Eight men are arrested in a South Carolina field -- including one "brought down" by one of the dogs.
In the official taxonomy of boneheadedness, there are two primary types: being boneheaded by virtue of stupidity, and being boneheaded by malice. And then, there are the cases that crank the boneheadedness up to 11 by combining the two.
People who run or attend dog fights usually fall into the last category of boneheads. (At least, that's the language we use when the kids are around.) Dogfighting is a malicious and ugly kind of abuse that requires about three brain cells. And while I'm never happy to be writing up any kind of article about a dog fight, the recent case of a bust in South Carolina at least has the compensation of some charmingly poetic justice.
Early Saturday morning in Effingham, South Carolina, sheriff's deputies came across a dog fight that was about to start in an empty field. A perimeter had already been set up with two Pit Bulls facing off. When the deputies arrived, the organizers and audience immediately tried to flee, heading for the nearby woods. At least one of the dogs didn't seem quite so keen on letting them go: Sheriff Kenney Boone said on his Facebook page that one of the dogs "escaped ... after attacking and bringing down one of the fleeing suspects."
The deputies arrested eight men, and in addition to the remaining dog, deputies seized three guns, some cocaine, marijuana, and a little more than $2,800 in cash.
As of now, there are no reports of the escaped dog being caught. The fate of the dog who was brought in is still uncertain, but for now, he's recovering comfortably at Florence County Environmental Services. Herbie Christmas, of Environmental Services, told SCNow that the dog has lacerations on his face and neck and may have a broken leg, but otherwise is very friendly.
"I saw him at 6 a.m.," Christmas said. "He was wagging his tail and even came to the fence and licked my hand. But actually, animals that are bred to fight don't usually show aggression toward humans, because their handlers have to get in the ring with them. So if they show aggression toward the handlers, they usually don't make the cut. They're trained to be aggressive to other animals, not humans."
The dog who escaped seems to have been willing to make at least one exception for that rule. We hope that both will find happy endings, wherever they wind up.
The death-row Labrador, accused of biting a girl, went missing days before an appeal hearing.
Amber and Patrick Sanders have been fighting for 16 months to save their yellow Labrador, Phineas, from being euthanized. Mayor Gary Brown of Salem, Missouri, declared Phineas to be "vicious" after the dog was accused of biting 7-year-old Kendall Woolman in June 2012 while she was visiting for a play date. On Thursday, Oct. 17, the Sanders had a hearing before the Missouri Court of Appeals, and brought a dog-bite expert to testify that the teeth marks on the girl's skin couldn't have been made by a dog. The judge is expected to bring a verdict within a week, but the decision might be moot at this point: the Saturday before the long-awaited hearing, Phineas disappeared from the veterinary office where he was being held.
The question of whether Phineas lives or dies has brought up a lot of bad blood in the town of 5,000. There have been allegations of threats and abuse on both sides, and one woman was charged with third-degree assault and harassment for allegedly threatening Wayna Woolman, the mother of the girl who was bitten. Woolman told a local reporter, "My life and my family's life have been turned upside down because of threats from Phineas supporters." The mayor, who made the original decision to have Phineas put down as "vicious," also says he's been threatened. Patrick Sanders says that although his family hasn't been threatened, friends of theirs have.
Phineas has become a cause célebrè with dog lovers far beyond Missouri. He has his own website, Facebook page, a Twitter account, and a Change.org petition that has garnered 75,000 signatures. There is virtually no part of the social web that the Sanders family has not used to spread the word about their dog.
Jim Crosby, an expert on dog bites and canine aggression, testified that the bite marks left on the Woolman girl's skin were the wrong size and shape to have been made by Phineas. Crosby used a canine skull and jawbone to show how the long canines would have punctured the skin before the front teeth even made a mark.
