Kaylee & Jayne, x-mas 2006

So. When last we talked of my furkids, I told you how my husband and I came to adopt Ralphie, Peedee and O-Ren – none of whom were considered “less adoptable,” or at least not at the time of their adoption. In fact, I doubt that each dog’s respective rescue group would have had much trouble placing them, had Shane and I not come along. We both recognized this, and felt rather guilty about it. So when we decided to adopt dog number four (and possibly five!), we resolved to find a “special” dog – a senior, someone with medical or behavioral issues, maybe even a bonded pair of dogs.

Our first choice was a pair of teeny lil’ rat terrier sisters, Bella and…I forget the other dog’s name. They were older adults with behavior issues, namely, anxious temperaments and a fear of men. They also needed to be adopted together – strike three. Ultimately, the adoption didn’t pan out; we were never able to meet the girls, in fact, because their fear of men was so great that their foster mom had more or less decided to adopt them herself. When we inquired about them, they’d already spent a few years in their foster home and were still fearful in the foster dad’s presence. I can see why mom gave up any hope of rehoming them, dog bless her heart.

So we hit Petfinder again, specifically in search of a pair of dog-friends who had to be adopted together. Unfortunately, Petfinder’s search parameters don’t easily allow for such a search (or even easy browsing), so when looking for a pair, you really just have to hope that they share a single listing. (Or else be prepared to pour over every single profile!) There really weren’t many bonded pairs of dogs listed at the time; besides Bella and her sister, Kaylee and Jayne were the only smallish dog-friends up for adoption. So, three years ago this September, we went out to Lexington, MO – about an hour’s drive from where we lived – to visit them.

From Kaylee’s Petfinder listing

Kaylee and Jayne originally came to Friends of the Friendless with a third dog, Paige, roughly six months before we met them. The three had been abandoned in a home when the tenants moved out; the landlord found them, several weeks later, starving and in rough shape. Jayne had heartworm, while Kaylee suffered from some serious dental problems, the result of both bad genes and a lifetime’s worth of neglect.

Curiously, Jayne had already been spayed by her previous owners, while Kaylee had not. From the looks of her sagging belly and, shall we say “well used” nipples, Kaylee had obviously birthed a few litters during her eight years. Jayne, in contrast, doesn’t appear to have ever had pups – odd because Jayne is a classically handsome terrier, while Kaylee is…not. (I joke that she’s so ugly, she’s back to being cute, much like a rhinoceros or ground mole. I totally mean that in a nice way, though.)

From Jayne’s Petfinder listing

Paige had since been adopted, while Kaylee and Jayne languished in the shelter/rescue. Supposedly, an older women had committed to adopting them, but died while on a cruise she’d already booked and had to take before she could bring them home. (Shane is convinced that this is the most elaborate cop-out, ever.) So I can only imagine what their foster mom, Gina, thought when we committed to adopting them, but said we’d be unable to bring them home until after we got back from an already-scheduled trip to New York! Unlike their would-be fairy dogmother, Shane and I kept our word; we welcomed Kaylee and Jayne into our home several weeks later, on September 30, 2006.

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As I mentioned a few weeks ago, today is the first (?) annual Adopt-a-Less-Adoptable-Pet Day! Petfinder created the holiday in order to raise awareness about animals who have an extra difficult time finding their forever homes, for a whole host of reasons.

Among cats and dogs, animals who face added obstacles to being rehomed include:

- Seniors and adults;
- Animals with medical issues, including disability and disease;
- Animals with emotional or behavioral issues, such as shyness or a nervous temperament;
- Animals who must be the only nonhuman in the home;
- Bonded animals who must be adopted as a pair – or, worse still, a trio, quartet, etc.;
- Cats with feline leukemia (a transmissible disease);
- Black dogs (for additional information, please see my post at Change.org on Black Dog Syndrome); and
- Dogs who belong to a so-called “dangerous” breed (pit bulls being the “dangerous” breed de jour).

