BOOKS: Silent Victims: Recognizing and Stopping Abuse of the Family Pet

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2007:

Silent Victims:
Recognizing and Stopping Abuse of the Family Pet
by Pamela Carlisle-Frank & Tom Flanagan
University Press of America (4501 Forbes Blvd., Suite 220,
Lanham, MD 20766), 2006. 296 pages, paperback. $39.95.

Social scientist Pamela Carlisle-Frank and Tom Flanagan, a
Boston police officer turned humane officer, in Silent Victims pull
together information from a broad range of sources, seasoned by
practical experience, which might usefully be on the required
reading list for anyone aspiring to a career in social work or law
enforcement–but for what specific class?
Few universities teach humane law enforcement, or the
sociology of animal rescue. Newly hired humane officers these days
often have some formal law enforcement training, and many of the
best humane society crisis counselors have background in social work.

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BOOKS: Kathryn & the Runaway Zoo

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2007:

Kathryn & the Runaway Zoo by William B. Catton
Vantage Press Inc. (419 Park Ave. S., New York, NY 10016), 2007.
140 pages, paperback. $11.95.

Kathryn, a 13-year-old passionate animal lover, is a
frequent visitor to the local zoo, which houses the largest
collection of animals in America, and is owned by one Mortimer
Farrington, known to all as an “ill-tempered and arrogant skinflint.”
Because of her way with animals she is offered a part time
job after school and weekends. She is, however, horrified at the
outdated, cramped conditions of the zoo, and seeks improvement by
writing to Farrington, asking him to consider refurbishing the zoo
in order to give the animals more space. He refuses, so she writes
to the newspapers, which infuriates him.

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BOOKS: What Every Pet Owner Should Know

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2007:

What Every Pet Owner Should Know
by Karen Halligan, DVM
Harper Collins Publishers Inc. (10 East 53rd St.,
New York, NY 10022), 2007. 312 pages, hardcover. $24.85.

Karen Halligan, director of veterinary services for SPCA/LA,
is well-known to television viewers through her frequent appearances
on animal-related programs.
What Every Pet Owner Should Know comprehensively addresses
the whole range of potential problems faced by pet owners, including
how to reduce veterinary bills by taking preventative measures such
as cleaning a pet’s teeth; what pet to choose for one’s particular
needs and circumstances; the ins and outs of pet insurance; and
especially, how to recognise illness and address it.

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BOOKS: The Dogs of Windcutter Down

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2007:

The Dogs of Windcutter Down
by David Kennard
St. Martin’s Press (175 Fifth Ave., New York,
NY 10010), 2006. 277 pages, paperback. $24.95.

The Dogs of Windcutter Down is British sheep farmer David
Kennard’s sequel to his first book, A Shepherd’s Watch, which we
reviewed in the June 2006 edition of Animal People.
It is a nostalgic look at the vanishing traditional farming
lifestyle. Dog lovers will enjoy Kennard’s descriptions of sheep
dog trials, but the hardships of sheep farming may surprise many
readers. Besides long, arduous hours of working with sheep through
often miserable weather, Kennard laments the declining market value
of sheep, the intrusion of European Union bureaucracy at every
level, and the slaughter of millions of sheep and cattle in 2004 in
a failed government effort to halt the spread of hoof-and-mouth
disease without resorting to vaccination.

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BOOKS: Babylon’s Ark: The Incredible Wartime Rescue of the Baghdad Zoo

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2007:

Babylon’s Ark: The Incredible Wartime Rescue of the Baghdad Zoo
by Lawrence Anthony, with Graham Spence
Thomas Dunne Books (c/o St. Martin’s Press, 175 5th Ave., New York,
NY 10010), 2007. 240 pages, paperback. $23.95.

At the same time that ANIMAL PEOPLE received a web link to a
video clip of U.S. troops stoning an injured dog in early 2007, we
received a link to another video clip showing lions being released
from cages to kill and eat several donkeys, as soldiers cheered.
“Three times per week the zoo keeper buys donkeys to feed the
starving lions,” the caption said.
This is not how Earth Organization founder Lawrence Anthony
taught the Baghdad Zoo staff to operate, after making his way there
from South Africa because he thought the zoo animals might need help
after the U.S. military invaded Baghdad in May 2003.

