"Unselling" Dogs and Selling Commitment

A repost from December 2008.

This is a terrific ad from the Netherlands, and made me recall an earlier post from this blog entitled Overbreeding: Beware of Simple Answers:

If we agree that there is still a problem ... the next question is WHAT is the problem?

You would be surprised at how little thought has gone into that question.

You see, the problem is NOT puppies. Healthy puppies are readily sold or adopted from pounds. There is always a line of people eager for a puppy.

The problem is DOGS. While puppies are small and cute, a dog is a loud, expensive, demanding, barking, defecating, and life-restricting ball-and-chain.

It turns out that a lot of people that want a cute puppy are not so enamored with the realities of adult dog ownership. In a world of throw-away marriages, jobs, cars, communities and houses, dogs have been tossed on to the pile....

...If we are really interested in reducing the number of dogs put up for adoption, we need to spend some time on the "unselling" of dogs in general, and purebred dogs in particular.

When we talk about dogs to people that do not have dogs, we need to talk about the fact that dogs are expensive, time-consuming, and smelly.

We need to acknowledge that they will occasionally pee on a carpet or wake us up at 5 in the morning. Dogs not only bark, they howl, they scratch at doors, they eat cell phones, and they will quickly reduce the resale value of your car. Not to mention that landlords hate them.

If people want to get a dog, fine, but there should be no surprises about the numerous liabilities involved, and that those liabilities can easily last for 15 years.

Link to the complete post. .

Pups Not Payola

A hat tip to Mark B. for sending this one!
.

How Did Dog Shelters Become Slaughter Houses?



 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.

.

LL Bean, the Dog, Adopted by LL Bean Employee

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.

.

Killing Dogs at Battersea

At Battersea Dogs and Cats Home outside of London, they are killing bull-staffie crosses left and right.  

Watch the whole video, above.  It's important and worth it.

Why is the Battersea "shelter" killing so many pit-bull type dogs? 

The short answer is because people continue to breed these dogs indiscriminately, and no one wants them in the number they are being bred.  That's as true in the U.K. as it is in the U.S.

Of course, this is not the story the Panorama TV crew started off to film!  They started off to say that these dogs were being put down because of the Dangerous Dogs Act.  And yes, they did find a few dogs that were put down merely for what they looked like.  On the main, however, they found something different:  that bull staffie crosses (i.e. pit bulls) and butcher dogs of other types (Rottweiler- and Boxer-crosses) were being bred and dumped indiscriminately in the U.K.,  same as they are in the U.S.  The dogs being put down are healthy and available, but no one wants them, and at Battersea perfectly fine dogs are coded "aggressive" just to make the whole thing a little easier to deal with

What's going on? 

What's going on is SILENCE in the pit bull and staffie community, and in the dog community in general, when it comes to the wholesale slaughter of these dogs.

Silence.  No one is talking about the FAILURE of the Pit Bull and staffie communities to spay-neuter their dogs, and as a consequence no breed is being killed as often.  Let me say it plain:

 
Silence = Death 

Look at the numbers above, which show how few Pit Bulls are neutered.  There's the Pit Bull problem -- both for the the dogs and for people.

San Francisco, which has mandatory spay-neuter for Pit Bulls has seen a steep decline in the number of Pit Bulls that are coming in to their shelters, and the numbers they are having to put down.

San Francisco appears to have found a solution. Since 2005, when the city adopted a mandatory spay-neuter law for pit bulls in the wake of the mauling death of 12-year-old Nicholas Faibish, the number of pit bulls impounded and euthanized has dropped dramatically, according to animal control officials.

"It's absolutely made a difference," said Capt. Vicky Guldbech of San Francisco's animal control department. "When I started this job, pit bulls were feared. We were afraid of them. Now when I see pit bulls in the field, they have cute wagging tails."

The shelter has seen a 25 percent decline in seized pit bulls at the shelter, and a 33 percent drop in pit bulls that are euthanized, according to animal control Director Rebecca Katz.

That's a story that the property-rights Pit Bull crowd do not mention too often.

Nor do the property-rights Pit Bull crowd talk about what happened outside of San Francisco with an un-neutered Pit Bull owned by a vocal supporter of BadRap.   Anyone want to guess what happened there?   No, it was not pretty.

But of course, the Wall of Silence remains.

We cannot talk about the nearly one million dead Pit Bulls that are killed every year in this country.

We cannot talk about the failure of the Pit Bull community to spay-neuter.

We cannot talk about the success of mandatory spay-neuter with this dog.

All we can do is bury the dead in silence, dog and human alike.

.

Punish the Deed... of Breeding Pit Bulls for Cash

UKC Pit Bulls mated on "rape rack" in North Carolina.  Current breeder web site picture.

There's no money and no glory in writing about the numbing numbers behind animal shelter deaths

Merritt Clifton writes for a publication called Animal People.

I do not know Merritt Clifton, but I like him.

For starts he didn't show up yesterday. He's been standing for dogs and cats for more than 30 years. In my book that counts for something.

An instant expert? No, thank God.

