Hi Juicers! Traveling this week and next, so Faunasphere is light (and, I guess, late). Please post your fauna-related thoughts and news in the comments, and please remember that sharing any of these links can help save lives. – Hillary
- “Dog whisperer” Cesar Millan being investigated for animal cruelty after using a pig to bait a dog with known aggression issues. The annotated video at the link is a pretty devastating indictment of his whole “pack leader” approach.
- Boston joins more than 120 other municipalities and bans puppy-mill and other commercially-bred animals in pet stores.
- Yippee! President Obama guarantees all military working dogs retirement on U.S. soil.
- Hopefully will lead to rise in adoptions: FIV+ and FIV- cats can live together without harm to the latter.
- Opposition builds to annual Texas rattlesnake roundup.
- Fantastic three-minute animation on true costs (subsidies, health, environmental) of meat consumption.
- Eggs may be the cruelest food, as you can tell by the fact that Germany is working to end the shredding alive of newborn male chicks. (More on the cruelties of egg production here and here’s a really interesting list of egg substitutes.)
- Seaworld releases a bizarrely upbeat propaganda video announcing the impending death of Tilikum, its kidnapped and imprisoned orca who has notoriously killed three people. Of course, no mention in the vid of those he killed, at least one of whom, as documented in the movie Blackfish, Seaworld blamed for her own death. By the way, captive orcas live around a quarter of their natural lifespans. (And Blackfish streams on Netflix.)
And, in breaking news…
Hillary Rettig
Sorry to post and run but I have to teach now. I’ll check in this evening.
01jack
Well of course they do.
MazeDancer
All of my cats – alive now and of blessed memory – were stray cats. The city cats were born on the streets and rescued, the country cats showed up at my door. Stray cats are frequently FIV+. Right now, two of my FIV positive kitties are 15. And have lived happy, normal kitty lives.
13 years ago, when those two appeared, vet told me I would want to put these kitties down because they were FIV positive. I was devastated. Hadn’t heard of this FIV thing before. Went online, found info at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary that said: Don’t believe vets on this. Best Friends was right.
Shelters use FIV as a way to clear out over-crowding. It is not “Kitty Aids”. It is a virus that affects the immune system, but does not devastate it. Some cats might get more sniffles. Some show no signs of any difference at all. Before FIV was discovered being FIV + was called “Being a cat”.
bemused
Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story aired on MSNBC maybe a year ago. Great doc with a couple subsisting for several months only on discarded food showing how much edible, good food is thrown away to rot and some of the efforts to reduce the waste. I don’t know why MSNBC hasn’t aired this doc again but I wish they would. It can be seen on youtube.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
Anyone who hasn’t seen “chihuahua or muffin” needs to use teh google.
You’re welcome.
ETA: one of the chihuahua faces could be John Cole’s Lily, who just has to be part chihuahua.
Mr. Twister
Here’s and interesting take on Cesar by a guy who knows a lot about dogs.
Germy
Interesting examination of Jan and Dean’s red-baiting anti-protest song “The Universal Coward”
http://dangerousminds.net/comments/charlie_dont_surf_jan_deans_red_baiting_anti_protest_song_the_universal_cow#disqus_thread
dedc79
If only Bart and Lisa Simpson and Barry White were around to lead the opposition.
Betty Cracker
@Mr. Twister: I’m willing to listen to both sides of a story until one of the people providing a counter view prove themselves an irredeemable knob. The Millan-defender you linked does so here:
Fuck that sexist prick. He may know a lot about dogs (debatable), but he knows nothing about human beings.
greennotGreen
I have been a defender of Cesar for some time. It seems to me that many of his critics misinterpret his message. (No, Cesar doesn’t say you can exercise a dog into obedience. No, Cesar does not use fear to train dogs.) That being said, using a pig – even if it had been well protected – as a tool in training a dog is cruel to the pig because pigs are prey animals and dogs are predators.
What I don’t understand in major fail situations like this is that many people are involved: the crew, the dog’s owner, the pig’s owner. Why didn’t someone put the brakes on this stupid idea?
dedc79
What Cesar Milan did, as awful and moronic as it was, would not even qualify for a Million Cruelest Things That Humans Did to Pigs list for that single day. [edited for clarity]
Amir Khalid
@greennotGreen:
Cesar Millan is the star of the TV show, the most powerful and influential person at any of its shooting locations, and the supposed expert here. Why did he have this stupid and dangerous idea in the first place?
elmo
@Amir Khalid: Because it’s good for ratings. He doesn’t give a shit about animal welfare.
