Chocolate is a food group which a lot of people can't do without. Unfortunately, it's got questionable nutritional value and often when some article entitled "The Benefits of Chocolate" or whatever is published referencing studies about how cocoa invigorates one's hypothalamus or how the colour brown enlightens one's chakras, I can't help but wonder who funds those studies and also why even bother? People don't need a valid reason to eat chocolate. That might just take the fun out of it.
In the same way, Stella doesn't need nor care for a reason to eat goose poo. In this fall season, it's easily accessible enough. Every day now, Canadian geese take their vengeance upon us humans for destroying all their wetlands by shitting on almost every untrafficked patch of cleared land near a body of water. For us, that would be the CNE grounds down by the lake shore where I take Stella most mornings.
When I first got Stella years ago and was yet unaccustomed to her ways, I used to see her loping across the grassy expanses with her head hung low and her mouth open. I thought she was licking the dew off the grass which seemed oddly resourceful for a city dog like Stella. Of course upon closer inspection, I realized she was imitating a whale harvesting krill only it wasn't seafood she was filtering through her mouth, it was goose poo - which, come to think of it, maybe could be considered seafood, just overly processed, since geese do get a good portion of their food from aquatic sources.
After that eye-opening discovery of my dog's dietary quirk, there were some stern words uttered and Stella soon realized that I did not approve. Sure, it's a disgusting snack in the form of speckled green tube food but I was also worried about giardia.
These days, when goose poo season first arrives, Stella still can't help herself and she always tries to sample the new vintage. She no longer does the whale thing, that being too obvious, but instead she tries to be sneaky about it. She starts by giving me her sideways glance to see if I'm looking - which I usually am but that doesn't really stop her from moving forward with her surreptitious plan. She then slunkers down a bit and trots nonchalantly away from me, all the while looking back at me to make sure I'm not going to chase her down or anything. When she reaches the morsel, she doesn't grab it up right away but instead pretends to be just sniffing the spot, like any other spot, no big deal, nothing to see here. She's still got her eye on me this whole time and then if she thinks I'm not looking, she quickly laps up the pungent delicacy and then it's chomp chomp swallow.
Now you'd think with my human brain, it wouldn't be such a big deal see through Stella's illicit behaviour and stop her before she gets to her goal, and I usually do, but I have to admit that she still manages to slurp one back every now and again.
This morning was one of those times and then after we went through the usual ritual of me berating her and her pretending to be sorry for what she just did, we continued along on our walk through the park.
People don't often approach us on our walks but this morning a man came over and asked me about my dogs (Rocky was with us as well). It turned out he was visiting from the States and wanted to come over and say hi since he was missing his own dogs.
"Is she friendly?" he asked, indicating Stella.
"Er, well, sometimes she takes a while to warm up to people she doesn't know," I replied because Stella doesn't usually like it much when strangers, especially male strangers, approach with too much enthusiasm. This morning, though, maybe because she was still all aglow from her goose poop snack or maybe because she just wanted to prove me wrong, she sidled up to the man.
He responded by stroking her back. Stella leaned into him, as Danes will do, having decided she liked the man's affections. The man made some cooing noise and started scratching her neck. Stella turned her head upwards and stared lovingly up into the man's face.
At this point, I knew she was up to something and what she was up to was no good. She was going to try for the prize, the prize being her tongue in someone's mouth. I used to think this behaviour was a remnant from from wolf cub instincts where a cub would make his mother regurgitate food by agitating the inside of her mouth. Now, I think Stella is just a sleazy old broad who likes to French kiss.
"Um, you might want to back off a bit," I said to the man whose face was inching closer to Stella's. "She's going to try to lick you." Sounded better than "She's going to try to tongue you."
"That's okay, I've got a couple big dogs at home. I'm used to it," he said.
"Yeah, but Stella just ate ..." I hurried to say but stopped.
It was like a car accident where everything seems to go into slo-mo. Stella was looking up at the stranger, batting her eyes at him, enticing him closer. Stranger was enchanted, lowered his face ever closer to hers. He opened his mouth just about to whisper some sweet nothing and Stella, like a frog catching a fly, flicked out her tongue and planted one well inside his mouth.
"Whoa, don't I get a dinner first?" he tried to joke but that only gave Stella more opportunity to strike. And she did.
"Sorry about that," I said. "She can be very forward."
"Ah, that's okay," but he'd had enough and he straightened up out of her reach. As I called Stella back over, the man make a smacking sound with his mouth.
