I decided to poke around online to see if I could find out about Betty.  When I found what appeared to be a legitimate response from the ASPCA regarding Betty, I e-mailed the following to Billy:

Many people have asked online about the dog you wondered about from the ASPCA commercial. Apparently that footage is from 2003 and she has since been adopted:

Thank you very much for your email regarding the dog named Betty in our commercial. When the ASPCA found Betty she was injured badly with a fractured vertebra, she could barely move but she continued to care for her new born pups. All of her pups were successfully adopted and shortly after in February 2003 Betty also found her new family and given the name Apple to start her journey with her new pet parents and another canine. Eight years later, Apples parents inform us that she is just as beautiful and intelligent as the day they brought her home and was a wonderful addition to the family. She spends her days chasing squirrels around five acres and being spoiled by her parents. Apple couldn’t have wished for a better life. This is just one of many rescue stories with a happy ending. Sincerely, ASPCA Public Information

I thought this would probably reassure him.  Not so.  His response:

Well – that makes it even more exploitative and manipulative that they’ve known all along and can’t put an update on the commercial. That would mean less donations. I’m sure someone had to dig deep to find this info. out.

He has a point.  Have you seen the commercial with Betty and her pups?  What do you think?

As such, I always like to see organizations making donation pleas which specifically ask for a dollar.  I remember recently a reader posted a link to a plea from Olympic Animal Sanctuary where they asked each FB fan to donate 48 cents.  These sorts of pleas plainly give permission to donors to contribute a small amount of money.  For various reasons, many people seem hesitant to donate small amounts, especially when it’s not a relatively anonymous act (such as dropping change into a donation jar).  If you donate online or by check, your personal information is forever attached to your donation and that seems to unsettle some would-be donors.

I am here to announce that now and forever, you not only have permission to donate a dollar (or cents) to the worthy cause of your choice, but to remind you that your donation is very valuable and much appreciated.  There is no shame in donating money to a good cause.  I don’t know how that notion ever came to be but let’s kill it with fire.  Donating money is a selfless act of kindness and anyone who is able to do it should be proud of their contribution.

99% of us must live within our means and budget our expenses.  In today’s economy, that means many of us have very small amounts of money available to consider for donation.  If you are able to budget a dollar a day/week/month for donation to a charitable organization, good on you.  And thank you.

Novartis Animal Health has ceased production of Interceptor, Sentinel and several other drugs manufactured in its plant in Lincoln, Neb., while the facility undergoes “process and compliance improvement activities,” a spokesman for the company confirmed today.

I buy Interceptor for Mulder, my CHD (Compulsive Herding Dog) since she has white feet.  As far as I know, there is no other product on the market that contains only the active ingredient in Interceptor (milbemycin oxime).  I hope the stoppage will be short-lived.

On Thursday night, police officers stormed into the Purple Hearted Puppies Animal shelter in Summerdale. They were on a rescue mission.

Officials said inside were more than 200 dogs, cats, and horses which had gone without food and water for two weeks.

The mother and adult daughter who reportedly operated Purple Hearted Puppies left town 2 weeks ago, leaving hundreds of caged pets to fend for themselves.  There was plenty of food in bags and cans right outside the cages, but no one came to distribute the food.  Dozens of pets starved to death with food in sight:

On a bag of food, claw marks were clearly seen where cats desperately tried to open it.

Outside, dogs resorted to eating grass and digging holes to allow water to pool, so they had something to drink.

When officers got inside the place, they started throwing food into all the cages as fast as they could.  Some of the dogs had resorted to cannibalism.

Many of the animals were found lying on their own feces. Some had to drink their own urine.

One dog was found in a pool of blood.

The owners say they had a worker who was supposed to be caring for the pets and had been checking in daily to let them know all was well.  Police checked out the story and say the worker quit 3 weeks ago and has documented evidence proving the women were aware he wasn’t taking care of their pets anymore.  Both women have been charged with animal cruelty and additional charges are expected.  A number of pets had to be euthanized due to the neglect.

In one of the videos, you can see an officer trying to pour dry cat food into a cage and the cats are desperately reaching out and mewing – it’s heartbreaking.

Several organizations are helping the pets including the Baldwin Co Humane Society and Red Rover.  I’m sure they could use donations and fosters/adopters to help these poor pets.

