Truth Hurts

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The Always New and Continuing Evolution of Dogs

A repost from this blog, circa February 2007.

A lot of people want the undifferentiating affection of a dog, but are not entirely willing to pay the price: forced awakenings at 7 am, expensive fencing, veterinary care, shedding coats, barking, and strange smells in the living room.

Dogs are small tyrants that crap on your rug, chew up your glasses and steal your sandwiches.

If you own a dog, you can still ride off into the sunset, but you better be back by 8:30 to feed it, and by midnight to put it to bed for the evening.

In the era of schooners and candles, when people lived on large farms with slow traffic, things were probably a little bit easier. Back then a large dog could sleep in the barn and roam more-or-less at will.

Now a lot of folks live in condominiums and multi-story apartment buildings surrounded by six-lanes of traffic. Others are retirees looking for less work. The result is a growing market for small dogs that are as easy to take care of as a cat.

In fact, what is wanted today is a dog that acts like a cat, and a cat that acts like a dog.

Towards that end breeders on both ends of the spectrum are working towards a middle ground, with cats that have affectionate personalities and legs too short to jump up on the furniture, and dogs that do not shed, rarely bark, and are so small they can be tucked inside a handbag.

I suppose all of this is simply a logical extension of Robert Bakewell's earlier efforts to control sires in order to produce animals for a particular function.

Cats, of course, were slow to domesticate as prior to the rise of the "indoor" cat, felines were free to roam and cross-breed at will.

Dogs, on the other hand, have been the product of controlled breeding for so long that most Kennel Club breeds now seem to specialize in two or three genetic defects. As a consequence, more and more prospective pet owners are are now looking at cross breeds in some hope of avoiding expensive veterinary work to "fix" defective canine hips, eyes, knees and teeth.

Another factor, of course, is that a lot of the small "toy" breeds are so fru-fru that no self-respecting heterosexual man is eager to be seen walking one. A Toy Poodle? A Papillon? Please.

A cross-bred small dog at least offers the potential dignity of being something a little "outside the box."A small dog described as a "little mutt" or "attack rat" by the husband, can be described by the wife as a Shitpoo (a Shih Tzu crossed with a Toy Poodle), a Cockapoo (a Cocker Spaniel crossed with a Toy Poodle), a Schnoodle (a Schnauzer crossed with a poodle), a Bagel (a Beagle crossed with a Bassett Hound) or a Puggle (a Pug crossed with a Beagle).

Pardon me if I do not join the Kennel Club crowd which clucks and moans about "little mongrels" being cranked out by puppy millers and "back yard breeders".

How, I would ask, does that differentiate these new dogs from most Kennel Club breeds? After all, most of the dog breeds on earth today are less than 140 years old, and most were invented by puppy peddlers doing their business between 1860 and 1900.

The harsh truth is that most canine breeds were not forged by honest field work, but by professional breeders seeking to sell dogs for the pet trade.

In short, the true history of most dog breeds is one of "backyard breeders" creating contrived names and fake histories for their dogs and producing enough of the dogs in a short enough period (a puppy mill by any name) to create a "class" of dogs to fill a Kennel Club ring.

And it's not like the Kennel Club breeds cannot be improved by a little outcrossing!

The Yorkie has such serious teeth problems that they invariably require attention from expensive veterinary dentists.

The Pug's bulging eyes make it prone to eye injury, and nearly every one of them is born caesarian.

The Toy Poodle is a barker and often mentally unbalanced.

Dachshunds are prone to serious back and joint problems.

Papillons and Chihuahuas have all kinds of health problems, not the least of which are that their bones may be so light they can break jumping off the couch.

The Lhasa Apso is a walking mop requiring more grooming than a Hollywood starlet, and is often a mental case as well.

Of course, most cross-breeds are not all that successful, and only a very few show a marked advantage over a common pound dog.

That said, enough crosses are working out that a few crosses are developing into regular replicable breeds. The most obvious candidate for "new breed" distinction is the "Labradoodle" -- a cross between a Labrador Retriever and a Standard Poodle. In Australia, this very tractable dog has been standardized and now breeds true after more than 15-years of focused work. In the U.S., however, most "Labradoodles" remain hybrids which, when crossed with each other, throw a wide array of very different-looking pups.

Contrary to what many hybrid dog advocates will tell you, a hybrid dog is not always healthier that its purebred cousin. Genetic loads are never revealed in one breeding, and "hybrid vigor" is not a perfect curative for all canine ills.

A final note is that when dogs are combined, the positive characteristics of a breed are not necessarily those that are transfered.

The tale is told of the time when Marilyn Monroe met Albert Einstein and coyly mewed, "Professor Einstein, we should get together. With my looks and your brains think of the wonderful babies we could produce." To which Einstein is supposed to have replied: "Yes, but what if they have my looks and your brains? That too is an equal possibility."
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What Happens When a Cat Meets a Coyote?

What happens when a cat meets a coyote?

Most of the time, it's lunch, according to The Journal of Wildlife Management which abstracts a new paper entitled: Observations of Coyote–Cat Interactions:

Coyotes (Canis latrans) pose a risk to domestic cats (Felis catus). We captured, radiocollared, and tracked 8 coyotes from November 2005 to February 2006 for 790 hours in Tucson, Arizona, USA. We observed 36 coyote–cat interactions; 19 resulted in coyotes killing cats. Most cats were killed in residential areas from 2200 hours to 0500 hours during the pup-rearing season. Single coyotes were as effective killing cats as were groups (>1) of coyotes. Documented cases of predators killing cats could encourage cat owners to keep their cats indoors and assist wildlife managers in addressing urban wildlife issues

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Overbreeding: Beware of Simple Answers

You could look a pretty long time and not find anyone as sympathetic to over-population problems --both canine and human -- as I am. I have spayed or neutered all my own dogs, and I have never had a litter of pups despite over 40 years with dogs.

I raise money for canine rescue and have rescued dogs directly from the street.

I suspect not many people in the world can say they have written a book that mentions the importance of Thomas Malthus in the development of the dog, and even fewer that have also written a piece entitled "Thank You for Not Breeding."

I take a back seat to almost no one when it come to population control. I have a Masters Degree in Demography, and at the age of 25 I walked into a urologist to get a vasectomy. The next week I began the process of adopting two children (now lovely young adults) from overseas. I imagine I am one of the very few working terrier enthusiasts in the world that can give a talk about all 23 methods of human fertility control.

Nor am I a big supporter of dog breeders. I do not value ribbons and paper pedigrees. My general recommendation to people looking for a pet dog is to go to rescue and/or or the local shelter. I do not believe that a "pure bred" Kennel Club dog is a better pet than a mongrel, any more than I think the Royal Family is a good place to find an athlete or a brain surgeon.

With such such deep concerns about over-population and the welfare of dogs, and a rather pronounced skepticism about the merits of paper pedigrees and selective breeding, you would think I would be the kind of person that supports mandatory spay-neuter programs as a way of reducing the number of dogs that end up in kill shelters.

But, as a general rule, I do not.

I am against broad mandatory spay-neuter proposals not only for practical reasons (they generally do not work as intended), but also for philosophical reasons.

