Until now, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) didn’t track animal cruelty crimes on statewide or national levels. Extreme cases of animal abuse and neglect were placed in an “Other Offense” category.
But that is finally changing. FBI Director James Comer has approved including these cases in the Uniform Crime Report, thanks to the years-long efforts of the National Sheriffs’ Association, Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and Doris Day Animal League.
The Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, created in 1929, is “the starting place for law enforcement executives, students of criminal justice, researchers, members of the media and the public at large seeking information on crime in the nation,” according to the FBI website.
As the FBI has previously done for offenses including hate crimes and the killings of law enforcement officers, it will now also collect critical information on animal cruelty crimes. This means there’s now “a real incentive for law enforcement agencies to pay closer attention to such incidents,” wrote HSUS President Wayne Pacelle on his blog today. “With accurate data, law enforcement agencies will also be better able to allocate officers and financial resources to handle these cases, track trends and deploy accordingly.”
Animal cruelty crimes to be tracked by the FBI include intentional abuse and torture, organized abuse, sexual abuse and simple/gross neglect. The FBI defines animal cruelty as “Intentionally, knowingly or recklessly taking an action that mistreats or kills any animal without just cause, such as torturing, tormenting, mutiliation, maiming, poisoning or abandonment.”
The tracking of these crimes “is a practical way of cracking down on cruelty,” Pacelle wrote.
“The decision is also significant in affirming, at the highest levels of our government, that animal cruelty is a vice just like so many other violent crimes. It is the latest tangible gain in our effort to make opposition to animal cruelty a universal value in our society.”
Believe it or not, some people just don’t love dogs. (I don’t get it, either.)
While there are plenty of magazines available here and abroad for people who are fond of canines, perhaps the first magazine ever for dog haters was launched this summer in Germany. And it sold out almost immediately.
Kot & Köter (which translates to Poop & Pooches) started out as a joke, thought up 22 years ago by a group of journalists who’d had “a lot of Guinness in a pub in Hamburg,” according to its website.
Just for the heck of it, Wulf Beleites, who was part of the group, trademarked the name. When the media caught wind of this, Beleites began appearing on talk shows as the editor-in-chief of Köt & Koter, even though there really wasn’t any such magazine.
Beleites, who had been bitten by a Spitz when he was a kid, would complain about how horrible he thought dogs were, and usually got booed by the audiences. As a self-proclaimed dog expert, he also spouted dubious facts. One of them: The formula for calculating the amount of poop a dog produces is “body weight times three divided by 50.”
Fast forward more than two decades, and through some tough financial times for Beleites. To make ends meet, he decided to actually publish Köt & Koter. With the help of about $9,000 raised through crowdfunding, he was able to do so.
The 1,000 copies of the premiere issue quickly sold out, so he printed 1,750 more.
“There are two types of people in Germany,” Beleites told the Wall Street Journal. “One type loves dogs. Another type doesn’t. These are my readers.”
He told Spiegel Online International that he wants the magazine to be “aggressive, funny, pseudo-serious and satirical.”
The magazine’s second issue recently rolled off the presses. “[MADNESS] TOTAL PIMP YOUR DOG,” says the cover.
These are a few of the pseudo-serious and satirical stories included in the first two issues:
A review of an imaginary restaurant that only serves food made from dogs.
The case for why having a burglar alarm is preferable to having a German Shepherd.
A look back at Hitler and his dog, Blondi.
Beleites told the Wall Street Journal he’s been getting hate mail and phone calls from the “German dog lobby.” Most of the letters posted on the Kot & Köter website appear to be negative. Some of the positive ones are pretty disturbing — hopefully, like the magazine, they’re tongue in cheek.
“I can only hope that the magazine comes about and is thus a counterweight to the general sanctity of the dog,” wrote Volker B. “I would like my (unpublished) novel, ‘I Kick Dogs,’ released for printing and to instigate the rights to do so.”
Good luck with that, Volker.
According to the Köt & Koter website, the magazine has 1,000 subscribers but will need 5,000 to continue being published on a quarterly basis.
