Saving Mexico's Strays: One Photographer's Mission of Mercy

Stunned by the suffering of dogs and cats in the streets of Cancun, Tracey Buyce took action.
By Jocelyn Heaney
February 21, 2012
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When Tracey Buyce left for a vacation in Cancun, Mexico, she never dreamed that she’d embarked on a life-saving mission. But Buyce soon learned that the streets and beaches of this glamorous resort are overrun with stray dogs and cats. Buyce, who hails from Saratoga Springs, New York, is also a photographer. She told The Saratogian that many of the animals were starving and sick. “I want to tell their story,” she explained. “I want to help them.”

Buyce started by contacting CANDI International, a nonprofit that works to save the lives of stray animals in destination communities like Cancun by hosting spay/neuter and adoption clinics throughout Mexico and the Caribbean. Then Boyce returned to Mexico to photograph the grateful animals at the CANDI-sponsored clinic in Cancun, and posted them on her website. Buyce hopes her photos will help spur both local and global involvement in the cause.

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Topics
Animals, World, dogs, Cats, stray animals, spay/neuter clinics, CANDI International, stray dogs, Photography, Mexico

Sheriff Frees Raccoon From Peanut Butter Jar, Earns PETA Award

PETA gives its Compassionate Action Award to people or agencies that improve the lives of animals.
By Jocelyn Heaney
February 17, 2012
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It all began one morning in St. Augustine, Florida, when Sharon Moyer’s dachshunds started barking crazily, The St. Augustine Record reports. When Moyer went into her yard, she discovered a raccoon with its head stuck in a peanut butter jar. The hapless critter was losing oxygen fast.

Agricultural Deputy George Letts responded to Moyer’s call. Letts and another deputy cut the jar off the raccoon’s head and even performed chest compressions on the little rascal. Once revived, the newly freed raccoon took a few moments to get his bearings, scooted off through the bushes, and finally disappeared through a hole in the fence.

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Topics
Animals, raccoons, wildlife, PETA, Compassionate Action Award, Animal Rescue

A Dog's Second Chance: Ace Is the Face of Animal Abuse Awareness

Once starving and neglected, Ace the boxer-bulldog now helps raise awareness and money to stop animal abuse.
By Jocelyn Heaney
February 17, 2012
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Tethered in a Missouri backyard, starving and alone, the little boxer-bulldog mix sought shelter from freezing temperatures in an old garbage can. Help came for the forgotten dog in the form of Kennett, Missouri, Humane Officer Tena Petix.

Taken from his so-called home, the dog was renamed Ace, an acronym for Animal Cruelty Example.

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Topics
Animals, boxers, bulldogs, Ace (Animal Cruelty Example), dogs, animal abuse, rescue animals

Pet Safe Anti-Freeze: Heartsick Boy Champions Law After Dog's Death

Nikko’s Law would protect thousands of children, dogs and other animals from poisoning and death.
By Jocelyn Heaney
February 16, 2012
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For six wonderful years, Nikko, a Shiba Inu, and Aaron Coash, a 12-year-old boy from Kansas were best friends. They competed in dog shows together and brought happiness to seniors in nursing homes. But, as Fox News reports, all that changed a few weeks ago. One day, Aaron returned home from school and Nikko was not there to greet him. The dog had wandered off on some ill-fated adventure and ended up drinking anti-freeze. Nikko’s health quickly declined and after a week of pain, the dog died.

Heartbroken, Aaron is following his parents' advice and trying to find some good in this tragedy—by proposing Nikko's Law, which would require that anti-freeze have a bitter, rather than a sweet, taste. This would repel, rather than tempt, dogs, cats, and kids.

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Topics
Animals, dogs, Shiba Inu, anti-freeze poisoning, Nikko's Law, Humane Society of the United States, Human Society, anti-freeze

Pigeon Shooters Blast Animal-Rights Drone From Sky

SHARK (Showing Animals Respect and Kindness) says their drone was shot down in retaliation for their disruption of a South Carolina pigeon shoot.
By Jocelyn Heaney
February 16, 2012
5 comments

An Illinois-based animal-advocacy group called SHARK (Showing Animals Respect and Kindness) recently planned to disrupt a South Carolina pigeon shoot by using a remote-controlled drone copter to film the pointless and cruel event.

SHARK President Steve Hindi told The Times and Democrat that he and his group were just about to launch the Mikrokopter when a lawyer and the police tried to stop them. The police claimed to represent the privately owned plantation where the shoot was set to take place.

"It didn't work; what SHARK was doing was perfectly legal," Hindi said in a news release. "Once they knew nothing was going to stop us, the shooting stopped and the cars lined up to leave."

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SHARK decided to send the drone up anyway.

"Seconds after it hit the air, numerous shots rang out," Hindi said. "As an act of revenge for us shutting down the pigeon slaughter, they shot down our copter."

