The Scream

Strongheart the Psychic German Shepherd & The First Dog Star

Bright Eyes Sanctuary — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 05:04:00 +0000

Strongheart and his mate, Lady Julie, dine in style at the Hotel Statler in New York City. Strongheart's manager, press agent, publicist and personal railroad representative sat at another table.

The handsome face of Strongheart was the top grossing Hollywood attraction for his entire film career. In his after life, he became famous as the icon of the modern animal communication movement. J. Allen Boone's Kinship With All Life
featured stories of Boone's introduction to the world of telepathic communication with animals as tutored by the great German Shepherd Dog.

Once Upon a Time, the Biggest Star in the World was a German Shepherd Dog Named Strongheart

I'm really proud of my newest article on Associated Content about Strongheart the German Shepherd Dog.

This dog was the first dog star, a star of the silent movies. And from 1921-1927, he was the biggest grossing star in Hollywood - the biggest star in the world! And if you know me very well, you know that Strongheart is the reason why there are two rescued GSDs living at Bright Eyes Sanctuary.

Strongheart would posthumously become famous through J. Allen Boone's book, A Kinship With All Life. Boone's stories of pet sitting Strongheart in between films were a life changing experience for Boone. Just through his sheer presence, Strongheart imparted the knowledge and skill of telepathic communication to the self-admitted bumbling human. It's no wonder that Strongheart had won the hearts and minds of so many movie goers way back then for his physical prowess on the screen.

Read more...

Book Review: Redemption - The Myth of Pet Overpopulation & the No-Kill Revolution in America

Bright Eyes Sanctuary — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 01:17:00 +0000

This book by Nathan Winograd is now the undisputed benchmark for companion animal welfare in America. It exposes the nation's best-known animal welfare groups, specifically HSUS, for being addicted to killing animals. The whole HSUS issue aside, I bought this book thinking it would give me a formula for no-kill.

I am a veteran rabbit rescuer and have also done bird and cat rescue and we have 3 rescued dogs (and one who was a stray) and I was burnt out and ready to retire rescue until I read this book.

I greedily digested this book hoping to come away with a 1-2-3-action plan for no-kill for my rescue efforts. I did not find such an action plan within the book. At the end of the book is a 10-point "No Kill Equation" which details the 10 things Winograd says are the most important steps to success for achieving a 100% no-kill rate.

At first I was disappointed. All the points of the No Kill Equation seem obvious and pretty much were already in place at the shelter where I volunteer, which, for rabbits, had a 50%, kill rate when I started volunteering there.

I did come away with a detailed history of how Winograd achieved this no kill solution and I suppose that is all I really need to know.

But the book really did open my eyes to the psychology of animal rescue and Nathan Winograd is really an amazing person. I was chagrined to read in this book a quote from my own dog trainer claiming that the shelter where Winograd and company had achieved 100% no kill was fudging the numbers and that this wasn't really true.

HSUS and other groups, and many animal shelters have been put on notice because of this book. My own shelter claims a 99% adoption rate but that is only for animals who reach the adoption floor. Nearly 50% of the animals who come in the back door end up in the freezer. Their claim of a 99% adoption rate is propaganda - a practice now being utilized all across the country to escape scrutiny from groups and individuals seeking to espouse Winograd's new No Kill Equation. That is fine, fudge your numbers, spew your propaganda but it won't work. You can only do that for so long. The traditional media and the blogosphere will expose the real story. Propaganda is only a delay tactic.

Since reading this book, I was so inspired that someone somewhere sometime had achieved 100% No Kill that I started my own 501c3 nonprofit animal sanctuary, Bright Eyes Sanctuary, and started volunteering to help rabbits at one of my local shelters. Not the shelter associated with my dog trainer, mind you. I have great respect for her and all she does for animals, but the shelter where her husband is the director is not by any means an example of a proactive shelter. Hundreds of animals are killed there every week and it seems nothing is done to counter act it, no education, no public outreach, just reaction: killing healthy animals.

