If you live near Collinsville, Illinois and are a science fiction fan, come on out to the North American Science Fiction Convention which is also Archon. It’s at the Collinsville Convention Center and runs August 2nd through 5th.

While this is not really a dog event, there are always lots of dog and cat lovers among the authors. And if you like cat collectibles, you’ll find things wou won’t see in most pet stores.

Hope to see you there!

As we boycott Nike’s Vick endorsed shoes let’s not forget the outlets for these shoes that are much closer — the stores that sell them. Most of us can only write letters to some unseen Nike employee. But we can actually talk face-to-face with our local store managers. Let’s tell them personally, and politely, why we won’t buy Nike’s Vick shoes and why we won’t buy other shoes in businesses that carry Vick Nikes.

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Have you ever watched a cat or a few cats interact with life and wonder what was going on in those petable heads? I bet most of us have. We know there is a whole secret life in front of us but those sometimes diffident kitties just won’t deign to share it with us.

Jonnie Paws and Carol Claws have pulled aside the veil and let the rest of us peak into the daily lives, adventures and trials of one cat, Willi Whizkas, and his assorted neighborhood friends in this gentle book, Willi Whizkas: Tall Tales and Lost Lives.

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Recently I’ve heard from some diary-writing Dogsters and Catsters who love sharing their thoughts in their diaries. Only one problem though. Some Dogsters and Catsters have been copying the entries to share with friends and others they think will enjoy the entries. That’s not the problem. In fact, the beauty of Dogster and Catster diaries is that we can share our experiences with every other Dogster and Catster.

The problem is when some folks copy the entries they aren’t making sure that the original writers are being given credit for their creativity. I’m sure none of us wants to not give proper credit so here’s my suggestion:

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The Lazy Dog’s Guide to Enlightenment is like a Zen koan. It is sublimely simple yet almost startling in its clarity. We as humans almost seem to revel in our complexity yet as authors Andrea Hurst and Beth Wilson show, sometimes life is better understood through simplicity. Hurst and Wilson help us see through the eyes of our oftentimes wiser canine friends.

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If you’ve had trouble voting on the Blogger’s Choice Award site you aren’t alone. I’ve heard from lots of Dogster, Catsters and others who’ve said they’ve gone to vote and gotten confused. Here’s how it works:

1. Follow this link to the exact page to vote for this blog.

2. The Blogger’s Choice site uses the official url of every blog so what you’ll see on this page is Dogblog.Dogster.com. While the official name is For Love of Dog Blog, don’t panic or click away. You’re on the right page.

3. About in the middle of the page you’ll see a little box that shows how many votes the blog has already gotten. At the bottom of that box is another box that says, “vote.” Click on that button and one of two things will happen.

If you have not already registered with the Blogger’s Choice site, you will be redirected to a site that asks you to register (Sorry about that but its the only way you can vote). Blogger’s Choice will then send you a confirming email which will let you click back to their site. Then click on “Best Animal Blogger” and look for Dogblog.Dogster.com and click on the link. You will be returned to the first page you entered. Look for the little box again that says “Vote.” This time your vote should be counted.

If you previously registered with Blogger’s Choice. you can just click on the “Vote” box and your vote should be counted.

4. You can vote on as many blogs as you’d like to on a mutlitude of topics.

Big thanks to everyone who has voted for this blog so far and everyone who will be voting for us in the future. Voting goes into very early June but please, if you are planning on voting for this blog, please do so soon. We’re right now in 10th place (which is pretty good considering how many blogs are nominated) but WAY behind the leader. Every vote counts! If even a relatively small percentage of the readers voted for this blog we would win paws down.

So thanks for pushing through the Bloggers Choice site to support this blog. I (and my pack) appreciate every vote!

We didn’t really want to think about where that tainted pet food was going did we? Now we don’t have a choice.

Let’s do a quick recap on what it means to be at the top of the food chain (that’s us). It means that if you eat something made from another animal, you are often also consuming what THEY ate, especially if that something is not normally ingested and passed through the system. I think its pretty safe to say that melamine and other weird chemicals aren’t naturally passed through. The result is that WE get it too!

I’ve been saying this for a while that somehow the pet parents would get tainted food too and now we know how. This is NOT something I want to share with my furbabies!

Thank you corporate agribusiness for bringing us this new disaster! You’re now asking youreself, “why is she blaming corporate agribusiness?” Because family farmers are not usually stupid enough to feed known TAINTED food to their animals. Family farms can be big (check out some of the massive family dairies) but the owners CARE about what goes into their animals. They make the connection between poison in (the food) and poisonous product (milk, meat, whatever) out the other side.

Corporate farms, on the other hand are run by people looking at the bottom line (Gosh, didn’t we just see this with Menu Pet managers and suppliers?). The further away from the animals or crops, the less responsibility anyone feels for the ultimate product.

