Strollerderby : animal cruelty

Woman Tapes Dogs' Mouths, Gives Birth

Amy Kuras — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 21:24:00 GMT

I am on record as not especially loving our family dog, especially post-baby: she smells, she vomits if she drinks water too fast or eats people food, which she steals from the table or the counter if we’re not looking, and she barks piteously when we leave the house.

And after a particularly hair-raising escaping incident that had our deeply kind friends out at midnight and again at 5 am searching for her, finding friends to dog-sit is a little bit, um, challenging.

But I’ve never considered resorting to this: a woman in Johnston, RI taped her two pit bull’s mouths shut while she checked into the hospital for two days to give birth to her son.

Animal control finally found the dogs after neighbors reported no one entering or leaving her apartment (that’s right, she had two pit bulls, which are not small dogs, in an apartment) for two days and the sound of whimpering dogs. The dogs were emaciated when they were taken away by animal control.

Let’s just think about the wisdom of this woman: not one, but two, pit bulls in an apartment soon to contain a baby. Yes, I know pit bulls can be wonderful dogs when treated well, but somehow I am guessing these dogs were more likely not. Owner thinks this is an appropriate way to treat dogs – what happens when she needs to step out on the baby? And this is a 20-year-old with so little common sense, cash, or social support that she couldn’t find someone to care for her dogs while she was gone.

She’s been charged with two counts of animal cruelty. Let’s hope she’s convicted and her sentence includes some parenting classes lest her kid gets a similar level of care, huh?

Woman Clones Her Pit Bull—Five Times

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 23:30:00 GMT

While this stor y will hopefully never be remotely related to parenting human babies, this woman’s quotes are so priceless that I just had to share. Plus, she’s essentially paying to torture puppies, and she should get some backlash for it, even if it’s only of the indignant blogger variety.

Losing a pet is awful. No one knows this better than I, who cried for days after my goldfish died. (Don’t even get me started on my dog.) So I feel for Bernann McKinney, who took the loss of her beloved pit bull Booger quite hard. Still, I can’t exactly condone her method of grieving. McKinney recently became the first person in the world to pay to clone a pet. After selling her house to raise the necessary sum—when defying death, one must make sacrifices—McKinney had a South Korean cloning company create five puppies using a piece of the original Booger’s ear.

McKinney couldn’t be happier with Booger McKinney, Booger Lee, Booger Ra, Booger Hong, and Booger Park. “I dream of the day, some day, when everyone can afford to clone their pet because losing a pet is a terrible, terrible loss to anyone,” she said.

Let us pray that McKinney’s dream is never realized. Cloning carries a high risk of miscarriage and still birth, and those animals that do survive are usually plagued with health problems. As RSPCA scientist Penny Hawkins put it, “I can’t believe that any true dog lover would condone causing suffering to dogs and wasting their lives for such a trivial and selfish purpose, particularly when animal shelters worldwide have thousands of dogs who need loving homes.” I'm pretty sure Booger would agree.

Photo: Getty Images

5 Reasons Dogs and Kids DO Mix

5 Reasonds Dogs and Kids DON'T Mix

What Would PETA Do? 101 Dalmatians – Giveaway!

editors — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Disney is letting another one out of the vault tomorrow, March 4th and this time it’s those lovable dogs fingered for fashion in 101 Dalmatians. This Disney classic and cautionary tale of over-breeding is available on DVD in 2-Disc platinum style, and we’ve got some to give away! What do you get with the limited edition package? Fun artwork, enhanced picture and sound and trivia like this:

If you added up all the spots on every drawing or cel of all 99 puppies plus Pongo and Perdita, you'd have a total of 6,469,952 spots.

That’s a lot of excruciatingly detailed pen work! Check out this clip of Cruella de Vil attempting to enforce her evil plan, and enter at babblecontest@gmail.com to win with the subject line: '"I live for fur. I worship fur". – April Peveteaux

Tiger Attack At SF Zoo

Kelly Mills — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 13:30:00 GMT

If you read any news at all, you probably know that over in my neck of the woods a Siberian tiger named Tatiana escaped from her enclosure/cage/cell and killed 17-year-old Carlos Sousa Jr., then seriously wounded two other young men. Best guess so far is that she jumped over the wall erected to keep her and her kind away from the humans, tore out the boy's throat, then tracked his two companions and cornered them near the cafe. Police, who responded to the call that an animal had escaped, found Tatiana on top of one of the boys. They distracted her with patrol car lights, then opened fire with .40-caliber handguns, firing an unknown number of rounds and killing her.

The attack has raised a bunch of questions, including speculation about whether the boys taunted the tiger and whether zoos are humane and if tigers should be kept in captivity. For me right now, I'm less interested in whether the boys said Tatiana's mom was a fireplace rug or even the ethics of zoos until we really establish one question in particular: How did a 350-pound tiger escape? Zoo officials have admitted the wall surrounding the tiger enclosure was four feet lower than recommended national standard. Hey, weren't alot of these places built a while back? Anyone verified the safety of most of these animal pens lately? Not to be all scary-lady, but I'd feel a little bit more comfortable knowing that zoos aren't just flimsy boxes around wild and stir-crazy animals. Because, you know, kids do go there and all. And we'd like to have our leisure activities be as safe as a sled ride through a wolf pack.