Greyhound racing ends on U.S. west coast

January 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2005:

PORTLAND, Oregon–Grey-hound racing
appeared to be finished on the west coast of the
U.S. on December 23, 2004, when Magna
Entertainment Corporation announced that it will
not reopen the Multnomah Greyhound Park in Wood
Village, a Portland suburb.
Multnomah Greyhound Park animal welfare
coordinator Patti Lehnert told Eric Mortenson of
the Portland Oregonian that the 46 dogs left in
the kennels at the end of the 2004 racing season
would be kept until rehomed.
“It’s business as usual for the adoption
kennel, Lehnert said. “We will find homes; we
will place them.”
Betting at the Multnomah Grey-hound Park
fell from $25 million in 1995 to $11 million in
2002, reported Mortenson. Magna attributed the
decline to the rise of online gaming and Native
American casinos.

BOOKS: Believe: A Horseman’s Journey

December 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2004:

Believe: A Horseman’s Journey
by Buck Brannaman & William Reynolds
The Lyons Press (246 Goose Lane, P.O. Box 480, Guilford, CT
06437), 2004. 178 pages, hardcover. $27.95.

Moviegoers will remember the film The Horse Whisperer, and
in particular, the dramatic scene where Tom Brooker, played by
Robert Redford, brought a troubled horse gently down into a prone
position. Buck Brannaman, the cowboy/trainer who inspired the film,
has followed up his best-selling book The Faraway Horses with this
account of his efforts to help thirteen horses and their people.
Each subject tells his or her own story, prefaced by
Brannaman’s comments.
All thirteen stories emphasize that a complete and satisfying
relationship between horse and rider cannot be based upon domination,
but rather must be based upon mutual trust and empathy. The rider
must learn to recognize subtle signs which compassionate people are
able to read once they accept their horses as equals, with complete
personalities.

BOOKS: The New Work of Dogs & The Dogs of Bedlam Farm

November 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

Two books by Jon Katz–
The New Work of Dogs:
Tending to life, love, and family
2003. 237 pages, paperback. $13.95.

The Dogs of Bedlam Farm:
An Adventure with Sixteen Sheep,
Three Dogs, Two Donkeys, and Me
2004. 260 pages, hardcover. $22.95.

Both from Random House (1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019).

“Bedlam” is defined by the Columbia Encyclopedia as “a place,
scene, or state of uproar and confusion.”
The term derives from a Cockney corruption of the name of the
Bethlehem Hospital, the most prominent mental institution in Britain
from as early as 1329, and definitely after 1403, until 1930.
From 1670 until 1770, Bedlam supported itself by collecting
admission fees from those who wished to view and perhaps torment the
lunatics. Among the first successes of the organized humane movement
in Britain was securing passage of the 1774 Madhouse Act. This
introduced medical inspection and oversight of madhouses, to try to
keep a fast-growing private madhouse industry from perpetuating the
abuses that occurred at Bedlam.

BOOKS: Partners In Independence

November 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

Partners In Independence:
A Success Story of Dogs and the Disabled
by Ed & Toni Eames
Barkleigh Productions, Inc.
(6 State Road #113, Mechanicsburg, PA 17050), 2nd edition 2004,
revised. 232 pages, paperback. $19.95.]

Ed and Toni Eames, of Fresno, California, are blind people
who have spent half a lifetime trying to make the world a better
place for disabled people who rely upon service dogs.
Partners In Independence describes what life is like for
people who cannot see or have only limited vision, and how guide dogs
transform their lives. Ed and Toni Eames describe the lives of guide
dogs, how they are bred and raised, how they are trained, how they
are paired with their human companions, and what happens when either
partner, human or canine, dies.
The first guide dog school in the U.S., The Seeing Eye, was
established in 1929, inspired by work done in Germany with blinded
World War I veterans. Initially the German Shepherd dog was the dog
of choice for guide work, but most trained guides today are
Labradors and golden retrievers.

BOOKS: Working Dogs: True Stories of Dogs & Their Handlers

November 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

Working Dogs: True Stories of Dogs & Their Handlers
by Kristin Mehus-Roe
with photos by Keith May
Bowtie Press (3 Burroughs, Irvine, CA 92618), 2003.
240 pages, paperback. $21.95.

Kristin Mehus-Roe offers a thorough introduction to the use
of dogs in hunting, herding, helping the disabled, providing
emotional therapy, pulling sleds and other vehicles, performing as
entertainers, detecting contraband, guarding, tracking, and
rescuing.
Among these 12 common canine jobs, Mehus-Roe lists hunting
first, because it evolved first. Dogs probably hunted and scavenged
in loose partnership with other species for millions of years before
humans evolved, much as coyotes and jackals continue to hunt and
scavenge in partnerships of convenience with badgers, crows,
baboons, and big cats. Typically the canines help to corner the
prey, let the other species do the most dangerous part of the
killing, then share the remains.