Its an old thought in management theory to reward people for what you want them to do. Corporate farms rewards their managers for making lots of money for the corporation and forget the harm caused if it can be swept under someone else’s rug. Family farmers feel pride in what they produce and how they care for their farms. Make money, sure, they have to and should make lots of money if they’re feeding the rest of us safe food.

What does this mean for the rest of us who are getting to the point of eating and feeding our dogs dandelions from the yard simply because that’s just about the ONLY things we know don’t have wierd chemicals on them (I don’t use any chemicals on the yard before someone asks)? I don’t know. I use to think people who played Russian Roulette were crazy. Now I feel like every time I feed my pack or myself I’m playing Russian Roulette.

Thanks to Boston.com for this article.

Investigators: Tainted pet food fed to hogs
By Diedtra Henderson, Globe Staff | April 20, 2007

WASHINGTON — Hogs fed pet food rejected as unsuitable for sale ended up eating a product laced with an industrial chemical, federal authorities said yesterday, expanding a food safety investigation that had been primarily focused on cats and dogs.

It remains unclear, however, whether products made from the hogs will be considered safe for human consumption.

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Is there more to this story than we’re seeing in this article? I sure hope so because I must say I’m not too sympathetic to these people. If you know more, please bark in!

As I look at what these people are saying I can’t help but think how absolutely selfish they are! They want dogs but they don’t want to have them as true family members; they want them outside.

And please do not give me this “poor people can’t afford fences” stuff. If you want a dog, you make arrangements. You get a crate and crate the dog inside or you find some other way to bring the dog inside. Ask my neighbor who lives on disability. He’s a sweet, gentle man who adopted a small, stray dog. My neighbor “Bob” has very little money to make is fence “dog-proof” so he went out and blocked up every hole with signs. It doesn’t look great but it does the job and far be it from me to complain because his fence isn’t suburban pretty! And his little girl lives inside with him unless he is in the yard or on the front porch. This is a man with little monetarily but a true love for dogs, and his Baby in particular.

Tethering outside for a short while is not the issue, even though any tethering is immensely dangerous to the tethered dog. That is just a smoke screen.The real issue is people who get a dog then drop him in the front or backyard because they’re tired of him, he got too big to be inside, they want protection (though how anything could protect someone IN the house if they’re chained outside is beyond me), or someone inside just doesn’t like dogs.

Because let’s get real. When people say they want to chain a dog outside, what that means is someone inside doesn’t want the dog inside. Maybe they’re afraid of dogs, maybe they are a neat freak who can’t abide the thought of their white couch getting dog paws on it or maybe they just don’t want the bother of having a dog inside. Whatever the reason, that’s fine. But then you don’t GET a dog. Period. End of question. Get lawn ornaments made of concrete or plastic. Pretty, don’t feed them and they don’t suffer from your indifference and stupidity.

Look, a dog is not a lawn ornament. Dogs are pack animals and MUST have a pack to be healthy. Abandoning and chaining a dog in a backyard every day and night is like taking a young child and locking him in a dark closet for years at a time. Sure, you’re feeding him but what does that to his psyche?

For the child, it makes him psychotic. The same for the dog.

And please do not give me the excuse that poor people must chain their dogs because they have no other options! And don’t try to use this emotional blackmail that if you can’t chain your dog, you’ll just have to turn them in to the shelters. Do you mean to tell me that it is better for a dog to live a tortured life constantly exposed to the elements and abuse from passing adolescents, starving for affection and real interactions? I wouldn’t want to live that way and I’m fairly sure no dog wants that either.

I grew up in the country and I live in a city where I’m surrounded by lots of working class families. Most of those families have dogs and most of those dogs spend their nights inside with their humans. The few who don’t are owned by people who are in mixed marriages with non-animal people (that’s a mixed marriage to me). Their families don’t want the dogs and the owners (these are owners and not guardians or pet parents, mind you) selfishly keep a dog around for the few hours a month THEY want to play with a dog.

Thanks to the Queens Chronicle for this article.

Dog Owners Have Bone To Pick With Vallone
by Joel Weickgenant, Assistant Editor
04/05/2007

Hoping to put a tighter leash on dog-tethering legislation, a group of dog owners held a demonstration last Saturday outside the Astoria law office of Councilman Peter Vallone.

The Dog Federation of New York handed out pink stickers to supporters and asked passers-by to sign petitions to voice their opposition to Vallone’s proposal to ban the tethering of animals for more than three hours within any 12-hour period.

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Just when I thought we were going to have a day with no recalls… Sigh…

I know we’ve been lambasting Menu and the dog food companies caught with their pants down in this fiasco but lets lay some blame on Wal-Mart too. Yes, Wal-Mart.

