Amy’s Gripping Commentary

An overwhelming number of animal hoarding, cruelty, neglect, and abandonment cases have come across my email in just the past week. I have actually been unable to follow all that is going on because there are so many. And I mostly hear about rabbit cases! Dogs and cats face this crap in even higher numbers.

Close to home, Fort Wayne ACC has contacted us and other local rescues to take some of the 53 animals seized (one account says 58) in a cruelty/hoarding case where the animals were kept in a basement, from rabbits to dogs to lizards to hamsters. The house was then condemned. We (IHRS) have taken in a couple of rabbits from FWACC.

Twelve guinea pigs are part of the confiscation, adding to the other ~150 or so in rescues from Indy to Chicago. 150 homeless guinea pigs right here!! I’m adopting one and donating to another group. Some of the piggies are listed at Petfinder, and for the lame excuse “I only want a baby pig,” keeping the pet stores in business and the problem cycling, yes, there are even babies in local rescues.

119 rabbits, mostly lops, were seized from a breeder in Tennessee as part of a hoarding/cruelty case (which also included 30 dogs). Amazingly, rescues around the country (including one of our fosterers) were able to step in and all rabbits have already left the original shelter, which had no way to house and care for so many. Happy news, right? Well, there’s a brief article about ten of the rabbits who were accepted by another shelter, where many breeders have stepped in with cranky comments, not to mention the hateful “Hitler” emails to a shelter staffer. Note there are also positive comments at the article from folks more of my mindset, and this is all much like the smaller scale crankiness that occurred on this blog as I documented our volunteer work during a similar case.

360 horribly abused animals, including 50 rabbits, are being cared for in a Missouri shelter. From dogs to donkeys to rats, this case is really revolting.

Nearly 30 rabbits have been caught so far that had been running loose in south San Francisco the past few weeks. Many are now being euthanized as the shelters run out of space. Rescues are scrambling to place as many as they can.

Buffalo, NY SPCA, a few weeks ago: 46 rabbits, 10 birds, three cats seized from a home, owner charged with cruelty. Two dead rabbits were also found. Thirty rabbits still remain at the shelter and no one from the public can surrender any more as a result.

Best Friends has partnered with shelter investigators to remove 1,000 mostly small-breed puppies from a West Virginia puppy mill.

Then there’s the guy from Illinois who was arrested for beating a cocker spaniel with a hammer after its owner paid him $25 to kill it; his dogs are now sheltered and the ones who lived need new homes. Apparently he has also been paid by other people to perform this service. And there’s the woman in the Bronx who was arrested for bringing her 25 cats to the ASPCA in sealed plastic bins in her trunk. Many died.

In many of these cases, the shelters must care for the animals while court cases are pending, causing a huge drain on resources (shelter staff and volunteers, supplies, veterinary care, and of course funding). Please keep these animals in your thoughts and if you find yourself in a position to help, donations or time are always appreciated (and of course adoption of available animals!). Some days it seems so overwhelming I don’t know what to do. Even if you are far from these cases, helping your local shelter or rescue helps them all, especially as space is made in one spot that can relieve the overcrowding at another facility.

You can even donate to the ASPCA’s emergency hay fund for horses who are displaced as hay prices have climbed.

More info can be found at the national House Rabbit Society website and through the links above. HRS has an emergency fund to which anyone can donate online or by mail. The typical recipients include some of the rabbit cases described above.

All pictures came from the linked shelters and my accounts are from public information or permissioned email lists.

Hooray for Annie and Lucy, two dogs who were adopted by my family members this month.

Shame on anyone breeding or buying while shelter pets die.

This week marked two years since I stopped eating meat. So, time for my annual tally!

In 733.71 days, you have saved:
0.2760 cows
60.599 chickens
0.6733 pigs
2.0199 turkeys
0.1615 ducks
114.46 fish

Total: 178.19 animals
Thank you

See what 178.19 animals looks like

And then there was this cute popup!

This comes from a veg*n calculator, and is discussed a bit here.

That two-thirds of a pig reminds me of an irritating ad insert in the paper the other day by some Indiana pork producers’ group. It said, roughly, Indiana Pork Feeds Every Hoosier, 5 Million People Around the World, and 15 Million Americans!

