BOOKS: The Other End of the Leash

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2004:

The Other End of the Leash:
Why we do what we do around dogs
by Patricia B. McConnell, Ph.D.
The Random House Ballantine Publishing Group
(1745 Broadway MD 18-2, New York, NY 10019),
246 pages, paperback. $13.95.

The Other End of the Leash opens up a
whole new way of looking at animal behavior.
After reading it, I can quite understand how
much difficulty a dog must have in trying to
understand the garbled way we go about
dog-training.
“So here we have two species,” writes
Patricia B. McCon-nell, “humans and dogs,
sharing the tendencies to be highly visual,
highly social, and hardwired to pay attention to
how someone in our social group is moving, even
if the movement is minuscule. What we don’t seem
to share is this: dogs are more aware of our
subtle movements than we are of our ownĊ  Surely
it would be a good thing if we knew what we were
saying.”

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Human obituaries

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2004:

Terry Melcher, 62, a board member of both the Doris Day
Animal Foundation and the Doris Day Animal League since inception,
died of cancer on November 19, 2004 in Beverly Hills, California.
“The son of actress and singer Doris Day and her first husband, the
trombonist Al Jorden, Melcher was known for his role,” primarily
as a record producer, “in shaping the sounds of the folk and surf
music scenes in California,” wrote Jeff Leeds of The New York Times.
Melcher worked with the Beach Boys, the Byrds, the Mamas & the
Papas, and Ry Cooder at various times; was executive producer of
The Doris Day Show, 1968-1972, and a later program called Doris
Day’s Best Friends.

Francis Lynn Holland, 56, animal control supervisor in
Fallon, Nevada, died suddenly on December 3, 2004 at the Washoe
Medical Center in Reno.

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Dog-cooking conviction

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

HONG KONG–Eastern Court Magistrate Julia Livesay on October
19, 2004 fined Chan Yuk-sim, 44, the equivalent of $220 U.S. for
killing and cooking a dog on February 8 on Mount Davis.
Seeing her and two unidentified men butchering the dog,
nearby resident Leung Chui-wa called police officer Lee Pak-kuen,
who caught the suspect and seized the dog carcass. The men were not
found. It was the first dog-eating case in Hong Kong since 1999,
reported Felix Lo of the South China Morning Post.

Editorial feature: Fundraisers and pro-animal strategy

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

Editorial feature: Fundraisers and pro-animal strategy

Before responding to any of the
fundraising appeals you receive from animal
charities this holiday season, take several
steps to ensure that your donations do the most
they can:

1) Prioritize the issues and projects you wish to support.
2) Avoid splitting your donation budget
so many ways that all you do is give the
organizations back the money they spent during
the year to solicit you. Focus on the few
charities you know best and for which you have
the highest regard.
3) Do not donate to any charity you only know from mailings.
4) Look up each charity in the 2004
ANIMAL PEOPLE Watchdog Report on 121 Animal
Protection Charities, to be sure that you are
fully informed about policies that it may have
but not advertise. For example, none of the
major environmental groups oppose hunting, and
many actively promote it. PETA actively opposes
no-kill sheltering and neuter/return of feral
cats and street dogs. Many other groups may not
take the positions that you expect. [The
Watchdog Report, a handbook published each
spring, is still available from us at $25/copy.
We include all of the biggest animal and habitat
charities, all of those we are often asked
about, selected leaders in specialized areas of
particular concern, and worthwhile foreign
charities whose programs ANIMAL PEOPLE
representatives have personally verified.]

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REVIEWS: Species Link: The Journal of Interspecies Telepathic Communication

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

Species Link: The Journal of Interspecies Telepathic Communication
Quarterly, $25/year, c/o Anima Mundi Incorporated
(P.O. Box 1060, Point Reyes, CA 94956; <www.animaltalk.net>.)

