Courtroom dog at center of legal battle

Rosie is an adorable golden retriever (shown at right) who lives in Duchess County, New York. She’s a therapy dog, and as part of her duties she works to calm people in particularly stressful situations, such as testifying in court proceedings. That’s where her story becomes interesting. Rosie recently assisted a teenage victim in a rape case who was testifying under oath against her accuser. The New York Times picks up the story:

The new role for dogs as testimony enablers can, however, raise thorny legal questions. Defense lawyers argue that the dogs may unfairly sway jurors with their cuteness and the natural empathy they attract, whether a witness is telling the truth or not, and some prosecutors insist that the courtroom dogs can be a crucial comfort to those enduring the ordeal of testifying, especially children.

The new witness-stand role for dogs in several states began in 2003, when the prosecution won permission for a dog named Jeeter with a beige button nose to help in a sexual assault case in Seattle. “Sometimes the dog means the difference between a conviction and an acquittal,” said Ellen O’Neill-Stephens, a prosecutor there who has become a campaigner for the dog-in-court cause.

Service dogs have long been permitted in courts. But in a ruling in June that allowed Rosie to accompany the teenage rape victim to the trial here, a Dutchess County Court judge, Stephen L. Greller, said the teenager was traumatized and the defendant, Victor Tohom, appeared threatening. Although he said there was no precedent in the state, Judge Greller ruled that Rosie was similar to the teddy bear that a New York appeals court said in 1994 could accompany a child witness.

At least once when the teenager hesitated in Judge Greller’s courtroom, the dog rose and seemed to push the girl gently with her nose. Mr. Tohom was convicted and sentenced to 25 years to life.

Is the mere presence of a cute dog who offers comfort an unfairly prejudicial influence on a jury? Interesting question, isn’t it?

The dog park question in Vancouver: It’s a never-ending recurrence: the tension between the rights of dog owners and non-dog owners in public spaces. The latest setting is Vancouver, British Columbia. The story comes from the Globe and Mail.

Beware of counterfeit medication: How many times have we warned against buying bargain medications from online retailers because of the risk of them being counterfeit (and even worse, harmful)? The latest troubling anecdote appeared in the Daily Kos. Marge Wright tipped me to the link discussing the fatal poisoning of a dog in Centreville, Virginia, due to probable bogus knockoff medication packaged as Frontline. EPA and FDA both know about it. Still, every year dogs and cats die because the truth never goes away: if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. The ten or twenty bucks you think you’re saving aren’t worth your pet’s life.

Heartworm supply shortage: Speaking of medication, VIN News confirms the shortage of Immiticide that has been looming since last year is reaching an even more serious levels.

Little known kitteh fact? CathyA forwarded this link to me (as well as the heartworm link above), and I don’t have a reason to dispute it…though I can’t confirm it, either. When cats are stressed, their right ear is hotter than their left. Anyone want to test this one out and report back?

Fun infographic! Thanks to the Pet365Blog, via Dogster, for this fun infographic: Dog vs. Human anatomy facts.

Video of the week comes from my pal Miz in Sacramento: Herm vs. the stairs. What’s that?  I only cited it because it shows a little bitty dachshund? I have no idea what you’re talking about. Is that a dachshund? Really? I didn’t know.

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.

Image credit: Rosie, Kelly Shimoda for NYT.

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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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Mrrrreowwwww! Arm & Hammer, Clorox in legal cat fight

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.

Tony LaRussa weighs in: I’ve written about baseball manager Tony LaRussa’s legendary love of animals and his work in the Bay Area. SFGate’s Scott Ostler quotes LaRussa’s opinion on Philadelphia’s athletic dog killer.

“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.

Photo credit: Hissing cat, Urban/AP.

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