First the philosophical reasons. I am pro-choice. Or, to put it another way, I am generally against authoritarianism, and I am for rational discourse and the power of persuasion and example. I would no more force all dog owners to spay-neuter their own dogs than I would outlaw contraception or require mandatory surgical contraception for all humans.

Now let's look at the practical. First, is there a problem? The short answer is "yes," but it's a much smaller problem than it used to be. Persuasion, education and teaching-through-example have been working to curb canine pet over-population in the United States for more than 30 years. As I noted a few years back, since 1975, canine shelter intakes and euthanasias have decreased by 60-80 percent in many cities, particularly those located on the East and West coasts of the U.S. This is a good thing.

If we agree that there is still a problem (albeit a smaller one than there used to be), the next question is WHAT is the problem? You would be surprised at how little thought has gone into that question.

You see, the problem is NOT puppies. Healthy puppies are readily sold or adopted from pounds. There is always a line of people eager for a puppy.

The problem is DOGS. While puppies are small and cute, a dog is a loud, expensive, demanding, barking, defecating, and life-restricting ball-and-chain.

It turns out that a lot of people that want a cute puppy are not so enamored with the realities of adult dog ownership. In a world of throw-away marriages, jobs, cars, communities and houses, dogs have been tossed on to the pile.

According to the the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, dogs that are left in shelters are those that are most likely to have been obtained at little or no cost, are deemed by their first owners as needing more care and attention than expected, and are most likely to come from a family that is divorcing, moving, or has changed financial circumstances.

The National Council on Pet Population Study and Policy has identified the top ten reasons people abandon dogs and cats in shelters: (1) euthanasia due to illness; (2) moving; (3) found animal (of unknown origin); (4) landlords will not allow pets; (5) owner has too many animals; (6) euthanasia due to age; (7) cost of maintenance of pet; (8) animal is ill; (9) allergies within the family; and (10) house soiling

If you look over this list, it becomes quite clear that the problem is not that there are "too many puppies," but that a lot of people who get puppies are not well-prepared for the realities and responsibilities of full-sized dog ownership.

How will mandatory spay-neuter laws change that equation? Not to the positive. You see, the unintended consequence of a mandatory spay-neuter policy is that it will increase the percentage of dogs coming from full-time commercial breeding facilities (sometimes called puppy mills or puppy farms) where paying the additional licensing cost for an unspayed bitch ($100 a year or more per bitch) will still make sense.

Commercial canine breeding facilities treat dogs as a cash-and-carry business. Little or no screening or education of prospective owners is done, and if the dog does not work out, the breeder is not going to take that dog back -- good luck with it.

Mandatory spay-neuter laws also have other unintended consequences, not the least of which is that they dramatically reduce the number of people willing to show up to get a dog license, since enforcement of spay-neuter laws often occurs at this contact-point with authorities. Since receipts from dog licensing are often used to support local shelters and animal control facilities, this loss of revenue is no small thing. Add to the mix the new work of inspecting and evaluating breeding facilities, and tracking all puppy sales, and you have an unworkable compliance and enforcement situation.

Ironically, it is the responsible person who takes his dogs to the vet, and who gets his dogs licensed, that will feel the full weight of mandatory spay-neuter laws. Ignorant and irresponsible dog owners who do not take their dogs to the vet, and who do not get their dogs licensed, will continue to remain "under the radar" and will continue to breed all those "free to good home" dogs that so often end up in kill shelters just nine months later.

There is an obvious alternative to the heavy hand of mandatory spay-neuter laws -- programs that enable and encourage responsibility by subsidizing spay-neuter procedures, or which change the way such services are paid for. In my area, spaying a dog can cost anywhere from $250 to $500, and absolutely nothing is done to cushion that cost even for the poor or the elderly on fixed incomes. How hard would it be for the State to simply add a dedicated tax to dog food, with the proceeds from that tax going to subsidize voluntary low-cost spay-neuter programs within the state?

If we are really interested in reducing the number of dogs put up for adoption, of course, we need to spend some time on the "unselling" of dogs in general, and purebred dogs in particular.

When we talk about dogs to people that do not have dogs, we need to talk about the fact that dogs are expensive, time-consuming, and smelly.

We need to acknowledge that they will occasionally pee on a carpet or wake us up at 5 in the morning. Dogs not only bark, they howl, they scratch at doors, they eat cell phones, and they will quickly reduce the resale value of your car. Not to mention that landlords hate them.

If people want to get a dog, fine, but there should be no surprises about the numerous liabilities involved, and that those liabilities can easily last for 15 years.

I consider it a great credit to the Jack Russell Terrier Club of America that this particular organization publishes warning ads about their breed in almost every canine publication, and that they also feature a prominent section on their web site warning prospective Jack Russell Terrier owners that these dogs "are not Wishbone," are "first and foremost hunting dogs," are "often aggressive with other dogs" and are "NOT a non-shedding breed." The JRTCA goes on to note that Jack Russells may kill other small pets in the house (especially rodents and cats), require a fenced yard, and "can be very destructive if left unattended and unemployed."

The AKC and the various breed clubs associated with the AKC should follow the JRTCA lead and similarly "unsell" their breeds while working to fully describe the general liabilities of dog ownership.

Perhaps fewer people would be so enamored with puppies if the Eukenuba and Westminster show announcers told the TRUE liabilities of dogs in general, and each breed in particular. Would that make these dogs show less interesting? I think not.

Haven't most of us heard the same lies and "bon mots" told about these breeds again and again? Wouldn't it be nice to hear a little about why dogs eat their own excrement, and why dogs will repeatedly urinate on the exact same spot on the rug?

How about a run-down on the cost of fixing the bad hips of a St. Bernard and the bad back of a Dachshund?

How about a little description of the liabilities of a Corgi or a Sheltie around small children, and the financial cost and labor of fencing in a yard? Perhaps a few statistics could be given on what percentage of landlords allow dogs, and what percentage of dogs are truly "nonshedding" (that would be zero).

If you want to reduce the number of shelter dogs, the place to start is not with spay-neuter laws, but with an honest reporting on what dog ownership is really about -- fleas, fur, turds, stains and all.

To admit to all the liabilities of dog ownership is not to value them less. I love my dogs and spend a lot of time and money on them, but dogs have never been a surprise to me or anything less than a responsibility and a burden that I have cheerfully accepted on myself.

Dogs are not for everyone, and they are not a relationship anyone should enter into lightly. The more we dog owners tell that story often -- and loudly -- to new and prospective dog owners, the fewer dogs we will see in shelters. If pound pups are a disease, the remedy is a talking cure.

So why do I hedge a bit? Why do I not come out and say I am opposed to mandatory spay-neuter under any circumstances?

The short answer is Pit Bulls.

This is a breed that is SO over-prescribed, and which is SO prone to tragedy (especially among unaltered males), that I think there is a very legitimate reason for cities and counties to require mandatory sterilization as a condition of ownership.

With nearly a million Pit Bulls a year being euthanized, and with education campaigns having no impact on voluntary reductions in breeding, there is a place for a rational and compassionate society to step in. Enough is enough.
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Bad Dog: An Article for Prospective Terrier Owners

If you are in the business of breeding and selling dogs (and I am not) or you have dogs that people think are cute (pretty much everyone), you will get people inquiring about working terriers who have not have done their research, may not be living in a stable home (i.e. they travel a lot or move often), have never had a dog or trained a dog, or perhaps they have unstable relationships (this includes married people!), or perhaps they simple need to hear the Whole Truth about what a working terrier brings to the table.