Why do you think the dog food manufacturers who deal with the big box stores are buying cheaper and cheaper ingredients? They are being leaned on constantly by those stores to sell them the products for less and less. You know those ads where Wal-Mart promises you the lowest prices? Do you know HOW they GET those low prices? They squeeze their suppliers until the suppliers have no room to breathe. They literally tell their suppliers how much they will pay them for their products. That’s right, Wal-Mart tells the people making the products how much they can bill Wal-Mart for the products, including pet food. Now don’t think that Wal-Mart gives a patootie about the supplier staying in business, making enough money to pay their employees, making enough to make a quality product, any of that. Nope! Wal-Mart just wants to make more and more for itself and doesn’t care about the consequences.

What does this have to do with tainted pet food? We got tainted pet food becasue the suppliers are greedy, yes, but also because if that supplier (Menu and their parent company Procter & Gamble) want to do business with the single largest retailer in the world, they have to play by their rules. And their rules are to provide the cheapest product legally possible. And if you’re a super large company (like P & G) and you have to keep hitting those quarterly profits you MUST deal with Wal-Mart. Smaller pet food companies like some of the good ones we’ve heard named in the comments and on the blog don’t even want to speak to Wal-Mart because they know trying to feed Wal-Mart’s appetites for profits will mean they don’t feed pets well. They will have to cut corners.

So now we’re facing the consequences of greed, Wal-Mart’s, Menu Food’s and whoever at Proctor & Gamble approved the importation and using of food stuffs from a country known for inadequate controls on their safety and quality.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for capitalism that works. But this pet food recall is the direct result of a really big game of Monopoly with Wal-Mart holding all the best property and the bank. They set the tone for all other major retailers and grocers. Whatever Wal-Mart does, the others must do as well or fall by the wayside.

Our furbabies have been sacrificed to feed this evil and dangerous game of follow-the-leader. Remember that the next time you hear Wal-Mart’s constant ads say, “Always low prices.” The prices may be low but what are the real costs?

Thanks to CBS News for this recall update.

Dog Biscuits Added To Pet Food Recall
Dog Biscuits Made By Sunshine Mills Under The Ol’Roy Brand Recalled

(AP) The recall of pet foods and treats contaminated with an industrial chemical expanded Thursday to include dog biscuits made by an Alabama company and sold by Wal-Mart under the Ol’Roy brand.

The Food and Drug Administration said the manufacturer, Sunshine Mills Inc., is recalling dog biscuits made with imported Chinese wheat gluten. Testing has revealed the wheat gluten, a protein source, was contaminated with melamine, used to make plastics and other industrial products.

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Isn’t it about time all our states (and countries) pass laws against chaining dogs? Hasn’t it been shown time and time again this is just another form of dog abuse and a sure fire way to make dogs psychotic enough to become dangerous?

I came back from a trip to find one of my neighbors had decided to chain his dog in his backyard. It broke my heart to see this lovely German Shepherd/Rottweiller Mix chained and unable to reach me through his usual hole in the fence. All I could do was pass him treats over the fence and cry. We just stood there looking at each other through the fence. I knew he wanted his usual hugs and pets and I so wanted to give them to him!

I couldn’t let that situation stand. I had talked to this neighbor before about chaining and knew he wasn’t a bad man; just uneducated when it came to dealing with animals. Why he even has a dog is beyond me but that’s not my decision. So I ordered signs and pamphlets from Dogs Deserve Better. I checked on my furry friend even more than usual to make sure he had food and clean water. I couldn’t reach him but I could stand on my side of the fence and speak to him to let him know someone cared. As soon as the DDB package got to me I posted several signs on my lawn so my neighbor could see them and I dropped a pamphlet on his truck.

I had to leave the next day on another business trip. I worried the whole time I was gone. I wasn’t worried about my pack; they have a house to themselves with people checking on them, playing with them and generally keeping them amused. I worried about my other furry friend, the one I had left on a chain. It tormented me to think of him on that chain.

I was delighted to see him greet me at his usual hole in the fence when I drove up! My neighbor had been guilted into releasing my friend! See, the man isn’t bad; he’s just like a lot of people who need to be taught why chaining a dog is so bad. It’s not something many people learn at home and definitely not at school. So where do they learn it? They learn it from us. We have to look for ways to explain the evils of chaining.

And we have to look for ways to pass laws against it. We need to tell our elected officials we are watching and we expect them to pass laws to protect those among us who cannot speak — our furred friends!

Thanks to DogFlu.ca for this post.

The Humane Society of Hall County in Georgia is asking city council to impose a ban on dog chaining

Rick Aiken, of the Humane Society of Hall County in Georgia, appeared yesterday in front of the Gainesville City Council to urge them to consider an outright ban on the practice of chaining dogs.

A chained dog is a danger to itself and to everyone around it, which is something the county animal shelter is very aware of.

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