Sorry, folks, you don’t feed me. And there might be a few equally irritated Jews and Muslims in this state. Their website states the group “provides the pork needs for every man, woman, and child” in Indiana, which is better phrased since at least that allows as how I might not have any pork needs. I won’t bother giving them a link and increasing their traffic.

A fur-free Olympian has been a bit controversial, but I gotta say, she’s got the abs needed for her lines of work:

Thanks for allowing me to rant today! Back to my tofu.

We’ve got finger-pointing, understaffing, underfunding (not even for food?), no accountability, bad public attitude, and where does it all lead? The animals suffer. Tonight’s board meeting at Indianapolis Animal Care and Control ought to be interesting. The Indy Star describes a complaint lodged against the city pound (the reader comments are always fascinating). The complainants make their case here as well. Yes, there are probably agendas all over the place, but the animals shouldn’t suffer as a result.

What is wrong with people?

…cats with paws slammed/stuck in the door of their cage in the receiving room overnight; a euthanasia procedure gone wrong causing a puppy to suffer a slow, painful 20-minute death; failure to rinse bleach solution from food and water bowls forces animals in the receiving room to drink from bleach-tainted water bowls if they wish to have any water at all; puppies and dogs kept in the receiving room (where cats are housed) are in cages that are too small, where they invariably step in and knock over or contaminate their food and water. They are seldom, if ever walked, so end up defecating and urinating in the cage (which is typically only cleaned once daily).

I’ve spent more time than I’ve cared to at several public animal control facilities in support of caring for animals under investigation as well as pulling them for rescue. I’ve often had a unique outsider’s view of some backroom activities because as a rabbit rescuer, I’m not seen as so much of a threat to the revelation of care and handling of the typically higher-valued dogs and cats, and since staff routinely don’t know much about rabbit care nor have the time and/or interest to participate in it, I’ve often been given relatively free reign of facilities to go find the supplies needed and to help in whatever way seems appropriate. As a result I’ve been a few feet from injection euthansias, I’ve seen the gas ovens, I’ve handled animals grossly neglected by their owners, and I’ve seen the filth. I’ve also seen caring, overworked staff, well-meaning administration, and the power of cooperation between public shelters and willing volunteers. When the politics come in, though, inevitably animals’ chances disappear or they are routed to worse “rescue” situations.

It’s too bad the politics are so entrenched in this case that I doubt there’s much hope for an overhaul. On the other hand, public controversy usually leads to short-term improved care (uh-oh, people are watching!) and brief interest from the community. I just hope some of it sticks.

While deleting old email, I found this article, Caring For Your Introvert. What a great piece!

Most people in my life are not overbearing and respect my need for personal time (or maybe I just hang out with busy people so it all works out). And I’ve gotten better at dealing with the general public since I do so many volunteer shifts. But this is great:

Remember, someone you know, respect, and interact with every day is an introvert, and you are probably driving this person nuts.

I have been involved in “discussions” (once the name-calling comes in, are they arguments?) in a local message forum for IndyGasPrices.com, where I am generally the lone liberal and suffer for it. I have to work hard at being nice and also at not responding to everything, because it gets old and I have better things to do, and I just don’t need to stress about these people’s ideas. But seriously, the place is an echo chamber of ridiculous statements on poverty, homelessness, the environment, global warming, and of course the solutions to high gas prices (I’ll save you the trouble: it’s all the Democrats’ and environmentalists’ faults, and poor people are lazy leeches on society). I know they feel the same disgust at what I say, but it makes me sad that there are so many cranky, uncaring, thoughtless Hoosiers. It’s just the loudest ones that make it seem that everyone is like that, but that’s one of the reasons I try to maintain a presence: so everyone else doesn’t think ALL Hoosiers have those opinions.

At least all the discussions have prompted me to do some more reading (and I’m sure my sources are too liberally biased to be worthwhile, if you ask them), including my library checkout of The Working Poor, a rather long Wikipedia article on Hugo Chavez, and today I was trying to find information on why apparently 80% of leased oil exploration areas don’t actually get explored (i.e., why do we need more drilling areas opened anyway?). I found this article from January on an Alaskan area threatened by a proposed oil and gas field, focusing on polar bear habitat and generally being way too liberal for the folks I mentioned previously. But the article ends with

“We can live without petroleum, but we cannot live without the whale,” said George Edwardson, Inupiaq subsistence hunter.

