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Four-Legged Friends OPEN THREAD

By SusanUnPC on February 3, 2008 at 9:45 PM in Open Thread

A couple stories this weekend tore at my heart. There’s one thing we ALL can do so easily: Mail a check, or donate online, to our local humane societies. My daughter and her boyfriend went to Costco and bought kitty litter, bleach, soap, garbage bags, cat and dog food and delivered it to the struggling county shelter along with a cash donation. What shelters always need most, of course, is money and new parents for these abandoned animals who make wonderful pets. (NEVER buy a purebred or a pet store animal when so many wonderful animals need a great home!)

(1) [Image: Abandoned cat at a shelter.] “‘Foreclosure pets’ unfortunate phenomenon,” A.P./Seattle Times: “The house was ravaged: its floors ripped, walls busted and lights smashed by owners who trashed their home before a bank foreclosed on it. Hidden in the wreckage was an abandoned member of the family: a starving pit bull.

“The dog found by workers was too far gone to save, another example of how pets are becoming the newest victims of the nation’s mortgage crisis as homeowners leave animals behind when they no longer can afford their property.

“Pets ‘are getting dumped all over’, said Traci Jennings, president of the Humane Society of Stanislaus County in Northern California. ‘Farmers are finding dogs dumped on their grazing grounds, while house cats are showing up in wild cat colonies.’ …” READ ALL.

Here’s the second story — a story of hope in the aftermath of horrific cruelty:

“Given Reprieve, N.F.L. Star’s Dogs Find Kindness”

A quick survey of Georgia, a caramel-colored pit bull mix with cropped ears and soulful brown eyes, offers a road map to a difficult life. Her tongue juts from the left side of her mouth because her jaw, once broken, healed at an awkward angle. Her tail zigzags.

Scars from puncture wounds on her face, legs and torso reveal that she was a fighter. Her misshapen, dangling teats show that she might have been such a successful, vicious competitor that she was forcibly bred, her new handlers suspect, again and again.

But there is one haunting sign that Georgia might have endured the most abuse of any of the 47 surviving pit bulls seized last April from the property of the former Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick in connection with an illegal dogfighting ring.

Georgia has no teeth. All 42 of them were pried from her mouth, most likely to make certain she could not harm male dogs during forced breeding.

Her caregivers here at the Best Friends Animal Society sanctuary, the new home for 22 of Mr. Vick’s former dogs, are less concerned with her physical wounds than her emotional ones. They wonder why she barks incessantly at her doghouse and what makes her roll her toys so obsessively that her nose is rubbed raw.

“I’m worried most about Georgia,” said the Best Friends veterinarian Dr. Frank McMillan, an expert on the emotional health of animals, who edited the textbook “Mental Health and Well-Being in Animals.” “You don’t have the luxury of asking her, or any of these animals: ‘What happened to you in your past life? How can we stop you from hurting?’

“So here we are left with figuring out how to bring joy to her life,” he said of Georgia, known to lick the face of anyone who comes near. “We want to offset the unpleasant memories that dwell in her brain.”

Mr. Vick, once the highest-paid player in the N.F.L., is serving a 23-month sentence in a federal prison in Leavenworth, Kan., for bankrolling his Bad Newz Kennels dogfighting operation and helping execute dogs that were not good fighters. Dogs were electrocuted, hanged, drowned, shot or slammed to the ground, according to court records. Two mass graves with the remains of eight pit bulls were found on Mr. Vick’s property in rural Virginia. … READ ALL.

Don’t forget to open your phone book, or look it up on the Web, and give your local shelter some funds. They’ll be most appreciative. And our four-legged friends will get a chance at a better life.

Michael Lafferty

Thank you for reminding us that is most often the least among us—in this case, the animals—who suffer most as the result of human anger, selfishness and greed.

I think, too—at a time like this—of the tens of hundreds of thousands of people, those like the many—or, most of the vast population—in Iraq, who suffer at our hands, while we seem to notice how little damage he have wrought upon them. And, who suffered under years of US led sanctions, only to eventually be bombed into near submission by an occupying force, pried from their homes and forced to flee, in advance of our forces and the murderous thugs among them who we seem powerless to stop.

All in the name of Democracy. Or, something. It’s a wonderful world…
susanunpc

Wow, what a great point. The U.S. media always play up the touching stories of soldiers who adopt dogs, but how many millions of animals — dogs, cats, mules, sheep, etc., etc. — have suffered horrific fates because of the war. The media should cover THAT story too. Thanks for bringing that up. (OF course, you can be sure the media will never do the story.)

Often, I wonder about the snow leopards who live(d) in the mountains of Afghanistan. I wonder if there are any left. I’d be shocked if there were.

And I’ve read stories about the decimation of wild bird populations in those regions because of war.

Yesterday on BookTV, there was an author who’s written about what would happen if man disappeared from the earth. I forget the name of his book.

Frankly, if mankind did disappear from the earth, it’d be better off.

He said the worst problem will be the disintegration of plastic. He wishes that organisms developed that fed on plastic.
simon

I guess I would add a lot of people are suffering, too.

If you think of it, drop a few cans of food off at your local food bank, or a couple of dollars.
http://noquarterusa.net/ SusanUnPC

Absolutely.

Before every Howard Dean Meetup in 2003-2004, we put a notice in the newspaper for the meeting’s location, etc., and a request that everyone bring food for the local food bank. It was amazing how generous people were — most brought several cans of food and not just junky food either — food high in protein, etc.

