FDA Cautions Dog Owners of Treats

The Food and Drug Administration continues to caution that certain chicken jerky products for dogs—also sold as chicken tenders, strips, or treats—are associated with illness in dogs.

According to a Nov. 18, 2011, update, the FDA has seen an increase during the past 12 months in the number of complaints from dog owners and veterinarians regarding illnesses in dogs associated with consumption of chicken jerky products from China.

The FDA issued warnings regarding chicken jerky products in September 2007 and December 2008. The number of complaints dropped off during late 2009 and most of 2010 before rising again.

The agency advises consumers who feed chicken jerky products to their dogs to watch them for any of the following signs of illness: a decrease in appetite; a decrease in activity; vomiting; diarrhea, sometimes with blood; an increase in water consumption; or an increase in urination.

Dog owners should consult their veterinarian if their dogs have signs of illness that are severe or persist for more than 24 hours. Blood tests might indicate kidney failure, and urine tests might indicate Fanconi syndrome. Although most dogs appear to recover, some reports to the FDA involved dogs that died.

The FDA and several U.S. animal health diagnostic laboratories are working to determine why these products are associated with illness in dogs. The agency continues chemical and microbial testing of the products but has not identified a contaminant.

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Dog Has Successful Surgery To Remove Spoon From Stomach

An Annapolis, Maryland woman may be out a lot of money, but she still has her beloved Labrador Retriever, Vincent.

Last Wednesday, when Laurie Neomany noticed Vincent wasn't eating his food, she took him to the vet for testing and that is when technicians discovered a seven-inch spoon lodged in his stomach.

Neomany said the surgery was successful and Vincent was back home the next day, minus the $2,500 medical bill.

So You’re Thinking About Giving Up Your Pet?

This is a copy of a post that I read. I am not the original author.  This was written by a Shelter Director. This Director is not at any of the shelters that I have visited. This may be what is going on at his shelter, but I have been behind the scenes in the shelters that I post adoption events on, and they are not like this.

So You’re Thinking About Giving Up Your Pet? You Might Want to Reconsider. You can’t keep your pet? Really?
~By a Shelter Director

Our society needs a huge “Wake-up” call. As a shelter manager, I am going to share a little insight with you all…a “view from the inside” – if you will.

First off, any of you whom have surrendered a pet to a shelter or humane society should be made to work in the “back” of an animal shelter – for just ONE DAY.

Maybe if you saw the life drain from those sad, lost, confused eyes, you’d stop flagging the ads on here and help these animals find homes. That puppy you just dropped off will most-likely end up in my shelter when it’s no longer a cute little puppy anymore. Just so you know, there’s a 90% chance that your dog will never walk out back out, once entered in to the shelter system…Purebred or not! About 25% of all of the dogs that are “owner surrenders” or “strays” that come into a shelter are purebred dogs.

The most common excuses: “We’re moving and can’t take our dog (or cat).” Really? Where are you moving to that doesn’t allow pets?
Or they say “The dog got bigger than we thought it would”. How big did you think a German Shepherd would get?

“We don’t have time for her”. Really? I work a 10-12 hour day and still have time for my 6 dogs!

“She’s tearing up our yard”. How about making her a part of your family?

“We just don’t want to have to stress about finding a place for her & we know she’ll get adopted, she’s a good dog”.  Odds are, your pet won’t get adopted  & how stressful do you think it is for your pet?

Did you know…

Your pet has 72 hours to find a new family from the moment you drop it off? Sometimes a little longer if the shelter isn’t full  and your dog/cat manages to stay completely healthy.
If it sniffles, it is euthanized.

Your pet will be confined to a small run/kennel in a room
with other barking & crying animals.

It will have to relieve itself where it eats and sleeps.
It will be depressed and will cry constantly for you.
If your pet is lucky, there will be enough volunteers in that day to take him/her for a walk.
If not, your pet won’t get any attention besides having a bowl of food slid under the kennel door and the waste sprayed out of it’s pen with a high-powered hose.
If your dog is big, black or any of the “Bully” breeds (pit bull, rottie, mastiff, etc) it was pretty much dead when you walked it through the front door.
If your cat is scared and doesn’t act friendly enough, or if it catches a cold (which most of them ‘do’), it will be put to sleep.