Merritt Clifton is not in it for the money or the glory.  There's no money and no glory in writing about the numbing numbers behind animal shelter deaths and the direct mail organizations that are working to raise money, ostensibly on their behalf.

So why does Clifton do it? Why does he spend the long hours and suffer all the abuse from those who find his data... inconvenient?

Well, perhaps because he thinks the data is important.

If you truly believe animal welfare is important, then it's important to make sure donations are not wasted.

If your goal really is to minimize shelter dog and cat death, then you want to know how many animals are in shelters, how they got there, who they are, and where they go in the end.

So Clifton has toiled away for decades doing the dog work (pun intended) of actually collecting the data.

If you want know how rare that is, consider this: I have challenged the Pit Bull community to document the non-molosser breed fatalities and show where Pit Bull types (aka butcher's dogs) do not ALWAYS come out on top. No takers there, even though the data is really not that hard to find (here you go) and has already been assembled by others. Instead, the Pit Bull community closes its eyes, puts its fingers in its collective ears, and chants like small children who do not want to hear bad news.

There's another reason I like Clifton; he has had to make peace with counting the uncountable. I too have spent three decades doing the same thing, first working with massive population and immigration data sets, and then with data on alcohol and drug abuse in the U.S., and now with various kinds of fraud.

People who want to do nothing will often punt back to "bad data" arguments, saying that since we don't know exactly how many illegal aliens there are, or how much cocaine is coming in, or how much fraud is costing us, or what the base line was 30 years ago, we should do nothing. Let's study the problem some more -- a little more paralysis from analysis, please!

But, of course, you do not have to have exact numbers to move on policy, do you? You just have to agree that there is a problem, and that things are getting worse.

Is there any doubt about that when it comes to Pit Bulls?

Clifton Merritt, unlike most of his critics, has worked with shelter data for a long time, and as an consequence he is as familiar with the data sets as a farmer is with his soil.

When you have been handling a data set for a long time, you no longer pay too much attention to the individual numbers. Instead, like a musician glancing over sheet music, you see the flow, the cadence, and the tone. You hear the music.

So what is the melody Merritt Clifton hears these days?

It is not all bad.

Clifton writes in the October issue of Animal People:

[T]he past 25 years have produced unprecedented improvement in the human relationship with dogs, especially here in the United States...

A dog who was impounded or surrendered to a shelter 25 years ago had just a 10% chance of being rehomed. Dogs in shelters today have about a 60% chance of being rehomed -- unless they happen to be pit bull terriers or close mixes of pit bull, whose sterilization rate is still barely 25%.

Only 3.3% of the dogs advertised for sale online are pit bulls, implying that only about 3.3% of all the dogs sold are pit bulls. Yet more than 16% of the dogs adopted from animal shelters since 2007 have been pit bulls, meaning that shelters are persuading adopters to choose pit bulls at about five times the rate that dog purchasers choose to buy pit bulls when they buy dogs from breeders.

Despite that extraordinary rate of success in pit bull placement, however, about 75% of the pit bulls and pit mixes arriving at shelters are killed, either due to dangerous behavior or simply because shelters are receiving pit bulls in ever-escalating volume. Each year from a third to 45% of the total U.S. pit bull population enters an animal shelter, a phenomenon never seen with any other dog breed....

Impoundments of fighting dogs and impoundments of neglected pit bulls both soared after the April 2007 arrest of football player Michael Vick in connection with dogfighting. Twenty-six percent of the dogs entering U.S. shelters were pit bulls. Yet, for the first time in at least 20 years, the numbers of pit bulls killed in shelters actually dropped. The Best Friends Animal Society, already opposed to breed-specific legislation, ramped up efforts to block breed-specific laws, and redoubled promotion of pit bull adoptions. The American Humane Association also became active in opposition to breed-specific legislation.

The publicity boost from the Vick case and the investment of Best Friends et al in saving pit bulls appeared to pay off, for a time, as the numbers of pit bulls killed in U.S. animal shelters fell from 920,000 in 2007 to 825,000 in 2008 and 810,000 in 2009. But the U.S. economy turned bad in 2008, causing more people to surrender pets to shelters, more people to neglect pets, and more people to try to earn a few dollars through backyard breeding. Meanwhile, the vigorous pit bull promotion appeared to hit inherent limits on just how many dogs of any one type can be adopted out. Even if every pit bull had the positive qualities of Lassie, and no problematic behavior, there are only so many people who want big dogs.

Even the Los Angeles Department of Animal Services, which appears to rehome more pit bulls than any other agency in the U.S., kills about 40% of pit bull intake, and has reported increasing pit bull intake since 2008. More pit bulls have been rehomed in recent years than ever before, but as most of the U.S. still has no effective brake on pit bull breeding, pit bulls in 2010 rose to 29% of shelter dog admissions and 60% of shelter dog killing.

The 2010 U.S. shelter pit bull toll of 930,300 was the second highest yet.

The bottom line: We are NOT going to be be able to adopt our way out of this Pit Bull mess. It's like trying to drain a swimming pool with a Dixie Cup, even as the garden hose pumps in more water.