If you plan on adopting an animal companion (or have adopted in the past), congratulations! With this one simple act, you become a hero to two animals – the one you rescued from a pound, shelter, rescue group or sanctuary, and also to the animal for whom you’re freed up a space in said pound, shelter, rescue group or sanctuary. According to the HSUS, between 3 and 4 million cats and dogs are killed (note: not “euthanized”) in U.S. shelters every year. While adopting one or two or even ten animals might seem a drop in the bucket, it makes a world of difference to the animals whose lives you’ve saved by adopting instead on buying.

But, as always, there’s more you can do! In regards to animal adoption, go out of your way to choose a cat or dog who meets the above criteria. Naturally, you may not be able to deal with all of these issues; for example, if you already live with one healthy cat, a FIV+ feline is out of the question. Instead of focusing on what you cannot do, however, concentrate on how you can help animals in need. For example, adopting a black dog doesn’t take any more effort than adopting a multi-colored one.

If your home is already filled to capacity, you can urge friends and family members to adopt – and to consider adopting a “less adoptable” animal, to boot. Or make a donation to any one of the hundreds+ animal rescue organizations across the country (and the globe) – many of which specifically focus on a population of “less adoptable” animals, be they companion, farmed, or “exotic”/wild animals.

Of course, you can also help by spreading the word. Make this Adopt-a-Less-Adoptable-Pet Day a success by linking to Petfinder on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc., and by telling the world about your “special” kids!

Speaking of which, part two of my family’s own story is coming up next!

[Pictured above is a very young me, circa 1997 - note the leather purse, ugh! on each count - with two of my family's own "less adoptable" girls:

Shannon the black mutt, one half of a 6-year-old pair of sisters we adopted from the local humane society (her sister, Shana, had already passed when this photo was taken); and

Shadow the pit bull mix, who had been hit by a car and had a crushed leg when we found her.

As with all our kids, they were both pure awesomeness, and I miss them more than words can say.]

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I’m usually one to roll my eyes at pseudo-holidays – National Hot Dog Day, anyone?; and, hell, even some of the “real” holidays like Easter and Thanksgiving – but I’m pleasantly surprised to see that Petfinder has designated August 12 Adopt-a-Less-Adoptable-Pet Day:

To help senior, special-needs and other often-overlooked pets find homes, We’ve named August 12 Adopt-a-Less-Adoptable- Pet Day. Visit our special section to:

* Get widgets to help pets find homes
* Find out which pets have it hardest
* Read touching adoption stories
* Learn why “less adoptable” pets rule!

And help us spread the word: Some pets are “less adoptable,” but they’re just as lovable!

Which animals have it hardest, you wonder?

Big black dogs. FIV+ cats. Senior pets. Special-needs pets. To help these and other often-overlooked pets find homes, Petfinder has named August 12 “Adopt-a-Less-Adoptable-Pet Day.”

We asked our shelter and rescue group members: Which pets are the hardest to place?

Here’s what they said:

* 30% senior/older pets
* 15% pets with medical problems
* 13% victims of breed prejudice
* 10% shy pets
* 10% those who need to be the only pet

“Pit Bulls are the No. 1 dog put down in our local shelters. There are too many of them, and there is never enough time to get them all adopted.”

“There’s also a ‘big black cat syndrome’! Hard to believe, but many people are still biased against black cats, especially if they’re big.”

“Once a dog is past 1-2 years old, people flat-out expect it to be housetrained. They consider the dog too old to be trained if they’re not housetrained by 2.”

(Links mine.)

Speciesist language aside (HIM! People expect HIM to be housetrained!), I love the idea of promoting not just adoption, but the adoption of “special needs” animals, who usually fare worse in shelters and rescues alike. (Though, happily, some rescues do specialize in hard-to-place animals, while others provide them permanent sanctuary; Old Dog Haven is a personal favorite!)

My own family is a mix of “normal” and “special needs” animals.