Keith G
Certainly, watching the Republican Party get smacked down in biblical proportions is the top hope on my list. Also running in the top 5 of happy making events would be seeing a crushing end to Cesar Millan-ism.
A common end to two styles of pointless authoritarianism.
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@elmo:
BINGO!!!
The first rule of ‘reality’ celebrity is the show is all about ratings & reality and decency fall before the mighty Nielson family.
Gvg
Dog experts I know have had a lot of contempt for Cesare for many years. They say he is wrong and cruel.
Troublesome Carp fka Geeno
Weird – the Rachel vid showed for me at first, but when I went back to see what people were talking about with the big space, it was gone – LOL
WereBear
Some joy, our recovering feral kitten is two years old!
Mithrandir, always serious.
Though this picture is a bit older. He does not like having his picture taken. That feral awareness thing, no doubt.
WaterGirl
@WereBear: Our little baby is all grown up! Bittersweet.
Scout211
Our 19 chickens free range by day and are snug and protected inside the coop at night.
It is amazing how much better and healthier the eggs are when the hens are free to eat what they need. We give them organic feed but they spend all day scratching around the property for natural food sources.
Added benefit: fewer rattlesnakes on our property. I call that a win-win.
BubbaDave
I have a cat who will chew up socks if I don’t put them in the hamper. Also chewed a hole in a pair of blue jeans. Will chew rawhide and cardboard and wire metal shelving and more iPhone cables than I can shake a stick at and…
He’s a sweet fellow, though a lot more feisty than I expected (my first male cat in 20 years, my first ginger cat ever). But I swear the little git is part goat.
J R in WV
I very much appreciate the animal rights and kitty health information, and have been aware that Cesar isn’t a knowledge-based and compassionate trainer for some time…
Especially the health news about the kittehs.
Trigger warning, sad story…
We had a litter of Maine Coons, back before the Feline Leukemia vaccine was available, and they all came down with the leukemia… The clinic gently encouraged us to put the kittens down “before you are attached to them” which made kind of a little sense, if we weren’t already attached, and if they weren’t so far completely asymptomatic. As they developed some adverse reaction we dealt with it. All different, liver failure, neurological problems, cardio-pulmonary issues, all sad. They were a great little herd of fun, and putting down wonderful kittehs one by one was very sad and hard, but we gave them a wonderful life while they were healthy enough to love living.
Also, of course dogs like socks, they smell like their people. Yumm! A pretty goofy video, but funny is good.
Pogonip
Sox on fox?
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
I watched one episode of Dog Whisperer a few years ago. At one point I actually yelled “Hey!” at the screen, as if I could get his attention and stop him from treating the dog the way he did. And this was before I got Iggy and fully understood the bond between a human and a loving dog. Now I’d have to stop myself from hunting him down.
Miss Bianca
BJ Dog Rescue – CO Progress Report!
Commenter Jimbo alerted the list to a little three-legged shepherd mix pup he found abandoned behind a shopping mall in Pueblo. He asked for help.
The miracle of the Internet! From BJ to FB…I put out an alert on our county’s community FB page that we were looking for a home for said puppeh, and got a great response. The community had already named him (Bear), and two women said they were willing to re-home him.
So I went and picked him up yesterday. OMG such Screaming Cuteness. A gentle, sweet, old-soul pup. He just brought a smile to everybody’s face when we went parading down the main drag in Manitou Springs. So shy – he’s obviously had bad experiences. But so determined to make contact when he was finally ready, that he crawled over the back seat of my CRV as we were hurtling down the highway (he was in the way back), and thence, after some drama and squealing that involved his one remaining back foot getting caught in my cupholder (!!), into the passenger seat next to me, where he started licking my hand and looking up at me with huge, calm, amber eyes. My heart just exploded with love. I was starting to regret turning him over to my new friend Cynthia.
Oh, yeah…my new friend Cynthia! In my new capacity as Democratic Party Central Committee member for our county, I’m going to be in charge of recruiting candidates to run for local and regional offices. And Cynthia just happens to have run for the School Board last election. She lost to a good old boy, but not by very much. She was on my list of people to contact to run again. And now we’ve met. And we’re going to do play date for all our dogs at the dog park.