A dog is a 15-year obligation and is not to be taken lightly. The average small terrier will end up costing its owner about $500 a year in food, vet care, pet sitting, and other kinds of upkeep and maintenance. This is to say nothing of the cost of major fence installation, major medical events that can occur, etc. Add a few thousand for those, and consider yourself lucky if you never need to spend it.

The bottom line is that a terrier is a $7,500 -$10,000 liability -- not quite as expensive as a child, but a lot less disposable than a guinea pig. On top of it all, a terrier can be a 15-year headache for people that are not ready for a terrier brings to the table.

The Ottawa Citizen, March 3, 1997

Bad Dog:
Author Philip Lee learns the hard way why you should not buy a Jack Russell terrier

Every family makes mistakes. Our mistake is named Richie. Richie is a Jack Russell terrier we purchased a year and a half ago as a gift for my wife on her birthday. He is a short-haired dog, white with brown spots and worry wrinkles on his brown and black forehead. He is about a foot and a half long and weighs 17 pounds.

When I say this little creature has taken over our lives, I'm not exaggerating, not a bit.

We decided to buy Richie after we met a lively Jack Russell named Robbie and concluded that it would be fun to have a personable little dog like him around the house. When told about our plan, one of my relatives who has had a female Jack Russell for many years said simply: "Tell them their lives will never be the same." While we thought this was a strange comment at the time, we don't think so any more.

Mistakes often result from a lack of information and poor preparation, and I admit we are at fault here. We didn't do our homework, and we paid the price.

Richie was an only pup, a fat little ball of fur, four weeks old and stumbling along behind his mother on the day we visited him and decided that we wanted him. When he was seven weeks old, we returned to pick him up. As we walked through the yard outside the farmhouse where he was born, his breeder warned: "You'll have to be careful, he's awfully rough."

The little dog we saw romping through the yard was harmless, no larger than a small kitten. Rough? Please. We already had horses, dogs and cats at home. We were animal lovers. We knew what we were doing. We smiled the confident smile of the blissfully ignorant.

Then Richie reappeared, dangling in mid-air with his teeth closed on the throat of the breeder's long-suffering German shepherd. The two dogs disappeared around the corner of the barn. Richie returned alone, choking on a mouthful of fur.

We laughed, nervously, picked him up and took him home.

Since Richie has become part of our lives, I've discovered that these little dogs are quite fashionable. A Jack Russell named Wishbone, who wears cute outfits, acts like a human and tells classic tales, has his own television show for children. Plastic Wishbones, complete with a variety of stage outfits, have been featured as toy of the week at Wendy's restaurants.

A long-haired Jack Russell named Eddie stars in the popular television comedy Frasier. A Jack Russell named Milo played a prominent role in Jim Carrey's movie The Mask. These dogs are regularly featured in television commercials; lately they have been helping to sell Nissans. The other day we saw one in a music video by the Toronto band Skydiggers. There was a picture of a Jack Russell on my daughter's Valentines this year (chosen, of course, in honour of Richie). These little dogs are everywhere.

All I can say to the person who is thinking about how nice it would be to have one of Wishbone's cousins at home, or have a dog like Eddie or Milo in your apartment is: Look before you leap.

Since Richie took over our household, I've done the research that might have prevented our mistake.

A recent issue of Audubon magazine featured a photo essay about the reclusive, wily fox. The spread of marvelous photographs showed a beautiful, athletic red fox at play. The fox was completely self-absorbed, standing up on his hind legs, leaping high into the air, twisting, whirling and almost flying over the tall grasses as he ran. When I saw those photographs, I was looking at Richie.

Jack Russells are working dogs, bred to hunt foxes. Their name comes from Rev. John Russell, "The Sporting Parson," who bred a fine strain of terriers in Devonshire, England, in the mid-1800s. The legend goes something like this: One day, when the Parson was attending Exeter College at Oxford, he spotted a sturdy white terrier riding confidently on top of a wagon. He was so taken with this feisty little dog that he purchased her on the spot and named her Trump. She is the founder of the breed. The Parson bred these dogs throughout his life, keeping careful records and placing emphasis on the characteristics that enabled the dogs to work and hunt. The Sporting Parson's tradition has continued in Jack Russell clubs in England and North America for more than 100 years.

Today at Barnstaple, England, there is an inn named Jack Russell, and there hangs a portrait of Trump and the Sporting Parson, the man I hold at least partly responsible for my troubles.

Jack Russell terriers are fox-hunting machines, possessing superior intelligence and gifted with great speed. They have athletic, muscular, compact bodies that run low to the ground, perfectly balanced. They have small chests that allow them to run down fox holes, or in any other small space you can imagine. Some of them can climb trees and fences.

In short, these are remarkable little dogs. Bad dogs.

Members of the Jack Russell terrier Club of America have posted a warning on the Internet about the dogs they love. The web site is called The "Bad Dog" Talk and it asks the one important question we failed to ask ourselves before we brought Richie home: "Is a Jack Russell terrier the right dog for you?"

Many dog owners are overwhelmed by these small, high-maintenance pets and they abandon them. I consider myself an experienced dog owner, yet I understand the sheer panic these poor people feel when they realize what a problem they have on their hands. The statistics are tragic. Jack Russells are the most commonly abandoned dogs in North America.

The Bad Dog website points out that the little terriers are bred to hunt, and if they are not hunting, they will "invent new and fun jobs for themselves," which includes their favourite job, "guardian of the world," when they become fierce protectors of their possessions and family. They also like to chase cars, hunt birds and dig holes both outside and inside the house.

I can tell you that all of this is absolutely true. If anything, The Bad Dog Talk is understated.

Richie, I am proud to say, has lived up to his breed's reputation.

In the past year and a half he has been run over by vehicles twice. The first time, last September, he disappeared when he was on a supervised walk, made his way from our upper meadow down through the woods to the highway, where he chased a car and caught it. When we found him he was in shock. He had a broken leg and all the fur was scraped off the top of his head. That little accident slowed him down for a couple of weeks. We hoped he had learned a lesson about cars, but resolved to keep him chained to a tree when we weren't walking him in the woods.

Then, one afternoon during hunting season, he darted under the tire of a truck that was driving slowly along the dirt road that runs past our yard. He was on his chain, tied to a tree. We had negligently allowed the chain to reach the edge of the dirt road. Witnesses to this accident swear the rear truck tire ran right over his body, and they were convinced that he must have been badly, if not fatally, injured. The chain broke and he disappeared for a couple of hours.

He finally showed up at the house, a little shaken, with a raspy voice from a minor neck injury, but very much alive. That accident slowed him down for a couple of days. We now know he doesn't learn lessons.

He likes to jump up onto our kitchen table to snatch food or lick the plates after a meal. (He consumed an entire apple tart at Christmas.)

He fights with every dog that comes near our property. The only dog he has any respect for is our eight-year-old Doberman, who put him in his place at an early age, although he still harasses her and encourages her to play rough. She loves him.

