Terrierman's Daily Dose

Dog Shows in the Age of Dog Show Ridicule

2012-01-27T09:00:00.002-05:00

I sometimes read something on a handheld device, send it to email, and forget it's there. Trolling through some old files while looking for something else, I came across this old gem from 2009: Bitch Please; Dog shows in the age of dog show ridicule.

If you're looking to mock, a dog show is an easy target. You could note how many of these people pursuing perfection in dogs are themselves fairly overweight, and eat too many funnel cakes, and dress in a way that would kill any chance of a social life were they actually in high school. Spending time at the dog show, however, the group came less to resemble some kind of wacky subculture, and more just the culture. A common trait of Americans — blue and red, gay and straight, X and Y, whatever — is that they largely want to be good at something, to be recognized for doing at least one thing well, and maybe that's at the expense of everything else. Poetry writing, bass fishing, cooking, competitive eating, you name it. So you spend months or even years in triathlon training. You juggle Family Feud and reality TV and dog show gigs. You learn about breeds and how to groom and how to rub your dog in just the right family unfriendly way to make its tail stand straight up for judging.

I think this piece has it exactly right: these are just people with limited talents trying to get good at something. And yes, in order to get good at this something, they are willing to give up quite a lot -- money, time, time with family... and even the health of dogs.

This is the dark little secret of dog shows: they are not about dogs. A dog will not cross a room for a rosette, much less drive 300 miles across two states and spend two nights in a bad hotel for the privilege.
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Coffee and Provocation

2012-01-27T06:00:00.001-05:00

Public Lockable Dog Crates?
What do you do when you have your dog with you, and you want to go into a store? In Norway, at leas one place has a "Hundehiet" box where you can stick your dog inside until you’re done. I am not sure I like the idea, for reasons that seem obvious: abandonment, heat, cold, sanitation.

Here's a List of 20 Ancient Living Things:
The youngest is 2,000 years old, the oldest about 500,000 years old. And yes, they are all living.

Something Is Brain Damaged
Christie Carr, a 39-year-old woman from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, nursed a partially paralyzed and brain damaged Red Kangaroo back to heath after it suffered a fractured neck, and now the animal shares her bed at night. ‘He’s always stealing my pillow,’ she said.

Three Million Lakes
Canada has at least 3 million lakes. Other odd geography facts here.

Guns for Less?
A shipment of 86,00 M1 Garands and 770,00 M1 Carbines held by the South Korean military since the Korean war in the 1950s, will soon be coming to the U.S. after an objection by the State Department was overturned.

What Percent Are You?
Want to know where your household income ranks? Punch in total household income and see.

A Dog Tag for Your Keys?
I have a dog tag on my keys with my cell phone number on it. This seems like a nice version and you get two numbers, so one tag can actually go on the dog!
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Fearless Beauty is on Duty

2012-01-26T04:15:00.001-05:00

"Beauty" was a wire haired terrier who belonged to a People's Dispensary for Sick Animals (PDSA) officer and who led the Animal Rescue Squads during the bombing of London in World War Two.

Beauty received the Pioneer Medal from the PDSA for all the lives she saved; a medal usually reserved for humans. She also received a silver mounted collar with the inscription, 'For Services Rendered'. She was awarded the Dickin Medal in January 1945.
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Six People and a Dog Commute on 50CC

2012-01-25T13:42:00.001-05:00

And you drive your SUV to work all alone!
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Too Close for Comfort

2012-01-25T05:30:00.001-05:00

This is an ad for some sort of breath-freshener for dogs, but it says quite a lot that so many Pugs actually look like this now. Cut off a dog's face, and a dog's head is not that different from a dog's back end.
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Only in America

2012-01-25T04:00:00.001-05:00

The Nonsense of "Pull Dogs"

2012-01-24T07:22:00.002-05:00

In The Working Jack Russell Terrier Eddie Chapman writes:

"Something that makes my blood boil is when I hear terrier men talk about dogs they call Caesar dogs. They will show you a Russell type that has been bred too big and say, 'I use him as a Caesar dog'. If I ask what a Caesar dog is, they say it is a dog which will hold the badger, he won't let go,' they say. I have never heard such rubbish in my life. Besides being unnecessary, it is invariably cruel to the dog and more often than not he will be badly bitten for his pains. Besides that, it is unnecessarily cruel to the badger and the sort of behavior that got badger digging banned. I have tried to explain how to remove badgers from a sett without injury to dog or badger. There is nothing clever about getting a hard dog smashed up by a badger. On the contrary, it shows ignorance and a lack of responsibility and feeling. Bravery in a terrier should never be exploited."

I found it quite refreshing to read this passage, as I have often noted that there is little reason to own a "pull dog" if you actually know how to handle things at the end of a dig. The use of "pull dogs" damages dogs and quarry alike and is wasteful as it often necessitates time out of the field and expensive veterinary work.

In the U.S., the use of pull dogs (what Chapman and some others call "Caesar" dogs) is to due to the prevalence of too many over-large terriers that cannot go to ground in a real earth. To say you have a "good pull dog," is to say you do not have a dog capable of actually going to ground.

If you have followed the Kennel Club dictates, and embraced a 14 inch tall dog with a 17" or 18" chest (or larger!), you are forced to rationalize a job for it. No matter that it is a stupid job forged in pain. Most people would rather see their dog injured than swallow their pride and admit they have drunk the Koolaid offered up by the Kennel Club know-nothings who think a fox den is as big around as a go-to-ground tunnel.

Another factor is that many people simply have no idea of how to handle quarry and so use the dog to to do the job. Having gotten to the end of a dig, they do not know how to get the animal out of the pipe, nor do they know how to dispatch it. In such a situation, the use of a "pull dog" is ignorance in motion.

The simplest way for a novice to handle quarry is with a snare. You can make your own for about $5, or else buy a pig snare from a feedstore.

Groundhogs can also be tailed out alive -- it is not hard if the groundhog's tail is presented, as it so often is. If very much of the pipe is remaining, however, you may find yourself in a tug-of-war with the groundhog who can jamb up inside a pipe so tightly that even a large man can have difficulty pulling one free.

Always use a snare for raccoons -- they can twist all the way around on their short fat bodies. They can grab you with their hands and have crushing bites. Rabies is not uncommon in raccoons, especially on the East Coast.

If you have entangled a fox in a net, be carefully when extricating the fox. The best advice is to pin the animal to the ground under your boot while removing the net. Work the net off the fox in sections, and then release it to hunt another day.
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Dog Show Etiquette

2012-01-24T04:00:00.008-05:00

That's one sure-fire way to get your sign read! Source.

Related Link:
** Dog show fashion police
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Learning About Dogs by Watching Dogs

2012-01-23T11:05:00.003-05:00

In the January issue of Earth dog-Running Dog magazine, Colin Didriksen has a nice article about picking a pup. Didriksen is raising Teckels these days -- working dachsunds -- and the piece starts out:

There was roughly one hundred years of doggy experience between the three men standing in the garden watching a litter of Teckels do what seven week old Teckel pups do.

Their mother was with them and now and again one of the pups would push her too far and receive first a growl and if that didn't convince it to stop then the nip that followed did. It's a pity that some human parents don't take note of the way other animals correct the wrongdoings of their young and act similarly; it would mean fewer badly behaved children and incidents of unsocial behavior would be diminished. Areas where some young people delight in causing aggravation to old people would disappear. A degree of respect is often brought about by a tiny tinge of fear.

Watch any non-human mother and its young. Cats, dogs, foxes, ferrets and the like, usually after a verbal warning in the guise of a growl or a hiss, will all discipline their young physically either with a nip, by swatting them with a paw, or both.

You will have to buy a copy to read the rest, and I encourage a subscription, as it's a good magazine with fine pieces from Didriksen, Richard Christian (the title of his piece this month is Civilization and Syphilisation and very amusing), David Harcombe and others.

I always find it amazing that the pet and show ring people are always quick to wax nostaligic and romantic about the history of dogs, but seem entirely blind to the fact that canine history is being written every day by men and women who actually work their dogs above and below ground.

And guess what? Take my word on this: true working dog men and women have something to say and to teach.

The fox in his burrow and the sheep on the hill do not judge up the leash, do not care about some scrap of pedigree paper, nor are they concerned about coat color, nose color, or "expression."

But, of course, people are people, and how is it that we choose a pup from a litter at eight weeks of age?

Ah well, you will have to buy the magazine and read the piece. But yes, it's very amusing.
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The Impact of Ebola in the Forest

2012-01-23T06:03:00.001-05:00

In three essays in Natural Acts: A Sidelong View of Science and Nature, David Quammen profiles the work of Mike Fay who did a 2,000 mile walking "megatransect," with pygymy porters, through the wildest and most inhospitable parts of the Central African Republic and Congo, ending up on the coast of Gabon after 18 months of walking through poacher-infested forests and leech-infested swamps.

Quammen writes of what they found -- and did not find -- in the Minkébé National Park in Gabon:

They found spectacular zones of forest and swamp, stunning inselbergs, networks of streams, all rich with species and virtually untouched by human presence. They also found — as Mike Fay has been finding — a nearly total absence of gorillas and chimpanzees. It wasn’t always so. In 1984 a paper appeared in the American Journal of Primatology, by Caroline Tutin and Michel Fernandez, in which the authors described their census of gorilla and chimpanzee populations throughout Gabon. Using a combination of field transects, habitat analysis, and cautious extrapolation, Tutin and Fernandez estimated that at least 4,171 gorillas lived within the Minkébé sector, representing a modest but significant population density. Something seems to have happened to those apes between 1984 and now. It may have happened abruptly in the mid-1990s, when three Ebola epidemics burned through villages and gold camps at the Minkébé periphery, killing dozens of humans. One of those outbreaks occurred in early 1996 at a village called Mayibout 2, on the upper Ivindo River. It began with a chimpanzee carcass, found dead in the forest and brought to the village as food. Eighteen people who helped with the skinning, the butchering, and the handling of the chimp flesh became sick. Suffering variously from fever, headache, and bloody diarrhea, they were evacuated downriver to the Makokou hospital. Four of them died quickly. A fifth escaped from the hospital, went back to Mayibout 2, and died there. That victim was buried in the traditional way—ceremonies were performed, and no special precautions were taken against infection.

By early March, thirty-one people had fallen ill, of whom twenty-one died, for a mortality rate of almost 68 percent. Then it was over, as abruptly as it started. Around the same time, according to later accounts, dead gorillas were seen in the forest.

... [Fay] spends hours in his tent, collating the latest harvest of data on his laptop. Within the past fourteen days, he informs me, we have stepped across 997 piles of elephant dung and not a single dung pile from a gorilla. We have heard zero gorilla chest-beat displays. We have seen zero sprigs of Marantaceae chewed by gorilla teeth and discarded. These are numbers representing as good a measure as now exists of the mystery of Minkébé.

See National Geographic's interactive web site for more information.

Mary Chapin Carpenter :: Come On Come On

2012-01-22T08:00:00.003-05:00

video url

Down the River Road is not a metaphor. River Road is a real road. Mary Chapin Carpenter used to live in the D.C. area near me. I drive down the River Road quite a lot when I go hunting.

Back about 13 or 14 years before this song was recorded at Wolftrap, Mary Chapin Carpenter would perform for beer money at Food For Thought on Connecticut Avenue, and I was a $5 and $10 tipper when she passed the hat. I remember her well as I thought I was being extraordinarily generous with my money considering that $10 back then could buy two pitchers of Tuborg beer, and I was making less money than the receptionist in my office.
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The Lessons On Mountain's Muzzle

2012-01-21T11:05:00.002-05:00

Mountain is curled up in her bed next to me. There are a couple of scars running down her nose from a few fox encounters in her youth, and if you look carefully, you can see the very tip of her nose is cut off from a groundhog bite. A front canine is broken -- a little something to remember from a sette with double raccoons.

Mountain works a little differently now -- she will stand back and bay a little more. Now she knows butt from breath. Old dogs know more than young ones do.

And yet this dog wakes up every morning to check what pants and shoes I am wearing. She lives for Carrharts and boots.

My point here is that this dog has not "bellied over" from a few natural aversives, and neither have any other dogs that I have owned. She has not been too cowed by bites, barb wire and brambles.

For that matter, neither are the cows who seem to be very happy living behind their electric fence. They are not too traumatized by having been nipped by the wire a few times in their life.

All of this is a wind-up to a truly excellent piece from Ruth Crisler about real world aversives and the fomented fear and contrived crisis fanned by certain dog trainers who seek to browbeat the world into thinking there is only one way to train a dog. Read the whole thing.

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Remember When We Played Outside?

2012-01-21T06:34:00.001-05:00

The irony here is at the end...
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Home Defense?

2012-01-20T17:53:00.001-05:00

Don't tell me you have a gun for home defense, when you're not doing a thing to help save the home planet.
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We Are All Marianne Gingrich

2012-01-20T17:26:00.004-05:00

We are all Marianne Gingrich (from Newsweek):

".... the Republican right continues to promote the virtues of traditional marriage, espousing conventional gender stereotypes that conform to Christian dogma by relegating wives to subordinate status while giving familial authority to their husbands. Other evergreen conservative refrains include the criticism of feminists and working mothers for supp...osedly abandoning their domestic duties in favor of paid work outside the home.

"But what happens to the woman who adheres to this retro feminine mystique? If she becomes a homemaker and depends on her husband for support, what if the family breadwinner turns out to be a guy like Newt Gingrich? The wife who sacrificed her ability to earn a living finds herself in deep trouble when hubby rewards her trust by running off with a newer, younger, blonder babe.

"... If Republican men want women to follow such a dangerous course, they should have to answer for how they lived up to their end of that deal in their own personal lives.

"And if they want us to elect them to high office, they should also be required to explain how voters can reconcile their private conduct with the consequences of their public policies.

"Because if we elevate them to the White House, the rest of us are also going to have to live with the gap between what they say and what they actually do. And in that scenario, we all become Marianne Gingrich.

Nature's Viet Cong

2012-01-20T06:00:00.002-05:00

In Natural Acts: A Sidelong View of Science and Nature, author David Quammen writes about one of the world's most despised insects:

"...the mosquito is taking a bad rap. It has been victimized, I submit to you, by a strong case of anthropocentric bias. In fact, the little sucker can be viewed, with only a small bit of squinting, as one of the great ecological heroes of planet Earth. If you consider rainforest preservation. The chief point of blame, with mosquitoes, happens also to be the chief point of merit: They make tropical rainforests, for humans, virtually uninhabitable

So as Europe was being stripped of its virgin woods, and India and China, and the North American heartland, the tropical rainforests largely escaped, lasting into the late twentieth century—with some chance, at least, that they may endure a bit longer. Thanks to what? To a concatenation of accidental and deterministic factors, no doubt, among which should be included this: 10 million generations of jungle-loving, disease-bearing, bloodsucking mosquitoes—the Culicidae, nature’s Vietcong.

A Coffee Cup Quote Starbucks Missed

2012-01-20T04:00:00.004-05:00

The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket, and a Quaker by descent....

"I will have no man in my boat," said Starbuck, "who is not afraid of a whale."
. - Moby Dick, by Herman Melville

The Coolest Man in the World Has Throat Cancer

2012-01-19T18:52:00.001-05:00

Over at the Querencia blog, Steve Bodio mourns that his mongolian friend, Aralbai, who was deemed to be "the coolest man in the world" by Field and Stream magazine, has throat cancer at the very young age of 54, and he is refusing chemo and radiation. Read the rest here.
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Coffee and Provocation

2012-01-19T06:00:00.040-05:00

Greenland's Sirius Special Forces

Greenland is under the control of Denmark, which is is responsible for both its police patrol and its national defense. In order to protect the native sled dog population of Greenland, however, no snowmobiles are allowed in the north of Greenland, nor are imported sled dogs allowed -- a way of making sure that gasoline and degenerated dogs from the Kennel Club do not wreck the native canine gene pool which has been 5,000 years in the making. The result is "Sirius," a special forces team that moves by native sled dog. Photographer Fritz Hoffman has put together a photo exhibit of the dogs patrolling one of the largest and most rugged frozen wildernesses in the world.

Remember Stamps? Remember Working Dogs?
The U.S. Postal Service is issuing four 65-cent postage stamps featuring “Dogs at Work". The dogs shown are a tracking dog, a guide dog for the blind, a search and rescue dog, and a "therapy" dog (Seriously? A therapy dog?). For those of you who have not mailed a letter in 15 years, a 65-cent stamp is the postage for sending a first-class piece weighing between one and two ounces.

Hollywood Terriers
Terriers are taking the limelight this year, with a cartoon Snowy (Milou) starring in the new TinTin movie, and Uggie the Jack Russell terrier, the star of "The Artist," apparenrly the most exciting prospect for an Oscar after his knock-out performance on stage at the Golden Globe awards. Finally, Christopher Plummer gave a shout-out to the Jack Russell terrier Cosmo, his co-star in the film Beginners.

The Horror of Dogs on Chains
I hate to see a dog on a chain, though I have to say these two characters seem to be having a lot of fun.

Pet Connection Comes Back From the Dead
The old Pet Connection blog will be coming back at a new location and with just dogs at HonestDog.com. Things should fire up around February 1st.

Pimp the Ride
For a small tour of American awesomeness in the motor home department check out this ride.

The Pretentiousness Scale
Calvin Trillin describes a new social index in this delightful little read.