Just so you know, Winograd worked at a shelter in San Francisco that for four years was open admission - turned no animals away - and was 100% no kill. That is phenomenal. But critics claimed it was only achievable in San Francisco which has a high homosexual population and there is a perception that homosexuals care more about and take the best care of their animals.

That perception aside, I do find that some of my best adopters have been gay but I also know plenty more gay men and women who despise animals - so that is just a stupid stereotype - on the other hand one of my vets told me her best clients have always been gay - whatever. To prove to the critics that his No Kill Equation could be done anywhere, Winograd took his philosophy to upstate New York and did the same thing again. All the while the county adjacent to his county's shelter had an abysmal adoption rate.

My first thought about him trying to replicate his good work in upstate New York was, well if you could find anywhere in the eastern US that is most like San Francisco in terms of politics and culture, it would be upstate New York!

As for the No Kill Equation and rabbits, the equation is more complicated. Part of the NKE is low-cost spay/neuter (duh). Although it can be possible to find low cost neuters for rabbits, low cost spays are a lot harder to find. I did find one vet 75 miles away who does spays on rabbits for $35 but it costs me $60 to get there! So I can't afford that as I've been paying for the spays & neuters at my shelter. Now the shelter is paying for it but the only local vet who can do rabbit spays is charging us $80. That is not low cost. Since doing this surgery (rabbit spay) requires special training, it is very difficult to find a vet to give a discount on it. The one vet who gives the $35 spay is a special angel on this Earth and she is one of a kind, literally. How do you adequately thank someone like that?

An interesting phenomenon has sprung up like a giant behemoth since the publication of this book and that is a great number of people who attack Winograd and his philosophy in favor of killing animals. This debate, or rather, this WAR between KILLERS and NO KILLERS is a healthy development in the long stagnant animal rescue/welfare arena.

KILLER advocates cite instances of rescue groups gone bad where animals are neglected and suffering in poor conditions. This anomaly in animal rescue is just that, an anomaly. The poorly run kill shelters of the nation far outnumber the poorly run animal rescue groups and WHAT'S MORE, the rescues gone bad often are exposed MUCH MORE OFTEN than poorly run KILL SHELTERS who practice inhumane methods of KILLING such as gassing or just taking the animals out back and shooting them (yes they do that). As a matter of fact, those kill shelters often get very little if ANY negative publicity.

The KILL SHELTERS who practice these inhumane methods have been known about for years and are the inspiration for action of most rescue groups. These horrible kill shelters are not making the headlines among the propaganda of the Winograd naysayers and yet, I would bet you a million dollars that the places where the rescues gone bad exist are right next to kill shelters who do gassing and shooting and the people who are part of the rescue gone bad are simply desperate and unprepared psychologically to battle against that.

This brings up another thing that Winograd naysayers love to shout about. HOARDERS! People who love to be judgmental have often labeled me a hoarder. In fact, I find one of the main problems with animal rescue groups is that control freaks and megalomaniacs who live to be judgmental of others run the larger groups. I admit I'm a bit of a control freak myself but I'm not a hoarder. Hoarders do not take their animals to the vet, hoarders do not provide the very best, premium foods to their animals, hoarders do not spend 1/3 of their household income on animal care. I do all of these things and yet there are those judgmental kill-advocates who love to use me as their scapegoat, their excuse for killing.

That should speak for itself. Those kill advocates who say people like me are one reason they should be able to keep killing expose their addiction to pain and death with their evil philosophy.

This country needs to wake up. It needs to rise up out of the ashes and say, hey if there is ANY POSSIBILITY that no kill might work then we should all be trying it.

And who will judge the killers and the no killers, who will honestly say who is a true hoarder and who is not, who will say which rescue is bad and which is good, who will say which animals are in good situations and who are not? Who will decide all this?

Public opinion.

So be warned. Public opinion will only listen to cold hard facts and you better have lots of photos of bad rescues, you better have impartial reporting, you better be prepared psychologically and philosophically to do battle on this front because the war of killers versus life savers has just begun and I for one will always be someone commenting and reporting on it and sending out my ideas to the powers that be (which I have an uncanny ability to do).

This is the Roe v. Wade of animal welfare.

