If Michael Vick was a Sociologist

Would his ‘exploration‘ of the dog fighting world have been defensible?  Maybe even commendable?

Yesterday’s edition of Inside Higher Education reports the story of Scott DeMuth, a University of Minnesota sociology graduate student who is studying radical animal rights and environmental groups.  DeMuth has been ordered to appear before a grand jury to testify on a 2004 attack on the University of Iowa allegedly conducted by members of the Animal Liberation Front (ALF).

During the raid hundreds of mice, rats, pigeons and guinea pigs were released from a research laboratory.  ’Cause, you know, animals bred and raised in laboratories survive so well out in the wild. 

DeMuth has been  indicted under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act for conspiracy.  The indictment states that “Scott Ryan DeMuth did knowingly and intentionally conspire with persons unknown to the grand jury to commit animal enterprise terrorism and cause economic damage to the animal enterprise in an amount exceeding $10,000,”.   The damages actually totaled nearly half a million dollars – not including the loss of data.  And in a twisted bit of irony, more animals will undoubtedly be used to collect data to replace that which was lost.

Inside Highter Education reports:

[DeMuth] maintains that his knowledge of animal rights groups is based on his pledges of confidentiality to the individuals who talk to him. After he was released from jail, he was indicted on charges that he conspired to commit “animal enterprise terrorism” and to cause “damage to the animal enterprise.” These charges are under a new federal law designed in part to give authorities more tools to go after those who vandalize animal research facilities.

A group of professors, led by DeMuth’s academic advisor David Pellow, have organized a petition drive and new organization – Scholars for Academic Justice – to support DeMuth.  Why is a professor defending student who is withholding information on a group that has damaged university property and threatened other academics?  Possibly because he’s sympathetic to ALF’s cause too.   In a guest post at GreenIsTheNewRed, Pellow (who describes himself as a “ vegetarian, animal rights and anti-racist activist” in advance praise for a book on the politics of animal rights posted prominently on the ALF website) writes:

My own research on movements for racial justice, labor rights, environmental justice, and animal and earth liberation suggests quite clearly that the state and corporations spare no expense and rarely hesitate to engage in surveillance, infiltration, and other efforts to neutralize the power and reach of these groups. As a publicly outspoken scholar and activist, Scott DeMuth is at the center of these dynamics and is quickly becoming a force for common ground among people across various movements, organizations, and universities who believe that government power should always be checked and that scholars, citizens, activists, and ordinary folks must enjoy basic rights and freedom from coercion and repression. Support Scott, protect academic freedom, and let’s work to abolish the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act!

About that “freedom from coercion and repression” thing Dr. Pellow – do you believe it should apply to everyone?  Or just to the people whose ideals are as  lofty as yours?

DeMuth can hardly be described as a dispassionate observer of animal rights extremists.  He was one of the founding members of Earth Warriors are OK! (EWOK), a group that directly supports animal rights and environmental activists facing criminal charges and prison sentences.  Speaking of criminal charges, it’s too bad this story didn’t come out sooner.  If DeMuth’s defenders are successful, Michael Vick’s attorney could have used it as a case study on how not only to prevent Vick from being charged, but to help get him published too!

Given where his sympathies lie, it isn’t surprising that even though DeMuth was offered immunity, he refuses to testify.  He claims that because the time he spends with them is part of his research, his work with ALF is protected by academic freedom.  I wonder how he feels about United States vs Stevens?

Is the politically incestuous, university-sanctioned “research” of a an avowed animal rights activist who takes notes during felony crimes more worthy of first amendment protection than the artistic, educational, historic “research” of a dog fighting aficionado?

And if it is, who gets to decide whose speech is more worthy of protection?

Gutsy Wolves Challenge Hunter

The International Wolf Center (IWC) reports that approximately 2,450 wolves lived in Minnesota in 1997-1998 (the most recent year I could find data for).  The IWC states that wolf populations in Minnesota are currently increasing at a rate of 3-4.5% per year, giving a current (2009) population of 3,000-4,000 wolves.

According to Minnesota DNR, about a million deer live in Minnesota.  Human hunters currently harvest over 200,000 of them each year.  The IWC reports that “On average, each wolf kills an estimated 15-20 adult-sized deer or their equivalent per year.”  This means that wolves harvest 45,000 – 70,000 deer each year.

