life is better

I have been thinking about the issues about off-leash vs. leash training and have come up with this idea for a tee shirt for my clients to wear.
Something that would make them proud for what they have accomplished and why they worked so hard to achieve this end.
Life is just better off- leash trained!

I will be looking for some better pictures to use and various breeds.
This was my first attempt and I really didn't know what I was doing.

NJ Legislative Alert

The AKC has sent yet another NJ legislative alert out.

Not only does this law give anyone the right with immunity to accuse you of animal cruelty for using specific training equipment if someone deems the equipment cruel but you will never have the chance to face or question the accuser.
This law will also have a mandate on space ration to allowed animals. Those with multiple dogs or rescue foster homes will loss their rights do so and have to give animals up if not within the guidelines.

More information from AKC:

Oppose Overreaching NJ Proposal! Print This Article [Thursday, June 07, 2007] The American Kennel Club is alarmed by the provisions of New Jersey Assembly Bill 2649. The proposal attempts to replace New Jersey's already comprehensive and reasonable animal cruelty laws and humane care standards with an unnecessary, confusing, and haphazard system that will not only affect the health of the general public, but will also threaten the due process rights of individual animal owners. The AKC believes that dog owners bear a special responsibility to their canine companions to provide proper care and humane treatment at all times. We take animal cruelty cases seriously—in fact, anyone convicted of animal cruelty involving a dog will have all AKC privileges suspended. The AKC also supports reasonable and enforceable laws that govern dog ownership, as is currently provided by New Jersey's regime of common-sense laws and regulations. Among AB 2649's 56 pages, its most egregious proposals include the following: Any person, regardless of their lack of knowledge, training, or expertise, could accuse another person of animal cruelty, while receiving immunity from prosecution for cruelty themselves. Without providing redress for someone who has been unjustifiably and vindictively accused of animal cruelty, this provision is ripe for abuse. The use of a living bird or other animal in events would be considered animal abuse. This would effectively make illegal many performance events, including Earthdog, Coonhound, and Sporting dog hunt tests and field trials. The definition of "minimum care" required for the care of animals will be lessened to include "veterinary care deemed necessary by a reasonably prudent person". AKC believes that veterinary care in all cases should be administered with a professional standard of care with the highest levels of professionalism and competence, as deemed necessary by a licensed veterinarian. The definition of "cruelly restraining a dog" specifically bans the tethering of dogs with less than 15 feet of tether. This provision does not expressly provide an exemption for dogs being groomed on grooming tables in any setting, including grooming salons and dog shows. With substantive animal cruelty provisions already in place, New Jersey state and local governments need to enforce existing law in cruel tethering cases. Irresponsible owners who are not providing humane treatment for their animals can and should be prosecuted under current law. What You Can Do: Contact your representative in the New Jersey General Assembly and express your opposition to AB 2649. To find your Assemblymember, click here. For more information, contact AKC's Canine Legislation Department at (919) 816-3503, or e-mail doglaw@akc.org.

Best Friends Animal Sancturay

Do not support this animal group. They are having secret meetings on how to remove certain breeds from our lives and are setting themselves up as the definitive word in animal knowledge with a hidden agenda.

Nj seeks to remove legal rights

Ownership alert!

While I fully understand the pain of losing a beloved pet, I oppose this attempt to create a legal hornet’s nest in the pet community by utilizing emotional backlash and love for one’s pet as a spring board into guardianship and a legal fray of pet malpractice suits it will bring.

Lawyers will be the only persons to stand to win in this proposed bill.

The bill will create several things:

1) Increase the cost of pet care due to medical malpractice insurance similar to what has

happened in the human medical community.

2) Promote fewer pet owners due to the increase cost of pet care.

3) Bring about the formation of “guardianship” laws which will create legal access to remove dogs from homes. Even using a leash collar and correcting your dog out in public can have you arrested. This is already happening in other states. People are being banned from dog competition because they looked at their dogs sternly and are considered abusive!

4) Create a legal system solely for pet law, since the already over crowed court systems will not be able to handle the excess of litigation. Simple things such as a neighbor has a grudge against another neighbor, speak abuse and the courts must remove your dog.

5) Increase all costs of dog ownership via the need for pet stores, trainers, toy manufactures and such to pay malpractice insurance.

6) Allow the state to become the legal owner of your pet. The state will have the right to bring lawsuits in your dogs name to courts against you the owner; this is the precedent of guardianship and the removal of dogs as property. The dogs will suffer no matter the outcome of the trial since they will be placed in a shelter for whatever time frame necessary for the legal system to work and you will not be allowed to see your pet or own another dog until the trial is concluded.

