Humane Society: Continuing to Rip off the Rubes

Back in November of 2007, I wrote a piece on this blog entitled Why the Humane Society Will Never Change in which I asked:

"Would people donate [to HSUS] if they knew 70 cents out of every dollar they gave to HSUS was spent to send out more direct mail? NO. .... Would folks continue to donate to HSUS if they knew the organization did almost nothing to help fund local animal shelters? NO."

In another post, I detailed the mechanics of the HSUS' direct mail machine in which I concluded that:

"I think, if you follow my narrative, you will see I am really quite conservative when I say 70 to 75 cents out of every dollar most folks give to HSUS will simply go to paying for more direct mail. The real figure, for the average donor to HSUS, is well over 100 percent."

Well, guess what? I was right, and the The Los Angeles Times has finally caught up with me.

They report that the Humane Society of the U.S. (HSUS) gets a "net return" of only 11 percent on their direct mail, and that PETA gets 28 percent. Whhen the cost of central-office management is factored in, I have no doubt the true numbers are even lower.

What this means is that 90 percent of the direct mail money folks are giving to the Humane Society of the U.S. goes down the rat hole of more direct mail, most of which is tossed out unopened, having first been chainsawed out of ancient boreal forests in Canada). About 75 percent of the money folks give to PETA goes down the rat hole of more direct mail as well.

And what of the remaining money -- the small fraction that goes to "program?" In the case of HSUS, not one dime goes to support local shelters, but quite a lot goes to support folks like Wayne Pacelle and his staff who oversee the direct mail machine.

And over at PETA, of course, they have to keep their kill shelter going -- the PETA animal shelter where 90 percent of the dogs that enter are killed using "the blue solution."

At the end of an earlier piece, I wrote:

"If Wayne Pacelle or anyone at HSUS wants to go over specific HSUS numbers with me, I am more than happy to do so, as I work right around the corner from their office in Washington, D.C., and I would be only too happy to drop by to
pick up a copy of their accounting ledgers.

In fact, if Mr. Pacelle will give me a copy of their raw direct mail expense and income data (not the processed IRS-990 data, but the real numbers showing the costs of postage, printing, paper, creative consultants, cost of caging operations, etc), I will buy him lunch and we can go over the data and run a cohort analysis to figure out how long it takes for a HSUS member to 'go green' and get out of the red.

My only stipulation is that after I run the data, I can publicize it. After all, who
knew truth to suffer in a free and open investigation?

If am wrong about the fact that 70-75% of all HSUS direct mail money is going out to pay for more direct mail, I will be more than happy to report my error. After all, as Charles Barkley so famously said, 'I could be wrong . . . but I doubt it.'"

And was I wrong this time? No I was not. As I said in my original post, my numbers were conservative. And they were. It turns out that the real data is even worse.

.

Coyotes in the Bronx. . . Again

"A young coyote pup that was found wandering around in the Bronx is now headed to an animal rehabilitation center. Animal Care and Control said "Oscar" is headed to Long Island to reside at the Star Foundation, which rehabilitates animals. The six-month-old coyote was found roaming in Riverdale on Wednesday. Officials believe he got separated from his litter." - Source and more on previous NYC coyotes
.

Kentucky's Best Kept Secret

“I try not to smile, ‘cause I got my teeth knocked out by a chainsaw.”

.

Bear Population Growth

The newest wildlife species to see a starling population explosion in the U.S. is the black bear.

The black bear population of the United States is estimated to have grown by up to 35 percent between 1988 and 1995, from a population range of 253,000 to 375,000 bears in 1988, to a population of 339,000 to 465,000 bears by the mid-1990s.

Since the mid-1990s, the black bear population in the U.S. has continued to grow very rapidly, and its range is extending into areas where it had once been extirpated (such as Ohio and North Dakota).

All of this is good news, and a sign of nation-wide environmental improvement. As rough as we have been on the environment, Mother Nature really is as tough as an old boot and generally will recover if we stop beating her to death. A country with half a million black bear is country with a lof of land left for fox, possum. groundhog, coyote, wolf, deer, moose, alligator, badger, beaver, pine marten, hawk and eagle.

A sustained black bear population growth of 3 percent per year (which seems to be occurring despite legal bear hunting in 27 states) could mean that the U.S. black bear population might rise to nearly one million bears by 2025.