That profoundly captures exactly how I feel. Of course that subsistence hunter can’t live without the whale and can totally avoid oil, but I’d say our planet and its population have the same basic needs. We’ve built this petroleum energy economy that threatens our very existence by shortages, political wars, unsustainable practices, and terrorism, and yet we blindly push for moremoremore of the addiction, never considering conservation or alternative energy seriously until, oops, I can’t afford to fill my SUV. It’s someone’s fault! Get me my American-guaranteed cheap gas! Those third world people are using too much oil! (The U.S. still consumes a QUARTER of the world’s energy but has 5% of the world’s population.) If we’d just get back to the basics, where we respect nature instead of pillage it, where we help the hungry instead of fertilizing and factory farming our way into Western obesity and soil depletion and water contamination, and where we stop thinking the planet is ours to trash, maybe we’d actually get somewhere.

I was just going to share a couple of reviews with you but then some really random material came along for the ride.

EcoSelect 100% Biodegradable Dryer Sheets: I found these at WalMart, of all places, a couple of months ago. They are made with a vegetable derived softening agent. They aren’t tested on animals and they totally degrade (buried in soil) in 21 days. So, I figured I’d give ‘em a try.

They’re great! The texture of the sheet seems a bit odd, but my laundry behaves the same as it did with Bounce and I feel much better about this product. But, alas, I can’t find it anymore. I tried to find it online and only saw a few notes from other people who can’t find these dryer sheets either. Let me know if you see them, or tell me about a substitute!

Tossed is a new-to-here franchise that has, well, salads. I picked up dinner last night and was impressed that they made the whole wheat crepe right in front of me from batter, though he messed up one of them and had to start over and it took a long time. David liked his crepe with roasted chicken, portobellos, roasted onions, spinach, and balsamic vinaigrette, though mine with tofu, carrots, sugar snap peas, shiitakes, romaine, and honey sesame dressing was just kind of eh. It may be NYC’s best salad, but it was just kinda plain to me. The crepe itself was the best part and reminded us of Ethiopian injera bread. I guess I’m not much of a salad person, but if you are, try Tossed in Fishers. You can put together your preferred ingredients in salad/sandwich/crepe, or choose one of their combination ideas.

So, the doorknobs:

Note the product placement, PQ.

Nicole and I meet regularly to exchange odd items. They make total sense to us, but most people probably don’t save their Wall Street Journals for their friend’s litterboxes, trade coupons, collect and pass on #5 plastic recyclables, or order detergent and hay for each other. This time I was surprised to get a bag of doorknobs (along with the books and detergent); Nicole had replaced all the knobs in her house and I was to give them to David to use in his remodeling jobs. (Never fear, if he can’t use them, I will donate them to Habitat for Humanity’s Indianapolis HomeStore where they resell them and use the funds to help build houses.) Here I thought I had brought the weirdest item, named The Quiet Check Valve which David had sourced for her sump pump, but then it was all topped by her rented fish in the front seat. I guess it eats a particular aquarium pest and once it eats all yours, you return the fish to the pet store to be sold to someone else who has this unique stuff that causes tank problems.

In other news, I spilled an entire glass of red wine in my keyboard last night, but it seems to be working fine at the moment. Also, David looked up an ex-girlfriend online, described as “90210 pretty,” and discovered she works for World Wrestling Entertainment (you know, as in SmackDown). And Nicole picked up a disease in Puerto Rico last week, so I hope she didn’t touch the doorknobs.

ETA: This morning my spacebar and enter keys have stopped working in their alcoholic stickiness.

Also tonight, I was all warm and fuzzy at seeing goose parents leading their juveniles across the Menards parking lot. There was another adult with about five fuzzy gray followers behind this batch.

If you notice the motorcycle in my mirror, you’ll see some punk guy who thought it was hilarious to zoom at them and rev his engine. His buddy on another excuse for a small penis also found this to be a great activity. I’ve never been so close to yelling DON’T BE AN ASSHOLE out my car window. The adult geese stayed with the juveniles who could not fly yet. The 15 seconds summed up how I feel most days: Aww, animals are awesome, and there’s no hope for humanity.