“You can slap your child in Germany, but you better not slap your dog,” Philip Alsen, a dog dad, journalist and trainer told the Wall Street Journal. “I don’t think this magazine has a future.”
As soon as the horrible news broke yesterday that an arson fire had destroyed the Manchester Dogs’ Home in the U.K., killing at least 53 dogs, people began offering their help and making donations to provide for the 150 surviving animals and rebuild the shelter.
As of Friday afternoon, more than $1.6 million had been raised via a donation page set up by the Manchester Evening News. Celebrities including Ricky Gervais and Piers Morgan have been helping to spread the word about the fund.
“£5 here, £10 there, the people of the UK gave what they could and will change our world as a result,” the Manchester Dogs’ Home tweeted earlier today.
A 15-year-old boy has been arrested for setting the fire around 7 p.m. last night. The Mirror reports today that he had recently been hospitalized after being attacked by a dog.
“It Was Soul Destroying”
Colin and Colette Ballance, who live on site at the Manchester Dogs’ Home, managed to save two dogs when the fire broke out.
“By the time we got as many dogs into an outdoor kennel as we could, the smoke was choking,” Colin told the Mirror. “It is anyone’s worst nightmare who works at a dogs’ home — and I have been here for 25 years — but those scenes will live with me forever.”
Anna Stansfield, the shelter’s manager, told the BBC that what she and others saw was “soul destroying.”
The fire affected three areas of the shelter, according to Manchester Dogs’ Home spokeswoman Jane Smith.
“One of the main blocks that was affected was adoption row. This is where dogs go when they are ready to be rehomed,” she told the Mirror. “A family may have been along adoption row on Thursday afternoon and seen the dog for them, and that dog may no longer be with us. It is so, so sad.”
Local Residents Risk Their Lives to Rescue Dogs
The Guardian reports that when local residents became aware of the fire, hundreds of them rushed to the site with dog food and bedding.
Some people even risked their lives trying to rescue the dogs. Jason Dyer and his nephew Dean Rostock managed to save at least 20 dogs from one of the burning buildings.
“[We] managed to get in the reception area,” Dyer told the Mirror. “We grabbed the dog leads, and ran down to try and help the dogs. There were no keys, so we had to pry the cages open, go in and then entice the dogs over to us. The dogs were scared and shaking, and they made their way over to us. We put them on the leads and led them out.”
An online petition requesting that Dyer and Rostock be awarded for their heroic efforts has more than 1,200 signatures as of Friday afternoon.
Help on the Road to Recovery
The Manchester Dogs’ Home, founded in 1893, takes in about 7,000 dogs each year. It finds forever homes for 95 percent of them.
The Manchester Evening News reports that workers from the construction company Powerhouse Property Services have volunteered to rebuild the shelter, free of charge. They’ve set up a Facebook page where other workers can also volunteer their services.
“A million. A million good hearts, a million amazing people thank you thank you thank you,” the shelter tweeted today.
Thirteen years ago, a 2-year-old Golden Retriever worked tirelessly alongside nearly 100 other search-and-rescue dogs, digging through the rubble of the World Trade Center towers in hopes of finding survivors.
For the first time since the attacks, Bretagne (French for “Brittany”) and her handler/dog mom, Denise Corliss of Cypress, Texas, returned to Ground Zero this week.
“Seeing this kind of took my breath away a bit,” Corliss, who was interviewed by Tom Brokaw on NBC’s “TODAY” this morning, told TODAY.com yesterday.
“It’s so calm and peaceful now, unlike the chaos of before. After 9/11, everybody — all of us — felt such sadness. We all wanted to help. I just felt so honored that we were able to respond.”
Corliss has had Bretagne since 1999, when the Golden Retriever was just a puppy. After she found out that civilians and their dogs can join federal emergency response teams to help out after a disaster, she and Bretagne began taking training classes together. She told TODAY.com that she spent 20 to 30 hours a week training with Bretagne.
In 2000, she and Bretagne were accepted into Texas Task Force 1. Less than a year later, their very first deployment was to Ground Zero.
