Animal cruelty is considered a felony
October 7th, 2007Betsy McLeod returned home last September to find her bunny’s cage empty. The bunny, Coco, wasn’t hiding under the bed or with McLeod’s roommates though. She was dead.
The bunny that McLeod, Overland Park sophomore, bought nearly three months before had been thrown off her balcony by a man who claimed he was too drunk to know what he was doing. “He blamed it on his alcoholism,†McLeod said.
On Sept. 28, that man went to court for charges of animal cruelty. He was sentenced to probation and fined $200. McLeod said she thought it was nothing more than a slap on the wrist for his actions. At the time animal cruelty was not considered a felony in the state of Kansas. Today, intentional animal cruelty is a felony according to the Senate Bill 408.
For Midge Grinstead, director of the Lawrence Humane Society, the bill was a nine-year battle. The bill finally passed unanimously through the house in March. Just last month Gov. Kathleen Sebelius signed the bill into law.
“It not only passed, but it was a slam dunk,†Grinstead said.
According to the bill, people convicted of intentional animal cruelty will be sentenced to jail for a minimum of 30 days or a maximum of one year and fined $500 to $5,000 depending on the severity of the abuse. They must have a psychological evaluation while in jail and they cannot own an animal for the next five years.
For McLeod though, the bill came too late.
“I wish they would have made it a felony a long time ago,†McLeod said. “It should have been a felony.†The Lawrence Humane Society performed more than 750 investigations on animal cruelty and neglect last year according to Grinstead. About 20 percent of the investigations resulted in the animals being removed from the home.
Dogs, especially larger breeds such as pit bulls and rottweilers, account for a majority of animal cruelty cases, Grinstead said. The most common type of abuse for all animals the Humane Society sees is neglect. Under the new law, neglect isn’t automatically a felony; only on the second offense of neglect can a person be convicted of a felony.
Animals that are removed from homes because of abuse or neglect are taken in at the Humane Society. After the police department gives releases for the animals, they can be adopted. Background checks for animal cruelty are done on anyone adopting a pet.
People interesting in adopting an animal rescued from abuse are informed about the animal’s history before adopting. Knowing the history of the pet doesn’t discourage people from adopting though.
“I think they all want to help,†Grinstead said. “People are very sympathetic and want to adopt.†Holly Romero, Colorado Springs, Colo., senior, is one such person. Last fall she went to nearly every pet store in Lawrence in search of a ferret, She ended up at the Humane Society. Quentin, a neglected ferret, arrived at the shelter with a family of ferrets.
“If you can take in an animal that’s been abused or neglected it’s an amazing thing,†Romero. “I immediately fell in love with Quentin.â€
The Humane Society told Romero that Quentin came from a home with a number of pets that had been neglected. Grinstead remembered that when the ferrets arrived at the shelter they were invested with fleas and underweight. When Romero first brought Quentin home he was less active than her other ferret, Baz.
“He slept a lot and seemed exhausted,†she said. “It would take Quentin awhile to come out of the cage, like he was scared.â€
Quentin is more active and less timid now, Romero said.
Today, the fleas and fears are gone, but Quentin deals with a more permanent problem because of his neglect.
“He doesn’t have good use of his back legs,†Romero said.
From what she had been told, Quentin’s legs suffer from being caged and walking on the wire floors of the cage for too long.Romero said the new law would give people more of a reason to not abuse their animals. Not that people should need a reason, she said.
SOURCE: The University Daily Kansan
Discount Stores pull tainted Halloween Items
October 4th, 2007Three specific items sold at Dollar General and Family Dollar discount stores have tested positive for lead up to 65 times (3.9 percent lead by volume) the U.S. allowable level (.06 percent lead by volume). An Ashland University chemistry professor, Jeffrey Weidenhamer, recently bought several Halloween seasonal toys that are Chinese imports from Dollar General and Family Dollar stores around Ashland at the request of U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown. Lead, which can be ingested if paint flakes off or young children chew on a painted surface, can stunt a child’s development or lead to death.
* A Frankenstein tumbler, a green plastic cup with a Frankenstein-like face.
* A plastic trick-or-treat bucket for carrying candy that looks like a skull.
* A plastic trick-or-treat bucket for carrying candy that looks like a witch.
Weidenhamer on Friday alerted the Consumer Product Safety Commission to his findings. The agency quickly notified Dollar General, “and we sent a message to our stores via satellite to stop sales” of the cup, said Tawn Earnest, senior director of corporate communications for the Tennessee-based chain. She said the store also stopped selling the plastic skull-shaped
bucket.Dollar General already had a “very rigorous lead testing protocol,” Earnest said. It included testing at the factory by a third party. Weidenhamer’s finding on the cups was especially surprising because Dollar General had done similar tests in China and found the cups to be safe.
Her company has concluded “that the supplier used different paint sources,” so the lead content changed with the paint supplies, she said.