States with the largest black bear populations include Alaska (which has about 100,000 black bears), Maine, Idaho, California, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin, Oregon, Washington, and West Virginia.

As an "indicator species," the dramatic increase in the black bear population of the U.S. suggests that wildlife and habitat management is improving in much of the U.S., and that there are still quite a few large blocks of relatively unspoiled habitat left.

Depending on the type of land (wetland, dry forest, riparian area, etc.) and climate conditions, individual black bears typically have a home range of 5,000 to 30,000 acres, while bear biologists estimate that a healthy reproducing population of black bears requires a minimum of 500,000 acres of land.

In the state of Virginia (my home), we shoot about 1,500 black bear a year and the population is slowly growing.

Fox From a Shepherd's Point of View

Sheep worrying by domestic dog. Sheep mortalities from fox are sufficiently rare that they have never been filmed anywhere in the world.


Anyone interested in the topic of predation of farmstock by wild animals will find the "Maryland Small Ruminant" site very interesting.

"Small ruminants" are goats and sheep, by the way. This page gives links to pages all over the the U.S. and the world covering predation of sheep and goats.

Note the fairly large losses to coyotes and feral or loose dogs, but the very low mortality of sheep to fox. This is a shepherd's page so it comes "right from the woolies mouth," so to speak. As a general rule, they do not seem much concerned with fox predation.

Out of 273,000 sheep and lamb alleged to have been lost to predators (I say alleged because farmers tend to push the numbers up for insurance and reimbursment reasons), only 8,100 were from fox. State break out data can be found here.


(click to enlarge)

Of the total number lost to fox, by the way, 600 were in Texas and 100 in Wyoming -- an average of zero everywhere else (my guess is because the predation is so rare it is not even included on state forms).
.

Come Quick Lassie: Timmy is Trapped in a Pipe

Click on picture, above, to go to BBC video.

.

Obama and the Family Dog

Best Friends Animal Society in Utah has put up a web site and "petition" to counter the nonsense advice from the AKC about getting a poodle or a hairless dog.

Best Friend's more sensible advice: get a mutt from a shelter.

As for the petition, its simply a publicity gimmick,because, guess what? It's still a free country, and the Obama's can get any damn dog they want.

They can even (gasp) get a cat or a pet raccoon or hippo. And yes, there have been pet hippos and raccoons at the White House before -- under Calvin Coolidge.

There have also been tiger cubs at the White House (Martin Van Buren), gamecocks (Ulysses S. Grant), a coyote (Teddy Roosevelt), a zebra (Teddy Roosevelt), and hamsters (Lyndon Johnson).

As to the pairing of the Jack Russell terrier with Obama (top picture), that was Best Friend's choice, not mine.

And yes, a Jack Russell might work out more-than-fine, depending on the dog. Lord knows that Skip, the little terrier Teddy Roosevelt brought back from a bear hunting trip out West, did fine in the White House with Teddy's kids.

• Related posts
  ** AKC Tries to Peddle Defective Dogs to the Obama's
  ** White House Going to the Dogs
  ** Teddy Roosevelt's Terriers

.

Averages: Now It's the Law

"Just think how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of them are even stupider!"
--George Carlin

Overstock.com: Hypocrites Bathed in Ignorance

Pony hide lounge sold by Overstock


Sometimes the title seems to say it all:

• Beijing takes dog off the menu during Olympics
  

And sometimes it doesn't.

• Overstock forgoes fur to avoid selling dog pelts

In the article, above, the "dog" is not a dog at all, but a "raccoon dog" which, despite its name, is actually an animal that is almost identical in every way to the American raccoon.

Raccoon or raccoon dog?

The inaccurate story in question seems to stem from a Humane Society campaign in which the organization is cynically banging the gong over the fact that the Chinese export raccoon dog pelts.

Raccoon dog? What? The Chinese are exporting the skins of Plott hounds?

No, not quite.

The Humane Society of the U.S. is quite secure that the average American does not know what a raccoon dog really is, and will jump the gun and believe the worst.

In fact the Chinese are exporting the skins of raccoon-like animals that are not a dog in any way, shape or form.

And just to put things into perspective, here in the U.S. we trapped 2.8 million raccoons in 1989 for the export fur trade. That same year, American trappers also harvested from the wild 2.2 million Muskrat, 429,249 Beaver, 398,037 Nutria, 190,221 Mink, 164,487 Red Fox, and 159,043 Coyote.

