RoguePundit

Animal Rights Terrorism in the LA Area

Last I blogged about violent animal rights activists, I mentioned Dr. Jerry Vlasak and his wife Pamelyn Ferdin of Agoura Hills CA (in the LA area).  He's the spokesman for the North American Animal Liberation Press Office (NAALPO, a mouthpiece for the Animal Liberation Front--ALF), and she's the founder of the Animal Defense League--Los Angeles and president of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty.

The most recent LA Weekly has an article on the increasingly violent animal rights activists in the LA area.  The primary focus of the activists' rage is the UCLA Medical Center, because some of its researchers do animal testing (here and here).  From this article...

Besides posting communiqués and press releases on the NAALPO Web site, Vlasak understands that his medical background gives the animal-rights movement a certain amount of cachet. Journalists come to him for quotes, and he gives them. In a 2004 interview with the London Observer, he said, “I don’t think you’d have to kill too many [researchers]. I think for five lives, 10 lives, 15 human lives, we could save a million, 2 million, 10 million nonhuman lives.” Those remarks caused him to be banished from England, but in Southern California, he practices surgery at Riverside Community and Parkview Community hospitals in Riverside County, as well as Community Hospital and San Antonio Community Hospital in San Bernardino.

He doesn't just include researchers in the above threat.  From this "60 Minutes" link when he was interviewed for a domestic terrorism piece in late 2005...

Asked who he thinks is fair game, Vlasak says, “Well, I think anybody that tortures animals for a living or for a profit and who won't stop when they're asked to and won't stop.”

Does that include researchers who are testing and performing tests using animals?”

“Animal researchers, slaughterhouse workers, the head of the corporation that slaughters hundreds of millions of chickens every single year for the taste of their flesh,” says Vlasak.

Vlasak says he wouldn't kill...his job is to explain to the media and the public why others are doing what's necessary to stop animal exploitation and suffering.   

Do you suppose you would truly get the same level of trauma care from Dr. Vlasak if, for instance, you entered one of the above hospitals wearing shoes or a belt made of leather?  Don't his professed views make those hospitals (and their insurers) nervous?  Back to the original article.

Despite his brief appearance on national television last year, California media have focused surprisingly few stories on Vlasak, and he has gained a foothold here, becoming an important voice—and face—for the increasingly violent movement. He works closely with the UCLA Primate Freedom Project, which gathers medical research documents involving animal testing through the Freedom of Information Act. The organization was founded in 2001 by UCLA honors student Erica Sutherland, who has since dropped out of the animal-rights scene. At the time, though, Sutherland shared the reports with other activists, who collected and posted the names of researchers at UCLA on various Web sites.

With Vlasak advocating violence and Sutherland supplying the underground information, UCLA Medical Center faculty members were suddenly in the cross hairs. But it wasn’t until the Molotov cocktail incident on June 30, 2006, that things truly got vicious. A communiqué 11 days later from anonymous members claiming to belong to ALF declared:

“On the night of June 30, we paid a visit to Lynn Fairbanks home at... in Belaire. Since she is rumored to have a cocktail every evening after a hard days work of breeding monkeys for painful addiction experiments at UCLA we thought we would give her a cocktail of our own a moletov cocktail. We left it on her doorstep but didn’t hang around to see if it went off.”

The Molotov cocktail never exploded — and it was left on the wrong doorstep. An elderly woman, not Fairbanks, who lived a few blocks away, found the defective firebomb.

The next paragraphs mentions a Dr. Rosenbaum who endured a couple of bomb threats last month.  The first turned out to be a false alarm, but it caused his neighborhood to be evacuated.  The second evacuation occurred when the doctor spotted a Molotov cocktail under his car in his driveway.  The bomb squad found that the firebomb had a faulty fuse.  Whether the intent was to detonate either of the firebombs or not, this is definitely terrorism.

UCLA has reacted by beefing up security on and off campus, even hiring private firms to watch over the homes of faculty members, according to UCLA Police Department spokeswoman Nancy Greenstein. At Dr. Arthur Rosenbaum’s home, armed security now stand guard 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

In addition, Abrams recently changed UCLA policy regarding Freedom of Information Act requests. The university will no longer make public its medical research documents, according to UCLA vice chancellor for research Roberto Peccei.

