North Carolina County Bans Gas Chambers - Perhaps Reluctantly -More work needs to be done!

Hooray for Stokes County, North Carolina. They decided not to wait any longer for state legislators to decide about ending the use of gas chambers to euthanise homeless pets. Instead the county put its own ban on the cruel practice.

Earlier in 2009 the North Carolina Coalition for Humane Euthanasia put pressure on state politicians to review their policies for euthanising animals. This led to two bills that were introduced to legislators.

The first was House Bill 6 or Davie’s Law which was introduced by Rep. Cary Allred. It prohibited any animal from being killed in a carbon monoxide gas chamber. Davie’s Law was named after a shelter puppy that survived a gas chamber killing and was rescued when a couple heard him crying from inside a garbage bag in a dumpster in Davie County.

The second proposal, Bill 27 was a watered down compromise that banned gas chambers for most pets, but allowed the procedure for wild or dangerous animals. Feral cats were among those included in this category.

For a little while there was a flurry of activity as animal advocates reported horror stories about terrified animals forced into gas chambers and their lingering inhumane deaths.

Unfortunately legislators also heard from animal control officers and even the North Carolina American Veterinary Medical Association that the use of gas chambers could be considered a humane method of euthanasia, if it is done properly.

There was even a political scandal during the hearings with Rep. Allred that eventually led to him stepping down from his office.

Ultimately all of the debates, statistics and scandals didn’t matter in the end. According to the Animal Law Coalition, both NC Bills “were defeated and the legislation is dead for this session.”

The good news is that most of the state’s animal shelters have made the decision to toss out their gas chambers even without a statewide law and now Stokes County has joined them.

Phillip Hanby, the director of the Stokes County Animal Shelter said, “We knew eventually we would go to injections; it’s just taken time.”

It isn’t clear from his statements if Hanby is a wholehearted supporter of the new policy, but he is moving in the right direction. In an interview with Stokes County News he explained that the workload for his staff has increased because of the ban and because his staff must now give individual injections to the 30 cats and dogs euthanised every week, but “it’s something that needed to be done,” he said.

To decrease the workload for his staff Hanby is working with local organizations such as the Stokes County Humane Society and Stokes County Animal Rescue to place adoptable pets and educate pet owners about having their animals spayed and neutered. (Yes! Mimi's note.)

The shelter has also linked their website to Petfinder.com and their new Facebook page has helped find homes for cats and dogs from as far away as New York and Pennsylvania.

Mona Triplett with the Stokes Country Humane Society is pleased with the efforts made. She said, “I’m so proud of Stokes Country because they’re placing value on our pets. The Animal Shelter is making great strides in the community.”

There are still 31 animal shelters in North Carolina that use gas chambers to euthanize homeless pets.

Click here to read more about the subject: Animals Continue to Die While Politicians Debate

Now, before you go look at another blog or say, "Boy, someone should do something about this," if you live in North Carolina, find your legislator's email or phone number and rattle some chains - both at the state and Federal levels. If you don't live in North Carolina, check out the shelters in your state and where you live. Find out what they are doing. If it doesn't seem humane to you - write an editorial, contact your commissioners, contact state officials, contact the HSUS, contact the ASPCA, contact each and everyone you can think of because if YOU don't do it, who will?

Dozens of people were moved to tears when they read about Domi's death from cancer. If the shelter where she was living before she was adopted by her family had a kill attitude or used an inhumane method of euthanasia, that wonderful therapy dog would have been dead and gone before her family found her. If you have a shelter pet, look into his or her eyes and imagine a horrible, frightful, miserable death - then, get up and RATTLE SOME CAGES and CHAINS. The animals you love are depending on YOU! 

The look of love. The look of desire. The look of lust.

 

The Orangutan and the Hound (NatGeo): When you find a friend, looks don't matter

If you didn't get a chance to see this on National Geographic, enjoy. If you've already seen this, enjoy again! There is a LOT to be learned when you really examine the relationship between these two friends. Neither has the same background, upbringing, social status, education or past, but that doesn't mean a thing to either of them. Because - well - because when you find a friend in this world, no matter who it is or what it looks like - it's worth keeping.

The world has lost DOMI the THERAPY DOG. My heart is breaking, my sorrow immense.

There are times when I can barely stand the pain of loving dogs as much as I do. This is one of those times. We have lost Domi, a precious asset to this world who just couldn't fight any longer and medicine could not give her a miracle. Below you will find her last post - her post from Saturday, yesterday. My tears are flowing, my heart is breaking. If I feel this much sorrow I can only imagine the grief of her beloved family. If you have the time, please leave a message on Domi's blog for her family.