So what to do?

Clifton says, that with the massive numbers of Pit Bulls in the U.S. today, in order to achieve a balance between demand and supply, we would need to see a 90 percent Pit Bull sterilization rate.

That may sound like a phenomenally high number, but 70 percent of other dog breeds are sterilized right now. A 90 percent sterilization rate for a single generation of Pit Bulls might actually be possible were Pit Bull owners normal people.

But they aren't.

Pit Bull owners are more likely to be criminal, young, and ignorant than the average dog owner.

Clifton is too nice a fellow to say it that way, but Pit Bull owners themselves say it, don't they?

Isn't that the subtext of the Pit Bull apologists refrain that, "it's not the dog, but the owner"?

Right.

But actually it's the dog and the owner. Put amped-up canine genetics together with sub-par human intelligence, and sprinkle denial over all of it, and you get America's Pit Bull mess.

Or, as Clifton puts it:

The central behavioral issue involving pit bulls is not a matter of "nature versus nurture," but rather a matter of inherently problematic dogs being acquired by inherently problematic people, who then keep and train the dogs in a manner that multiplies the risk factors.

Bingo.

But what to do?

Clifton suggests one small step in the right direction would be to stop glamorizing Pit Bulls in ads and start treating them like any other overly-promoted breed.

When Budweiser featured a Bull terrier as part of its "Spuds McKenzie" ad campaign, there was a great deal of tut-tutting by the shelter and pet community all around. Oh. My. God. Now everyone will run out and get a bull terrier like they did with German Shepherds (Rin Tin Tin), Collies (Lassie), Saint Bernards (Beethoven), and Dogue de Bordeaux (Turner and Hooch).

Stop treating dogs as cartoon characters in ad campaigns screamed the pet community!

When Disney featured Dalmatians in the live-action re-make of 101-Dalmatians, the shelter and pet community went nuts for spotlighting this cute and dramatically photogenic breed. The movie would predictably lead to over-breeding, abandonment, and the death of thousands of dogs, they said. And they were right.

When Taco Bell featured a Chihuahua in their commercials, they too got beaten up for helping foster the subsequent Chihuahua explosion.

So what happens when the dog is a Pit Bull?

Suddenly the rules change. Every commercial and movie that has a lovable Pit Bull in it is celebrated. Ditto for every Pit Bull featured in a television show or YouTube video, no matter how ridiculous the premise or the message.

Of course, ending the glamorization of Pit Bulls as "nanny dogs" and "pibbles" and "pet bulls" will not change the game. We are too deep in the mud for that.

Changing social cues might be able to prevent a very small problem from escalating, but it's not going to put out a raging fire like we have with the American Pit Bull.

And so Merritt Clifton has, very reluctantly, come to the same place I did a few years back. While generally skeptical of mandatory spay-neuter, he says we may have to impose a "pit bull exception" to break the back of commercial breeders and get-rich-quick backyard entrepreneurs.

Is Clifton embracing an across-the-board ban on breeding?

He is not. Instead, he suggests a more modest and targeted response: making it illegal to advertise or sell Pit Bulls for money. He writes in the October issue of Animal People:

[A]ctive enforcement of breed-specific legislation would be most effective if enforcement is triggered by evidence of breeding, sale, or other exchange. The act of offering animals for sale constitutes an admission both that the animals belong to the would-be seller and that they are not considered members of the family.

In short, Clifton is suggesting treating Pit Bulls a bit like some would have federal and state governments treat marijuana. You want to grow your own? No problem. You can even grow a little weed for your friends. But if you sell dope, advertise dope, or trade dope, you are going to get busted. A right to own, and even a right to breed, but not a right to sell.

Of course some will say that criminal Pit Bull dog fighters will simply ignore the law. Yep. But so what?

You see, most Pit Bulls are not being bred by criminal dog fighters; they are being bred by young get-rich-quick idiots who think cranking out two or three litters a year might be a good way to make their rent and beer money.

Make it impossible for them to advertise or sell dogs without attracting police attention, and a new calculation will be made.

Of course, some will turn around and say it is impossible to know which dogs are Pit Bulls, and so how can breeding them for sale be made illegal?

Nonsense.

If the dog looks like a Pit Bull and is not registered as another breed by the AKC, it's a Pit Bull. Lets stop hiding behind semantics and remember that the heat is not going to be vested on the dog, but on the human who decided to breed another litter of common-as-dirt large molosser dogs for cash. Punish the deed not the breed? Damn right!

Remove the money from the equation, and let's see if things change. Clifton thinks it will, and I think he may be right.

We know denormalization campaigns work. They have worked for cigarettes, and they have worked for drunk driving. If we went one step further, however, and required people who wanted to smoke cigarettes and drink wine to grow and bottle their own, you can be sure use and abuse numbers would plummet even further.

What would the world look like if we banned the commercial sale and advertising of Pit Bulls?

You could still own the dog.

You could still acquire the dog.

The only thing that would change is that all those backyard breeders and "hump and dump" commercial kennels would have to find a new line of work.