Peccei revealed this bold, possibly unconstitutional decision after the L.A. Weekly asked about a “redacted report” that Vlasak had released to the media. The document, blacked out in several areas, including one section that detailed the pain levels animals endured, was a renewal application for Rosenbaum’s research into eye muscle control. Rosenbaum is trying to cure severely crossed eyes in humans—a debilitating condition that can also lead to blindness.

Vlasak insists the experiments with rhesus monkeys and cats are unnecessary—a claim the vice chancellor meets with open disgust. “They’re always using these things in a way to hype it up!” Peccei says. “Let them take us to court for not providing the documents.”

Via e-mail, Vlasak retorts, “They obviously feel like they have to hide not only the details of what’s going on in their research labs, but now they are going to try to hide from the public, at a public institution no less. If they were not ashamed of what they are doing, they should be willing to openly display what is going on there.”

I don't like the additional secrecy either, but it obviously has nothing to do with shame.  You can't reason with zealots, so UCLA is trying to hide from them.  Haven't we already seen enough examples to know that this is a failed strategy?  Who's fighting--not hiding, fighting--for the people awaiting treatments and cures that would at least be delayed by a lack of animal testing?  Why aren't animal rights activists also fighting for these victims, another species of animal?

Hippophilia

No, it doesn't mean a person who's sexually attracted to or loves hippos.  Instead...

A Corvallis teenager is facing charges of burglary and sexual abuse of an animal after being arrested last week at a barn in northeast Corvallis.

...

The owners of the property had reported assaults on the horse before, once on July 30, 2006, and again on Feb. 9 of this year. After the July incident, the owners noticed the halter of their mare had been moved. So the owners installed a video surveillance camera inside the barn.

In February 2007, the owners again noticed a halter and some food dishes had been moved in the barn. When they checked the video from the surveillance camera, they saw a male who they estimated being between 16 and 18 years old, sexually assaulting the horse. He wore a jacket and long pants and a baseball cap. They were not able to identify the suspect from the video.

Deputy Clay Stephens, who viewed the video, said the youth seemed very practiced, not hurried but not wasting any time. Stephens said he seemed to be following a “very concise, deliberate, well-thought-out plan.”

It was a 17-year-old.  The more general term for sex with animals is zoophilia.  From Wikipedia:

There is presently considerable debate in psychology over whether certain aspects of zoophilia are better understood as an aberration or as a sexual orientation. The activity or desire itself is no longer classified as a pathology under DSM-IV (TR) (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association) unless accompanied by distress or interference with normal functioning on the part of the person, and research has broadly been supportive of at least some of zoophiles' central claims. Critics point out that that DSM-IV says nothing about acceptability or the well-being of the animal, and many critics outside the field express views that sexual acts with animals are always either abusive or unethical. Defenders of zoosexuality argue that a human/animal relationship can go far beyond sexuality, and that animals are capable of forming a genuinely loving relationship that can last for years and which is not functionally different from any other love/sex relationship.

...

Scientific surveys estimating the frequency of zoosexual activity, as well as anecdotal evidence and informal surveys, suggest that more than 1-2%—and perhaps as many as 8-40%—of sexually active adults have had significant sexual experience with an animal at some point in their lives. Studies suggest that a larger number (perhaps 10-30% depending on area) have fantasized or had some form of brief encounter. Larger figures such as 40-60% for rural teenagers (living on or near livestock farms) have been cited from some earlier surveys such as the Kinsey reports, but some later writers consider these uncertain.

Awhile back, I was going to do a Random Nature on the subject (after that Enumclaw WA case, recently memorialized in the documentary "Zoo").  But, it just got too creepy.  Back to the original article.

After the February incident, the owners installed a silent alarm on the barn. On June 7, at around 2:30 a.m., the alarm sounded in the house. The owners looked at the video monitor and saw the suspect preparing to assault the horse. They called the sheriff’s office. The suspect had gotten into the locked barn by squeezing behind one panel of a sliding door.

The suspect was charged with second degree burglary, a Class C felony, and sexual abuse of an animal, a Class A misdemeanor. He was taken to the Linn-Benton Detention Center where he was arraigned and released later the same day. His next court appearance is a hearing June 20.

And the appropriate punishment is what?

PETA Killers Only Guilty of Littering

Well, the PETA trial I blogged about recently is done.  The jury has found the two employees not guilty of animal cruelty and of obtaining property by false pretenses.  However, they were found guilty of littering because they disposed of the carcasses in a dumpster behind a supermarket.  The trial was rather enlightening as to the mindset of PETA as an organization. 