My belief is the spay/neuter laws are being enforced to clear the shelter out to allow store room for dogs who will brought through the legal system. There is no such thing as over crowed shelters due to over breeding of dogs. Shelters are full of untrained dogs whose owners can’t be bothered to train them properly.

Contact your senator to voice your opposition to this proposed law. Contact any friend or family and have them do the same. This bill is going before the assembly on Monday May 28, 2007.

N.J. May Give Pet Owners Right to Sue Bill Would Allow Lawsuits for Pain And 

Suffering If Animal Dies From Eating Contaminated Food   

  (CBS/AP) New Jersey on Monday will consider giving pet owners the right to sue 

For emotional pain and suffering if an animal gets sick or dies from eating 

Contaminated pet food. 

Joyce Tischler, founding director of the Animal Legal Defense Fund, said New 

Jersey would become one of the few states in the nation to allow such lawsuits. 

She said Tennessee allows pet owners to sue for up to $5,000 in damages. New 

Jersey's proposal includes no damage limit. 

"This would be a significant step forward in state legislation, " Tischler said. 

New Jersey Assemblyman Neil Cohen said his bill would change the legal standard 

that generally regards pets as property. 

"For many pet owners, losing a dog or cat to tainted food is tantamount to 

losing a loved one to a preventable tragedy," Cohen said. 

Veterinarians have opposed similar proposals in other states, arguing that such 

laws would increase consumer costs and encourage frivolous lawsuits. 

Cohen's bill is set to be considered Monday by an Assembly committee. He said he 

wrote it following March's nationwide pet food recall. 

http://www.cbsnews. com/stories/ 2007/05/21/ health/main28318 51.shtml

Genocide in California

Follow this link and read what is really happening. If this pases in CA. it will spread across the country like wildfire!


http://tinyurl.com/3xpv6y

Mandatory Spay and Neuter

The new wave of dog insanity crossing the country is the requirement that all dogs be spayed or neutered by 4 months of age.
What is truly sad is the fact that despite new information suggesting early altering of dogs is found to be harmful both physically and emotionally, the push goes on. Laws being made by those with little or no knowledge of what they are doing, spurned on by organizations looking to rid the planet of family pets!

The push is being presented as a way to reduce the numbers of dogs who are placed into and euthanized in shelters. The over population card has been played so many times in this very controversial issue that people no longer what is or isn't fact.

Shelter numbers have been on a steady decline since the 1980's and dog are now being shipped around the country to keep numbers elevated. Dogs are being brought in from Puetro Rico and Europe.

The benefits of early spay and neuter are this:

A full and rapid decline of dogs and cats. The goal here is to eliminate all cats and dogs as pets.
HSUS president Wayne Parcells says. " One generation and out!" Read information on the www.anti-peta.com web site to see what the real agenda is and how they use the millions of dollars donated by those who have paid to kill and promote genocide of their own family pets.

Dogs and cats will only be available through limited sources sanctioned by the government. A limited gen pool creates sick dogs.

Hobby and show Breeders will become a thing of the past. Over populations does not happen by those who build and develop blood lines carefully. Over populations comes from puppy millers looking to make a buck off the emotional buy people make in pet stores.

Dogs are already being black market into the country from Mexico, so this will eventually become an illegal form of black market and illegal commerce.

Dogs will not be inoculated because owners will fear being turned in by their Vets who will be compelled by the state to report ever dog.

Dogs will not physically develop normally since those hormones are needed for growth.

A greater increase of bone cancer and other forms of cancers and diseases.

More behavioral problems. Dogs will stay emotionally immature, not train well or mature properly.

Early spay of females creates more aggressive females.
See information from www.caninesports.com/SpayNeuter.html

Dog Food Recall Wal-Mart Ol' Roy Biscuits

The over a hundred various company products recalled in the past few weeks due to chemicals found in wheat gluten that are making dogs sick and killing, it is important you contact your food vendors to be sure what you are feeding is safe.
It seems Menu Foods, the manufacture of the recalled foods has been testing and receiving complaints as early as December 2006, so foods made before that time can still be on store shelves.
At first the recall was for wet foods but now dry foods and treats are being recalled.

As of yesterday April 5, 2007 this recall became necessary:

Sunshine, of Red Bay, Ala., sells pet foods and treats under its own
brands as well as private labels sold by grocery, mass merchant and
dollar stores, according to its Web site. The recall included some
of the products made for sale under five private labels, including
Ol'Roy biscuits, sold by Wal-Mart Stores Inc., and Stater Bros.
large biscuits, sold by Stater Bros. Markets. It also covered a
portion of Sunshine's own Nurture, Lassie and Pet Life dog biscuit
brands.