Those dogs & cats just don’t get adopted. In most cases, it doesn’t matter how ‘sweet’ or ‘well behaved’ they are. If your pet doesn’t get adopted within it’s 72 hours and the shelter is full, it will be destroyed. If the shelter isn’t full and your pet is good enough,
and of a desirable enough breed it may get a stay of execution,
but not for long.

Most dogs get very kennel protective after about a week and are
destroyed for showing aggression. Even the sweetest dogs will turn in this environment.

If your pet makes it over all of those hurdles chances are it will get kennel cough or an upper respiratory infection and will be destroyed because the shelter gets paid a fee to euthanize each animal and making money is better than spending money to take this animal to the vet.

Here’s a little euthanasia 101 for those of you that have never witnessed a perfectly healthy, scared animal being “put-down”.

First, your pet will be taken from its kennel on a leash. They always look like they think they are going for a walk…happy, wagging their tails…until they get to “The Room”, every one of them freaks out and puts on the brakes when they get to the door.
It must smell like death or they can feel the sad souls that are left in there. It’s strange, but it happens with every one of them.

Your dog or cat will be restrained, held down by 1 or 2 shelter workers, depending on the size and how freaked out they are.
Then a shelter worker who we call a “euthanasia tech (not a vet)”
finds a vein in the front leg and injects a lethal dose of the “pink stuff”.

Hopefully your pet doesn’t panic from being restrained and jerks.
I’ve seen the needles tear out of a leg and been covered with the resulting blood…the yelps and screams are deafening.

They all don’t just “go to sleep”, sometimes they spasm for a while,
gasp for air and defecate on themselves.

You see, shelters are trying to make money to pay employee pay checks and then, there’s the board of directors…who need to be paid too!

Consequently, corners are cut, & we don’t spend our funds to
tranquilize the animal before injecting them with the lethal drug,
we just put the burning lethal drug in their vein and let them suffer until dead.

If it were not a business for profit, we’d do it humanely and hire a
licensed vet do this procedure. That way, the animal would be sedated or tranquilized and THEN euthanized.

But to do this procedure correctly would only cost more money…
so we don’t necessarily do what is right for the animal, we do what’s expedient so we can continue to make a buck!

Shelters do not have to have a vet perform their euthanasia procedures. Oftentimes, they are untrained personnel administering lethal injections. So… that employee may take 50 pokes with a needle and 3 hours to get inside the vein.

In the end, your pet’s corpse will be stacked like firewood in a large freezer, usually in the back of the building with all of the other animals that were killed. There they will sit until being picked up like garbage.

What happens next? Cremated? Taken to the dump? Rendered into pet food? Or used for schools to dissect and experiment on?

You’ll never know and it probably won’t even cross your mind. After all, it was just an animal and you can always buy another one, right?!

I hope that those of you who still have a beating heart and have read this are bawling your eyes out and can’t get the pictures out of your head. I deal with this everyday. I hate my job, I hate that it exists & I hate that it will always be there unless you people make changes and start educating yourselves, your children, the public.
Do the research, do your homework, and know exactly what you are getting into before getting a pet. These shelters and humane societies exist because people just do not care about animals anymore. And PLEASE stop breeding!

Animals were not intended to be disposable but somehow that is what they’ve become.

Cheetah, The Chimpanzee that Starred in Tarzan Movies Dead at Age 80

Condolences poured in to a Florida primate sanctuary Wednesday after it announced the death of Cheetah, a chimpanzee that the sanctuary said starred in the Tarzan movies during the 1930s.

The chimpanzee died Saturday after suffering kidney failure the week before, the sanctuary foundation said on the site. He was roughly 80 years old, Debbie Cobb, the sanctuary's outreach director, told CNN affiliate WFLA.

Cobb recalled Cheetah as an outgoing chimp who loved finger painting and watching football and who was soothed by Christian music, the station said.

Several chimpanzees appeared in various Tarzan movies, many of which were popular in the 1930a and 1940s. The Florida primate sanctuary said its chimp appeared in the Tarzan moves from 1932 through 1934, according to WFLA.