U.S. Census Bureau data shows that the human population of Minnesota is currently about 5.2 million.  The human population is increasing at a rate of 4-4.6% per year, slightly faster than the wolf population.

More wolves plus more people equals a lot more opportunities for wolves to become habituated to people.  While most of Minnesota’s wolf population lives in the northern part of the state where human population density is still low, one situation where habituation can occur may be creating a threat to both species.

A gut pile is part of any successful deer hunt by humans. Minnesota DNR regulations state that:

Hunters who process their own deer may not dispose of carcasses on public land, including wildlife management areas, state forests, road rights of way or in any water body. Deer carcasses may be disposed of in the following ways:

    • On private land with the permission of the landowner.
    • Through your refuse hauler after checking on how to properly bag the
         carcass.
    • At a local landfill.

But as someone who has spent a lot of time hiking in the forests of Minnesota and Wisconsin, I can assure you that far too many hunters adopt an “out of sight, out of mind” philosophy when it comes to carcass disposal.  After they’ve packed the meat they want out of the woods, a  lot of hunters find it easy to “forget” about that gut pile.  Especially when getting rid of it properly can mean hours of “pointless,” messy labor.  So it’s frustrating, but not surprising, to find that gut piles and carcasses are a regular sight along backroads and wooded areas during deer season.

According to this article in the Detroit News, Wisconsin wolf biologist Adrian Wydevan sees a problem in this trend:

Wydeven said a wolf pack near the Minnesota-Wisconsin border learned to associate the sound of gun shots with food from gut piles. When Minnesota’s hunting season started, they lived in Minnesota. When Wisconsin’s hunting season started, the wolves were in Wisconsin. If you shoot a deer in the afternoon, have a headlamp and be prepared to field dress and remove the animal. If you don’t, the wolves might.
 

Could increasing habituation of wolves to humans combined with packs of wolves who become conditioned to see gut piles as the vulpine lupine equivalent of fast food, eventually make the northwoods a more dangerous place for deer hunters (and other outsdoorsmen) in the upper midwest?

If a recent news report is true – it’s already happening.  Last week the StarTribune reported:

The wolves appeared shortly after Scott Wundinich shot and gutted a deer, then climbed back into his stand.

“Four or five, including a pitch-black male, came running out of the woods together,” recalled Wundinich, 48, of Eveleth, Minn. “I looked to my left and saw three more. There were three or four more on my other side. I was stunned. I yelled and screamed, but they pretty much ignored me. They paced back and forth. They wanted my deer and the gut pile.”

Despite firing several shots to try to scare away the wolves, they lurked, sometimes howling and barking, about 50 yards from Wundinich’s stand for 45 minutes.

Wundinich stayed in safety of his tree stand until it was dark.  Still able to hear the wolves, but desperate to escape, he climbed down with a still-loaded rifle, bolted for his ATV, and raced out of the woods (it isn’t legal to operate an ATV in the woods between sunrise and sunset during hunting season).  I’m sure he was glad to leave the deer behind, and I’m not sure I’d have been brave enough to wait until dark.

Wildlife officials say the encounter with wolves was unusual. But Wundinich and others, including some northern Minnesota conservation officers, say such encounters and sightings there are becoming more common.

“I’d say almost 50 percent of the deer camps I’ve checked have said they’ve seen wolves,” said Dan Starr, Department of Natural Resources conservation officer in Tower. “That has increased. They [wolves] are getting pretty bold.”

Wild wolves usually flee from people, even around food. And wolf attacks on humans are exceptionally rare.  Somehow, I doubt that Wundinich found this thought comforting.  When the wolves approached his deer:

He stood up and made noise. “They scampered off a bit, but it didn’t scare them,” he said. He shot his 30.06 rifle twice in the air. “They ran about 45 yards away on top of a hill and started howling.” Unsure what to do, he used his cell phone to call his dad at the cabin, who told him to call Starr, the local conservation officer, whom Wundinich knows.

“He [Starr] said fire some shots to scare them. I told him I had done that,” Wundinich said. “He said to leave the deer.”

Wundinich and his nephew later returned to retrieve the deer later that night – armed with rifles. 

“The gut pile was mostly gone and they bit into the hindquarters and neck and chewed on an ear,” he said.