One of his favourite games is chasing our two horses. The closer their hooves come to kicking him in the head and killing him the better he likes it. His horse game scares me, and when he starts playing it I have to turn my head away.

He enjoys sitting on the couch and protecting his perch. He has to sleep on our bed at night, with his little body touching ours. I haven't slept soundly in months.

When he was a puppy and we left him alone in the house, we locked him in the kitchen, where we figured he couldn't do much damage. He started digging a hole through the kitchen door. After he made it halfway through the door and we got tired of coming home to a pile of wood chips, we stopped locking him in there.

He's virtually untrainable and often won't come when called. (This may be the result of our shortcomings as trainers, but we did manage to turn our Doberman into one of the most obedient dogs on the planet.) Richie will sit for the blink of an eye if you're holding a piece of food in your hand. And after an epic struggle, we finally managed to housebreak him. Or perhaps I should put it this way -- he pees outside when he wants to, which is most of the time.

We recently asked the owner of that cute terrier named Robbie, the one that inspired our mistake, if she had any humorous terrier stories to pass on. She replied grimly: "How about tragic?"

Incidentally, Richie hates Robbie. They can't be left together.

Fourteen years ago, Catherine Romaine Brown of Mt. Holly, New York, received two Jack Russells as a gift, and her life immediately became a shambles. Today she has 10 of the little dogs and is a Jack Russell breeder. She wrote a book about Jack Russells that was published last September and admits that her life has gone to the dogs.

Six years ago, a dog she sold to one of her neighbours was killed when she was trying to find him a new home. She realized that there were dogs out there who needed her help, so through the Jack Russell Terrier Club of America she pioneered a rescue service that places unwanted or abandoned terriers in good homes.

Since 1991, her rescue service, which quickly expanded into a nationwide network, has placed more than 600 Jack Russells abandoned by people who couldn't handle living with a bad dog.

A Canadian version of the rescue service is run by Marla Robinson in Guelph, Ont., in conjunction with the Jack Russell Terrier Club of Canada.

Ms. Brown says the problems often begin when a family realizes their terrier is the most intelligent member of the household. "You soon realize you're their pets," she says.

People buy these dogs because they're small and cute, then they move the dogs into the city, where both the owners and the dogs have nervous breakdowns. "They can't take the stress of a city," she says. Even if the dogs are being walked in city parks, they'll challenge every dog they encounter and often have disastrous battles with German shepherds, rottweilers and other large dogs.

"They think they can conquer the planet," she says. "I call them loaded guns."

She says the television exposure given to Jack Russells has created grave misconceptions about the breed. She has met Wishbone's trainer and now knows that the canine television star is a typical Jack Russell: "a very difficult dog." Television Jack Russells are bad, but they're good actors. Then people bring one home and "find the cat dead."

She has heard stories about Jack Russells who have dug through the outside walls of a house and escaped, and another who dug down through the kitchen floor and spent the day roaming in the subflooring of the home.

They need exercise and lots of it, far away from roadways because cars are the leading killers of Jack Russells. "They're little heartbreakers," she says.

Meanwhile, the members of the Jack Russell Terrier Club of America are waging a campaign to keep their dogs from being "recognized" by kennel clubs. If these dogs were bred for the show ring instead of the woods, they would lose what makes them special: their great intelligence and strong bodies.

The club points to what has happened to the fox terrier, a close cousin of the Jack Russell, which is a prized show dog but has lost its working traits. The fox terrier's conformation has changed over the years: its jaw lengthened, shoulders straightened and chest deepened, so that today these terriers couldn't run down a foxhole even if they wanted to.

The club wants Jack Russells to remain what they are -- feisty, bad little dogs -- which is a courageous and admirable stand.

As for us, we're learning to cope with our mistake, for when we couldn't train him, he trained us.

We take him for a long walk every day through the woods in back of our house. He tears out the back door, heads for the trail with his nose to the ground, and does what he was born to do. He's a pleasure to watch. These walks offer a pause in our busy lives.

When we leave him alone in the house, we put him in a large, well-built, steel-mesh kennel with a rawhide bone to chew. He doesn't seem to mind as long as he's had his run first. His runs keep his mind right.

As for all of his other bad habits, we've simply admitted defeat.

Through it all, I've grown fond of this bizarre little creature. He amuses me and I admire his blind courage and absolute devotion to our family.

We're stuck with a bad dog, and as penance for our mistake, we'll spend the next 15 years trying to keep Richie alive.

I don't mind so much. In our digital, plastic, conformist world, I figure it's a fine thing to love a creature who has to be protected from his own reckless spirit.

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Philip Lee is the editor of the Atlantic Salmon Journal and author of Home Pool.

Thinking of buying a true working terrier? >> Read this first
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Curiosity Kills the Rat

Rat hunting, 1850


One of the many diseases harboured by rats is toxoplasmosis.

Toxoplasmosis is a major livestock disease and is a serious problem for humans. In the U.S., it is said that toxoplasmosis causes more congenital abnormalities than rubella, syphilis and herpes combined.

The Toxoplasma gondii parasite (a protozoan) passes from rats to cats to humans. It has long been known that toxoplasmosis changes rat behavior and makes them more susceptible to predation by domestic cats, which are the parasite's definitive host.

Dr. David Macdonald's team from the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at Oxford looked into how toxoplasmosis effects rat behaviour. They found that compared with healthy rats, infected rats were more active (and hence more prone to cat predation), more curious (even approaching humans), and more likely to overcome their innate fear of cat odour. Some infected rats even preferred areas scented with predator odors!

Obviously, a disease that makes rats lose fear of predators must have some adaptive benefit for the microrganism. And it does. Since infected rats are more likely to be killed by cats, the Toxoplasma cunningly helps move itself on to its final cat host.

Ironically, curiosity kills the rat, not the cat.

In most other respects, rats infected by Toxoplasma behave normally. They are not totally deranged and their social status within their warrens is unchanged. However, infected rats are less phobic of novel foods and are also more easily trapped. So, in addition to tempting fate with respect to predation, these unfortunate rats are also more susceptible to control measures.

Toxoplasmosis is very rarely carried by dogs. It is theoretically possible for a dog to get toxoplasmosis, but this is so rare (only occuring in dogs with seriously compromised immune systems that are already fighting off some other type of disease) that dogs are not considered a vector.
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Coffee and Provocation

How do You Spell Coccidiosis?
The Wall Street Journal reports that some feline owners are fearful of professionally processed cat foods made by big companies that actually have quality control personnel and bank accounts large enough to go after. Their solution is to buy fresh rabbit carcasses that have been ground up whole -- guts, brain, bone, fur and all. Good idea? Maybe not. Here's a tip: look up a few diseases like Cryptosporidium cuniculus, Giardia duodenalis, Toxoplasma gondii, Sarcocystis cuniculi and see if they have a relationship to rabbits and cats. Remember: there's a reason we cook food in restaurants, and why wild animals that eat raw meat are generally dead at age two or three. Eating raw animals (even domestic animals) is not a good idea. Fire was invented for a reason.

Attack of the Killer Water Weed:
The New York Times reports that Caddo Lake in Texas is being eaten alive by Salvina Molesta, a type of South American water weed "with an ability to double in size every two to four days and cover 40 square miles within three months, suffocating all life beneath." No problem there!