A skeptic might ask why telepaths need a periodical, when
they have telepathy.
Why do any of us need paper and filing cabinets, when we
have computers?
Telepathy alone, if it existed, might be sufficient to
share ideas, contact information, and details of coming events,
but even the most powerful communicating mind might become cluttered
and confused if obliged to archive and organize the sort of
information gathered and shared for 56 editions so far by Species
Link editor Penelope Smith.
Further, not everyone interested in telepathy is a telepath–yet.
Smith and others believe “animal communication” can be taught and
learned. Many of the Species Link participants believe that they are
telepaths, but some do not. Many others hold a more practical and
quantifiable perspective on how wordless communication with animals
occurs.

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PETA tells Aussies to back away from sheep’s behinds

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

SYDNEY–Long resisting animal welfare reform, Australian
sheep trade defenses may be unraveling, after PETA yanked the thread
of the New York City-based outdoor fashion retailer Abercrombie &
Fitch in October 2004 with the threat of a boycott hitting Australian
wool goods.
Australia exports about $3 billion U.S. worth of wool per
year, competing against synthetic fibres largely on the cachet of
being a natural product. Market surveys show that consumers who
prefer “natural” also prefer “cruelty-free.” Thus U.S. retail fur
sales fell by half in three years of intensive anti-cruelty
campaigning, 1988-1991, while furriers’ defense of fur as
“natural” largely failed.
Marketing a rival product to fur, the wool industry tried to stay
inconspicuous, and mostly succeeded. Within the animal rights
movement, only Christine Townend in her 1985 book Pulling The Wool
argued that the wool industry also should become a priority
target–until now.

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

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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.

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Frogs, chemicals, & talk of confused gender identity shake up bureaucrats

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

ST. PAUL–An apparent attempt to muzzle University of
California at Berkeley biologist Tyrone Hayes instead enabled him to
tell the world in October 2004 that frogs, toads, and salamanders
appear to be abruptly disappearing due to the effects of atrazine.
Atrazine, an endocrine-disrupting herbicide, is used on
two-thirds of the cornfields in the U.S. and 90% of the sugar cane
plantations. Popular with farmers for 45 years, it may be the
most-used farm chemical worldwide. Residues can persist in soil for
more than a year and in groundwater for longer, but by comparison to
paraquat, a leading rival herbicide, atrazine breaks down
relatively quickly, and is safer for applicators and field workers
who may have accidental exposure.
Unfortunately, Hayes testified at an October 26 Minnesota
Senate hearing, even low levels of atrazine “chemically castrate and
feminize” male frogs, fish, and some other wildlife.
Atrazine may also trigger prostate cancer in male humans,
Hayes said, citing studies of men who work in proximity to it and
the results of laboratory testing on various mammal species.
“Hayes was invited to speak to the Minnesota Senate
Environment and Natural Resources Committee after Minnesota Pollution
Control Agency commissioner Sheryl Corrigan withdrew an earlier offer
for him to make the keynote speech at an agency-sponsored
conference,” explained Dennis Lien of the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

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Ric & Helene O’Barry return to Taiji

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

Representing the French group One Voice, dolphin defenders
Ric and Helene O’Barry returned to Taiji, Japan on October 27, 2004
to again witness and document the annual massacre of dolphins, who
are driven into a shallow cove and hacked to death after some are
selected for live sale to oceanariums and swim-with-dolphins resorts.
The O’Barrys, who also helped to document the Taiji
slaughter in 2003, said the fishers were joined this year “by about
20 young people in wetsuits. Some displayed the logos of the Taiji
Whale Museum, World Dolphin Resort, and Dolphin Base. All of these
facilities are located in Taiji,” but are believed to export
dolphins abroad.
The fishers argue that the killing and captures protect fish stocks.
“It seems the fishermen have simply fished themselves out of
a job,” observed Paul Kenyon, director/producer/reporter of a
November 8 BBC special entitled Dolphin Hunters. “But, back in
Taiji, the hunt is going ahead,” Kenyon continued. “The activists
trying to stop them are likely to be exclusively outsiders. That is
not necessarily because the Japanese support the trade. During the
three weeks we were[in Japan], we found no one outside the dolphin
hunting towns who even knew that dolphins are eaten. So, perhaps the
challenge is not to change minds, but to inform them.”

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