Petville

Coming soon: a GPS pet locator

AKC Companion Animal Recovery (CAR) and Positioning Animals Worldwide (PAW) will offer the Spotlight GPS pet locator.

Spotlight is the only product of its kind that couples the tracking services provided through GPS technology with the recovery services of AKC CAR.

Spotlight says: "Locate your pet on the SpotLight website (SpotLightGPS.com) using your cell phone, smart phone or personal computer. Or you can text message us from your cell phone, or give us a call at 1.888.DOG-LOC8, and we can tell you where your pet is located – anytime, anywhere in the U.S. with pinpoint accuracy. You can even receive turn-by-turn directions to your lost dog sent to your mobile device and/or your personal computer."

Additional features of Spotlight include:

• Simple set up: designate your "Safe Spot" from your computer by clicking on a satellite image
• Small and lightweight: SpotLight attaches to your dog’s existing collar for universal and easy wear
• Removable, rechargeable battery for hassle free protection and safety round the clock
• Bright LED beacon helps owner locate pet at night—from up to 100 yards away
• Rescue "If Found" button connects lost dog with AKC CAR’s Recovery Team and the owner
• Unique collar tag identification
• Recovery assistance: 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year from AKC CAR

Largest Dog Fighting Raid and Rescue: Nearly 400 Pit Bulls Seized

The Humane Society of Missouri, working with numerous federal agencies, coordinated the rescue of and is currently sheltering 378 dogs suspected of being used for illegal dog fighting. Yesterday federal and state officers made arrests and seized dogs in five states including Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. Additional arrests were made in Arkansas and Mississippi.

ANIMAL RESCUE, TRANSPORT AND TRIAGE
Under contract with the USDA’s Office of the Inspector General, the Humane Society of Missouri Animal Cruelty Task Force, working with partners from the ASPCA and Humane Society of the United States, is coordinating the multi-location effort to safely remove, transport and shelter the dogs. All pit bulls seized in Missouri and Illinois will be taken to a secure facility where the Humane Society of Missouri will conduct triage of each animal, document any evidence of dog fighting and oversee care for and shelter of the animals. All animals will receive a complete veterinary examination and necessary on-going veterinary care. The dogs will be cared for by the Humane Society of Missouri and its partners until final disposition by the United States District Court.

DONATIONS Donate to the Humane Society of Missouri Animal Cruelty Fund Supplies needed: large box fans, sheets, full-size towels, blankets, shredded paper, newspaper, creamy peanut butter and sturdy toys. Donations can be dropped off at the Humane Society of Missouri Headquarters at 1201 Macklind Avenue, St. Louis, MO 63110

ADVOCACY Contact your state legislator and let them know you are concerned about the issue of dog fighting in your area. Click here to find your legislator. If you live in Missouri you can also get involved through the Missouri Alliance for Animal Legislation.

Dolphin 56: A lifetime of playful antics along the East Coast

Rod Houck with "Dolphin 56" last summer off Island Beach State Park, NJ.

Dolphin 56's history goes back to August 28, 1979 when he was captured along with five other dolphins near the NASA Causeway in the Indian River Lagoon in Central Florida. At the time he was captured, Dolphin 56 was 238 cm long and weighed 145 kg. Based on growth layers in one of his teeth, he was estimated at about 12 years old.

Dolphin 56 is a wild bottlenose dolphin with a passion for freshly caught fish and a reputation for cheekily sticking his crooked snout into fishermen's boats and playing with anyone who will pet his slick skin.

His fans say meeting him in the middle of the ocean is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. He has blogs, websites and a Facebook page devoted to his travels.

Over the last 30 years, Dolphin 56 sightings have been recorded from Florida to Long Island. The bottlenose, whose dorsal fin was branded with a 56 for a research study in the 1970s, has spent his life swimming up and down the East Coast chasing down any boater or kayaker who might toss him a fish.

