It’s often said that rather than simply complaining about things online, one should do something. I try to take this advice and I want you to also. Let’s do something about Mr. Sak being forced (illegally) to give up his service dog.

Below is a widget from ChipIn. It will accept a donation of any amount and deposit in my PayPal account. On January 21st I will send all other money to Animal Farm Foundation, which is already trying to help the retired police office and war veteran keep his service dog. I have set a goal of $2000. That’s 100 people giving $20 each. I think we can do that, don’t you?

Why do I think you should donate some money to this cause? Well, not just because it’s a lot more effective than liking a Facebook status or resharing that awesome anti-Millan Esquire article from 2006 for the 20th time.

Aurelia IA’s government has shown themselves to be shining examples of the bullies that perpetuate BSL. Is there a better example of bullying than taking away a service dog from a retiree? This is one of the battles we need to win if BSL is ever to be eliminated in the U.S. Put down the like button, open your wallet, and put your money where your snarky comment would be.

If you use a blog, you can easily embed this widget on it. If you have Facebook account, use the button below to share this post.

The cowardly bullies in Aurelia may have already ruined Mr. Saks’ Christmas, but we can do our best to fix his New Year!

Make a small donation and then spread the word: let’s help this man get his dog back and put a nail in the coffin of BSL.

I generally try to avoid the constant drumbeat of doom and gloom on the Internet. If you take much of what you see on Facebook and blogs at face value you wouldn’t think that in the past 10 years or so dog training, rescue, and animal welfare had come as far as it had. Fact is, most activists aren’t up to the task of winning hearts and minds without truthiness and drama.

But I digress.

In BraindeathAurelia, Iowa a retired policeman and war veteran has had to surrender his service dog because he (the dog) is a pit bull.

Here are the money quotes:

Aurelia is “simply exercising its authority to protect and preserve the rights and property of its residents — whether or not that’s trumped by” federal law. said George Wittgraf, an attorney representing BraindeathAurelia.

Well, it is trumped by federal law. This genius of an attorney didn’t just watch his client open itself to incredibly expensive legal and civil consequences, he’s bragging about it to the press.

Second, breed specific legislation does not protect communities. It is the refuge of lazy cowards that lack the knowledge and/or willpower to do what it takes to actually protect people from dangerous dogs.

“They had several people come forward saying they were concerned about the pit bull because of the nature of the breed. They just feel it’s unsafe. They’re aggressive and could hurt somebody. If the service animal was anything but a pit bull, it would have been fine,” said City Clerk Barb Messerole.

Yes, that’s right. Based on the complaints of several of the “friendly citizens of Aurelia” these Mensa candidates have decided to defy federal law and take away a disabled veteran’s service animal.

What more can I say? Brent Toellner has written volumes on the stupidity and ineffectiveness of BSL, and on the beautifully coined term panic policy making.” This appears to be a result of this kind of policy making: Aurelia’s breed ban apparently dates back to, get this, a single bite.

A miserable Christmas to you too, Auerlia, Iowa. Here’s hoping for coal in your stocking.

And a very, very, very, costly loss in court. The kind that ends careers.

We had a pretty crappy experience at the Bethel Woods Center For The Arts Harvest Festival today. Since the harvest festival has four more weeks left this year I thought I might help other pet families avoid the mistake we made today.

You are not welcome at the festival with your dog.

Back in June we had such a great time at the Inn at Lake Joseph that we decided to make reservations for this weekend. Getting a larger room and better preparations have made this a great weekend – more about that in a future post.

Before coming here I spent some time poking around the Interwebs looking for things we could do together. ("We" means all of us. We don’t go to a dog-friendly inn to leave our dogs in the room.) Being Labor Day weekend in the Catskills, I expected a lot of harvest festivals. Being harvest festivals I expected many of them to be outside. Being outside, I expected that dogs would not be a problem.

Well silly me.

We were turned away at the gate by the nice man. (By "nice man" I mean a guy checked hand stamps at topless clubs to earn tuition for The Miss Manners Academy.) He barked (heh) “We don’t allow animals. (Interesting choice of words at a festival with ponies and alpacas?) It says so on the web site!” (It doesn’t.)