Except it should be called Kronos v. Winograd. The death addicts and pain junkies need to heal. They are human after all but part of their humanity has been trampled and stomped upon by their own love for animals and feelings of helplessness.

It's time to wake up! Never hold so tightly to an opinion that is completely defeatist and negative and violent (killing is violent). There is always hope and even if you don't believe in the NO KILL EQUATION - honestly, what is wrong with trying to make it work?

Tell me that and I'll respond. I'll show you where your philosophy is tied down in chains of pain.

Get the book. Read it, ponder it and do something about it. Don't just make accusations and be judgmental. Help some animals with your own bare hands not your mouth.

Book Review: The Dog Who Spoke With Gods by Diane Jessup

Bright Eyes Sanctuary — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 14:02:00 +0000

I first bought this book at an animal rights conference in 2000. AR2000 to be exact. I think the author was even there giving a talk but I don't remember. Anyway, I was intrigued by the title and then I read the blurb on the inside cover and it said something about a dog who tried to actually speak out loud and could say a few words. That's all I needed to read. I bought it and then didn't read it until this year.

I don't know why I waited so long to read it. I did a lot in those eight years though, a lot of animal rescue work. Since then I have swayed back and forth in my stance on animal rights. I have become disenchanted with PETA and HSUS. But I digress.

One thing I have always loved more than anything is a good book about dogs. A book written from the dog's point of view would be even better but those are hard to come by as are any books written from an animal's point of view. But they exist and this is one of them.

Only small parts of the book are actually written from the dog's point of view and those parts interweave with other characters' point of view to form a tapestry of experience of each. Diane Jessup weaves a vivid, gripping tale about a feral pit bull dog whose life is saved by a field scientist studying feral dogs. Of course the reason his life needed saving was because of the interference the scientist had on the dog's life.

Thinking he was doing the dog a favor, he brings him back to his school and puts him in a program to become a laboratory dog. Most dogs at the school end up part of horrific experiments. A lot of dogs, umpteen numbers of them, end up in the medical school where their lives end on an operating table to train young doctors. Some uses of the dogs may seem necessary, many are not. The book carefully and impartially presents this to the readers for them to decide.

The main characters are a young medical student, a daughter of two brilliant heart surgeons who is sure to follow in their footsteps, and the pit bull dog himself, Damien. Although the character of the girl, Elizabeth, is fairly flat (this is Diane Jessup's first novel), I welcomed it because I was not too interested in human character development but rather more interested in canine character development and there the book is rich and fertile. I practically ripped the pages out of the book, it was such a page turner for this reason and also because once the dog's plight is set, you just have to know how it ends!

My life seemed to go on hold while I greedily soaked up every word in this book. I learned some things about animal rights along the way that I didn't know which I should have known being an animal advocate. And I learned an awful lot about the very noble breed of dog known as the pit bull. I have loved pit bulls for a good while now because I've met some very sweet ones who were the silliest, sweetest, goofiest love bugs in the world. But the pit bull in this story, Damien, is not a goofball and not silly at all.

We are given the impression that he is an Old World style pit bull and one of not too shabby breeding. He is a very serious dog but he knows how to let loose and play. The pages with descriptions of play between Elizabeth and Damien make you feel like you're right there with them playing and loving every minute of it. These parts of the book will make you want to run right out and throw the ball as long as you can with your own pooch.

I can't stand book reviews that tell you all about the story so you don't even have to read the book. So I'm not going to do that. I'm going to tell you that this book is riveting, it is a page-turner deluxe and you will never, never guess how it ends. And to me that is a wonderful thing because I can't fiction that is like a broken record, same old story, different names for the characters. I like to not know what is going to happen. I'm one of those people who went to see The Sixth Sense and knew what the twist was just from the ads (wasn't it obvious?)

But I never for a million years would have guessed how this story would have ended. Although in retrospect, I do see the foundations, how Diane Jessup set the reader up for it, was even a little merciful in doing that. But I can tell you that it does have a happy ending. And it had too or I would never have written this review. I would have had to burn the book after ripping it to shreds. But none of that was necessary.

So get the book! When you buy from the link below, Bright Eyes Sanctuary will get a little commission too. Help our sanctuary! Read!