Paula Deen Moves from Fat Pusher to Drug Pusher Who is Fat
Paula Deen, an overweight TV cook, is famous for pushing fat- and sugar-soaked food on her TV show. Now it turns out she had had diabetes for three years and has only now decided to announce it after securing sponsorship from diabetes company Novo Nordisk. And yes, she is still going to be pushing lard and sugar on her TV show -- now all you have to do is take drugs for the disease she is encouraging you to get! This is like someone promoting cigarettes who then gets paid by the chemo companies while forgetting to mention that your Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance dollars are supporting it all.

Two Awesome YouTube Video Remixes and Mashups
The first is Elvis and Duffy. I always hated this Elvis tune, but with the addition of Duffy it becomes pretty good. And how about this catchy little mashup of The Fresh Prince of Bel-air?

So Why Are the British So Pasty White?
I am told that no point in Great Britain is more than 75 miles from the sea.

Good Luck With That
The Federated Farmers of New Zealand are calling for sheep shearing to become an Olympic sport. And I am sure that will happen -- right after I win the bronze for digging on the terriers.
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This is Good and Worth Reading

2012-01-19T03:00:00.000-05:00

No, I did not write it. That's why it's good and worth reading.

This is Not a SOPA Protest

2012-01-18T12:25:00.000-05:00

I do not know enough about SOPA or PIPA to support or oppose, but I note that everyone from Wikipedia to Google are flying blacked out sites or logos to protest the proposed laws.

Rather than jump on a bandwagon that I know nothing about, I am simply posting a nice black square.

This is what inside of a den looks like to a working terrier.

There is no light at all -- there is only pure darkness, and the beat of the dog's own heart, and the faint beat of another up the tube.

There is only the scent of fur and urine, water and mold.

There is only the sound of my shovel above, and perhaps the growls, clicking teeth, and rumble of rock and dirt ahead.

This is the world of the working terrier.
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Four Minutes of Lies and Confusion

2012-01-17T03:00:00.012-05:00

This morning, the Kennel Club came out with a 27-minute video entitled "Dogs -- A Healthy Future".

I do not have time this morning to go through all 27-minutes of the video, but it turns out I do not have to in order to make the essential point, which is that this is an in-house industrial self-promotion video which does NOT tell the true history of the Kennel Club, nor does it actually tell you what is wrong in the world of pedigree dogs, or the way forward in the world of dogs.

You can see the video yourself, here, but let me detail the first four minutes: what is said, what is not said, what is an outright lie, and what small steps forward are actually being taken.

Killing off working dogs. The video starts off (at 0.38) with the narrator gushing about Poodles, Old English Sheep Dogs, and Border Terriers. What is not said is these three breeds were once working dogs, but they do not work anymore. In fact, these are three perfect examples of what happens when you draw a dog into the Kennel Club and the dogs are either denatured or exaggerated to the point that they are useless in the field. Work a dog? The Kennel Club affords ZERO points for work, same as it affords ZERO points for health. The result is what you see in the Kennel Club: guns dogs that have never heard a shotgun, sheep dogs that have never seen a sheep, and terriers too big to go to ground on a fox.
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A nation of dog lovers? The narrator says (at 0.42) that to visit a dog show is to see that Britain is a nation of dog lovers. You will notice, however, that the announcer does not advise visiting a Kennel Club-approved puppy farm to see the horrifying scenes there, nor do they advise visiting a local kill shelter, such as Battersea, where about a third of all healthy dogs are put down because no one wants them. A nation of dog lovers? Yes, there are a lot of dogs in Britain, but there is a lot of institutionalized cruelty as well, and the Kennel Club and its paid apologists have been part of that cruelty for 140 years, banging the gong for predictably diseased dogs bred in a closed registry system, saluting deformity and exaggeration at every turn, and always pushing back at those who say the nation can do better.
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One big, happy (entirely white) family. Steve Dean, the new head of the Kennel Club, shows up to suggest (at 0.51) how friendly and fun everything is at a Kennel Club dog show. This is the same Steve Dean who, when asked just ten days ago whether the Kennel Club would welcome as members everyone in the world of pedigree dogs, answered: ”It is not open to everybody as this carries risks: if you do not filter the applicants then any group of people can join and thus effectively change the entire organisation.” Right. Watch the film and see if there is anyone in it who would not look perfect in an Aryan Nations film. Britain is a very diverse place, but the Kennel Club is not very diverse, and they do not see any problem with that, as their own self-promotion film makes clear. A non-white face in a 27-minute Kennel Club film? What an odd idea! And yet the tin-ears at the Kennel Club seem shocked that anyone would note that while the world went from Bassets to Auschwitz in 50 years, the Kennel Club never left that stage, saluting closed gene pools at the front end while winking at sterilization and gas chambers at the back end, all the while keeping a firm eye on coat color and social class -- of people and dogs alike.
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Looking after canine welfare? The narrator claims (at 1.00) that the Kennel Club has been looking after the welfare of pedigree dogs for almost 150 years. This is a naked lie. In fact the single greatest threat to the welfare of pedigree dogs has been the Kennel Club itself. The reason for this is that the Kennel Club has:
... a) Generally closed breed registries with less than 50 dogs;
... b) Required all dogs be bred within closed gene pools;
... c) Routinely saluted morphological exaggeration, and;
. . d) Afforded zero points to health in the show ring.

The result, today, is that breed after breed on the Kennel Club's roster is a genetic and structural wreck. Canine insurance companies now charge higher premiums for Kennel Club dogs which are deemed to be less healthy than cross-breeds or mutts. Can there be any more powerful indictment of what 150 years of Kennel Club stewardship has meant for pedigree dogs?
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The ethos of the Kennel Club is health? Steve Dean, the new head of the Kennel Club, is seen sprawling on the grass (at 1:10) while dressed in black pants, blazer jacket, tie, and penny loafers (mind the dog poop Mr. Dean!). He tells us that "the whole ethos of the Kennel Club is the health and welfare of dogs, and that includes "all dogs, pedigree dogs, cross-bred dogs, mongrels." This is, of course, complete nonsense. To refresh, the Kennel Club is an organization that is focused on registering purebred dogs, it is an organization that is pushing people to buy only purebred dogs from registered breeders, and it affords ZERO points to the health of any dog in the show ring. This is an organization that registers thousands of puppy farm dogs a year, and which does nothing to promote adoption from shelters. In short, Steve Dean's statements here are as tortured and contrived as his squat in the grass.
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The Kennel Club runs Crufts, the most famous dog show in the world. Following the showing of Pedigree Dogs Exposed in 2008, the Kennel Club lost all of its major corporate sponsors for Crufts. Scrambling for any major sponsor, the Kennel Club accepted sponsorship from a discount furniture chain which required it to change Cruft's logo to include a sofa. No, I am not making this up! Now, Crufts has lost that discount furniture store sponsor, and other major sponsors have yet to come forward. And why would they, when Crufts and the Kennel Club are more likely to be associated with canine misery and defect than quality?!
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The Kennel Club registers all dogs. The narrator claims (at 1.32) that the Kennel Club registers "all dogs" but in fact that is a dramatic overstatement. The Kennel Club is focused on registering purebred dogs, and only those dogs whose owners want them registered, and will pay a fee. In fact, most dogs in the UK are not registered with the Kennel Club.
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The Kennel Club regulates 708 breed clubs. The narrator goes on to note (at 1.32) that the Kennel Club "regulates the 708 breed clubs." Are we to take it that this means the Kennel Club is in charge and can make the breed clubs do what it wants when that needs to be done? Does this mean that if there is a problem with pedigree dog health, it's not the fault of the breed clubs, but the Kennel Club's hierarchy itself? Is the Kennel Club finally going to stop hiding behind the skirts of breed club matrons and (supposed) legal impotence? Time will tell!
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The Kennel Club helps to stamp out puppy farmers? The narrator claims (at 1.45) that the Kennel Club works to stamp out puppy farms, but this is a lie. The Kennel Club has actively recruited puppy farmers and registered their product since the beginning, and it continues to do so to this day. The objection of the Kennel Club is not to puppy farms -- but to anyone that might be breeding a cross-bred (and therefore unregistered) "Cocker-Poo" or "Dorgi, as well as to anyone who might be breeding pedigree dogs that are not registered by the Kennel Club.
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The Kennel Club registers a quarter of a million puppies a year. Steve Dean tells us (at 2.22) that the Kennel Club registers a quarter of a million puppies a year. Amazingly, however, the Kennel Club puts its brand on these dogs even as the organization manages to slip out from under all consumer regulation. How does that work? The Kennel Club licenses breeders, its creates and sanctifies breed standards, and it says it regulates all the breed clubs and is dedicated to canine health, and yet the Kennel Club accepts NO responsibility for defective, diseased and deformed dogs, and it offers NO guarantee about the health of any dog or puppy carrying its brand. Amazing! How is that possible? If a car company put its logo on a car, could it claim it had nothing do with the defective brakes that came from its supplier? How then, does the Kennel Club not fall within similar regulatory oversight since, according to its own statements, it controls all facets of pedigree dog breeding under its own registry?
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The Kennel Club is trying to 'control the loss of genetic diversity in dogs?' We are told (at 2.40) that the Kennel Club is trying to "control the loss of genetic diversity in dogs." Really? What does that mean? Not what you think! In the Kennel Club, "controlling the loss of genetic diversity" means that you keep breeds separate and in a closed breeding pool. In fact, the entire rationale for the Kennel Club is not to promote genetic diversity, but to trap dog breeds in genetic bottles cut off from the rest of the canine gene pool. When the Kennel Club talks about "controlling the loss of genetic diversity" what they really mean is putting more dogs in more breed bottles!
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The Kennel Club is working to eliminate inherited diseases? When the Kennel Club says it is "working to eliminate inherited disease," is does not mean that the Kennel Club is opening up its roles in order to increase genetic diversity and reduce the level of inbreeding. It does not mean that the club is banning brachycephalic breeds with faces so pushed in they cannot breathe. It does not mean they are banning super tiny dogs whose brains cannot fit in their skulls, and it does not mean they are banning giant breeds that die of heart failure only a few years after they stop growing. What the Kennel Club means when it says it is "working to eliminate inherited diseases" is that it is looking for new health care tests so that already-too-small breed pools can be pared down even more. And even here, the solutions talked about are often complete nonsense. How do you get rid of mitral heart valve disease in Cavalier King Charles Spaniels when 85% of the dogs will die with that affliction? It cannot be done! How do you get rid of brachycephalic breathing disorders and whelping problems in the English Bulldog when the breed standard requires smashed faces and huge heads?
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The Kennel Club is working to tighten regulations at dog shows? We are told the Kennel Club is "working" to tighten regulations at dog shows. Really? Again, what does that mean? All Kennel Club shows operate under the dictatorship of the Kennel Club. It is the Kennel Club that creates and legitimizes breed standards, which trains and writes the rules for dog show judges, and which sanctions and promotes the dog shows themselves. Every regulatory aspect of a dog show is under the Kennel Club's control, so there is no "working" to regulate a dog show; either the Kennel Club does it, or it allows the dysfunction, disease, deformity and defect that is on parade. In fact, the Kennel Club has winked at defect, deformity and disease at dog shows for more than 140 years.
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We must unite to fight "inherited diseases." Having just told us that the Kennel Club has complete control over pedigree dogs, and that it has always put canine health front and center, the announcer tells us (at 2.45) that the world of pedigree dogs must unite to fight inherited diseases. What?! There are widespread health problems in the world of pedigree dogs? How did that happen if the Kennel Club has complete power and has been putting breed health first for nearly 150 years? Suddenly, the entire narrative comes crashing down, and it comes crashing down for a very good reason: almost everything we have heard up to now has been a lie.
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"They're a working breed... or they came from a working breed." In the Kennel Club's self-promotion video, we are shown some dachshunds, and an owner tells us (at 3:20) that "They're a working breed... or they came from a working breed." Right. Came from a working breed. The Kennel Club dachshund is not a working breed now. A working dachshund is called a "teckel" to differentiate it from the non-working joke paraded around on a string lead at a Kennel Club dog show. We are told "we do have a back problem" with dachshunds, but we are not told what that problem is. Here's a hint: it involves paralysis of the back legs, and the dog is either put down or put into a wheeled rack where it spends the rest of its life scooting around the living room. This small "problem" is fobbed off as being in "some lines" and is said to be a "conformation" problem. Not said is that the odd structure of the dachshund is in no way related to the work it does underground. Working terriers are found all over Britain, Europe, Canada, and the United States, and none have the stretched back or the history of spinal injury and rear leg paralysis we see with the dachshund.
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The Kennel Club has always taken the lead in inherited diseases. We are told (at 3.45) that "the Kennel Club has always taken the lead in addressing the problem of inherited diseases." Heads up! A small word game is being played here. You see, the Kennel Club has always taken the lead in CREATING the closed gene pools that make inherited diseases so common in the world of dogs. And, to be clear, the Kennel Club continues to salute those closed registry gene pools. By saluting closed gene pools, and encouraging further reductions within them, the Kennel Club keeps the wheels of inherited disease spinning forward at an ever-increasing rate. The history is clear here, and the Kennel Club's own publication tells it. Back in 1897, when the issue of inherited disease sprang up in the world of the Scottish Deerhound, the response of the Kennel Club was not to rush in to outcross to improve breed health, but to rush in to close the registry to preserve breed purity. So YES, the Kennel Club has "always taken the lead in inherited diseases," but not in eliminating them, but in fostering them!
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The Kennel Club's weak stance on hips. The announcer tells us (at 3.44) of the Kennel Club's scheme to get rid of hip dysplasia, which they tell us has been in place since 1965. Not said, is that the scheme has not worked, and it has not worked because the Kennel Club does not require breeders who want to register Kennel Club puppies to follow it! Dysplasia in Kennel Club dogs has not gotten better.
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Sequencing of the canine genome. The announcer prattles on about the sequencing of the canine genome in 2004 (at 4.16), but fails to mention the obvious, which is that we do not need to sequence genomes to know how to breed healthier dogs. We know how to breed healthier dogs NOW, and it is not a closely held secret:
a) Get rid of breeds that are selected for defect and extreme exaggeration, and;
b) Allow breeds to "fall upward" to type so that dogs are bred for real function rather than for a scrap of paper proclaiming breed purity.

Will we get rid of all canine health problem by simply doing those two things alone?

No, of course, not. It would, however, be a simple, quick and immediate step forward.

Remember: right now Kennel Club dogs are NOT as healthy as cross breeds and mutts.

That fact alone stands as an indictment of the Kennel Club's way of doing business.

Is this to say there is nothing good going on?

No, that would not be true.

The Kennel Club has suddenly discovered Coefficients of Inbreeding (COI), something that has been around since 1922, and it is providing a computer program to make it easier for breeders to calculate those equations.

The Kennel Club has banned very close incest breeding (sire to daughter, dam to son) which is the kind of thing that has been banned in humans since the days of the Old Testament.

The Kennel Club has named 14 breeds of particular concern -- a real step in the right direction, and one for which they should get some applause, despite the still-timid way that they are going about operationalizing it.

So YES, there are some good things happening, and YES, let's recognize that the Kennel Club is under some duress to "build forward" out of the wreckage of its past, even as it keeps the cash box full.

That said, let's be clear that NOT ONE of these recent changes occurred because of the Kennel Club's own initiative.

Every single one of these recent changes has occurred because of the exposure and shame heaped on the Kennel Club by the BBC documentary Pedigree Dogs Exposed.

The Kennel Club did not see the light until they felt the heat, and it has taken several concerted years of heat to get the modest change we see here.

That's the real story, but it's the story the Kennel Club attempts to sweep under the rug with four minutes of bold-faced lies at the front end of this self-promotional film.

Sorry, but the era of lies and disinformation is over. Someone please tell Steve Dean and Caroline Kisko.

Now, do you want to see pictures from the Richmond dog show (the one featured in the film) taken by someone who was not a paid apologist for the Kennel Club? Good news then! Those are up over at Jemima Harrison's blog. Yes, her pictures are more powerful than my text. See for yourself!

Related Links:
** So You Want a Dog?
** Making and Breaking Dogs In the Show Ring
** Inbred Thinking
** Dogs as Breed Products
** Kennel Club Inbreeding: Data Revealed
** Carnival Barkers at the Dog Shows .
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Black and White and Happy All Over

2012-01-16T07:00:00.001-05:00

Coffee and Provocation

2012-01-16T05:00:00.028-05:00

What the Talmud Says About Dog Breeders:
In the Talmud it says: "No man should breed a dog unless it is kept on a chain. He may, however, breed it in a town adjoining the frontier where he should keep it chained during the daytime and loose it only at night. It was taught: Rabbi Eliezer the Great says that he who breeds dogs is like him who breeds swine. What is the practical bearing of this comparison? — That he be declared cursed."

Dog Breed Health Site:
Carol Fowler has launched a new Dog Breed Health website (www.dogbreedhealth.com), with information on the inherited health problems of 130 dog breeds.

Mitt Romney Is a Serial Killer:
Steve Colbert's Super PAC, now named the "Definitely Not Coordinating With Stephen Colbert Super PAC" has put out its first attack ad, noting that if Mitt Romney really thinks corporations are people, then for most of his life Mitt Romney has been a serial killer. Colbert has it about perfect when he mocks the insanity and inanity of the American political system, especially the way big money influences the process. Of course, the real object of attack here is the U.S. Supreme Court which not only greenlighted the notion that corporations are people, but also the entire "Super PAC" process with unlimited amounts of unaccounted for corporate cash driving the process.