Wundinich said he was reluctant to tell anyone about the experience because he feared no one would believe him. Starr, however, mentioned the incident in his weekly report, which is distributed to news media. He said he has no reason to doubt Wundinich’s story.

According to wolf expert David Mech, deer and moose are the main prey of wolves in the area where the incident happened.

While it isn’t legal to hunt wolves in Minnesota, Wundinich could legally have shot any wolves that attacked him.  If he was correct that ten or more of them were attracted to his deer carcass, he was probably wise to stay up in his stand and try to drive them off.

To protect their own safety, hunters need to be more responsible about gut pile disposal.  Carcasses and gut piles along roads attract wildlife to traffic areas – a situation that is frequently lethal to scavengers.  When they’re left in wooded areas, they teach wolves and other scavengers to associate gunfire and the scent of humans with easy food.  And that can create situations that are potentially lethal to humans and wolves.

Responsible use of wild lands isn’t always convenient in the short run – but if we’re going to co-exist with wildlife we need to take responsibility for our actions.  Teaching wild animals of any kind that people are a safe and easy source of food is a bad idea.  Once they’ve become lost their fear of humans, it can be very difficult to re-instill a safe and sensible sense of fear back into animals.

Deer season ended a week ago, but I just shot this pretty buck in my backyard.
He had a healthy sense of fear, and I had to use a long lens.

A Portrait of the Artist as an Old Dog

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a dog photographer who didn’t specialise in photographing dogs - he was a dog.

Cyrus the Australian Shepherd belonged to photographer Athena Lonsdale and his career, like many of the great ones, began utterly by chance.  As reported in the Missoulian:

Lonsdale was a student at RMSP several years ago when a classmate came to her with a request. He was going into pet photography, and wanted his business cards to include a picture of a dog taking a picture of him. Could Lonsdale and Cyrus help him out?

Lonsdale taped a cheap Instamatic to a short tripod, stocked up on treats and taught Cyrus to swing his paw at the top of the camera. It wasn’t too difficult – the motion is essentially the same as you’d see if you taught a dog to “shake a paw.”

It’s just that Cyrus was taught it to the command, “Take a picture.”

At first Cyrus’ picture-taking was just a cute trick accomplished with an old, empty camera.  An amusing diversion for Lonsdale and, I’m sure, for Cyrus.  Fortunately a friend of Lonsdale’s saw the potential for photographic genius in Cyrus and suggested that she put film in the camera to see what Cyrus would come up with.  The rest, as the say, is history.

What developed was a photography career.

Cyrus’ prints have fetched, pardon the pun, up to $350, and he was even commissioned by people to take their portraits.

Like too many gifted artists, Cyrus didn’t achieve widespread recognition until after his death.  He passed away in September at the age of 13 and his first exhibit;  ”A Dog and his Girl” opens tomorrow (Friday, December 4, 2009) at the Rocky Mountain School of Photography Gallery.

Wow.  If dog art fetches $350 a photo – I may have to buy the OddMan his own camera.  Given Audie’s agreeable nature and willingness to use his mouth and paws to manipulate things for me, I don’t think it would take long to teach him to take photographs. 

Rather than a derivative approach modeled on Cyrus’ pre-selected, pre-posed compositions, I believe that Audie would prefer to adopt a more free-form approach. Perhaps selecting subjects based on their aromatic characteristics.

I wonder if I can get a motion-activated still camera that is set to take photographs when it detects a lack of motion instead of the standard camera that is triggered by the presence of motion?   The ‘no-mo’ camera would only take photos of the things that Audie stopped to examine in detail (or that he napped next to). 

If I put the no-mo camera on him before a long, off-leash walk, it could provide some fascinating insights.  Along with the usual poop and dead things, I bet there’d be some fascinating views of game trails, dens, tracks and a host of other wonderful things that my atrophied human senses and chronically distracted mind miss when he and I walk together.

If anyone knows where to get something like this -  please drop us a comment. If it works and it’s affordable, I’ll send you a free pawtographed print by the artiste.

If you ‘d like to see Cyrus’ work or buy a print, visit Wet Stinky Dog Studios.  There is some surprisingly good stuff there.

NOTE: Gallery date updated 12/04/09 as per Maddy’s correction.