According to the website Tarzanmovieguide.com, "Tarzan the Ape Man" was released in 1932 and "Tarzan and his Mate" in 1934. Both movies starred Johnny Weissmuller as Tarzan. Weissmuller was the first speaking Tarzan, according to the Internet Movie Database website. He died in 1984.

Weissmuller appeared in Tarzan movies through 1948, according to the online movie guide site, with other chimpanzees appearing in the role of Cheetah.

Cheetah came to the primate sanctuary from Weissmuller's Florida estate around 1960, Cobb told WFLA. He was the most famous of the sanctuary's 15 chimpanzees.

"He was very compassionate," Cobb said. "He could tell if I was having a good day or a bad day. He was always trying to get me to laugh if he thought I was having a bad day. He was very in tune to human feelings."

Cheetah was known for his ability to stand up and walk like a person, sanctuary volunteer Ron Priest told WFLA.

Another distinguishing characteristic: "When he didn't like somebody or something that was going on, he would pick up some poop and throw it at them," Priest said. "He could get you at 30 feet with bars in between."

Still, Cobb told the station, "He wasn't a chimp that caused a lot of problems."

Cheetah is not believed to have any children, Priest said.

His age was advanced for a chimpanzee, Cobb told WFLA. In the wild, the average chimp survives 25 to 35 years, she said, and they can live 35 to 45 years in zoos.

Another chimpanzee named Cheeta lives on a primate sanctuary in Southern California named C.H.E.E.T.A (Creative Habitats and Enrichment for Endangered and Threatened Apes). The sanctuary's creator, Dan Westfall, said on its web site that he was saddened to hear of Cheetah's passing in Florida. He said he and others at the sanctuary "send our deepest sympathies to our colleagues at Suncoast."

Westfall writes on the site that he was told Cheeta was one of the original chimps in the Tarzan movies during the 1930s and 1940s. However, when he began working with a writer on Cheeta's biography, research revealed "that our Cheeta is unlikely to be as old as we'd thought, although he is clearly old," Westfall wrote. "It is also difficult to determine which movies, if any, our Cheeta may have been in."

People from several countries offered condolences for Cheetah on the Florida sanctuary's site in several different languages. A few credited him with helping them develop a love for animals.

"Cheetah will remain forever remembered in history," someone in Malta wrote.

Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O'Sullivan hold hands with Cheetah the chimpanzee in "Tarzan and His Mate."

Man Donates Ton of Dog Food to Animal Shelter

A local resident delivered a surprise early Christmas present to the Humane Society of North Iowa last week.

“He told us that he’d like to make a donation of a ton of dog food. It just blew us away. We were overwhelmed. That’s two thousand pounds,” said Executive Director Sybil Soukup.

Garth Jordan of Osage, Iowa droped off fifty, forty-pound bags of dog food at the shelter last Thursday. The donation, valued at approximately $1000, will account for roughly half of the Humane Society’s annual food supply.

Like most non-profits, the Humane Society does not receive state or federal funding, and relies on donations in order to maintain operations.

“We have a lot of donors here in Mason City, corporations that do donate, but it’s just never enough. It seems like so this was really a great Christmas gift,” said shelter manager Tracy Hamand.

Jordan’s generosity will spare the shelter’s dogs from a common ailment: digestive upset caused by constant changes in diet.  Soukup says allowing the dogs to eat the same brand of food for six months will keep them healthier.

“When you switch brands it often causes digestive issues or can weaken an immune system for a dog and so by keeping them on the same diet for a long length of time it keeps them healthier. And it helps them gain weight if they’re needing to do that,” she said.

When asked why he was making such a generous donation, Jordan said he just wanted to do something kind in memory of one of his beloved former dogs.

Cat Inherits $13 Million Fortune Including Cash, Properties in Rome and Milan

A 4-year-old stray cat that was rescued from the streets of Rome has inherited a $13 million fortune from its owner, the wealthy widow of an Italian property tycoon.

Maria Assunta left the fortune to her beloved kitty, Tommaso when she died two weeks ago at the age of 94. The feline's newfound riches include cash, properties in Rome and Milan, and land in Calabria.

As her health began to fail two years ago, Assunta, who had no children, began to look for a way to see that Tommaso was properly cared for after she died.