Mitt Romney Does Not Have 15 Homes:
In a Newt Gingrich-sponsored attack piece on Romney, some random citizen claims Mitt Romney has 15 homes. That is simply not true. Mitt Romney does NOT have 15 homes. He has a $12 million beachside mansion in La Jolla, California, which he is in the process of quadrupling, and he had a massive ski estate on 11 acres in Park, Utah which he sold because it was looking a little too large for television and he wanted to run for President. Romney also has a $10 million home in New Hampshire and a townhouse in Belmont, Mass., and a nearby mansion, where one of Romney’s sons lives, and where Romney was registered to vote as recently as last year. There may be more, but I doubt it rises to 15 -- more likely 7 or so, though I image that if you looked at total square feet, you might find they were equal in size -- or larger -- than 15 average American homes.

Praying to Not-Extinct Turtles:
The black softshell turtle is native to South Asia but, as of 2002, it was officially considered extinct in the wild (even if there is some reason to doubt that claim). The good news is that in Chittagong, Bangladesh, there are about 150 to 300 of these turtles living at the a shrine dedicated to to Bayazid Bastami, an influential Islamic mystic from the 9th century. The legend of the shrine is that the forebearers of this group of turtles were once human sinners, but in the 13th Century a saint saved their souls by turning them into turtles. Since then, the attendants of the shrine (called the Mazur Committee) have taken care of the turtles and their descendants.

More Not-Extinct Turtle News:
In the Galapagos Islands, a species of giant tortoise believed extinct for 150 years appears to be alive and well and living on the volcanic slopes of Volcano Wolf on the northern tip of Isabela Island. A genetic analysis found that DNA footprints of the long-lost tortoise species, Chelonoidis elephantopus, in the genomes of hybrid offspring that are only 15 years old, meaning that there are almost certainly several purebred turtles roaming the island. The hybrid tortoises are a mix of C. elephantopus and another giant tortoise from the area, C. becki.

"Avoid Ghetto" Ap for Cell Phone GPS:
Microsoft has patented an ‘avoid ghetto’ feature for GPS devices. The "ap" notes that a route can be plotted for pedestrians to avoid an “unsafe neighborhood" based on the latest crime statistics.

You Are the One Percent:
If you made over $34,000 last year, then you are part of the richest 1% in the world. Of the richest 1%in the world, half live in the United States.

Twittering With Ron Paul:
There's a twitter feed that just includes direct quotes from Ron Paul's old Newsletter. 140 characters is about all you need, and just a few samples will do. For example this morning's is: "Our country is being destroyed by a group of actual & potential terrorists -- and they can be identified by the color of their skin." Another: "I've urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self defense. For the animals are coming." And another: "If you have ever been robbed by a black teenaged male, you know how unbelievably fleet of foot they can be." And another: "The criminals who terrorize our cities -- in riots & on every non-riot day -- are not exclusively young black males, but they largely are." And another: "At least 39 white women have been stuck with used hypodermic needles -perhaps infected with AIDS- by gangs of black girls." Just to remember: Ron Paul finished second in the New Hampshire primary.

Immigration Policy That Rewards Failure:
David North writes: "Many parts of U.S. immigration policy reward failure. This is usually not recognized. Whether the failure is in the labor market, the investment market, or the marriage market, bits and pieces of our immigration system are there to shore up those who cannot make the grade."
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Jessica Elgot is a Racialist, Not a Reporter

2012-01-14T12:37:00.010-05:00

Hitler and Eva Braun with their purebred dogs. Six dogs were in the bunker -- all purebred.

This post is not about dogs. It is about racialism and reporting.

Jessica Elgot is a young "reporter" for "The Jewish Chronicle," but we will get to to that in a moment.

Let's start with the fact that she is a racialist.

A racialist is someone who sees the world through one lens, the lens of race, culture or religion.

The folks you find on the Stormfont web site, or at British National Party or English Defence League rallies are all racialists if not outright racists. These folks are obsessed with the race and religion of people they see on the street corner, in the media, and in politics.

This obsession is shared by Jessica Elgot.

Though she is not hurling invective at others, her obsession is not how we are connected together, but how we stand apart.

If The New York Times said the end of the world was at hand, Jessica Elgot would write an article entitled: "End of Word at Hand, Jews to Be Most Affected."

So how do I come to write about Jessic Elgot? After all, she has not written a word about me, we live in different countries, and she herself says she does not care a whit about dogs.

It seems that someone Ms. Elgot did not know sent her a smear packet about the BBC documentary Pedigree Dogs Exposed.

Ms. Elgot herself says she does not care a whit about dogs, but as a confirmed racialist it seems she reflexively reached for her keyboard when she was told the documentary was opposed by "Jewish dog breeders." The result: an article for The Jewish Chronicle entitled "Jewish dog breeders call upon BBC to cancel Nazi-linked film".

Whiskey-tango-foxtrot. Nazi-linked film? There's taking some liberties with the English language!

The morning the piece came out, I looked up Ms. Elgot. It turns out she is all of 24 years old and she wants to be a freelance journalist. Good luck with that!

I shot off an email. Had she actually talked to anyone about dogs or the history of dogs? Who was it that represented ALL Jewish dog breeders? Under what claim?

Her answers were evasive.

It turns out that she had not talked to anyone. She had not talked to Jemima Harrison nor, apparently, had she talked to anyone who knew anything about dogs or the history of dogs. Instead, she said she had received a letter "signed" by four putatively Jewish dog breeders from a Facebook group.

A Facebook group??! A letter from FOUR people??!

Yes, that seems to have been the extent of her "research".

How absurd does this story get? You cannot imagine.

For starters, let me point out that Pedigree Dogs Exposed was commissioned by Richard Klein of the BBC, a Jew according to the typing Nazis over at the Stormfront web site who happily go through the roster of all the Jews in power at the BBC.

The Executive Producer of the Pedigree Dogs Exposed update that is now in video production under commission from the BBC, is also Jewish.

But so what? What's religion got do with it? Not a thing!

We would all recognize the naked racism and anti-Semitism if the typing Nazis over at the Stormfront web site put out a headline entitled "Jews Bash Kennel Club Dog Breeders" and it turned out to be just four random people who happened to be Jewish, wouldn't we?

And guess what? That headline may yet float!

You see Nick Griffin, the hate-spewing head of the British National Party has already tweeted in support of the Kennel Club after critics noted it's obsession with ~~racial~~ breed purity.

Very amusing.

I actually know more people who hunt with their dogs who are opposed to breeding dogs for defect, disease and deformity than I know "Animal liberation cranks" with that view point, but never mind that.

What I'm hoping for is that someone will tell Nick Griffin that a Jewish fellow commissioned the BBC piece about the Kennel Club. I am sure Mr. Griffin will oblige with a headline or a tweet about that. After all, Nick's already got his Kennel Club rosette!

But wait, it gets better.

Caroline Kisko, the press secretary for the Kennel Club, is married to Chris Kisko who is (or was) a member of the British National Party, and who is all over the web site of the hooligan-soaked English Defence League. On one post, for example, he echoes sentiments once voiced by the likes of Hitler, Goebbels and Goering:

Since what date did accepting an invasion of an incompatable cuture into ours become desirable. (sic)

Right. Nice words those, and I cannot help but note that they nearly echo those of Steve Dean at the Kennel Club who, when asked if the Club would welcome all who are actively involved with pedigree dogs, replied: ”It is not open to everybody as this carries risks: if you do not filter the applicants then any group of people can join and thus effectively change the entire organisation.”

Right. They want to "filter" out the riff-raff. You know who you are. They're not actually against the Jews, or the Muslims, or the Pakistanis, you understand. They're just for their own kind. "Separate and equal," and all that.

Now to be clear, it may be that Ms. Elgot is not a dyed-in-the-wool racialist like Nick Griffin or Chris Kisko.

It could be that she is simply a very young and very lazy reporter who has not been too well trained.

Perhaps no one has told her that Facebook and Twitter are not news sources!

Perhaps no one advised her that a real reporter would have noted that Jemima Harrison's award-winning documentary resulted in three independent studies affirming its conclusions (one of which was commissioned by the Kennel Club itself).

Perhaps no one suggested to her that she might Google "eugenics and dog breeding". If she had done that she might have read "The Eugenics Man and the Kennel Club" right at the top, or "The Westminster Eugenics Show" just below, or "From Bassetts to Auschwitz in 50 Years."

A few more clicks and she might have read about how the Nazis were obsessed with breeding "pure Aryan cattle" and how Hermann Göring helped fund the creation of a "German hunt terrier," and how dog breeders associated with the "Verein Fur Deutsche Schaferhunde" gave Hitler "Blondi," the German Shepherd that was by his side when he ordered millions to their death.

At the very least, she might have thought of calling up Jemima Harrison.

So yes, Jessica Elgot is not much of a reporter, and she certainly seems to fit the criteria we might normally associate with a racialist.

But perhaps she is simply young, not very well-trained and lazy? That, is, in fact, almost certainly true.

What then of her editors? Where are they in all this? Any guidance from them?

Nope, not a bit. They are cloud-hidden, whereabouts unknown.

I copied my correspondence with Jessica Elgot to Stephen Pollard, Richard Burton, and Alan Montague, her putative editors at The Jewish Chronicle, but they do not seem to care how poorly this story was hammered together. And why would they? Their readership is not subscribing to this publication to actually read the news of the day, is it? No, they are mostly subscribing as an act of ethnic solidarity. The Jewish Chronicle is not likely to lose too many subscribers because of a mangled and poorly-researched piece on dog breeding!

And yet, I am troubled.

How could an editor of a Jewish publication miss the fact that any story about pedigree dogs is also a story about breed purity... and that standing in the shadows of that discussion is also the dark shadow of forced sterilization and gas chambers?

Have the parallels never occurred to them? Have they never wondered why those parallels exist?

Are the editors at The Jewish Chronicle really that asleep at the wheel?

Surely the editors of The Jewish Chronicle know that the gas chambers of World War II were first suggested in 1935 by Alexis Carrel, the French scientist who won the 1912 Nobel Prize for medicine and who wrote that, "Perhaps it would be effective to kill off the worst and keep the best, as we do in the breeding of dogs."

Surely the editors of The Jewish Chronicle know that Hitler was not operating in a vacuum, and that he got a lot of his ideas from Leon Whitney, the dog breeder, veterinarian, and American Kennel Club-darling who was president of the American Eugenics Society, and who had penned a book calling for the forced sterilization of 10 million Americans?

Surely the editors of The Jewish Chronicle know that Whitney got a lot of his ideas from Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin who was President of the British Eugenics Society and who was the first person to coin the term "eugenics?" Surely they know that Galton was an advocate of closed breeding pools, and that it was this idea that was so warmly and emphatically embraced by the Kennel Club around 1900?

Surely the editors of The Jewish Chronicle know the intellectual roots of the Holocaust?

No?

Then, how sad is that?

Related Links:
** The Eugenics Man and the Kennel Club
** Fearing Foreign Blood at the Kennel Club?
** From Bassetts to Auschwitz in 50 Years
** The Canine Neo-Nazis Have Their Panties in a Twist
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The World As It Was and Should Be

2012-01-13T14:00:00.007-05:00

I downloaded a dozen FREE books to my Kindle Fire last night, one of which was In Africa - Hunting Adventures In Big Game Country (1910) by John T. McCutcheon.

A quick glance through the table of contents found this summary of Chapter Eight:

Meeting Colonel Roosevelt in the Uttermost Outpost of Semi-Civilization. He Talks of Many Things, Hears that he has Been Reported Dead, and Promptly Plans an Elephant Hunt

Nice!

Now to be clear, I am not saluting elephant hunting, but neither would Teddy if he were alive today. This is, after all, the man who almost single-handedly created the National Forest system, the national Wildlife Refuge system, and the National Park system, and who did more to protect wildlife in this country than anyone who came before or who has come along since.

But Roosevelt believed in an active life, well-lived. He did not shrink into his hole, cuddle up next to the fire, and play board games all day. Life was to be lived, and he was out in the world living it. That is the world as it was, and the way it should be today.
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Knocked Down

2012-01-13T05:30:00.003-05:00

You can learn a lot by watching.

For example, I once watched a drunk passed out on a street corner.

He was NOT trying to get up, and as a consequence no one tried to help him. No one tries to help those who do not try to help themselves.

A week later, someone fell in front of my office building. I did not see the fall, but I think it may have started with an epileptic seizure. After it passed, the fallen person had a leg injury of some kind and was trying very hard to stand. A dozen hands were there to help.

The lesson is clear: If you try to get back up, this country is full of hands and always will be.

There is no shame in being knocked down, only in not trying to get back up.
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Catcher in the Rye

2012-01-13T05:08:00.000-05:00

Shakespeare's Polar Bear

2012-01-12T17:30:00.006-05:00

Perhaps the greatest stage direction ever is in William Shakespeare's Winters Tale, in which a scene ends with "Exit, pursued by bear."

A bear? What bear? Believe it or not, a Polar Bear.

A Polar Bear? In Elizabethan England?

Actually, yes.

Author Garry Wills, writing in Verdi’s Shakespeare, notes that Winter's Tale was written in 1610 and that in 1609, two Polar Bear cubs were captured from Greenland by Jonas Poole and brought to England where they were sold to Philip Henslowe's Beargarden, an animal-baiting establishment located right next to the Globe Theater.

The young Polar Bear cubs showed up in three theatre productions in 1610 and 1611 (one of which was "Oberon the Faery Prince by Ben Johnson) before they became too difficult to handle. Though in later productions actors in bear suits may have been used, or brown bears, in that first year of the Play, it is believed that the novely of Polar Bears was part of what drew the crowd.

Related Posts:
** A Polar Bear at a Roadside Zoo
** Happy Birthday William Shakespeare!
** The Terrier of the Tiger Tower
** Shakespeare in the Park
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Newt Gingrich Goes to the Dogs Over Romney

2012-01-12T06:00:00.004-05:00

Newt Gingrich is an ego-besotted hot-air balloon full of toxic gas, and to underscore that point he has decided to resort to the very ugly tactic of showing clips of his political opposition, Willard Mittens Romney, talking to press, public and politicians.

Is a mirror cruel? Of course.

Ugly? To be sure.

Mean spirited? To the core.

I mean, my God, Gingrich even brings up the fact that candidate Willard Mittens Romney strapped his terrified, shit-caked dog to the roof of his car and drove it to Canada!

Now the dogs themselves are getting into the act (how catty!), going so far as to create a Facebook page entitled "Dogs Against Romney."

I think this is a bit much.

I mean sure, Romney strapped his own dog to the roof of a car and drove him to Canada, only stopping every once in a while to wash the diarrhea and terror out of the crate, but it's not like the dog lost his job because Romney's company, Bain Capital, bankrupted it, boned out its divisions, and sold the equipment and jobs off to the Chinese!

And it's not like Romney worked to squirrel away millions of dollars offshore in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying taxes, is it? He didn't do that did he? Who says so? Not him! Only ABC News.

But NO, you cannot look at candidate Romney's tax records. People who make ~~$10 million~~ ~~$50 million~~ ~~$100 million~~ $250 million under mysterious circumstances have their rights too, and that includes the right to make a quarter of a billion dollars as a vulture capitalist killing off American jobs and asking for your vote while providing no answers about any of it. Let freedom ring!

Of course, you have rights too, including the right to watch this documentary produced by people who used to work for Mitt Romney and being shown by Republicans as a warning to others in their own party not to buy this pig in a poke.

This is the story Willard Mittens Romney does not want you to see.

This is not only how Mr. Romney made his fortune -- it also speaks to the values he has.

Are these your values? Are these America's values?

No Balls Harmed in the Making of This Movie

2012-01-12T04:40:00.000-05:00

Is It Time to Dump the Bulldog?

2012-01-11T18:00:00.002-05:00

Art for Dogs Today by the always-terrific Kevin Brockbank.
This article appears in the February 2012 issue.

Is it time to drop the English Bulldog as national mascot, and replace it with a healthier alternative?

The case to be made is obvious and straightforward. The modern English Bulldog is mostly Chinese pug -- a show ring creation with legs so deformed it can barely walk, a jaw so undershot it cannot grab a Frisbee, and with a face so bracycephalic it can barely breathe.

Add to this a deformed intestinal system which makes the dog fart constantly, a pig tail prone to infection, and serious eye problems due to excessive facial wrinkles, and you have a dog that considers its own death a blessed relief.

Is this a dog any patriot would choose as a symbolic representative of his or her country?

I think not!

The Replacement in the Wings

The good news is that a replacement dog is ready available, and this breed is not only healthy, active and brave, but British to the bone and readily available at your local shelter or rescue.

The dog in question, of course, is the Staffordshire Bull Terrier. This dog represents half of all dogs now going to shelters in the U.K., and most of the healthy dogs on death row waiting to be put down for no other reason than they are not puppies.

Some may bridle at the notion of replacing the English Bulldog. Why not simply make a few minor changes to that breed’s standard, and keep it as it is?

Well, for starters, a few minor changes will not solve this breed’s problems! This dog is a complete morphological wreck, and trying to “save it” now is a bit like trying to raise the Titanic in order to start a cruise line venture. Only a fool tries to save a fantasy while reality is being killed at his feet.

And to be clear, the English Bulldog really is a fantasy production.

As early as 1894, Rawdon Lee, noted that the bulldog was bred "for extreme exaggeration, for extreme foreheads and huge skulls, for totally exaggerated low-slung front legs, and for shoulders pointing outwards at almost a right angle."

