August 13, 2010
One of the things I do in my “spare time” is to write short articles about Pet Law for Examiner.com. From time to time I submit Legal Briefs for which I mine the Internet for reports of animal abuse and cruelty cases and present a short synopsis of some of them. While doing this recently I ran across two articles that stuck me as particularly noteworthy.
Marinated Cat
The first one was just bizarre. Gary Korkuc of Cheektowaga, New York (near Buffalo) had adopted a cat from a local shelter. Sunday night, Buffalo police pulled him over for running a stop sign, and heard a cat meowing from the trunk of his car. When they opened the trunk they found 4-year-old Navarro in a cage, his fur covered with oil, crushed red peppers, and chili peppers.
Korkuc told police at the time that he did it because the black-and-white tuxedo cat was ill-tempered, and he was going to eat him. He also reportedly told them his neutered male cat was pregnant. The officer took custody of the cat and charged Korkuc with cruelty.
In a news interview with a reporter, Korkuc insisted he was “not crazy” claiming the cat had “miscarried” and was sitting in his own blood, that he wasn’t planning to eat him, but was instead returning him to the shelter, upset that his cat had gotten pregnant after being spayed, and miscarried.
Navarro has been adopted to a new home, and renamed Oliver.
Baseball Bat
There’s no element of humor in the baseball bat case. In this horrific incident, a 20-year-old Fairborn woman and her 44-year-old boyfriend/fiancé beat the family dog with a baseball bat and then ran him over with their car, supposedly because he had been aggressive toward family members. Chastity Elliott and Robert Proffitt are due in court August 16th to face charges of animal cruelty.
One report says the Australian Shepherd mix bit Chastity’s 2-year-old brother in the nose six weeks earlier, and quotes her as saying Smokey chewed her brother’s nose “all to pieces.”
Smokey is in the custody of the Greene County Animal Shelter. Officials say he’s making progress, but his future is still uncertain.
So why am I writing about this? Prior to launching Peaceable Paws in 1996, I worked at the Marin Humane Society in Novato, California for 20 years. For 15 of those years I was a humane officer, and part of my job was investigating and assisting with the prosecution of animal cruelty cases. Paul, my husband of 23 years, is also an animal protection professional, presently executive director of the humane society here in Washington County, Maryland.
 
One of the things I always said while working at the shelter was that it was never boring. Even after 20 years, you couldn’t begin to predict what each day might bring. I never investigated a marinated-cat case, but we did convict a man who killed a litter of puppies by smashing them in the head. I’ve continued at least peripheral involvement in animal investigations through Paul, and sometimes more than peripheral, such as when his shelter impounded 75 neglected and mostly-unsocialized horses in December of 2006. We took care of 32 of them ourselves on our farm and a farm across the street from us, (the rest went to rescue groups) and two of them remained as permanent members of the Miller family. (Remind me to tell you more about that case one of these days.)
 
When I see cases such as the two described above, I long to put that uniform and badge back on and go kick some animal-abuser butt. I can only imagine what Smokey must have been thinking, and feeling, as he was being smashed to pieces by the humans who were supposed to be caring for him. How can people be so brutally cruel? I often think there are different subspecies of Homo Sapiens, and that humans like Elliott and Proffitt must have evolved on a far distant branch of the tree from the people I associate with.
Korkuc, hopefully, does have some psychological problems – the scanty information from news reports certainly seems to indicate as much – and hopefully will receive treatment. Hopefully he won’t acquire any more animal companions, at least not until he’s able to properly care for one. While we still have to protect animals from people whose minds are functioning well, at least they don’t seem as purely evil as those who would brutally beat their dog.
It’s pretty common knowledge now that there’s a link between people who are deliberately cruel to animals and the increased likelihood that they might also be cruel to humans. Fortunately, over the last 35 years I’ve seen a steady increase in the willingness of our judicial system to take animal cruelty cases seriously. Perhaps one day cases like Smokey’s will be a rarity. Perhaps someday all people will realize that abuse has no place in our relationships with the sentient beings who share our world, be they human or not-human. Perhaps when that day comes, all our animal companions will enjoy the benefits of positive training in a cruelty-free, force-free world.
Until then, they are depending on all of us, dog trainers and others, to protect them, and to keep moving our world toward a more humane society.
People sometimes ask Paul and I how we can do this work, and bear to see animals suffering. I can only answer, “How can we not?”
Keep Smokey in your thoughts and prayers…
Warm Woofs and Happy Training,
Pat
June 11, 2010
You just never know what surprise is waiting around the corner.
I was wrapping up a private consult at about 5:30pm yesterday when one of our 6pm class students arrived and informed Shirley that there was a dog in a carrier halfway up our driveway. Since our drive is about a half-mile long, there’s no chance this dog crate bounced out of the back of a passing pick-up truck; someone must have left her there deliberately.
