Chena as Santa

It’s snowing in Colorado right now so Chena looked best as Santa this year!

Chia Dog

Walrus Dog

Wookey Dog

Franken-Dog

See more at Sure Fit Slipcovers Facebook contest!

Controversy around violent video games is nothing new, but now a shocking cell phone game exists that marries animal cruelty with video game violence. KG Dogfighting is a game that allows the player to virtually train dogs to fight against other players’ dogs. Despite the cruel nature of the game, Google refuses to remove it from its cell phone application marketplace.

Dog fighting is illegal in all 50 states because of the cruel nature of this “sport” in which dogs must fight until they are too injured to continue, or until one of the dogs dies. Injured dogs are often used as bait to excite other fighting dogs. To make matters worse, statistics show that people who abuse animals are exponentially more likely to harm human beings. This behavior shouldn’t be encouraged–even in game form. Tell Google to remove this game from their marketplace.

Hopefully once this is banned, the game for ipone and android will follow!

Sign the petition here: No More Playing around with dog fighting!

• Henry McDonald , Ireland editor
• The Observer, Sunday 27 July 2008
• Article history

He was once branded the ‘dog of death’ by a British tabloid. These days Raymond, a pit bull terrier, jumps and frolics playfully outside an Irish cottage that is offering a safe haven for dogs under death sentences in the UK.

The pup gained national notoriety this year when he was bought online by a British Sunday newspaper from underground dealers in fighting dogs. Like others, Raymond is illegal in Great Britain and could be put down at any time because of the Dangerous Dogs Act of 1991, which banned the breeding, sale or exchange of pit bull terriers and some other breeds.

The hyperactive ginger pit bull has now been ‘rescued’ and relocated to an isolated corner of Co Galway, where pit bulls and other dogs in danger live in exile. His saviour is German-born dog-lover Sara Gunther, who has turned her rented cottage into a refuge for breeds that are banned in Britain as well as dogs that Irish owners have either neglected, starved or exploited. On arrival, Gunther nervously asks for ID cards to verify who the strangers at her door are.

‘I have to check you out because of the Farmers’ Boys,’ she said, referring to a notorious gang running illegal dog-fighting rings in Ireland. The Ulster Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals labelled the group the ‘Manchester United of the dog-fighting world’.

‘They know that I have pit bulls here, some of whom come from fighting stock,’ added Gunther. ‘I have received threats on mobile phones that these gangsters want my dogs and will take them from me.’ She pleads that The Observer does not print the precise location of where she lives with 22 rescued dogs and her four-year-old son. ‘I have to protect myself and my family,’ she adds.

Gunther says that she grew up with pit bulls in Frankfurt. She says this is why she has no problem allowing her son to play with dogs that have such a fearsome reputation on the other side of the Irish Sea.

‘The only dog that ever attacked me in my entire life was a golden labrador, but no one in the media will ever do a report about someone being attacked by an Andrex puppy lookalike,’ she added, as Raymond leaped around with a fellow rescued pit bull named Bowie, after the rock star.

Gunther revealed that her cottage is home to yet another pit bull media star. Nipper was sold to Panorama, the BBC’s investigative current affairs show, during a programme on dog-fighting rings. An undercover reporter bought Nipper from European pit bull dealer Paul Dunkel in Helsinki. Nipper was described on the programme as a lethal dog descended from a legendary Texan fighting dog called Little Killer. He was subsequently sold to the documentary makers but has ended up, Gunther claimed, at her sanctuary to avoid being put down.

‘My son is four and he plays with Nipper,’ she said. ‘I am even able to foster him out part-time. Nipper has more scars and injuries than any of the other dogs we look after, but he sits and watches cartoons with my son.’

Asked if she was prepared to take in more pit bulls and other illegal breeds that face being destroyed in the UK, Gunther replied: ‘I have to be very clear about this. I will not break the law in Britain, so I won’t go over and take a dog there. But if someone comes to Ireland with a dog and hands it over here to me in the Republic, then that is different.’

The organisation that speaks for rank-and-file Irish police officers, the Garda Representative Association, is currently campaigning for an Irish version of the UK’s Dangerous Dogs Act brought in by John Major’s government in 1991. The GRA highlighted the lack of legislation after one of its members was subjected to a ferocious attack by a pit bull terrier in Galway earlier this year. The officer had to receive more than 100 stitches during a raid on a house in the city when he was savaged by the dog belonging to a suspected drug dealer.