"What'd she have for breakfast?" he asked, uncertain, ready to be horrified.
"That's probably the kelp flakes you're tasting," I said. I didn't want to ruin his day.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Sunday, October 18, 2009
The end of Pit Bulls
Tomorrow, on October 19th, Michael Bryant, the man largely responsible for bringing BSL and the resulting mass slaughter of Pit Bull looking dogs to Ontario, will be in front of a judge to plead his case in the killing of cyclist Darcy Allen Sheppard.
While killing thousands of dogs simply because of their looks has nothing legally to do with the killing of a cyclist, let's see how karma judges Bryant for his overall performance as a human being.
Leading up to Bryant's plea, I thought I'd post a couple of links showing the real, up close and personal consequences of Pit Bull abuse and slaughter.
The first one is from Bad Rap, "Hallowed Dogs - A Compassionate Goodbye for Victims of Cruelty".
Below, Oklahoma handler of public service working pit bulls, Molly Gibbs,
describes her experience of giving a dignified death to two dogs from what is being called "the largest dog fight bust in history." We agreed that the stories of these two dogs must be told, as they represent untold thousands of pit bulls-without-option across the country, including and especially those dogs from the big raid that will not be lucky enough to find their way into already crowded rescues.
The photos in the above piece are especially hard to look at not because they show anything graphic but because they show love before it was extinguished.
The next post does contain graphic photos. "Time to wake up to the horrors of BSL", from Wag The Dog!, is about the mass slaughter of Pit Bulls in Denver by city officials.
As the poster writes:
Now, just before you lean back and wipe your brow to think this is a Denver issue or this isn't happening here.. think again.
This happens every day right here in Ontario. We have the numbers. Over 5000 dogs have been killed right here in Ontario since August 25, 2005!
Something to think about come tomorrow.
While killing thousands of dogs simply because of their looks has nothing legally to do with the killing of a cyclist, let's see how karma judges Bryant for his overall performance as a human being.
Leading up to Bryant's plea, I thought I'd post a couple of links showing the real, up close and personal consequences of Pit Bull abuse and slaughter.
The first one is from Bad Rap, "Hallowed Dogs - A Compassionate Goodbye for Victims of Cruelty".
Below, Oklahoma handler of public service working pit bulls, Molly Gibbs,
describes her experience of giving a dignified death to two dogs from what is being called "the largest dog fight bust in history." We agreed that the stories of these two dogs must be told, as they represent untold thousands of pit bulls-without-option across the country, including and especially those dogs from the big raid that will not be lucky enough to find their way into already crowded rescues.
The photos in the above piece are especially hard to look at not because they show anything graphic but because they show love before it was extinguished.
The next post does contain graphic photos. "Time to wake up to the horrors of BSL", from Wag The Dog!, is about the mass slaughter of Pit Bulls in Denver by city officials.
As the poster writes:
Now, just before you lean back and wipe your brow to think this is a Denver issue or this isn't happening here.. think again.
This happens every day right here in Ontario. We have the numbers. Over 5000 dogs have been killed right here in Ontario since August 25, 2005!
Something to think about come tomorrow.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Football and dogfights and Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell, one of my favourite writers/speakers has just recently published an article in The New Yorker, one of my favourite magazines, called Offensive Play - How different are dogfighting and football? in which he uses the Michael Vick case as a foundation for laying out his premise that football players and dogs used for dogfighting are very similar in that they are valued for their gameness - their ability to fight on even at great expense to their own personal well-being. No, he's not suggesting that pro football players get electrocuted or a bullet in the head if they lose - nothing like that - but instead he questions the ethics of football, which most Americans take such pride in versus dogfighting which most Americans look down upon with great disdain - and rightfully so. You'll have to read the article for yourself to get the breadth of it because I can't simplify it all here without basically rewriting it.
Anyway, the reason I bring up this article is because of the parts of it relating to dogs. Gladwell's got a heart for dogs. He was one of the first mainstream writers to write about Cesar Milan. He also wrote an excellent piece on anti-Pit Bull laws and racism.
In this newest article, the paragraphs dealing with dogs are few but brilliant. He gets right to the crux of why the dogs fight the way they do and why it is so abhorrent that dogfighters exploit these animals.
