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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

If you think of it, drop a few cans of food off at your local food bank, or a couple of dollars.

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.