Bowl-a-Rama success

Yesterday we participated in the 6th Annual PACC911 Bowl-a-Rama on Arizona RESCUE's dog team. I bowled in the cat team's lane and brought down their average score, helping the dog team to another win--apparently Nintendo Wii bowling doesn't help train for the real thing. The event had a morning and afternoon session; RESCUE was in the morning session from 10-12:30. RESCUE came in second place for "loudest cheer," which added another $50 There were about 60 groups participating in the morning session which raised a total of about $122,000--of which RESCUE alone raised $42,000! Thanks to everyone who supported our efforts and to Lisa and Einzige for coming out to the event to cheer us on!

Bowl-A-Rama!!

There’s a saying in the non-profit world that people don’t donate to organizations, they donate to the individuals that represent them. Let me introduce you to two wonderful representatives of RESCUE:

Otto was saved from the euthanasia list in December 2001.

Fred was saved in August 2002.

Otto and Fred were both found on the streets of Phoenix and wound up on the kill list. They would not be with us if not for RESCUE. Otto and Fred are just two examples of the over 9,000 lives that RESCUE has saved thanks to donations. All of RESCUE’s cats and dogs are taken directly from the kill list at Maricopa County Animal Care and Control. If you have not donated to our largest fundraiser of the year – Bowl-A-Rama, PLEASE do so today! No donation is too large or too small.

If you are outside of Arizona and can spare $5, please make a donation, there is an informal competition to see who can get donations from the farthest place. Be sure to put Jim or Kat Lippard as the referrer.

Please help us help them!

Fox story on RESCUE

Fox 10 News in Phoenix did a story last night on how the mortgage crisis is resulting in more animals being turned in to the pound, and more animals being euthanized. The story featured Lisa Thomas from RESCUE, the organization we volunteer with, as well as the Corgi mix named Rascal (pictured) who we've taken out on weekends a few times. Check it out, and please consider donating to RESCUE's Bowl-a-Rama event. (Put Kat's or my name in for the bowler to encourage, and The Lippard Blog as the referrer.)

RESCUE Bowl-a-Rama

RESCUE's Bowl-a-Rama fundraising event is here again, and Kat and I will both be bowling for the "Leader of the Pack" team of volunteers who work with dogs. There's a competing "Rockin Bowlin Felines" team of volunteers who work with cats.

Our goal is to raise $3,000 between us for RESCUE, of which we've so far raised $220.

RESCUE is a group we've volunteered with since January 2002, which rescues dogs and cats from the euthanasia lists at the Maricopa County pound. It operates its own cat shelter, while dogs are kept in foster homes and boarded at Dog Days in Tempe, a boarding and doggie day care facility that has been a valued partner of RESCUE.

Two of our three dogs, Fred and Otto, were rescued from euthanasia by RESCUE.

Every donation helps save dogs and cats from unnecessary euthanasia--if you can give even $5, it will be greatly appreciated.

You can make donations through RESCUE's website, here. Specify "Leader of the Pack" as the team, and put Kat's or my name under "Encourage Your Bowler" or "Referrer."

The actual bowling will occur on August 2, 2008 at AMF Shea Village Lanes. In past years there have been more than 60 organizations participating, so the bowling gets divided into morning and evening shifts and the place gets packed.

Bill McCauley, RIP

I was saddened to learn this morning of the death of Bill McCauley, who was my boss when he was Vice President of Operations for GlobalCenter for a year or so around 1999-2000. I last saw him in 2001 at NANOG 21, when he was working for a company called iAsiaWorks, and we chatted briefly. I never knew him well, but when I worked for him he would occasionally chat with me about network security.

Bill had left the technology field to run a food distributorship, Red Rock Foods, and recently opened a coffee shop in Queen Creek called Daily Buzz. Unfortunately, he was having financial troubles, and chose a gruesome and horrible way to end his own life, by backing his car into a storage area at his food distribution business, pouring gasoline behind his car, and setting it on fire. The fire burned him and his dachshund, Millikin, killing his dog and leading to his death in a hospital several hours after firefighters pulled him from his car, mortally injured but still alive.

His death has been reported at the Arizona-Coffee blog where he frequently posted. He apparently left no suicide note. It's very sad that he chose to end his life this way, as well as that of his dog.