 Maggie Faith, too-cute-for-words.. abandoned in our driveway PPaws apprentice Jenn Rutter and I hopped in my van and drove down to investigate. We found the world’s most adorable 12-week-old Westie pup in the world’s flimsiest soft crate, set off the side of the driveway in the grass, in the shade. Along with the pup, the owners left a dog bed, toys, food, a plastic food/water bowl, and a six-page letter explaining in great detail how much they love Maggie Faith and how much it hurts them to give her up, but because of her “serious behavior problems” they simply couldn’t keep her.
Of course I scooped Maggie up and took her back to the training center, where I sat down to read the whole letter. As I slogged through it I wondered what horrible behavior problems could possible be hiding in this wonderful, friendly, outgoing, adorable pup.
The first clue was when she expressed her admiration for the Monks of New Skete. “Ah,” I thought. Punishment.” She mentioned a 3-year-old child, and I went to “punishment for puppy nipping.” When she castigated the breeder she got the pup from for keeping puppies in crates, I thought “housetraining.” And sure enough, she’s convinced this pup is aggressive and can’t be housetrained.
 Chewing on a cow hoof I gave her - not a *drop* of resource guarding tension when I messed with her and took it away from her (and gave it right back) Her comment: “Maggie is aggressive. She doesn’t recognize me as the dominant figure despite my following the training guide (Monk’s) to a T. (Why do I guess she probably watches Cesar, too?) Then she says, “We always stepped in and corrected her, initially with the ‘NO BITE” command. Within days we realized how serious it was and had to grab her muzzle and say the words.”
Then she says “It’s gotten progressively harder to handle.” Why am I not surprised?
The final irony is that she said, “I think that someone who can handle these issues needs to have her or else she will end up in a shelter and I can’t handle that thought.”
Of course, anyone who knows me knows that I work closely with shelters and my husband is the director of the Humane Society of Washington County here in Hagerstown. So the first thing we did was call to have an officer come pick her up and transport her to the shelter, where she is now, safe, warm and well-fed.
Of course, I can’t just let go. There’s a good chance Maggie does have some inappropriate behaviors after 5-6 weeks of muzzle grabbing, and from the owner’s description is sounds like she’s also a good candidate for reverse crate training, once we rule out a urinary tract infection. So I e-mailed Debbie McClain, shelter manager, and suggested that Maggie would be an excellent candidate for the shelter’s not-yet-officially-launched “Gold Paw Behavior Foster Care Program.”
Debbie responded: “I just went to meet this little girl….What a Doll Baby!!! She’s definitely a mouther, but like you say, that is easily corrected. (She loves a belly rub!) At the end of her stray period, staff can do an assessment and have her ready to move her into the GOLD Paw Program.”
So, in short order, Maggie will be ready to go to a Gold Paw foster home.
 Maggie Faith says, "Yay, I get to be a Gold Paw puppy!" And, of course, I’ll keep you posted here on her BMod progress.
Have a great weekend! Or as my good friend Lisa Waggoner of Cold Nose College says, suggesting that you have control over your own happiness, “Make it a great weekend.” (I love that, Lisa – thanks!)
Warm Woofs and Happy Training,
Pat
PS – If anyone happens to have any information who might have dropped Maggie off in our driveway, please feel free to let me know.
March 24, 2010
No-Kill Animal Abusers
This week a Friend on Facebook posted a link to an animal cruelty case involving a “so-called no-kill” “rescue” organization, the Humane Sanctuary of Kinsman, Ohio, that had (allegedly) badly neglected the animals under its care.
http://tiny.cc/3Pfou
On Friday, February 12, 2010 the Animal Welfare League of Trumbull County (AWLTC), the county sheriff’s department and other agencies executed a search warrant at this facility and impounded one hundred sixty-two dogs, 18 cats, two horses and multiple fowl and chickens. The woman (not) caring for the animals has been charged with nearly 200 counts of animal cruelty.
The photos are horrendous – pictures of emaciated live animals, and dead dogs partially consumed by their starving companions. Horrendous, but not atypical for a hoarding case.
I have long been troubled by the link between the so-called no-kill movement and the proliferation of hoarding cases in the animal protection world, especially hoarding cases connected to alleged “rescue” organizations. During the 20 years I worked at the Marin Humane Society, hoarder cases (we called them “collectors” then) were few and far between, and tended to be the “little old lady living with 150 cats in her home.”
Granted, there was no Internet then so we didn’t have as easy access to the information, but my husband Paul and I edited and published for 13 years a quarterly magazine called the C.H.A.I.N. Letter (Collective Humane Action and Information Network) and we collected and reported all the cases we could find. We found a few hoarder cases per quarter. Today I receive at least three or more per week. Did you get that? Per week. The experts tell us there are even more.
