Treats on the Internets

The No Kill Nation posts about the HSUS Las Vegas hotel shindig this week:

A number of stakeholders in the pit bull advocacy community have been invited to sit down and have a heart to heart with HSUS about their recently amended policy regarding dogs seized as part of a fighting case. 

As with No Kill, the position seems to be loaded with a lot of “ifs” and “buts” as in if we ask for evaluations, communities will be less likely to cooperate with us in conducting these operations. Once again the call is for the largest humane organization to take a leadership position in defense of these dogs. The messages from HSUS over time on this issue have been confounding, confusing and even contradictory. 

But in one respect, HSUS has been consistent regarding their philosophy on bust dogs:  kill them all, even the puppies still nursing from their dams.  I wish the meeting was going to be livestreamed on the net.  At least the unwashed masses could listen in that way.  I prefer to get my information straight from the horse's mouth whenever possible but I guess we'll just have to wait until the invited "stakeholders" in the Pitbull community serve us up their reviews.

Dogged Blog will be attending today's seminar at the HSUS conference by Maddie's Fund on no kill sheltering.  

Nathan Winograd sounds off on the HSUS court testimony in the Wilkes Co case:

The transcripts reveal that the court was struggling with what to do with the dogs and at one point asked HSUS why killing them, as HSUS was recommending, was humane? Not only did HSUS representatives mislead the court about the Vick dogs (falsely claiming none were rehabilitated), the cost to rehabilitate the Vick dogs (false claiming it cost $190,000 for each dog!), and about Best Friends offer of help (they offered to evaluate and then help get the dogs into rescue which was not conveyed to the court), they also lied to the court saying all the dogs posed a danger. To say that nursing puppies are a threat to public safety is very close to perjury in my view, and one that cost the little puppies their very lives.

Follow up story on Ted and Karen Koran in FL who were struggling to keep their pets fed.

In Texas, dogs over 40 pounds may be declared "dangerous" according to HB1982.

Also on the PetsitUSA blog, a post about banning the gas chamber to kill shelter pets - an idea whose time is way overdue