The prospect of an Irish Dangerous Dogs Act which would outlaw certain breeds like pit bulls horrifies Gunther. She pointed to her T-shirt, which reads ‘Deed Not Breed’, referring to a campaign that fights against ‘breed-specific legislation’. Gunther argued that legislation would only drive the problem underground and result in dogs such as Nipper and Raymond being put down ‘just because of their looks’.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/27/ireland.wildlife

Municipal governments from New York City to Miami, and from Council Bluffs, Iowa to Denver, have responded to fear of pit bulls and similar breeds of dogs, by severely restricting their ownership or banning them entirely from their jurisdictions.  Now, thanks to a rule issued recently by the U.S. Department of Justice, such actions are subject to being struck down.  Jurisdictions now considering such overreactions, such as Douglasville, Georgia, would be well-advised to review the Justice Department’s opinion before proceeding.

Dog owners and humane societies have long-opposed such arbitrary and overly broad laws that penalize thousands of pit bull owners who maintain their canine companions properly and without incident, because of a small number who fail to properly train and control the dogs.  Courts generally have permitted such ordinances to stand, based on deference to the so-called “police power” of local governments to protect the public “safety and welfare.”

The 20-year old, federal Americans With Disabilities Act (”ADA”), however, may put a stop to such “breed-specific legislation.”  The ADA protects measures designed to help persons with disabilities, which includes dogs used by disabled persons for assistance.  Laws that outlaw ownership of entire breeds, including those that might be used for assistive purposes, would limit the ability of persons with disabilities to use such pets, and would therefore violate the ADA and be deemed by the Justice Department to be unlawful.

In what some might consider a rare example of the federal government recognizing that laws can be overly broad and therefore harmful to individual liberty, the Justice Department’s opinion on breed-specific legislation noted that such laws sweep too broadly; and that it is inappropriate to outlaw an entire breed of dogs because a small number cause problems.  Such problems are the result of owners not restraining their dogs properly or inadequately training them, rather than the result of a particular breed’s disposition, and can be addressed by more narrowly-crafted legislation.

Unfortunately, there are still those, like the mayor of Douglasville, Georgia, who favor overly restrictive measures.  The mayor recently noted in support of the city’s proposed pit bull ordinance, that he had no problem singling out pit bulls, because he sees them “on TV” causing “incidents.”    One would hope that local government officials might on their own possess some understanding of limited government and individual liberty; but if the Justice Department at least in this instance will ensure that they do so by way of a federal law, then the feds are serving as an important check on excessive government power.

Read the comments and see the original article here

Read the original article or listen to the interview on NPR here ( plus lots of interview highlights and related stories).

In July 2007, Michael Vick and three other men were arrested and charged with operating an interstate dogfighting ring. When the authorities arrived, they seized 51 pit bulls from Vick’s Virginia fighting compound, which he’d nicknamed the “Bad Newz Kennels.” The pit bulls showed clear signs of being abused and tortured.

Much attention has been paid to Vick and whether he should have been eligible to return to the NFL when he was released from prison. It turns out there was also an extremely successful effort to rehabilitate the pit bulls rescued from his compound. Many found new lives as pets, and others live peacefully with other dogs in animal sanctuaries.

Jim Gorant, a senior writer for Sports Illustrated,has been following the 49 surviving pit bulls the past three years. He’s written a book about their story called The Lost Dogs: Michael Vick’s Dogs and Their Tale of Rescue and Redemption.

Gorant joins Dave Davies for a conversation about the rehabilitation of the dogs. He’s joined by Hector, a pit bull rescued from Vick’s compound; dog trainer Andrew Yori, who adopted Hector, and Dr. Stephen Zawistowski, a psychologist and ASPCA animal behavior specialist who worked extensively with the Vick dogs.

Zawistowski explains that the Vick case offered a rare opportunity to have both the knowledge and the resources to rehabilitate the pit bulls at the center of the case.

“I’ve been working in the field for over 20 years now and when I first started, when we did dog busts at the ASPCA, typically the dogs were euthanized,” Zawistowski says. “Part of it was because our ability [to understand] dog behavior and knowledge hadn’t really developed to the point where we really understood the opportunities and the trajectory of a rehabilitation program.”

Listen to the story on NPR

Scientists are hoping that a new DNA database for dogs will help track — and prosecute — people who breed dogs to fight. But advocates say there’s a risk that the DNA records could be used against the dogs, or against people who adopt them.

