Progressive Wednesday

A New Leash on Life

A few Wednesdays (the progressive kind) ago, we gave you five ways in which you can help provide the highest level of care and compassion to companion animals, both our own and those of others. I shared with you my favorite quote; I like it so much that I'll share it again:

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.

-Mahatma Gandhi

I guess this doesn't say much about our nation's greatness and moral progress. Between three and four million dogs and cats are euthanized at animal shelters in the United States every year, while “puppy mills– pump out new dogs in conditions that, according to the Humane Society, promote over-breeding, inbreeding, minimal veterinary care, poor quality of food and shelter, lack of socialization with humans, overcrowded cages, and the killing of unwanted animals.

These numbers sicken me when I think of my animals and quality of care that they get. But for Bobby and Kelly Dorafshar, it moved them to start A New Leash On Life:

A nonprofit organization designed to reduce the number of animals abandoned and euthanized in Los Angeles and to educate the public, through a series of seminars, on responsible pet ownership.

They first opened this no-kill shelter in 1997, and have joined with animal rescue veterans in Chicago to open up a branch in “The Windy City.– Together they have saved the lives of over 3,000 animals while neutering thousands more and providing invaluable public education and awareness.

While these shelters may only exist in the second and third largest cities in the country, you don't have to live there to participate. By visiting their website you can adopt, foster, or sponsor a dog, volunteer with A New Leash on Life, or make a tax-deductible donation. Whichever way you choose, for Lenny's, Vera's, and Whizzer's sake, please lend a hand.

It’s Alaska, not Vietnam

Last month I asked you to join me in signing a petition to stop the removal of the Gray Wolf from the endangered species list and opening it up be hunted right back to its pre-endangered-species-list numbers. Well, in Alaska they have started a program to kill off wolves in large numbers with Vietnam-style aerial gunning. According to the Defenders of Wildlife:

Nearly 700 wolves have been killed by aerial gunning teams in Alaska since state officials resumed the aerial gunning program — shot from above or chased to exhaustion and killed at point-blank range. Now the killing threatens to spread to the Lower 48, as anti-wolf legislators push for aerial gunning to help kill hundreds of wolves in Idaho and Wyoming.

What's worse is that there have been two ballot measures in “The Last Frontier– to prevent aerial hunting of threatened wolves that have been ignored by the Board of Game, and the killing has continued.

Fortunately, these canines have a champion in the United States Congress; Representative George Miller of California is introducing legislation to close the gaping loophole in the Federal Airborne Hunting Act that allows this cruelty to happen. He needs your help and mine. So once again, please join me in signing a letter to be sent to your representative urging them to stop this disgusting practice. It'll only take 30 seconds. They want 10,000 by Labor Day and are only a few hundred short. Let's give them that progressive push over the edge.

Why should you? The reasons are too many to list in a single post, but you can read all of the ways in which these animals are beneficial and all of the ridiculous myths about the dangers of wolves by clicking here. Plus, it wasn't okay when Michael Vick did it to domesticated dogs; it's not any better to do it to wild ones.

Picture clicked by this wolf-lover.

Dog fighting is not a victimless crime

On the front page of the newspaper lately you've undoubtedly seen Michael Vick's face along with a headline accusing him of being involved in illegal dog fighting. While I, of course, wish that this story was not true, I am glad that it has brought this problem under the public microscope.

The problem, however, with this case is that it has switched from the front page to the “Sports– page, and now that microscope seems to have focused in on Michael Vick, the Atlanta Falcon's star Quarterback rather than the problem of dog fighting and what needs to be done about it. Because of its lack of attention, dog-fighting statistics are hard to come by, but hopefully now a few more resources will go into finding and stopping this disgusting practice.

What con you do to help? I won't ask you to sign a petition telling Nike to drop their endorsement or to get the NFL to suspend Vick. While I think they should do those things if he is found guilty, I think that misses the point.

