California Law Bans Using Dogs to Hunt Bears and Bobcats

Advocates say the hunting dogs are put at risk.

Beginning Jan. 1 it will be illegal to use packs of dogs to chase, corner, and ultimately shoot down bears and bobcats in California. Backers of the law say it's not only unfair to the hunted animals but also potentially dangerous and borderline abusive to the dogs.

Gov. Jerry Brown signed SB 1221 into law in September, banning the use of hounds to hunt bears and bobcats, the Huffington Post reported. The practice involves unleashing packs of trained dogs to track down, chase, and tree bears. Once cornered, hunters can then shoot the animals. 

Seventeen states still permit the use of dogs to hunt bears, while 15 ban hunting hounds. In the remaining 18 states, it is illegal to hunt bears at all. In California, bear hunting season was closed early when the allotted number of licensed kills -- 1,700 -- was reached. Preliminary data puts the number of those kills tracked by dogs at less than half.

It is a sport with a long, robust history, and hunting enthusiasts argue that the new ban impedes on a legacy of tradition. They claim they much prefer the chase aspect of the hunt, and that bears and bobcats are often released.

The Humane Society of the United States believes otherwise, and supporters of the bill maintain that it is intended to protect not only California's bear and bobcat populations, but the hunting dogs as well. Using a pack of dogs to run down another animal can be seen as unfair, and once a bear or bobcat is in a tree, it's not a shot a hunter is likely to miss. What's more, in confrontations between dogs and game, dogs are often mauled or thoroughly exhausted by the hunt. When it comes to hound hunting, it seems that all animals involved face unnecessary risk and abuse.

The sport is similar to English fox hunting, which was banned in different parts of the United Kingdom starting in 2002.

Do you agree with the ban? Tell us why or why not in the comments below. 

Source: The Huffington Post

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Pet Grooming May Soon Be Regulated in California. Good Idea or Bad?

"Hey, bud, watch the carotid, OK?"

Grooming may seem like an easy-breezy profession, with shampoo in the eyes or an uneven haircut being about the only consequences of a grooming error. But it’s a serious business, and when things go amiss, they can do so in a big way, including:

• Shearing off body parts such as nipples, ears, and even tail tips

• Wounding a dog, gluing over the wound, covering the injury with fur, and the wound later becoming severely infected

• Dropping a dog, resulting in serious bodily injury

• Dogs dying from heat exhaustion in cage dryers

Most groomers are extremely conscientious, and little accidents (nicks, cutting to the quick of the nail) can happen to anyone. But a few careless or ill-educated (completely noneducated in some cases) groomers can cause the whole industry to be questioned, and can keep people resisting a trip to a groomer in order to keep their pets safe.

San Diego Senator Juan Vargas is trying to make the industry safer, and has crafted a bill that would require vocational training for groomers. It would mandate that they pass a state-issued exam, and obtain a license that costs up to $350. If the bill passes, California would be the first U.S. state to require a vocational license for groomers.

Some groomers think it’s a great idea. Others say no education can take the place of experience, and that experience should be taken into account.

“You can’t regulate experience. If you’re trying to regulate the problems, you potentially mislead the consumers into believing the regulations or licensing is an equivalent of skills or experience,” Pamela Demarest, the owner of Sacramento’s Launderdog & More! grooming service and pet shop, said in an article in The Sacramento Bee. “To have the state of California be the tail that wags the dog is a mistake.”

Last week I wrote about a Petco in Hawaii where a dog’s ear was allegedly nicked by a groomer, who glued it back on and didn’t say a word. The dog’s owner hired a lawyerm who says the tip of his own dog’s tail was also lopped off at the same Petco.

Vargas thinks groomers should uphold professional standards in the same way as hairstylists, lawyers, and doctors, and hopes that this kind of problem would be far less common if the bill passes.

I’m not big on regulating everything, but I wonder if this could help this industry, in which there are so many ill-trained — and even untrained — groomers? Sure, it’s easy to get recommendations, but not everyone does this. Some just trust that a big-name pet store will have qualified groomers, and we’ve seen the results of that.

What do you think? Is this legislation that’s been needed for a long time, or is it overkill?

Sources: Sacramento Bee, NBC Bay Area

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Will California ever let ferrets out of the dog house?

I’m in Michigan for the next few months, a state where ferrets are legal as pets. As might be expected, they have over-run the countryside. I can barely walk to my mailbox without having a pack of ravenous, marauding little ferts try to attack and eat me and my dogs.