What’s the reasoning? It certainly can’t be the typical Ewww! Dogs! attitude I see in the ‘burbs. This is an outdoor farmer’s market for crying out loud. Is it somehow based in the fear that the dogs will disturb the farm animals there? If that was the case, actually posting something on the website might be nice. Of course, not allowing dogs for a reason like that is really just lazy. Set some rules and then send a few of the 20 or so people they had making parking a nightmare into the festival to enforce them.

Dagmar wanted to see the festival, so I stayed at the van with Caffeine and Buddha. My filthy, noisome, and disruptive canines, attracted 20 or so people to us, many of them children, without incident. Meanwhile Dagmar admired the puppies for adoption inside the festival…

Yes, that’s right. The Bethel Woods Harvest Festival will not let you bring your dogs to a festival where you can adopt a dog. I can’t make this crap up. (I wonder how fast they kick you out after you adopt one?)

If you are looking for a place to enjoy a fall Sunday outside, listening to live music, looking at arts and crafts and picking out some fresh produce, with your family and your dog(s) stay away from the Bethel Woods Harvest Festival. They don’t want you there.

• Navy SEAL Dog Helps Take Down Osama Bin Laden | i Love Dogs - learn abpout the K9 hero that helped take down OBL.

• Swedish Sperm-Sniffing Dog Nabs Accused Rapist | The Dog Files - there’s an application of the dog’s great sense of smell you never thought of….

• Pets for Patriots - I love this program!

• I Killed the Bufo Toad – NYTimes.com - very entertaining and thought-provoking essay.

• A Primer on Leptospirosis « speakingforspot.com - the background on a very common and necessary vaccination

• US Soldiers Rescue War Dogs | Life With Dogs - more great stuff about the military and dogs

• Dog Saves Owner from Sexual Assault | Life With Dogs - another K9 hero

• What a Dog Does When It’s Cold | Life With Dogs - it’s a trifecta for Life with Dogs

It’s so hot I forgot to post this!

Here are the week’s links. Check them out!!!

• Cat and dolphins playing together. [VIDEO]
• Lizards as seed dispersers in island ecosystems [video]
• Deaf Dog Adopted By Deaf Kids
• Spay & Neuter with a Smile: Rock & Roll Edition
• The Sixth Sense | Pawcurious Vet Blog: With Pet Blogger and Veterinarian
• Study of Alpha Male Baboons Shows It’s Stressful at the Top – NYTimes.com
• Our Favorite Dog Word: “Fudge!”
• A Tooth Brushing Terrier | Life With Dogs
• Clouds, bangs and balls [video] | Science | guardian.co.uk
• Tanzania Highlights Slideshow | Uncornered Market
• Dog.Nerd.101: Hiking with your dogs: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly!

I recently discovered Diigo, which makes it easy to collect a bunch of links into a blog post.

I’ll post a list each Friday, as well as an interesting photo from Creative Commons on Flickr. Enjoy!

 

• Massive Elk Turns Soft-Hearted Hero – wonderful story about an elk that goes from scary beastie to heroic figure.
• Cooked Chicken Also Now Dangerous? – thoughts from Jean Donaldson on the mental gymnastics people will perform to avoid using food in training.
• The beautiful tricks of flowers [video] – flowers aren’t just beautiful. They are examples of nature devious ingenuity.
• Super Normal Sign Stimuli (What the heck?) – what are Super Normal Sign Stimuli? Patricia McConnell explains
• Hitler’s Talking Dogs – weird stuff from Maureen Dowd.

Have a great weekend!

Photo credit: Kevin Law

Can I get a Bloody Mary Miss?

Pet Airways has been working to address the travel part of the problem for just about two years. On this airline pets travel in the main cabin, not in the cargo hold. Their planes have been adapted to hold pet carriers rather than humans, and they use a plane that travels lower and slower than most, so that pets experience less stress. Humans don’t travel with their pets – you need to get your own ride.

This week fellow Animal Cafe’r Edie Jarolim of the Will My Dog Hate Me blog interviews Aly Tognotti, a Pet Airways representative. Aly has been with Pet Airways since the beginning, and she has a great perspective into how they started and got to where they are today – which is expanding!

The lengths Pet Airways goes to make sure that their "pawsengers" are safe and comfortable are truly extraordinary. Pet Airways is a lot more than just an airline with different planes – they are truly the gold standard in pet travel! From a thorough examination at check-in and check-out to onsite vet technicians, this is the closest to worry-free travel for your pets that you can get. Perhaps more worry-free than driving.

And they take hermit crabs! Listen to the interview.