Assunta first told her attorneys to leave her estate to an animal welfare association who would care for Tommaso. But when she was not satisfied with any suitable group to care for Tommaso, in 2009, Assunta decided to leave all her money to the cat via her nurse Stefania, who cared for her until she died.

Stefania said she had no idea Assunta was so wealthy.

"The old lady suffered from loneliness," the nurse said. "She looked after that cat more than you'd look after a son."

Tommaso and Stefania, along with another cat, are living outside Rome at an undisclosed address.

The windfall for Tommaso places him at No. 3 on the list of wealthy pets. He ranks behind Kalu the chimp, whose owner left him $80 million dollars, and a German shepherd named Gunther IV, who inherited $372 million dollars from an eccentric German countess.

Real estate magnate Leona Helmsley famously left $12 million to her little dog Trouble. After her human descendents contested, Trouble's pot was cut to $2 million.

Smithsonian’s National Zoo, Washington, DC - Animals Paint Adorable Pictures

Sans berets, smocks or palettes, the animals at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo are getting their paws dirty with non-toxic, water-based paint and creating one-of-a-kind works of art. Painting is one among many activities that fall under Animal Enrichment—a program that provides physically and mentally stimulating activities and environments for the Zoo’s residents. The animals have the opportunity not only to choose how to behave, but also to use their natural abilities and behaviors in new and exciting ways.

Enrichment is an integral part of the daily care of the species in the Zoo’s collection. Keepers and curators carefully study animal behavior and determine what kinds of enrichment are appropriate for each species and, occasionally, individual animals. Keepers have a number of novel options for enrichment. They may alter an exhibit; train an animal; introduce new smells, sounds, foods, and objects; or enlist an animal in a research project, such as a study about foraging skills or cognitive research. Adding a variety of engaging activities helps keepers ensure the Zoo’s animals have a high quality of life.
              
Though the subjects of the animals’ paintings remain mysterious, the ways visitors can support the Zoo’s enrichment program are as clear as a starry, starry night. Drop off any size canvas, art paper, paint brush or non-toxic, water-based paint at the Visitor Center for the animal care staff to distribute. Animal keepers are collecting gifts for the animals this holiday season. Browse the list of needed items on the Enrichment Giving Tree section of the Zoo’s website or the Enrichment page of the Zoo’s online store.

Art produced by many of the Zoo’s mammal and bird residents will be available for purchase at the National Capital chapter of the American Association of Zoo Keepers (AAZK) Art Show, which will take place spring 2012.
                      

Burt Ward as Robin in the Batman Series – Is Now a Canine Crusader! He and His Wife Tracy are the Founders of Gentle Giants Rescue and Adoptions

Have you ever wondered…whatever happened to Robin of the Batman series.  Well, I have found him and he is doing great work for animals! He was the Caped Crusader…now he is the Canine Crusader!

I had the pleasure of interviewing him for his story in The Pet Tree House. He played Robin in the Batman television series that aired from January 1966 to March 1968.

In 1994, he and his wife, Tracy, founded a charitable organization called Gentle Giants Rescue and Adoptions, Inc., located in Norco, California. They rescue giant breed dogs like Great Danes and some smaller breed dogs. Their work with the organization has been featured in such outlets as People magazine, ASPCA Animal Watch, Hard Copy, Inside Edition, and Entertainment Tonight. Mr. Ward was also seen in an episode of Animal Planet's Adoption Tales.

About Gentle Giants Rescue

We have 45 different traditional and unique breeds from all over the world to choose, all of which are behaviorally trained, easy to handle, great with kids, and socialized with dogs, cats and other animals.

Meet some of the beautiful dogs at the Gentle Giants Rescue! The video below shows 27 of the dogs in the Wards bedroom…or should I say…all over the bedroom!

Adam West and Burt Ward, TV's famed "Batman" and "Robin," provide the voices of "Young Mermaid Man" and "Young Barnacle Boy" in an episode of "SpongeBob Square Pants."

Batman is an American television series, based on the DC comic book character of the same name. It stars Adam West as Batman and Burt Ward as Robin — two crime-fighting heroes who defend Gotham City. It aired on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) network for three seasons from January 1966 to March 1968. The show was aired twice weekly for its first two seasons, and 120 episodes were produced in total.