The immediate assumption after Phineas disappeared was that his abductors killed him. Even the family's own lawyer, Joe Simon, told the press that "there's a 95 percent chance the dog is dead." However, on Saturday, Sanders family members announced on the Save Phineas Facebook page that they'd received a letter signed "Friend of Phineas," from someone claiming to have taken the dog. The letter is in part a manifesto about animal rights and vegetarianism. It concludes:
Help one friend like Phineas every chance you get.
Thanks for all you do for our fellow earthlings. And shame to the selfish.
If I were on death row I wouldn't want my fate in the hands of a judge. So Phineas is now safe and happy playing with friends.
More to come -- Friend of Phineas
Now on their second attempt to have the mayor's kill order overturned, the Sanders family is obviously hoping that the letter is genuine. However, there aren't any photos or other evidence of its authenticity, or at least none that have been made public. For now, all anyone can do is wait: not only for the court's decision, but also to find out whether someone has made that decision irrelevant.
It’s that time of year again! No, not spring — that’s not here for weeks yet. I mean PetHobbyist.com’s annual “Chat Month”!
I’ve been producing this event for ten years now, but it’s actually in its thirteenth year. Last year, we started using streaming Internet radio instead of text-based chat, although we run a real-time chat room so listeners can talk with each other, make comments, and ask the guest questions.
We’re kicking it off tonight with an interview with Nathan Winograd, one of the most controversial and inspiring figures in the no-kill movement. I’ll be interviewing him about the raging-hot issue of laws that give rescue groups the right to take dogs and cats slated for death from shelters. Laws like California’s 13-year-old Hayden Law, the recently passed Delaware shelter standards law, and the current battle over proposed shelter access laws in New York State, including Oreo’s Law — a topic I know many of you here have strong opinions on.
If you want to ask questions on that topic, be sure to drop by the chat, or post them here. And yes, they do have to be on that topic — I know there are lots of other issues you might want to question our guest on, but this is the one we’re looking at now.
The interview is this evening, Friday, March 4, at 9:30 PM Eastern. Click here for more details.
Then on Sunday at 8 PM Eastern, we’ll be welcoming Andrew “Roo” Yori and Marthina McClay to talk about their dogs Hector and Leo, two of best-known of all the former Vick dogs. Cindy will be joining them, talking about her own fight-bust rescue dog, Cleo — less famous, but no less awesome!
Chat Month runs every weekend this month, and we’ll be welcoming some of our Pet Connection team, including Dr. Tony Johnson on the topic, “Sewing tiny sequinned evening gowns for tarantulas,” and Dr. Robin Downing on “How to give your pets the really good drugs.”
Okay, I made those topics up. But they really will be guesting with us!
We even have a possible very exciting special guest who our own Gina Spadafori would be interviewing — wish I could say more, but you’ll be the first to know, I promise!
You can find out how to listen and participate, and keep up to date on when chats are scheduled and when new guests are added to the line-up, right here.
Maybe I’m getting cynical in my old age, but a large chunk of this week’s stories feel as if they came straight out of The Onion. They didn’t, but I’ll still preface the whole column by saying “I’m not making this up.”
Cat fight! Two cat litter companies are going at it with each other over an advertising claim. The gist of the argument is — get this – cats do not talk. I kid you not. Gothamist has the details:
Arm & Hammer is suing Clorox because the Clorox brand “Fresh Step” claims that cats prefer “Fresh Step” to Arm & Hammer’s “Super Scoop.” The suit says an “independent study” is flawed, “The Clorox advertisements are unambiguous that the judges of whether Fresh Step is superior at eliminating odors are cats, not people. But cats do not talk, and it is widely understood in the scientific community that cat perception of malodor is materially different than human perception. It is not possible scientifically to determine whether cats view one substance to be more or less malodorous than another substance.”
And it’s all over this ad, which I’ve gotta say is pretty damn cute. I’m not sure it’s actionable, but I’m not a corporate lawyer, either. .
