
Pegeen McAllister, 85, died on
September 24. As longtime Dublin SPCA secretary,
McAllister with Edna Ardagh formed the Irish SPCA
in 1949. “She served for many years on the
Society’s executive council, representing the
Wicklow SPCA, and holding at different times the
offices of chair, president and trustee,”
recalled World Society for the Protection of
Animals director general Peter Davies. Among her
projects, Davies listed, was passage of
legislation in1986 “which provided for setting up
pounds throughout the country and employing dog
wardens to collect strays. Perhaps her most
significant achievement,” Davies said, was
“ending of the export of horses for slaughter in
1960. This trade involved terrible suffering for
animals, often ill or injured, who were shipped
to continental Europe in all weather. Supported
by Margo Dean, Nancy Hatte, and Molly Meyers,
Pegeen visited docks and ships, and saw at first
hand the cruelty involved. She was also closely
involved in setting up the Richard Martin
Restfields, which provide sanctuary for horses
and donkeys.”

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2006:
Jesse, 13, a trained service dog, on October 15, 2006
alerted Jamie Hanson, 49, to a housefire started when her cat
knocked over a candle, took Hanson her artificial leg and a
telephone, led her outside, then returned inside and was killed
trying to rescue the cat, who also died.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006:
Steve Irwin, 44, was killed when stabbed in the heart by a
stingray on September 4, 2006, while videotaping a series called
“Ocean’s Deadliest” at Batt Reef, north of Cairns. Irwin starred in
the Crococile Hunter television series, aired in Australia since
1992, later carried globally by the Discovery Channel. An outspoken
opponent of recreational hunting, Irwin led a successful campaign
against a government proposal to open trophy hunting for saltwater
crocodiles in the Australian Northern Territory. Irwin’s parents,
Bob and Lyn Irwin, founded the Australia Zoo, north of Brisbane,
in 1970. “In 1991, Irwin took over the zoo when his parents retired,
and began building a reputation as a showman during daily crocodile
feeding shows. He met and married Terri Raines, of Eugene, Oregon,
who came to the park as a tourist,” in 1992, recalled Brian Cassey
of Associated Press. “They invited a television crew to join them on
their camping honeymoon on Australia’s far northern tip. The
resulting show became the first episode of The Crocodile Hunter.

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