A few Wednesdays ago, we concentrated our efforts on stopping animal cruelty; we renew that call today. If you ever suspect that an animal you know of is involved in any kind of fighting or other abusive situation, visit Pet-Abuse.com, a 24-hour service where you can anonymously report any pet abuse that you have witnessed.

The most recent edition of DVM News provided a short list of red flags to alert those in the Veterinarian profession of possible dog-fighting cases. Here it is:

• The nature of the injuries – “ typically on the face, front legs (rarely the rear legs), chest and abdomen.
• Third-party payments, and payments in cash.
• Explanations of injuries that are inconsistent with what the veterinarian sees.
• Requests for treatment supplies for home use.

So if you're in the veterinary medical field, keep your eyes peeled and report any possible animal abusers. And if you're not, keep you're eyes peeled and report animal abusers anyway.

I hope this photographer called the police

Hi-Tech Parks = Confused Poachers = Happy Nature

The problem of poachers is a constant, particularly in national parks located in the Republic of Congo, Costa Rica, The Galapagos Islands, and the Shavia Wildlife Refuge in Russia’s Altai Republic. So, those hired to protect the wildlife in those areas are going hi-tech.

According to a recent article The Economist, the Nouabale-Ndoki National Park in the Congo is 4,200 square kilometers and has 14 park rangers. In the past year, they’ve caught no poachers. This isn’t because there’s no poaching. For example:

Last year poachers are estimated to have killed more than 23,000 African elephants. According to a study by the University of Washington, that is about one in 17 of the continent’s total.

So the good folks running the park are going to place special metal detectors and smoke detectors (poachers often smoke the meat) along trails and in trees. When a poacher trips a detector, a signal goes right to the rangers with exact coordinates. Many people in the Congo believe, quite strongly, in magic, and “local people will receive no explanation for the rangers’ new powers.” The hope is that this will both stop poachers in their tracks (or rather, the apes’, jaguars’ and elephants’ tracks) and discourage poaching in the first place.

So what can you do from the comfort of your computer? We’ll give you three:

1. Sign the pledge from Wild Aid and the Active Conservation Awareness Program, urging world leaders to do their part in putting an end to poaching. The ACAP is hoping to get 25 million signatures by 2008. Let’s be part of this effort.
2. Consider donating a measly five smackers to Wild Aid. All you’ve got to do is click this sentence. Just so you know they’re as legit as it gets, you can click right here to go to a National Geographic article on the organization. And you can listen to the executive director of Wild Aid on NPR by clicking here.
3. Tell a pal about Wild Aid. You can do this by clicking this sentence, or by clicking the “Share This” button at the bottom-left of this post. This is a very important action because Wild Aid “guarantee[s] that 100% of donations from the public go straight to the field,” so free marketing is the best marketing.
   

Picture clicked by this friend of pachyderms.

It’s everywhere your dog wants to be

Last Wednesday you read about five ways that you can improve the lives of companion animals, stop animal cruelty, and even a little about how those animals can improve the lives of others. We asked you to join us (and several of you did), in donating just two bucks to the Humane Society of Louisiana. There's a way you can donate more, and it won't cost you a nickel.

Before I go on, I should say again that we're not great advocates of credit card companies. I think it's safe to say that we rather despise them and the lack of government regulation to keep them from charging 35% interest rates and $50 late fees. But a lot of people have them; there are 641 million of them in circulation. While I wish I were not a part of this statistic, the four I have do offer benefits other than the ability to drive my family into unrecoverable debt.

So, if you are thinking about applying for a new credit card, don't. But if you do, consider this one: The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) Visa card from Chase bank, aka: “Kitty Kard.– Here's the skinny from the ASPCA website:

Become a card-carrying member of the ASPCA and Chase will donate $75 upon first use of your new card – at no extra cost to you. In addition, each time you use your ASPCA credit card to make a purchase, the ASPCA receives 0.2% of the sale, with a minimum guaranteed payment from Chase of $2.4 million.