Pets and politics – is this a BJ story, or what?
ruemara
Sorry but as a person working in the behavior community, there’s nothing to defend about Cesar Milan’s techniques. They are dangerous, brutal, not based on science and on the dumbass pack leader theories that even the creator has disavowed. He’s no expert, he’s a celebrity. Using his style creates a dog that not only represses his fear signals, but jumps to aggression sooner. He got chased out of the Western Veterinary Conference this week, and for good reason. The company that brought him in as a celebrity spokesbabe also has been banned from the next conference. There’s not much both sides on the science part, although I know some people feel they need balanced training with their particular dogs.
StellaB
Cesar Milan reads dogs very well and has quick reflexes. Even if his techniques were effective, most of us couldn’t reproduce them. Positive training is easier and more efficient for us regular people.
The pack-leader theory is silly, but sometimes people have to learn that they don’t need to permit dogs to behave in any manner that they want too. I like to think that I run my household as a benign dictatorship, but it took my husband a few years to understand this program. The dogs picked up on it a lot faster.
Pogonip
I couldn’t watch the clip. Poo.
I WAS able to see the one at Terrier Man’s site. That one looked all right to me. (I was only baguely aware of Cesar Millan’s existence before this.). Does he specialize in saving large, aggressive dogs from being put down? You would use a different approach for such a case than you would for a dog that loves everything and everybody. And you can’t let a small dog, however mean it is, work out its tantrum hanging on the end of the leash be ause it’ll injure its neck.
Steve from Antioch
Bullshit. Just google blind last tests and you’ll see that there is absolutely zero difference in the taste of coddled free-range eggs and whatever you buy from the store.
Understand – I have a flock of chickens that range over our property – but I’ve done the blind taste tests myself and there’s no difference.
bystander
I just like the caption I saw that referred to the “French bulldog-terrier mix”. All French bulldogs are part terrier, so not quite sure what they meant.
For those of us who are French bulldog fans, this story is bittersweet. For all the chipmunks, squirrels, rabbits and even bird who are never remotely menaced by the great predatory beasts that Frenchies are, it was unusual to hear of an animal actually threatened by the Clown of the Dog World.
Elmo
@bystander: I had a rescue Frenchie mix for several years. All Frenchie except for his legs and snout. On the couple of occasions he got out of the dog yard, he gleefully murdered as many of my chickens and turkeys as he could chase down.
Lovely wonderful clown charmer of a dog, but he was death incarnate to our flock.
Pogonip
@Elmo: Dogs, even foo-foo cute little dogs, are tougher than many people realize.
Which may mean Millan, however mean he may be to pigs, may not be mean to dogs. A dog does not have to, and probably should not, be handled like an egg. (Before you start roughhousing around with a pedigreed or elderly dog, though, check with the vet as to how frail it is. Some of those short-faced pedigreed dogs can barely breathe, much less play.)
Betty Cracker
@Steve from Antioch: Bullshit yourself. Eggs from a home flock both look and taste different. It’s not rocket science to figure out why either.
muddy
@Betty Cracker: How about it! They are visibly different before you even get to taste them. The home ones are orange inside, not yellow. They are different in the nutrition they provide.
Miss Bianca
@Betty Cracker:
Seconded on that.
muddy
@BubbaDave: I have a ginger cat who likes to bite and shred. I gave him a good sized box on the kitchen floor, and put some paper and cardboard in it. He has made a nice nest with a scalloped edge from biting. The other day he stole a coffee filter and I found it in his fort. He also likes crumpled envelopes, the ones with a plastic window are the best because they make a noise. He hasn’t discovered wires, and I hope he doesn’t!
Pogonip
I’m not sure how reliable memory is after 50 years, but my grandparents’s eggs tasted better than the ones from the store, then and now.
The eggs were laid by the chickens belonging to my grandparents, not by the grandparents themselves. Before anyone asks. I know how you people are.
CONGRATULATIONS!
I raise Guide Dogs for the blind. Have done so for a number of years.
I would NEVER use Millan’s methods on our dogs, but that’s because I don’t have to. They’re purebreds, bred for over 100 years, for temperament and not looks. The trainers are trained as well. We use positive reinforcement only. These dogs simply never develop the behavioral problems that the dogs that Millan’s cases do. Why? The dogs get 24/7 socialization from the moment of their birth, full-time supervision (24/7) for their first year and a half of life, and an organization that spends thousands per dog to insure that they come out good. These are resources that will never be available to the average dog owner. So the majority of folks have to wing it. The results of that are not good. I’d like to see a lot fewer people owning dogs, to be honest.