Hoarding
“Hoarding” is a long-recognized psychological condition when it comes to the extreme collecting of inanimate possessions. Only beginning in the 1990s has the term been applied to animal collectors, and animal collecting is still not universally recognized as a hoarder syndrome. An animal hoarder has been defined as “someone who accumulates a large number of animals; fails to provide minimal standards of nutrition, sanitation and veterinary care; and fails to act on the deteriorating condition of the animals (including disease, starvation and even death) or the environment (severely overcrowded and unsanitary conditions), or the negative impact of the collection on their own health and well-being.”
Dr. Gary Patronek of Tufts University conducted a survey (1999) of shelters that had dealt with hoarder cases. He estimated that there were between 700 and 2,000 new hoarder cases every year in the United States. Dr. Randall Lockwood at the ASPCA in New York suggested in 2009 that there were approximately five thousand new hoarder cases reported every year. That’s approximately fourteen new cases every day! In 69 percent of the cases Dr. Patronek surveyed, animal waste accumulated in living areas. Over 25 percent of the hoarders’ beds were soiled with feces or urine. Hoarders’ justifications for their behavior included an intense love of animals, the feeling that animals were surrogate children, the belief that no one else would or could take care of them, and the fear that the animals would be euthanized. According to Patronek, a significant number of hoarders had nonfunctional utilities (i.e., bathroom plumbing, cooking facilities, heat, refrigeration and electricity). Indeed, if you make your way through the photos of the AWLTC case you will see at least one of a barely functional toilet.
I don’t believe it’s just the power of the Internet raising awareness of the extent of the hoarding problem and making it seem like there are more of them now than there were 20 years ago. A significant number of the cases reported in my news searches now involve hoarders posing as legitimate rescuers. That wasn’t the case then. I lay the blame for this tragic phenomenon squarely on the shoulders of the so-called no-kill movement. Here’s why:
So-Called No-Kill Shelters
I have no beef with shelters who don’t want to euthanize – as long as they do it responsibly, by being selective about taking in animals, honest about the fact that every responsible shelter euthanizes sometimes, and doesn’t hold the full-service shelters in their communities out to be evil because they do the necessary heartbreaking work of euthanizing animals for whom there are no homes.
Shelters are under tremendous community pressure to call themselves no-kill. As a result, several things have happened.
• Shelters have lowered adoption standards in their efforts to get dogs (and cats and other animals) out the front door. Where once most good shelters did landlord checks, confirmed regular veterinary care for past animal companions and checked animal control records for past violations, now many do not.
• Shelters work more closely with rescue groups which, on its face, is a very good thing, but shelters that are panicked about being no-kill often don’t check the credentials of so-called rescuers, and may put their shelter animals directly into the hands of hoarders. A large number of Hurricane Katrina rescues, for example, ended up in the hands of a hoarder who was later charged with cruelty.
• Hoarders have learned how to make themselves look legitimate by incorporating as 501(c)3 non-profit organizations. There are now many of these.
• The no-kill movement has convinced many in our society that no-kill is possible, today (and it simply is not), and so many people giving up their animals look for any no-kill option, inadvertently feeding the hungry maw of the rescue hoarder.
• Many excellent shelter administrators have been forced from their positions rather than succumbing to no-kill pressure, and their replacement are often no-kill devotees, pushing once-legitimate well-run shelters into institutionalized hoarding. We see those stories routinely on Internet news as well.
The allure of the no-kill promise is understandable. Those of us who love animals would love to see that dream become a reality – and we are all working, in our own ways, toward that day. But let’s be real – that day is a long way off. Meanwhile, those who travel the country and write books and blogs promising a no-kill fix are like the Sirens of ancient Greek mythology, who lured sailors to their deaths on the rocks with a promise of love, only today’s no-kill Sirens are luring animals to their deaths in the arms of the hoarders who claim to love them.
I remember my first collector case. Louise Ritchie was living in her Volkswagon van with 18 Siberian Huskies in upscale Marin County. We impounded the dogs and won the case. Ritchie’s defense, as is common in hoarder cases, was that she loved her dogs. The words of Prosecuting Attorney Linda Witong ring in my ears to this day.
“Louise Ritchie claims she loves her dogs. God help us if she had hated them!”
I do know that no-kill advocates love our animal companions and don’t want to see them suffer. I just wish they could recognize what they are doing to the animals they profess to love. The “quick fix” promised by no-kill advocates is no better than the quick fix promised by trainers who use shock collars, alpha rolls and other dominance-based coercive methods. In the end, they only harm the very animals they profess to love.
God help us if they hated them…
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