Back from Seattle

We're back from a week of vacation in Seattle--this was my third time in the city, but my first time with free time to do touristy things. We saw the usual sights--the Space Needle, Pike Place Market, Pioneer Square and the Underground Tour, and we took a Snoqualmie Falls/winery tour and paid a visit to Bainbridge Island. We also saw the Klondike Gold Rush Museum, the Olympic Sculpture Garden, the UPS Waterfall Garden, the Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum, and the oddities at Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, including the feejee-mermaid-like objects pictured and a collection of tsantsas (shrunken heads). We also managed to see some local crazies--a 9/11 conspiracy theorist outside Pike Place Market, Lyndon LaRouchies at Westlake Center, a Church of Scientology "free stress test" center, and building housing the Discovery Institute.

And we had plenty of great meals, including a few with friends we haven't seen in a while (or hadn't met before in person). Lots of Thai and Indian food.

We didn't get around to visiting the Seattle Aquarium, the Museum of Flight, the fish ladder at the Ballard Locks, the Roman exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum, or trying a doughnut at Top Pot Doughnuts. Maybe next time for most of those.

Seattle is a fun city, we had great weather almost the entire time, and we were happy to see how dog-friendly it is. I'm sure we'll return.

Otto's painting

Local artist Susan Barken completed her painting of Otto, and here it is. (Previously.)

Otto gets discovered

At RESCUE's 8th annual "Beauty to the RESCUE" fundraiser at the Mane Attraction on March 9, local artist Susan Barken spotted our dog Otto (a rescue dog himself) and thought he'd make a good subject for one of her paintings. Here are a couple of the photos she took of him on March 16. Susan donated a dog painting for RESCUE's silent auction at the fundraiser. (UPDATE: here's the painting.)

Blackwater shoots the NY Times' dog in Baghdad

A Blackwater bodyguard shot and killed Hentish, the mascot dog of the New York Times that has lived its entire life in the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad. Blackwater claims Hentish attacked one of their bomb-sniffing dogs and had to be shot.

Mike Huckabee's problems

Mike Huckabee's problems continue to accumulate. There's the little problem of his son David hanging a dog by its neck, slitting its throat, and stoning it to death--and the fact that Huckabee himself defends this animal cruelty (of the sort that's often a precursor to serial killing of human beings) on the grounds that the dog was emaciated and had mange. (You may recall that Mitt Romney has a similar, though not nearly as nasty, poor record with dogs.) David Huckabee killed the dog when he was 17 and was never prosecuted, but in April he faced a weapons charge for trying to take a loaded handgun through airport security in Little Rock.

Huckabee also claimed to Pat Robertson's CBN that "I'm the only guy on that stage with a theology degree," but he doesn't have a theology degree--he only attended Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary for a year, he's a theology-school dropout.

Then there's his role in calling for the 1999 release of convicted rapist Wayne Dumond, who was strongly defended by Baptist minister Jay Cole, a close friend of the Huckabee family. Some conservative activists apparently defended Dumond on the grounds that one of his rape victims was a distant cousin of Bill Clinton and the daughter of a major Clinton campaign contributor. Several victims wrote letters to Huckabee describing Dumond's brutality, but Huckabee was quoted in a column by Steve Dunleavy titled "Clinton's Biggest Crime--Left Innocent Man in Jail for 14 Years" saying that "There is grave doubt to the circumstances of this reported crime." But as we know today, Dumond was guilty--he was released from prison in September 1999, apparently with some help from Huckabee, and he raped and murdered two women. Huckabee has refused to release his administration's records pertaining to Dumond on grounds that they contain sensitive law enforcement information.

In 1992, Huckabee called for AIDS victims to be quarantined, and refused to retract that position just recently, despite the fact that the disease is not spread through casual contact (which was also well known in 1992).

On top of all of this, Huckabee appears to be genuinely dumb. While governor of Arkansas, Canadian comedian Rick Mercer fooled Huckabee into congratulating Canadians on preserving their capitol building, the national igloo. He is a proud disbeliever in evolution and has publicly supported creationism, though now he refuses to answer questions about it. He thinks that women's role in marriage should be to "submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband". And in the December 11 Republican debate, Huckabee pledged to repeal the laws of thermodynamics, stating that "We ought to declare that we will be free of energy consumption in this country within a decade, bold as that is."