Family Dollar says it pulled the witch buckets from stores on Tuesday and has sent a sample for independent testing. Spokesman Joshua Braverman said the chain tests products randomly. Family Dollar got the buckets from a vendor and did not have an exclusive agreement to carry them, “so there are others out there,” Braverman said.
Please be cautious of purchasing Halloween candy buckets that are shaped as witches, as Family Dollar was not the only merchant that likely will carry the product.
SOURCE: Cleveland.com
Amazon Friday Sale Deals – Pet Care, Home, and Health Products
September 28th, 2007Pet Care Products
Petsafe Cat Veranda
PetSafe Cat VerandaTM Cat Door Window-mounted Cat Flap Door
Petmate Le Bistro Electronic Portion-Control Automatic Pet Feeder, Black
Scoop Free LT1 Fresh Step Refill Litter Cartridge, 6 Pack
Lentek 6-Day Automatic Pet Dish
Health Care
Alli Weight-Loss Aid, Orlistat 60mg Capsules, 90-Count Starter Pack
LifeGear Power Fit Electric Treadmill
UPDATED:
Hitachi Magic Wand Massager
Home
Nav7 20GB 7″ Touchscreen LCD GPS 
Digital Spectrum 5.6-Inch Digital Picture Frame
Tekno the Robotic Puppy – Silver
Dogfighting not deterred by law in South Florida
August 28th, 2007Buttercup arrived at the Tri-County Humane Society crippled and cowering, having served as easy prey in dogfight training. After surgeons repaired the legs her owners apparently broke, the pit-bull mix landed a permanent home at the shelter west of Boca Raton several years ago.
Each month, the humane society receives about 12 scarred dogs and 80 complaints about dog fights, said executive director Jeannette Christos.
“Dogfighting is out of control in South Florida,” Christos said. “It all stems from the money . . . thousands and thousands of dollars can be made on betting.”
A state law approved in 2003 toughened penalties for those involved in animal fighting by making it a felony to sell, transport, breed or bet on animals for fighting. Yet authorities and animal advocates say the illegal blood sport continues unabated and largely under the radar.
Precise figures on incidents are unavailable because complaints are often misclassified, unrecorded or not investigated, law-enforcement officials say.
Dogfighting came into the public eye in July, when Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick was implicated in a dogfighting ring. Vick admitted in a plea agreement filed Friday that he took part in an illegal interstate dogfighting enterprise. He is expected to formally enter a guilty plea today and could face more than a year in prison. The National Football League has suspended him indefinitely without pay.
The Broward State Attorney’s Office has prosecuted nine people under the tightened Florida law, said Jeff Marcus, the office’s chief of felonies. But the number of animals turning up with fighting injuries dwarfs the number of prosecutions, law-enforcement officials say.
“In some cities and counties, law enforcement ignores it, or doesn’t have the resources to conduct complex investigations on some of the more sophisticated rings,” said Lt. Sherry Schlueter, who commands the Broward Sheriff’s Special Victims and Family Crimes section, which includes an animal abuse and neglect unit.
Fights with stakes up to $200,000 are highly secretive and are often associated with gambling, drugs, prostitution and other criminal activity, said Detective Michael Vadnal of the Broward Sheriff’s Animal Abuse and Neglect unit. In other cases, the fighting is less organized.
“This is the type of thing that happens behind closed doors,” said Alison Gianotto, president of the New York-based Pet-abuse.com. “Animal fighting is way underreported.”
Most participants, dogs and owners, never achieve the notoriety of the Vick case.
In June 2006, a Broward deputy sheriff patrolling a park in Pompano Beach saw 10 people watching a dog fight.
“I could hear loud squealing similar to that of a dog crying,” the deputy wrote in an incident report.
Brandon McNair, 21, and Tommy Neloms, 20, were arrested on charges of fighting animals and animal cruelty. Neloms was sentenced to 120 days in jail; McNair received three years’ probation. The dogs were sent to Coral Springs Animal Hospital to be treated for puncture wounds.
This fall, a 17-year-old Fort Lauderdale boy will stand trial on multiple counts of animal cruelty and confinement after deputies found eight pit bulls, two with telltale wounds, Vadnal said.
Many of the rescued dogs are maimed or aggressive, making adoption unthinkable. So they are euthanized.
“Unfortunately, dogfighting is still happening in large numbers in South Florida, perhaps even larger numbers than before the new law was passed,” said Heather Veleanu, managing director of Fort Lauderdale-based Animal Rights Foundation of Florida. “This is a real priority.”
SOURCE: Orlando Sun-Sentinel
Michael Vick’s Dog Fighting
August 10th, 2007In April authorities raided Vick’s Property in Virgina shortly after he put some of his Pit Bulls through test fights. Authorities alleged that 8 of the Pit Bulls were executed by Vick and 2 co-defendants by “hanging, drowning, and slamming at least one dog’s body to the groundâ€. NFL Falcons’ Quarterback Michael Vick was indicted by a federal grand jury accusing him of taking part in a dogfighting operation.
Source: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
<-- -->