I rode about 50 miles to and from work on my bike in the last week since I started this little commuting project. Observed:

One catcall and one general holler
Two cheery guys with booze in paper sacks
One muskrat
No crashes (did almost fall off this morning and saw one person fall over with a clip incident)
Four trips before I even noticed a McDonald’s along the way
One chunk of broken TV on the giant bridge
Two wrong turns
Felt short in my compact car after riding so much perched on the bike
No near death experiences
Zero flats, hooray
Twenty-plus pounds of gear in my backpack!

Without my laptop, the backpack isn’t that heavy. Well, I guess it still is, but not so painful. I leave a lot of shower and clothing items in the locker room at work, but I do tend to overpack no matter how I’m traveling. I discovered the way in is 150 ft negative elevation change over the whole route, which means riding home is really hard work to recover that (not to mention the up and down of the bridge both ways right by work). That isn’t a huge change in elevation, but when you suddenly weigh 180 lbs with all that stuff on your back, you have knobby tires, and there’s a headwind, it can take almost an hour to go seven miles! I am ready to get a rack and/or panniers to help with the load. I can probably leave the heavy U-lock behind because no one is going to cut a cable lock at my security-controlled workplace populated with upstanding people. I hope to get a new cross strap for my Timbuk2 bag and just carry it messenger style like it was designed, instead of inside the backpack. I must learn to part with more things.

For Bike to Work Day this morning, almost thirty of us left from a bike shop in Irvington to ride together downtown. I was riding just behind the people in the video in the local paper’s sidebar coverage. Riders from 11 points in the city met at the circle for breakfast, press conferences, free bike parking… pretty much all of which I missed because our eastside group arrived late at the circle, and my coworkers were leaving together for our plantsites then.

The ride in: Michigan Street

Waiting forever for a train

It was a nice mix of people: racers on road bikes in team spandex, random people like me on mountain bikes, and regular joes in jeans on cruisers. I don’t think those groups mix a lot otherwise, but the point was to highlight bike commuting and riding in a group provides safety and camaraderie, even when you don’t know anyone else.

I liked this shot of my coworkers converging at corporate headquarters for a group picture (which I don’t have). I noticed a lot of them are carrying backpacks too so maybe we just need a lot of stuff at our jobs!

It was a gorgeous day today and I spent more time on the bike trail for scenery, but the ride home still hurt with all that crap on my back.

Today, our company organized multiple beautification projects around the city with Keep Indianapolis Beautiful as part of a global day of service. I helped paint an urban wall with a colorful mural. I found software on my computer that stitched three separate photos pretty well! Our department mostly painted from the tuba player to the violin player.

I’m the dork in the white shirt.

Other employees worked on other wall murals, planted trees and flowers, cleared brush, walked to raise money for MDR-TB programs, and built Habitat homes around the city, while employees around the world at our other sites participated in their own local projects. The Indy group was listed at eight to nine thousand people participating! There was some attempt at a world record too, I think for largest paint-by-number.

I biked to the mural site and passed several other groups of volunteers. When I biked home, I found miles of brush piles and trash cleaned up from Pleasant Run Stream. They even managed to keep it out of the road and bike trail, and the city crews were already working on mulching the brush.

It was nice to be out of the office for the morning (though I had to stay late the night before and skip lunches to catch up) and help our community. I love urban murals, and I never realized how much I’d benefit from the clean up, but I bike along that stream all the time!

I feel like I’ve been surrounded by a lot of negative people lately, and combined with my general worries about life/politics/planet, it can drag me down. I’m trying hard to be positive and not feed into that undercurrent of crankiness. Getting out with a paintbrush helps sometimes.

Looks like economic stimulus checks started going out this week. You can check the schedule of when you’ll get yours here.

So what will you be doing with your newfound cash? So far I’ve heard a coworker is getting car repairs and his dog’s tooth crowned, a lot of people are paying down credit cards, for many, money is going straight to savings and retirement accounts and emergency funds, and one person was buying a computer. I planned to leave it in the old checking account and it’ll just go to various normal expenses like any other directly-deposited money. I am currently on board for a trip to Rome and I need a new computer so I suppose it will contribute to those things as well. Now that I’m done paying for teeth, the next step is to pay off school loans, especially since my employer is cutting jobs and I’ve been considering going back to school! How could I ever let myself get MORE school loans?