Pet Insurance:
With insurance, the big print always seems to provide coverage, but the little print always seems to limit that coverage or void it altogether. Now consider pet insurance. When a pet insurance company denies your claim or pays out only fragmentary coverage, your only option is to hire a $10,000 lawyer in order to litigate a $2,000 claim. Not likely. So what do you do? You pay the vet, walk away bruised, and the Pet Insurance company pockets your premums and laughs all the way to the bank. Don't believe that's what happens most of the time? Then read what people with pet insurance have to say. Has anyone ever had a good experience with pet insurance? If so, tell us in the comments section (and sign it!).

Giant Alien Crabs:
Check out this picture and story over at Tom James Virginia Outdoors. Yow! Just what the Cheseapeake Bay needs -- more alien invaders.

Advice from a Mad Man:
Over at the Black Bear Blog, Tom Remington has sage advice from a mad man in Oklahoma who wrestles live coyotes: “If a coyote bites down" on you this gentleman says, “Don’t panic.” If you jerk your hand back, the coyote’s teeth will rip flesh off the bone. The thing to do is to calmly dig your fingernail into the soft roof of the coyote’s mouth. “When it lets go, grab it by the throat and yank it up. “When you get all four legs off the ground, the fight is over. You’ve won.”

Louisiana Hawking Blog Kicks Up Again:
Good news on the blog-o-sphere: Matt M. is cranking up his hawking blog again. Excellent!

Best Environmental News of the Month:
Sen. Ted Stevens's home has been raided by FBI and IRS agents looking into corruption. Corruption? No! Just because he has pimped out America's wild lands to the oil and gas lobbies, for more than 30 years? Why would you think there might be corruption there? Anyone who thinks getting a warrant for the most powerful U.S. Senator on Capitol Hill (who is also a Republican) does not know how it goes in this town. And yes, he could be as innocent as O.J.

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Cats Came from Iraq 100,000 Years ago

A look at mitochondrial DNA suggests that cats orinated in Iraq and other parts of the fertile crescent and not in Africa, Europe or North Africa as others have suggested, and that domestication began perhaps 100,000 years ago. A cat is a domesticated animal? Good to know, as most of the ones I know sure deny it. >> For more information.

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Coffee and Provocation

Oppose California's Mandatory Sterilization Law:
California Assembly Bill 1634 would require the mandatory sterilization of most working dogs in California. Hard to believe, but true. If you live in California and have a working terrier, a lurcher, a bandog, or any type of breed not recognized by the AKC or the UKC, then the State is going to require that your dog be sterilized by the age of four months.

• To read the legislation
  
  
• To read about the legislation
  
  
• To take action to stop this terrible and poorly thought out legislation
  
  

• Overbreeding: Beware of Simple Answers -- Why I oppose mandatory spay-neuter laws, and why I hope you will too.

Deben Mark III for Sale:
A fellow in New Mexico is selling a Deben Mark III locator set for $150 (original cost was $300). It was used for ferreting, and is very good condition. Email Clint at >> cchisler@unm.edu to inquire and/or work out the details.

Jon and Roseann Hanson's New Magazine:
Jon and Roseann Hanson have come out with a new magazine called Overland Journal, which is dedicated to vehicle-centered expedition travel and exploration in North America and around the world. The premier issue features over 100 pages of expedition vehicles, travel stories, equipment reviews, and conservation news, and has a crack-shot group of writers and editors associated with it. All good and long may it prosper! A hat tip to Steve Bodio for pointing me to this one.

The End of Playboy Bunnies?
Hugh Hefner's bunnies are under threat. No, not the dim-brained silicon-injected automatons that Hugh Hefner shares his mansion with, but the real marsh rabbits that live on Big Pine Key in Florida and that were named after Hefner by a couple of scientists with a sense of humor. It seems feral cats on the island and a nearby airforce base threaten to make Sylvilagus palustris hefneri extinct. >> To read more

A Good Read on Canine Diet:
I'm tired of reading about dog food, but this essay was well-worth the time >> Are Dogs Carnivores? A hat tip to Teddy Moritz for this one!

The Monks of New Skete Use Choke Collars:
A while back I wrote a piece about television dog trainers who work with problem dogs, and that most use chain slip collars to teach basic commands. While watching Divine Canine, the new dog show about the dog trainers at the New Skete monastery, I noticed the use of chain skip collars once again. Of course they use choke collars. Why change what works?

Get Over It: Bagged Dog Food is Fine for Fido

An excellent piece by John R. Moffett, entitled "Are Dogs Carnivores?," is well worth reading.

He goes through the physical evidence that clearly indicates dogs are well-adapted to eat more than meat, from their ability to synthesize taurine to the relative length of their gut. He also looks at their ability to break down plant starches:

"The next issue is amylase, the enzyme that digests starch. Grains are mostly starch, so an animal would need to make amylase if it is going to digest starch. People have amylase in their saliva, so starch digestion begins when you chew your food. Dogs, like cats, don’t have amylase in their saliva. But this ignores the fact that dogs secrete large amounts of amylase from their pancreas. Since meat doesn’t contain starch, why would dogs need to make amylase in their pancreas? Obviously because they are equipped to eat and digest plant-derived starches. Foxes, which are closely related to dogs, eat just about anything in the wild, from bugs to birds, to fruits, grains and berries. They too are very adaptable 'carnivores'."

His conclusion: "Dogs not only can be healthy on a diet consisting of meat, grains and vegetables, they will do exceptionally well on one."

He must be right, as I completey agree with him (now tell the truth, isn't that how we all think?).

Remember, of course, that regardless of what you feed your dog the most important thing not to over-feed it.

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P.T. Barnum and the Beastiaries of the Imagination

Over at the Querencia blog a while back, Matt M. reported that he had been reading a book called Big Foot Exposed, which was written by his wife's first cousin, who happens to be a specialist in primate anatomy and biomechanics. Big Foot data is looked at straight-faced and is -- not too surprisingly -- found wanting.

Meanwhile, over at the Tetrapod Zoology blog, the always-interesting Darren Naish went to a Big Cat conference in the U.K. and seems to have gotten sucked in to believing that there are large mystery cats running around Britain. Well maybe they're not large cats ... maybe they're little ones about the size of a house cat or a Scottish Wild Cat. Hmmmm . . . . could they possible be just house cats and Scottish Wild Cats?

On my end, I have to say I rather enjoy the cryto-zoology crowd because it's an odd alamgam of P. T. Barnum myth makers, city slickers that that have never touched a cow, country rubes easily fooled at the carnival, and regular folks with a deep-seated desire to find (please!) some level of mystery, fantasy and novelty in a world that is pretty well explored and explained.

At some level we all desperately want there to be a Santa Clause, a flying Yogi, a living T-Rex, and an anaconda large enough to swallow a house trailer.

If we canot find it, we will invent it, and who is to say that it does not exist? You cannot prove that the non-existent does not exist -- an interesting fall back position for every kind of fun thing from Sasquatch and Cold Fusion theorists to the Church of the Invisible Pink Unicorn.