But before proceeding, a bit of an overview...  PETA's headquarters, where the two employees work, is in Norfolk, Virginia.  They commuted weekly to North Carolina to pick up animals from various animal shelters and hospitals, promising they'd take the animals to Virginia where the odds of adoption were better.  Instead on multiple occasions, the defendants quickly euthanized the animals in their van and then dumped them in a local dumpster.  The differing laws between the states definitely played a part in the trial, if for no other reason than it confused jurisdictional issues. 

- Dachna Nachminovitch, Manager of PETA's Domestic Animal Issues & Abuse Department (and the defendants' supervisor), testified that the organization was under no obligation under Virginia law to keep pets for five days before euthanizing them, because the law only applies to stray animals.  North Carolina has no such law, but nothing in Virginia's law notes an exemption for strays.  In fact, fifteen days after the defendants were arrested, a Virginia inspection of PETA's Norfolk facility specifically noted that the organization had to keep animals for five days before it could euthanize them.  Who for PETA signed off on that inspection comment?  Dachna Nachminovitch.

But, she also offered another line of reasoning.  When PETA takes possession of an animal, it owns that animal.  Therefore, PETA didn't have to hold an animal for five days and needed no signed statement from the previous owner that authorized immediate euthanasia. 

- PETA's Norfolk facility isn't registered as an animal shelter; it's an office building with quarantine rooms.  That means it can't offer adoptions.  Instead, adoptable animals are supposedly fostered in homes.   

- The dogs and cats that PETA employees collect and then kill are stored in the facility's walk-in freezer pending cremation.  PETA has a contract with a local cremation service that charges them a bulk rate for disposing of dead animals...about $0.45 per pound.  Even with that huge discount, the two employees saved PETA money by dumping the animals.  However, Nachminovitch denied knowing anything about that...it's against PETA policy.  One of the defendants testified that they brought carcasses from other North Carolina counties back to Norfolk for disposal.  Sure...

- Remember that after three consecutive weeks of carcasses being found in the dumpster, police staked it out the next week and caught the two defendants in the act of "littering."  One of the defendants (Cook) had worked with PETA for less than three weeks.  The trips were a two-person job.  So, someone else had to know that the carcasses were being dumped.  Speaking of that...

An internal investigation showed it was likely that other PETA workers tossed animals into the same Bertie County Dumpster where Ahoskie police caught Adria Hinkle and Andrew Cook, according to a top PETA director.

For the first time since police arrested Hinkle and Cook in June, 2005, their supervisor talked openly and frankly about the "life-altering" experience, including the steps she and PETA leaders have taken since.

"There is just not a chance that something like this will ever happen again," said Daphna Nachminovitch, PETA's director of domestic animal programs.

In testimony Thursday, Hinkle told a Bertie County jury she was responsible for just two of the four times where police found bagged dog and cat carcasses in a grocery-store Dumpster. Hinkle said she did not tell other employees about the Dumpster.

Nachminovitch said, for legal reasons, she never sat down with Hinkle to ask for a full accounting of what happened.  However Nachminovitch said on Monday the Bertie County episodes expanded beyond Hinkle.

- PETA had offered to take over the operations of the Bertie County NC Animal Shelter in 2004.  As part of that offer, it wanted the shelter to split the cost of a walk-in freezer.  Note that it's legal (and free) for the County to dispose of dead animals at its landfill.  But of course, the public might see PETA doing that.

- PETA is only licensed to administer sodium pentobarbital--the drug used to euthanize the animals--in Virginia.  But, the defendants used it to kill the animals in North Carolina.  A DEA rep testified that PETA indeed needed another permit to use the drug in North Carolina...so we'll see if DEA does something about it.

- During jury instructions, one of the PETA lawyers asserted that the defendants couldn't have obtained property by false pretenses because that involves things of value, and the animals from the shelters and hospitals had no value.

The punishment was meted out as follows:

Both received a 10-day suspended jail sentence and a year of supervised probation, meaning neither will serve jail time. Their van will be confiscated by police and each was ordered to pay $4,000 in fines and court costs.

It was PETA's van.  I'm sure its value is minor compared to what PETA must have spent defending its employees.

And from the earlier quoted link...

Nachminovitch said those responsible either left the organization or were asked to leave.

But their supervisor is doing damage control with the press.