The Rabbit Army is Unleashed

Bright Eyes Sanctuary — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 10:25:00 +0000

Well today my comrade in arms said she would help me promote my rabbit articles on Associated Content. Thank you Evonne! You are a true compatriot! The folks at AC aren't going to know what hit them when the army of bunny people come marching over (let's hope).

I have already submitted "Secrets to Bonding Rabbits: Matchmaking for Bunnies Part 2" and so that should be published soon and today I worked on Part 3 but I have a lot of tweaking to do first. I tweaked Part 2 very painstakingly.

I really enjoy writing for Associated Content and hope to do so for a long time. I have so much to say!

So meanwhile, while we're waiting for Part 2 to be published, why not sink your eyes into Part 1? It is a lot of information about rabbit behavior gleaned from some long years of hard core rabbit rescue.

Lost in Cyberspace & Associated Content

Bright Eyes Sanctuary — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 10:43:00 +0000

Well I have surrendered to cyberspace. I am now officially a slave to the CyberVerse. As such, at least I get to work at home and be with the animals all day as opposed to driving a long way to somewhere and sitting at a desk and getting sneezed on in a cubicle. And I can put up any kind of posters I want over my desk.

Of course, the poster that's up there is called "The Many Faces of Expression" which I picked up at a paper show many years ago. It's a beautiful print with a dozen of animals painted by an illustrationist named Beckett. In the center of the print is my beloved wolf brother, and below him, a hare. Also portrayed is a skunk, badger, squirrel - all the woodland creatures.

I don't have to look far in my house to see a bunch of woodland creatures. Several reside right in my bedroom including two rabbits and 2 birds and a house cat who stops in for snuggles in the evening.

And so being lost in cyberspace isn't all the bad.

Where have I been lost and trying to find my way? Associated Content.

Check out the first installment of my new series "Secrets to Bonding Rabbits: Matchmaking for Bunnies Part 1" I wrote this and the next two parts soon to follow to express my personal philosophy, as a veteran rabbit rescuer, about why you should bond your rabbit and what your concerns should be. This first installment goes over the motivations you should have and the precautions you should take prior to starting the search for your rabbit's bond mate.

Did you know rabbits mate for life in the wild? I bet you didn't. Well they do. And you can find out more about all that in this article! Check it out and leave me some comments too! Everyone's got an opinion. And that's a good thing. Everyone's experience is different and sharing your experience (as well as your opinion, but please differentiate between the two) is a valuable thing in the CyberVerse.

I also have eight other articles, all about - you guessed it! - rabbits also on Associated Content. The one getting the most views, which is important to me, is called "The Easter Bunny: Silly Parents; Rabbits Aren't for Kids" and is about the oh so important issue of parents who make the poor decision of getting their small children a rabbit for Easter. Read this article, please, and pass it on to as many people as you can, especially those who you think might be leaning toward this decision. It will help them with the reality of the situation which hopefully they will consider before subjecting a little life (both the child and the bunny) to the many dangers of improper handling.

And maybe once they read that, their curiosity will be piqued about this whole house rabbit business. How did it start? When and why did people start bringing them into the house from out in the hutch? "The Evolution of the House Rabbit" explains this and more.

I've also written "How to Extend the Life of Your Pet Rabbit" and "The Importance of Spaying or Neutering Your Rabbit" whose titles are self-explanatory.

But I'm really proud of "Selecting a Qualified House Rabbit Veterinarian" which is something I have trouble convincing some people about taking very seriously. I will be sending that link to many future adopters hence.

Oh and don't let me forget one of the most touching stories you'll read in a while, "Caring for a Disabled Rabbit." This is a stirring story of triumph on the part of a little stray, hobo rabbit named Rebecca who continues to inspire all who know her.

Phew! That's a lot of rabbit articles! Well you get the idea that's why I'm passionate about; bright eyes, bushy tails and twitching noses. That's right! I love them all. But I don't just love my little rabbit friends. I love all animals and I will be writing a lot about all animals. Especially my wolf brothers (that's a juxtaposition for you eh?)

Stay tuned!