It's a bit fun to stoke the fires of misbelief, as anyone who has even taken a troop of cub scouts "Snipe Hunting" at night can tell you. After you have them beat the brush for half an hour looking for a "snipe" (described as an animal that looks like a thin rabbit with a white stripe downs its back) you aim your flashlight up a tree and bounce it around a bit while telling the kids you just saw .... a Ho-Dag!

I plead guilty of pulling a few tricks like this. Regular readers might remember the "Chupacabra" that I reported the dogs killing a while back. The post came complete with pictures, and they were not faked. All I did was take a natural oddity, add a tall tale which I told straight, and presto -- a real Chupacabra.

In fact, my "Chubacabra" was nothing more than a groundhog victimized by four or five very large tumors that had distorted its body to the point that it looked like an alien beast. The purple color was due to the fact that the poor creature was dragging itself over nearby pokeberry plants as it tried to find food in the final days of its misery.

Similar "mystery creatures" are reported all the time, and in almost every case they are nothing more than a mangey fox or coyote, or a bear that has lost its hair or -- in some rare cases -- an escaped exotic pet like a mouflon goat or a wallabee.

The "Beast of Stronsay" turned out to be nothing more than a half-rotted basking shark.

Pulling people's leg is big business. I could point to Big Tobacco here (or the Bush Administration and Haliburton), but let me stick to the natural world and not digress too much.

Phineas T. Barnum made his fortune by parading people into a museum to see a "Feejee Mermaid," which was nothing more than a faked bit of taxidermy combining a monkey and a fish. That gag worked so well, he began parading a pair of retarded dwarf brothers from Connecticut around as the "Wild Men of Borneo," and he found a 5-year old midget he paraded around as an adult named "General Tom Thumb."

Today, thanks to PhotoShop, the gags have never been easier. In the great tradition of western postcards that show Rainbow Trout so large that just one of them fills a wagon pulled by a team of 20 mules, we now have pictures of massive sharks looming over surfers or jumping out of the water to snatch National Guardsmen off of ladders dangling from helicopters. Even video tape can be faked.

And yet, we want to believe. I regularly get interesting bits of stuff sent my way from folks who are sure it is true. After Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, an office mate sent me a picture of a giant alligator that was caught in New Orleans' streets. There was just one problem -- the picture was not an alligator, but a crocodile. I tracked down the origin of the picture in a few minutes ... ditto with the enormous snake "in Australia" that I quickly recognized as an African Rock Python.

Some of my favorite tall tales are the myriad "Beast of" stories that come out of the U.K. People who believe in such things are entirely immune to rational thought. Here's a hint: there are about 200 mounted fox hound packs working every inch of a very crowded U.K., and yet they have never turned up a big cat.

Yet people want to believe there is real danger in the English countryside -- never mind that the last wolf in the U.K. was shot dead more than 250 years ago, and the last bear more than 1500. If there is a dead sheep with a torn throat it must be a giant cat, never mind all the sheep-worrying lurchers that regularly get loose and go feral for a few days, weeks or months. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle understood the mind set well when he wrote "The Hound of the Baskervilles."

People want to believe and will suspend all logic to do so, and if it also helps sell a few newspapers and T-shirts, so much the better.

The folks around Loch Ness have a small business selling postcards, tours and trinkets. The same is true around Lake Champlain where the locals have invented their own version of "the monster" which they call "Champ." Add to the mix the Yetti of the Himalayas and the Sasquatch of the Pacific Northwest.

And while we're at it, let's not forget the thousands of "Jackaplope" heads gracing the walls of western bars and tourist stores in Wyoming, Colorado and Montana.

And, of course, if there is ever a Museum of Humbuggery, the alien autopsy gag has to get its own case, as does the running gag known as "crop circles," which turned out to be nothing more than a collection of pranksters with a bit of rope and a couple of two-by-fours.

The real story, however, is that most of the earth has been well-swarmed by biologists, hunters, anglers, explorers, bug collectors, small children, foreign aid workers, and old men. Sadly, on land and in the air, there is no longer too much new under the sun.

Not all mystery is gone, of course. About once every decade we find something as "amazing" as a new small deer or striped rabbit in the forests of Southeast Asia.

Several times a year a scientist or two declares he has found a new species of mouse, frog, large insect, or small bird.

The deep oceans contain a lot of things yet unseen and unnamed. Perhaps the Creature from the Black Lagoon really does exist .... somewhere ... out there.

And even if not, we can still sell a book, a movie, and a few T-shirts about it, eh? What's the harm in believing?


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PETA, Pet Food and Wheat Gluten

Over at the Pet Connection Blog, Gina Spadafori is reporting some pretty distressing numbers, with more than 3,000 pets already dead due to over 60 million pounds of rat-poison and melamine-contaminated dog food being shipped around the country.

Some reporters seem to have taken to quoting PETA about this dog food tragedy -- never mind that PETA knows nothing about dog food or nutrition, opposes ownership of both pet dogs and working dogs, euthanizes more than 85 percent of the dogs given up to to it, and steals dogs from shelters in order to kill them.

The poor quality of the reporting on this dog food story is amazing. For example, in all of the writing, no one has taken the time to ask a basic question: What the hell is wheat gluten, and why is it in our dog food?

Here's the answer: Wheat gluten is synthetic meat made from processed wheat.

In vegetarian cuisine, this stuff is called Seiten, and if PETA had its way, not only would your dogs and cats be eating nothing else, but so would you.

The picture at the top of this post is a Taiwanese can of "mock duck" made from 100 percent wheat gluten.

To the right is what the contents of this same can looks like when it is dumped out into a bowl.

Mmmm Good!

Does that look like the "chicken and chunks" you have been serving your pooch?

That's not an accident. Along with "Mock Duck" you can find wheat gluten carefully shaped to look like "mock" beef, mock turkey, and almost anything else.

Wheat gluten is imported from Asia because it is made in massive amounts over there, where is used as an alternative to soy-based meat substitutes such as tofu.

Wheat gluten is cheap and it is a realistic-looking meat substitute. In and of itself, it is not necessarily bad for you, but since most wheat gluten is imported from overseas, almos none of it is inspected by the FDA.

It turns out that folks who thought they were giving their cat or dog "real meat" were -- more often than not -- giving them a little bit of meat and a whole lot of wheat gluten produced overseas by the lowest bidder in a non-FDA-inspected factory.

OK, let's go to a second point: How and when did the dog food companies finally realize that their pet food products really were heavily contaminated by poison?

Early reports from customers were the first sign, of course, but the definitive evidence came from routine "live feed trials."

In a live feed trial, kenneled animals are systematically fed food samples from the production line. When about a third of the cats and dogs in a Menu Foods feed trial subsequently died, that company knew it had a disaster in the making.

What no reporters have mentioned in all their articles about this mess is that PETA is against testing any pet food on any live animals. In fact, in the middle of this pet food recall, PETA actually produced “a list of dog and cat food manufacturers that don’t test on animals.”

Talk about missing the message.

"Don't test on animals"??? That's a good thing??? Not in my house.

Please God, let's keep testing dog food on live animals.

And while we are at it, let's also test prescription drugs and vaccines too. Our children are worth it, and so are we.

As for this dog food mess, let's remember that's while it is primarily caused by poor corporate management, human greed, and an incompetent FDA, you can also find the hand of Seitan at work.

And no one loves Seitan more than PETA.