Anyway, I liked this idea to give the money to something that supports a charity of your choice. Of course the post entertained me because it focused on giving it to charities that the current administration (of which I am hardly a fan) disapproves, but I try to steer clear of politics here since some of my readers do not share my views. I’m not sure why that should matter since I rant about everything else, but there ya go. I have, however, been known to buy trinkets for my dad celebrating Bush’s term ending. He’s always good for a political rant on the phone.

Doing anything sensible (or fun) with your stimulus?

The weekend was so busy it is taking multiple posts! The rant ahead didn’t lend to brevity. The picture uploading is mostly working now with the new blog software, but apparently it only uploads square pictures, so some have been cropped without my intent to do that. I thought it was just a thumbnail thing and then the uploading broke completely again, so who knows.

I went to Earth Day Saturday afternoon, by myself because everyone else pooped out. I had a nice time in the lovely sunny weather (in my Eat Like You Give A Damn shirt) and discovered some interesting tidbits, like that all of Indy’s residential waste is actually incinerated to create steam energy, and in fact my employer is one of the largest customers of that energy. I also learned about an upcoming green building conference in town and I asked the Walmart guy who was giving out free reusable shopping bags made from old soda bottles why the cashiers at Walmart were so confused about bagging items in these very same reusable totes. I had great Indian food and watched all the kids hula-hooping on the grass.

My internal barometer was running from excited to depressed to hopeful to discouraged as I thought of all the ways the human race has messed up the planet and how all the problems of war and hunger and diseases of affluence and environment and animal welfare and social justice and energy crises are so intertwined with our cultures and lifestyles that it’s hopeless to try to make it better… but what else are you going to do? I want to be a person who tries to make it better, by making less waste myself and saving animals’ lives before they are put down like so much trash in the landfill, by speaking up when fellow members of local message boards say all panhandlers are faking it and lazy and that homelessness is the homeless person’s fault and that they should deal with it themselves. Not the kind of person who mindlessly consumes, assuming it’s the American Dream because TV tells me so, and I’ve never gone hungry so anyone who is must be doing something wrong. If you don’t have hope that something better can happen, is there a reason to live? That whole butterfly-flapping-causing-hurricanes thing has to play out somewhere, so it may as well be my wings and hopefully the wings of a few other hopeful people who recognize the disastrous, unsustainable, unjust course our nation and world seem to be following.

Was that dramatic and sobering enough? I had to do fun doggie things to make up for all the soul searching. Meanwhile I accepted a rabbit back into rescue from a woman who had told us allergies developed in the family. When she and her sons brought Miesa back to us, the nine-year-old volunteered, “You know why we’re returning him, right? Because he ate my mom’s laptop cord.” Ah, the honesty of kids. As if that weren’t enough to make me wonder if it’s ever possible to screen adopters enough, they had been feeding him not only the CRAPPIEST food you can buy, but it was GUINEA PIG food. They’re darn lucky it was not the other way around because if you feed a guinea pig rabbit food, it’ll DIE of scurvy.

On to doggies, because I’d had about enough of people at that point.

Here we are at Mutt Strut, a fundraiser for the Humane Society of Indianapolis. Despite my concerns with this organization, I decided to attend this year again. There’s something about a lot of pet lovers coming together to celebrate happy relationships with their animals while raising money for an org that does indeed find homes for homeless pets that made me want to participate. People go to this event because it’s fun, and that’s what we needed. And people need to see that they aren’t crazy for loving their pets–lots of other people do too. Thousands, in fact, judged by this event’s attendance.

BTW, this is part of the crash wall at the track. It doesn’t seem to be in very good shape!

Poor Casper’s tootsies didn’t hold up too well on the coarse Indianapolis Motor Speedway track, but a stop at one of the vet stations wrapped her sore feet and two little boys tried to give her water from their hands. It was very cute. Casper wanted to sleep in the shade, not finish the 2.5 mile racetrack walk!

We had two happy, tired dogs at the end. Casper’s feet didn’t bother her at all that night so all is well. And I finally saw another white collie! This one, Oreo, is about Casper’s age and was adopted from the Humane Society.

This morning a knock at the door got us out of bed (well, Walt’s barking at the knock did). Our next door neighbor brought us a “very tame” rabbit. He thought it was mine (a reasonable assumption on his part), and apparently David thought it might have been one of mine that escaped (doesn’t he know I would have NOTICED if one of my bunnies were missing from the house?), but of course it was a stray that made it down to our part of the street. I think I saw it yesterday down the street on my way home from work, and at the time I thought it was a cat since stray rabbits are relatively uncommon (but more common than you would think, trust me!). I guess I forgot about it by the time I parked the car or I would have gone back to check. I could have spared it a night out in the rain and perhaps helped it more.