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This is extent of interaction allowed between piglets and their mothers “living” on modern factory farms:

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After January’s “fur hag” post, I’d like follow up with several examples of anti-fur ads that I like – albeit, with a few caveats.*

While I’m rather ambivalent when it comes to PETA’s nude “I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur,” “Turn Your Back on Fur,” (and similar) campaigns, I quite like anti-fur ads which depict fur as the bloody, murderous mess that it is. (In theory, anyway…hence the forthcoming caveats.)

For example, this recent series from IndyAct:

Each ad features a thin, white, conventionally attractive, stylishly dressed woman, decked out in a fur coat which once belonged to various animals. The knife-wielding women are covered in blood spatters – bright red blood, everywhere. The woman in the first ad is, inexplicably, rubbing the knife along her chin, as if in contemplation of fellatio (?). Needless to say, I prefer the other two ads in the series.

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Last week, I started reading Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s The Pig Who Sang to the Moon: The Emotional World of Farm Animals. Well, not so much “reading” as “listening to the audiobook.” (Hey, how else am I supposed to occupy myself while I clean the house?) I read Masson’s When Elephants Weep a long time ago – back when I was a newbie vegetarian – and enjoyed it immensely. I figured I’d like The Pig Who Sang to the Moon as well, and so far, so good.

Masson structured the book so that each chapter covers a different species of farmed animals: pigs, chickens, sheep, goats, cows and ducks, in that order. He juxtaposes information about the animals’ emotional lives – thoughts, feelings, sentience, capacity for joy and sorrow, etc. – with the brutal reality for the vast majority of these “owned” animals. Treated like milk and meat machines, dehumanized and objectified, their individuality obscured and their needs ignored, farmed animals suffer the worst of humanity’s whims and wants.

Though I’m only about a third of the way in, a theme which keeps resurfacing is the extra-special abuses (the collective) we mete out to the female members of the species. With brutal precision, farmers routinely turn the reproductive systems of female animals against them, finding newer and more callous ways in which to exploit them as science and technology allow. This isn’t to suggest that males don’t suffer as well – they do. But their suffering isn’t as prolonged or extensive as that of their female counterparts; veal calves, for example, are tortured for sixteen weeks and then, “mercifully,” (relatively speaking) slaughtered. Their sisters, meanwhile, are exploited as baby and milk machines for three to four years, after which they become ground beef. First, their babies and their babies’ food is stolen from them; and, finally, their lives are snatched away as well.

By the mere fact of their sex, sows, hens, ewes, does, nannies, cows and heifers – not to mention mares, bitches, jennies, jills, etc. – are ripe for especially brutal and prolonged exploitation. Oftentimes, this involves a constant cycle of pregnancy, birth, nursing and baby-napping, culminating with the female’s own death when she’s no longer able to breed or “produce” to her “owner’s” satisfaction.

Certainly, we recognize that the theft of a mother’s child is an atrocity when the victims are human mothers and children. At the same time, we argue that non-human animals deserve no rights because they are mere brutes, “lesser” beings, ruled by instinct and instinct alone. Yet, what is the drive to reproduce and parent if not an evolutionary instinct? And if we follow the popular line of reasoning – i.e., animals are creatures of instinct – does it not stand to reason that the maternal instinct is especially powerful in non-human animals?

100 million pigs are birthed, raised and slaughtered for “pork” annually – just in the United States. 100 million piglets are stolen from their mothers. Mothers who, without a doubt, grieve for their disappeared babies. These poor mothers are forced to relive the trauma over and over, as each new litter is stolen from them. This is what I mean when I say that a female’s – a mother’s – suffering must surely be the most painful to bear.

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This C. David Coats quote (from the preface to his 1991 book, Old MacDonald’s Factory Farm) has been floating around the animal rights blogspherz for a few weeks now. While I think Coats is dead-on in his analysis, his choice of phrasing strikes me as a little…curious, shall we say.