“Felony” Police Dog Gets Death Penalty

Most of the local outlets aren’t covering this, but Minneapolis KARE11 News is reporting on the “euthanasia” of a local police K-9:

At ten years of age, Felony was nearing the end of his K-9 career with the Howard Lake Police Department. It just wasn’t supposed to end like this.

On October 30th, one of Felony’s handlers found that the black labrador had escaped his kennel.  He immediately called the Wright County Humane Society, who reported that they didn’t have the dog.

The County wasn’t aware that Felony had been picked up by a dog catcher working for the Animal Humane Society (AHS) not long after he escaped.

“Our officer contacted the Animal Humane Society shortly after contacting the dog catcher, said Chief Tracy Vetruba. “Unfortunately, at that time the dog catcher still had the dog, who he did not believe was our dog, and it ‘was’ our dog.”

Felony had somehow lost his license and rabies tags — and he had never been micro-chipped.  Thinking that their original calls to Wright County Humane Society and Animal Humane Society were sufficient to alert them to the dog, the Howard Lake police did not make any follow-up phone calls.  So, when he arrived at the Animal Humane Society Felony was placed on 5 day mandatory hold.  During the hold time he was labeled as “dangerous and unadoptable” — so at the end of his hold time, the police dog was killed.

The Howard Lake Herald-Journal reported that the dog was described to AHS and Wright County as being a black labrador.  Since he’s a working dog who’s almost eleven, Felony has a grey muzzle and paws — which reportedly made Kozitka believe he was not the “all black” K-9 he had just been asked to look for.  Why he didn’t think it was important to notify the police department of any black labs or substantially black lab-like dogs he picked up on this particular day is beyond me.  AHS skips out of the blame game by stating they have no record of calls from the police department providing a BOLO on Felony.  I’d love to see their phone records for October… 

KARE11 quotes Police Chief Tracy Vetruba:

“It’s kindof like the perfect storm of events coming together to result in a (sic)tradedy,” said Vetruba. “Our officers were devastated to learn that he was put down. He will absolutely be missed by our officers.”

I suppose a callous disregard for the life of a valuable police K-9 on the part of those whose jobs are (supposedly) to safeguard our community’s animals could be considered as part of a “perfect storm”.   I just see it as blatant, cold-hearted callousness. 

CityPages reports:

Howard Lake police say Felony had been with the force since 2002, after K-9 stints in Ortonville and Hector, and was responsible for more than $25,000 worth of seized drugs, cars  and cash.

This dog spent his life serving the community.  And he didn’t do it for a salary, benefits and a pension — he did his job for the pure joy of it.  What a sad and pointless waste. 

First I’m utterly gobsmacked that the City of Howard Lake couldn’t find the time or money to microchip a $5,000 police K-9.  Second, as dog owning (and tax paying) resident of Minnesota, I’m also deeply troubled by the callous attitude taken by Wright County dog catcher Wayne Kozitka and AHS.  If they make so little effort to identify and return a valuable local police K-9 that they’ve specifically been asked to look for — what kind of treatment can an average pet owner expect?

We’ve blogged here before about AHS’s disturbingly high kill rates.  I couldn’t find information on their website about the methods AHS uses to assess the adoptability of dogs in their care, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find that they use some version of Susan Sternberg’s test.  Sternberg’s Asses-A-Pet program recommends testing a dog for “food aggression” by poking it with a fake hand while it’s eating.  A picture of one of these hands is shown below – next to a picture of the kind of bite sleeve commonly used to train police K-9s.

Take a good, long look at those two pictures and tell me how shocked you’d be to find that a shelter stressed dog who has had any protection training might take one look at the item on the left and confuse it for the one on the right.  And then explain to me how a group who was specifically asked to be on the lookout for a lost black labrador who is a police K-9 doesn’t think to contact them when a short-coated black dog who likes to bite sleeves is seized the day after the loss is reported (oh, thats right – they never got the message [head-desk]).

Felony gave his life for his community.  Instead of dying a heroic death during a drug raid or tracking down a violent criminal – he died a sad and pointless death alone in a shelter death room.  Instead of being lauded as a hero, he’ll be mourned as a “mistake”.   …it breaks my heart…

To help protect these wonderful, valuable, four-legged public servants from similar pointless cluster fucks mishaps in the future, Midwest Animal Rescue & Services has offered free micro-chipping and registration for police dogs across the Twin Cities metro area.  Show them a little love.