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BOOKS: Kinship With The Wolf

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2007:

Kinship With The Wolf
by Tanja Askani
Park Street Press (One Park St., Rochester, VT 05767), 2006.
144 pages, paperback. $19.95

The text accompanying this collection of superb portrait
photographs of wolves describes the social lives and behavior of a
family of wolves living in captivity at the Luneburger Heide Wildlife
Reserve in Germany. Author Tanja Askani gives an absorbing account
of the emotional lives of wolves, and of their complex social
structures and rituals.
Askani mentions that some wolves take an instinctive dislike
to a particular person for no apparent reason, and gives a
fascinating description of how wolf family life can give leadership
lessons to business executives. She includes a particularly
interesting chapter on the status of wolves in Europe, reviewing the
current wolf population estimates and conservation initiatives in
each nation of the European Union. Outside the EU, wolves continue
to be viciously persecuted in Norway and Russia. Even within the EU,
where wolves are nominally protected, the protections are often not
enforced.

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BOOKS: Cats Of Africa

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2007:

Cats Of Africa by Luke Hunter
Photography by Gerald Hinde
Johns Hopkins U. Press (2715 N. Charles St., Baltimore,
MD 21218), 2006. 176 pages, hardcover. $39.95.

As well as the well-known lion, leopard,
and cheetah, and the less familiar but still
reasonably common caracal, serval and African
wildcat, Africa hosts the golden cat, jungle
cat, sand cat, and blackfooted cat. Cats of
Africa author Luke Hunter, a Wildlife
Conservation Society carnivore specialist,
covers them all–but his volume is not to be
confused with the distnguished Cats of Africa by
Anthony Hall-Martin and Paul Boseman, published
in 1998, now out of print.
We were surprised to read that “none of
the big cats purr.” This has been alleged by
others, but we have personal experience that
cheetahs purr, a loud deep purr sounding much
like a small motorbike. Lion expert Paul Hart,
of the Drakenstein Lion Park near Cape Town,
South Africa, advises that lionesses in heat
express themselves by what could be described as
purring.

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BOOKS: Hollywood Hoofbeats: Trails Blazed Across the Silver Screen

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2007:

Hollywood Hoofbeats:
Trails Blazed Across the Silver Screen
by Petrine Day Mitchum
with Audrey Pavia
BowTie Press (3 Burroughs, Irvine, CA 92618), 2006. 205 pages,
hardcover. $39.95.

Coffee-table books don’t come more lucidly written or
thoroughly researched than Hollywood Hoofbeats, a definitive history
of horse use in American film making, with frequent emphasis on
humane issues.
Horses were still basic transportation when the film industry
started, but began to be displaced by automobiles coincidental with
the early growth of Hollywood. Film makers took advantage of an
abundance of cheap cast-off horses for a time, treating them as
expendible commodities.

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BOOKS: Donkey: The Mystique of Equus Asinus

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2007:

Donkey: The Mystique of Equus Asinus
by Michael Tobias & Jane Morrison
Council Oak Books (2105 E. 15th Street, Suite B,
Tulsa, OK 74104), 2006. 213 pages, hard
cover. $19.95.

“This book has emerged out of our
responses to donkeys: donkeys as a species and
donkeys as individuals,” write co-authors
Michael Tobias and Jane Morrison, longtime
partners in producing books and films about
nature and animals, and in directing the
California-based Dancing Star Found-ation
wildlife sanctuary.
“The book grazes, feeding on a landscape
both real and historical, imagined, desired and
underfoot, inspired by a creature that has,
strangely, embedded itself into the very fabric
of philosophy, religion, art, the environment,
human history, as well as in our hearts,”
Tobias and Morrison continue. “Donkeys did not
bray for this attention, but their own subtle
beauty and gentleness have attracted our kind,
while their utility has brought them loads of
woe.”

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