The dog Lee describes is not a dog with any historical roots. It was never a stock dog or a bull fighter. Instead, from the beginning, this dog was a dog dealer’s dream -- an animal to be sold to pretenders at a high price, and with a rapid turnover due to high rates of mortality.

A Defective Disposable Dog Designed to Die

And yet, the English Bulldog has remained popular – a top twenty breed in the Kennel Club, and a top ten in the American Kennel Club.

Why?

One reason is that the English Bulldog is a perfect fit for modern couch potatoes who spend five hours a night in front of their television sets and six hours a day in front of their computers.

These folks do not want a dog that is too physically demanding, and the English Bulldog certainly fits that bill. This is a dog with a face so smashed in, and a trachea so reduced, that it often gets winded just walking from the backyard into the kitchen. A one-mile jog around the lake? That might kill it!

Dog breeders also like the bulldog because there is a steady demand for replacement dogs when an owner’s first dog dies. If you are in the puppy peddling business, a dog that lives for only six years is more than twice as useful as a dog that lives to age fifteen!

It helps too that Bulldogs are such anatomical basket-cases that they cannot conceive or whelp on their own. The average casual owner is not likely to own a bulldog "rape rack,” (commercially sold as a “mating cradle”) nor are they going to feel entirely comfortable going to a veterinarian and paying them a few hundred pounds to masturbate their dog into a collection plate for later artificial insemination into a bitch in heat.

And once a litter is conceived, that’s not the end of medical intervention, is it? Not by a long shot. Almost all English Bulldogs are the product of a surgical procedure called a caesarian section. Try to avoid going to the vet and whelp an English Bulldogs at home, and you are likely to end up with a litter of dead puppies stuck in the canal, and a dead bitch too!

So, to put a point on it, in order to breed bulldogs you have to have money, experience, and certain coldness in your heart. No wonder that the supply of these dogs is not dramatically higher than the demand!

What’s Wrong with Staffies?

So what’s wrong with Staffies?

Well, not a thing if you want a real dog that wants and needs to be walked around the block two or three times a day.

Is that you? If so, then a Staffordshire Bull Terrier may be your cup of tea!

Another problem for Staffies, rather than with Staffies, is that because they are not anatomical freaks, they can breed and whelp on their own.

What that means is that any young fool in a Council House flat can squeeze out a litter on their own in the hope of quick cash.

Sadly, that happens too often, and with predictable results: a flood of poorly-homed dogs that end up in “rescue” with thousands of healthy, friendly dogs being killed every year for the crime of no longer being a puppy.

Another issue, of course, is that the Staffordshire Bull Terrier is not a fantasy dog that arrives completely denatured.

While the English Bulldog is as closely related to pit and stock dogs as a Chihuahua to an Arctic Wolf, the Staffordshire Bull Terrier of today is remarkably unchanged from the days of yore.

Does that mean this dog is dangerous? No, but it does mean that this breed, more than most, needs the kind of proper socialization, exercise and training that can only be provided by a steady home life and a hands-on owner. Sadly, this is the opposite of what so many Staffie owners have to offer.

So, to circle back, is it time to reconsider Britain’s canine mascot? Do you really want a half-Chinese dog that cannot move well, cannot breathe well, and cannot mate or whelp on its own as a national symbol? Or do you want a dog that is British to the bone, as healthy as they come, and is as tough as an old shoe?

In the world of dogs and politics, making a new choice would send a powerful message to the world.

Related Links:
** How Much is That Bulldog in the Window?
** Between Two Lies, Lost Opportunity for Pit Bulls
** Bull Dogs in Rape Racks & Canaries In Coal Mines
** Bulldogs: How Did We Come to Select for Defect?
** We Want Our Mutant Dogs, Never Mind Their Pain
** Does the Breed Standard Require a Rape Rack?
** The Kennel Club Freak Show
** Is 400 Million Pounds of Dead Pit Bull Enough?
** Making and Breaking Dogs In the Show Ring
** Selecting Dogs for Defect... and Disease
** The AKC Top Ten: A Sad & Grim Joke
** Nightline: AKC Terrified of Dog Health Topic
** What the Hell is an American Staffordshire Terrier?
** Flying Bulldogs Get to Heaven Faster
** Counterfeit Collies and Transvestite Terriers
** Kennel Club Dogs: Unnatural Selection for Defect

NOTE: This article was written for a British publication, but the same could be said for the ridiculous Marine Corps mascot -- a foreign dog that can barely move and cannot perform in the field. Is this the right image for America's fighting forces? Is this the right image for the University of Georgia? How about any of these other schools and teams across the world?

Terrierman Now with FaceBook Linkages

2012-01-11T12:01:00.008-05:00

I am still operating this blog with an ancient version of blogger, but I have made one concession to modern times...

This blog now has a little thingy on the bottom of all posts for those who want to post a FaceBook link to a blog article. There are also dozen of other "social media" options.

I Watched This on My Kindle

2012-01-10T17:00:00.001-05:00

I watched this video on my Kindle Fire which does not need shelving, allows highlighting and margin notes, and sends all my highlighted text to a computer file for easy use if I am writing something ("Look Ma, no typing!").

All Kindle books are searchable, several million books are free, and all new books are cheaper than their printed versions (and most used books are cheaper too if you figure in postage). If I do not know a particular word, I only have to hover a finger over i, and a definition pops up.

I still have hundreds of paper books, of course (not all books are online yet) but I can see that in the not-too-distant future they are going to be seen as very heavy furniture that collects dust and makes rooms look smaller. Yes, paper books are very clearly going the way of "long-playing" records....
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The Rise of the Machines

2012-01-10T12:01:00.036-05:00

On the Inevitable Thoughts blog, Colin Vanderbilt argues that the rise of the machines is already here, and maybe we need to take a step back:

“Our society has become awe-inspiring because of the technology we created and used, but there was a cost. We are now dependent on it. Our planet is the Tower of Babylon, and every single support beam is a piece of technology. Our tower will continue to get higher every year as everything gets ‘better’ and ‘progress’ continues, but let’s consider why we are convinced that we must build our technological tower higher?

Technology kills hundreds of thousands of people every year (cars, guns, industrial working conditions), it causes upwards of 50,000 species a year to go extinct, it poisons our drinking water and our bodies every day, it cuts down 13 million hectares of forest every year, and all this without any kind of artificially intelligent robots. Everything that we could possibly fear that robots will do when they rule the planet is already happening.”

Well robots are not really the issue, are they? The gossamer thin layer we call civilization is much thinner than that, and has been for 150 years.

Within a few hours of losing electricity your house is a cold or overheated rock, your food is spoiled, and you have no way to cook.

Do you have a shovel that can really dig a hole? How about a sharp ax (and a file to keep it sharp)? Probably not, which means that you could not make a decent latrine in the woods or build a dug out house either.

Do you own a bicycle? Well, there's some transportation (so long as the tires last), but you won't be carrying much. All those "refugee carts" we see in the movie trailers have been gone for 70-years now. Still, when the "it" is on, a bicycle or canoe will be the only way out of town.

Have a fishing rod, extra line, lots of hooks, and a decent couple of guns with ammo? How about a few leghold traps (more important that the gun, I assure you)? No? Then you are not going to go the distance, no matter how much rice and oatmeal you sock away in a stack of 5-gallon paint buckets.

Of course, rather than prepare for the apocalypse and reject technology, maybe we should be building forward to a future where everyone is "off the grid" because everything is sustainable. Imagine a world in which you waste is recycled on site into energy, soil and food, and your energy is collected on site in the form of solar and wind and biogas. Imagine that what you need that you do not make is repairable with simple tools and does not break very often either.

Imagine.
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Are the Cat Birds Getting Eaten by the Dog Sharks?

2012-01-10T08:15:00.001-05:00

Are the Cat Birds getting eaten by the Dog Sharks?

Of course they are. As the American Bird Conservancy notes:

Researchers at Dauphin Island Sea Lab in Alabama, who have been conducting a two year study focusing on the diets of Tiger Sharks in the Gulf of Mexico, have made a surprising discovery: not only are the sharks feeding on fish and other marine organisms, they are also feeding on land-based birds, such as woodpeckers, tanagers, meadowlarks, catbirds, kingbirds, and swallows.

“We were not expecting to see this. It certainly prompts a series of questions, the most obvious being, how does a land bird end up in the water as food for sharks?

What's to blame? One theory is that lighted offshore oil and gas platforms attract the birds which then get trapped in a cone of light, circling around until they get exhausted and fall out of the sky or crash into the platform. There are about 6,000 oil and gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.
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Stinking Up Adamstown, Maryland

2012-01-09T20:02:00.002-05:00

It's an unlikely thing, but Adamstown, Maryland (population 3,000) and stink bugs have made the front page of The Wall Street Journal. Adamstown is the tiny little hamlet that is, more or less, at the center of a small swath of farms and land I hunt in Maryland. As the Journal reports:

Brian Biggins's life stinks.

The Maryland organic farmer is suffering from an infestation of stink bugs—crop-consuming pests emitting the odor of cilantro mixed with burned rubber and dirty socks. They began destroying his fields of peppers and tomatoes in 2010. Now, they've invaded his Adamstown home, where Mr. Biggins crushes them by hand and has trained his English Shepherd, Coadee, to eat them.

Still, thousands scurry across the floor of his farm house.

"For the love of God, my wife is the one I feel for the worst," says Mr. Biggins. "This is the kind of thing that you don't sign up for."

Stink bugs, Mr. Biggins's brown marmorated nemesis, infiltrated the U.S. as cargo ship stowaways from Asia about 15 years ago and have proliferated in the past two years. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says the immigrants have spread to 36 states; trade groups say they were responsible for $37 million of damage to apple crops alone in 2010.

Coffee and Provocation

2012-01-09T08:15:00.021-05:00

back

Butcher's Dog Fail:
Rotties, Pit Bulls, and Boxers are all the same dog -- "butcher's dogs" dressed up for the ring with different names. A Rottweiler is a Rottweiler Metzgerhund or a butcher's dog from the town of Rottweil. A Boxer is simply a Bullenbeisser or bull biter. A Pit Bull is pretty self-descriptive -- it is a stock catching "butcher's dog" of the oldest and most basic kind. Here's a modern boxer that is a total fail as a butcher's dog.

A Dog Backpack Fail:
Seriously... what kind of copy editor and buyer allowed this bit of nonsense into the catalogue?

Ortovox Snow Avalanche Dedicated Dirt Dog Stuff:
Ortovox now sells dedicated dirt dog stuff -- a repositioned avalanche transmitter and locator with a collar pouch.

Whooping Crane Idiocy:
Being stupid is a right, but it's not an obligation!

This Explains a Lot:
Obesity causes brain damage or maybe brain damage causes obesity.

Not a Big Cat Myth:
A Mountain Lion was live caught -- and released -- by a trapper in Missouri, with a little help from the DNR.

Parking Predators:
Dave Gardetta writing about parking in LA Magazine: "I truly believe that when men and women think about parking, their mental capacity reverts to the reptilian cortex of the brain. How to get food, ritual display, territorial dominance—all these things are part of parking, and we’ve assigned it to the most primitive part of the brain that makes snap fight-or-flight decisions. Our mental capacities just bottom out when we talk about parking."

Car Repair Predators:
If a car repair is worth your time, RepairPal is a pretty good resource for checking the average cost of repairs against whatever it is your local shop is charging you.

Attack of the Zombies:
Bees are getting wrecked by parasitic flies that turn them into zombies.

Doomed from Birth?
The British cohort studies, first started in March 1946 with the weighing, measuring and enrolling of 13,687 babies born during one week is now 65 years old. And what's it show? One result that is true across all cohorts: children who are born into better-off families are more likely, on average, to do well during their lives on almost every measure. The poor were worse off on most counts.

The Democratic Debates:
Did you know there are also Democratic candidate debates? My favorite, so far, features Vermin Supreme for President, and yes we have video!

Oh The Places You'll Go!
Awesome video reading of Dr. Seuss’ last book as read by folks at the 2011 Burning Man festival/be-in. Check it out!

Renewables Beat Nukes:
The latest data from the Energy Information Agency shows that for the first nine months of 2011, renewables produced just under 12% of US energy, while nuclear power produced about 10.6%.

The Greatest Natural Disaster in the World

2012-01-07T20:08:00.000-05:00

The greatest natural disaster in the history of the world has been the human brain. Get rid of us and Eden will return unaided.
. . . . . - When the Thrill Is Gone by Walter Mosley

Steven Seymour on the Kennel Club's Failure

2012-01-05T12:01:00.008-05:00

Writing in Dog World, Steven Seymour notes that the Kennel Club continues to salute inbred thinking at every level.

I was deeply disappointed to read Kennel Club chairman Prof Steve Dean’s replies to some of Sheila Atter’s questions on her article titled ‘In the hot seat’. It really does seem that we are destined for more of the same.

Most upsetting was the answer to her question on membership of the KC. When asked “Would you like to see KC membership open to all who are actively involved with pedigree dogs,” we have the reply, ”It is not open to everybody as this carries risks: if you do not filter the applicants then any group of people can join and thus effectively change the entire organisation.”

Oh dear maybe our new chairman would like to explain exactly who the right sort of person is. Go back and read the question again and you will see it says “to all who are actively involved”.

There seems no logic or reason other than absolute arrogance to think that anyone who is actively breeding or showing or participating in any other canine activity would not be the right sort of person to join the KC.

Right. There's the problem as I noted in a 2006 blog post which led to my first email and telephone call from Jemima Harrison who later went on to produce the 2008 BBC documentary Pedigree Dogs Exposed:

The Kennel Club is a huge money-making bureaucracy dependent upon selling people on the "exclusivity" of a closed registry and a scrap of paper that says a dog is a "pure breed"....

[T]he Kennel Club is not primarily about dogs. Dogs do not care about ribbons, pedigrees, titles, and points. These are human obsessions...

In the end, [the Kennel Club] is a closed registry in every sense of that word. It continues to embrace the failed genetic theories of Victorian England because it is incapable of serious reform within the Club itself

Of course, as deep as the Kennel Club's problems are, and remain, they have been made worse by the complete hash that its public relations department has made of things. As Steven Seymour notes:

2012 will no doubt be another year of challenges for the KC on the health front and with the way dogs are bred and shown. Instead of playing silly games and sulking in the corner over Jemima Harrison, now is the time for the KC to stand up, act its age and accept that anyone, who has an interest in dogs for whatever reason, is entitled to have a voice.

What we have happening now is something that was initiated by our democratically elected government (I know that’s a hard one to swallow). Let me explain it. In a democracy, everyone is entitled to have a say. They may not get the result they want but we all are able to express our point of view.

The KC’s policy of not showing up at such an important meeting as the Associate Parliamentary Group for Animal Welfare (APGAW) one is the same as what happens when a business has a monopoly or when a head of state is unelected by the people. Slowly over time they think they are invincible and irreplaceable.

The KC has sent that message direct to Prof Crispin and her committee not once but now twice. The problems which pure breed dogs are now facing are not because of Pedigree Dogs Exposed and not because of Jemima Harrison. The more the KC acts like a spoilt teenager, the longer it will take to correct and improve the health of dogs. There are no winners in such a silly game. Maybe it is ego and pride or maybe it is just outright bad advice, but whoever is directing the KC along such a path needs to be sent packing quick smart. This is not the time to point-score or play hard to get.

Perfect, and right as rain at every turn. Read the whole thing!

Related Posts:
** Inbred Thinking
** Caroline Kisko Continues to Damage the Brand
** Fearing Foreign Blood at the Kennel Club
** Is There a Kennel Club Road to Reform?

Are Defective Dogs Subject to a 4-Year Warranty?

2012-01-05T05:00:00.001-05:00

Here's a case that could ruin the AKC and end pet shop puppy sales forever.

A woman who can best be described as a poorly informed consumer, is suing the "Raising Rover" pet store in Manhattan because the Brussels Griffon she bought there began whimpering and limping in pain at the age of four or five months.

Under New York's "Puppy Lemon Law" a new owner can return a dog that gets sick within 14 days, but since the dog, Umka, didn't show symptoms until months later, it's not covered.

The lawyer for Elena Zakharova, Umka's owner, argues that "Pets must be recognized as living souls, not inanimate property," and that under New York State's Uniform Commercial Code, a buyer should be able to return a dog at any time up to four years later provided it can be show to be a "defective product."

Ms. Zakharova argues that her dog's health problems, pain and suffering are due to the fact that the pet store sold her a dog with genetic abnormalities that were entirely avoidable had the pup not been bred from other dogs with defects and disabilities.

But, of course, there are dozens of dog breeds which are defined by their defects, deformities and diseases, from brachycephalic breeds like the Bulldog and Pug, to achondroplastic breeds like Dachshunds and Bassetts.

If we throw in inbreeding due to closed gene pools, and the breeding of dogs with high and known rates of dysplasia, cancer, and other diseases, you are looking at a canine consumer time bomb of the First Order.

So far, Ms. Zakharova, who purchased the pooch for $1,600, has paid $4,000 toward vet bills and is expecting to spend $4,000 more.

Will New York's court see her costs as a "stupidity tax" and the dog's misery as a "never mind," or will the court say that the distributor and producer of these dogs willfully failed to avoid predictable, known, and well-documented quality-control problems associated with breeding pedigree dogs?

The case may swing on the facts: What specific evidence does Ms. Zakarova and her lawyer have that this specific puppy was bred from other dogs with known or unknown genetic defects and disabilities?