Did this trapping hurt wild animal populations in this country? Not a whit. In fact, all of the named animals are at a 100-year record for abundance in this country. Raccoon dog is similarly common and abundant (with an expanding range) over much of Eurasia.

What makes Overstock.com's cave-in to the Humane Society particularly absurd, is that this same company has no compunction at all about selling other kinds of animal products, including fur.

Interested in Shearling Lamb? Overstock has shearling jackets and coats, as well as lined boots and slippers. Shearling, for the record, is a skinned baby sheep.

Want a Pony-hide Lounge chair? Overstock is only too happy to sell it!

Want leather items? Overstock has over 4,000 of those, from belts and gloves to purses, coats, shoes and upholstered furniture.

Want shark skin or eelskin products? Overstock has them.

Want to kill your own critters and tan their hides? Overstock sells books to help you learn how to do it, including such little gems as The Ultimate Guide to Skinning and Tanning, How to Tan Skins the Indian Way, and Tan Your Hide!

Of course, if you are a vegan it's not all about leather and fur is it? Overstock also sells rawhide chew toys for dogs as well as over 4,000 items made with goose and duck down, and another 1,500 items made of feathers

As for the sniffing exceptionalists who say killing raccoon dogs for their pelts is different, because at least with chicken, geese and cows, we eat the flesh of the formerly living animal, let me suggest they take some time to study Chinese cooking recipes.

In China folks eat everything that flies, slithers, crawls, hops, or runs including rats, lizards, snakes, turtles, bats, cats and dogs.

Raccoon dog is simply raccoon, and we even eat raccoon in this country, so you know they eat it in China.

So, push-comes-to shove, the folks at the Humane Society of the U.S. are doing nothing more than pushing an extreme animal rights agenda (How can you each chicken!! How can you eat hamburger!!) by cynically pairing ignorance with cultural prejudice.

And the nodding fools at at Overstock.com bought into it.

Nice. So when are they going to stop selling leather purses, wallet, shoes, furniture and watch bands? When are they going to stop selling goose down pillows and quilts?

• Related Posts
  ** More Than 100,000 Active Trappers in the U.S.
  ** Rat or Ratatouille?
  ** Beijing Fast Food at the Olympics
  ** The High Cost of Animal Rights Rhetoric
  ** Modern Scientific Trapping
  ** Red Fox as Litmus Test
  ** Raccoon Biological History
  ** The Cull of the Wild
  ** Why the Humane Society Will Never Change
  ** Direct Mail Economics of the Humane Movement
  ** Beyond the Blue Solution of Dog Shelter Death
  

93 Degrees in the Shade (not that there was shade)

Chris with Bean (Patterdale) and Pearl (Russell).

Chris and I dug on two groundhogs and located four.

The first sette was a rock-and-root fortress which we gave up on after finding we could not get the bar in more than three inches despite 45 minutes of banging with shovel and posthole digger. The locator box said the dog was still four feet down, and it was pretty clear we were not going to get there before night fall. We moved off, and in time Mountain came out.

The good news was that the next two settes were conventional dirt and were easy enough to dig on. Chris' young Patterdale, Bean, is as slim as beer can and did wonderful work baying up a small groundhog that was very aggressive despite it size. Bean is a chocolate patterdale from Jeff Rowe's kennel in Tennessee, and I like her quite a lot.

Pearl found the second groundhog of the day. This was the same groundhog that Mountain had located in the large Sycamore trunk last week, but this time it was found on the dirt side of the ditch. Pearl came away from this dig (Mountain at the back door preventing a bolt) with nothing more than small scrape on the her front paw. The groundhog did not fair as well, and was dispatched per the request of the land owner who is trying to rid the creek bed of these burrowing varmints.

Mountain found a fourth groundhog as we were walking back to the truck, but Chris and I both decided to call it a day as it was 93-degrees in the shade, and we had not been digging in the shade.

Of course, Mountain had a different idea.

In the end, Chris and I walked back to the truck for something cold to drink and to put up the other two dogs. Surely Mountain would follow on. But of course she didn't, and so I walked back and found her where I had left her, silent now as she tried to dig on to the groundhog.

I walked back to the truck and Chris and I drove down to the sette with the tools, but just as we were unloading Mountain showed up.