And who would benefit? Not Merritt Clifton. Not me. Not you.

Nope, the beneficiaries would be about a million Pit Bulls a year that are now killed and shoved into land fills. A lot of those dogs would not be born, and lot more of the others would end up getting adopted. How great would that be?

* * *

A Final Note: Merritt Clifton and I do not have much in common. He is a bunny hugger and I am a hunter. He is a vegetarian, and I am a ready apologist for commercial chicken farms. It's pretty clear to me that we have come to dramatically different conclusions on a lot of things, and I am OK with that. You see, though Clifton and I may disagree on some fundamental issues, I think Clifton cares a great deal about reducing shelter animal death in general, and Pit Bull deaths in particular. I do not question his integrity; instead I give a solid hat tip to it. I do not fear his vegetarianism any more than I fear "catching gay." I suspect he thinks deer hunters are barbarians and I know he thinks my own form of hunting is beyond the pale. I am OK with that too. Who knew truth to suffer in a free and open debate? I am pretty sure deer hunting, Kentucky Fried chicken, and hunting with dogs is here to stay. I have no fear to sell, and I am not scared of animal rights folks.  Not in the least.  That said,  I am interested in building a few bridges if it will help the dogs.

So what's my point?

My point is that if you are looking for an animal charity to support, "Animal People" is a pretty low-cost expense.

This is a tiny little outfit that, working with a few true believers, has managed to leverage a very small amount of money to help shape a better understanding of what is going on in the world of shelter dogs and cats. Not everything they produce is smooth or slick. These folks have production standards about as rough as the old Mother Earth News, but I consider that a mark of integrity. If you want to piss your money down a rat hole in exchange for glossy pictures of a guy in an expensive suit and a good haircut, go ahead and give to the Humane Society of the United States. If you want to help at the local level, give to your local No Kill shelter. But if you want to stand for animals and influence the national debate, consider subscribing to Animal People. You do not have to agree with all their goals. I do not. That said, these folks are not fly-by-night publicity whores like PeTA, nor are they purveyors of forest-killing direct mail campaigns in which 75 cents out of every dollar goes to fund more direct mail, like HSUS. No, these folks are true believers, and they have quietly stood for shelter dogs and cats for a hell of a long time. There is a principled asceticism to their actions and so, as odd as it may sound, I encourage everyone to click and treat. 

.

We are not going to adopt our way out of this mess, and we cannot continue to fiddle.

• Related articles:
  ** What the Hell is an American Staffordshire Terrier?
  ** Between Two Lies, Lost Opportunity for Pit Bulls
  ** Is 400 Million Pounds of Dead Pit Bull Enough?
  ** Pit Bulls In the River
  ** Nanny Dogs?
  ** Doing Right by Pit Bulls
  ** Pit Bulls as Cash Cows and Cause Celebre
  ** When Is a Pit Bull Not a Pit Bull?
  ** What Is a Terrier?
  ** Remember When Dogs Used to Have Balls?
  ** Silence and Excuses Kill More Pits than Vick
  ** Pit Bulls and Holocaust Deniers
  ** Whistling Past the Pit Bull Graveyard
  ** What the Hell is the Saint Francis Terrier?  

.

What the Hell is the Saint Francis Terrier?

This morning I popped open my email to get a very nice article from someone who cares a great deal about reducing shelter death in general, and Pit Bull death in particular.

More on that in another post, but for right now, in order to keep the focus on the story, I append a little squib that jumped out from the piece.  It's about the efforts of shelters and rescues to "sell" Pit Bulls to the public:

Striving to implement the 1994 Adoption Pact, which made San Francisco at least nominally the first U.S. "no kill" city, the San Francisco SPCA introduced free sterilization of pit bulls. When that did not stop the rising influx, the SF/SPCA in 1996 renamed pit bulls "St. Francis terriers," in hopes that changing their image would make them more adoptable. More were adopted--but the original "St. Francis terrier" program was suspended within 60 days, as was a similar program introduced by the Wisconsin Humane Society, when several of the strenuously screened and rehomed dogs turned out to be cat-killers.

After retooling and relaunching the "St. Francis terrier" program several times, and having another fiasco in 2003 when an adopted pit bull attacked a police horse, leading to two human injuries, the SF/SPCA and San Francisco Department of Animal Care & Control between them reduced their pit bull killing to 450 per year. Then, against vigorous opposition from the SF/SPCA and local animal rights groups, the SF/DACC persuaded the San Francisco City Council to pass an ordinance requiring all pit bulls to be sterilized. Pit bull shelter killing in San Francisco fell to 300 in the first year after the ordinance passed. Within another year San Francisco shelters were killing fewer pit bulls than any cities except Denver and Miami....

... Echoing the "St. Francis terrier" program, the New York City Center for Animal Care & Control opened 2004 by announcing that pit bulls would henceforth be promoted as "New Yorkies." That lasted just three days.

The Saint Francis Terrier?

New Yorkies?  

What!!?

Surely this cannot be true?