Intrade currently puts Huckabee's chances of obtaining the Republican presidential nomination at 16.8%, third behind Giuliani (36.0%) and Romney (22.0%) and ahead of McCain (8.8%) and Paul (8.5%). But it also puts him at the leading candidate for getting the Republican vice presidential nomination, at 28.9%, well ahead of Pawlenty (10.1%), Romney (8.6%), Thompson (7.6%), and Gingrich (6.5%).

UPDATE (December 25, 2007): Mike Huckabee's tied to Christian reconstructionists and thinks that the Ten Commandments are the basis of U.S. law (even though seven of the ten would be unconstitutional).

Vote for Fred!!!

Our Fred is a contestant in the National Pet Idol contest. He needs your help to win! Each vote is only $1 and all proceeds go to AZ Rescue . The first round of voting starts today, October 24th through October 31st.

Click here to vote for Fred!

Thanks!!!

Yet another dog found

As we set off to take our dogs for a walk down the Highline Canal this morning, we ran into this hound dog coming towards us in the opposite direction. He has a collar, but no tags. He's friendly and well-fed, and (surprisingly for this neighborhood) a neutered male. We've put him in our front yard and given him water, and put his photo up on Pets911.com. With any luck, his owners are somewhere nearby. (If they're close enough, they should be hearing his distinctive hound bark...)

UPDATE (1:30 p.m.): His owner put a "lost dog" ad on azcentral.com that we just found, and came and got him. He normally has tags, but they came off when he got out about a week ago.

Where the deer and the dog play

I'd like to know what happened after this clip ends.


Bambi-Scruffy - The funniest videos clips are here

Yet another puppy found

When Kat got home from work and let the dogs out, she heard an additional dog barking in the backyard. It turned out to be this puppy, perhaps two months old, which somehow got into our fenced yard.

How much animal euthanization is unnecessary?

Maricopa County Animal Care and Control and the Arizona Humane Society regularly euthanize animals, not just because they are terminally ill, critically injured beyond the possibility of saving, or displaying uncorrectable aggressive behavior, but to make space for more owner turn-ins. (Another group which regularly engages in euthanasia of healthy animals is People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, a group which is very good at getting free publicity, raising funds, and polarizing opinions, but not particularly good at directly improving the welfare of actual animals. On occasion they indirectly improve the welfare of animals when they successfully stop cases of severe abuse.)

Tuesday's San Francisco Chronicle reports on the content of Nathan Winograd's Redemption: The Myth of Overpopulation and the No Kill Revolution in America, a book which claims that there isn't a dog and cat overpopulation problem or lack of demand for them as pets, but that most animal control and animal shelter operations are simply not taking the most effective steps to care for their animals. Winograd's book and his organization, the No Kill Advocacy Center, argues that by using effective volunteer animal fostering programs and behavior rehabilitation programs, and partnering with local animal rescue groups, there should be no need to euthanize any healthy, adoptable animals. He's not just talking about it, he's successfully done it as director of operations for the San Francisco SPCA and for a rural animal shelter in upstate New York.

The No Kill Advocacy Center promotes the "No Kill Equation," a set of ten programs that it identifies as mandatory for any animal control or shelter operation to reduce euthanasia to a minimum:

I. Feral Cat TNR Program

II. High-Volume, Low-Cost Spay/Neuter

III. Rescue Groups

IV. Foster Care

V. Comprehensive Adoption Programs

VI. Pet Retention

VII. Medical and Behavior Rehabilitation

VIII. Public Relations/Community Involvement

IX. Volunteers

X. A Compassionate Director

I recommend reading the SF Chronicle's coverage of Winograd's book. If you're a supporter of your local animal shelters and animal control operations and they engage in euthanasia to make space for new animals, they deserve to be asked pointed questions about what they're doing along the lines of Winograd's recommendations.

RESCUE, an organization that we volunteer for, is an organization committed to reducing euthanasia of dogs and cats by taking animals from the Maricopa County Animal Care and Control euthanasia lists and keeping them in foster homes or boarding until they can be adopted out to someone who's a good match for the pet based on the pet's behavior and adopter's lifestyle.

(Hat tip to Jack Kolb on the SKEPTIC list for posting the article about Winograd's book. Thanks, Jack.)

Our dogs featured on RESCUE's new website

Arizona RESCUE has gone through a website redesign, and the new design now features photos of our dog Otto and our former foster dog Ollie. The front page cycles through photos of rescued dogs and cats at the top right; Otto is the black and white dog with the ball in his mouth and Ollie is the bassett hound. Both can be seen simultaneously on any of the other web pages, such as the "About RESCUE" page, where Otto's second from the left and Ollie is third from the right.