Rat Poison in Dog & Cat Food Kills Over 1,000 Pets

A lot of dogs and cats are dying due to the unintentional poisoning of wet and moist dog food manufactured by Menu Foods and sold across North America under store brands carried by Wal-Mart, Kroger, Safeway and other large retailers, as well as private labels such as Iams, Nutro and Eukanuba.

The latest numbers from PetConnection data base shows 1,103 deceased pets (654 cats/449 dogs).

A point under-reported in the popular press: High-price Eukenunba, IAMs and Nutro dog food is the same crap made at the same company as the store-brand dog foods sold at Safeway and WalMart.

For the record, my dogs eat Purina dry bag kibble, and always has.

• For more on rat poisons in general;
• For more on this specific poison, which is not legal in the US and came to the U.S. via imported Chinese wheat (why would anyone in the U.S. import wheat from China??);
• For more on dog food history
  
  

Rat Poison Found in Tainted Pet Food By Mark Johnson, Associated Press

ALBANY, N.Y. - Rat poison has been found in pet food blamed for the deaths of at least 16 cats and dogs, a spokeswoman for the State Department of Agriculture and Markets said Friday.

Spokeswoman Jessica Chittenden would not identify the chemical or its source beyond saying it was a rodent poison.

ABC News reported it was aminopterin that may have been on imported wheat used in the pet food. Aminopterin is used to kill rats in some countries but is not registered for that use in the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The chemical, also a cancer drug, is highly toxic in high doses.

Officials from the agriculture department and Cornell University's Animal Health Diagnostic Center would not immediately confirm the ABC report but scheduled a news conference Friday afternoon to release laboratory findings from tests on the pet food.

The Food and Drug Administration has said the investigation was focusing on wheat gluten in the food. Wheat gluten itself would not cause kidney failure, but the common ingredient could have been contaminated by heavy metals or mold toxins, the FDA said.

State and FBI officials said they knew of no criminal investigations in the case.
The pet deaths led to a recall of 60 million cans and pouches of pet food produced by Menu Foods and sold throughout North America under 95 brand names. There have been several reports of kidney failure in pets that ate the recalled brands, and the company has confirmed the deaths of 15 cats and one dog.

Menu Foods last week recalled "cuts and gravy" style dog and cat food. The recall sparked concern among pet owners across North America. It includes food sold under store brands carried by Wal-Mart, Kroger, Safeway and other large retailers, as well as private labels such as Iams, Nutro and Eukanuba.

Menu Foods is majority owned by Menu Foods Income Fund of Streetsville. The company also makes foods for zoo cats, but those products are unaffected by the recall.

The company's chief executive and president said Menu Foods delayed announcing the recall until it could confirm that the animals had eaten its product before dying. Two earlier complaints from consumers whose cats had died involved animals that lived outside or had access to a garage, which left open the possibility they had been poisoned by something other than contaminated food, he said.

Menu Foods planned a media teleconference for later Friday, a spokesman said.
A spokesman for New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said he was not aware of any criminal investigation involving the tainted food. FBI spokesman Paul Holstein in Albany said Friday he was not aware of any FBI involvement in the case.

"I don't know where we'll go from here," he said.

A complete list of the recalled products along with product codes, descriptions and production dates was posted online by Menu Foods and is available at http://tinyurl.com/2pn6mm. The company also designated two phone numbers that pet owners could call for information: (866) 463-6738 and (866) 895-2708.
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Associated Press writer Andrew Bridges in Washington contributed to this report.
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On the Net:
FDA pet food recall information: htp://www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/hottopics/petfood.html
Menu Foods: http://tinyurl.com/2pn6mm

Some Groups Are Nuttier Than Squirrel Scat

One of the folks I like to read is Ted Williams. Not the baseball player (did he write anything?) but the conservation author, hunter, environmentalist and sometime angler who has a regular gig with Fly Rod & Reel magazine (as well as about a dozen other places).

Williams writes well, but he also melds common sense, conservation and a pretty good understanding of the political landscape.

His latest piece on his blog is commentary about a lunatic-fringe group called "Californians for Alternatives to Toxins" or "CATS". As Williams puts it:

Just because hackers, gougers, radical conservatives, and wise-use whackos claim to see “environmental extremists” behind every Coke machine, doesn’t mean they don’t exist. And CATS (not the kind that stink up my barn, but equally clueless about wildlife) provides a superb example. The herbicides that BLM uses are essential to protect wildlife habitat from invasive exotics such as yellow star thistle. Along the upper Snake River I inspected two million acres of former big-game habitat that had been forever ruined by environmental extremists who got an eight-year injunction on federal herbicide use. All the feds needed to do was spray 100 acres of roadsides to keep the weeds out. For eight years they could not, thanks to the injunction. Now it’s too late. The infestation is too big to treat.

Groups like CATS have zero understanding of and zero concern for native ecosystems. And the pesticides they rail against are short-lived and safe, posing virtually no threat to humans or non-target organisms. These pesticides may not be the perfect tools to protect and restore native fish and native plant communities; but, in most cases, they are the ONLY tools.

CATS was also behind the long delay and near scuttling of Paiute cutthroat recovery—the first-ever project to restore a federally listed species to its ENTIRE native range

Shame on the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and anyone else for listening to lunatic land de-spoilers like CATS. The people at CATS are not just idiots, they are positively dangerous, as their policy demands, if listened to, end up stealing and despoiling America's wild lands as sure as if they were doing it with a backhoe and paving crew.

The botton place is that there is a place for herbicides, not only in your yard, but in our National Forests, National Parks, Indian Reservations, Military Bases and on BLM land as well.

I am not sure if 80 percent of our corn and soy crop needs to be "Round Up Ready", but I'm damn sure strategic spraying to control non-native invasive and destructive species such as star thistle, purple loosestife, spurge, and brazillian pepper trees is the way to go. It is outrageous that America's public lands are being allowed to be degraded by the tryanny of a handful of California wackos that represent no one.

For those interested in reading a little more Ted Williams, his magazine articles are generally excellent and he has a few books as well. His piece on "Guns and Greens" can be read in the Essays section of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers

New Orleans Pet Rescue Gathers Steam

CTV.ca News Staff

With progress being made in evacuating people from New Orleans, some are turning their attention to other living creatures affected by the flooding: pets.

People left thousands of dogs, cats and other family pets behind in the rush to escape either Hurricane Katrina or the flooding that followed.

"We alone at the Humane Society of the United States, through our 1-800 number, logged 1,500 calls from people who lived in New Orleans and said they left their pets there," the Humane Society's Wayne Pacelle told Canada AM Tuesday.

"They simply misjudged how long they'd be gone. They left food for a couple of days, and now of course, people won't be able to enter for months."

Many of those animals sit forlornly on the rooftops of flooded homes, slowly starving to death as rescue boats ignore them, looking for people instead. Some have even tried swimming to boats, only to be rebuffed by the rescuers.

"A lot of these animals are pit bulls, rottweilers. We're not approaching the dogs if we can help it," says Jitm Metza, a U.S. Coast Guard searcher.

One fear is that after seven days in the hot sun, with no food, and drinking nothing but polluted water, the dogs might be dangerous.

On dry land, stray dogs have formed packs to scavenge the city for food.