Here he is describing Meryl, a Vick dog rescued by Best Friends:
The court-ordered evaluation of the Vick dogs labelled Meryl, a medium-sized brown-and-white pit-bull mix, “human aggressive,” meaning that she is never allowed to be taken out of the Best Friends facility. “She had a hard time meeting people — she would preëmpt anyone coming by charging and snapping at them,” Ann Allums, one of the Best Friends dog trainers, said, as she walked around Meryl’s octagon, on a recent fall day.
She opened the gate to Meryl’s dog run and crouched down on the ground next to her. She hugged the dog, and began playfully wrestling with her, as Meryl’s tail thumped happily. “She really doesn’t mind new people,” Allums said. “She’s very happy and loving. I feel totally comfortable with her. I can grab and kiss her.” She gave Meryl another hug. “I am building a relationship,” she said. “She needed to see that when people were around bad things would not happen.”
What happens at Best Friends represents, by any measure, an extravagant gesture. These are dogs that will never live a normal life. But the kind of crime embodied by dogfighting is so morally repellent that it demands an extravagant gesture in response. In a fighting dog, the quality that is prized above all others is the willingness to persevere, even in the face of injury and pain. A dog that will not do that is labelled a “cur,” and abandoned. A dog that keeps charging at its opponent is said to possess “gameness,” and game dogs are revered.
In one way or another, plenty of organizations select for gameness. The Marine Corps does so, and so does medicine, when it puts young doctors through the exhausting rigors of residency. But those who select for gameness have a responsibility not to abuse that trust: if you have men in your charge who would jump off a cliff for you, you cannot march them to the edge of the cliff — and dogfighting fails this test. Gameness, Carl Semencic argues, in “The World of Fighting Dogs” (1984), is no more than a dog’s “desire to please an owner at any expense to itself.” The owners, Semencic goes on, understand this desire to please on the part of the dog and capitalize on it. At any organized pit fight in which two dogs are really going at each other wholeheartedly, one can observe the owner of each dog changing his position at pit-side in order to be in sight of his dog at all times. The owner knows that seeing his master rooting him on will make a dog work all the harder to please its master.
This is why Michael Vick’s dogs weren’t euthanized. The betrayal of loyalty requires an act of social reparation.
I love the use of language and reason here. "...the kind of crime embodied by dogfighting is so morally repellent that it demands an extravagant gesture in response." Gladwell understands very well why it was so important for us humans to rescue the Vick dogs. We needed to save the dogs but just as important, we needed to redeem ourselves.
"... those who select for gameness have a responsibility not to abuse that trust: if you have men in your charge who would jump off a cliff for you, you cannot march them to the edge of the cliff — and dogfighting fails this test." And that's really it, right on the button. That's why dogfighting is so detestable to most civilized people - because it's an ultimate abuse of trust. The crime not only results in the torture and violent death of a dog but it also displays an utterly inhumane desire and ability in some people to exploit the best traits in other living beings, to twist those traits around to the point where the animals destroy themselves for a moment of entertainment.
Anyway, the reason I bring up this article is because of the parts of it relating to dogs. Gladwell's got a heart for dogs. He was one of the first mainstream writers to write about Cesar Milan. He also wrote an excellent piece on anti-Pit Bull laws and racism.
In this newest article, the paragraphs dealing with dogs are few but brilliant. He gets right to the crux of why the dogs fight the way they do and why it is so abhorrent that dogfighters exploit these animals.
Here he is describing Meryl, a Vick dog rescued by Best Friends:
The court-ordered evaluation of the Vick dogs labelled Meryl, a medium-sized brown-and-white pit-bull mix, “human aggressive,” meaning that she is never allowed to be taken out of the Best Friends facility. “She had a hard time meeting people — she would preëmpt anyone coming by charging and snapping at them,” Ann Allums, one of the Best Friends dog trainers, said, as she walked around Meryl’s octagon, on a recent fall day.
She opened the gate to Meryl’s dog run and crouched down on the ground next to her. She hugged the dog, and began playfully wrestling with her, as Meryl’s tail thumped happily. “She really doesn’t mind new people,” Allums said. “She’s very happy and loving. I feel totally comfortable with her. I can grab and kiss her.” She gave Meryl another hug. “I am building a relationship,” she said. “She needed to see that when people were around bad things would not happen.”
What happens at Best Friends represents, by any measure, an extravagant gesture. These are dogs that will never live a normal life. But the kind of crime embodied by dogfighting is so morally repellent that it demands an extravagant gesture in response. In a fighting dog, the quality that is prized above all others is the willingness to persevere, even in the face of injury and pain. A dog that will not do that is labelled a “cur,” and abandoned. A dog that keeps charging at its opponent is said to possess “gameness,” and game dogs are revered.