HSUS produces a print magazine for shelters called Shelter Pages (which they are preparing to publish online) which they describe as “your ultimate guide to the equipment, supplies and services you need”.  This is the cover of the current issue (click to enlarge):

When you look at the sweet cat face on the cover, you are probably so excited to look inside to find what equipment and supplies you can buy for her (well, for kitties like her at your shelter).  Here’s one!

Trust is everything.  As a shelter, the public trusts you to protect this kitty from harm, to take good care of her and to find her a good home.  The public trusts you not to inject her with Fatal Plus.  And of course the cat trusts you too – with her life.

But if you are a kill shelter which needlessly kills healthy/treatable pets like the kitty pictured here, you’re going to need more than Fatal Plus – especially if you are a high volume pet slaughter facility.  The HSUS magazine has your back:

When you enlarge the page above, you’ll see that HSUS has placed an ad for its own program called “Pets for Life” next to an ad for a pet incinerator.  The juxtaposition might seem odd to some but obviously HSUS was fine with it.  And it does fit right in with their say-one-thing-while-doing-another approach to pet sheltering.

The below incinerator ad touts a claim that it’s a “great revenue builder”. I was curious how much revenue HSUS generated by selling ads for pet killing supplies in this magazine. A reader’s request to HSUS for advertising rates went unanswered. But I assume they don’t give away ad space for free.

Out the doggie door and into the incinerator.

Does anyone know how much money HSUS makes off these ads for pet killing supplies and how they spend that dough?  We know it’s not on animal sheltering of course but I do wonder how this money gets disbursed.

(Thank you to an anonymous reader for scanning these pages for me.)

Julie has her own Facebook photo album with 71 photos. 

Being fostered in Yanceyville, NC.

2+ years old, Hound/mix 57 lbs
Julie loves people and dogs. laid back and calm. House, crate,leash trained, UTD on shots, spayed, HW+ but has been on “slow kill treatment for 6 months” and doing great. does well with basic commands. trained “Pet Safe Fence”, playful with dogs, no aggression.

My contact information is:

Dot Kirby

dittodotcom@embarqmail.com

(Yanceyville, NC is 7 miles south of Danville, VA)

Julie's head is available for adoption.

Plays well with others.

Virginians: Proposed legislation would make it illegal for shelters to kill animals if rescue groups are willing to save them. Please contact members of the Agriculture Committee and urge a Yes vote. You can find their e-mails here: http://bit.ly/wRhiGf

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Kitteh has extra toes (totally awesome super fun time the feet cat!) and UPAWS is not even charging extra for him.

Merlin needs a home!

www.youtube.com

Homeless cat for adoption at UPAWS

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YesBiscuit via Helping Tipton County Animal Shelter Animals

Surrey’s alma mater shelter. They need beds to get the dogs up off the concrete.

Donate to Tipton county animal shelter in brighton, Tennessee | Kuranda Dog Beds

kuranda.com

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YesBiscuit via No Kill Coalition

Pets Alive Blog » ASCPA – steps up, acknowledges and FIXES

petsalive.com

I think that most of you have followed the story of Gloria. Gloria was a cat that was abandoned at an ASPCA mobile clinic about a month ago. The ASPCA turned her over to the ACC in NYC. After three weeks the ACC put her on the kill list and Pets Alive pulled her. We discovered the following mor…

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YesBiscuit via HumaneWatch

HSUS: 9 Things You Need To Know

www.youtube.com

Like this video? Visit HumaneWatch.org to learn more.

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YesBiscuit via Animal Farm Foundation

Nice video but I don’t understand why the dogs aren’t going into total spazz mode, injuring the owner and tearing the house apart. That *is* the normal way, right? Cos that’s what my dogs have been telling me for years.

Welcome Back!

vimeo.com

A house is not a home unless there are dogs to home to. Looking for one? We have plenty! Visit www.animalfarmfoundation.org.

Your choices are:

• In response to the public outcry over the revelation that the Jackson Co pound kills some pets without ever checking them for microchips, director Colleen Macuk offered a policy shift.

• After I posted a photo of a worker at Memphis Animal Services hanging a cat by the neck with tongs, director Matthew Pepper told us we were not seeing what we were seeing.

A worker at MAS hangs a cat in tongs prior to killing.