The idea is to have a canine version of the FBI’s CODIS — a database of human DNA that is used to connect criminals to crime scenes. But in this case, the DNA might help prove that breeders supplied dogs to a dogfighting ring.

In July 2009, a dogfighting operation was raided in northwest Missouri. Tim Rickey, the senior director of field operations for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, recalls the scene from that morning.

“I very vividly remember getting out of the truck, and one of the first images I seen was a dog that had one of its legs chewed off in a fight,” Rickey says. “And then the owners just amputated the leg.”

More than 500 dogs were seized from sites across seven states that day, and authorities arrested 26 people. It was the largest dogfighting raid in U.S. history. Rickey says he has heard all of the excuses.

“What their cover is, is that they’re just breeding the dogs,” he says. “They don’t fight the dogs, you know — they’re just breeding dogs because they’re a lover of the breed.”

In the Missouri case, DNA samples from the dogs proved that these weren’t just random pound dogs. They were all related. Prosecutors believed this was evidence that the dogs had been bred to fight.

And that makes sense, says Beth Wictum, who directs the forensics lab at the School of Veterinary Medicine at University of California, Davis.

“Essentially by breeding these dogs they’re creating a subpopulation, almost a new breed,” she says.

“Just as with Labradors, they may try and concentrate certain aspects of pointing or retrieving, there are behavior traits that they’re trying to concentrate within this subpopulation.”

Working with the ASPCA, Wictum is compiling a database called the Canine Combined DNA Index System. So far, it includes about 400 samples taken from inside the cheeks of fighting dogs, including those seized in the Missouri raid. It’s designed to help law enforcement go after not just the fight operators but also the breeders.

Rickey says that’s where the money is.

“For most of these fighters, it all comes down to creating a champion, and then to breed that champion,” he says.

Breeders can get as much as $20,000 for a puppy from a champion bloodline, according to Rickey.

And genetic proof of that bloodline could go a long way in court, he says, by helping convince a jury that a suspected breeder is supplying dogfighting rings across the country.

Still, the dog database makes some people very nervous — among them, Ledy VanKavage, an attorney for the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab, Utah.

“I’m not convinced this is a good thing for dogs,” she says.

VanKavage is also the owner of Karma, a pit bull whose DNA is in the database. Karma was a fighting dog rescued from the Missouri bust in 2009. By VanKavage’s account, she Karma has turned out to be a wonderful pet, whatever her DNA might suggest.

“We know that if DNA was the be all and end all, all of Secretariats’ foals would be champions and win the Triple Crown. And they don’t,” VanKavage says.

She said she worries that the genetic information could be like a scarlet letter on the dogs, precluding even the gentle ones from being adopted. Companies could refuse to sell homeowners insurance to people who adopt former fighting dogs. That would be unfair, she says, because as with people, DNA is not destiny.

“We’re not a prisoner of our genetics,” VanKavage says. “Each dog, like each person, is an individual and should be judged on their own character.”

Rickey and Wictum agree on that point — that the DNA records say much more about people who breed dogs than it says about the dogs themselves. In the Missouri dogfighting case, everyone who has been charged with a crime has pleaded guilty.

Susa Ataris

Beware. by the end of this you”ll know more than you need to about our new cat.

Once we got a bigger place to hang out, we were finally able to have a cat in our lives again. I think we had the new trailer for a day when I started looking on craigslist for needy cats and within a week, on a routine dog food stop at Pet Smart, we walked in just as they were closing the adoption counter. There were tons of cute cats, mostly adults or sister brother pairs, and one young orange cat. I often say stupid things for no reason so I saw the orange cat and said “I don’t like orange cats, they’re terrors.” What my mind had used to come to that conclusion was that every orange cat I’d ever known was a horrible half wild tom cat (and maybe I’m a bit of a ginger-cat generalist). Since 80% of orange cats are males, because orange is basically the calico of male cats, I assumed the orange cat, although the prettiest one, was a male. I read the card above the cage anyway, and it was a girl! I immediately and illogically changed my mind about her and decided to make a connection. I put my hand to the glass and she put her paw to the glass and it was done. There were several other females that were pretty but I was happy with a young cat, not a kitten, and one not too set in their ways already. All the cats were from the New Orleans Animal Control and had either been dropped off or caught feral, they didn’t have any clue which one she was.