Bretagne worked 12-hour shifts for nearly two weeks. Along with the other search-and-rescue dogs, she became depressed when she found only human remains. To cheer the dogs, some workers buried themselves in the rubble so the dogs could discover someone alive.
The human responders, of course, were as upset as the dogs. At one point Bretagne left Corliss’ side and went to a firefighter who was sitting on the ground. Corliss called for her dog to come back, but Bretagne ignored her.
“I was surprised that she wasn’t listening to me — it was like she was flipping me the paw,” Corliss told TODAY.com. “She went right to that firefighter and laid down next to him, and put her head on his lap.”
When Brokaw asked Corliss about her most memorable experience at Ground Zero, she replied that it didn’t occur while searching through the debris, but as she and Bretagne waited in the staging area.
“Searchers would come by to pet her and to thank her, and would tell us their stories,” Corliss said. “So it became an unexpected role of therapy dog. That’s what, among the other things, sticks out to me the most.”
Veterinarian Cindy Otto, who treated Ground Zero’s search dogs, told TODAY.com they frequently brought smiles to weary firefighters.
“Those dogs brought the power of hope,” she said. “They removed the gloom for just an instant — and that was huge, because it was a pretty dismal place to be.”
Many animal lovers were concerned about the long-term health of the dogs working at Ground Zero. However, Dr. Otto, who in 2007 established the Penn Vet Working Dog Center to train and study search-and-rescue dogs, made a surprising discovery. After years of studying these dogs, she found they actually outlived dogs who didn’t work at Ground Zero. (In addition to Bretagne, there is one other surviving 9/11 search-and-rescue dog: Morgan, a 15-year-old English Springer Spaniel who was deployed to Staten Island after the attacks.)
After Ground Zero, Corliss and Bretagne worked at several other major disaster sites, including New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. Bretagne officially retired when she was 9.
Even though she’s now at the age when most dogs enjoy lots of long naps, she continues to work. She’s a service dog at an elementary school, helping students with learning disabilities by being their audience as they read aloud to her.
“She still has this attitude of putting her paw up and saying, ‘Put me in, coach!’” Corliss told TODAY.com. “She absolutely loves it.”
An Oregon family is probably being a whole lot more careful about where they leave their socks.
After their 3-year-old Great Dane began vomiting last February, they took him to DoveLewis Emergency Animal Hospital in Portland, where X-rays revealed the cause of the problem.
“We opened up his stomach and kept removing sock after sock of all different shapes and sizes,” Dr. Ashley Magee, a veterinary surgeon, told KGW.
The Great Dane had been brought to the vet previously for eating socks — but just one or two of them, not nearly four dozen.
“It could be an anxiety thing,” Dr. Magee told KGW. She explained that when dogs are left home alone, they may look for comfort in items with their owners’ scent — like smelly socks. “Dogs get nervous and their natural instinct is to chew,” she said.
The Great Dane (his name wasn’t mentioned, but I really hope it’s Socks) was released from the animal hospital the day after his surgery and is doing fine.
And now, more than six months later, he’s in the news as a winner of Veterinary Practice News’ 2014 They Ate WHAT? X-ray contest.
The annual contest, which is pretty self-explanatory, is sponsored by pet insurance provider Trupanion and provides cash awards “to support the uncompensated care these hospitals provide pets,” according to Veterinary Practice News.
DoveLewis Animal Hospital entered the Great Dane’s stomach X-ray in the contest this year, and it won the third-place $500 prize.
The second-place prize of $1,000 went to Gulf Breeze Animal Hospital in Florida, which also submitted an X-ray of a dog’s unusual stomach contents. In their case it was a shish kabab skewer that was somehow swallowed by a German Shorthaired Pointer named Marley. (Ouch!) The skewer was removed and Marley is doing fine.
The winner of the contest’s first-place, $1,500 prize was Paws & Claws Animal Hospital of Plano, Texas. Its entry was an X-ray of an exotic frog who swallowed 30 ornamental rocks.
Really? Sorry, but if I had been on the They Ate WHAT? judging panel, 43.5 socks would have definitely beat 30 ornamental rocks. WHAT?!
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