• Responding to calls for Shawnee AC to publicly post photos of impounded pets online, Russell Frantz, chief of the police department which oversees the pound, blamed Nigerian scammers.

• Bay Co AC pound in FL kills 76% of its pets.  Pound manager Bill Olasin told the local paper he suspects his staff members lie about the reasons they kill such an astronomical number of pets, coding most of the killings as behavioral or medical cases instead of the truth.

But at a recent Animal Control Advisory Committee meeting, these items didn’t get much attention.  Instead, misinformed attendees clamored for mandatory spay-neuter (MSN) laws and even tossed in some wildly misleading (and I’m being generous here) information:

More than 32 states have mandatory spay/neuter laws, with a minimum requirement that all animals adopted from a shelter be spayed or neutered, said Lisa Frost, an Ashland attorney and shelter volunteer.

Frost urged the committee to move forward in implementing a mandatory spay/neuter program to help curb pet overpopulation and reduce the numbers of feral, stray and abandoned animals who are euthanized.

Where to begin?  There is no such thing as pet overpopulation.  The danger to community pets in this country lies primarily with the agencies designated to protect them which are instead killing them.

MSN does not reduce/eliminate shelter pet killing and it’s failed everywhere it’s been enacted.  Some examples:

• The city of Los Angeles enacted MSN in 2008 and after the first year, shelter intake and killings were up.  Killings increased after the second year as well.  The third year was yet another failure.
• Intakes and killings increased in Las Vegas after the city enacted MSN in 2010.
• When CA was considering statewide MSN legislation in 2007, the past president of the California Veterinary Medical Association wrote a lengthy letter to the Board detailing his opposition.
• Killings and costs both went up in King Co, WA after MSN was passed in 1992.

As a result, most every major animal welfare group in the country opposes MSN.  That list includes:

• The No Kill Advocacy Center explains “Why Punitive Legislation Fails”
• Alley Cat Allies points out that MSN does not reach most intact cats
• “Best Friends does not support mandatory spay-neuter legislation as a method of pet population control.”
• The “ASPCA is not aware of any credible evidence demonstrating a statistically significant enhancement in the reduction of shelter intake or euthanasia as a result of the implementation of a mandatory spay/neuter law.”
• The American Veterinary Medical Association opposes MSN.

32 states do not have statewide MSN as the article leads the reader to believe.  In fact no states have statewide MSN.  There are various cities and counties around the country which have enacted MSN but they have all failed.  All.

To be clear, MSN is completely different than requiring shelter pets to be neutered.  The article makes it seem as if the two are related.  They are not.

Also during the meeting, another resident told how her cat Max (incredibly, a different cat) had also been trapped by a cat hater, brought to the pound, deemed agggressive and killed before she could find him.

More mess o’ stupid:

There is no county ordinance forbidding cats to be “at large,” said Colleen Macuk, shelter director. But owners are responsible for their animals’ actions. It is also legal for others to bait and trap “nuisance” cats and take them to the county shelter. In fact, it is required that trapped cats be taken to the shelter to prevent the possibility of animal abuse, said Macuk.

“We don’t turn them away because of the alternative,” Macuk said.

Well gee, I wish you would turn them away.  Because the alternative is that they might, ya know - live.  (It’s just this little thing I’m fond of.)

The director explained that Max (the recently killed cat) was deemed aggressive while in the trap so they stuck him with a needle on the end of a pole to kill him.  He was never checked for a microchip.

With the county’s resources, wild and aggressive cats cannot be safely or humanely held to perform this task [of checking for chips] without putting staff at risk of bites or scratches or injury to the cat, Macuk said.

Heaven forfend the poor cat might get injured.  Better to go straight for the kill stick.

Adding to the problem is the lack of manufacturer uniformity regarding chips and scanners. The shelter has two scanners, which are capable of reading all but two types of chips, she said.

Gee, all but two.  That sounds… inadequate.

In 2011, the shelter received 2,883 cats. Only eight were microchipped, Macuk said.

Well but – how do you know, right?  I mean, you’re not checking them all so maybe 8 had chips or maybe 800 did.  Or maybe 2800.  Nobody knows.

“One thing we’ve committed to is that we’re going to scan them all after they’ve been euthanized,” Macuk said, referring to cats that were deemed unsafe for staff to handle.

An excellent plan with only one possible drawback…