We did all the paperwork and took her to the RV parked out front in a little cardboard cat carrier. She was surprisingly calm, didnt meow, didnt scratch, just quietly worried and hoped for the best. We went back inside to buy some things for her, and $150 later (egads) she was the most spoiled cat in the trailer park. I took her out once during the drive back home to give her some water, she just walked around the RV curios and sniffing everything, then mostly quietly went back into her box (except for the part where her water spilled and she got all wet - didn’t like that).

When we got back to the trailer without any issues or noise. When I opened her box, Chena -lover of all things box, was right over top waiting for the surprise. I knew it might not be the best idea to introduce them that way but I had high hopes. They would have to be best friends eventually, it’s a condition my pets have to endure (within reason). As I’d hoped, the cat didn’t even look at Chena, almost looked right through her while curiously looking around the trailer.  After that she made herself right at home. Never once hid or peed on anything, didn’t meow uncontrollably, hiss at us or try to escape. Just laid out in the open or played with her new toys.  She spent one night in the bathroom just in case her litter box skills werent perfect and after that shes been with us almost every minute of every day. I even gave her a bath on the second day because she smelled like kennel and pee and she was fairly decent about that, didn’t scratch, just a little worried.

Susa And Chena

As far as her personality, shes very trusting and affectionate but sometimes she would duck from us when she got in trouble, like she thinks we’re going to whack her one, but shes getting used to the idea that we wont be doing that. She has the “I want to trust you so badly and love you unconditionally but some bastard kicked me” syndrome. She came to us with 2 shaved areas. Her belly from being spayed and the side of her back leg. We considered at first, that although strange, maybe it had to do with the spaying but upon closer inspection the hair was longer (more grown out) and there was a 1 inch scar. She may have got cut on a fence, beat up by a raccoon.. who knows. Shes also pretty scared of loud noises, as is Chena but for different reasons. The first time she got scared was by a storage chest closing loudly, she ran from me for several minutes. It was painful that she was so afraid of me but after hours of apology and showing her that what she was scared of wasn’t so bad, shes started to understand. Now when she gets scared she looks at you intently and wide eyed to make sure you give her a sign that you didn’t mean it to scare or hurt her. You have to walk up to her and pet her or pick her up and apologize – If you don’t, she’ll run off and be scared and overall lose trust. Sensitive little kittehs!

It took us a while to name her. We went though all the cliche names for orange cats, and cats in general ans since she nibbled your hand, nose or face while she’s being brushed, we considered Nibbler (from futurama) but decided on a completely different little black monster, Susa Ataris from My Neighbor Totoro. They are soot sprites that hide in the shadows and are said to be good luck – there’s no real connection between them and her personality but it sounded like a cute name and we were sick of having nothing to call her. Within a day she was coming to Susa and it was set.

She’s super curious, what cat isn’t though right. Every time you’re doing something at the counter shes up on hinds mewing at you to know what’s going on. We encourage her curiosity by showing her every single thing she wants to see. Whether its a running tap, sink full of soapy water or jalapeños. After the first 2 times of climbing up my legs, she figured out she could get picked up if she just taps them with her paws. I find that the more you show cats willingly, rather than making things and places forbidden, the sooner they get over it. She walked all over my camera equipment and art supplies twice (on the top bunks), getting hair on everything, then never cared to hang out up there again (save the random kitty freakout and run around the trailer session).

Although I got her the cutest little princess bed, she lays on the hard floor and wont even go into the bedroom except sometimes when we’re sleeping. Good for me because I prefer my clothes stay somewhat hair free before I put them on. When I work she often sits on the breakfast tray beside me and lays her head on my arm. Making it hard for me to type but too adorable to resist. She also likes Jalapeno chips so any time we snack on them she gets her own little crushed chip to snack on.

Susa at work

Susa says hi to Ross

All in all I think we’re pretty lucky people and got the best cat we could have possibly found.

She’s undergoing lessons in fetchology, climbing the walls control (claw control), lick the doggys face and ears and most exciting of all, harness training! Shes going to be even more awesome than she already is!

The Observer

A group of dog owners set up camp at Sarnia’s city hall Monday to protest Ontario’s ban on pit bulls.

“Basically, it’s not right to be cruel to animals,” said Josh Atkinson, organizer and owner of Justice, a five-year-old pit bull.

“The City of Sarnia and a lot of other cities in Ontario are killing dogs for no apparent reason whatsoever, just because of the name pit bull. It’s ridiculous.”