Do Wolves Experience Mid-Life Crisis?

No, that kind of pointless angst is reserved for intellectually over-indulgent species like humans.  But, contrary to common myth, wild wolves don’t necessarily live hard and die young either. Doug Smith, Yellowstone Wolf Project leader at the Yellowstone Center for Resources was recently quoted in Minnesota Daily;  “Through mythology and fables, we want wolves to be a certain way and that is supremely good at killing,” he said. “It turns out they’re subject to the same problems we’re subject to. You get old quick.”

 Science Daily reports:

Although most wolves in Yellowstone National Park live to be nearly six years old, their ability to kill prey peaks when they are two to three, according to a study led by Dan MacNulty and recently published online by Ecology Letters.

As is the case with human beings, physiology appears to be an important factor.  Wolves need to have speed, strength and endurance to hunt successfully – and these qualities diminish with age.  This leads to some interesting economic parallels between our world and the world of the wolf:

When older wolves can no longer hunt successfully, younger wolves share their kill with them, in what MacNulty describes as a lupine version of Social Security. While a high ratio of old-to-young wolves may benefit elk, it could strain the wolf population because there aren’t enough workers to support retirees.

Montana legalized hunting wolves after they were removed from the endangered species list in 2007. Although hunting is prohibited in the park, packs wander beyond it boundaries and radio-marked wolves have been killed. MacNulty says hunting won’t put the species at risk, but it actually skews the population towards younger wolves, which could mean more deaths, not fewer, for the elk.

As quoted in BBC News MacNulty notes that aging in wild animals has (surprisingly) been a controversial subject:

“Although the effects of aging on physical performance in humans are well-known, the effects of aging in wild animal populations have been controversial,” says Dr Daniel MacNulty of the Michigan Technological University in Houghton, US.

“Many eminent biologists have argued that ageing rarely occurs in nature, because animals do not live long enough to exhibit its effects.”

“My study refutes this notion as well as demonstrates that aging may have important ecological consequences in terms of how a wild population uses its environment,” he says.

Wolves are brilliant cooperative hunters. Younger pack members supply speed and endurance to the chase - and older ones the wisdom they’ve acquired over years of experience.  I look forward to seeing more on how hunting affects the balance of old versus young members of wolf packs and how that, in turn, affects populations of their prey species.  If young wolves help feed older ones, and if wolves only kill what they need to eat, I’m not clear on exactly how a higher percentage of young pack members acts to decrease elk populations.  Intuitively it would just seem to mean that the young wolves don’t have to work as hard to feed themselves, and if hunting pressure continues to keep wolf numbers stable it isn’t obvious (at least to me) that elk numbers would be greatly affected. 

I’d also like to know more  about what kinds of wolves hunters look for. Tropy elk are pretty easy to identify from a distance, but it can’t be easy to get close enough to a wolf to tell its gender or, in many cases, its age.  Do hunters typically look for the biggest wolf, the one with the nicest pelt - or the easiest one to take down?   And how do ranchers who want to limit predation fit into the equation? 

It seems that today I’ve got more questions than answers.

Tricky

Hat tip to Southern Rockies Nature Blog for a link to the story of a very lucky unlucky gawd, I don’t know what to call it coyote who rode across California in the grill of a car.  According to KRCA:

Daniel East and his sister, Tevyn, were travelling at about 75 mph along Interstate 80 when they saw some coyotes running nearby. One of the coyotes ran in front of the car.

 ”Right off the bat, we knew it was bad,” Daniel East said.

 They said they kept driving because they thought they had killed the animal, so there was no point in stopping.

Well yeah, ’cause of course the best thing to do after you hit a defenseless animal on the road is just keep on truckin’.  After all, who’d want to stop and have to deal with all that suffering and blood and stuff.

And of course it makes perfect sense to wait eight or ten hours until you reach your destination to even check for damage to your car.  I wonder, did they have a full tank when they hit the coyote or did they just studiously avoid looking at the grill of their car on pit stops?

Imagine the surprise chagrin clueless confusion when they arrived at the art colony they were headed for and found a live coyote trapped in the engine compartment of the car.  To their credit, East and his sister called Wildlife Rehabilitation and Release after they found the coyote. 