With Americans charging $1.5 trillion on their credit card every year, if everyone switched to this card the ASPCA would get $348,075,000,000 in total one-time donations and sales percentages from Chase. Since that would make Chase either file for bankruptcy or drop the program, we'll shoot for a lower number. In fact, I'll ask you to shoot for just one: you.

I'll hold you to the same intellectual standard as high schoolers that are taught, “Don't have sex, but if you do, use a condom,– when I say, don't apply for credit cards, but if you do, apply for this one. It might just save the life of a creature of this world, and it doesn't cost you a nickel. Just remember to pay off the balance every month.

This Wednesday: 9 Lives in Dog Years

For those of you keeping score at home, 9 lives in dog years would equal 1.285714 repeated.

Problem:

I write about this issue with a degree of expertise that is unmatched by any other topic. I had no pets growing up. Well, that’s if you don’t count the newt I had when I was ten that crawled out the tank and went missing, only to turn up two months later alive and well, swimming in our basement that was flooded with two feet of water. (“This is the happiest day of my life!” I yelled, as my mother wept for the destruction of all the furniture in the basement.)

Then I married a vet student; that was the end of that. Three rabbits, a parrot, two tortoises, two terrapins, a saltwater fish tank, a dog, and countless hours helping my wife study for exams later, to say that I know a thing or two about animals and pet ownership is like saying Wayne Gretzky was a good goal scorer. (Did I just compare myself to Wayne Gretzky? Oh well.)

Needless to say, or perhaps not so needless, our animals get great care. Having a live-in vet doesn’t hurt anything. But many pets get neglected, abused, abandoned, and thrown in shelters at the rate of 8 million per year. People are forced to put animals down because they lack the funds for proper veterinary care. They can�’t give their animals the lives they deserve. We can help change that.

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Make Progress:

Mahatma Gandhi once said: “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”

We’ve domesticated these animals; we have an obligation to provide the highest level of care possible. By Gandhi’s standards, it follows that we have an obligation to make our nation greater. Here’s how we can do that.

• Donate
• Contribute or Apply
• Visit
• Adopt
• Report

9 Lives in Dog Years: Donate

Any organization that is trying to advance a cause usually has to buy “stuff,– and unfortunately, “stuff– costs money. Logically it follows that one of the easiest ways to help an organization that supports a cause that you believe in is to make a donation, whether it be a little Washington or a big Benjamin.

The problem is that it can seem rather feeble to donate some of your hard-earned bacon to an enormous organization that deals with seven or eight-digit figures everyday. I don't buy it, but I understand why people would be hesitant. This week we're going to narrow it down a little bit. We've asked you to do it several times before; we're asking you to donate just two dollars, one more time.

Louisiana is not exactly the most progressive state in our union, and its animal shelters are some of the most despicably under-funded. So rather than sending money to the Enormous International Association of Huge Organizations (EIAHO), or even the Humane Society of the United States, we are asking, no, pleading with you to send those measly two smackers to the Humane Society of Louisiana.

Before Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans animal shelters were grossly under-funded; now they're grossly under-funded and overbooked. According to the HSLA website:

Animal shelters in the parishes surrounding New Orleans area have seen dramatic increases in animal intakes of up to 30%, due to population shifts.

The Humane Society has reopened its headquarters in the New Orleans metropolitan area and started “Camp Katrina,– a grassroots operation to provide rescue and shelter for animals injured or abandoned after the hurricane. It is rebounding nicely, but it still needs our support. So instead of Super-Sizing that value meal (or instead of buying it altogether), send that extra money to the Humane Society of Louisiana, and let's make a tangible difference with our donations.

Oh, and I would be remiss if I failed to thank the countless foot soldiers and veterinarians who have donated their time and effort during and after the storm to save all of the Fidos and Snuggles in New Orleans. From the bottom of their parasite-free hearts, woof-woof. That means, “Thank you.–

Thanks to this Katrina rescuer for the top pic.