Previously, Menu Foods had recalled some wet-style dog foods it made
for sale under the Stater Bros. and Ol'Roy brands as well.

Life's Abundance Premium Dog and Cat Foods are not part of the recall nor is the company a part of the Menu Foods production.
You are safe with all the Life's Abundance food products.

www.petvitamins.org

Sonoita Night

Here is a nice letter written about the abundance of dog training. A goal all training should achieve. Well trained dogs have a fuller life, living more as a natural being. Owners experience more joy in the freedom of the moment.

____________________________________________________________________


We turned onto the dirt ranch road that serves as the southern entrance to
the Empire-
Cienega Ranch (www.empireranchfoundation.org) just as the sun ducked behind
the mountains and the orb of the moon hung itself high in the Sonoran sky.
The Empire-Cienega is is a 42,000 acre patch of high rolling watered
grassland, (cienega means swamp) bordered by the Mustang Mountains on the
east and backdropped by the Santa Ritas on the west. From where we parked
to walk, I was embraced by grassland from horizon to horizon - on one side
the shimmering white light of the full moon, on the other, the fading pink
silhouetting the mountains whose tones were
deepening to cobalt in the fading light. On moonlit nights like this one,
the light is so bright you can see your shadow, and the waxing and waning of
colors in the sky and on the ground never fails to take my breath away.
Fortunately, the dogs love it as well.

Nagi adores this place and trundles along with his big plume of a tail
wafting from side to side. We haven't been here in a while, but he knows it
well. He has always loved trailing scent in the grasses, but he is starting
to find Lily's {Shiba Inu) hunting antics even more entertaining than
flushing birds himself. She is faster and more efficient, and he gets the
benefit of clusters of birds soaring up under his nose. She is getting to a
level of fitness that astounds me. Periodically she just makes these
quantum leaps forward in development, mentally and physically that leave me
open mouthed wondering what just happened. Recently all of her muscling and
bone have deepened and widened (month 9-10). In the mornings, she now
boings as high as the top of the
bottom half of the barn door impatiently waiting for me to get it open to
hunt mice. Just in the last week it seems that she has discovered she has
springs in her legs, but I had not yet seen the display she put on tonight.

We wandered off the road and up into the hills, the whole area blanketed in
an unimpeded stream of moonlight. Lily started pronging from place to
place, getting more and more excited as birds flushed up from her drives.
As we started down into a draw, it was as if the land, and the light, and
her heart and her heritage all joined forces and became one joyous whole. I
confess to never quite having seen a dog do what she did. By the light of
the moon, dog morphed into antelope. Down the hill she flew bounding three
feet into the air and 6-8 feet forward with each leap. It was astounding.
I was so mesmerized that I had to shake myself and whistle her back in as
she went bounding hundreds of yards ahead of me.

As the light faded, and moonlight washed over the plateau, she became a
dark form with just a flash of white tail that would periodically hurl
itself above the grass level and then down hidden from sight again, Nagi
happily following in her wake. I think he thinks that it is just now sort
of worth it, that we put up with her being a baby. For me, these moments,
when dog gets to be fully dog, are what fuels my soul. Not the ring, not
the progressions, not competition, but when I can simply take a good dog,
for a good walk, in a great place, for me, that is when I truly feel that
God's in his heaven and all's well with the world.

I read something from an author, much of whose words I deeply respect,
words which pained me to the core. She was talking about leash laws and
said "most dogs can't be offleash, nor SHOULD THEY BE..." While it is true
that being off leash carries with it a responsibility to conduct oneself in
a manner befitting noble dog, were I to have to live my life never having
these moments, never having the joy of seeing dogs in nature where they
deserve to be, I think I would die. I never take the spaciousness of my
western lands for granted. And I never take the joy of seeing a dog
experience ground, and wind, and smell, and space for granted. It is my
lifeblood.
Maryna Ozuna Copyright 2007 Ozuna

Reno's Rights Holland WI

There are more newspapers picking up the Reno's Rights story.
I ask you all to go to the newspaper link provided and send them your well thought out and polite response, here is mine!

"There is more of a concern for potential problems then there is for someone who has already proven by demonstrating beyond a doubt their ability to have more dogs than allowed under the current laws and still remain vigilant in their care and consideration for the neighbors.
If a laws exists which would allow more dogs than currently designated, how would that be any different than the expectations placed on someone with two dogs. The number is arbitrary, the care, up keep and training is what anyone should be looking for in a competent dog owner. Someone seeking a variance who has not displayed abilities to care for the dogs should not receive one, but someone how has proven themselves should not be punished by being grouped with and blamed for another failures.