Chris was very happy to see Mountain above ground, and so was I, as neither of us were too anxious to do more digging, even if this one was sure to be shallow.

Did I mention it was 93 degrees in the shade? True!!

All's well that ends well, and we sealed the day with a soft ice cream at the local country store. Hard to beat soft ice cream any time, but especially after a hot day in the field.

A little one, but an aggressive one for all that.

.

Coffee and Provocation

• From NPR this morning (link to audio file).
  Apparently the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) is saying folks should get a cat or a mutt to avoid high animal care costs. Good advice! Of course the AVMA will not tell folks what else they can do to save money, such as going without all those unnecessary "well dog" checkups to begin with, saying NO to unnecessary teeth cleaning, saying NO to unnecessary "booster shot" vaccine regimes, buying overpriced (and stale) dog food at the vets, or getting your heartworm preventative and antibiotics over-the-counter at a fraction of the cost.
  


• How Far Should We Go to Save Our Pets?
  "This is a country in which 93 percent of we owners describe our pets as members of the family, where 70 percent of us sleep with our dogs and 78 percent with our cats, in which nearly three-quarters of married pet owners report greeting their pet before their spouse when they return home. It is a culture in which, according to one New York study, women report feeling "significantly" more intimacy with the closest pet than the closest person in their lives."
  


• Putting a leash on veterinary costs
  "[O]one of the biggest contributors to higher consumer costs was a comprehensive veterinary market study issued in 1999 by consulting firm KPMG International.It found that the profession was charging too little. And some veterinarians were giving away care." Opportunities abound," the executive summary of the study stated, but vets were held back by "inefficient structures, inappropriate business practices and attitudes."Many professionals in the field, faced with stagnating incomes, took heed." It was a sea change for the veterinary profession," said Jim Flanigan, marketing director of the veterinary association. And soon thereafter came sticker shock for clients...."
  


• Microchips are reuniting more lost pets with their owners
  "German shepherd who ran away from home a year ago will reunite with her owner today, thanks to a microchip ID that was embedded in her body.. . .Microchips, about the size of a grain of rice, are placed between an animal's shoulder blades. The “permanent pet identification” devices have greatly improved police efforts to return animals to their owners before they are brought into the shelter. . . The microchips cost about $50 at most veterinarians. Animal Care and Control occasionally holds low-cost clinics in parks where owners can get a microchip placed in their pet for $8. The department also requires all animals leaving its shelter to have microchips. Police started scanning the microchips in 2003 and, since that time, have returned more than 400 microchipped pets to their owners."
  


• Cookstown man says cat killed his dog
  "Holding up a picture of his dog, which he said died after being attacked by a neighbour’s cat, Greg Cox implored Innisfil council last week to pass a feline control bylaw. Cox’s pet beagle was scratched near the eyes, which created a severe infection. 'His head swole up so bad, he looked like a St. Bernard,' Cox said following the meeting. 'It cost me $300 in vet bills, but we couldn’t keep it under control and I had to have him put down.'”
  
  


• Pet Tips from Consumers Report
  Here are a few cash-saving tips from Consumers Report: 1) You don't have to buy prescription drugs from vets. More than 600 drugs used to treat pets are actually human drugs, and you can find some of the best deals at ordinary drugstores; 2) Pet insurance won't necessarily save you money. In fact, with it, you can end up paying far more for veterinary care than if you didn't have insurance; 3) Demand for purebred dogs has made costly genetic diseases more widespread. Research inherited disorders by breed to avoid high vet costs; 4) The hardiest breed is the common mutt; 5) A second opinion may save you a lot of money; 6) Avoid emergency vet visits; in most cases the vet will do nothing but cage your dog over the weekend even for something like a broken bone. This will be billed to you as "stabilizing" the patient, when in fact it's just crating the dog with a little buffered aspirin.

.

The Watcher Watches

See the little observer in the upper right, tucked into the crack in dirt wall? We left him undisturbed.
.

Nuttal On Those Who Give a Bad Name to All

Brian Nuttal, a rather famous breeder and worker of Patterdale Terriers, was asked by the editors of the Fell and Moorland Working Terrier Club's Annual Yearbook (Volume XXX): "Have you any strong dislikes about Terrier sport or its participants?"