Related Posts:
** We Want Our Mutant Dogs, Never Mind Their Pain
** AKC Loves Puppy Mills ... and the Naïve
** The Vanishing Pet Shop Puppy
** Ten Tips to Finding the Right Dog
** AKC Continues to Tailspin Into the Ground

Iowa Says None of the Above

2012-01-04T16:00:00.006-05:00

Some three weeks ago, I wrote:

I am predicting a Ron Paul win in Iowa with Romney in #2 and Gingrich a close third (which will kill him going into NH).

The actual tally was Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum in a dead heat, with Ron Paul close behind -- really a three-way draw. Newt Gingrich fell faster and farther than even I could imagine, coming in at a distant fourth place.

Romney, the putative "winner" (by all of 8 votes in an entire state!) did not break 25%, which is a nice way of saying that 75% of Iowa Republicans voted against him.

Rick Santorum, who was a non-person through more than a dozen televised debates, rose very, very rapidly in the last week prior to the Caucus as Iowa's Republican voters scurried around desperate to find someone in the field that they knew nothing about.

Anyone but Romney!

And why did no one know anything about Rick Santorum?

Well, in part, because he has the charisma of book paste, and in part because he typically keeps going back to issues that have nothing to do with jobs, economics, national defense, or anything else that a president should be concerned about.

The core planks in Santorum's political platform, you see, are hating on gays and hating on contraception. Santorum opposes contraception, describing it as "a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be," and he says there is no right to privacy, not even in your own bedroom.

Santorum does not believe in evolution and wants "intelligent design" taught in schools.

Santorum does want to bomb Iran and he salutes torture, going so far to tell former POW John McCain just last year (2011) that McCain simply does not "understand" how "enhanced interrogation" works.

No, you cannot make the stuff up!

And who does Rick Santorum want for President?

In 2008, when John McCain was running for President, he said:

"If you're a Republican, if you're a Republican in the broadest sense, there is only one place to go right now and that's Mitt Romney."

Right. Hard to disagree with that now.

Related Posts:
** Driving Seamus & Other Lapses in Judgement
** Mitt Romney Fires, Aims, and Flops Over Wounded
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The Best Ice Fishing Video You Will See Today

2012-01-04T13:01:00.002-05:00

from Juuso Mettälä on Vimeo.

This is the best ice fishing video you will see all day. Filmed at Lake Saarijärvi in Vaala, Finland. Let's see how long it takes you to figure out what is going on.
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Faking It With Frank "Bring Em Back Alive" Buck

2012-01-03T06:00:00.014-05:00

I wrote a bit, yesterday, about the wildlife and nature fakery occasionally employed by everyone from David Attenborough to Marlin Perkins, and from Marty Stouffer to Walt Disney.

One fellow I left out was Frank Buck who was an animal dealer and adventurer who brought back a lot of zoo animals in the 1920s and 30s, even as he puffed up his "Bring 'Em Back Alive" exploits with grand tales and even staged film, as above.

This Frank Buck film was shot in 1931 or 1932, and its making was immediately met with cries of hoax.

In response, Modern Mechanix sent out a gullible reporter who documented how the "real live animals" were filmed. You can read his report here, but upon close reading you will find it is a captured and boxed python and a captured and boxed tiger.

Frank Buck and his photographer (both of which had every reason to lie) claim the Python and the Tiger were boxed after the battle, but is there anyone who seriously believes that?

I will let you judge for yourself, but please note that Frank Buck cannot help bragging about his new DeVry automatic camera which just happened to be placed perfectly, with its lens "trained on the scene to be filmed" and which got it all dead center despite the fact that the camera could only capture movement within 10 feet of dead center!

A miracle!

Or, more likely, an entirely staged "battle to the death."

Faking nature, it seems, has been going on for a pretty long time.
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Faking It With the Turtleman

2012-01-02T12:01:00.002-05:00

Over on FlyRod+Reel Online, Chris Palmer notes that a recent David Attenborough special (Frozen Planet) filmed polar bears in a zoo while leading viewers to believe the animals were filmed in the Arctic wilderness.

This is not the first time nature films have faked nature. As I noted in a previous post, there is no evidence that Honey Badgers have ever been guided to a hive by Honey Guide Birds -- the film showing that is entirely faked.

And what about all those photos and film you see of wild mountain lions? They are almost certainly shot in large filmed enclosures with entirely tame animals.

Remember all that film from Marty Stouffer's Wild America, and Marlin Perkins' Wild Kingdom, to say nothing of Walt Disney? Yes, a great deal of that footage was faked too.

Modern examples of fakery and outright lies include the ridiculous "Bear" Grylls television show which is replete with faked scenes, as well as the even more ridiculous "wolfman" show featuring Shaun Ellis.

Also faked are many of the hunting shows we see on TV today, where farm-raised animals are baited for weeks at specific locations before a film crew and a hunter fly in to shoot a few bullets and a little film on a very tight schedule.

You want to know how difficult it is to show a real hunt for real wild animals in real wilderness? My suggestion is to read "The Luck of the Draw" by Lee Wulff in which he recounts the making of a bow hunting film he participated in, and which involving spotter airplanes and several weeks in the field in order to get a few seconds worth of usable film (after which the stalk-up to the animal was then ~~faked~~ recreated).

Wulff writes:

[I]t's hard for a guide to realize how accurately placed both archer and cameraman must be and how swift and sure each must perform in filming a kill. The cameraman must always have the sun at his back, regardless of wind direction. He must be far enough away to show both hunter and his game in his lens, yet close enough for the images to be sharp and clear. He must move quietly, start his camera before the action starts, and not stop the camera before the action is complete. However great the difficulties may be for a solo hunter, for a camera-hunter team they're increased a hundredfold.

Right. And that's why so many of these television hunting shows are so often centered around canned or "high fence" hunts with semi-wild animals drawn to bait stations by "outfitters."

I bring all this up because fakery continues apace, even with the simplest of wildlife shots using the smallest of small game -- rats.

I was forwarded a link to this clip of the "Turtleman" who is now featured on the "Call of the Wildman" show being shown on the Discovery network. I have no doubt that Ernie Brown, Jr. (aka the Turtleman) has excellent wildlife hand-grabbing skills, but television wants drama and it seems that fakery is more than OK in the name of entertainment.

Either scripts and active content are not permitted to run or Adobe Flash Player version10.0.0 or greater is not installed.

Those who know much about rats and home construction will spot the fakery pretty quickly.

For starters, look at the ceiling board that is about to be opened up here -- it's been patched. That's a little odd, but only a caution. What is not a caution is that once a hole is bashed into the ceiling, rats instantly come piling out of the hole as if they were being fed down a hopper placed directly above -- which do doubt they were.

You see, floor and ceiling joists are built on 16" or 24" centers with long parallel stretches running 10-30 feet or more, depending on the size of the floor. Punch a hole the size of your fist in a drywall ceiling, as shown here, and any rats running between the joists will simply stand back to avoid the commotion, or else bolt from the area altogether using the other hole that they used to get into the space to begin with.

This is not to say the rats will not swarm out of a ground hole if smoked. They will, and I have been there manning the smoker when they did it, but even here the numbers that explode from an ancient rat warren are not as large a number as seen here. This is ridiculous, and speaks to fakery and staging from a producer who did not know too much about rats.

Want another clue? Look at those rats going to the food. Yes, LOOK at those rats -- they are out in broad daylight, and they are not in the least bit nervous. Wild rats simply do not come out in broad daylight like this unless they are dazed from warfarin poison, or are running from one location to another. When they do come out, they do not enter the middle of an open floor to feed with humans moving around just a few feet away -- they run along the edges of walls.

Another clue to the fakery is that this basement does not seem to have much detritus or food lying around. Rats need food and water, and for a rat colony of this size to have developed over time, they would need access to a lot of very steady food -- bags of spilled grain or a full-scale garbage dump. Unless the home-owner here is a real hoarder with old pizza boxes strewn all over (and the cleanliness of this basement suggests they are not), then this bit of drama is staged from top to bottom.

Related Links:
** RatDog
** A Dedicated Rat Smoker
** Brilliant Web Site on Rat Biology

AKC Continues to Tailspin Into the Ground

2012-01-01T10:48:00.002-05:00

The AKC continues to auger into the ground. A few statistics from the AKC concerning 2011:

Volume of AKC registrations continued to be headed downhill
Number of AKC breeders has declined 10% in 2011 for a total decline of 34% over the past 3 yrs.
Number of Commercial breeders has dropped 36% from last year
Number of puppies sold at retail stores is down 20%
Total revenues during the first eight months of 2011 were 5.4% lower than 2010.
Due to the shrinking population of breeders, the number of registered litters continues to decline, 11% below 2010.
The AKC licensing agent is currently in bankruptcy proceedings and may cease operations
$500,000 in guaranteed royalty revenues due to us from the AKC licensing activities have been lost over the past 2 ½ years due to the licensees going out of business
Revenues from AKC's affinity credit card are 50% less than what they were three years ago
Revenues from AKC sponsorships are anticipated to decline by one third from last year due to the fact that a number of AKC corporate sponsors (with their own budget constraints) have either reduced or eliminated their commitments to the AKC

Back in March of 2010, I predicted that the AKC would go out of business by 2025.

I may have been optimistic -- the decline is speeding up, and at some point there will be a tipping effect. We may be there very soon at this rate, as the AKC operated on a $2.3 million deficit last year -- the second year in a row that the AKC has run an operating deficit.

As for registration numbers, things have gotten so bad in recent years that the AKC has not published them -- a very bad sign, and one more reason corporate sponsors might one to think twice before they plop money down for what is probably less than imagined.

This is not to say that the AKC is on the verge of insolvency. It still has a little less than $60 million a year in income, but it also has rapidly rising pension and post-retirement obligations, and a declining stream of income. At some point something has to give.

Americans, of course, continue to acquire dogs. As I have noted in the past, however, more than half of all American dogs are now cross-breeds or mongrels and today AKC-registered dogs represent less than 10% of all dogs.

Of the approximately 500,000 dogs registered by the AKC last year, more than half were members of just 10 breeds, while the rarest 50 breeds combined represented less than 2 percent of all AKC-registered dogs.

Related Posts:
** Inbred Thinking
** American Canine Demographics
** Hunte Corporation: Pushing AKC Puppy Mill Pets
** All At Sea With the AKC

Best After-dinner Speech at a Specialty Dog Show

2012-01-01T10:03:00.000-05:00

The Kerry Blue Terrier Foundation has a wonderful bit about a judge's speech at a Kerry Blue Terrier Club of Northern California Specialty Show dinner, in 1967. Here's the spiel, lifed from the Kerry Blue Terrier site:

"Ellsworth Gamble was one of the most identifiable judges in the ring. He was not overly tall, but stood ramrod straight. Thin and almost 'hatchet faced,' waves of white hair topped fierce eyes. This year he had judged, for the second time in ten years, the Kerry Blue Terrier Club of Northern California Specialty.

"In those days, a sit-down Club dinner finished off the festivities. The highlight of the dinner was always Judge's remarks on how he enjoyed and was honored to judge such magnificent animals. Well, most judges said things like that - but not Ells Gamble.

"Mr. Gamble rose, his icy stare sweeping the group. "'Ten years ago, when I judged the Kerries here I said that I felt that the quality had declined. Now, ten years later, I can honestly say that the quality of Kerries is even worse.'

"Mr. Gamble sat down, to absolute silence. Even after that, Ells Gamble was a frequent guest and speaker at KBTCNC meeting and dinners."

This is a terrific story, but I wonder how often folks in the AKC have ever wondered why their dogs are not improving? Why are more genetic problems cropping up in the dogs? Why are so few Kennel Club dogs found working in the field today?

There is an answer, and it can be found in the family tree of Charles Darwin himself. To read more >> See Here

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30 Days to Success... or a Great Story

2011-12-31T12:01:00.000-05:00

What do you aim to do every day, for the next 30 days?
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Lion Grooming

2011-12-31T07:00:00.000-05:00

Like so many things, lion grooming looks very easy and relaxed from the cheap seats, same as sword swallowing, but if you intend to try this at home, bring a gallon of iodine as you may need it at the end!
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Why the Indians Attacked at Dawn

2011-12-31T06:00:00.000-05:00

I continue to engage in free reading thank to my Kindle Fire.

From "A Flintlock in the Rain" by Lionel Atwill in The Best Hunting Stories Ever Told, edited by Jay Cassell, comes this little gem about getting ready for deer hunting with flintlocks in the Adirondack wilderness of New York:

Loading a flintlock at five in the morning by the light of a Coleman lantern is a ticklish feat. It is hard to tell if the powder goes down the barrel or down your boots. The temptation is to stand smack next to the light and see what you are doing, until the thought of the lantern igniting the powderhorn in your hand soaks through your coffee-laced brain. Then you step back even farther and forget if you have tossed a charge down the barrel or not.

"This," says Hatfield, "is why Indians attacked at dawn."

Maxims and Hints for Quite a Lot

2011-12-30T18:21:00.003-05:00

I am grooving on my Kindle Fire, reading obscure books for free.

Today's find is in an odd little book entitled Maxims and Hints on Angling, Chess, Shooting, and Other Matters also, Miseries of Fishing by Richard Penn (1784-1863), and published in 1842.

I came across the four maxims below, and thought they applied to quite a lot, but especially to the world of dog training where there are thousands of years of experience, thousands of very excellent trainers alive today, and hundreds of different training techniques, and yet we still have some folks who have yet to bury their first dog, who are quite sure they have all the answers, that there is only one way to do it, and that maybe they themselves invented it all too.

____________________

You must not insist upon its being admitted without dispute, that the man who made your gun is the best maker in London. This town is a very large place, and it contains a great many gunmakers. You must also remember that it "stands within the prospect of belief" that there may be other persons who think themselves as competent to select a good gun, and to shoot well with it afterwards as you are.

* * * *

In like manner, although you may prefer using one kind of wadding to another, or may perhaps like to wear shoes and gaiters rather than trousers and laced boots, you must not suppose that every man who takes the liberty of forming a different opinion from yours on these subjects is a mere bungler.

* * * *

If you are thought to excel in any particular game or sport, do not too often lead to it as a subject of conversation: your superiority, if real, will be duly felt by all your acquaintance, and acknowledged by some of them; and you may be sure that "a word" in your favour from another person will add more to your reputation than "a whole history" from yourself.

* * * *

The foundation of good breeding is the absence of selfishness. By acting always on this principle — by showing forbearance and moderation in argument when you feel sure that you are right, and a becoming diffidence when you are in doubt, you will avoid many of the errors which other men are apt to fall into.

Time to Return the Golden Bear to California!

2011-12-30T18:02:00.000-05:00

A wandering radio-collared wolf has entered California from Oregon, making it the first wolf to return to that state in 80 or 90 years. No doubt more will come in over the next few years and decades.

All of this is great, but where is the Golden Bear?

The Golden Bear is nothing more than a light-coated regional variant of the Grizzly, and is on the state flag of California, but there are no Grizzlies in California anymore, even though the habitat is still there.

It it too crazy to suggest that instead of shooting Grizzlies in some parts of the U.S., a few be moved to California where they would thrive on nuts, wild pig, deer, and ground squirrels?

Fish on Fridays: Unnatural Selection Edition

2011-12-30T09:30:00.001-05:00

From The Oregonian:

Genetic adaptation of hatchery steelhead starts hurting spawning success within just one generation, according to a study of Hood River fish that could lead to pinning down the causes of hatchery domestication.

Classic Darwinian evolution is clearly at work –- and it's working fast, the researchers concluded in their study, published today by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

...Hood River steelhead that thrived in hatcheries had traits that were "beneficial in captivity but severely maladaptive in the wild," the study says.

Fish on Fridays: Devil Ray Edition

2011-12-30T09:00:00.001-05:00

Devil Rays Tooling the Sky in the Sea of Cortez:

Fish on Fridays: Killer Whale Verus Great White:

2011-12-30T06:00:00.002-05:00

Killer Whale Verus Great White:

The Killer Whale grabs and flips the Great White to immobilize it. Yeah, I think this Orca has done this particular trick before!

What's the Jack Russell connection you ask? What? You don't know who the lead singer of Great White is? Seriously?
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Happy Birthday Gideon!

2011-12-30T05:50:00.000-05:00

Gideon came to me at a little past two and a half years of age thanks to the kindness of Dawn Weiss at Briar Run Jack Russell Terriers in Missouri. Gideon is a tough 11-inch body attached to a big head that is always sporting an enormous grin, and he lives for food, balls, and time in the field. Gideon is Dawn's breeding, but behind him are quite a few Kingsway dogs from Jan DeWinter in Belgium, who seems to produce a steady stream of workers himself. As for Gideon, he is the only intact dog I have and he will remain so, which is all the editorializing I need to make about his value to me as a worker and companion. So far as I can tell, Gideon has never met a dog or a human he could not convert to his side in five seconds. Dale Carnegie could take lessons!
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Signs of Mammoth in Central Park

2011-12-29T08:53:00.000-05:00

This is pretty good little lecture about nature, seen and unseen, in Central Park.

The bit about the Kentucky Coffeetree is reminiscent of my 2006 post, The Mammoth in the Hedge.
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Hog Dogs and Bear Dogs

2011-12-29T06:00:00.003-05:00

Chad R. writes from Texas where he is using Jagd Terriers to bust pig from thick brush. I was struck by how much the picture, above, is reminiscent of another picture, below.

This is Skip, Teddy Roosevelt's bear-busting terrier which he got from John Goff in 1905. Skip died in 1907 and was buried at the White House, but before Roosevelt left in 1908, he had Skip disinterred and buried at Sagamore, the Roosevelt family home at Oyster Bay, Long Island, New York.