PETA Killers on Trial

In the summer of '05, we were greeted with ugly stories and photos from North Carolina regarding how a couple of PETA members were arrested for killing animals rather than putting them up for adoption.  PETA's leadership expressed horror at the situation as well.  But rather than firing its employees, PETA has kept them on the payroll and is paying for their defense.  That involves three trial lawyers and PETA's in-house counsel.

Adria Hinkle and Andrew Cook are currently on trial, charged with "21 counts of animal cruelty, seven counts of littering, and three counts of obtaining property by false pretenses."  Their defense attorneys claim that the only thing they did wrong was illegally dispose of the euthanized animals in a shopping center dumpster.  Here are some of the details surrounding the case.

The dog carcasses always appeared late on Wednesday nights, wrapped in black trash bags and stuffed in the Dumpster behind the Piggly Wiggly supermarket.

Over a period of three weeks in the summer of 2005, police officers in the small town of Ahoskie, N.C., pulled the bodies of 80 animals from the trash bin. Some were puppies, some were full-grown. Most were mutts.

On the fourth week, officers set up a stakeout, and when a white van pulled up to the dumpster, they pounced.

If the van's cargo—10 dead dogs and three dead cats in black bags—was to be expected, its occupants were not. The driver and the passenger were employees of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and the vehicle was registered to the organization.

Each Wednesday, the pair went to the Bertie County animal shelter to clean it and pick up animals that would supposedly be put up for adoption.  In their van, they injected each of the animals with a lethal dose of sodium pentobarbitol (an anesthetic they weren't licensed to administer) and then dumped them.  Hinkle and Cook kept a detailed log of their killings, including breed, sex, age, and condition (like adorable, perfect, and pregnant).  There are photos of some of the dead animals and a tackle box of drugs and syringes confiscated during the arrest here. 

PETA continues to assert that there was no cruelty involved.  The organization's president, Ingrid Newkirk, says the employees deviated from PETA policy by dumping the animals rather than cremating them...and PETA's Norfolk VA office has a crematorium.  Documents that PETA sends annually to the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Human Services show that it cremated over 14,400 animals there between 1998 and 2005, just over 80 percent of the animals it received.  17.1 percent were adopted and the remainder was transferred elsewhere.   

Statistics compiled by the national Humane Society indicate that only about half of the strays will be adopted. The rest will be put to death. PETA insists that in the case of the "unadoptable"—the old, sick, antisocial or not housebroken—it is more compassionate to euthanize them immediately than to let them live in shelters, where they may be mistreated.

"Critics may condemn PETA for supporting euthanasia, but we are not ashamed of providing a merciful exit from an uncaring world to broken beings," Daphna Nachminovitch, PETA's director of domestic animal issues, wrote in an editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle shortly after the arrests.

That stance is controversial in the animal rights community.

"The responsibility we have to animals doesn't mean giving them a painless death. It means coping with their challenges like we would a family member or a child," said Rich Avanzino, the president of Maddie's Fund.

His organization, endowed with $300 million by PeopleSoft founder David Duffield, advocates making the United States a "no-kill nation," where animals are only euthanized if they are dangerous or suffering from an incurable condition.

PETA contends that county officials knew the animals were going to be euthanized in a more humane manner than gun or gas chamber, the deaths that unadopted animals there face.  The county officials strenuously deny knowing of PETA's plans.  Hinkle, Cook, and other PETA employees have evidently been picking up animals needing adoption from the area's animal shelters and hospitals for years.  They'd tell folks that they were taking the animals to Virginia where odds of adoption were supposed to be better.

The defense portion of the trial is supposed to begin today.  Should be interesting. 

Sidestepping the Proposed Tethering Law

To catch up with a subject I blogged about before the New Year...earlier this week Ashland's City Council voted 3-3 on the proposed tethering law (previous blog here), leaving it to the mayor to cast the deciding vote against it.  As I'd noted, this was about a lot more than just tethering (proposed ordinance here), and the volunteers who would patrol it and file complaints would be animal rights activists.  Instead, the city is going to study and possibly adopt California's new law.

That law allows tethering only on a running wire for a maximum three hours a day. Staff was instructed to report back with what Councilman David Chapman called an "Ashlandization" of the law. "I don't want anything to do with any law that looks like this," he said of the original proposal. Police Chief Ron Goodpaster said he would consult with Jackson County Animal Control to see if and how it enforces excessive tethering.