In one way or another, plenty of organizations select for gameness. The Marine Corps does so, and so does medicine, when it puts young doctors through the exhausting rigors of residency. But those who select for gameness have a responsibility not to abuse that trust: if you have men in your charge who would jump off a cliff for you, you cannot march them to the edge of the cliff — and dogfighting fails this test. Gameness, Carl Semencic argues, in “The World of Fighting Dogs” (1984), is no more than a dog’s “desire to please an owner at any expense to itself.” The owners, Semencic goes on, understand this desire to please on the part of the dog and capitalize on it. At any organized pit fight in which two dogs are really going at each other wholeheartedly, one can observe the owner of each dog changing his position at pit-side in order to be in sight of his dog at all times. The owner knows that seeing his master rooting him on will make a dog work all the harder to please its master.
This is why Michael Vick’s dogs weren’t euthanized. The betrayal of loyalty requires an act of social reparation.
I love the use of language and reason here. "...the kind of crime embodied by dogfighting is so morally repellent that it demands an extravagant gesture in response." Gladwell understands very well why it was so important for us humans to rescue the Vick dogs. We needed to save the dogs but just as important, we needed to redeem ourselves.
"... those who select for gameness have a responsibility not to abuse that trust: if you have men in your charge who would jump off a cliff for you, you cannot march them to the edge of the cliff — and dogfighting fails this test." And that's really it, right on the button. That's why dogfighting is so detestable to most civilized people - because it's an ultimate abuse of trust. The crime not only results in the torture and violent death of a dog but it also displays an utterly inhumane desire and ability in some people to exploit the best traits in other living beings, to twist those traits around to the point where the animals destroy themselves for a moment of entertainment.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Update 2 on Luna
From the owner of Luna (now Inka):
As you can see, life is tough. She is doing great. Many thanks, I love her.
As you can see, life is tough. She is doing great. Many thanks, I love her.
Toronto Animal Services Friday review, Oct. 16
I guess TAS South is trying to make up for the downtime over the summer with respect to dog rescues/adoptions so with all the new dogs coming in, the place is getting quite full and busy. Some of these guys don't even have names yet - or I just haven't managed to track them down.
Ciara, a Whippet mix? Well, that's what her kennel card says anyway.
Spike - Yellow Lab
sorta Rottweiler pup
Buddy - Beagle
Jasper- Beagle
Update on Spike here.
For adoption information on these and other dogs (and cats and other animals), please visit Toronto Animal Services.
Ciara, a Whippet mix? Well, that's what her kennel card says anyway.
Spike - Yellow Lab
sorta Rottweiler pup
Buddy - Beagle
Jasper- BeagleUpdate on Spike here.
For adoption information on these and other dogs (and cats and other animals), please visit Toronto Animal Services.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Kitchener Waterloo coming to their senses?
(h/t to Ian for this story)
From The Record Dog owner pleads case to save pet’s life:
Jack Simpson walked into City Hall on Monday morning to plead for his dog’s life.
Last month Simpson’s dog Charlie was designated as a banned animal by the Kitchener Waterloo Humane Society. A designated dog must be destroyed.
Simpson appeared before the city’s Dog Designation Appeal Committee, saying his Charlie never bothered anyone.
...
But mainly because of the size of the dog’s head Carroll [humane society officer] designated Charlie a Pit Bull-like animal that was banned and would have to be destroyed.
Luckily for Charlie, Simpson was able to convince the Committee to give him back his dog.
Kitchener Waterloo was the first jurisdiction in Ontario to bring in a Pit Bull ban leading the way for an all Ontario ban.