I suspect if Teddy were alive today, he would very much love to go pig hunting with a couple of Jagd terriers!
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What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?

2011-12-29T05:50:00.000-05:00

Coffee and Provocation

2011-12-28T16:30:00.001-05:00

Chicago Park to Be 10X Larger Than Manhattan:
Chicago and the state of Illinois are going to turn 140,000 acres of under used post-industrial land along Chicago's southern rim into a public recreation hub called the Millennium Reserve. The state is giving $17 million to the project, and Illinois Governor Pat Quinn hopes to add private funding which will create jobs even as it ~~preserves~~ creates nature.

Why Is NIH Giving Cocaine to Quail?
Why is the National Institute of Health giving cocaine to quail? Why, to study unbridled sex of course! And, as Scientific American makes clear, it's not a waste of your tax dollars, but sound science.

Larry Craig, Coal Lobbyist:
"Wide Stance" Larry Craig, the Idaho Senator who was last seen soliciting sex in an airport men's room (allegedly), has remained true to his school and is now a Washington, D.C. lobbyist for the coal industry. As I wrote back in 2007, "If Larry Craig wants to go 'Brokeback Mountain,' I could care less so long as places like Brokeback Mountain (i.e. the wild public lands of the American West) remain unviolated long after he is gone." But Craig will not go off into that good night. And why would he? This is a man who has always been willing to drill any hole for a dollar, and rip, rape and ruin any spot better off left alone. Larry Craig is now a paid apologist for strip mining and Mountain Top Removal? Of course he is!

Cheetah the Chimp Dead at Age 80?
Cheetah the chimp of Tarzan fame is dead at age 80. This is true, except for two things: the chimp is almost certainly not an "original" Cheetah (though there were many of those) and it is almost certainly not 80 years old. Cheetah frauds are an old game, and there does not appear to be any evidence at all that this animal, named Mike, is as old as claimed or that it was ever used in any film whatsoever.

There's a Good Chance the Java Tiger is Not Extinct:
There's evidence coming from the Meru Betiri National Park in East Java that tigers are still present there. They are installing motion-sensing camera traps to confirm. The last recorded sighting of a Javan Tiger was in 1976, and it was officially declared extinct in 1994. Finding "extinct" species is not that rare, however, as I note in a previous post. That said, if Javan Tigers are found, this should but in no way be considered a bright sign of optimism -- more of a small spark, too easily extinguished.

North Carolina Whooping Cranes?
A pair of Whooping Cranes are wintering in western North Carolina. In every article about these birds it's always noted how rare they are (now about 500 in the world) but it is almost never noted that, even in pre-Columbian times, there were never more than 5,000 Whooping Cranes in the world. The reason: these birds are extremely poor parents.

A Village is Drowned and the Fish Celebrate:
Not as bad as it sounds. Very cool art.

Coral Can Be Made to Grow Much Faster:
It seems a metal cage with a very weak electrical current running through it creates enough electrolysis to build up limestone which attaracts everything from corals to oysters which both grow with amazing speed. This is a small bit of good news in an arena long overdue for good news.

If You Really Want to Get Away From It All:
If you really want to get away from it all, but still want to see a doctor and be able to buy groceries in a small store, the island of Tristan da Cunha is the place for you. However, the only way to get there is on the RMS Saint Helena which arrives once a year in February, so start packing now!

Two Bumblebee Species Are Rediscovered:
A rare species of bumblebee was rediscovered in Scotland after 50 years, and now scientists at the University of California, Riverside have announced they too have rediscovered a rare bumblebee not seen in the United States for 55 years.

Jesus Wept:
A brawl between Greek Orthodox and Armenian priests broke out this morning at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, Israel, with the battle being fought with broomsticks. Yes, we have video. Palestinian police armed with batons and shields broke up the clashes. Discuss the thelogical, cultural, and geo-political ramifications among yourselves.
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I Love My New Kindle Fire

2011-12-27T10:37:00.003-05:00

My new Kindle Fire is quite the tool! Not only is it a good e-book reader, but it also gets my email, the Internet, plays all my music, is a great place to store and show pictures, and streams video and radio too (I have been watching National Geographic's Amazing Planet at Starbucks, which is about as cool a thing as I have done in the last three months). All this for $200, which I find rather amazing!

Some of this can be done with my Samsung "smart" phone, of course, and the Kindle does not replace that, as the Kindle is not a phone and is dependent on a wireless connection for everything but downloaded books and music and movies and photos, while the phone operates off of high-band radio frequencies (that's what a G3 or G4 connection is really all about).

The phone of course, it not a book reader, nor is it very good at reading stuff on the Internet (not even email). The Kindle allows me to download both recently published books and many free older books as well. For example, on my first morning with the Kindle, I downloaded four free old dog books, as well as some Conan Doyle and some obscure Mark Twain for starts. More free book are available at archive.org (2.5 million titles for free), openlibrary.org (1.5 million titles), Project Gutenberg, ManyBooks.net, and Feedbooks and select either Mobi, Text, or Kindle formats for easiest downloads.

Apparently, I can also download audio books too. I will have to try that!

This morning I figured out how to highlight text in a Kindle book, so that I can then rip and strip that text into a blog post. The trick here is to know that Kindle has created a social network which can be accessed at http://kindle.amazon.com/ One you log in, it shows you not only all the books you have downloaded, but also all the passages you have highlighted. For example, this is text I read yesterday:

“My dear fellow,” said Sherlock Holmes as we sat on either side of the fire in his lodgings at Baker Street, “life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outrageous results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.”

Kindle can read Word, .txt, .jpg, .pdf, .gif, and HTML files as well as .mobi, .prc, and if you email yourself at your Kindle email address, it will convert files and even unzip and convert Word folders and documents so they are ready to read.

So what is the Kindle not great for? Well. it's not a full computer with desk, chair, mouse, and key board. Nothing really replaces that, not even a laptop or notebook in my opinion (and yes I have those too). For actual writing, I remain a "box box table unit" man, but for researching, reading, and doing the light communications "tasking" that the world demands of us these days, the Kindle is pretty darn great!

Final two bonus bits: It fits in the front pocket of my Carrhart pants, and it takes the same charger as my cell phone, which is particularly great in the car.

Christmas Dinner in the Yellowstone

2011-12-25T04:00:00.000-05:00

A red fox in Yellowstone National Park dives for mice it can hear, but not see. It takes quite a few head-first dives to score dinner!
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Don't Stop the Music!

2011-12-24T09:01:00.000-05:00

If you do not smile at this, you have a dark soul.

Predator Fear, Alone, Results in Fewer Birds

2011-12-24T04:30:00.008-05:00

Fear of meso-predators, and fear alone, results in fewer successful clutches according to a paper by Liana Zanette entitled "Perceived Predation Risk Reduces the Number of Offspring Songbirds Produce per Year" that appears in the December 8th edition of Science.
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22,963 Ducks Land in Laurel, Maryland

2011-12-23T12:01:00.000-05:00

Duck wings.

National Georgraphic explains all, in a piece entitled: Hunters: For Love of the Land. A brief squib:

The great irony is that many species might not survive at all were it not for hunters trying to kill them. All the wings provided to Norman Saake and his colleagues throughout the country come from hunters, who fold them into prepaid envelopes, record the date and place of harvest, and mail them in. It is but one example of how the nation’s 12.5 million hunters have become essential partners in wildlife management. They have paid more than 700 million dollars for duck stamps, which have added 5.2 million acres to the National Wildlife Refuge System since 1934, when the first stamps were issued. They pay millions of dollars for licenses, tags, and permits each year, which helps finance state game agencies. They contribute more than 250 million dollars annually in excise taxes on guns, ammunition, and other equipment, which largely pays for new public game lands. Hunters in the private sector also play a growing role in conserving wildlife.

Read the whole thing. Excellent.
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Coffee, Birds & the World Bank

2011-12-23T08:00:00.007-05:00

American Redstart

It is pathetic, but true, that there are 391 Starbuck's coffee houses within an hour's drive from my house (50 miles). Amazingly, all of them seem to have a line of customers at all hours of the day. Could Americans be any more addicted to $4 coffees?

I told you it was pathetic, and as soon as they serve me my coffee, I promise you I'm going to leave.

As I wait for my coffee, I read the paper. Paul Wolfowitz, the current head of the World Bank and one of the architects of the war in Iraq, looks like he may lose his job for promoting his girlfriend to a World Bank job that pays better than Condoleeza Rice's.

The shocking part is not that there are scoundrels in Washington, or waste and corruption at the World Bank, but that Paul Wolfowitz has a girlfriend. Of course he had to pay her, but it's still amazing. Apparently, the human soul knows no limits to depravity.

Coffee and the World Bank.

There is a connection there, and I recall the linkage as I watch the pigeons rearrange themselves on the telephone wire in front of the Safeway food store across the street.

Legend has it that the coffee plant was first discovered in Ethiopia by a goat herder who found his charges a little too animated after eating beans from a local bush. The coffee plant (and the drink) eventually made its way to Yemen and the Arab world via the Sudanese slaves that were forced to paddle boats across the Red Sea to the Arabian Peninsula.

With alcohol banned, coffee quickly became the "drug of choice" in the Arab world. While an alcohol-besotted Europe struggled in a drunken haze through the Dark Ages, the Arab world became caffeinated and invigorated. Soon after they started the first coffee houses in the world, Arabs began creating grand libraries, universities, new mathematical equations, and amazingly complex architectural designs. Such is the power of coffee.

Coffee houses hit Europe around 1600, and there they had the same effect they had in the Arab world -- a spectacular growth in intellectual clarity and output. From the enlightened coffee houses of London grew the first newspaper divisions (business, style, overseas news, etc.), the first organized scientific associations, and Lloyds of London -- the first international insurance cartel.

Coffee consumption took off like a rocket in Great Britain, and in 1796, when the British took over Sri Lanka (Ceylon) from the Dutch, the new settlers began clearing land for coffee plantations.

By the 1860s, Sri Lanka was the largest coffee producer in the world.

In 1869, however, a lethal fungus known as coffee rust had shown up on the island causing premature defoliation of the coffee plants, and dramatically reducing berry yield.

By 1879, the rust fungus had spread across the island and into Indian plantations as well, with the result being a collapse of coffee production across the region.

Unable to grow coffee in the face of a devastating rust fungus epidemic, Ceylonese and Indian plantation owners began to rip out their coffee plants in order to grow tea.

Within a few decades, tea consumption in the U.K. had surpassed coffee consumption, and it has remained so to this day.

While tea is the national drink of Great Britain, coffee remains the national drink of the United States, where we consume vast quantities of it. In fact, though coffee is the second most internationally traded commodity in the world (after oil), the U.S. consumes one-quarter of the world's coffee beans.

Coffee came to the New World via the French, who introduced it into the Caribbean in the mid 1700s, and the Spanish, who brought coffee plants to Latin America a few decades later.

By the mid 1800s, coffee plantations had been planted in Central and South America, and these coffee plantations were greatly expanded after coffee rust decimated production in Sri Lanka and India.

Coffee plantations in Central and South America were diverse operations that grew, rather naturally, out of the multi-storied small-patch gardening operations that had been successfully employed by the native Indians for several thousand years before Columbus.

These small patch gardens were created by removing large trees with little agricultural value, but leaving those that might yield a nut harvest, good wood, seasonal fruits, or which had the lucky property of fixing nitrogen in the soil.

Under these large forest tree were planted shorter citrus and cacao trees, and between these were planted bananas. Underneath and between the bananas were planted coffee bushes and vegetable crops for local food consumption.

Multi-storied "shade coffee" plantations were miracles of production. When coffee prices fell (as they often did), other crops provided sustenance and cash, ensuring that the local could always eat and pay for things made elsewhere.

Because multiple types of plants were found on shade-grown coffee plots, multiple types of insects and birds were present. The result was not only less overall insect predation on any one crop, but less erosion and slower evaporation as both rain and sunlight filtered through multiple vegetative layers.

Shade-grown coffee plantations were particularly rich in bird life -- especially neo-tropical migrant song birds such as redstarts, Tenessee warblers, Baltimore Orioles, yellow-throated and solitary vireos, wood thrushes, catbirds, ruby-throated hummingbirds, Nashville Warblers, and oven-birds.

All told, more than 150 bird species are known to winter or live year-round in shade coffee plantations, making them the most bird-intensive agricultural areas in the world.

Shade coffee production thrivedSri Lanka) 100 years earlier was discovered in Brazil and Nicaragua. This discovery caused a panic, not only in the coffee industry, but also among the economic and political elite that run such major banking and development policy shops as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the U.S. Agency for International Development..

The fear was that coffee rust would soon sweep through Central and South America. If that happened, not only would the coffee crop be destroyed, but so too would the economic base of entire countries and many millions of people. If that happened, not only would we not have coffee in New York, Paris and Vienna, but billions of dollars of foreign loans would go unpaid.

Something had to be done.

What was done was massive, mechanical, and swift. Under orders from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the large cartels that control much of the world's coffee market, coffee plantations in Central and South America were systematically ripped from the ground and replanted.

The idea here was a simple one: by growing coffee in direct sun, rather than in the shade, coffee plants could made safe from the coffee rust fungus. The prescription for salvation was destruction, and entire mountain sides were plowed clear of their multistory canopies and the detritus burned. In their place was planted dense hedgerows of a dwarf variety of coffee that could withstand direct tropical sunlight.

With the loss of a diversified shade forest cover, bird populations that had once thrived in the rich overstory of coffee plantations plummeted. At the same time, with the absence of trees to provide vegetative nutrients to the soil and hold back erosion, the fertilizer needs of coffee plantations skyrocketed. Mono-cropped sun coffee plantations proved far more susceptible to insect infestations than shade plantations, so insecticide inputs also increased. The open sunny soil between coffee plants proved susceptible to weed infestations, so herbicide use also increased. Finally, though the new coffee plants produced a great number of beans, the plants themselves were not as hardy as the old shade-grown varieties, and an additional expense had to be factored into the equation -- the cost of periodically replanting large numbers of exhausted plants.

Ironically, all of the devastation and destruction was not needed. It turns out that due to the peculiarities of Latin America's climate and the timing of rain, humidity and mountain temperature, coffee leaf rust has not been able to proliferate in either Central or South America.

Adding insult to injury, it turns out that the new dwarf varieties of sun-grown coffee are not less susceptible to coffee leaf rust than the older varieties. When a fungus outbreak does occur, as it sometimes does, it is generally localized and easily treatable with a copper-based fungicide.

Sadly, however, the damage to the once-vibrant shade coffee plantations cannot be rapidly undone. Forests that took decades to grow were razed to the ground in hours, and will now take decades to grow back.

The good news is that some people are re-thinking coffee production in Central and South America, and in time shade-grown coffee may yet make a partial come back.

If so, the folks spearheading the charge will be the aging hippies and eco-freaks that once wore tie-dyed T-shirts and earthshoes. Now older, these folks frequent businesses like Starbucks and Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, edit newspapers and magazines, start movements, run foundations, and are otherwise a social force to be reckoned with.

For this set, buying coffee has become a political act. From their perspective, if you are not buying shade-grown, organic, free trade coffee, then you are simply giving the "big wink" to American song bird destruction and the poisoning of the soil, people and economies of Latin America.

They have a point, and it's such a good and strong point that companies like Starbucks are working to change their business practices as a consequence.

Working with Conservation International, Starbucks has created a set of Coffee and Farmer Equity practices (CAFE for short ) to guide the growing and purchase of coffee.

This year, Starbucks is supposed to purchase 60 percent of its coffee from suppliers who successfully implement the CAFE guidelines.

The end of this story is not yet written, but it may yet be good news, albeit good news that remains at least 10 or 15 years off due to slow nature of the turn around, and the slow regrowth of shade coffee plantations.

That said, if consumers continue to demand and purchase shade grown coffee grown in Mexico and Central America, we may yet see a turn around in neotropical songbird decline in the United States.

If so, that would certainly make a $4 coffee worth the price.
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This is a repost from 2007. .

Merry Christmas from the Terriers!

2011-12-23T08:00:00.004-05:00

The Missing Birds of Rock Creek Park

2011-12-23T07:30:00.001-05:00

OvenBird

This was written in 2003 for a major environmental organization.

The decline of neotropical migrant song birds in the U.S. was first noticed by birders in Washington, D.C.'s Rock Creek Park, a small federally-protected enclave nestled along a stream bed in Washington, D.C., just 15 miles from Fairfax County.

Breeding Bird Surveys from 1947 through the 1970s, revealed that the yellow-billed cuckoo and yellow-throated vireo -- as well as the northern parula, black-and-white warbler, Kentucky warbler, and hooded warbler -- were disappearing. Six other migrant song birds -- Eastern wood-pewees, Acadian flycatchers, wood thrushes, red-eyed vireos, ovenbirds, and scarlet tanagers -- had declined by more than 50 percent.

What was going on?

Evidence from Overseas

Domestic forest destruction was ruled out, as Rock Creek Park had suffered no substantial encroachment in decades.

An analysis of radar images, done in the early 1980s, however, showed only half as many birds were flying to the U.S. from Mexico's Yucatan as had been migrating just 20 years earlier. Clearly, some part of what was happening to "our" birds was happening overseas. Experts theorized that much of the song bird decline, now being documented across the U.S., was due to forest destruction in Central and South America.