To deny someone based on a possible problem is unfair to those who are responsible and give allowances to those who are not."

Please contact the Holmen Courier News at:

http://www.holmencourier.com/news/00lead.txt

Holland WI.

Here is more information by a great trainer about Reno's Rights.

There is also rational information concerning Pit Bulls to counter the false claims that all Pit Bulls are bad!

http://www.lilacpitbull.com/wordpress/index.php

Dog food recall

Here is a link to the lastest information of the dog food recall:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17650075/


Looking for food at this time becomes a difficult task with so much uncertainty.
Life's' Abundance Premium Dog and Cat food are by far the safest of products out there.
The product contains no corn or Wheat Gluten (suspect in the alfatoxin deaths) and the manufacturing of the foods follow a very strict production code demanded by the formulator of the product with quality checks done weekly.
The foods ingredients come from the same source and remains constant in the production process so bag to bag, there is no variations in the foods developed.



www.petvitamins.org
www.caninehealthy.com

Reno's Story - Shame on Holland WI

Here is further information brought to light by the local newspaper!

http://www.lacrossetribune.com/articles/2007/03/19/news/02dogs.txt

This situation is so important to so many dog owners across the country.
Rescue groups in particular should be keenly aware and follow the outcome.

Dog Laws are Bad for Our Dog! Shame on Holland, Wisconsin

Shame on Holland, Wisconsin

The never ending dog legislation are NOT sound nor safe for dog's or owners. The truth is becoming that no matter what you do right, your rights may be eliminated based on whim, certainly, not fact.

Read the below and imagine it being your dog forced from your home.
Read the below letter sent by the owner of Reno who is being forced to give up a well trained, happy and extremely loved pet because the law says if your neighbors do not want dogs near them, no matter how well trained or cared for the dogs are, you have to give them up.
Imagine Reno is your dog!
__________________________________________________________________

In the wake of the town board's decision not to issue a variance for the number of dogs I have, I've been preparing for each dog to go to his new home. What should the dog take with him to help settle in? What do the new owners need to know about their training and handling? What do these people need to know about the dogs' individual likes and dislikes? What their souls are like?

One of the dogs leaving is my Reno. Oh my God. Reno.

He needs his semi-deflated basket ball. A bumper of course. A cow femur bone preferably stuffed with peanut butter, but it's fine plain if that's all there is. He'd like a spot on the couch if one's available, but he'd never be rude or pushy about it.

He gives 5 with both paws individually and then "10" with both. After this, he leaps into the air, and then spins one circle and grabs his tail. He's a very mellow dog by nature, and this trick just cracks him up. It's his only one.

He barks three barks to let you know someone's arrived, and then quiets. Other than that, he never makes a noise. His obedience is terrific, on or off leash. His manners are terrific. He has the temperament of an angel. He passed his Canine Good Citizen / Therapy Dog International test as a walk in. He leaves and go lays down when you eat, although he's happy to help you out with the leftovers if invited. He looks sad when you give him a bath or trim his nails, but he always cooperates. Reno always cooperates.

He is wonderful with anyone he meets, human or animal. Any age, any temperament. He used to go to work with me at the assisted living facility. There was an old crotchety man who would only take his meds and come out for meals in exchange for being able to take Reno for a walk and throw a few bumpers for him. The only time I ever saw this man let his guard down or his expression soften was when he was with Reno. He'd been a hunter when he was younger. I guess the dog took him back to better days.

Reno loves to ride in the car. He makes the most wonderful face if you ask him about "The Bird." He likes to "tunnel" through your legs, and stop in position to get scratched above the base of his tail. His back feet march in place as he does this. He likes to be scratched behind the ears, too.

On the day he passed the final series of tests needed for the American Kennel Club to award him the title Companion Dog, he was mounted by another male dog who had gotten up during the exercise known as the three minute down. Not only did Reno not get up from his down, but he looked at me across the ring and wagged his tail as if to say, "See? I am a GOOD boy."

Yes, Reno. You're a VERY good boy.

God help me next Wednesday when he's taken out of here.

Eleanor Herrick

Holmen, Wisconsin

__________________________________________________________________

Look into this dogs eyes! Read about the depth of love and commitment this owner has given him. This is what owners should be doing. This type of owner should be commended for her dedication, not punished for it!
NO law, being written at this time has the best interest of the dog and owner in mind. On the surface the wording makes them seem like good laws because the true intent and depth of them is not evident beyond the initial sweet wording.
The interest they are serving are the special interest group seeking to remove dog ownership from the face of the earth. Sound unlikely and even unrealistic? It is being done one step at time one law at a time.
It happened to Reno!