In Domi's honor, the next dog that I adopt will be a senior. After all, every one of us will be a senior one day and will look to the world to love and to care for us when we no longer have the glow of youth. Imagine what it feels like to be old and homeless. To have given all you have when you were younger and then to be cast off. I, for one, will do my part, however small, to offer my home to a dog in need.

Hello pups, kitties and peoples.

I'm not feeling well and I think this will be my finally post as I doubt I will make it through the night. We thought we had worked out a good dosage of the steroid and I had been feeling good lately. I had been looking forward to my visit with my girls parents as they always have lots of good food and take me on plenty of car rides. Unfortunately, after a couple of days there I just really started to not feel so well. I lost all my energy and was just having trouble getting around and breathing. My girl's mom increased the dosage on the steroid but my face just continued to swell. I'm home now with my boy and girl and it's a good place to be. They are resting beside me and trying to keep me as comfortable as they can.

Before I go, I just want to remind all you pups and kitties to always have plenty of love for your humans even if they might be grumpy. Sometimes they get caught up in all sorts of things and take us for granted. That doesn't mean they don't love and need us. Also you humans, remember why you have us around. If you are feeling stressed out, pet us. It's been proven to lower your blood pressure. Also keep lots of treats handy. And for everyone, enjoy life. Always take time for walks, frisbee and CAR RIDES.

And one last thing for you humans. If you are considering adding another dog to your home, think about giving one of older dogs a chance. We don't chew up your shoes, pee inside (well, not unless we really can't help it) or need lots of training. Plus you will have a very loyal friend for the rest of our lives.

Good bye everyone. It's been really wonderful to get to know all of you.

Domi the Therapy Dog

Do dogs go to Heaven? The battle of the Catholics and Presbyterians!

Published on February 19, 2009 in liturgy.

Many of you will recognise this thought-provoking series is a product of a Church Sign Generator.

Presbyterians, it appears, are pre-destined neither to use this wonderful viral advertising for their church positively, nor to roll in the aisles with laughter. Here is the Cumberland Presbyterian Church response to the above.

Roman Catholic Church is Our Lady Queen of Martyrs Church is in Forest Hills, New York, USA.
 

Did you know that it is NATIONAL DOG WEEK! WOWZA!

The phrase "man's best friend" is a well worn but accurate description of the depth of our relationship with dogs. It is that relationship which is celebrated during National Dog Week. This year, the 74th National Dog Week runs Sept. 24 through Sept. 30.

"Man's Best Friend" is this year's theme. The idea that the dog is "man's best friend" is believed to have originated during a closing argument given by Sen. George Graham Vest, of Missouri. Vest, a lawyer, was representing a man whose dog was deliberately shot and killed by a neighbor. The grief stricken dog owner was suing the neighbor for damages.

In his closing argument, Vest gave what has become the famous "Tribute to the American Dog." The speech to the jury was so powerful that it not only won the case, it has been inscribed in a monument in Warrensburg, Missouri. William Safire included it in his compendium of the world's great speeches.

Here is a portion of the speech, which reportedly left not a dry eye in the courtroom:"The best friend a man has in the world may turn against him and become his enemy. His son or daughter that he has reared with loving care may prove ungrateful. Those who are nearest and dearest to us, those whom we trust with our happiness and our good name may become traitors to their faith ...

"The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog. ... He will sleep on the cold ground, where the wintry winds blow and the snow drives fiercely, if only he may be near his master's side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer. ... If fortune drives the master forth, an outcast in the world, friendless and homeless, the faithful dog asks no higher privilege than that of accompanying him. ..."

National Dog Week was founded in 1928 by Captain Will Judy, a noted dog judge and former publisher of Dog World Magazine. The purpose of National Dog Week is to educate all dog owners in their responsibilities to their pets and to their communities, particularly those organizations dedicated to caring for unwanted or lost dogs.

The event is being sponsored by the Dogs on Stamps Study Unit, of the American Topical Association. The Dogs on Stamps Study Unit is a non-profit philatelic organization specializing in the collecting, study, and enjoyment of stamps and other postal items that pertains to dogs. For more information, visit www.dossu.org.

What National Dog Week means depends on the individual. The sponsors suggest having your mayor proclaim Sept. 22-28 as National Dog Week and inviting the press to cover the proclamation. (Last year, New Jersey's acting Governor Donald T. Difrancesco proclaimed National Dog Week for the state).

Videos of Animal Torture and Dog Fighting - Cruel or Freedom of Speech?

Published: September 18, 2009 
THE NEW YORK TIMES

WASHINGTON — The next great First Amendment battle in the Supreme Court concerns, of all things, dogfight videos.

Robert J. Stevens, in “Pick-a-Winna.” He was sentenced under a law that bans trafficking in depictions of animal cruelty.