Here's a link to California's tethering prohibition.  It deals strictly with the tethering of dogs, and has exceptions for licensed activities plus conduct related to the shepherding or herding livestock and the cultivation of agricultural products.  And, it will have county or municipal animal control agencies enforce the law...Ashland lacks an animal control department.  The California law had its detractors (such as hunters), but it steered away from much of the activism which nearly got its way in Ashland. 

Needless to say, the sponsor of the Ashland law was disappointed.

After rejection of her proposal, Rosen said, "I'm shocked and very disappointed. I thought my town would be more progressive. The California law is horrible."

The fact that it took the mayor to break the tie shows that Ashland is already plenty...something.

Ashland's Animal Family Members

Next week, the Ashland City Council is going to consider enacting a "tethering" ordinance that would provide additional protection for pets at an owner's residence.  Even after compromises, the proposal is a somewhat idealistic product that covers a lot more than just tethering.

Animal rights activist and writer Barbara E. Rosen pioneered the ordinance, which would restrict tethering of dogs for no more than an hour and no more than three times a day and mandates that dog pens have a minimum 97 square feet of space.

"This is just a bread crumb for animals and its need is so obvious," said Rosen. "We're just coming out of the dark ages about treating animals as family members."

The proposed ordinance addresses an array of cruelties to domesticated, vertebrate animals, including calling for no killing or injuring of an animal, and no taking healthy animals to the vet to be put down.

In addition, abandoning animals would be banned; animals must be supplied adequate nutritive food daily and water in tip-proof containers and must have sufficient space to exercise for 75 percent of the time or be taken on walks for at least 90 minutes a day. Animals outside must have protection from sunlight and from cold below 40 degrees, with bedding. If tethered, dogs must have water, shade, dry ground and collars or harnesses that can't injure or choke them.

Throughout this article, Rosen can never bring herself to use the term "pet."  In the vernacular, they are actually "companion animals."  And then there are the "free-roaming animals," stray or otherwise. Groups like the local Kitty Rescue advocate Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) as a means of avoiding euthanasia.  The return part refers to releasing the cat where it was trapped, plus providing continued feeding...I'm sure the cats will stay there (where they'll obviously be welcome, comfortable, and safe) and won't consume any local wildlife.  The Southern Oregon Humane Society also has a no-kill policy...which leaves much of the dirtiest work regarding overpopulation, dangerous animals, etc. to Jackson County Animal Care and Control.  Note that Rosen eventually wants her ordinance to apply to all of Jackson County.   

Some of Oregon's laws regarding pets are very general and thus difficult to enforce.  A number of rules in the proposed ordinance, which is based upon selective parts of others around the nation, definitely make sense.  However, there are a few which seem a wee excessive...and she wanted much more.    

Rosen wanted dog pens to be at least 250 square feet, saying anything less would be a "mere pittance." Rosen argued that dogs should have pen space 75 percent of the time to prevent people from satisfying the law by putting dogs in pens for a few minutes, then going to work and leaving them in small travel cages where they "suffer intensely." She also worked to have cats included in the pen language so they wouldn't have a "horrible life" in pens, but the city deleted that. It also wrote the tethering section so it didn't include cats.

"I hate that," said Rosen. "The whole thing has been compromised. No family member should be tied outside. We're trying to get away from the chronic tying up of animals. I love when people walk their animals. People can easily have a fenced yard or an electronic fence. But I'm happy with the one hour maximum on tethers and it's enforceable." Rosen compared the 97 square foot minimum pen size to solitary confinement, adding, "we don't even treat murderers that way."

We house people like the Unabomber, Eric Robert Rudolph (who bombed the Atlanta Olympics and an abortion clinic), Zacarias Moussaoui (of 9/11 infamy), and for awhile Timothy McVeigh (the Oklahoma City bombing) in the Supermax Prison in Florence CO.  Each prisoner gets a cell that's 7 or 8 feet by 12 feet (in other words 84-96 square feet) with climate control, running water, and a 4 inch by 4 foot window.  The prisoners spend at least 23 hours per day in their cell, with food and mail delivered through a slot.  They get just one hour per week outside in a caged "dog run," after stripping down and enduring a cavity search.

Ashland has no animal control department, so who's actually going to observe, gather evidence, and enforce this ordinance?

...Rosen has assured the city that a group of volunteers are willing and ready to observe and file complaints, then police would issue citations, said city attorney Michael Franell.

...