But, of course, it is. A quick tour of Google and I come up with this:

The Saint Francis Terrier, which has been their name, officially, since 1996, and first used by the SPCA in San Francisco. They were formerly known as the American Stafford Shire Terrier, or Amstaff.

"Saint Francis Terrier" is very befitting, because this breed has a lot of integrity, warmth, is extremely loyal and loving -- the most affectionate and intelligent dog in the world!

Uh, right. Very smart, very loyal and very loving most of the time.

And yet these dogs are often very dog aggressive, are they not?

They are also implicated in about half the dog-related deaths and a very large percentage of the serious maulings that occur in this country.

Yes, that too is true.

And, of course, they are not a terrier.   As I have noted in the past, an "American Staffordshire Terrier" has no terrier in it at all. It is pure molosser, and is descended from a long line of butcher's dogs that now includes Boxers, Rottweilers, and Dogue de Bordeaux.  A terrier does not become a terrier because you tack that word on to the end of its name!

Of course, the world has not been much deceived, has it?

Look up Pit Bull in the dictionary and see what you see:

Now, to be clear, I am all for adopting Pit Bulls from the pound.  Yes, absolutely!  Please look them over and consider them, especially if you are in the market for a mid-sized to large dog, have a fenced yard, and you are not a first-time dog owner.

But be advised that Pit Bulls are not "just like every other dog" in the world. That is a lie.

No, Pit Bulls are not as dangerous as lions, but they should never be marketed as "nanny dogs" either.

And for God's sake, let's not start marketing them as "New Yorkies" or "Saint Francis Terriers" either.

These dogs are Pit Bulls, not "pet bulls" or plush toys.

As I note in a 2006 post entitled What the Hell is an American Staffordshire Terrier?

Kennel Club owners of these dogs will tell you they have worked hard to breed all aggression and prey drive out of their charges. And no doubt many have. What a comical thing that is, of course -- a bit like an auto club bragging that their sport cars have no engines.

The only thing is .... it's not always true. "Bad breeding" and "poor socialization" are often blamed when dogs descended from pit and catch dogs attack small children, but ... could it be .... perhaps ... that a small bit of genetic code remains unbraided as well? It is certainly in the realm of possibility, is it not?

In fact, molosser breeds can make fine pets in the right hands, but many of these dogs demand much more time, energy, and commitment than their young owners realize.

A large dog in the hands of a young man with shifting interests and an unstable housing situation (i.e. most young men) is a recipe that too often leads to dead dogs at the County shelter.

Sadly, as true then as it is now.

The nearly one million Pit Bulls that will be killed this year were all bred, acquired and dumped... most of them by young men and women with shifting interests and unstable housing situations who said they loved Pit Bulls. For too many of these people a Pit Bull was their first dog.

And what was the predictable result?

Dead Pit Bulls and a lot of misery.

We are not going to change that equation with new marketing slogans and fantasy names for these dogs.

The problem with Pit Bulls is not marketing; it is the reality that this is the wrong dog for most people.

The problem with Pit Bulls is that too many people are breeding them, and too many people are marketing them as something they are not.

The problem with Pit Bulls is the Pit Bull.

Until we embrace the dog for what he is, rather than what we want him to be, the mis-match between dog, prospective owner, and society will continue unabated.

• Related articles:
  ** What the Hell is an American Staffordshire Terrier?
  
  ** Between Two Lies, Lost Opportunity for Pit Bulls
  ** Is 400 Million Pounds of Dead Pit Bull Enough?
  ** Pit Bulls In the River
  ** Nanny Dogs?
  ** Doing Right by Pit Bulls|
  ** Pit Bulls as Cash Cows and Cause Celebre
  ** When Is a Pit Bull Not a Pit Bull?
  ** What Is a Terrier?
  ** Remember When Dogs Used to Have Balls?
  ** Silence and Excuses Kill More Pits than Vick
  ** Pit Bulls and Holocaust Deniers

Crimes Against Dogs in Memphis

Here's one more reason I write about hump and dump breeders... the continuing needs of dogs like this one in the Memphis, Tennessee shelter. Her crime is that she is five years old.

The crime of Memphis Animal Services is that they have photographed her as poorly as possible, and shoved her terrified into the corner of a sterile death box, not bothering to even wipe her eye or note that her name cannot be "Mr. Froto" as she is a female.

People say they want a dog, but they really want a puppy, and when they get an actual dog they too often abandon it to its likely death when it becomes inconvenient.   About 25% of all dogs in this country end up dead in the pound. 

If you know anyone in the greater Memphis area, send this post or this link to them and ask them to post it around.  Also, if you go to this link you can "Facebook" this dog.  Let's see if we can change this dog's circumstances!

For more information about this little dog, call at (901) 363-1416 and ask for information about animal ID number A232907.

If you are looking to adopt a rescue Jack Russell and live elsewhere in the nation, please see the links in the right colum of this blog and/or Google "Russell Rescue" or "Jack Russell Rescue."  They exist all over, from California to Maine, and from New York to South Africa. 