A dozen people were on hand with their pets and homemade signs, reading: “Stop the killing of our pets,” “Pitbulls have rights, too,” and “Pitbulls are family.”
The group also planned to protest at the Sarnia and District Humane Society.

Sarnia Mayor Mike Bradley said the demonstrators were barking up the wrong tree.

“It’s provincial legislation — not the city, or the humane society. They should be at the MPP’s office, he said.

“I don’t even agree with the legislation myself, but we have to enforce it.”

The 2005 Ontario Dog Owners Liability Act says any Staffordshire bull terriers, American Staffordshire terriers, American pit bull terriers and any dog that looks “substantially similar” is illegal, and only those already living in the province at the time of the ban are allowed.

Bradley said the law has been a stress on animal control workers, noting that he preferred the city’s previous ‘dangerous dog’ bylaw, which dealt with the animals on a case-by-case basis, rather than by breed.

Last year Sarnia made a pledge to consult an expert before putting any more dogs on death row. The move followed a number of confusing cases hinging on whether or not the dogs were pit bulls, or boxers, while officials admitted to euthanizing at least one dog every month, because of the ban.

“It’s very fuzzy legislation; the province passed it, but now they have no involvement in the law itself,” said Bradley. “In fact, I’d like to go join those protesters, myself.”

Article found at: http://www.theobserver.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2540872

By ADAM LIPTAK

Published: April 20, 2010 at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/21/us/21scotus.html?hp

WASHINGTON — In a major and muscular First Amendment ruling, the Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down a federal law that made it a crime to create or sell dogfight videos and other depictions of animal cruelty.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority in the 8-to-1 decision, said the law created “a criminal prohibition of alarming breadth” and that the government’s aggressive defense of the law was “startling and dangerous.”

The decision left open the possibility that Congress could enact a narrower law that would pass constitutional muster. But the existing law, Chief Justice Roberts wrote, covered too much speech that depicted lawful activities.

The case arose from the prosecution of Robert J. Stevens, an author and small-time film producer who presented himself as an authority on pit bulls. He did not participate in dogfights, but he did compile and sell videotapes showing the fights, and he received a 37-month sentence under a 1999 federal law that bans trafficking in “depictions of animal cruelty.”

Dogfighting and other forms of animal cruelty have long been illegal in all 50 states. The law applied not to the underlying activity, but to recordings of “conduct in which a living animal is intentionally maimed, mutilated, tortured, wounded or killed.” It did not matter whether the conduct was legal when and where it occurred; under the law, what mattered was whether the conduct would have been illegal where the recording was sold.

The government argued that such depictions were of such minimal social worth that they should receive no First Amendment protection at all. Chief Justice Roberts roundly rejected that assertion, saying that “the First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter or its content.”

He acknowledged that some sorts of speech — among them obscenity, defamation, fraud, incitement and speech integral to criminal conduct — have historically been considered outside the protection of the First Amendment. But he rejected the government’s analogy to a more recent category of unprotected speech, that of trafficking in child pornography, which the court in 1982 said deserved no First Amendment protection.

Child pornography, he said, is “a special case” because the market for it is “intrinsically related to the underlying abuse.”

As a general matter, Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “the First Amendment itself reflects a judgment by the American people that the benefits of its restrictions on the government outweigh its costs.” He continued, “Our Constitution forecloses any attempt to revise that judgment simply on the basis that some speech is not worth it.”

Having concluded that the First Amendment had a role to play in the analysis, the chief justice next considered whether the law on animal-cruelty depictions swept too broadly.

The 1999 law was enacted mainly to address what a House report called “a very specific sexual fetish.”

“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.”

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 since then, the government has used the law in several prosecutions for trafficking in dogfighting videos.

Chief Justice Roberts said the law applied even more broadly. Since all hunting is illegal in the District of Columbia, for instance, he said, the law makes the sale of magazines or videos showing hunting a crime here.

“The demand for hunting depictions exceeds the estimated demand for crush videos or animal fighting depictions by several orders or magnitude,” he wrote.

The law contains an exception for materials with “serious religious, political, scientific, educational, journalistic, historical or artistic value.” Those exceptions were insufficient to save the statute, the chief justice wrote.

“Most hunting videos, for example, are not obviously instructional in nature,” he said, “except in the sense that all life is a lesson.”

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. dissented, saying the majority’s analysis was built on “fanciful hypotheticals” and would serve to protect “depraved entertainment.”