Help for animals, however, is coming.

"There are hundreds of people on the ground now, who are trained in emergency animal rescue disaster response, just waiting to get into the areas hardest hit," Betsy Saul, president of Petfinder.com, told CNN on Monday.

It appears that pets were one reason why many people stayed behind in the flooded city. One man "refused to leave even at gunpoint when he was ordered to leave by the patrolmen in our boat," said CTV News Toronto's Paul Bliss.

"He said no because he had seven dogs that he want stay and take care of."

CTV's Jed Kahane met another couple who turned down a ride out to wait a few days and walk out of the flood zone with their dogs and other pets.

"They're dependent," Adrienne Price said, a snake around her neck. "This is my kid. These are my babies."

Many people who did evacuate were forced by authorities to abandon their pets before being whisked off to a different city or state.

Saul said there is information available at katrina.petfinder.com, "and certainly if they want to contact us directly ... we can get make sure they have the information they need to get to the (bus)."
The ASPCA (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) also has a searchable online database to help reunite pets with their owners. Volunteers who want to help can register on the society's website.

Several temporary animal shelters have been set up around southern Louisiana and Mississippi -- some next to shelters for human evacuees so people could visit their pets, she said.

Louisiana State University is providing shelter for hundreds of dogs and cats in an arena. One such shelter in Gonzalez, La. is taking pictures of every animal and uploading them to the Internet.

Besides pets, the flooding has damaged some of New Orleans' animal attractions.

The electricity failure meant no ability to pump oxygen into the water at the New Orleans aquarium, resulting in the deaths of about one-third of the 4,000 fish there.

At the zoo, 12 people are trying to take care of about 1,400 animals. After seeing what Hurricane Andrew did to Miami's zoo in 1992, the New Orleans facility upgraded its hurricane preparations, so losses there were minimal.

Vet Care Reaches Human Care Costs

The Washington Post, August 29, 2004

Whose Life Is It, Anyway?
by Mary Battiata
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The good news: New trends in veterinary medicine can help extend the lives of pets.
The bad news: The costs, risks and complications increasingly resemble human medicine.
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[The recognition that people are willing -- and want -- to spend money on their animals] is one small part of a sea change that began in the late 1980s, driven by technological innovation and the rising social status of the American house pet. At the country's leading veterinary teaching hospitals, surgeons now routinely perform procedures that were unavailable to the average house pet 10 years ago: kidney transplants, cancer chemotherapy, back surgery for herniated disks, titanium hip-joint replacements, radiation treatments for goldfish, MRIs for hawks. Even treatments once reserved for very expensive animals -- racehorses and champion purebred dogs -- are available at the sophisticated specialty hospitals that have proliferated in the past decade and that provide a range of care previously available only at the nation's 28 veterinary school teaching hospitals.

"In the 1980s, pet owners began to say, 'If medical science can remove my cataracts, why can't it take out my dog's?' " says Jack Walther, head of the American Veterinary Medical Association, the profession's primary membership organization. "And the answer was, we could. We'd just never been asked."

Until the 1940s, and through most of its history, veterinary medicine was devoted to helping agriculture manage its food animals. The creed of veterinary medicine -- to help society by helping animals (as opposed to helping animals themselves) -- reflects this. Until the 1960s, most vet students were men with a background in farming or animal science. As the United States suburbanized in the 1950s, small-animal veterinary practices began to proliferate, but pet cats and dogs still spent much of their time outside. (Try to picture Lassie sprawled lengthwise on the living room couch at Timmy's house. It can't be done.) As recently as the late 1980s, most pets were treated as second-class citizens by their owners.

The practice of veterinary medicine reflected this lowly status. Even now, most veterinarians carry little or no malpractice insurance, because until very recently, it was impossible for a pet owner suing a vet over loss of a pet to recover anything more than the animal's replacement value. The bigger part of the vet's week was spent administering vaccines and fixing the broken bones that were a common and unremarkable fact of life in the decades before leash laws. When a pet's medical problems became difficult or expensive to fix, the animal was "put to sleep," or euthanized.

"One of the most discouraging parts of my practice in the early days was having a dog come in with a simple broken leg and having the owner say, 'Well, it costs money and it's just a dog, so put him to sleep,' " says Walther, who began his practice in Nevada almost 40 years ago.

In the late '80s, however, pets began to fill the emotional and physical void created by rising divorce rates and growing numbers of single-person and childless households. "A pet may be the most stabilizing, permanent presence a child from a divorced home will ever experience," says Arlington vet Robert Brown.

Dogs and cats began to live longer, too. From 1987 to 2000, the life spans of the average dog and cat increased by more than one-third, thanks to better commercial pet foods and widespread vaccination, according to the AVMA. But longer life spans meant a jump in the incidence of the diseases of old age -- cancers, organ failure, crippling arthritis and other problems. With the family pet now ensconced on the bed instead of at the far end of the yard, the medical problems were easier to spot and harder to ignore.

Today, many people think of their pets as members of the family, and they want them to have access to the same medical technology they do, vets say. And this is possible, thanks to the same biomedical revolution that transformed human medicine in the 1950s and '60s. According to the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates drugs for the veterinary market, the pharmaceutical industry in recent years has begun shifting its energies away from the agricultural market and toward companion animals. The number of new drugs approved for veterinary use has increased dramatically in the past decade, with special interest in drugs for behavior modification and pain relief.

The focus on pain medication is a particularly significant bellwether. Until very recently, desensitizing veterinary students to animal pain was an important part of their education. "When I went to vet school back in the Stone Age, we didn't really talk about pain," says Stephen F. Sundlof, director of the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine. "It was, 'Do the surgery, and the animals will get along fine.' " Today, Sundlof says, there is a growing understanding of pain as a complication that impedes recovery and healing.

This gradual and ongoing "evolution in consciousness," says Elliott Katz, a veterinarian and founder of the advocacy group In Defense of Animals, has been spurred by the entrance of large numbers of women to the profession in the past 15 years, and by the demands of pet owners, whose economic clout is becoming a counterweight to the agribusiness interests that have traditionally underwritten much veterinary research at universities.

All of this has put new pressure on the ordinary neighborhood veterinary clinic. Vets, who 30 years ago needed little more than a stethoscope and an Army surplus field X-ray machine to set up a practice, now equip their clinics with an array of expensive diagnostic equipment, from blood-analysis machines to ultrasound scanners. Even setting up a small practice costs upwards of $500,000.

The average veterinary bill -- which has tripled in the past 10 years -- reflects this. The price surge was not an accident. It is the direct result of a half-a-million-dollar study commissioned by the leading veterinary professional organizations in 1998 to figure out why veterinarians' salaries lagged far behind those in human medicine and in such professions as law and engineering. The study, by the business consulting firm KPMG, cited federal statistics showing that veterinary practice incomes had declined during the 1990s, a decade when many other professional incomes rose.

The study concluded that veterinarians were failing to run their practices as the demanding businesses they had become. Pressed by competition, vets were mortgaging their practices to buy expensive equipment but charging clients prices that hadn't increased much since the 1970s. The veterinary profession called the study's findings a "wake-up call" and set up a national commission dedicated to encouraging vets to concentrate harder on the bottom line.