Well, “very tame” generally means “very sick,” and this bunny was no exception. I could hear its respiratory distress, it smelled terrible, and it didn’t want to eat. It sat hunched in the carrier, a bad sign for a rabbit. I have enough experience now that I didn’t even examine it, just transferred it from the neighbor’s arms to mine to the carrier, and could tell it had a day or so to live. I got ready for work and took it to the vet on the way, calling ahead to let them know.

Bunny was either starving to death or had a terrible illness that caused it to waste away. My vet said 90% of the rabbits she sees that come in like this, cachexic, have cancer, and the other 10% are in kidney failure. The smell was from caked on urine and feces, another sign that bunny was too ill to posture correctly or keep itself clean. It was mouth-breathing, which rabbits only do in extreme oxygen starvation situations, either due to pneumonia or end of life issues.

We decided to gently euthanize poor bunny. I don’t even know its gender. It seems strange to me that creatures find their way to my door (in this case, because the neighbor, who I don’t know well, parks behind my car with a rabbit license plate frame or because he sees them through the window of the bunny room), but I’m glad this one did. I wish it had come sooner when it had a decent chance to be healed.

People suck. Whomever owned this rabbit either let it go and it became ill as a result, trying to fend for itself, or it became ill at home and they let it go because they didn’t want to deal with the illness. It’s not only against the law to release domestic animals to the wild, but it’s just plain ridiculous that a person can think the animal will be fine, that they don’t have ability and responsibility to keep a creature from suffering. This lop was beautiful at one time and could have been a lovely companion for a person with a heart. Now it’s dead before I even had a chance to get the picture I took off the camera.

I won’t pretend to be an expert in the No-Kill movement in animal sheltering. I hardly think anyone else could be more disturbed by the notion of euthanizing unwanted animals simply because owners are too irresponsible to consider caring for a pet for life, including preventing litters being born. But this breaking news from the Humane Society of Indianapolis (I don’t even see it on their website yet, though I’m on a mailing list that alerted me tonight) announces that in two weeks, the private shelter that has been Open Admission for thirty years is going to require “reservations” to surrender an animal. They are NOT using the term No-Kill, I should note, and I am not trying to put words in their press release. But I have some concerns from the fallout of these decisions, and wonder if certain popular points with No-Kill (namely the ability to claim most or all of your intakes go home with someone) drive this change in policy.

“Open Admission” is currently described on their website:

We accept animals regardless of their temperament, health status, origin, age or breed. There may be times during the week when we have limited space for a specific type of animal (for example, our cat areas may be full). During these times we will not turn animals away. We will, however, make the surrendering patron aware of the limited space. The more space available, the more time we have to work with an animal that may arrive with behavioral or health issues. At that point it is up to the patron to decide whether to surrender the animal on that day, or keep the animal until more space is available. We will also advise patrons if the only option at HSI, based on the animal’s history or observed behavior, is euthanasia.

Reasonable idea, right? Well, the new plan:

HSI will accept the surrender of owned cats and dogs by appointment only. This “Reservation Required” system is designed to help pet owners make an informed decision before they give up their pets due to destructive or aggressive behavior, an inability to be housetrained, living arrangements, health issues or because the animal does not get along with children or other pets.

I am ALL FOR personal responsibility. But you know what? I’ve been doing rescue for a few years and a few hundred animals now, and 95% of the time someone contacts us to surrender their rabbit, they have an excuse, and when we offer to help them solve the behavior, health, or living arrangement issue, they balk and just want an easy out. These are not the people you are going to convince to keep their cat who pees outside the litterbox by sending them handouts and websites. These are the people who will drive their cat to Animal Care and Control, a city organization that must accept all animals, or who will set their cat free to die of disease, hunger, or being run over by a car, or it will survive and reproduce to be an ongoing plague of kittens, kittens, kittens.