Kat previously blogged about Ollie almost a year ago.

Also check out RESCUE's donation page...

Adopt Bully!

Bully is about 4 years old, approximately 40-45 pounds. For most of his life, Bully and his caretaker have been homeless. Bully currently is kept outside, behind the store where his caretaker works. He has little shade or other comforts, and does not get the love and attention he deserves. I keep tabs on him and his ‘owner,’ but I’d like to find Bully a better home if possible.

We tried to adopt him about 1 ½ years ago, but after two perfect months in our house, he began to attack one of our dogs. Neither dog was ever injured, but we could not trust Bully around our dogs. Other than that, he is a great dog. He loves attention and belly rubs, will come when called, won’t chew inappropriately, and never had an accident in the house. Despite his rather tough life, Bully always has a smile on his face and is happy to see you.

Bully is: affectionate, lap dog, house broken, neutered, eager to please, unknown behavior with children, extremely intelligent, unpredictable aggression towards other dogs.

In his ideal home he would be the only pet. As I have never seen him around children, I’d only want him to go to a home where any children are 16 or older. A prospective adopter home inspection is required. No adopters farther than 300-400 miles outside of Phoenix will be considered, as I will be unable to travel to inspect your home on Bully's behalf.

Mitt Romney's dog

David at Blue Mass Group offers comment on the Boston Globe's story which reveals that Mitt Romney used to strap his dog's carrier to the roof of the car and put the dog in it for 12-hour trips from Boston to Ontario (the specific story takes place in the mid-1980s). In the story, the children are disgusted because the dog, Seamus, has emptied his bowels in his crate, and the animal waste is dripping off the back of the car:

As the oldest son, Tagg Romney commandeered the way-back of the wagon, keeping his eyes fixed out the rear window, where he glimpsed the first sign of trouble. ''Dad!'' he yelled. ''Gross!'' A brown liquid was dripping down the back window, payback from an Irish setter who'd been riding on the roof in the wind for hours.

As the rest of the boys joined in the howls of disgust, Romney coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station. There, he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the highway. It was a tiny preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free crisis management.

David at Blue Mass Group, quoting Ana Marie Cox:

Massachusetts's animal cruelty laws specifically prohibit anyone from carrying an animal "in or upon a vehicle, or otherwise, in an unnecessarily cruel or inhuman manner or in a way and manner which might endanger the animal carried thereon." An officer for the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals responded to a description of the situation saying "it's definitely something I'd want to check out." The officer, Nadia Branca, declined to give a definitive opinion on whether Romney broke the law but did note that it's against state law to have a dog in an open bed of a pick-up truck, and "if the dog was being carried in a way that endangers it, that would be illegal." And while it appears that the statute of limitations has probably passed, Stacey Wolf, attorney and legislative director for the ASPCA, said "even if it turns out to not be against the law at the time, in the district, we'd hope that people would use common sense...Any manner of transporting a dog that places the animal in serious danger is something that we'd think is inappropriate...I can't speak to the accuracy of the case, but it raises concerns about the judgment used in this particular situation."

In the comments, several people correctly observe that a crate-trained dog won't relieve itself in its own crate unless it absolutely has to or is under extreme stress.

Not surprising from a man who wants to double the size of Guantanamo.

Microsoft's new Turing Test

Microsoft Research has partnered with Petfinder.com to come up with a new test for determining whether there's a live human behind the keyboard or just a computer program. It's called Asirra, Animal Species Image Recognition for Restricting Access. The method presents twelve photographs of dogs and cats from Petfinder.com (each of which has an "adopt me" link associated with it) and asks the viewer to select all of the cats.

Dog deduction abilities

In an experiment by Friederike Range of the University of Vienna reported in the Washington Post, a border collie named Guinness would demonstrate to other dogs how to use her paw to push down on a bar to get a treat. Guinness would demonstrate in one of two different conditions--with a ball in her mouth, and without a ball in her mouth. Dogs prefer to use their mouths to move the bar, and so dogs that saw the demonstration while Guinness had a ball in her mouth inferred that she was only using her paw because her mouth was otherwise occupied, and would use their mouths. Dogs that saw her perform the demonstration without a ball would duplicate her demonstration, using their paws to push on the bar.