BOOKS: Partners In Independence

November 1, 2004 Archivist 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.

Poacher Veerappan killed in India

November 1, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

CHENNAI–Koose Munisamy Veerappan, 52, the most wanted
poacher and wildlife trafficker in the world after sometime elephant
ivory and rhino horn trafficker Osama bin Laden, was killed on
October 18 in an hour-long shootout with members of the Tamil Nadu
Special Task Force. Killed with Veerappan were his close associates
Sethukuzhi Govindan and Madegowda, and Tamil separatist guerilla
Sethumani, also known as Sethumalai.
The STF unit caught Veerappan in an ambush at about 11 p.m.
on the road between the towns of Padi and Papparapatti in the jungle
of Dharmapuri district, Tamil Nadu, near the Karnataka border.
Introduced to elephant poaching at age 10 by another poacher
of note, Selvan Gounder, Veerappan killed his first human at age
17, took over the gang at age 18, was briefly jailed for murder at
age 20, but was bailed out by a Tamil separatist politician, and
went on to kill as many as 2,000 elephants, along with uncounted
thousands of blackbuck, monitor lizards, languors, and tens of
thousands of fish. His favorite fishing method was reputedly
dynamiting ponds.

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

November 1, 2004 Archivist 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.

BOOKS: Dogs Don’t Bite When a Growl Will Do

November 1, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

Dogs Don’t Bite When a Growl Will Do
by Matt Weinstein & Luke Barber
Berkeley Publishing Group (c/o Penguin USA, 375 Hudson St., New
York, NY 10014), 2003. 282 pages, hardcover. $19.95

Playfair Inc. management consulting firm founder Matt
Weinstein and philosophy professor Luke Barber have compiled 67 short
lessons on how to make one’s life happier by adopting or adapting
some canine philosophy.
The book could also be called “67 lessons in being Zen like
your dog.” Each lesson starts with an observation about canine
behaviour, and then extrapolates it to human habits. Using the dog
story to expose a common social or psychological flaw in humans,
Weinstein and Barber reveal how silly and futile many cherished human
beliefs and habits are. Ancient wisdom is quoted in support of the
ways of the canine Zen masters:
“Celebrate your life every moment that you have. No event in
life is too small to celebrate. Live fully. Love and laugh
wastefully. Take pleasure in the little things. Play and roll on
your back in the park. Forgive even if you cannot forget–grudges
only make you unhappy.”
We can learn from dogs to be receptive, playful,
optimistic, easily satisfied, sensitive, faithful, curious, and
compassionate. –Chris Mercer & Bev Pervan

Feral cats, urban wildlife, and species survival amid human enterprise

November 1, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

TNR Past, Present, & Future:
A History of the Trap-Neuter-Return Movement
by Ellen Perry Berkeley
Alley Cat Allies (1801 Belmont Rd. NW, Suite 201, Washington, DC
20009), 2004.
100 pages, paperback. $16.00.

The Raccoon Next Door: Getting Along With Urban Wildlife
by Gary Bogue
illustrated by Chuck Todd
Heyday Books (POB 9145, Berkeley, CA 94709), 2003. 142 pages,
paperback. $16.95.

Win-Win Ecology:
How the Earth’s Species Can Survive In The Midst of Human Enterprise
by Michael L. Rosenzweig
Oxford University Press (198 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10016), 2003.
209 pages, hardcover. $27.00.

Ellen Perry Berkeley’s 1982 volume Maverick Cats, especially
the 1987 reprint, is justly credited with introducing appreciation
and understanding of feral cats to the U.S. humane movement. Focusing
on the ecological roles of feral cats, Berkeley included a
description of neuter/return feral cat population control, then
known to be widely used only in Britain.

Marine mammals

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

Whaling

Humane Society International, a division of the Humane
Society of the U.S., on October 18 sued the Japanese whaling firm
Kyodo Sepaku Kaisha for allegedly illegally killing 428 whales since
2000 in the name of scientific research within the Australian Whale
Sanctuary. The sanctuary was created, on paper, by the Environment
Protection & Biodiversity Conservation Act of 2000, and adjoins the
Southern Oceans Whale Sanctuary declared in 1994 by the International
Whaling Commission. Japan does not recognize either sanctuary. The
suit against Kyodo Sepaku Kaisha is reportedly preliminary to seeking
an injunction asking the Australian government to enforce the
sanctuary bounds.
The suit was filed on the same day that Mali, landlocked in
the Sahara desert, joined the IWC, apparently with Japanese
support. Japan has acknowledged using development aid to persuade
small nations to join the IWC and support the Japanese position.
The HSI lawsuit was also filed one week after a trawling crew
doing research for the Tasmanian Aquaculture & Fisheries Institute
accidentally netted and drowned 14 dolphins, raising suspicion,
because of the ease with which the accident happened, that the
Australian Fisheries Management Authority and Department of the
Environment may be overlooking much greater numbers of dolphins
killed accidentally by commercial fishers.

Appellate verdicts: 1st Amendment, trapping, pigs

November 1, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

Confining anti-circus and rodeo
protesters to “free expression zones” far from
the entrance to the state-owned Cow Palace arena
in San Francisco violates their First Amend-ment
rights to freedom of speech and assembly, a
three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals ruled on October 20, 2004.
“Cordoning protesters off in a zone the size of a
parking space, located over 200 feet from the
entrance, far from encouraging interaction with
them, is more likely to give the impression to
passers-by that these are people to be avoided,”
wrote Judge Martha Berzon.

The National Trappers Association does
not have legal standing to try to overturn the
1998 California ballot Proposition 4 ban on
leghold traps and the poisons sodium cyanide and
Compound 1080, ruled U.S. District Judge Thelton
Hender-son during the third week of October 2004.

China bans eating civets

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

BEIJING–The Chinese federal health ministry on November 2
banned the slaughter and cooking of civets for human consumption, to
promote “civilized eating habits,” the state-run Beijing Daily
reported.
“The announcement came a week after the government said 70%
of civets tested in the southern province of Guangdong were carrying
the Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome virus,” observed Associated
Press.
The October 23 disclosure hinted that civets were not the
source of SARS, as no civets from northern and eastern China were
infected. The Guangdong civets are believed to have been
captive-raised for slaughter, while the civets from northern and
eastern China, where “wild” animals are rarely eaten, were
apparently trapped.
The Chinese ban on eating civets came just under three months
after U.S. Health & Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson announced
a health embargo on the import of either live or dead civets plus
civet parts, such as civet pelts.

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

November 1, 2004 Archivist 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.”

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