Why? Because people want convenience and an excuse. We are a busy, self-centered culture and we don’t like to make appointments, just like we don’t want to think about how much a vet bill will cost or how the dog might live 15 years when we purchase a very cute puppy on impulse. Sure, there are organizations who can help rehome some of the unwanted animals. And I’m not saying HSI isn’t on the right philosophy track to help people keep their pets. But I am willing to bet most people are not going to see the light and keep Fluffy.

I hope I’m wrong. But what I see here is pushing a community problem onto an even more resource-strapped government agency. When you take the stray you find or your own pet to ACC, who will be there? A large number of the 4000 animals HSI took in and euthanized in recent annual totals. Let’s assume they now won’t accept them in the first place, knowing they’ll have to kill them for space, medical reason, temperament, what have you. ACC will bear the brunt of those thousands of unwanted animals. And people will set many pets free, further strapping ACC resources to capture strays, not to mention the public nuisance and the absolute tragedy each pet will face being homeless.

HSI can do whatever it pleases because it is a private organization. Lacking a comprehensive plan on the part of ACC, though (and the press release says that details of a joint plan to deal with this change in the city are coming soon), I think HSI is failing to serve our community by pushing the burden back on government, at least for the short term. The lofty goals of placing adoptable animals in forever homes have to come with a commitment to high-volume, low-cost spay and neuter (HSI has not historically wanted anything to do with that in Indianapolis) and willingness to partner with the community, not just to hand-select which cute animals will join the shelter after the educated white people willing to go through interviews and education before being allowed to surrender their energetic lab who they just don’t have time for have the chance to drop him by for a pre-scheduled evaluation.

I think No-Kill is an admirable goal (and again, that’s not what HSI is saying they’re doing), but it takes a plan. I don’t see one yet–I can’t wait to hear about the “joint plan,” though it’s one for the transition. Does that mean it’s just to get us through, and not a comprehensive solution? Meanwhile this (from the press release) burns me:

(S)tray animals are best handled by municipal animal control facilities whose officers are on community streets looking out for animals that may have gotten away from their owners.

HSI has been a safer, more comfortable place to take a stray for a long time. Ever been to the city pound? It’s so loud I can’t believe any dog can stand it in the kennels. Surrendering a stray seems like a criminal activity with the buzzer and locked doors and smelly intake and staff resigned to the depressing fate of many of the animals. I always thought of HSI as a real chance for a stray to find a home, because they’d be less stressed and adopters actually like going there. I didn’t mind paying a surrender fee and often offered an additional donation because I believed they were doing good and necessary work. And forget the idea that we have enough animal control officers to safely and humanely round up strays to get them home. They are rounded up in a jail-like vehicle to go to a jail-like facility. I think ACC does the best they can with what they have, but that’s exactly why HSI filled a niche for a better option, taking the burden off intakes at the pound.

I can’t think of anything sadder than the last moments of the 15,000 animals Indianapolis euthanizes each year. Who is making a difference? Groups like F.A.C.E., who meet the community where they are: in the urban areas with low-cost services for alteration and vaccinations. And a mandatory spay/neuter law in Indianapolis would help a hell of a lot (are you listening, city government?). I really want HSI’s plan to work, but it can’t work in a vacuum. There are too many cast-off animals who won’t fit their pretty mold. We need a community plan to solve pet homelessness, not fundraising for the few. HSI has the ability to be a powerful force for change and solution in Indianapolis and I hate to see that thrown away to have their high percentage of quality adoptions when our city suffers from a quantity problem, affected by socioeconomic forces and a selfish population.

I have never been considered a shiny-happy, uplifting person to be around. I’m known for sarcasm and associated with the phrase Get Over It. But goodness, I hope I don’t come across as whiny. I’m sure there are some days that I do, no doubt about it. Still, there’s a blog I keep going back to because this poor, poor person just has so many annoying relatives and bad things happening to her and she just keeps making excuses about how it’s never her fault, her life is unfair, she surely couldn’t do anything to improve her lot, and when things get better she’ll do x and y and never complain…. then good things happen and guess what? She complains. I can’t stop reading it because I wonder how hypocritical the next post will sound. Ok, now I’m sounding bitter. I guess I’m just glad I’m not around this person, say, at work, because I think she’d drive me crazy! I don’t think this blogger reads here so if you’re all paranoid or something, don’t be. Most blogs I find either funny/entertaining/interesting/educational or just realize I don’t have a lot in common with the person but it’s their life so hey, blog what you want. I rarely visit I Can Has Cheezburger either but I see why it has a following.