I was in charge of the Meetups but someone always came up to me afterwards and asked me if they could deliver the food for me, and I was so grateful for the offer. People can be truly great.
http://noquarterusa.net/ SusanUnPC

Another little story: When my daughter was in high school, we had a parents’ class called “Random Acts of Kindness.” Every week we did something kind for someone — but without discussing its purpose or what we wanted to get out of it — and then discussed it at our meetings. One of my personal best memories was walking outside the grocery store one night and seeing a young man who was obviously homeless. I gave him some money, and he went inside and came out five minutes later with a nice sandwich and hot coffee. It was touching. That was such a fun class — and we all left each week feeling so good about each other and the world.
http://noquarterusa.net/ SusanUnPC

It makes me sick that people would abandon their pets inside a house that they’re leaving. The least they could do would be to take it to a shelter … to let that dog starve to death is unbelievably cruel.

I realize it’s immensely traumatic to lose one’s home, but to put the pet through such hell? I have no sympathy for such people.
CognitiveDissonance

Susan, unbelievable! I have no sympathy for anyone who would abuse a pet or leave it to die. You’re right – the very least they could do is take it to a shelter. Better yet, don’t EVER get a pet if you aren’t going to consider them a part of your life and your family. Every pet I’ve had has been very special to me. It would be inconceivable not to take them with me, no matter how bad the situation.
TeakWoodKite

My daughter is volunteering at the local Humane Society as her High school requires 40 hours of Community Service. She says it rewarding.
ybnormal

My pet story.
Last summer a friend of ours found a 6+ month old dog wandering dangerously in the streets next to a park in North Hollywood. She took him home for a night. Because she already had two labs, she decided to take him to the county shelter; and later begged us and other of her friends to adopt him.

We went and checked him out at the shelter. They listed him as a “brindle-colored hound”. We couldn’t resist, so we adopted him.

Pure breeding didn’t have a lot of meaning to us, but I was curious to know if his breed if any would tell us anything about how he might be expected to grow up. Some neighbors thought he was mixed pit-bull or rotweiller because of his coloring and rather solid jaw, but those breeds are not hounds.

After a fair amount of research, it turns out he’s a North Carolina classic hunting hound known as a Plott Hound; named after the Blue-Ridge Smokey-Mountain area family named Plott which first bred them back in the 18th century. The official NC state dog and according to AKC, “arguably the most effective hunting hound ever developed”, used to hunt bears and wild boar – a benefit lost on me, a non-hunter. However, he is very energetic and eager to please.

So the result is, a shelter doesn’t necessarily mean mixed breed. You might just get one, even if it’s not what you were looking for, and find that whatever you got was a good choice after all.
ybnormal

“I wonder if there are any left.”

Near where I live is a high-desert area called Antelope Valley – which has zero Antelopes – except for a few in a local zoo.
http://noquarterusa.net/ SusanUnPC

What a beautiful story! It’s so neat that you finally found out what your dog is. What’s his name?

You are CORRECT — I should modify my statement. My daughter’s own experience is like your own. She adopted Lily, a rescue who been badly abused in three homes before it went to a foster home. In one home, it was kept in a crate in the garage 24/7 except once a day when it was allowed out to go to the bathroom and eat.

Everyone thought that Lily was a mix of terrier and something else.

One night my daughter was walking Lily in Seattle’s great dog park on Lake Washington, and a couple walked up to her and said, “We know the breed of your dog.”

It turns out that Lily is a Irish lurcher — a breed raised in Ireland by gypsies to hunt small game — and that lurchers are very uncommon in the U.S.

Now my daughter knows why Lily goes nuts whenever she sees a squirrel!

She also runs faster than any dog at the dog park — none has beaten her in a race yet!

She’s taken a lot of work to help her calm down. She still dives under the car seat when they drive on the ferry. But a lot of her behaviors have disappeared. She gets along beautifully with others dogs and cats…. she’s a real joy.
dana b

Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the human “victims” of the subprime mortgage crisis. Thinking only of themselves, this family trashed the house but left a reminder of who they really were when they left their animal as the only witness.
ybnormal

His name is Brindle, because of his color.
Not terribly original, but only two syllables.

I’ve also noticed some possible left-over reactionary behaviour. Not extreme, and I don’t know his history, but he still gets a little freaky when I reach for the top of his head. He prefers back petting.

Very athletic and very fast and agile with long endurance. My biggest challenge is getting him tired. Looks like a bigger heavier version of a greyhound (roughly 50 pounds). Can also leap high. I’m trying to ‘frisbee’ train him, if I can get him to give it back to me once in a while. He has webbed toes, I suppose for running through mud?

He loves the off-leash dog parks; but his favorite outing ever is the beach – goes berzerko in the surf.
Delia

Agreed! My sympathies for the humans involved just went way down.

Another problem human population for animal abandonment are university students. I live in a university town and there’s a problem here with students adopting cats and then just leaving them when they move out. When my daughter was in college in another area her roommates picked up a cat that had been dumped at the local pound before it opened in the morning. None of them would take care of her properly, so my daughter took her when she moved. Then I ended up with her (the cat) b/c daughter moves around too much to give an animal a stable home right now.
TeakwoodKite

daughter moves around…funny how that works. Same thing here.
Jamie Molina

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