From Canadian Kennel Club, Public Hearings into Ontario's Proposed Bill 132:
Dr Gary Goeree of the Animal Hospital of Kitchener-Waterloo gave a powerful presentation. Heavily involved in the Kitchener-Waterloo By Law application, he provided an overview of the process followed to enact the By Law. Council banned "pit bulls" in 1997 as a result of one veterinarian bringing to Council the following: - "Pit Bulls" are the leading cause of bites, chemically they have a different brain from other dogs, they have a 2000psi jaw pressure and are number 1 in dog bite fatalities. Research thereafter proved that ?pitbull? ranked well down the bite scale, immediately behind Poodles; a board certified neurologist confirms that there is no study and has never been a study noting any thought of a chemical difference in the brain of a "pitbull" vis-à-vis any other dog; no study has proven the 2000 psi thought this has been media generated; regarding dog bite fatalities, fatalities tend to be in proportion to the breeds numbers in any country and for a time the "pit bull" comprising four breeds as denoted in the US was #1 but then the focus moved to other breeds. In 1997 there was no good evidence that "pit bulls" were more dangerous than other dogs. When asking the Kitchener paper why they reported only "pitbull" bites, the editor responded, "They make news". Dr Goeree notes that Kitchener-Waterloo's By Law is not a success story. It is an experiment that was a mistake and is not based on fact. It is not and experiment that should be repeated Province-wide. When asked about the Calgary By Law, Dr Goeree responded, In January this year I presented to Kitchener Council the methods to toughen up dangerous dog legislation. Waterloo bite statistics have not dropped since BSL was invoked.
From The Record Dog owner pleads case to save pet’s life:
Jack Simpson walked into City Hall on Monday morning to plead for his dog’s life.
Last month Simpson’s dog Charlie was designated as a banned animal by the Kitchener Waterloo Humane Society. A designated dog must be destroyed.
Simpson appeared before the city’s Dog Designation Appeal Committee, saying his Charlie never bothered anyone.
...
But mainly because of the size of the dog’s head Carroll [humane society officer] designated Charlie a Pit Bull-like animal that was banned and would have to be destroyed.
Luckily for Charlie, Simpson was able to convince the Committee to give him back his dog.
Kitchener Waterloo was the first jurisdiction in Ontario to bring in a Pit Bull ban leading the way for an all Ontario ban.
From Canadian Kennel Club, Public Hearings into Ontario's Proposed Bill 132:
Dr Gary Goeree of the Animal Hospital of Kitchener-Waterloo gave a powerful presentation. Heavily involved in the Kitchener-Waterloo By Law application, he provided an overview of the process followed to enact the By Law. Council banned "pit bulls" in 1997 as a result of one veterinarian bringing to Council the following: - "Pit Bulls" are the leading cause of bites, chemically they have a different brain from other dogs, they have a 2000psi jaw pressure and are number 1 in dog bite fatalities. Research thereafter proved that ?pitbull? ranked well down the bite scale, immediately behind Poodles; a board certified neurologist confirms that there is no study and has never been a study noting any thought of a chemical difference in the brain of a "pitbull" vis-à-vis any other dog; no study has proven the 2000 psi thought this has been media generated; regarding dog bite fatalities, fatalities tend to be in proportion to the breeds numbers in any country and for a time the "pit bull" comprising four breeds as denoted in the US was #1 but then the focus moved to other breeds. In 1997 there was no good evidence that "pit bulls" were more dangerous than other dogs. When asking the Kitchener paper why they reported only "pitbull" bites, the editor responded, "They make news". Dr Goeree notes that Kitchener-Waterloo's By Law is not a success story. It is an experiment that was a mistake and is not based on fact. It is not and experiment that should be repeated Province-wide. When asked about the Calgary By Law, Dr Goeree responded, In January this year I presented to Kitchener Council the methods to toughen up dangerous dog legislation. Waterloo bite statistics have not dropped since BSL was invoked.
Spotted blue tongues
There's been a influx of dogs with spotted blue tongues this past week. I always thought that a whole or partial blue tongue meant a dog has some Chow Chow or Sharpei in it but apparently that's not always the case. Some breeds, including Labs, sometimes just show up with spotted blue tongues all on their own. Either that or they've been licking too many blue flavoured slushies (what flavour is that anyway?).
Retriever Danny has got abundant energy and will need lots of exercise as well as some training. He's a pretty attentive dog, though, so the training shouldn't be too difficult.
Hendrix, the Collie mix below, is one of those popular dogs whose photo I take and before it even gets put up on the site, he's already adopted.
Well, Red at least looks kind of like a Chow Chow. Some Chows can be indifferent to strangers but this one is quite friendly though not in any pushy sort of way. He waits politely for you to make the first move before he comes in for more attention.
Retriever Danny has got abundant energy and will need lots of exercise as well as some training. He's a pretty attentive dog, though, so the training shouldn't be too difficult.
Hendrix, the Collie mix below, is one of those popular dogs whose photo I take and before it even gets put up on the site, he's already adopted.
Well, Red at least looks kind of like a Chow Chow. Some Chows can be indifferent to strangers but this one is quite friendly though not in any pushy sort of way. He waits politely for you to make the first move before he comes in for more attention.
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