Oh, wait. Just as in every other of the 48 states where ferrets are legal, they have never created the slightest problem by reverting to a feral state and promiscuously over-populating the wilds of the Midwest.

And they won’t if my home state of California lifts its idiotic, unscientific ban on them, either.

But hey, that’s just my opinion. How about some facts?

LegalizeFerrets.org submitted a preliminary Environmental Impact Report, prepared at their own expense, to the California Fish and Game Department last September. The response so far? Crickets.

This is an email the organization’s director, Pat Wright, sent to the Department today, which he cc’d to me and other reporters who’ve written about this issue in the past:

Hello Mr. Mastrup,

We have been waiting a long time for the Fish and Game Department to review the preliminary Environmental Impact Report that Dr Graening first submitted to the Department back in September 2010.

I’m sure you can understand our impatience and frustration.

At a time when the state of California is so broke that California Supreme Court orders the release of tens of thousands of inmates we find illogical that the Fish and Game Commission and Department won’t move on this item; to free hundreds of thousands of ferrets from the burden of an ineffective and unfair ban.

Releasing the citizens of California from this ban would no doubt generate some funds for the state of California and reduce the overreaching bureaucracy we suffer from.

We would be interested in funding staff time if that would speed the process up. Are you able to give us the expense so that we can start the fundraising to get this issue moving?

Thank you and I hope you don’t mind that I make this letter public to the press.

Pat Wright
LegalizeFerrets.org

How about it, California? Ferret lovers have consistently willing to put their money where there hearts are, into the cause of lifting this stupid ban. Why don’t you take them up on their offer and get this thing moving?

Photo: Vicious beasts, aren’t they?

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Dining outdoors with dogs legal in California? Mostly.

Ever since I got my first dog as an adult, I’ve delighted in taking them to public places.

Savanna frequented the patios of pet-friendly restaurants and was known at the bank, dry cleaners and video store. Bella, Darcy, Twyla and Harper all followed in her pawprints.

These days, not a week goes by that you don’t see us with Harper at Wahoo’s, El Pollo Loco, Zinc Café or Brussels Bistro, to name just a few of our favorites. All of our dogs have eaten out in Carmel, San Francisco, Burlingame, San Diego and elsewhere in California. So when I was told recently that technically it was illegal for dogs to be on restaurant patios, I was stunned. And disbelieving. Were we and our favorite restaurants scofflaws? (Not that that would concern me too much.) I happened to be writing an article about the opening of a dog-friendly restaurant here in Lake Forest, so I decided to look further into the matter.

At first, information officer Ralph Montano at the California Department of Public Health confirmed what I’d been told.

“With the exception of service animals and law enforcement dogs, California Health and Safety Code Section 114259.4 (a) prohibits pet animals from accompanying their owners into retail food facilities, including restaurants.”

Well, yeah, but what about on outdoor patios?

He firmly repeated his previous statement.

Hmm. I went back and looked at my notes for the story. Oh, right, there was a quote I’d found from a California Department of Health Services spokesperson, from an article written in 2006, that said dogs on patios were okay: “(D)gs are allowed throughout California at any outdoor dining areas unless they have to walk through the inside of a restaurant to get to the outdoor seats.”

I asked Montano to clarify. He was surprised and said he’d look further into the matter. When he got back to me the next day, I was much happier with the response.

There’s no formal exemption to allow pets in outdoor seating areas, but local jurisdictions can opt to allow the practice as long as the conditions don’t present a risk of contamination to food being served in the outdoor area.

“When you consider that these seating areas are often adjacent to the public sidewalk with no physical barrier between the sidewalk and the outdoor seating area, it is reasonable to conclude that the animals sitting with their owner in the outdoor seating area would pose no greater risk to the contamination of food than from one passing by on the sidewalk,” Montano said in an email.

It’s up to individual restaurants to check with their city or county health official to determine if their patio area is suitable for pets. I asked Scott Sellers, owner of Milo’s Café, what requirements he’d had to meet for Lake Forest or Orange County.

“Basically, the rule is if you have dogs, you have to have an outdoor-only area for them,” Sellers says. “You can’t have a patio that’s completely enclosed because then air can’t get out. Wherever it’s enclosed, there can’t be pets.”

So, we can continue our outdoor dining without fear of ejection by random health inspectors. Now, to get a hat so Harper can raise money for the Darcy Fund by doing her “sit pretty” trick for the entertainment of passers-by…

Photos: Jerry M. Thornton and Spencer Kornhaber

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California gets new First Dog

Last week I told you about the new cat at 10 Downing Street. Today, much bigger news.