Shooting geese kills Kerry, Voting machines steal greyhound victory in Florida

November 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

CLEVELAND–Democratic Party presidential
nominee John Kerry either forgot or took for
granted the 40% of Ohio voters who supported a
failed 1998 ballot initiative that sought to
reinstate a ban on dove hunting. The initiative
was heavily supported by young voters and women.
On October 21, 2004, Kerry in the words
of New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd “cooked
his own goose.”
Wrote Dowd, “In yet another attempt to
prove to George W. Bush that he is man enough to
run this country, John Kerry made an animal
sacrifice to the political gods in a cornfield in
eastern OhioŠTromping about in a camouflage
costume and toting a 12-gauge double-barreled
shotgun that shrieked ‘I am not a merlot-loving,
brie-eating, chatelaine-marrying dilettante,’
the Democratic nominee emerged from his shooting
spree with three fellow hunters proclaiming,
‘Everybody got one,’ showing off a hand stained
with goose blood.”

Iditarod, Yukon Quest racers charged with neglect

November 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

WASILA, Alaska–Animal control officers from Mat-Su Borough,
Alaska, on October 16 removed 28 allegedly starving dogs from the
property of three-time Iditarod musher David Straub near Willow and
charged him with 17 counts of cruelty.
Competing in the 2000, 2001, and 2002 runnings of the
Iditarod, Straub in 2002 recorded the fastest time ever for a
last-place finisher.
The Straub dogs were seized three weeks after former Yukon
Quest contender Sigmund Stormo was charged with neglecting 15 dogs on
Kodiak Island. Stormo turned the dogs over to former Iditarod musher
Tim Osmar for care, pending resolution of the case. The same dogs
were impounded on June 11 by the Alaska SPCA, after they were found
without food at Stormo’s home near Soldotna. State police reportedly
found more than 50 marijuana plants, but did not find Stormo, who
was in Kodiak. The Alaska SPCA returned the dogs to Stormo and did
not charge him, after he averred that the dogs were neglected by
someone else who was to look after them in his absence.
The ANIMAL PEOPLE files indicate that no prominent musher has
ever been convicted of neglect while in good standing with racing
associations.

Greyhound exports to Southeast Asia

October 2, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2004:

KIDDERMINSTER, U.K.– Greyhound Action International
announced on September 16 that newly obtained 2003 statistics show “a
drop in the number of greyhounds exported from Australia to South
Korea, but an increase in the number sent to Macau.” Greyhound
racing has recently been introduced into Macau, Vietnam, and
Cambodia, and has expanded in the Phillipines.
Greyhound Action International notes that dogs are eaten in
all of these places, and alleges that the exported greyhounds “are
ending their days being butchered in the dog meat industry.”
Australian activist Lyn White inspected the Vietnamese
greyhound racing facilities and dog meat markets for the Animals Asia
Foundation in late 2002 and found no evidence that greyhounds were
being sold for human consumption, or could be, since Vietnamese
consumers prefer fat puppies rather than hard-muscled older dogs.
However, greyhounds were at the time still scarce in
Vietnam. If intensive breeding for competition produced a perennial
surplus, as exists in nations with an established greyhound racing
industry, it is not inconceivable that an entrepreneur might find a
way to sell their remains, perhaps as a pre-cooked canned stew.

U.S. Senators make USDA subpoena for Siegfried & Roy video disappear

October 2, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2004:

LAS VEGAS–The USDA Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service
in mid-September agreed to settle for viewing a Feld Entertainment
Inc. videotape of the October 3, 2003 mauling of tiger trainer Roy
Horn at the Mirage hotel and casino in Las Vegas, without actually
obtaining a copy of the tape.
USDA/APHIS in April 2004 subpoenaed the videotape while investigating
whether Horn and his performing partner, Siegfried Fishbacher,
broke the Animal Welfare Act. Feld Entertainment, owners of both
the Mirage and the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus, offered to
show the video to USDA/APHIS inspectors, but refused to give them a
copy lest it be obtained by animal rights activists or TV magazine
shows via the Freedom of Information Act.
When the USDA/APHIS continued to seek a copy, U.S. Senators Harry
Reid (D-Nevada) and John Ensign (R-Nevada) threatened to introduce an
amendment to the USDA budget which would have prevented use of any
funding to obtain the video.

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