Take a look:

Isn’t man an amazing animal? He kills wildlife – birds, kangaroos, deer, all kinds of cats, coyotes, beavers, groundhogs, mice, foxes, and dingoes – by the millions in order to protect his domestic animals and their feed. Then he kills domestic animals by the billions and eats them. This in turn kills man by the millions, because eating all those animals leads to degenerative – and fatal – health conditions like heart disease, kidney disease, and cancer. So then man tortures and kills millions more animals to look for cures for these diseases. Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals. Meanwhile, some people are dying of sad laughter at the absurdity of man, who kills so easily and so violently, and once a year sends out a card praying for “Peace on Earth.”

In the course of his patriarchy blaming, Coats assumes the language of the very patriarchy he’s indicting. Specifically, he continually employs variants of the term mankind when he’s actually referring to humankind: man is an amazing animal; he slaughters wildlife so that he can raise and eat “food” animals; man suffers from dietary-induced health conditions, which leads man to torture millions of “lab” animals in search of cures for these self-inflicted illnesses, and so on.

In fact, Coats only switches from androcentric to gender-neutral terms near the end of the paragraph – when he transitions from describing the actions of the oppressor (man) to the consequences of these actions on other human animals. To wit: “millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition”; “[m]eanwhile, some people are dying of sad laughter” (“at the absurdity of man,” natch).

Possibly, this is an unintentional example of casual sexism – i.e., Coats accidentally employed largely androcentric verbiage when writing this preface. Since this isn’t primarily a feminist blog*, allow me to explain why Coats’s choice of terminology is problematic. By using language which explicitly refers to men – necessarily, at the exclusion of women – we erase women from the public sphere, from our written and oral histories, from our cultural narratives. These seemingly innocuous, male-specific terms have very real, very harmful practical consequences. Language shapes the way we think; words matter. In eliminating women from our discourse, so too do we eliminate them from our consciousness – shoving them from the public (political) to the private (domestic) sphere. “Man,” “mankind” and the like simply are not inclusive, universal terms for “men and women.” Nor is “convenience” an excuse – it’s not very hard to use “humankind” in place of “man” or “mankind,” “people” in place of “men,” etc.

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Valentines Day? Meh. I’ve never been very big on the holiday. Through most of high school, I was boyfriend-less, and thus predictably unimpressed with February 14th. The husband and I have celebrated it on and off over the years, but mostly in a half-assed kind of way: veg*n chocolates here, a dinner in there. One problem I’ve always had with V-Day is the idea of forced, scheduled romanticism. Why should the Mr. and I only go on dates or surprise one another with gifts on February 14th, eh? And why do so on a day in which the prices are all jacked up and the theaters and restaurants, obscenely crowded?

Additionally, in the few years since my budding feminism has blossomed into a thorny, black, man-hating rose, I’ve actively resisted engaging in a commercialized, wasteful and largely heteronormative holiday. Diamonds? Roses? Tacky Bandit Bears? Bargained sex? IBTP.

So, in keeping with my previous re- evaluation and -imagining of the wintry holidays, I’ve been thinking about celebrating Valentines Day in a different way. While I try to pamper my furkids – i.e., my dogs – on a daily basis, I thought it might be fun to celebrate them this Saturday. After all, there is no doggeh equivalent of “Mother’s Day” or “Grandparent’s Day” – so why not transform a lackluster holiday into it?

There are many ways you can toss Valentines Day to the dogs (or cats, rats, gerbils, pigs…whatever species your kiddos belong to). Dogs Deserve Better, for example, holds an annual Valentines Day card drive for chained dogs. During “Have a Heart for Chained Dogs Week,” Valentines – complete with informational brochures, coupons for dog food, etc. – are delivered to the “owners” of chained dogs, with the ultimate goal of freeing these animals and bringing them back into the home. You can donate money to fund the effort, or volunteer by submitting the addresses of homes that have chained dogs, creating or delivering Valentines, and gathering donations of coupons and such. If your heart belongs to a species other than canine, you can donate your time or money to help a local or species-specific organization on or around the 14th.