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How smart is your Border Collie? I am firmly in the camp that believes Border Collies are among the smartest canine breeds. As a result, I like the Science Daily article featuring a study from Wofford College saying Border Collies can differentiate between one thousand unique objects by name, and can distinguish between the objects and orders to fetch them.
The authors demonstrated that their dog, Chaser, learned the names of 1,022 objects — no upper limit is apparent — they stopped training the dog after three years due to their time constraints, not because the dog could not learn more names. This study demonstrates Chaser’s ability to learn the names of proper nouns, and her extensive vocabulary was tested repeatedly under carefully controlled conditions. The authors admitted that she remembered the names of each of her 1022 toys better than they could. Chaser’s ability to learn and remember more than 1000 proper nouns, each mapped to a unique object, revealed clear evidence of several capacities necessary for learning receptive human language: the ability to discriminate between 1,022 different sounds representing names of objects, the ability to discriminate many objects visually, an extensive vocabulary, and a substantial memory system that allowed the mapping of many auditory stimuli to many visual stimuli.
Thank God for the lack of opposable thumbs.
Dog ate my wallet: Back to the world of “Really?“let’s go to Toronto, courtesy of the Toronto Sun. A guy is pulled over by the Ontario Provincial Police for speeding. He tells the officer he doesn’t have his license because, yes indeed, his dog had eaten his wallet. And then….
Michael Macleod’s lies continued when he gave the officer a fake name. He used the name and birth date of someone he knew. When the man received the speeding ticket in the mail with a licence plate number he recognized as Macleod’s, he phoned police, assistant Crown attorney Susan Bruce said.
Macleod, of Sudbury, pleaded guilty to driving while disqualified and impersonation.
The 22-year-old was prohibited from driving in December 2009 after he pleaded guilty to failing a breath test.
He was driving his mother’s vehicle when he was pulled over on March 14, 2010 about 10:50 p.m. after the OPP officer clocked him going 96 km/h in a 70 km/h zone.
In the future, “my dog ate…” doesn’t work. Whatever it is we’re talking about. It’s never worked*. Small children figure that out. Apparently, word didn’t make it all the way to Canada.
*Except for Gina and her license, but even so, she’s still got it in her possession, so the rule still applies.
The story of the WWII mocking mutt: OK, this one gives me serious doubts. Just because the AP has the story and it’s in Yahoo News doesn’t mean I still believe it. As the story goes, in World War II Finland there was this Dalmatian mix named Jackie. Allegedly, Jackie had a unique talent. I make no promises that this isn’t a hoax. Honestly, I’d like it to be true. I just don’t believe it.
“It seems like (Vick’s) getting a pass on the severity of what he did,” LaRussa said. “And part of it’s because he’s come back in a sensational way, athletically. You’ve got to separate the two. I think he’s expecting, and he’s getting, much less condemnation and quicker forgiveness than he deserves.
“The forgive-and-forget part that’s dominating with some, it’s way too quick for that. … I don’t think he should be executed, but I think what he did was horrific, and we’re edging forward legally in this society to making people have more of consequence when they act that way towards animals.”
And just in case you missed it, yesterday’s final score: Green Bay Packers 21, Philadelphia Eagles 16. No. 7's season is over.
Tissues at the ready: Marge forwarded the link to this long cartoon, called dog, the thoughtful animal, and added:
Excuse me, I have to go get a Kleenex now.
Just a heads up, that’s good advice. NOTE: The link will probably bring you to what appears to be a blank page with dim text down the left side. Click on that text to enlarge it to a full page.
Best adoption video of the week: The kitty litter ad was cute, but this wins video of the week, and is especially good if you liked the recent series of Old Spice commercials. .
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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.
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It’s that time of year again! No, not spring — that’s not here for weeks yet. I mean PetHobbyist.com’s annual “Chat Month”!
Maybe I’m getting cynical in my old age, but a large chunk of this week’s stories feel as if they came straight out of 