Been a busy week -- without much posting. Will hopefully get back on track in the next week or so. Meanwhile, let's look at some of the top stories and blog postings from the week:
Cities/States and Laws
Wentzville, MO is set to discuss the repeal of their breed specific law on Wednesday.
Miami-Dade lawmakers are trying to now derail the quickly moving HB 997/SB 1322 that would eliminate the county's 23 year old breed ban by now offering to put the initiative to a vote of the constituents vs having the state mandate they repeal it. The effort is a last gasp appeal to try to keep a law everyone else in the state realizes is wrong and ineffective. At least one writer says the county doesn't want to repeal its breed ban because it is a revenue stream for the city....
Ogden, UT has decided on going with a breed-neutral dangerous dog law.
Springfield, MO continues to look at alternatives to it's breed-specific legislation
Media Ridiculousness
A south Florida man accidentally shot his mother when up to 10 dogs in his house got into a fight while his 84 year old mother was feeding them. The dogs began fighting, and the man pulled a gun to shoot one or more of the dogs but ended up hitting his mother in the leg. The woman is going to recover. Interestingly, most media outlets initially began reporting that the incident involved 10 pit bulls -- however, later follow ups note that the dogs involved included two greyhounds, two Rottweilers, a poodle, a small heading type dog, a shepherd and an assortment of mutts. Not that the breed matters, but it is interesting just how poorly the media covered the breeds in this one.
Kansas City News
The Northland Animal Welfare Society (NAWS) had their grand opening for their new low cost spay/neuter clinic serving the areas of KCMO north of the river. Congrats guys!
A 12 year old Kansas boy is pushing for a new state law that would add a bitter taste to anti-freeze after his beloved dog died from anti-freeze poisoning. According to this report, 10,000 animals each year and more than 1000 children.
Cruelty Cases
A Kansas City area family is devestated after their pet chihuahua was brutally killed and left dead in their yard. The group Love4Paws has offered a $1500 reward for information about the attacker.
A Pit bull in Horry County, SC was found in a trash can in the back of a truck that was being repossessed. The dog was alive, but had major injuries.
A Honolulu Petco is being sued after a family took their dog in for grooming and apparently the Petco cut part of the the dog's ears off. To make the situation worse (yes, it gets worse), instead of admitting the mistake, they just taped the pieces of the ears back on and the owners of the dog didn't notice until the ear pieces started falling off again.
No Kill News
The Elmsbrook Humane Society (WI) is being praised as a No Kill Shelter -- having a 93% live release reate in 2011.
Richland County, OH has gone 4 straight months without having to euthanize any animals.
Thoughts on Westminster
The Westminster Dog Show was this week -- and a lot of people had opinions about the show and specifically its break from Pedigree as a sponsor because Pedigree's advertising promoted adoption AND was a little sad. There was a lot of backlash on this from the rescue community.
Westminster officials made a mistake in dumping Pedigree as sponsor -- Seattle Dog Spot
And in the Comedy world, Stephen Colbert weighed in.
Blogs
Another former "Vick Dog", Grace, has earned her therapy dog stripes and just passed the Delta Pet Partners evaluation. Congrats to Bad Rap, her owners, and Grace.
The Sale of Puppies Online -- some commentary regarding the PUPS bill from Time 4 Dogs. I confess that I have not dived into the details of this bill.
It's not fair for a dog not to have a home -- For the pit bulls tells the story of a young child who's school found a pit bull roaming on the playground and took it to the pound and the young child thought it was unfair for the dog to not have a home and saved him.
As if the situation in Memphis couldn't become worse, media reports this week came out with a tape of a Memphis shelter employee who entered the shelter one night with the goal to kill all the pit bulls and anything that looks like a pit bull. While this is a more formal approach to killing almost everything in shelter regardless of what it looks like, it definitely is further insult to injury for the shelter. Memphis TV's anti-pit bull bias was also on display. Just when you thought it couldn't get worse...
TV star Jennifer Aniston adopts a pit bull mix --adding to he list of well known stars who continue to adopt pit bull type dogs from shelters.
And interesting post about Mandatory Spay/Neuter in Los Angeles from Paws & Learn Humane Education Center. They note that the law is basically unenforceable and that without the low-cost programs to support the law it is impossible for people in low cost neighborhoods to comply with the law (not that any of them realize it's the law in the first place).
How you can help -- a good blog post by Winograd not asking for money (as many national orgs tend to do) but by asking people to take proactive steps in their communities to increase life-saving.
If not for cats, we'd be covered in rats -- Yesbiscuit! looks at another value in feral cats
More on the news anchor that was bitten by the dog on live tv last week:
When "stupid" is mainstream -- Save a Pit Bull, Save the World has some good commentary on just how far removed we are from understanding animals these days
9News in Denver did an educational piece for their news anchors to help them better understand canine behavior to hopefully help other anchors to avoid this type of situation.
Channel 9 news in Oklahoma City also had an expert that noted that all of the dog's behavior seemed to be geared to trying to get away from the news anchor -- who ended up getting bitten when she tried to kiss the dog on the nose.
Brent - Thank you for keeping up with your blog despite the heavy work load we all know you're facing at the shelter. It can't be easy!
Posted by: Donna | February 20, 2012 at 10:00 AM
Thanks Donna. We're getting to the point where I am able to divest myself a bit from the day-to-day at the shelter. We're making progress and I still like writing the blog so it's important for my own peace of mind to make time to write it...
Posted by: Brent | February 20, 2012 at 10:03 AM
I echo Donna's thank you regarding you writing the blog.
The whole story about the Westminster Kennel Club dumping Pedigree as a sponsor was very overblown. The new commercials were wonderful and far more positive.
Posted by: kmk | February 20, 2012 at 11:49 PM