The ones at issue in the case are old and grainy, and they feature commentary from the defendant, Robert J. Stevens, an author and small-time film producer. Mr. Stevens calls himself an educator, and his subject is the history and status of pit bulls.
“For centuries,” Mr. Stevens exclaimed on one videotape, “the American pit bull terrier has reigned supreme as the gladiator of the pit!”

Mr. Stevens, 69, had nothing to do with the dogfights themselves. But he did compile and sell tapes showing them, and that was enough to earn him a 37-month sentence under a 1999 federal law that bans trafficking in “depictions of animal cruelty.”

The Supreme Court will hear his case, which has divided animal rights groups and free-speech advocates, on Oct. 6. The central issue is whether the court should for the first time in a generation designate a category of expression as so vile that it deserves no protection under the First Amendment. The last time the court did that was in 1982; the subject was child pornography.

Dogfighting and other forms of cruelty to animals are illegal in all 50 states. The 1999 law was aimed solely at depictions of such conduct. A federal appeals court last year struck down the law on First Amendment grounds and overturned Mr. Stevens’s conviction.

The law has an odd history. It was enacted in large part to address what a House report called “a very specific sexual fetish.” There are people, it seems, who enjoy watching videos of small animals being crushed.

“Much of the material featured women inflicting the torture with their bare feet or while wearing high-heeled shoes,” according to the report. “In some video depictions, the woman’s voice can be heard talking to the animals in a kind of dominatrix patter.”

  

A scene from "Catch Dogs and Country Living," one of a series of videos on pit bulls that led to the producer’s prosecution.

When President Bill Clinton signed the bill, he expressed reservations prompted by the First Amendment and instructed the Justice Department to limit prosecutions to “wanton cruelty to animals designed to appeal to a prurient interest in sex.”

But the Justice Department in the Bush administration pursued at least three prosecutions for the sale of dogfighting videos.

There is little dispute that crush videos are profoundly disturbing. The two dogfighting videos Mr. Stevens was prosecuted for selling present a harder question.

There was conflicting testimony at Mr. Stevens’s trial about the nature and social worth of the videos. Defense experts said the films had educational and historical value, noting that much of the footage came from Japan, where dogfighting is legal. A veterinarian who testified for the prosecution disputed that and said the videos depicted terrible suffering, including scenes of dogs that were “bitten, ripped and torn” and “screaming in pain.”

There is certainly biting in the dogfighting videos, but the fights are not bloody. In their Supreme Court brief, Mr. Stevens’s lawyers denied that any of the dogs in the videos were “ripped and torn,” and they counted “at most, 25 seconds containing yelps” in the more than two hours of footage on the tapes.

The third video at issue in the case, “Catch Dogs and Country Living,” shows pit bulls being trained to attack hogs and then hunting wild boar. The encounters are gory and brutal. Mr. Stevens participated in the hunting and filmed parts of the third video, which bears some resemblance to nature documentaries.

The law applies to audio and video recordings of “conduct in which a living animal is intentionally maimed, mutilated, tortured, wounded or killed.” It does not matter whether the conduct was legal when and where it occurred so long as it would have been illegal where the recording was sold.

That means it may be a crime for an American to sell a video of a bullfight that took place in Spain, where bullfighting is legal. And because all hunting is illegal in Washington, a literal reading of the statute would make the sale of hunting videos illegal here. The law contains an exception for materials with “serious religious, political, scientific, educational, journalistic, historical or artistic value.”

That exception may well protect journalism, scholarship and animal rights advocacy about subjects like factory farming, pharmaceutical testing, circuses and the slaughter of baby seals. But the determination of whether particular materials have “serious value” is, in the first instance at least, made by prosecutors.


News organizations, including The New York Times, filed a brief supporting Mr. Stevens. The 1999 law, the brief said, “imperils the media’s ability to report on issues related to animals.”

In a brief supporting the government, the Humane Society of the United States said that “gruesome depictions of animal mutilation targeted” by the law “simply do not merit the dignity of full First Amendment protection.”

When federal agents raided Mr. Stevens’s home in rural Virginia in 2003, he had no idea, his lawyers and family say, that he was breaking the law.

But there are hints in the videotapes that Mr. Stevens at least knew that people participating in dogfighting in the United States were doing something illegal.

“Because I’m not going to show any participants or spectators, I have to cut a lot of it,” Mr. Stevens, who has a folksy manner and looks a little like the actor Bill Murray, said on one of the videos. “I only show certain action clips I think you’ll enjoy.” Mr. Stevens did not try to hide the identities of those involved in the Japanese dogfights or in the video of dogs attacking hogs.

There is a crucial difference, Mr. Stevens’s lawyers told the Supreme Court, between illegal conduct and depictions of that conduct.