More contact information for JRTCA rescue in each state is listed here.

• Related Links:
  ** American Canine Demographics
  ** Beyond the Blue Solution of Dog Shelter Death

.

Commitment

Portugese ad.

Copy:

"He will never abandon you.

And you, would you be able to do the same?

Don't abandon your pets."

Puck the Patterdale Needs a Home!

Puck is a an approximately 2-years old Patterdale Terrier in Chesapeake, Virginia.  He is about 2 years old, approx. 12-15 lbs, recently neutered, and up to date on vaccines and heartworm negative.   Apparently his original owner was an idiot, as the dog was left in the yard to escape several times, ending up at animal control in Chesapeake 3 times before finally turning up at rescue.   All this dog needs is a forever owner with a small slice of brains and a decent fence!

Puck is very good with older kids (see picture).  As with all terriers, this dog will thrive with  an active owner.  He can be adopted out of the area, but if he stays in the area, the new owner can always take him hunting with me and my dogs whenever he or she wants.  Yes, this dog comes with a lifetime hunting invite!

To contact the Chespeake shelter about Puck, click here or see Petfinder, a service which is 15-years old today.

Cookies!

You Can Blame Garrison Keillor's Grandfather

The Minnesota WTCD may have gotten its distinctive coat pattern
from the American Barbet, a Special Breed intended for Very Special People.

In the past I have written a bit about the lost histories of the "Kill Devil Terrier" and the "Shenandoah Mountain Cur."

More recently I got a note from Sara at the Lessons from Layla blog.  

Would I support her push to get the Minnesota White-Toed Chipmunk Dog into the AKC?


Of course!   I clicked over to her blog and found an excellent breed description, but sadly it was short on  history.

Being a famous researcher, I flipped through the historical record and found a volume, printed in 1934, which had what I was looking for. 

I encapsulted a short thumb-nail history of the breed in the comments:

A rare dog, and a find!

I believe they were first bred by Garrison Keillor’s grandfather who wanted a Lutheran hunting dog. The dog was not designed for big game, as Lutherans are a modest people who only need enough meat for the Powdermilk Biscuit gravy, and the dog could not be too flashy because, well, Lutherans are not flashy people like the Episcopalians.

Hard to believe you found a pure Minnesota White-Toed Chipmunk Dog!

Terrific news and new hope for the breed!

A few minutes more, and I found a bit more of the story (and an illustration, see below) in a book entitled Famous Dogges and Dogge Men printed in 1923 by Alexander Ruttridge.

I did some more research and it appears this dog, while initially created by Garrison Keillor’s grandfather, was brought into an intensive breeding program funded by the Powdermilk Biscuit Company which, at one time, had 600 dogs and 10 kennel maids to take care of them.

As you may recall, the slogan of Powdermilk Biscuits is “Made from whole wheat raised in the rich bottomlands of the Lake Wobegon river valley by Norwegian bachelor farmers, so you know they’re not only good for you, but also (mostly) pure.”

It turns out the “mostly pure” line came to be after two dogs escaped their kennel and were found rolling in the flour and licking the edges of the bagging equipment at the Washburn A Mill where the flour for Powdermilk Biscuits was once ground.

They threw out the ruined flour, of course, and hosed off the bagging machinery too, but being Lutherans they figured they had to qualify the purity thing after that, and hence the modifier phrase.

Tragically, all but two of the Minnesota White-Toed Chipmunk Dogs were destroyed in a horrible flour mill fire at the Washburn A Mill. 

This was the 1928 fire, not the 1878 explosion at the same mill.  Some more history can be found here.

Clearly a gene pool worth preserving!

Exhausted from my research, I forgot about the Minnesota White-Toed Chipmunk Dog until, earlier today, when I was reminded of this lost breed while reading another friend's blog.

You see, among some of the readers of this blog, dogs like the Minnesota White-Toed Chipmunk Dog are NOT SPECIAL because they are not registered with the AKC and they do not carry a fancy provenance that can be read in an AKC all-breed book or on a breeders web site.  

And so they are not suitable companion animals.

I get it. 

Special people have special dogs, and common people have common dogs, and who wants to be common? 

No one!

When it comes to companion dogs, so many of us are "Special Needs."

And so the Minnesota White-Toed Chipmunk Dog has fallen out of favor because no one knows their story, and it has been deemed not a special breed suited for Very Special People.

This seems a tragic shame to me, and quite unfair.

You see what makes a dog special is not its size or its temperament. 

After all, every size and temperament of dog under the sun is available within an hour or two of your house.  Just check Petfinder if you don't believe me.

And of course it's not what the dog actually does either. 

I have checked around, and none of the AKC Rhodesian Ridgebacks are actually hunting lions, and none of the Portugese Water Dogs are actually herding fish into nets as some claim they once did.  No one who owns a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel is actually a royal person named Charles.  The Irish Wolf hounds are not racing down Irish wolves -- or even Minnesota wolves for that matter.

But it does not matter.  These dogs have provenance.  They have story. 

The poor rescue dogs at Petfinder are not special dogs suitable to be companion dogs for Special People because they do not have provenance.  

