Dusting the goats

via National Geographic

Bo

I love how the press has all those microphones aimed at him as though he's going to say something.

The Obama's New Dog

I know Malia has allergies that made the choice of adopted dog a bit tricky, but I was disappointed to read that the First Pet is a purebreed. I was excited when the Obamas announced plans to adopt from a shelter. I hoped it would encourage others to do the same.



I know everyone has a lot of opinions about the mysterious new dog. Here's my two cents: If my animal rescue volunteering has taught me anything over the last four or five years, it's that people are going to rush out to buy an Obama dog of their own. Then shelters will start seeing more of these dogs surrendered.



This routine has played out many times over. Years ago, a shelter manager gave me this example: A Disney movie starring husky dogs causes people to rush out and adopt one, not realizing the amount of exercise and discipline the breed requires. They end up in shelters. Many end up euthanized. It sucks.

Shark attack

From the Department of Irony:

Witnesses reported seeing a dorsal fin and thrashing in the water before the sea turned red and the man vanished. Father-of three Brian Guest, 51, who had campaigned for many years for the protection of sharks... was attacked about 30 metres from the shore.

Vice-Puppy

Looks like Mr and Mrs Biden will have some cute company when they move into the Naval Observatory next month.

It seems President-elect Barack Obama's children were not the only ones promised a dog after the presidential election. Biden's wife, Jill, made the same assurance to her husband if he and Obama, his running mate, won the election.

Since the puppy is from a K-9 breeder, I wonder if he'll join the Secret Service?

Fairly smart

Anyone who's ever had two dogs at the same time, or two cats, knows this is true.

However, I think the article is confusing a sense of fairness with a sense of unfairness. Many is the dog who complained when his sibling got a treat and he didn't. But show me the dog with two milkbones who's willing to give one to the dog who has none!

Doggie Soup Kitchen, Part 2

For you, Maggie:



They need a hypoallergenic dog because Malia is allergic. May I suggest a cocker-poo!

Doggie Soup Kitchen

The city of Berlin in Germany opened a soup kitchen for the dogs of homeless and impoverished residents.

It warms my heart that people not only realize that the recession effects households' ability to feed their pets, but that they are doing something about it.

Local food pantries around me have begun to collect pet food in addition to people food.

In other animal news, President Elect Barack Obama has said that his family is looking to adopt a dog. They will get one from a shelter, not a pet store or breeder. I love this guy.

Bizarre Quote for the Day

A woman is walking a very large dog, white with black spots, in Downtown Crossing. Two guys observe.

Guy 1: What is that?
Guy 2: It's a Dalmation.
Guy 1: A Dalmation?
Guy 2: It's a Dalmation mixed with a hound.

It was a Great Dane.

Resurfaced Species

I love stories like this one, in which 50 years have past since the last sighting of this African species.

They thought it was extinct.

I like it because, in my densely populated life, it seems magical that something could go unseen for half a decade. I guess there is still some wilderness out there.

Bounce

I suddenly want guinea pigs.

You will too.

Seeing Eye

This morning I saw a seeing-eye dog bringing a woman across Winter Street in Downtown Crossing. It's mostly foot traffic there, but while they were crossing a slow-moving Poland Spring water truck happened to be coming down the street. The dog noticed it when they were half-way across the street. He hesitated for a second, just long enough to make it clear he was deciding whether to continue along or go back. Then he started backing up and brought the woman back to the sidewalk.

Reunited

My cat rescue group was holding our adopt-a-thon in a local pet store about a month ago. A woman came in and immediately recognized one of our strays as her own cat, which had been lost in early November. She scared the bejesus out of us where she shrieked, "That's my Smudgie!" and tore the cat from its crate to squeeze it to her body, tears already flowing.

The lady was so happy to find her lost friend that we all cried too. What are the chances, five months after Smudgie disappeared, that she would find her at a pet store. We hold adopt-a-thons only once a month, and we are there for only 3 hours. Lucky the lady came in when she did!

The whole tale of the lost and found Smudgie is captured in a front-page story in one of the local town papers. It gave our little rescue group a great chance to get our name out there, as well as to highlight issues like feral colonies.

A Racoon One-Night Stand

On Saturday morning at 8:30 a.m., we were sitting watching Mike's new Planet Earth DVD when the power went out.

For lack of anything better to do (and sprung from a desire not to leave the couch), we turned our attention to Momma Cat. She was looking intently through the sliding door, up into a tree. We followed her gaze and saw a big fat racoon in a nest.

After watching it for a while, I felt confident in insisting that there were two. Another 15 minutes later, I was proved right. They hunkered down and slept all day. The power came back on, but we checked on them every now and then.
"Do you think they ate the garlic I threw out into the snow yesterday?" I asked Mike.
"You did what?" he said.
"Nevermind... think they'd like an apple? What do racoons eat?"
(I decided against feeding them, having learned a lesson from the bird feeder that quickly created a squirrel problem on our deck.)

I was excited, hoping they were permanent residents of the tall tree and that I could watch them every day. Surely, if they returned, they should get names, I told Mike.

They were still sleeping when it got dark. We went out for dinner and couldn't see whether they were there or not we we returned.


They didn't come back the next morning and haven't been back since. I'm disappointed, but it made me realize how thankful I am that I live in a place where seeing wild animals, even for just one day is possible. One of my favorite things about my four years in Boston was seeing geese, rats and squirrels in the Public Garden. I love the surprise of seeing an animal I don't expect to encounter.