In fact, forest destruction in Central America was proceeding at a very rapid pace, driven in no small part by truly sobering rates of human population growth. In the Peten region of Guatemala, for example, 77% of the original forest cover still existed as recently as 1977. By 1980, however, that number had fallen to 42% and by 1989 just 29 percent of the original forest cover was gone. Scientists now believe as little as 10% of the forest may be left by 2025.

Evidence from the U.S.

By the late 1990s, however, scientists began to realize that forest destruction in Central and South America did not tell all of the story. Analysis of migrant song bird populations at the national level showed that birds loss was not evenly distributed across the U.S.

While most migrant song birds are experiencing clear negative trends east of the Mississippi River, and along the thin coastal strip of the West Coast, neotropical migrants seem to be doing fairly well on large tracts of forested land in the West.

An overlay of neotropical migrant song bird decline and a map of federally protected lands, showed a fascinating pattern: migrant song birds were not in general decline in our national parks, our national forests, or on lands managed by the U.S. Department of Interior's Bureau of Land Management. Migrant song birds were in general decline in the east and in the Midwest, however, where changing agricultural practices and increasing levels of forest fragmentation seemed to be having a real impact.

Scientists looking for clues to song bird loss in Rock Creek Park began to look at the forested areas immediately surrounding the suburbs of Washington, DC, and what they found was pretty startling. Between 1980 and 1995, Fairfax County saw 69 percent of its forests converted to homes and businesses.

While scientists had been puzzling over bird loss in Rock Creek Park, just 15 miles away, Fairfax County's forests had been vanishing under asphalt at an astonishing rate.

Scientists now recognize that these once-vibrant suburban forests were probably the principal "home" of many of the birds that had once been seen in Rock Creek Park. Rock Creek had merely served as way-station between larger forest blocks that once ringed the Washington, DC area.

As new roads and light rail systems continue to be built in the suburbs of Virginia and Maryland, more and more forests are falling to farms and more and more farms are falling to freeways and subdivisions.

Once large blocks of unbroken forest are being shattered into increasingly smaller fragments, allowing such meso-predators as crows, jays, raccoons, possums, feral cats and fox to prey on once-secure migrant song bird nests. In addition, increasingly fragmented forests have enabled the brown-headed cow bird to colonize areas they once would have found unattractive.

Cowbirds nest at the edge of forests and feed in farms fields and pastures. Though native to North America, the brown-headed cowbird was once confined to the forest edges of Midwestern prairies where they fed in grasslands grazed by roaming bison. Today, however, because of widespread forest fragmentation, parasitic cowbirds can be found all across the United States.

The brown-headed cowbird is a parasitic nester, which is to say it builds no nests of its own, but instead lays its eggs in the nests of other birds -- most frequently in the open, cup-shaped nests of neotropical migrants. A single cowbird may lay as many as 80 eggs in a breeding season - one or two eggs per songbird nest. Because cowbird chicks hatch earlier, and are much larger than the offspring of migrant songbirds, they are able to out compete songbird chicks for food, and often simply push them out of the nest altogether.

In the end, a single cowbird may prevent 20 to 30 warblers, finches and vireos from raising their young. If the bird species has a short nesting period, it may not be able to hatch out a second brood that year, in which case that species may fall off rapidly in that area over a relatively short period of time.

Yellow-throated Vireo

More Trouble Ahead?

While a great deal of population-driven environmental damage has already occurred in the suburbs of Virginia, more population growth lies ahead. Fairfax County's population continues to grow rapidly, most of it driven by a combination of internal domestic migration (military and government families coming to support a burgeoning government and high-tech corridor) and international migration.

Fairfax County may be a demographic "canary in a coal mine" signaling where the rest of America may be headed in terms of land use patterns and population growth. With U.S. population growing by more than 3 million people a year, and suburban sprawl gobbling up more than 500,000 acres of forest and farmland every year, the pace of habitat fragmentation is likely to increase rapidly in the years ahead.

Under the Census Bureau's middle-series projection, which assumes that current U.S. immigration and fertility levels will stay about the same, the population of the U.S. will increase by 120 million people over the course of the next 50 years. About 63 percent of this future population growth will be due to immigrants and the children of immigrants that have not yet arrived in the U.S. -- the remaining 37 percent of population growth will be driven by demographic momentum as current U.S. residents move to complete their families.

One hundred and twenty million people is a very large population to add to the U.S. over the course of the next 50 years. To put this number into perspective, this is a population equal to the current populations of California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Colorado, Montana, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Wyoming, Utah, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana combined.

In addition to sprawl directly driven by population growth, the U.S. can expect to see increased forest fragmentation due to more and more folks moving farther and farther out into the countryside, abetted by high-speed internet hookups, satellite television, and light rail systems feeding into an ever-expanding network of four, six and eight lane highways.

As Canadian real estate agent Ozzie Jurock noted in an article for The Vancouver Sun (June 30, 2001),

"People throughout North America are on the move. Population growth in smaller towns is exploding. Californians move to Oregon and Arizona, New Yorkers joke at the rain but moved to Washington. The ski resorts and lakes are teeming with 'former' city slickers clutching cash and the hope for the elusive 'better quality of life."

Even as population growth continues apace in the U.S., the population of Central America continues to grow. Over the course of the next 50 years, Central America and Mexico combined are expected to add 90 million people to their populations -- a 65% percent increase in population.

Why the Fairfax Bird Loss Story is Important

Bird population data are such a robust metric of general environmental health that in the United Kingdom they are used as an official indicator of environmental sustainability.

A broad decline in many wild bird populations in the Western Hemisphere may be an indication that a broad decline in environmental quality is occurring across much of the region.

In the case of neotropical song birds, population-driven habitat decline along the entire migration flyway -- including the United States -- has had a serious impact on U.S. song bird numbers. The decline of songbird species in the U.S. is a powerful reminder that population pressures beyond our borders really do "come home to roost" and that reducing the rates of population growth at home, and abroad, is a real and serious "back yard" environmental issue.

Ironically, even as many bird populations are in decline, the number of Americans interested in birds is on the rise. The National Survey on Recreation and the Environment found that over 71 million Americans are recreational birders, up 250 percent from 1982, making birding the fastest-growing outdoor activity in the U.S.

Black and White Warbler
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Bird Species Decline in the U.S

2011-12-23T07:15:00.002-05:00

In large parts of the U.S., over half of our songbird species are in decline. Scientists say habitat destruction is largely to blame.

Across the United States, more than 250 species of neotropical migratory birds fly south for the winter.

Beginning in the early 1970s, scientists began to notice that many species seemed to be in decline

What was going on?

Scientists have concluded that the decline of neotropical migratory song birds in the United States is closely linked to four issues closely linked to human population growth and habitat destruction:

Tropical Forest Destruction
The population of Latin America and the Caribbean has doubled in the last 35 years, and with it has come unprecedented destruction of tropical rainforests. As populations have exploded, more landless peasants have colonized forest areas and cleared vegetation, with slash-and-burn cycles becoming progressively shorter. At the same time, logging over wide areas and the rapid expansion of commercial farming has accelerated the disappearance of forests and fueled the rapid destruction of once-lush bird habitat. In the Peten region of Guatemala, for example, 77 percent of the land was covered in dense forest in 1960. By 1990, that number had fallen to just 29 percent.
Pesticide Use Overseas
Neotropical migratory birds are being killed by the heavy use of insecticides, herbicides and fungicides, which are used to boost crop productivity to feed increasing numbers of people in the developing world. In some cases, birds are poisoned outright by chemical application, or by consuming grain and insects that have been sprayed. In other cases, the pesticides accumulate and concentrate within the birds, resulting in deformed chicks or eggshells that are so thin they break before hatching.
Suburban Sprawl and Forest Fragmentation
As the population of the United States has grown from 76 million in 1900 to over 280 million today, cities and suburbs have sprawled outward. Fairfax, Virginia, for example, a suburb of Washington, D.C., saw 69 percent of its forest converted to homes and businesses between 1980 and 1995. As human populations have risen, and forests have fallen, primary predators such as wolves, bobcats, and cougars have been wiped out, while the ecological niche of meso-predators such as raccoons, possums and foxes has expanded. The result has been massive predation of Neotropical songbirds, which tend to nest in the open and near the ground rather than in tree cavities or higher up in the forest canopy.

With forest fragmentation has come an invasion of native and non-native birds that compete with deep-forest species for food and nesting sites. One example is the brown-headed cowbird. Cowbirds were once confined to the forest edges of mid-western prairies where they fed in grasslands grazed by roaming bison. Today, however, because of widespread forest fragmentation, parasitic cowbirds can be found all across the United States. A single cowbird may lay as many as 20 eggs in a breeding season - one or two eggs per songbird nest. Because Neotropical migrants tend to build open cup-shaped nests, and raise only a single brood a year, they are particularly susceptible to cowbird parasitism.
Intensive U.S. Farming Practices
As American farmers make increasingly intensive use of their lands, bird populations suffer. Post-to-post cultivation has wiped out edge-row thickets where many songbirds used to nest, while many farmers now cut hay three times a year where they used to cut just once. The result is that hedgerow and ground-nesting birds like the northern bobwhite, the eastern meadowlark, the vesper sparrow, and the grasshopper sparrow are in rapid decline.

Cowbirds, Mesopredators, & Grass Nesting Birds

2011-12-22T09:30:00.000-05:00

The National Audubon Society's Christmas bird count is a pretty good organizing tool, but a little weak on science, since it is mostly counting bird-feeder birds that are not in too much danger of loss.

So what birds are in decline in the U.S.? Mostly neo-tropical migrants and grassland-nesting birds. More on neo-tropical migrants tomorrow. For now, let's look at grassland birds.

U.S. populations of Henslow's Sparrow, Cassin's Sparrow, Grasshopper Sparrow, Field Sparrow, Savannah Sparrow, and Vesper Sparrow exist in numbers only a fraction of what they did in the 1850s when the tall grass prairies had yet to fall under the plow.

Over the course of the last 20 years alone, the Breeding Bird survey has enumerated a very rapid decline in these birds that seems unrelated to loss of land across the U.S. Other grassland birds also seem to be in decline, especially such sparrow-like birds such as the Bobolink, the Dicksissel, and the Western Meadowlark (the state bird of Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oregon and Wyoming).

What is going on? The short answer is industrial agriculture.

As human population numbers have increased in the U.S. and across the world, more and more pressure has been put on America's farm land -- the source of 15% of the world's cereal production.

The good news is that record crops are being produced despite the fact that less and less land is being put under the plow.

The bad news is that this increased production has required more automation, less fence-row cover, and more intensive management of farm habitat than ever before.

A good example of what is going on can be seen by taking a look at America's hayfields. While 40 years ago a hay field might have been harvested once a year, most hayfields are cut three times a year now, thanks to automation. The second and third hay harvests typically occur just as grassland birds are breeding.

The good news is that while we are farming our most productive lands more intensively, we are putting a lot of marginal farm land into a Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) started in 1982.

The CRP has worked to take more than 32 million acres of farmland out of production in order to slow top soil loss and exhaustion, and to provide habitat for native plants and animals. CRP lands now total more than 50,000 square miles across the United States, and make up vast stretches of some prairie states.

Unfortunately, despite the extensive acreage put into the CRP program, it has not been enough to reverse the decline of some grassland bird species.

One problem is that much of the land in the CRP program is in relatively small blocks, often bordered by working farms. This "edge" habitat is perfect for deer, fox, raccoon, raptors, pheasant, grouse and turkey, but it is not always conducive to the successful breeding of grassland birds, many of which only do well in very large blocks of prairie devoid of trees.

In fact, because the population of medium-size predators such as fox, raccoon, possum and hawks is high in edge habitat, grassland nest mortality of small grass-nesting birds is often unnaturally high in small-acreage CRP locations.

In addition, the tree cover provided by old farm windbreaks and shelterbelts provides a near-perfect habitat for the brown-headed cowbird.

The brown-headed cowbirds is a brood parasite species which lays its eggs in nests of other birds and leaves them for the host bird to raise.

Because cowbird eggs hatch a few days before those of their hosts, the larger cowbird chick is able to push out the eggs and chicks of the host bird, thereby winning all the food resources for itself.

The destructive capacity of the brown-headed cowbird is hard to overestimate: a single female can destroy the clutches of 20 or more song birds in a single season.

Would I advocate shooting a cowbird? In a minute.

In fact, in some areas the only way to get native bird species back up to acceptable levels is with Larsen Traps designed to catch cowbirds. To learn how to build a cowbird trap (a good project for a boy scout !) click here.
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Not All Churches Are Under New Management

2011-12-22T09:00:00.001-05:00

Winter Solstice, a tune written for the English bagpipes by David Faulkner.
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Blue Jays at the Feeder

2011-12-22T05:50:00.003-05:00

Jays got hit hard by West Nile, but are bouncing back.

Barack and Me

2011-12-21T17:30:00.005-05:00

Barack and I shop at the same store for dog stuff.

We're cool like that.
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Happy Hanukkah!

2011-12-21T17:00:00.003-05:00

Andy Borowitz writes:

"Hanukkah is the most American holiday because it's a celebration of burning oil that we don't have."

Related Post:
** Hunting on Sunday

Oog, In the Cave, With a Mammoth Bone?

2011-12-21T08:33:00.002-05:00

Heather Houlahan forwards the latest link from the deep thinkers at PlosOne who want us to know that Phylogenetic Distinctiveness of Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian Village Dog Y Chromosomes Illuminates Dog Origins.

Of course. I have always said so.

But I wonder....

Is this the paper that says dogs are from Asia, replacing the one that said they were from the Middle East, which replaces the one that says they were from Europe, which replaced the one that said they came from Africa?

Or is this the paper that says dogs are 200 years old, 10,000 years old, 30,000 years old, or 120,000 years old?

I am STILL waiting to find out why ANY of it matters, but I have not yet gotten to the end of the book, so please don't tell me it was Oog, in the cave, with a mammoth bone. I like the mystery of it all!
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The Tintin Movie Opens Today

2011-12-21T04:00:00.000-05:00

Merry Saturnalia!

2011-12-20T09:30:00.001-05:00

A happy and blessed Winter Solstice to all my Pagan friends.

For those who are wondering, Winter Solstice (December 21) is the shortest day of the year and the ancient Pagan day of celebration to which Christmas conveniently attaches its sleigh.

What? Christmas is older than Jesus?

Yes, it's true.

In fact, it's older than Judaism as well.

Surely, you did not think the world began with Moses or Jesus? Dinosaurs once roamed your back yard. I promise you this is true.

Winter Solstice is the the darkest day of the year, and Winter Solstice is celebrated as the beginning of the return, or rebirth, of the Sun.

In short, tomorrow is the beginning of the REAL New Year, and it pretty much always has been celebrated as such.

The Roman holiday held at this time of year was called Saturnalia, and it lasted from December 17th to the 24th, with the Winter Solstice itself being (incorrectly) celebrated on December 25th (Sol Invictus) after Julius Caesar introduced the Julian Calendar in 45 B.C.

Groundhog Day, February 2nd, is the halfway point between the true Winter Solstice (December 21) and March 21 (the Spring or Vernal Equinox)..

It is not an accident that February 2nd is also 40 days after Christ was born, as in Hebrew tradition mothers were required to purify their children in the temple 40 days after giving birth.

February 2nd then is not only Groundhog Day, but also the "Feast of the Presentation" otherwise known as Candlemas. In the ancient Pagan world, Groundhog Day was known as Imbolc.

So where did the holiday we know as "Groundhog Day" come from? For that story, read the previous blog posts on that topic.

Bottom Line: Today is a great day to celebrate "that old time religion".

And yes, all you New Age Pagans should feel perfectly free to call it Festivus.

In fact, please do!

Seinfeld - The Festivus Story
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A Horse Story, A Santa Story, a Dog Story

2011-12-20T06:07:00.003-05:00

Sarah B. sends this excellent video, noting that "War Horse is a huge success...it is also a FICTION...try explaining that to the legions of fans!"

Yes. So much of what we believe is fiction and much of it of recent vintage too.

For example, did you know that the image of Santa Claus, as we know him today, was created by American Thomas Nast who was hired to draw a picture for Harper’s Weekly of Santa bringing gifts to Union troops fighting the Civil War, and that Santa was partly drawn to resemble Uncle Sam?

Santa's red suit showed up in 1931 and is "Coca Cola red" because it is the product of a Coca Cola ad drawn by Haddon Sundblom, with the fat laughing Santa we now have in our minds modeled on a real-life retired Coca-Cola salesman by the name of Lou Prentice.

And is it any different today? How much longer before someone writes a book about The Kill Devil Terrier of the Minnesota White-Toed Chipmunk Dog?

Related Posts:
** When Fairy Tales Meet Hairy Tails

I Normally Don't Give a Flying...

2011-12-20T04:00:00.009-05:00

I normally don't give a Flying F*uck, but this season I'm going to change the errors of my ways.

And you can too! Order one from Amazon! Remote controlled.

Perfect for the political season ahead. You can change the word too, I suspect, which will be Job One at my house.

Christopher Hitchens on the Zoo in North Korea

2011-12-19T15:00:00.004-05:00

With a side note about God and government, and using George Orwell's novel, 1984 as a five year plan and political guide.
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Christmas Bird Count Illuminates an Old Fable

2011-12-19T11:30:00.001-05:00

The National Audubon Society is in the midst of its annual "Christmas Bird Count," which is mostly an unscientific "bird feeder" bird count done when those birds which are at greatest risk of decline (i.e. neo-tropical migrants including most grassland birds) are actually down south in Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America.

In short, this is the wrong time of year to count birds that are truly at risk!