His answer: "One strong dislike I have is the type of Terriermen who kills everything they dig or bolt, cubs or adults, and sell for fox pelts. They are usually the first to complain when quarry is scarce. I know these people are in the minority, but they give a bad name to all. Most of the foxes I dig or bolt are released unharmed, unless they have been doing damage to poultry, pheasants or the like."

Mr. Nuttal's thoughtful answer indicates someone who has a solid understanding not only of the dynamics of fox population densities and diet, but also someone who understands that terrierwork can easily be harmed by the ham-fisted and ill-advised. For more thoughts on ethical terrierwork, see >> here
.

Does John McCain Really Support the Troops?

Does John McCain really "support the troops"?

Not so much, according to the Veterans groups that track this sort of thing.

Here's John McCain's voting record (and the other fellow too) with links to the same.

• Vietnam Veterans Of America
  John McCain voted AGAINST THEM them 17 out of their last 26 scored votes.
  Barack Obama, on the other hand, voted FOR THE VETS 13 out of 14 times.




• Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans for America
  Senator John McCain -- a grade of "D"
  Senator Barack Obama - a grade of "B+"
  
  


• Disabled American Veterans
  Senator John McCain -- 20%
  Barack Obama -- 80%
  .

And what happens when a Vietnam veteran asks John McCain why he has consistently voted against increasing health care and hospital services for returning wounded vets from Iraq?

Suddenly the "Straight Take Express" careens off the road into a rambling soliloquy, far from the facts, and racing away from the question. Check it out.

As for John McCain's statement that he has "a perfect voting record from organizations like the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion," guess what? Those two groups do even keep voting records! All we know for sure is that both groups were pushing the Webb bill, which McCain is criticizing in the video link, above.

And, just to close the loop, McCain was AWOL on the Jim Webb-authored bill expanding GI benefits to returning Iraq vets (Webb was the former Secretary of the Navy under Reagan).

The bill passed 75-22 with a veto-proof level of bi-partisan support.

Some other votes by John McCain:

• McCain was one of only 13 Senators to vote against $430,000,000 for the Department of Veteran Affairs for Medical Services for outpatient care and treatment for veterans.
  
  


• McCain voted against increasing Veterans medical services funding by $1.5 billion in FY 2007 to be paid for by closing corporate tax loopholes.
  
  


• McCain again against voting against closing abusive tax loopholes in order to pay for a reserve fund to allow for an increase in Veterans' medical care by $1.8 billion...
  



• McCain voted to table an amendment by Senator Dodd that called for an additional $322,000,000 for safety equipment for United States forces in Iraq and to reduce the amount provided for reconstruction in Iraq by $322,000,000.
  



• McCain voted to table an amendment by Senator Dodd that called for an additional $322,000,000 for safety equipment for United States forces in Iraq and to reduce the amount provided for reconstruction in Iraq by $322,000,000.

Coffee and Provocation

Happy Hunters Do Not Pop Pills
As I have noted in the past, parrots and puppies on Prozac are the latest thing, but as this New York Times piece suggests, most of the mental illness suffered by our pets is caused by humans who do not recognize the psychological and physical needs of their animals. Read the whole thing, but the "money" paragraph is at the end:

Dodman’s theory, essentially, is that the causes of mood disorders and obsessions in humans and our pets aren’t so different — faulty genetics, dreary environments. Whether cubicle- or cage-bound, we get too little exercise; we don’t hunt, run or play enough to produce naturally mood-elevating neurochemicals. Strangely enough, I had already heard this theory — from a pharmaceutical company executive who, for obvious business reasons, didn’t want to be named. "All of the behavioral issues that we have created in ourselves, we are now creating in our pets because they live in the same unhealthy environments that we do,” he said. “That’s why there is a market for these drugs.”

My Presidential Campaign is Taking Off!
I am flattered, of course, by the very nice publicity that has come my way thanks to folks pushing my Presidential candidacy, but I am still encouraging folks to make as generous a contribution as possible to the person I think is the best candidate with a real shot at winning: Barack Obama.

Three Books Off the Nightstand:
I just finished a good book on hawking entitled Equinox written by Dan O'Brien -- much thanks to Doug P. who gave it to me. I also just finished reading Trawler by Redmond O'Hanlon; a book about Scotsmen fishing the North Atlantic. Thanks to the Old Man for passing that one on. Unbeknown to him, I had read an earlier O'Hanlon book about Borneo (pretty good). I am about 1/3 of the way through a book on the history of potatoes.

