The Pet Tree House - Where Pets Are Family Too : Pekingese The Pet Tree House - Where Pets Are Family Too : Pekingese
Showing posts with label Pekingese. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pekingese. Show all posts

Saturday, April 4, 2015

Delta Air Lines Inc. Will Offer the First Pet-Tracking Device: Customers Will Be Able to Monitor Their Pets in Real Time


Delta Air Lines Inc. will offer what it says is the first pet-tracking device to reassure passengers who are separated from their beloved furry companions during flights.

Delta customers will be able to monitor their pets in real time, with data on the surrounding temperature and whether the animal is right-side up or sitting askew. The gadget was developed by Sendum Wireless Corp. and will be available for $50 per flight from 10 U.S. airports.

“When things go wrong with a pet, it often goes horribly wrong,” said Neel Jones Shah, an airline adviser to Burnaby, British Columbia-based Sendum and former Delta cargo executive.

The new GPS gadget wasn’t specifically meant to address the airline’s past trouble with animal shipments, Delta spokesman Morgan Durrant said. United Continental Holdings Inc. said it’s also testing a pet tracking device. Sendum’s PT300 has uses beyond monitoring live animals, including temperature-sensitive organ transplants, Durrant said.

It’s the furry friends that make the headlines, however, and transporting animals can be a tricky business. The Humane Society of the United States urges people not to ship their pets by air “unless absolutely necessary,” according to its website.

English bulldogs, Pekingese and other dogs with short snouts have may have trouble breathing during flights, so much so that some airlines ban the breeds, said Walter Woolf, a veterinarian and owner of pet mover Air Animal Inc. in Tampa, Florida.

The number of animals that die while in an airline’s care has been dropping in recent years.

Delta has had the most animal deaths among U.S. carriers in the past five years, with 51, though it has had only 6 since 2013, Transportation Department data show. In 2014, U.S. airlines reported 17 animal deaths, including some that were out of the airline’s control. That’s down from 39 in 2010.

Delta, based in Atlanta, will offer the new GPS-based device to owners who bring animals to the Delta Cargo facility at New York’s LaGuardia and nine other airports in Atlanta; Cincinnati; Detroit; Los Angeles; Memphis, Tennessee; Minneapolis/St. Paul; Seattle; Salt Lake City; and Tampa. The service is not available for pets sent by checked baggage at the passenger terminal.

Placed on the animal’s crate, the device notes location, ambient temperature and other factors, including how the crate is positioned. If the temperature rises above 85 degrees Fahrenheit (29 Celsius), for example, it will shoot an an alert to Delta’s call center, Shah said. The pet owners also can check on their animal’s stats by visiting a website, he said.

A caveat is that the system only sends alerts before and after a flight because restrictions on cellular communications prevent it from sending notices while airborne, Shah said. Still, many of the accidents that cause an animal to go missing or die occur at the airport and not in the air, he said.

Woolf, the animal shipper, regularly plots round-the-world flights for pets, recently shipping a dog from Sydney to London and another animal from San Francisco to Zurich. He’s not convinced people will pay extra for real-time following of pets, since all animals already get a tracking code called an airway bill.

Sendum is hoping pets offer a new venue for its monitors, which more often are used to keep tabs on alcohol and tobacco and to make sure seafood is kept cold, founder Wayne Chester said.


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Thursday, August 14, 2014

China Denounces Pet Dogs as Filthy Imports From the West


Bangkok, China - They slink through Chinese streets dropping poop like “land mines.” They are a blight on “social peace and harmony.”

Pet dogs, in the eyes of China’s Communist Party, are a modern-day menace. And the Chinese urbanites who’ve grown infatuated with Spot and Rover are acting out a “crude and ludicrous imitation ... of a Western lifestyle.”

So goes a recent op-ed in the People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s official news outlet.

The op-ed decries a “dog infestation” in China’s cities. Its urgent message to selfish dog owners: scoop those land mines - or else.

And yet the writer concedes that pet ownership is proof of China’s economic ascent. After all, starving peasants can’t afford to pamper Shih Tzus.

The ranks of people who can afford dog chow is rising fast. By 2030, according to the United Nations, China’s middle class will be four times the size of America’s middle class. Many Chinese can now seek out what Western consumers have long enjoyed: cars, flat-screen TVs and, yes, pet poodles. In Beijing, the number of registered dogs hit 1 million in 2012.

The doggie denouncement coincides with a revived effort to stamp out certain Western beliefs and behaviors taking root in 21st-century China. Officials are taking aim at bigger perils to social harmony, including democracy, an obsession with “individual rights” and the “free flow of information on the internet.”

“During Mao’s cultural revolution, dog ownership was condemned as elitist.”

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A Chinese man who supplements his income by walking dogs around the Houhai Lake area of Beijing on December 11, 2012. Dog ownership is popular amongst China?s elderly and the growing middle class but Beijing owners cannot keep dogs taller than 36 centimeters.


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This picture taken on March 18, 2014 shows an unidentified man posing for a photo with two Tibetan mastiffs after they were sold at a "luxury pet" fair in Hangzhou, in eastern China's Zhejiang province. One of the Tibetan mastiff puppies (L) was sold in China for almost two million USD, a report said on March 19, in what could be the most expensive dog sale ever.


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An old man and his Pekingese dog in an ancient street of Beijing, China.


Officials in Shanghai have experimented with an even stricter edict: If dog owners can’t convince neighbors to approve of their dogs, the animal is confiscated by the state.

Dogs who aren’t up to code can be yanked out of owners’ arms. That was the fate of one white pooch, confiscated by cops in this cell phone video that went viral in China.

All of these rules on dog ownership, however, are increasingly flouted.

A documentary titled “Oversized Dogs” focuses entirely on Chinese citizens defying dog laws. Its director calls this trend “an important part of Chinese dissent.”

Meanwhile, the Communist Party’s media arm keeps cranking out editorials about dogs.

Just one month ago, the People’s Daily published another piece urging animal rights activists to stop berating fellow Chinese who view dogs as a culinary delicacy.

The op-ed first revives the elitist legacy of pet dogs in China: “Over China’s long history, they have only recently become pets except in the imperial court where Pekingese were kept exclusively for the royals.”

Another group suspiciously fond of canines? That’s right — foreigners. Though Westerners call dogs “man’s best friend,” the People’s Daily states, “Chinese people have only ever kept watchdogs or hunting dogs — along with those to be eaten.”

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