“While acts of animal cruelty have long been outlawed,” the brief for Mr. Stevens said, “there have never been any laws against speech depicting the killing or wounding of animals from the time of the First Amendment’s adoption through the intervening two centuries.”

State and local governments occasionally try to ban depictions of violence against people, notably in videogames. But those laws are routinely struck down, and the Supreme Court has never ruled that speech about nonsexual violence is beyond the protection of the First Amendment.

Mr. Stevens’s sentence was 14 months longer, the brief noted, than that of Michael Vick, the football star who actually participated in a dogfighting venture.

Through his lawyers, Mr. Stevens declined to be interviewed. He has said he never had his own dogs participate in dogfights.

Mr. Stevens’s son, Michael, said his father was guilty of nothing more than a longtime fascination with the affection, loyalty and passion of pit bulls. “You couldn’t treat a dog any better,” the younger Mr. Stevens said, “than my father treats pit bull dogs.”

My backyard sign. Did any-dog bother to read it? Nope!

My backyard sign. Did any-dog read it? Nope!

I'm preaching to the choir - I wish this for every dog and every cat and every living being

Here in this house...

I will never know the loneliness I hear in the barks of the other dogs 'out there'.
I can sleep soundly, assured that when I wake my world will not have changed.
I will never know hunger, or the fear of not knowing if I'll eat.
I will not shiver in the cold, or grow weary from the heat.
I will feel the sun's heat, and the rain's coolness,
and be allowed to smell all that can reach my nose.
My fur will shine, and never be dirty or matted.

Here in this house...
There will be an effort to communicate with me on my level.
I will be talked to and, even if I don't understand,
I can enjoy the warmth of the words.
I will be given a name so that I may know who I am among many.
My name will be used in joy, and I will love the sound of it!

Here in this house...
I will never be a substitute for anything I am not.
I will never be used to improve peoples' images of themselves.
I will be loved because I am who I am, not someone’s idea
of who I should be.
I will never suffer for someone’s anger, impatience, or stupidity.
I will be taught all the things I need to know to be loved by all.
If I do not learn my lessons well, they will look to
my teacher for blame.

Here in this house...
I can trust arms that hold, hands that touch...
knowing that, no matter what they do, they do it for the good of me.
If I am ill, I will be doctored.
If scared, I will be calmed.
If sad, I will be cheered.

No matter what I look like, I will be considered beautiful and known to be of value.
I will never be cast out because I am too old, too ill, too unruly, or not cute enough.
My life is a responsibility, and not an afterthought.
I will learn that humans can almost, sometimes, be as kind and as fair as dogs.

Here in this house...
I will belong.
I will be home.
(Author unknown)

Jon Gosselin Ditching Dogs; Kate Won't Take Care of Them

I imagine that the article speaks for itself. I had read about the abuse of his dogs a while back. All I have to say is that I certainly hope the breeder finds better homes for these two animals. My heart is so totally aching right now. And, yes folks, these are the same "adults" who are raising eight children.

Watch as he loads them up to give them away. He doesn't show any concern for animals that have given him all their love. He's a poor excuse for responsibility, if you ask me.

Credit: INFphoto.com

Jon Gosselin says estranged wife Kate is in the dog house — because she won't take care of his German Shephard puppies, Shoka and Nala. So he is returning them to the breeders. "It's not fair to the dogs to not be wanted in their own home," Jon says. See a photo of Jon playing with his dogs

The dogs belonged to Jon, and he was in charge of feeding, brushing and caring for them. He didn't explain why he won't just bring the dogs with him to New York City – where he rents a  two-bedroom bachelor pad — when it is not his turn to stay at the family's $1.1 million home in Wernersville, Pa.

Earlier in the summer, the Humane Society of Berks County, Pa., received about a dozen complaints from animal activists around the country after Gosselin said his eight kids "beat" the dogs, "climb on them, pull their tails, bite at them, drag them around."

He later denied animal cruelty claims, stating: "We understand the responsibilities of being good dog owners."

We ♥ Miss Golden Samantha an' our mailman WOOF!

Click on Sammie's photos an' you can go meet her

A furry good friend of ours alla' the way out there in the California surprised us like crazy when she sent us a box of many and delicious cookies and treats from a doggy barkery by the name of 3 Dogs and a Chick alla' the way down there in the Floridas. It was just the most amazing and wonderfuls delights that ended up on our porch! We gots BBQ Squirrels (hope it didn't hurt too much) and some'a those Tail Waggin' Variety Treats and a box of Gourmet Cookies, too! Thank you so much precious Miss Golden Samantha (an' her momma an'  dadda)! We are your loyal and devoted pals fur-ever and fur-ever! (We woulda' ♥'d you wifout da cookies but they sure did provides added wonderfulness.)

 

Freyja, how do you feel about sharing your wonderful treats and cookies with your brofur?