A Rhino Head for the Living Room?
My living room has 12' foot ceilings and a massive stone wall with a fireplace on one end. The space above the fireplace is blank and I have always thought it would be a perfect spot for a moose head. Now, however, I am thinking of putting a Rhino there. Too much?

Dubious Medical Advances:
Pfizer, whose stock is at a 12-year low, has just announced that the FDA has approved a new injectable version of a cephalosporin antibiotic for cats and dogs called Convenia. The drug is a one-time injection which provides up to 14 days of antibiotic treatment for common skin infections. The injection must be administered by a veterinarian, which will cost you about $80 for the visit. What neither a vet nor Pfizer will tell you: You can get cephalexin to treat skin infections at a fraction of the cost and without a visit to the vet or a prescription. Shhhh! Tell no one!

The Best Congress Detroit Can Buy:
Washington Post car guy Warren Brown noted in a March 2007 article, that U.S. car makers make and market cars overseas that get much better mileage than those they are selling here in the U.S. How come these American car companies aren't trying to sell these higher mile-per-gallon cars over here? "Europe and the United States are two different worlds," said Robert Lutz, GM's vice chairman for global product development, noting that gasoline was selling for $2.48 a gallon in the U.S. as compared to $5 a gallon in Geneva. Of course, that was then, and this is now. It now appears U.S. gasoline prices will top $5 by Christmas; a sea-change that caught GM by surprise and is pushing it towards bankruptcy. Meanwhile, cars in the U.S. still get an average of just 25 miles per gallon, while automakers in the European Union produce cars that get an average of 44.2 miles per gallon, and cars in China get 36.7 mpg.

Gas Buddy:
Want to know what other folks in the country are paying for gasoline? Just go to Gas Buddy and click on the interactive map to zoom in on your region, state, or neighborhood.

Three for the Road on the Lot Right Now:
Three relatively high mile-per-gallon, non-hybrid, low-cost cars that can be found on the lot right now, and which might fit the needs of the average dog owner are: the Honda Fit (MSRP $13,950, Invoice $13,452, EPA combined MPG 31); the Toyota Yaris liftback (MSRP $12,225, Invoice $11,491, EPA combined MPG MPG 32), and the Nissan Versa (MSRP $13,500, Invoice $12,900, EPA combined MPG 32). All three are reported to have surprisingly roomy fold-down seats.

Alfred Hitchcock Barbie:
Finally

Meat Water:
Finally

A Republic Candidate We Can All Support:
Finally

The First Picture of Water on Mars:
Finally

How to Fold a Shirt:
I had to watch this over and over again.

John McCain Does Not Work Weekends:
And who can blame him at his age?

Married, But Not to Each Other:
Senators David Vitter and Larry Craig have signed on to sponsor the Marriage Protection Amendment in the Senate. Vitter is the Senator from Louisiana who visited hookers in order to satisfy his diaper fetish. Craig is the Idaho Senator caught cruising public restrooms seeking anonymous gay sex.

Free Music for your Ipod:
Anyone looking for free tunes for their mp3 player can get more than they need at www.beemp3.com. Worried that this is stealing? Do what I did: Download tunes you used to own (back in the days of vinyl, reel-to-reel, and cassette) from artists that made their millions years ago, and who are now retired.

Reformat Video Files From Your El-Cheapo Camera:
You can reformat and edit QuickTime movie files (.mov) made from your el-cheapo point-and-shoot camera by downloading (for free) RadVideo Tools. If you are outputting your edited .avi files to Youtube, however, you will also have to compress your files with this same software.

A Custom Error Page?
I made a custom 404-error page for the www.terrierman.com web site. Apparently, 404 pages are "the most commonly viewed pages on any web site." Hmmm. Who knew? Is it true? I have no idea, but in case it is, I took the time to suggest that lost souls on the web site might want to consider ordering the book.
.

Farm Fresh Creative Juice

.

Junk Science and Wiener Dogs

A new "study" from the Center for the Interaction of Animals and Society at the University of Pennsylvania concludes that the "most aggressive" dogs are small breeds, and the most aggressive dog of all is the Dachshund.

The Dachshund? Wiener dogs are the most aggressive dogs on the planet?

Riiiiiiiight.

According to the authors of the study, after those killer Dachshunds comes the killer Chihuahuas, the killer Jack Russell terriers, and the killer Beagles.