Rosen, an activist who has protested and passed petitions while wearing animal costumes, wanted the tethering law to cover goats, sheep and horses, but city officials, because there are so few such farm animals in town and no detention facilities for them, made it apply only to dogs.

Animal rights activists will get to be big brother in Ashland.  I'm sure their actions will help a number of abused and neglected pets.  But will zealots prove capable of showing any restraint in applying the tethering ordinance? 

Dog Flu

There have been a bunch of stories the last few days on the spread of a new dog flu virus.  I'll use this one from last Thursday as the base for the post.

A new, highly contagious and sometimes deadly canine flu is spreading in kennels and at dog tracks around the country, veterinarians said yesterday.

The virus, which scientists say mutated from an influenza strain that affects horses, has killed racing greyhounds in seven states and has been found in shelters and pet shops in many places, including the New York suburbs, though the extent of its spread is unknown.

Dr. Cynda Crawford, an immunologist at the University of Florida's College of Veterinary Medicine who is studying the virus, said that it spread most easily where dogs were housed together but that it could also be passed on the street, in dog runs or even by a human transferring it from one dog to another. Kennel workers have carried the virus home with them, she said.

How many dogs die from the virus is unclear, but scientists said the fatality rate is more than 1 percent and could be as high as 10 percent among puppies and older dogs.

Dr. Crawford first began investigating greyhound deaths in January 2004 at a racetrack in Jacksonville, Fla., where 8 of the 24 greyhounds who contracted the virus died.

Horse influenza is rather similar to the flu we suffer.  This new dog flu was seen at 14 greyhound tracks in 6 states in the summer of 2004, and 20 tracks in 11 states earlier this year.  Part of the reason this disease is seen at so many racetracks is because the dogs are frequently transferred to different tracks to race.  The early onset of the disease doesn't come with major symptoms, so the dogs can be pretty sick before anyone notices.  Some of the greyhounds that die are killed by a secondary pneumonia infection.

"This is a newly emerging pathogen," she said, "and we have very little information to make predictions about it. But I think the fatality rate is between 1 and 10 percent."

She added that because dogs had no natural immunity to the virus, virtually every animal exposed would be infected. About 80 percent of dogs that are infected with the virus will develop symptoms, Dr. Crawford said. She added that the symptoms were often mistaken for "kennel cough," a common canine illness that is caused by the Bordetella bronchiseptica bacteria.

Both diseases can cause coughing and gagging for up to three weeks, but dogs with canine flu may spike fevers as high as 106 degrees and have runny noses. A few will develop pneumonia, and some of those cases will be fatal. Antibiotics and fluid cut the pneumonia fatality rate, Dr. Crawford said.

The virus is an H3N8 flu closely related to an equine flu strain. It is not related to typical human flus or to the H5N1 avian flu that has killed about 100 people in Asia.

Experts said there were no known cases of the canine flu infecting humans. "The risk of that is low, but we are keeping an eye on it," said Dr. Ruben Donis, chief of molecular genetics for the influenza branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is tracking the illness.

Between one and ten percent is an enormous range--evidence of significant uncertainty.  This link provides different data which is also interesting. 

While most attention has focused on racing dogs, the researchers tested 70 dogs of various breeds with respiratory disease in Florida and New York pet shelters and veterinary clinics. Some 97 percent showed antibodies to the new canine flu strain.

Tests of blood stored by racetracks suggests the new flu strain began infecting dogs sometime between 1999 and 2003, well before the first outbreaks were recognized, the researchers conclude.

So, we don't know how many dogs died of the disease, but we do know that most of them in group situations--at least in certain parts of the country--have been exposed to it.  The original article notes that as opposed to kennel cough which tends to strike younger dogs with inexperienced immune systems, the new dog flu is striking older dogs.  The dog flu is more virulent than kennel cough, but not as virulent as parvovirus.   

The CDC scientist interviewed in the original article believes it won't be very difficult to come up with a vaccine for dog flu, as there already is one for the horse flu.  Let's hope he's correct.

Handicats

My sister is one of those folks that vets and humane societies can't find enough of, a person who will take on severely injured and/or handicapped pets and provide them a loving home, despite the expense and additional care required. There are always more pets available than there are prospective owners, and the odds of adoption really sag if a pet is physically flawed. The last few days with my sister have been a chance to once again observe and play with her collection of lovable handicats.