The coyote was taken to the rehabilitation facility. It remained there until Thursday, when it managed to push up the steel at the bottom of a kennel to free itself, Crowell said.

 It hasn’t been seen since.

 ”We named it Tricky for a reason,” Daniel East said.

Somebody’s tricky here, I’m just not convinced it’s the coyote.  I’ll bet he was convinced that those tricky humans had just wedged him into a slightly larger trap

East told reporters that the coyote only had a few scrapes on its paws.  I hope that information came to him from the folks at the wildlife center because SRSLY -  How can a man who can’t tell there’s a live coyote wedged in the engine compartment of his Honda possibly diagnose a lack of broken bones and internal injuries in a panicked wild animal just by looking at it?

Check out the slide show at this link

Around the Web

First a thought-provoking article in the New Yorker comparing football and dog fighting by Malcolm Gladwell.  Here’s an excerpt, go here to read the rest:

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.
Professional football players, too, are selected for gameness. When Kyle Turley was knocked unconscious, in that game against the Packers, he returned to practice four days later because, he said, “I didn’t want to miss a game.” Once, in the years when he was still playing, he woke up and fell into a wall as he got out of bed. “I start puking all over,” he recalled. “So I said to my wife, ‘Take me to practice.’ I didn’t want to miss practice.” The same season that he was knocked unconscious, he began to have pain in his hips. He received three cortisone shots, and kept playing. At the end of the season, he discovered that he had a herniated disk. He underwent surgery, and four months later was back at training camp. “They put me in full-contact practice from day one,” he said. “After the first day, I knew I wasn’t right. They told me, ‘You’ve had the surgery. You’re fine. You should just fight through it.’ It’s like you’re programmed. You’ve got to go without question—I’m a warrior. I can block that out of my mind.

KFOX New Mexico reports that marijuana was found in several bags of dog food.  And no, this isn’t another product recall:

A drug-sniffing dog alerted U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers to the trunk of 2009 Peugeot. CBP officers opened the trunk and found large bags of dog food, but when they opened them up, marijuana was found inside.

 CBP officers removed 30 marijuana-filled bundles from the dog food. The drugs weighed 31 pounds. A drug-sniffing dog alerted U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers to the trunk of 2009 Peugeot. CBP officers opened the trunk and found large bags of dog food, but when they opened them up, marijuana was found inside.

A disturbing case of animal neglect reported on LocalNews 8 an eleven-pound stray dog in St. Anthony, Idaho had nine and a half pounds of matted hair removed from its body by a local vet.

However, police in St. Anthony say the owners of the matted dog Tuesday will NOT be charged with animal cruelty.

St. Anthony Police Chief Jim Smith says the owners are not mentally capable of understanding any charges facing them.

“You pass by the house where we found the dog and it’s surprising that people even live there it’s so run-down,” said Smith.

The dog, now appropriately renamed “Matt” is reported doing well after the mat-ectomy.  St. Anthony police are looking for ways to help his owners because according to the chief of police, “the dog’s situation mirrored that of the owners.”

Dog Tagging

We heard about a disturbing new trend in gang violence from a story published on BakersfieldNow earlier this month:

OILDALE, Calif. — A puppy was recently found tagged with red spray paint in an alley off Chester Avenue.

The puppy was found across from Sam Lynn Ballpark with the letters “O-A-E” sprayed on her side and a red strip sprayed down her back.

Michelle Lyon met the puppy Tuesday night when her neighbor brought her home.

“It’s appalling,” Lyon said. “We have so many animals dumped all the time, and we have so many graffiti problems in this area, and now we have them both in the same thing.”

Some people who live in the area where the puppy was found said this is the new trend in gang tagging. They said they see dogs and cats walking around with spray paint on them all the time.

Those residents spoke on condition of anonymity, because they said they fear the gang members responsible for the graffiti. They said the gang members tag animals to mark their territory.

Officials with the Bakersfield Police Department and the Kern County sheriff’s and animal control departments said they’re unaware of the problem. They said, however, that they wouldn’t expect to hear about it because of the fear of gangs.