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Topics
Animals, animal rights activists, shark, pigeons, pigeon shoot, animals rights, Activists, Hunting

TV Imitates Life: Two Horses Die While Filming HBO's 'Luck'

The American Humane Society was present on set. HBO claims all safety protocols were taken. What went wrong?
By Jocelyn Heaney
February 15, 2012
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HBO’s new drama Luck, starring Dustin Hoffman as an ex-con mobster and Nick Nolte as a horse trainer, is a bit too realistic when it comes to capturing the tragedy of thoroughbred racing.

As Forbes reports, two horses died during the filming of the pilot and another in the seventh episode. The horses stumbled during racing sequences, suffered severe fractures, and were euthanized.

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Topics
Animals, Arts + Entertainment, animal welfare, horses, thoroughbreds, Horse Racing, HBO, “Luck”

Westminster Kennel Club Loses Pedigree Over 'Sad' Pound Pups

Who should have the upper paw: coddled purebreds or survivalist shelter dogs?
By Salvatore Cardoni
February 15, 2012
1 comments

The 2012 Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show has come and gone.

If you caught the two-day pooch-a-palooza on television, you glimpsed the prestigious pageantry, where purebred dandies in well coiffed, tailor-made hair suits pranced around the green carpeting of Madison Square Garden.

Had Pedigree been allowed to run its pro-adoption commercials, how many empathic viewers would have picked up the phone and inquired about bringing a shelter dog home to join them on that empty couch?

What you didn’t see were Pedigree commercials featuring emaciated shelter dogs staring at you with their adopt-me-please puppy dog eyes—with a faint underscore of melancholy music running throughout.

The show canned the ads, which encourage shelter dog adoptions, because they were considered “too depressing” for the Westminster TV audience. In doing so they let go of their main sponsor for the past 24 years, Pedigree, which was replaced by Purina. Purina ran ads featuring healthy-looking, smiling, athletic dogs.

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Topics
Animals, The Westminster Kennel Club Show, dogs, dog shows, purebred dogs, shelter dogs, pound pooches, adopt a dog, dog adoptions, pedigree dog food, Advertising

Cancer-Surviving Pitbull Paints to Raise Awareness for Canine Cancer

Once a stray on the streets of New York, Elsie now brings a message of hope through her distinctive paintings.
By Jocelyn Heaney
February 14, 2012
1 comments

The conventional wisdom is that an artist’s desire to create is born of some kind of suffering. This seems to be true for animal artists as well. Elsie—or Something Elsie, as she’s known in the art world—is a cheerful, talented 10-year-old pitbull who has experienced her share of hardship.

As Reading Eagle reports, Something Elsie was abandoned on the streets of New York in 2006 and picked up by Animal Care and Control. An hour before she was to be euthanized, Elsie found a foster home, and from her foster home she went to live with Tanya Turgeon, her forever human.

Today Elsie uses non-toxic paint to create paw-traits in Turgeon's Manhattan apartment, usually in the bathtub. “It takes a minute to make one painting, because she's stepping and wagging,” Turgeon said. “We paint for about an hour. She doesn't try to lick the paint.”

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Animals, Arts + Entertainment, dogs, pit bulls, canine cancer, animals that paint, Art, painting

Two Emaciated Puppies Check Themselves Into Texas Hospital

Starving and sick, the two little dogs seemed to know exactly where to go for help.
By Jocelyn Heaney
February 13, 2012
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After one recovers from the mind-crippling wave of cuteness inspired by the story of two deathly ill puppies wandering into a human emergency room and waiting for help, one has to wonder about the intuition of these poor pups.

Did they somehow know that this wasn’t simply a public place full of humans, but a place humans went for help when they were sick?

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KIIITV reports that the two sick dogs walked right though the glass doors into the lobby of the Christus Spohn Shoreline Hospital in Corpus Christi, Texas, where they waited patiently in the lobby to be seen. After some food and TLC from the hospital staff, the two puppies were whisked off to the Gulf Coast Humane Society.

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Topics
Animals, dogs, puppies, abandoned dogs, stray animals, Animal Shelters, Gulf Coast Humane Society

Snake-Hunting Labradors Rid Everglades of Invasive Pythons

Eager to please their human handlers, obedient Labrador teams have a 92 percent success rate at locating the snakes.
By Jocelyn Heaney
February 13, 2012
7 comments

Sometimes when man creates a huge problem that destroys the balance of the ecosystem, man’s best friend must come in and sort it out.

Oanow reports that Jake and Ivy, two Labradors from Alabama's Auburn University, were recently called to the swamps of Florida to find a formidable non-native species: the Burmese Python.

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Topics
Animals, dogs, Labrador Retrievers, EcoDog, snakes, Burmese pythons, invasive species, exotic pet trade, everglades

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