They have no fabled story.

To be a special companion dog for a Very Special Person, you have to have come from somewhere special, and have a little mystery and romance attached to you.  

A geographical region should be given a nod, and perhaps a specialized or arcane task, and maybe an odd color. 

And, of course, it never hurts to have a once-famous, but now-obscure person attached to the breed as well.

And so we have the French Bulldog and the Irish Terrier, the Parson Russell Terrier and the Gordon Setter.

We have the Chinese Crested and the Neopolitan Mastiff, the Inca Orchid Dog and the American Pit Bull Terrier. 

We have the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, and the West Highland White Terrier, the Rhodesian Ridgeback and the Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever. 

Not a common dog among them, and never mind if not one of them actually works for a living or does a single thing better than any dog down at the pound.   

No, a special dog does not actually have to DO anything special; it is enough to claim that some ancestor, lost in the mists of time, might have done something special (at least once).

What makes these AKC dogs special is not what they actually ARE or what they actually DO, but what people SAY they are, and what they say they might be able to do.  

It's a bit like art.  

The major difference between a painting you can get for free from the art therapy room in a mental ward, and the high-class stuff they sell for thousands of dollars in the fancy galleries in New York, is that the latter is featured in a catalogue and has a few notes written about it in an obscure book about modern neo-fascist impressionism. 

What a world of difference that seems to make!

And so it is with dogs. 

It's all about the provenance. 

It's all about making people feel special so that someone else can charge them more for the priviledge. 

Then the newly-made "special person with a special dog" can go to the local dog park and make other people feel less special because their less-exclusive dogs probably do not have as interesing a story and as cool a provenance as this new dog which this new owner drove over three states to acquire. 

Nice!

But, of course, none of this is new.  

Some years back I wrote about the early dog shows of the late 19th Century:

[T]he attraction of dog shows was that people who themselves were as common as a turnip top could now fancy that they were among the social elite. They did not have to have real knowledge of animals, or have an important job or title or large estate -- they just had to purchase a dog from a "reputable" show breeder and put on airs.

And that's still true today!

For it all to work, of course, there must be "standards" to help keep the market up and the riff-raff out.

The standard says that the dog has to registered, and the dog can only be registered if it is racially pure. 

"Not one drop of foreign blood" is the rallying cry of the Kennel Club as well as the Ku Klux Klan. 

The breed has to have a history, and that history should be gilded pretty thickly.

The dog must have both a Call Name and a Kennel Name, because one name is simply not enough.

And, of course, the dog must have a pedigree with five generations of multi-syllable names typed in, each with their own registration numbers afixed below. 

Which brings me to where we are today.  

You see, Garrison Keillor's grandfather made a serious mistake when he did not rush to get the Minnesota White-toed Chipmunk Dog on to the rolls of the Kennel Club as soon as the breed was created. 

If Olaf Keillor had registered his dogs with the Kennel Club (and if the Washburn A Mill had not caught fire) then the Minnesota White-Toed Chipmunk Dog might be a Top Ten AKC breed right now.

But it was not to be.  

The breed was never registered, the provenance was broken, the history lost, and the luster tarnished. 

Today only a handful of Minnesota White-Toed Chipmunk Dog exist at all.

And so Minnesota, while inhabited by many good Norwegian bachelor Lutheran farmers, remains a state without a state dog.  

Maryland has the Chesapeake Bay Retriever, Massachusetts the Boston Terrier, Texas the Blue Lacy, Virginia the American Foxhound, Louisiana the Leopard Dog, and South Carolina the Boykin Spaniel.

But Minnesota?

Minnesota has nothing.   And that, my friends, is a shame.

So please join with me today in pushing for belated AKC registration of the Minnesota White-Toed Chipmunk Dog and, also please join with me in asking that this dog, above all others, be declared the State Dog of Minnesota.  

Sara and Layla are asking for our support..

Not Layla, but another MWTCD dog discovered near Bemidji.

Sometimes Its Works Out

THANKS to everyone for getting the word out!

For anyone looking to find their next forever pet, please try Pet Finder.
.

OHIO - Please Help This Dog!

This poor dog is in Youngstown, Ohio, and he needs help.  

This emaciated Jack Russell Terrier dog came in as a stray in Youngstown, Ohio, and there is no background information.

If interested please contact by phone @ 330-740-2205 EXT 2 to adopt this dog and save a life.  

Look at those eyes.  All this dog needs is food .... and a chance.   

What it doesn't have is time.  Call now.

Pay it forward this Thanksgiving by making a call or, at the very least, sending this post to everyone you know in the greater Youngstown area (which includes Pittsburgh and Akron).  Thanks!
..

Shelter Kills Dog Rescued from Afghanistan

From MSNBC comes this horrific story:

FLORENCE, Arizona — A dog named Target that lived through explosions in war-torn Afghanistan couldn't survive a brief stay at an Arizona animal shelter.

The shepherd mix was featured on "The "Oprah Winfrey Show" and local media for her heroics in Afghanistan, got loose from her owners on Friday and was put down on Monday after spending the weekend in a county shelter.