Graffiti is as old as the written word and it’s a common sight in cities all over the world.  And dealing with problems like graffiti is a part of life for people that live in neighborhoods plagued by gang activity.  But until recently -  living creatures weren’t targets for these assaults defacement.

According to Alex Alonso (Gang Graffiti on the City Landscape), gang graffiti functions as a way to communicate sentiments, express group identity, and to dictate rules of their socially constructed places.  Alonso states:

Those who understand these spatial conquests of the landscape are able to identify the social and spatial order of a community. This even applies to non-gang youths of an area, who take it upon their own initiative to understand and respect these socially claimed places in an effort to safeguard themselves and to stay clear of gang conflict.

Imagine having gang members tag your pet with the signs they use to mark their territory.  Claiming a living member of your family as part of their turf.   The unfortunate people – and animals – who live in areas afflicted by gang activity live in a constant state of fear.  Threats and violence are a regular part of their daily existence.  It’s like living in a war zone.  And the problem is just getting worse…

The US Department of Justice reports:

Twenty years ago, fewer than half our cities reported gang activity. A generation later, 95 percent of our largest cities and 88 percent of smaller cities suffer gang-related crime. Eighty-nine percent of all cities recently reported that their gang problem was the same or getting worse. In one recent year, gangs committed more than 580,000 serious crimes.

These crimes exact a toll of tremendous physical and emotional pain from individuals, families, and entire communities. We are learning more about gangs and their activities, but know little about the individuals whose lives they so quickly and tragically change–the victims and survivors of gang violence. These victims face additional, special problems not confronted by most other crime victims.

There is one bit of good news in this story.  The tagged puppy, who was a stray, has found a new home.  But, like many other cities, Bakersfield’s gang problems continue to escalate.

Kern County – NO Exceptions in Dog Licensing

KGET News reports a story of dog spies animal control officers run amok.

A Bakersfield woman says she has been hounded by county animal control officers to license her dog. Funny thing is, the pooch officials were so concerned about is a stuffed animal.

Dottie Elkin lives by herself in a quaint home in south Bakersfield. For the past few months the 83-year old says she’s hated getting the mail, due to letters she’s receiving from the Kern County Animal Control Department.

“I told them I do not have a dog, it’s a stuffed dog,” Elkin said.

That’s right, Elkin has a stuff [sic] “guard dog” named Wolf, keeping watch at her front door. For the last six months she’s been getting letters from animal control asking her to license the dog or face a $200 fine.

Apparently animal control officers were cruising local neighborhoods trolling for revenue searching for unlicensed dogs when they spied Wolf sitting in Elkin’s doorway.  In classic bureaucratic style, they immediately started sending letters threatening to fine her if she didn’t license the dog immediately.  And they continued to send these letter for six months – even after she informed them that they had made what they now refer to as a “legitimate mistake”.

Video of the story is posted on MSNBC.  How in doG’s name did these morons get close enough to the “dog” to see that it wasn’t wearing tags without noticing it was a freaking stuffed dog!!!   Apparently Kern County officials have a very different understanding of the word “legitimate” than I do…

Heavy Metals Detected in Dog Toys

Several news sources today reported on recent testing conducted by Washington Toxics Coalition that found elevated concentrations of potentially toxic metals like lead, arsenic, cadmium and mercury in a quarter of the pet products they tested.

The government has not set any standards for hazardous chemicals in pet products.  Some researchers use recommended levels for children as a substitute because pets and small children crawl around on the floor and put products into their mouth potentially exposing them to higher levels of surface contaminants.  Standards for these metals set by ASTM F963-07: Standard Consumer Safety Specification for Toy Safety are 90 ppm for lead, 75 ppm for cadmium and 60 ppm for mercury in children’s products.   

The Washington Toxics Coalition’s press release states:

• 25% of the 400 pet products tested had detectable levels of lead.
• 7% of all pet products tested had lead levels greater than 300 ppm – the current Consumer Product Safety Commission standard for lead in children’s products.
• Nearly half of pet collars had detectable levels of lead; with more than one quarter exceeding 300 ppm.
• Nearly half of tennis balls tested had detectable levels of lead. Tennis balls intended for pets were more likely to contain lead, while the sports tennis balls tested did not contain lead.

The results can be found on the user-friendly website: http://www.healthystuff.org/departments/pets/. You can look up products by manufacturer, brand, or product type.