As for your own furkids, here are four ways you can pamper them this Saturday. Since I’ve got five dogs, these are all canine-specific, but you can adjust accordingly.

1. Take your dog for a walk or hike. Set some time aside for a leisurely stroll, walk, run or hike – or some combination thereof – and let your dog lead the way. Allow her to walk you, wherever she chooses to go (within reason, of course). If she wants to spend five minutes sniffing and marking that tree at the corner of the street, let her. It’s her day, remember? Just enjoy her company, the beautiful weather, the sights and sounds.

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I haven’t been up to blogging lately (for reasons explained below), so here’s yet another crosspost from easyVeganInfo. Never leave your dog/cat/baby/child unattended in a vehicle, people.

Sorry for the lack of posts this week, y’all. I’ve been sick since Monday night, and feel ill-equipped to do much more than the daily link roundups. I imagine that the maxim against blogging while drunk includes blogging while drunk on NyQuil. Anywho, I have a number of post ideas on the back burner, so hopefully I’ll be coherent enough by mid-week next week to resume my regular blogging schedule.

Until then, did anyone happen to catch the latest installment of ABC News’ What Would You Do? Basically, it’s a hidden camera type show, wherein ABC News sets up various discomfiting situations in order to determine how the observers stooges will respond. For example, one segment that got some play on the feminist blogs involved a couple (of actors) who were seemingly out at a bar on a first date. When the woman excused herself to the restroom, the man (quite obviously) slipped something in her drink. Cue the crazy.

I only caught the last twenty minutes or so Tuesday night’s episode, but that was more than enough to make me wish I hadn’t. In the last segment, “Dog Left Inside a Hot Car,” a large, fluffy Golden Retriever is left inside a car parked on a suburban street on a hot summer (spring?) day. (The car actually has a hidden A/C unit cranked, and the dog’s trainer is lying on the backseat floor, covered by a blanket.) The windows are cracked so the dog’s barks are audible, and the dog’s “owner” walks to and from the car several times in order to see whether observers will confront him. Strategically placed hidden cameras record passerby reactions.

Unfortunately, ABC News doesn’t appear to allow embedding (grrrr!), so here’s the part where I send you to their website to watch the video.

So, what are your thoughts? How do you think the passerby handled the situation? Did the results exceed your expectations, or fall short? And wtf about those firefighters, eh?

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Via ecorazzi, singer Neko Case of The New Pornographers has persuaded her record label to donate $5 to Best Friends Animal Society every time a blogger links to her new single, ‘People Got a Lotta Nerve.’ So link, people!

Of Best Friends, Neko says:

“Best Friends took the Michael Vick dogs,” Case points out. “That’s a big deal because a lot of supposed animal welfare organizations like PETA — who can blow me — said you should euthanize the dogs immediately. But it’s not the dogs’ fault that they were fighting dogs — they’ve been abused. Pit bulls are muscular and big, but they’re not man-eaters.”

By the by, of the 49 Vick pit bulls, only one was deemed too vicious to save and was killed. Subsequently, 25 were placed in foster homes and/or adopted, and 22 found permanent sanctuary at Best Friends. Those 47 lives might be a drop in the ocean to PETA, but their abuse makes them no less deserving of life than the “food” or “fur-bearing” animals PETA typically focuses on. More so than their “naked ads,” their stance on the Vick dogs, as well as their forays into animal rescue and “adoption,” has been and will likely remain an objection of epic proportions that I have with PETA.

PETA, I might add, is an animal welfare group – not an animal rights group. Yes, there’s a difference – and it’s a biggie.

(At the most fundamental level, they appear to support Peter Singer’s philosophy of utilitarianism, which is a form of “progressive animal welfarism” – not animal rights. See also: PETA’s support of breed-specific legislation; their continued insistence that killing the Vick dogs would have been the right thing to do; and their “humane” killing of shelter animals rather than spend the time, money and effort to rehome them.)

And can I just say that I also f—ing love Neko for correctly identifying PETA as a welfare group? f—ing love her, I do!

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