All that being said, I have worked with problem dogs. A couple of whom were extremely serious. Millan’s methods tend to disturb viewers because he inflicts corrective violence on dogs. In the wild, this is how dogs work it out. And in the wild, sometimes the way dogs work out other problematic dogs is by killing them. Millan knows this and has taken extraordinary pains to avoid getting these dogs put down. I have seen him do some things that looked disturbing but were well within the margin of safety for every critter concerned. To be honest, the only error Millan’s ever made is by allowing some of the more violent corrections to be filmed and published, but that’s a career mistake. The actions themselves are not and I defend them. The alternative in these cases is simply killing the dog. That might be the right decision in some cases, frankly, but I’ve watched Millan over the years do everything humanly possible to avoid that.
Here’s the fact no one wants to acknowledge: POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT ONLY DOES NOT WORK ON ALL DOGS.
Once you accept that and get on with proper training, you can try to save the pup’s life. Like it or not, what determine’s a dog’s worth is their ability to work well with all humans they encounter. The ones fail that challenge die. He deserves a medal as far as I’m concerned, and he’s rehabbed dogs I would have put down without a second thought. Millian is doing his best to save as many dogs as he can.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Terrierman nails it.
NotMax
For someone who is anti-meat, you sure do serve up a giant-sized helping of tripe in these posts.
Betty Cracker
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Do you co-sign “Terrierman’s” sexist bullshit too? Sorry, but a person who has so little understanding of his own fucking species has zero credibility about another.
Pogonip
@CONGRATULATIONS!: That was the impression I had too, that he is a specialized dog trainer of last resort.
Pogonip
In other news from the animal world, today’s goodmorningkitten.com has an off-center Hitler ‘stache that is too cute.
In animal-related questions, what does “chimp-out” mean? To me it evokes hooting, screaming, jumping up and down, and flinging poo, all of which I consider laudable activities–people are too submissive to authority these days.
Pogonip
@NotMax: I think Hillary is parodying the stereotypical liberal tree-hugger while collecting interesting news from the animal world. I don’t think she expects her persona to be taken seriously.
She’s probably Doug J.
ecr
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Mr. Millan is being investigated for cruelty to the pig being used as bait, not to the dog.
Anne Laurie
@BubbaDave:
Count your blessings! Our ginger Oriental Shorthair boy is on at least his third home — after being rescued from scrounging around some strip-mall dumpsters, his first adoptive family returned him for eating holes in their clothes. Foster-mom assured us Rocket was just bored, he’d be fine in a home with other cats & dogs & people around all day…
In 18 months the (not so little) monster has chewed holes in at least a thousand dollars’ worth of clothing & linens — jeans, party dresses, teeshirts, dress shirts, jackets, towels, linens, and more socks than we care to count. He eats nylon brushes — we have to keep the toilet brush rubber-banded in its case to keep him from chewing on it! He has the Siamese acrobatic genes, leaps & climbs ‘impossible’ barriers, and not only opens cabinet doors (even the ones with childproof latches, just for the hell of it), he opens heavy drawers by scrambling inside the back of the dresser & using his weight to shove them open…
Meezers are notorious for chewing on stuff they shouldn’t, but maybe it’s his ginger genes as well!
@CONGRATULATIONS!: You’re right about Millan; there are a small minority of dogs at the end of the bell curve that don’t respond to positive-only conditioning, and for whom the only safe alternative to a domineering “pack leader” is euthanasia. Millan’s (career-profitable) “mistake” is assuming, or pretending, that this training is necessary for more than that tiny minority of pet dogs. Not to mention assuming that more than a tiny minority of American dog owners have the ability to enforce his training correctly… I’ve got good friends who’ve “rehabilitated” dogs with serious temperament problems, but it’s a life-of-the-dog commitment, one that most people just don’t have the ability to make & keep.
Juju
@Betty Cracker: Terrierman lost me with that hooey as well. It’s not only sexist, it is very outdated. Schools have been dealing with bullying in a whole different way for at least the last ten years, probably longer. If you watch the occasional public service announcement about bullying, you’d be at least a bit aware.
As a former humane society worker, I’ve seen dogs abandoned for the stupidest reasons. if some of Milan’s techniques can help prevent that, I can deal with some of his BS. The pig thing was stupid, though.
Darkrose
@muddy: One of our cats chews on anything plastic. Grocery bags when we used to get them, earbud cords, cardboard, and all types of cables–including the power cord for my vibrator, which sounds hilarious until I turned it on and the cord sparked.
Juju
@Darkrose: I had a dog who liked to eat drywall. That was fun.