That said, the 111-years worth of data collected by the "Christmas Bird Count" does have some use, if for no other reason than to prove that one of the biggest fables about Bald Eagles and Osprey is more than a small lie.

What's the story? Simple: that Bald Eagles and Osprey were pushed to the edge of extinction by DDT.

Not True.

In fact, Bald Eagles and Osprey were pushed to the edge of extinction by bullets and leghold traps long before DDT showed up on the scene. See this previous post for more information about that.

This is NOT to say that the ban on DDT was not good for birds, only that the notion that Bald Eagles and Osprey were specifically driven off the map by DDT is simply not true, and obscures an important story about the value of the Bald Eagle Protection Act of 1940, and the Endangered Species Act of 1973.

Coffee and Provocation

2011-12-19T04:00:00.047-05:00

The Humane Society for Shelter Pets:
As I have noted in the past, when you respond to a Humane Society of the U.S. (HSUS) fundraising letter, 70 cents out of every dollar goes to fund more direct mail, and almost none of your donations (less than 1%) goes to shelter animals. What happens to the remaining money? The remaining money goes into stock portfolios and to fund attacks on farming and agriculture. Now, the agricultural world is fighting back with a simple idea that will only benefit dogs and cats. Two weeks ago they launched The Humane Society for Shelter Pets with full-page ads in four major newspapers and a website. The ads show a sad-eyed dog and ask people to help by donating to local shelters, NOT the Humane Society of the U.S. Of course Wayne Pacelle of the HSUS is up in arms about any campaign that would actually help shelter dogs and cats and expose the Big Lie his organization is built upon. Wayne Pacelle is upset? Excellent! Let's make him even more upset. Please let the world know through Facebook and G+ that donations to HSUS do NOT help shelter animals and that if folks want to give to a local shelter this holiday season (please do!) all they have to do is click here to find a worthy recipient for charity donations.

Socks Filled With Meat:
No, we are not talking about Congress. Apparently, socks filled with meat are one way to get good camera trap pictures of fishers, a type of large weasel.

Killing Badgers by the Thousands in the U.K.:
After banning the hunting of badgers with terriers and shovel, the geniuses who manage wildlife in the U.K. have discovered they are neck-deep in badgers (there are now more badgers than fox) and that the animals have a role in spreading TB to cattle. What to do? They have trapped and shot thousands of badgers, but that it not efficient enough, and neither is trapping and inoculation, so now they are setting out carcasses to draw in badger and they are gut-shooting them from a distance. The idea of licensed terrier work and managed hunts seems to be more than the British can wrap their brains around.

This "Robot Nation" Stuff is Nonsense.
I asked Siri and she says this Robot Nation stuff is nonsense and I have to stop listening to Wally Shawn and Andre Gregory.

Consumer Reports on Retractable String Leashes:
Consumer Reports says the obvious, which is that the damn things are a menace to society.

University of Montana Hot Tub Party:
This picture should be in the college catalogue. In fact, it should be the cover.

Yes, Virginia, There is a Flying Spaghetti Monster:
Virginia, where the American Revolution was started, has decided that if you are going to allow mythical stuff to be put up on the courthouse steps, the Flying Spaghetti Monster should be seen, along with Jedis (may the Force be with you), and a skeleton Santa Claus mounted on a cross.

A Nice Hook:
The movie is entitled Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. A fish out of water story I am guessing.

Everyone Hates Newt Gingrich?
Apparently all the Republicans who used to work with him "hate him like like they hate a bowl of cream of tapeworm soup".

One Nation Under Cash:
80 percent of the money sloshing around in America's SuperPAC warchests comes from just 58 donors.

Transgendered Sea Anemone are Denounced by Clergy:
A coalition of Baptist clergymen are speaking against the Telia felina, a transgendered sea anemone they are decrying as “base and depraved.” “This filthy anemone, which exhibits both male and female characteristics, is turning our oceans’ intertidal zones into dens of sin and perversion,” said Rev. William Chester, spokesman for the Save Our Seas Coalition, a Huntsville-based activist group dedicated to “the preservation of aquatic decency and morality.” “For God knows how long, this twisted sea creature has been running rampant in our oceans, spreading its unnatural, bisexual lifestyle. And it’s high time somebody took a stand.” >> Read the rest here from the Onion.
God Depends on You, But Science Does Not:
In the beginning, Man created God in his own image. Or, as Penn Jillette puts in his book, God, No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales: "There is no god and that's the simple truth. If every trace of any single religion died out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again. There might be some other nonsense in its place, but not that exact nonsense. If all of science were wiped out, it would still be true and someone would find a way to figure it all out again."

Coffee is Pure Awesome:
Here's a little video that tells you why.

David Attenborough :: What a Wonderful World

2011-12-18T18:30:00.000-05:00

THIS IS ALL THERE IS... and it's enough.
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Happy Birthday "Blog"

2011-12-18T11:51:00.000-05:00

On Dec. 17, 1997, Jorn Barger became the first person to use the term "weblog" to describe his collection of links logged from the internet.
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How Did Dog Shelters Become Slaughter Houses?

2011-12-16T14:00:00.001-05:00

From the December 2011 edition of Dogs Today. Illustration by Kevin Brockbank.

Why do we call places that kill dogs ‘shelters’ or ‘rescues’?

Like so many things, the answer goes back to the Victorian era.

The goal back then was to eradicate rabies, and the most obvious place to start was to round up all the stray dogs and kill them as quickly as possible.

Pet dog owners were instructed to always have their dogs muzzled, and to never have them off leash, which meant any dog found un-muzzled or off-leash was fair game for the dog catcher.

In the U.K. and in the U.S., dog catchers and dog pounds were subsidized by taxpayer funds, and budgets were always thin. Pound operators were told to keep overhead costs low or risk cutting salaries, and the simplest way to do that was to rush dogs to their death, thereby lowering food and staff costs.

And so, within a week of being caught, most stray dogs were summarily shot, gassed, clubbed, or drowned in wire cages shoved off the dock.

SELLING DEATH FOR 100 YEARS

The good news is that rabies was eradicated from the U.K. by 1903. The bad news is that by then dog pounds were institutions with budgets, employees, real estate, and a fully developed ethos. Animal welfare had become a social cause and a business, and while improved treatment of horses and cattle was a concern, it was the plight of dogs and cats that really opened up the purses.

Of course one had to treat the issue gingerly! One could not be raising money to help subsidize a canine slaughterhouse, and so a new term was coined – a ‘shelter’ or “rescue’. Let people guess what actually happened there!

It should be said that from the beginning the ‘humane movement’ and the Kennel Club had a detente.

The Kennel Club did not decry the movement for pocketing taxpayer money for killing hundreds of thousands of healthy dogs, while the humane movement did not criticize the Kennel Club for encouraging the breeding of pedigree puppies. Both groups recognized that they were trying to milk the same group of upwardly mobile middle class and high-value donors, and both found it convenient to pitch their messages along class lines. Better people had pedigree dogs, while loose mutts and cross-breeds were the unfortunate canine flotsam cast up by the actions of the ignorant and the lower class.

In fundraising appeals, the humane movement always suggested that more money could ‘save’ a dog or a cat down at the ‘shelter” or ‘rescue,’ but the mechanics of such an operation were always vague, and for a very good reason; only a small percentage of money was ever spent on dog and cat welfare. Instead, the large humane organizations became almost pure legislative and political organizations. Stray dogs and cats? That was the job of the City pound, and never mind if that job involved endless killing.

If a consumer actually wanted to get a dog from the pound, of course, he or she had to cross the railroad tracks, pass by the town dump, and go down a dirt road or trash-strewn street to a nondescript building. There they would find a double row of cages filled with barking dogs. Each of these dogs had only a few hours or a few days to live before they were to be shot, gassed, drowned, or injected. If you wanted a particular dog, it was best to take it with you now!

Of course, the average person looking to get a pet for their child never considered subjecting them to the horror of such an experience. Instead most picked up an all breed book, flipped through the glossy pictures and romantic canine descriptions, and then thumbed through the local newspaper and dog magazine advertisements to find a breeder. Then, on a Saturday afternoon, the family headed off to a house or farm where cash was exchanged for a wiggling eight-week old package of fur.

What about the dogs at the pound, which had now been rebranded as a ‘shelter’? Out of sight and out of mind, they were dead and on the land fill.

THE GOOD NEWS IS THINGS ARE CHANGING:

The good news is things are changing.

In the last decade or so, the world of dog shelters has changed, and it is still changing.

To start, people have come to understand that the big direct mail organizations do very little at the local level to help shelter dogs and cats. If you are interested in helping those animals, stay clear of the national organizations and give to a local shelter where you have some chance of knowing where the money actually goes.

Second, the shelters themselves have come to realize that they need to be in the ‘sales” business. To that end they are creating more “store front” rescues and shelters which are less depressing and more attractive to young families with children.

Third, the social cues we now give each other about pedigree dogs and about cross-breeds have changed. While pedigree dogs were once seen as a sign of an upscale and informed consumer, the message going out now is that pedigree dogs are more likely to be expensive, inbred health messes, and ownership of such dogs is more likely a sign of pretension than sophistication.

Fourth, more and more people are spaying and neutering their dogs, and fewer unaltered dogs are running around at large. As a consequence, the number of unplanned litters has dropped remarkably in the last 20 years.

Fifth, the Internet has made it easy for shelters and rescues to post pictures and descriptions of available dogs online, where people are free to look through them without the terrifying emotional pressure of going to a shelter and choosing one among a hundred to save.

All of this is terrific news, and a true sea-change in the world of dogs.

THE BAD NEWS ABOUT STAFFIES

The bad news is that while things are generally looking up for shelters dogs, that is not true for ‘Staffordshire Bull Terrier types,’ -- what we in America call ‘Pit Bulls’.

More Pit Bulls are killed in U.S. shelters every year than ALL dogs registered by the American Kennel Club and the United Kennel Club combined.

But it's not just an American story is it?

Last year less the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home put down more than 800 "Staffordshire Bull Terrier types".

That's more dead dogs of a single type at one shelter than the total number of Neopolitan Mastiffs, Pekingese, Chinese Cresteds, Portuguese Water Dogs, or Boston Terriers registered by the Kennel Club that same year.

And why are so many "Staffordshire Bull Terrier types" put down?

Simple: Because no one wants them.

And yet these dogs are still being bred by people who say they love them, and they are still being acquired by people who say they want them.

What happens next, however, is all too predictable: about half of these dogs end up on death row because they prove to be too much for their owners.

What is the dog writing community, saying about all this?

Not much.

The silence is pretty deafening.

And why is that?

Mostly it’s because folks who talk about “the Staffie problem” end up being aggressively bullied whenever they raise the issue.

"Blame the deed not the breed" the apologists for death wail.

But they don't mean the deed of actually breeding these dogs for cash, do they?

No, that's a sacred cow.

Talk about a ban on advertising these dogs for sale, and suddenly there is no concern at all about the dogs.

Now it's all about property rights. Now it’s all about business.

The dead dogs?

They offer up no solutions for them.

In the world of Staffies, at least, it’s capitalism that is being defended, not the dogs.

That Magic Moment With Dogs

2011-12-16T13:25:00.002-05:00

I Was Right . . . Once

2011-12-16T08:55:00.005-05:00

I just sent an email to one of my most conservative friends:

I am predicting a Ron Paul win in Iowa with Romney in #2 and Gingrich a close third (which will kill him going into NH).

My friend reminds me that right now it's all:

.. upsies downies. Just remember that Dewey beat Truman and that was the final election.

True!

That said, I looked back on my post to this blog at about this same point before the last Iowa caucus.

Back then Hillary Clinton was the "inevitable" Democrat candidate, and Rudy Giuliani was tops on the GOP side of the ticket.

Hillary, of course, was finally choked out of the race, and Giuliani crashed and burned in a fire ball, winning only one electoral vote.

And what I did I say? I predicted.

I think if Obama can rip through the gossamer-thin film of "inevitability" surrounding Hillary Clinton, he will be President. Giuliani is simply not presidential timber; he's too mercurial and too provincial (even more provincial than George W. Bush).

Which is not to say Barack OBama is going to have a cake walk. He's going to be Swift-boated by the folks at Fox and by the whispering campaigns of right-wing emailers who will pass on what they think are clever nigger jokes laced with suggestions that the Senator from Illinois is really a Muslim fanatic in drag.

There's only one problem with that attack plan: Barack Obama. The more you see of this guy, the more you realize how incredibly solid he is. As time goes on, more and more people are going to pay attention, and the folks making the sniping comments about race and name are going to look smaller and smaller until at last they both reveal and embarrass themselves at the same time.

As for Rudy Giuliani, he has the opposite problem; the more people see of him, the less impressed they are going to be.

So, do I think the current crop of GOP nominees can beat Obama?

No. Not a chance unless they catch him in bed with a dead girl or a live boy.

And not only do I think this is not going to happen, but I predict a third party candidate, Michael Bloomberg, will join the presidential race shortly after Iowa, and further wither Republican chances.

Don't get me wrong: the GOP has fielded the finest collection of dwarves and midgets ever to suit up for the NBA, but if you want to play ball at the NATIONAL level, you have to do much better. Much, much better.

But, as my friend suggests, we shall see.

I could be wrong! (But I doubt it).
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LL Bean, the Dog, Adopted by LL Bean Employee

2011-12-16T06:48:00.014-05:00

From KARE11 TV in Minneapolis comes this little feel-good story:

A dog named L.L. Bean will soon be united with the clothing company of the same name after a TV report in Eau Claire, Wis., featured the dog in an adoption segment.

The day after the dog, a three-year-old, 80-pound coon hound, was showcased on WQOW-TV during a "Pet of the Day" segment, an employee from L.L. Bean's corporate office in Maine contacted the Dunn County Humane Society to inquire about the dog's availability.

According to the Dunn County Humane Society's website, the shelter had not been able to find a place for L.L. Bean the dog for more than a year. That is, until L.L. Bean the company called.

An employee at L.L. Bean's headquarters shared the dog's story with other employees. Four adoption applications were submitted to the Dunn County Humane Society for L.L. Bean.

Pam Burt of Windham, Maine, is a customer service representative at L.L. Bean and in early January, she will be the proud new owner of the hunting dog. She was selected after a phone interview with the shelter.

"I fell in love with L.L. Bean as soon as I read the story and saw his picture," Burt told WQOW. "My family can't wait to get him."

The dog will leave western Wisconsin for Maine in early January.

Employees at L.L. Bean's Maine offices collected more than $800 to pay for the dog's transportation from Menomonie to Burt's home in Maine.

Terrierman's Daily Dose

Dog Shows in the Age of Dog Show Ridicule

Coffee and Provocation

Fearless Beauty is on Duty

Six People and a Dog Commute on 50CC

Too Close for Comfort

Only in America

The Nonsense of "Pull Dogs"

Dog Show Etiquette

Learning About Dogs by Watching Dogs

The Impact of Ebola in the Forest

Mary Chapin Carpenter :: Come On Come On

The Lessons On Mountain's Muzzle

Remember When We Played Outside?

Home Defense?

We Are All Marianne Gingrich

Nature's Viet Cong

A Coffee Cup Quote Starbucks Missed

The Coolest Man in the World Has Throat Cancer

Coffee and Provocation

This is Good and Worth Reading

This is Not a SOPA Protest

Four Minutes of Lies and Confusion

Black and White and Happy All Over

Coffee and Provocation

Jessica Elgot is a Racialist, Not a Reporter

The World As It Was and Should Be

Knocked Down

Catcher in the Rye

Shakespeare's Polar Bear

Newt Gingrich Goes to the Dogs Over Romney

No Balls Harmed in the Making of This Movie

Is It Time to Dump the Bulldog?

Terrierman Now with FaceBook Linkages

I Watched This on My Kindle

The Rise of the Machines

Are the Cat Birds Getting Eaten by the Dog Sharks?

Stinking Up Adamstown, Maryland

Coffee and Provocation

The Greatest Natural Disaster in the World

Steven Seymour on the Kennel Club's Failure

Are Defective Dogs Subject to a 4-Year Warranty?

Iowa Says None of the Above

The Best Ice Fishing Video You Will See Today

Faking It With Frank "Bring Em Back Alive" Buck

Faking It With the Turtleman

AKC Continues to Tailspin Into the Ground

Best After-dinner Speech at a Specialty Dog Show

30 Days to Success... or a Great Story

Lion Grooming

Why the Indians Attacked at Dawn

Maxims and Hints for Quite a Lot

Time to Return the Golden Bear to California!

Fish on Fridays: Unnatural Selection Edition

Fish on Fridays: Devil Ray Edition

Fish on Fridays: Killer Whale Verus Great White:

Happy Birthday Gideon!

Signs of Mammoth in Central Park

Hog Dogs and Bear Dogs

What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?

Coffee and Provocation

I Love My New Kindle Fire

Christmas Dinner in the Yellowstone

Don't Stop the Music!

Predator Fear, Alone, Results in Fewer Birds

22,963 Ducks Land in Laurel, Maryland

Coffee, Birds & the World Bank

Merry Christmas from the Terriers!

The Missing Birds of Rock Creek Park

Bird Species Decline in the U.S

Cowbirds, Mesopredators, & Grass Nesting Birds

Not All Churches Are Under New Management

Blue Jays at the Feeder

Barack and Me

Barack and I shop at the same store for dog stuff.

We're cool like that..

Happy Hanukkah!

Oog, In the Cave, With a Mammoth Bone?

The Tintin Movie Opens Today

Merry Saturnalia!

We're cool like that.
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