Trained Animals

When Chris and I saw the circus last year, certain things occurred to me that never did when I was a kid. Things like an appreciation for the mindboggling precision required for three people to ride three motorcycles inside a small iron sphere. And other things like, how can such a big production be on the road indefinitely?

It's one thing when bands tour. U2 has their own plane to cart all the tons of lights and stage apparatus around the world. But what if you have six elephants? How do you tour them? And what if you have six elephants and twenty horses and lions and tigers and two hundred people?

The answer, it would seem, is as nicely old-school as the circus itself: They do it by train.

All last week, a train, each car bearing the Ringling Bros logo, has been parked on the tracks just outside of Providence, where they're performing at the Civic Center.

I don't know how many train-cars long it is -- I haven't been able to count -- but it's long. And there are different kinds of cars. Some are clearly cargo, and others are passenger cars -- the windows have things hanging in them, doo-dads and stuff. I wonder what it looks like inside? How would a circus performer decorate his or her little rolling apartment? What would cover the walls? Posters of clowns? Letters from home?

It makes me wonder, too, what all the circus people do when they're in Providence. The show was here almost a week -- that must allow at least a little spare time. Do the acrobats have lunch at Uno's? Does the lion tamer stop at Macy's to pick something up?

Have you ever seen the Ringmaster buy socks?

Pit bull Ban

Ben: Maggie, what were you saying about the pitbulls?

Maggie: I heard that California was trying to ban Pit bulls even though breed-specific banning is currently illegal in 11 states. There is some legislation addressing this.

Aside from what a terrible precedent it would set to be able to ban a particular breed of anything, it feels like crooked thinking. Pitt bulls have a bad reputation because of people. They are one of those breeds that people think are killers, and so people treat them that way. When Pitt bull owners try to make their dog tough, that just means they're abusing it.

The Pittie Love rescue group here in Massachusetts says that Pit bulls are "one of the most abused and misunderstood dogs of all time."

Pitt bulls end up spending a lot of their time chained in backyards and that isolation drives them nuts, just as it does to all other breeds. The more isolated they are while chained in back yards, the more likely they are to attack someone.

Pit bulls aren't like other dogs. While Labs were bred to retrieve birds and St. Bernards were bred as rescue dogs, for hundreds of years Pit bulls have been bred to fight other dogs. They do have the potential to be aggressive. But Pittie love says:

Pit bulls have superior physical and mental characteristics that make them excellent partners for responsible, active, and caring owners. On the other hand, these same outstanding qualities can make them a little difficult to handle for people who don't have a lot of experience with dog ownership, or for those who don't understand the breed very well. Luckily, pit bulls are very responsive to training and eager to lease. It is therefore strongly recommended to take them to obedience classes.

Every breed has problems that adopters should be aware of. For example, people think Huskies are great dogs because they seem so smart in movies. But Huskies were bred to work and if they don't get A LOT of exercise then owners will have A LOT of behavioral problems with their husky.

The flip side of the banning issue that if state governments don't address the fears that result from dog bites and attacks, people may take matters into their own hands. When Googling about this, I saw several references to incidents where people killed neighbors' or stray Pit bulls with golf clubs or guns because they were afraid of them.

Legislation should be addressing animal neglect and abuse, dog fighting, and other cruelty.

Foster Cats

It's been over a year since I began fostering kittens to help local animal rescue missions. In that year, 17 cats and kittens have been through my apartment. Now we're in a condo and Kitten Season '07 is about a month away from beginning.

It's discouraging to think that even though the group I'm working with now has found homes for almost 200 kittens in their two short years of operation, this doesn't even register when compared to the stray problem that still exists in most places. We focus on two towns in Massachusetts. Some entire counties don't even have a group working to reduce the cat population by spaying and neutering.

Anyway, I am looking forward to having more crazy and destructive kittens come through our new place. It's fun to have them, relieving to see them go, and exciting to get new ones.

Here are some of our favorites:

I don't know how the two women who run our group haven't burnt out yet. Even so, I wish I could do this full time. How long until I retire?

Melt

As nice as it was to be able to go outside in short sleeves today, it was hard to appreciate it when it seems so wrong. In Boston, flowers that shouldn't be open until April are blooming in January. Ski resorts are laying off staff. It's even worse for polar bears.

Members of the Polar Bear Club will soon be joining their Arctic cousins on the endangered species list, mutual casualties of global warming. Today in New York City "the Polar Bears held a moment of silence, turned their backs on the Atlantic and headed toward the boardwalk, a protest, albeit an underdressed one, against global warming."

It's hard to be a winter daredevil when it's 72 degrees out.

Lab Meat

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to go vegetarian. So far so good, except for a trip to McDonald's that is part of our driving-to-New-Jersey tradition. I am still eating fish, which gives me options at restaurants. I won't be eating another double burger on this week's Thanksgiving road trip to New Jersey, though. I've hardened my resolve.

This decision is based on moral issues. I know that animals who are raised to be food are treated horrifically and I don't want to be part of the problem.

It's also a health decision because not only are the conditions bad for animals, but they are frequently bad for the consumer too. The worse condition the animals are in, the less healthy it is to eat them.

If I could be guaranteed that the meat came from an animal that was killed humanely, I would feel a lot better about eating it. But humane practices aren't the standard.

I might not have to worry about animals at all anymore because according to this article, it will soon be possible to grow meat in labs using bioengineering. No live animals would ever be involved. That sounds gross and sci-fi, but it might be a grocery store option in ten years. The article points out that lab meat would not only prevent the slaughter of animals, but it would help the environment: in the United States, livestock produce 1.4 billion tons of waste each year.