Along with a new/old governor, the Golden State has a new First Dog. Welcome to Sutter (you gotta love the name), a Pembroke Welsh corgi. Governor Jerry Brown and First Lady Anne Gust Brown are happy to have 7-year-old Sutter in Sacramento after losing their previous dog, Dharma, last year. The Los Angeles Times reports that Sutter is already on the job.

“He finds all the extra food lying on the floor in the office,” Gust Brown told the Sacramento Bee of Sutter’s job duties. “He barks at anyone, he gives snuggles, he warms up the Republicans.” Beyond Republican-warming, his hobbies include herding and accompanying the Browns on jogs.

Corgi fanciers know the breed, famous for their appetite and their herding talent, is a longtime favorite of Queen Elizabeth II. Her Majesty has owned and bred Corgis since she was a teenager. If you are active on Twitter, you can follow Sutter @SutterBrown.

A mess in Memphis: There is no other way to say it – the Memphis Animal Shelter is broken. Shirley at YesBiscuit will give you the latest. The shelter’s director is definitely a piece of work.

Tell eBay to do the right thing: Technically, live animals cannot be sold on eBay. Unfortunately, all bets are off when it comes to their classifieds. That means that puppy milling scum have an unfettered avenue to do, and sell, whatever they want. You can support Change.org‘s petition to shut down this blatant loophole.

A true hero: James Campbell leases a kennel housing greyhounds. The kennel sits adjacent to the Derby Lane track in St. Petersburg, Fla. Last week, in the middle of the night, he was alerted by security that the kennel was on fire. A total of 46 greyhounds were trapped inside. Mr. Campbell rushed to the kennel and rescued the dogs — all of them. Meanwhile, the place was quickly burning to the ground. From the Tampa Tribune:

“It didn’t matter to me how much flames, how much smoke,” said Campbell, a father of three. “I was going in. I was getting my dogs.”

“I put them right below my kids,” he said. “Without thinking, I went in.”

There were 46 greyhounds in 46 crates stacked two high, with names such as JR’s Boy and Backwood Omar. As the fire crackled to life in the back of the kennel, with flames he described as 20 feet high, Campbell started quickly, but methodically, rescuing the dogs.

He unlatched the crate on top, helped the dog out, unlatched the crate underneath it, let that dog out. Then he went to the next stack, working down a row. Some of the dogs appeared to be oblivious to the peril, wagging their tails and staying close to Campbell rather than escaping through a side door into a penned area outside, he said.

“They still wanted to play,” he said. “They didn’t act any different. I’m not sure they were even aware of what was going on.”

Others were more easily led – or went on their own – to the penned area outside.

The fire department’s preliminary investigation points to the kennel’s HVAC system as the fire’s probable cause. (Tip of the cap to Cathy A.)

ASPCA-PetSmart partnership: In an ongoing effort to expand services across the country, ASPCA is putting clinics in place to assist with supplying ID tags and collars in selected communities. The project is underwritten by a just-announced $115,000 grant from PetSmart Charities.

Annandale’s gone to the dogs: Annandale, Virginia, just inside the Beltway, is a lovely place to raise a family. Ms. Beatha Lee relocated to Annandale from her previous home in Maine, and was nominated for the presidency of Annandale’s Hillbrook-Tall Oaks Civic Association.  Ms. Lee was elected easily. However, as the Washington Post tells the story, Ms. Lee will have some difficulty chairing meetings. It isn’t that she’s particularly old, it’s just that Beatha Lee is a Wheaten terrier. (Thanks, Susan)

Two unforgettable photo essays: In light of the Whistler massacre, how about a look at some sled dogs (thanks, Ericka). Next, as we wrap up coverage of Westminster, a final look at the doings in Manhattan, courtesy of the Boston Globe‘s Big Picture. Oh, and by the way, PawNation would like you to know positive reinforcement training is the norm at Westminster.

Remember the Ramones? They got the lyrics wrong. If this tune gets stuck in your head the rest of today, you’ll be in good company. Happened to me, too. Blame Animal Friends.

Turtle vs. kitteh: Ericka sent me this one, too. Tough little turtle, there. Liz, are you sure this one isn’t yours?

Engineer’s guide to cats: I neglected to ask Patti S. if she was an engineer when she forwarded this video, but now I feel much more enlightened.

I always like to hear from readers, especially if you have tips, and links for interesting stories.  Give me a shout in the comments, or better yet, send me an e-mail.

Photo credit: Sutter, Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times. James Campbell, Chip Osowski/TBO.

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