An unidentified employee at the Pinal County facility was placed on administrative leave after euthanizing the female shepherd mix by mistake, county Animal Care and Control officials said.

"I'm heartsick over this," Ruth Stalter, the county animal control director, said in a written statement. "I had to personally deliver the news to the dog's owner and he and his family are understandably distraught."

Yeah, you read that right. We're supposed to feel sorry for the county animal control director. Because it's all about her.

While in Afghanistan, this war-hero dog frightened a suicide bomber inside a military base and potentially saved dozens of soldiers' lives.

The dog was treated like royalty by U.S. troops, who brought it to "safety" in the U.S.

But what the Taliban could not kill, Animal Control in Florence, Arizona did.

And why? The answer is here:  Beyond the Blue Solution of Dog Shelter Death.
.

Tea Party Dog Care

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Big Red Dogs
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Rally to Restore Sanity

Remember, giving puppies adequate food and adequate water and adequate space is "exhorbitant care" (see the video!).

This is stuff I could NOT Make up!

It's "the same as Obama Care." It's "One more step to making us a communist and socialist society."

Watch the whole thing, and you will never drink tea again!

• Related Links:
  ** Who Speaks for the Dogs?

A Hoarder of New Guinea Singing Dogs?

More pictures of how the dogs were kept here.

The Philly Dawg blog reports:

The state Department of Agriculture has shut down an unlicensed kennel in central Pennsylvania and removed 58 New Guinea Singing Dogs, an ancient and rare breed of dogs that once populated the island of New Guinea.

Randy A. Hammond was charged with operating a kennel license and failing to have dogs vaccinated against rabies, after dog wardens entered his property in Willow Hill on Oct. 13 and found 68 dogs, according to officials.

The New Guinea Singing Dogs, closely related to the Australian Dingo, are among the rarest dogs in the world. None are known to be licensed in Pennsylvania and there are only 100 known to exist in the United States

The chief of the Bureau of Dog Law Enforcement in Pennsylvania has said this is a case of animal hoarding, and that all of the dogs on the property are descended from two pairs acquired in 1995.

New Guinea Singing dogs are extremely primitive wild dogs that are rarely kept as pets as they tend to be very shy, extremely territorial, and have a marked tendency to be aggressive towards other dogs. They do not look towards humans for signals, have an extremely strong prey drive, are very difficult to train, and are not social animals by nature.

To the credit of both the owner of these dogs and the Bureau of Dog Law Enforcement (BDLE), things seem to be proceeding in an orderly manner. State Dog Warden Georgia Martin of the BDLE says an anonymous tip led her to the Willow Hill property of Randy A. Hammond, age 58. She spoke to Mr. Hammond, researched the breed, and did an outreach to Tom Wendt of New Guinea Singing Dog International and James McIntyre of the New Guinea Singing Dog Conservation Society. Wendt drove 13 hours from Illinois and McIntyre flew from his home in Florida. The group met with Mr. Hammond last Friday, and he agreed to turn over the majority of his dogs, and says he is greatful for the help as he was well and truely overwhelmed.

"He's been awesome," Wendt said of Hammond's cooperation with the rescue.

Hammond's dogs were kept in 24 pens of different shapes and sizes which were arranged in a maze-like configuration on his property and scattered amidst old rusting vehicles and other detritus.

Since the dogs were not spayed or neutered, the population had grown larger than the number of pens Mr. Hammond had to hold them, and when BDLE arrived, six adult dogs were being kept in small wire crates and plastic travel kennels stacked on top of each other inside an open shed.

Only two of the Singing Dogs are socialized enough for possible placement as pets; it's hoped the others will find homes in zoos and sanctuaries. Between 10 and 20 Singing Dogs are scheduled to be taken away by Best Friends Animal Society of Kanab, Utah.

Two of the dogs are extremely handicapped. One dog is missing both back legs, the other is missing one leg. The two-legged dog is to be fitted out with a special set of wheels to restore his mobility.

Folks that want to help with costs for food, transportation and veterinary care for these dogs can contact New Guinea Singing Dog International at 815-814-4968, or the New Guinea Singing Dog Conservation Society at 904-261-5630.

These dogs are not good pets and placement is being made to groups with special knowledge and facilities to care for this difficult-to-handle breed of dingo-like wild dog.
.

Tired of Your Coffee Mug Being Stolen at Work?

A terrier will mark its property to signify ownership, and now you can do the same with this large 15 oz. ceramic coffee mug with a large easy-to-grip handle.  Dishwasher and microwave-safe.  >> To order (Note: 100% of all profits to go to rescue).

Adopt a Jack Russell

Adopt a Jack Russell. And yes, with only a little training, they will even do your taxes. Operators are standing by.
.

Lita Ford and Pet Adoptions?

This is a public service announcement.

Christie Keith has a rocking little post on how to rock pet adoptions.

And yes, Lita Ford of The Runnaways (pictured at top), makes a cameo. Read the whole thing. That is all.
.