__________

Her paraplegic cat, Wilhelmina--Willy for short--has become the guardian of her computer room with all its vulnerable cords, fragile knick-knacks, etc. Being rather vulnerable, this cat has become fiercely territorial, lunging at nearly all cats and even occasional guests who invade her one-room space. With evil growls and moans as accompaniment, Willy tears after the transgressors, rapidly dragging her hind-end over the carpeting. The site of a large black cat moving so unnaturally really unnerves the rest of the cats, so they rarely even attempt to trespass in the computer room. Willy happily stays in her well-defended room.

To the few people she trusts, Willy is a very loving kitty. She really craves any kind of rubbing or scratching of most of her upper body since she can't scratch herself with her back feet. She doesn't need a litter box since she can't go to the bathroom by herself. My sister has to "express" her twice a day...squeeze the proper locations to relieve her bowels. She's a better person than I.

__________

Her deaf cat (who I always forget the name of) is really interesting to watch, as her lack of hearing really changes her dynamics with other cats. Cats develop pecking orders through various types of dominance displays and actions. From observing this cat, it would sure seem that sound is generally more important to cats than body language.

My sister's dominant cat is scared of the deaf kitty. On several occasions just after my sister got the deaf cat, the dominant cat made aggressive displays combined with various growls and hisses to cow the much smaller deaf cat. It didn't work...the deaf cat just stood there obliviously and stared, which unnerved the dominant cat. As a result, none of the cats screws with the deaf kitty (except Willy...the deaf kitty runs from the awkward-looking, aggressive paraplegic cat).

The deaf cat also plays with different toys since sound is not an issue. There's a whiffle ball with a clangy bell in it that most cats don't like because of its grating sound. Deaf kitty can't hear the bell and likes the funny way the ball rolls around. And, if it rolls too near the other cats, they tend leave to get away from the noise. Great toy.

But the best toy is the vacuum cleaner. Not only does she have it to herself (nearly all cats take off when a vacuum is running), but the deaf cat gets quality playing time with my sister. The deaf cat tackles the moving head of the vacuum, figuring it's the focus of a wrestling match my sister is orchestrating. It's especially neat if the beater bar or suction pick up the edge of a rug, giving the cat more to attack. This game doesn't make it easier for my sister to vacuum, but it certainly makes a boring job more entertaining.

__________

My sister has two blind cats, one (Sunny) that came to her with one missing eyeball and the other with severe cataracts, and the other being a stray that my sister helped recover from being hit by a car, but has since gone completely blind (I forget the name). They have both learned her house well, and their whiskers are now definitely longer than are a normal cat's. Thus, they have little trouble navigating, but they tend to walk a bit more deliberately. To jump, they stand up and put their forepaws on something to measure it first.

Both cats crave human attention but take different approaches to getting it, in part because Sunny is large and strong, and the other is not. Sunny makes it her job to get the closest to anybody she wants to pet her. That entails shoving other cats out of the way, jumping onto the back of chairs to rub on folks' heads and shoulders, swatting other cats, etc. She's a very affectionate stalker. The other cat has learned that by coming near enough to attract my sister's or my attention but not the aggression of other attention-seeking cats, then uttering a plaintive meow or two, we'll sometimes give her special attention.

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And then there's her youngster, a stray that lost the use of a front leg that now just hangs there limply. That cat is so non-chalant that none of my sister's cats have any dominance issues with it...even Willy the paraplegic allows it in her room (the only cat with such privileges). I think when it comes to missing or useless legs, dogs do much better than cats because cats are more dependent upon agility and jumping. Nonetheless, this youngster can climb up and down a cat tree, and it definitely runs better than it walks.

It's still adjusting to stopping after a dash and supporting itself for head scratches...it tends to just leave its hind-quarters up and put its head and shoulder (of the missing leg) down if a more graceful effort isn't in the cards. And, it hasn't learned to completely ignore it's useless leg. It's occasionally chews it a bit as if it's a rag...my sister's trying to stop that for fear of injury and infection.

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Handicats are damaged goods to most folks in somewhat the same way that various people have trouble dealing with or accepting the handicapped. It's harder (but certainly not impossible) to throw away physically flawed human beings than it is to dispose of flawed pets. Drop them of a few miles from home, take them to the pound, drown a kitten...they're all death sentences with different levels of personal involvement. A few of them get lucky and are taken in by somebody like my sister. More would be if they got a chance to meet a few handicats.