Killer Beagles? Hmmmmmm. Something is seriously wrong here!

In terms of larger breeds, the highest aggression rating goes to the Akita. The Pit Bull came in sixth, while such notorious biting breeds as Dalmatians and Corgis did not even make it on to the list.

Whiskey- Tango- Foxtrot.

When you tell me Beagles are a dog to fear, and yet Corgis and Dalmatians have not even mad it on to your breed survey, you have a credibility problem.

You also have a credibility problem when you list Huskies as one of the least aggressive dogs when, in fact, the Center for Disease Control counts them as among the top 5 dogs most likely to kill you (PDF).

The credibility problem is compounded when it turns out that this "study" is not based on post-dog-bite emergency room visits, but on something a good deal less illuminating: interviews with 6,000 dog owners who are recalling stuff.

Never mind that most of these same folks cannot recall what they had for dinner last night!

And never mind that the "problems" being recalled may say less about the breed involved than it does about the unthinking nature of people and their bumbling actions around dogs. A Chihuahua has a good reason to fear the kind of clumsy handling that a Great Dane might scarcely notice.

But never mind that; the problem must be down the leash and not up!

But, wait. There's more. It turns out this research is not based on a random sample of dog owners. Instead, this study is based on a survey of "11 American Kennel Club recognized national breed clubs" and "an online survey" of 101 questions, of which 26 questions were actually on canine aggression.

What? You mean only 11 breed clubs were contacted, and the rest was done with an "online survey?"

An online survey of who? The press articles do not say.

And it only gets better. Upon inspection, it turns out that the "data" here is so thin that broad statements are being made based on reports about -- literally -- a handful of dogs.

For example, Dachshunds are deemed to be psycho based on a survey that encompassed only 68 dogs.

When your "N" is this small, only a few offending dogs are needed to tip an entire breed into the "aggressive" zone.

And so it goes down the list. Only 56 Chihuahuas were in the survey. Only 78 Jack Russell terriers. Only 63 Beagles.

In fact, of the top four breeds indicted as "the most aggressive" this distinction was based on the supposedly bad temperament of about 30 dogs.

Not 30 dogs per breed, but 30 dogs across all four breeds!!

More troublesome still is that response bias does not seem to have been factored into the survey at all.

What is response bias? Simple: In this case, it would be the tendency of owners of large-breed dogs beset by "breed ban" legislation to downplay bites and aggression, and the tendency of the owners of small dogs to overstate how "tough" their little dogs actually are.

"Tricky-Woo is soooo fierce," says the hair dresser. "You should have seen him growling at that big ol' mastiff the other day."

Along with response bias, you may also have selection bias, which is to say that folks who pony up to take a 101-question survey about dog temperament may be more likely to have a disconnect between the dog they thought they were getting, and the dog they actually got.

Which is a nice way of saying that a small dog is just about as much work as a large dog, but the expectations of a small dog owner may be very different.

What freaks out the ill-informed owner of Chihuahua or the casual purchaser of a Jack Russell terrier may not raise the eyebrows of a Pit Bull or Mastiff-owner who comes expecting to have some problems, and who is more likely to to make training Job One from Day One.

Of course, none of this matters to newspaper reporters looking to score a quick headline.

Your average reporter got an "A" in English and failed math. An R-square value? What's that mean? A meaningful sample size? A survey response rate? Sample bias? Survey bias? And what do you mean when you say "correlation is not causality?"

Reporters know little about such things, and care even less if this kind of "detail" gets in the way of a quick headline.

"Attack of the Killer Dachshunds!"

That's the kind of headline that sells, and so we get unending amounts of junk science consumed like junk food by a gullible public more interested in entertainment than information.

Just imagine if, instead of dogs, this was a survey of adolescent aggression.

Can you imagine any self-respecting university doing a study of "human aggression by race" in which a handful of "ethnic-pride clubs" were questioned along with folks responding to an online survey about how their kids acted?

Woooo-eeee!

Now imagine that folks were simply asked to "recall" incidents of aggression or fear or excitability or attention-seeking by their children.

No objective critera or hard incidents of bad actions were needed; it was all about parental impression, not about arrest records or bullet holes. And, of course, the numbers of each "race" surveyed would never be large enough to tease out any meaningful data on such variables as age of mother, preschool attendance, or education.