Dolphin observers at Hilton Head Island (300 miles away from his "home") had seen Dolphin 56 in April of 1997. He kept going north and spent the summer of 1997 in the North Carolina-Virginia area. He "disappeared" in the winter an reappeared in Virginia. He again moved northward as far as Sheepshead Bay, New York, but spent most of the summer in the Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey area. As the winter approached he moved southward to North Carolina and again "disappeared" during the winter. He reappeared off Virginia Beach, Virginia, in March 1999. From there he moved southward and spent the summer in North Carolina and northern South Carolina.

The Marine Mammal Strandling Center in Brigantine has documented more than 80 Dolphin 56 sightings in New Jersey in the last decade, including one earlier this month when the bottlenose was spotted begging boaters for fish in the bay in Avalon, Cape May County.

Dolphins have an average life span of 25 years - and a maximum life span of about 50 years. Dolphin 56 is estimated at 42 years old!

While Dolphin 56 often "begs" for food, he is perfectly capable of catching fish on his own and, since dolphins are protected by the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, it is illegal for people to feed wild dolphins. Feeding wild dolphins can lead to fines up to $20,000 and one year in jail, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service, the federal agency that oversees the nation's marine habitats.

Before you swat... think about a humane bug catcher

PETA is sending President Barack Obama a Katcha Bug Humane Bug Catcher, a device that allows users to trap a house fly and then release it outside.

"We support compassion even for the most curious, smallest and least sympathetic animals," PETA spokesman Bruce Friedrich said Wednesday. "We believe that people, where they can be compassionate, should be, for all animals."

During an interview for CNBC at the White House on Tuesday, a fly intruded on Obama's conversation with correspondent John Harwood.

"Get out of here," the president told the pesky insect. When it didn't, he waited for the fly to settle, put his hand up and then smacked it dead.

Maybe the White House needs a few cats. Just a thought.

Pet Pharma: the "humanization" trend

The practice of prescribing medications designed for humans to animals has grown substantially over the past decade and a half, and pharmaceutical companies have recently begun experimenting with a more direct strategy: marketing behavior-modification and “lifestyle” drugs specifically for pets.

America’s animals, it seems, have very American health problems. More than 20 percent of our dogs are overweight; Pfizer’s Slentrol was approved by the F.D.A. last year as the country’s first canine anti-obesity medication. Dogs live 13 years on average, considerably longer than they did in the past; Pfizer’s Anipryl treats cognitive dysfunction so that absent-minded pets can remember the location of the supper bowl or doggy door. For lonely dogs with separation anxiety, Eli Lilly brought to market its own drug Reconcile last year. The only difference between it and Prozac is that Reconcile is chewable and tastes like beef.

Doggy diet pills may be plainly absurd, but scientists in an expanding field known as behavioral pharmacology say that the combination of new drug therapies and progressive training techniques can solve problems that in the past almost always resulted in euthanasia. The supposed effectiveness of psychiatric medicines in treating mood and behavior issues is prompting new questions in the centuries-old debate over what, exactly, separates mankind from the beasts. If the strict Cartesian view were true — that animals are essentially flesh-and-blood automatons, lacking anything resembling human emotion, memory and consciousness — then why do animals develop mental illnesses that eerily resemble human ones and that respond to the same medications? What can behavioral pharmacology teach us about animal minds and, ultimately, our own?

Marketers have a new name for the age-old tendency to view animals as furry versions of ourselves: “humanization,” a trend that is fueling the explosive growth of the pet industry and the rise of modern pet pharma. Americans forked over $49 billion for pet products and services last year, up $11.5 billion from 2003; other than consumer electronics, pet products are the fastest-growing retail segment. The market expansion is being driven both by more pets and by more spending per pet, especially by affluent baby boomers whose children have graduated from college. A third of the total spending, and the fastest-growing category, is health care, with treatments formerly reserved for people — root canals, chemotherapy, liposuction, mood pills — being administered to pets.

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