Here is the interview:

I really hope you will consider subscribing to the Animal Cafe podcast on iTunes. We’ve got some great interviews already up there, and many more great ones to come!

Want to help a great shelter win $15,000? Care2, ASPCA and Adopt-a-Pet are sponsoring a contest. The winning shelter will receive $15,000, and each week a different shelter is selected at random to win $500! I am campaigning for St. Hubert’s Animal Welfare Center. St. Hubert’s is a fantastic organization, where many pets find new homes every year, and where I apprenticed as a dog trainer.

Why should you vote for St. Hubert’s?

• St. Hubert’s has a shelter, a dog training school, a human education program, a therapy dog program and a shelter outreach program.
• Because of the shelter outreach program, helping us means helping many other shelters.
• St. Hubert’s helps pets from all over the country, like the dogs from tornado-stricken Georgia we just rescued.
• The St. Hubert’s dog training school has launched the careers of many successful, effective, and dog friendly, dog trainers. Helping the school has “ripple” effect of helping countless families with their beloved companions.
• St. Hubert’s is in the midst of building a new building, which will increase the number of animals we can save every year.
• Because I am asking you very, very nicely.

You can vote right here.

Here’s a description of the contest from Care2:
The “America’s Favorite Shelter” Contest, sponsored by Care2, ASPCA, and Adopt-a-Pet.com, is a chance for animal lovers to rally behind their favorite shelters. These shelters are often the last chance and refuge for thousands of animals. Now’s the chance to celebrate the work they do and help them win crucial funding. What makes your favorite animal shelter special? Say it loud, say it proud, and help them win $15,000.

Also, the top 20 “recruiters” will win a $50 gift card. If I manage to win that, I will use the card to buy gear for St. Hubert’s. Here’s what I would like you to do: use my link to vote for St.Hubert’s. It will take you about a minute. If even.

Sorry - too busy to take pictures at the conference!

I actually went up a couple of days early to take care of some association business (I am on the Board of Directors) and then attended and helped with running the conference. You can take the bouy out of the A/V club, but you can’t take the club out of the boy.

I’m obviously a little biased, but I think the conference was great. We had some great speakers: Dr. Nick Dodman, Bob Bailey, Brenda Aloff, Victoria Stilwell, and over 20 other speakers. The topics were “advanced” behavior issues with dogs, cats, horses and parrots, such as resource guarding, aggression, psychological trauma, and self control.

I also had an opportunity to speak about how animal professionals can use social media to help market their businesses and help animals. It was a very gratifying experience, and based on the feedback, a business idea that has been forming in the back of my mind may finally become a reality.

But the most gratifying experience was receiving the IAABC’s Animals as Other Nations Award. It was a humbling, surprising, and very motivating experience.

Here is the award’s description:

“Nominated by the previous year’s recipient and a committee, this award goes to a member who is supportive of other IAABC members, volunteers time to the IAABC’s advancement, best demonstrates IAABC’s mission and embraces LIMA.”

“We patronize them for their incompetence, for their tragic fate of having take a form so far below ourselves. And therein we err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.” – Henry Beston

Janet Velenovsky, the award’s previous recipient, presented the award:

“As the last winner of the IAABC Animals as Other Nations award, I had the responsibility and pleasure to create a committee to consider members who met the criteria for the award and submit our recommendation to the Board of Directors.”

“The Animals as Other Nations award goes to a member who is supportive of other IAABC members, volunteers time to the IAABC’s advancement, best demonstrates IAABC’s mission and embraces LIMA”(Least Intrusive Minimally Aversive, how the IAABC believes animal behavior work should be approached – EG).

“This year’s winner has volunteered significant time and effort to bring the IAABC’s website and image into the 21st century. The winner has contributed greatly to technical improvements and functionality of the IAABC website, offering his valuable knowledge of information technology. He has increased our visibility through podcasts and blogging. As someone uniquely qualified to help with technical issues, he facilitated improvements in data management as well as serving on the board of directors. He is well-respected for his behavior knowledge and opinions.”

“I am very pleased to say the committee was unanimous in its recommendation that Eric Goebelbecker receive the Animals as Other Nations award. Congratulations, Eric — and thank you.”

I was struck completely speechless, and in a way I still am. I have put a lot of effort into IAABC the past couple of years, but never expected this.

It was a great conference. If you were there, thanks for coming. If not, there will be more. I hope to see you there soon.