And now imagine that when questions were asked and the answers coded, that murder, robbery, and rape were treated the same as a playground brawl, a shoving match, and yelling at the kids next door to get out of your back yard.

Would you consider that meaningful and important science?

Or would you call it something else?

• Anyone who thinks my objection to this "study" is driven by its conclusion about Jack Russell terriers, should think again and read the links below. My objections are purely methodological. If you are new to dogs, or are looking for an easy-to-care for pet for the kids, please do NOT get a Jack Russell terrier.
  ** A 15-Year Mistake
  ** Bad Dog: An Article for Prospective Terrier Owners
  ** Bad Dog Talk
  ** No, You May Not Pet My Dog
  .

Pack of Killer Dachshunds on the Loose!

Are they dachshunds? Sure, why not? Close enough.

See another attacking small dog tragedy here.

And catch this battle to the death between a Dachshund and a Bulldog.

When will we end the horror of organized dog fighting with Dachshunds end?

.

Word Origins and Hunting

.

Anything that has been around a long time will generate a few words and phrases, and that's true for hunting as much as sailing ("posh", "pay the devil", etc.) or market trading ("pig in a poke", "cat out of the bag", etc.).

A few phrases derived from hunting in general and fox hunting in particular:

• To be "in the pink" originally meant to be in the swankest possible fox hunting gear, designed by the London clothier, Mr. Pink.
  
  
• The term "flying start" originally referred to a horse speeding up after the fox was spotted, with the idea that the horse was already going at some speed before it switched into an even higher gear to keep up with the hounds.
  
  
• "Staying power" is a term used to describe a hound that will pick up a scent, not lose the scent, and stay up with the fox.
  
  
• "To toe the line" meant a hound following a hot scent and not casting about too far while looking for it.
  
  
• "Red Herring" is a term for deliberate misdirection and may come from poaching and/or dog training. One story is that poachers were said to rub herring on their feet to mislead dogs put on their trail by game keepers. Another, perhaps related story, is that a red herring was chosen because dog trainers often used the pungent fish to create a trail when training their hounds. A "red" herring, by the way, is simply a smoked version of the fish.
  
  
• "Soho" a section of London, is named after a term derived from a cry once used in rabbit hunting. The term dates to around 1307 and was yelled when the hunters had sighted the rabbit, equivalent to "Tally Ho" in fox hunting. The areas where Soho now occupies was once pastureland where hunting took place. The place name, which dates to 1632, derives from this hunter's cry. The "Soho" section of New York City is a mimic of the London place-name area, but is actually shortened version of "South of Houston Street. North of Houston street, if course, is called "Noho."
  
  
• "A Fast Woman" is a woman who did not ride side-saddle, but straddled the saddle like a man.
  
  
• "Hello" has only been used as a common greeting since the advent of the telephone. The first recorded use is from 1883. It does, however, have earlier origins in other senses. It is a variant of hallo, which dates to 1840 and is a cry of surprise. That in turn is related to halloo, a cry to signal that exclamation used by a hunter to signify that a fox has been seen breaking into the open. Halloo dates to about 1700, but a variant, aloo, appears in Shakespeare's King Lear about 100 years before that.
  
  
• "The brush off" refers to removing a fox's tail as a trophy at the end of hunt -- a signal that it was time to pack it up and head back to the barn.
  
  
• "A Majority Whip" is a term that originated in Parliament in the mid-19th century and is a shortening of ‘whipper-in,’ who is the huntsman’s assistant in charge of keeping the hounds from straying by driving them back with the whip into the main body of the pack.
  
  
• "Go to Ground" refers to a fox that takes to a hole to avoid the hounds that are pursuing it.
  
  
• Corduroy is derived from the French ‘cord du roi’, and was once woven from silk and was used exclusively by the kings of France as part of their hunting costumes

.

Unanimous DC Gun Decision

Back in 1950, these DC-area women captured four night-marauding men who had been terrorizing their neighborhood for three weeks.


My old friend Gary Imhoff writes about the Heller gun decision in DC Watch, his on-line muck-raking newsletter about the antics of local Washington, D.C. politicians:

"... [T]the vote was five to four, but the Court was unanimous on one point: the linchpin of the District’s case was wrong. All nine justices held that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is an individual right, not a right of states to raise militias. The Scalia majority opinion took that position, of course, but the fo