Ah, the internet. One of the best inventions ever. Why is watching other people whine or fight with each other so entertaining? When my grouplist readings lapse as I get busy, I sometimes stop back in only when I get an announcement that it’s back on moderation due to some controversy. That’s a great time to get caught up!

Meanwhile, if you work in a cubicle and have a computer and coworkers around, this video will make you laugh. Note the Lundberg guy. My favorite part is the CRT on the copy machine because the guy can’t get his document to print.
Bad Day at the Office
My work week has been pretty intense, but so far my laptop has cooperated, so I’ll let it live.

And pet sterilization is now the law in Los Angeles!

Now I shall whine: I have had a sinus infection for over a week, and I’m tired of the reverse-sneeze-sounding (you’ll know what it is if you have a dog) attempts to get the green strings to either be in my nasal area or in my throat but not stretched in a gooey line to be in both places at the same time. I can actually pluck them out like a slimy noodle. Gross, huh?

I heard about the slaughterhouse video from the Humane Society of the United States a couple of weeks ago, but did not watch it because I’m way too sensitive for stuff like that. This morning coworkers were talking about the massive beef recall it spawned, one person yelling for the other to stop talking about it because she couldn’t think about the downed animals, and the other coming to my desk to tell me he was done eating beef and that the processors should be put in jail for endangering human life. This struck me as interesting (and depressing) on a couple of points: first, that people don’t want to face horrible things about animal suffering and just prefer to let it continue, and then that other people aren’t concerned at all about the animals and just want to sue over mad cow disease.

Obviously we all have different motivators, shock-inducers, thresholds for action, what have you. Had it not been for the work of undercover animal rights investigators, though, who are vilified or considered crazy by the average person and targeted by ridiculous laws like AETA, my average American coworkers would not have to face knowing that yes, cattle in slaughterhouses are abused, and that yes, you might eat tainted meat from sick livestock.

I’m just wearied by the news and not interested in passing judgment. I think it will take a bigger wake up call than this, though, for people to incorporate a little compassion and safety into their hamburgers.

In the video, workers are seen kicking cows, ramming them with the blades of a forklift, jabbing them in the eyes, applying painful electrical shocks and even torturing them with a hose and water in attempts to force sick or injured animals to walk to slaughter.

I still haven’t watched the video. You can read the HSUS article, where there is a link to the video if you can stomach it. There is also a short New York Times article about the recall. Much of the beef went to school lunch programs and food for the elderly, poor, etc.

has devolved into my perusing blogs (but accidental new ones, since I don’t have bookmarks for blogs on this computer), while David plays a submarine game where he is so sidetracked by his dog licking his forehead and beer and the Scrabble game and general conversation and a glitch in the sound card that he doesn’t even notice the enemy until it attacks him for several seconds. He’s now entering the Sea of Japan.

Amy, on the sub game: Pausing is not real life
David: When you’re drunk, it simulates soberness

Meanwhile, even on the fourth rum-n-Coke, I still spelled dalliers and quandry. And then rime, which David did not believe was real. Then I took a couple of turns for him.

David is now talking about his por-tee-doh tubes.

I have been fascinated by the Google street view today. We found our house (and the neighbor taking out his trash). It’s bizarre that someone drove around and photographed every street in town. Try it at http://maps.google.com/, typing in your address of interest. If the street is outlined in blue, you’ll be able to see photo-travels of every house along the way (and any pedestrians and cars and such who were out at the time).

And I just happened upon this depressing article, which reminded me:

an estimated 30 percent of the earth’s ice-free land is directly or indirectly involved in livestock production

livestock production generates nearly a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases — more than transportation

2.2 pounds of beef is responsible for the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the average European car every 155 miles, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days

if Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan — a Camry, say — to the ultra-efficient Prius

Though some 800 million people on the planet now suffer from hunger or malnutrition, the majority of corn and soy grown in the world feeds cattle, pigs and chickens

In Iowa alone, hog factories and farms produce more than 50 million tons of excrement annually

If price spikes don’t change eating habits, perhaps the combination of deforestation, pollution, climate change, starvation, heart disease and animal cruelty will gradually encourage the simple daily act of eating more plants and fewer animals.

Can anyone tell I’ve also been reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma and The China Study?

I shall go sleep it off now.