Hero Dogs Of War Discarded As 'Surplus Equipment' After Service

Article by The Barbi Twins on thedodo.com
thedodo.com March 13, 2015


Until 2000, military working dogs (MWDs) were discarded, warehoused or euthanized at the end of their service. There was no law allowing for their adoption and retirement. However, that changed when President Clinton signed a bill, known as "Robby's Law," to facilitate the adoption of retired MWDs. Since that time, countless families and retired dogs have been united, but there is still much more to do. While retired military dogs are now available for adoption, some fail to enter the system simply because of their location overseas. It makes sense for the military to take responsibility by bringing MWDs back to the US at the completion of their tour, but they're not. Retired MWDs are reclassified as "surplus equipment" and discarded if there is no immediate home.

We worked with the top D.C. lobbyist from Animal Welfare Institute, Chris Heyde, to end horse slaughter in 2011. A couple of years ago, we worked with him on the Canine Members of the Armed Forces Act, sponsored by Representative Walter Jones, Jr. (R-NC), in the House, and Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) in the Senate. That would have done several important things, including requiring the military to return MWDs to the US upon completion of their service overseas, so they could enter the adoption program at Texas' Lackland Air Force Base.

While the Canine Members of the Armed Forces Act was blocked in 2013, President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act into law, which authorized — but doesn't require, as originally intended — the secretaries of the various military services to transfer the dogs back to Lackland Air Force Base or another location for adoption. This provision would be for any MWD who is to be retired and for whom "no suitable adoption is available at the military facility where the dog is located." This kind of language is needed to ensure that the military returns MWDs to the U.S. where homes are available. The bill also authorizes, (but again, does not require), the Secretary of Defense to create a program with funds from the public to provide veterinary care to retired MWDs.

While these steps are important, they fall far short of ensuring that the US military upholds its duty to honor these national canine heroes by requiring them to return them safely to the US, and caring for them as they age. Several basic tasks that the US government should do for every single veteran, no matter how many legs and/or tails they might have.


#K9VeteransDay is today, Mar. 13, so let's make our canine veterans lucky and "leave no man or dog behind." Demand that our representatives #BringHomeOurDogs from overseas. They fought for us, just like all our veteran heroes did.

Original Article:  thedodo.com

5 Reasons Kill 'Shelters' Don't Work

By the Barbi Twins
On Dodo.com September 18, 2014

There's nothing closer to people than their companion pets. We're responsible for their very existence. Yet there's nothing more betraying to a dog or cat's loyalty than for them to end up at a pound to be killed in return for their unconditional love. We've been brainwashed that "killing is saving" so we kill healthy adoptable pets if there are "too many." We've never stepped outside the cage to ask what's "too many pets?" Nor do we think of alternative ways to find homes for pets without killing.

For example, there are 4.2 million people living in Los Angeles and 45,000 shelter pets killed there per year. That's only one percent of the population. Similarly, there are 316.1 million people that live in the U.S. and three to four million pets killed in pounds nationwide; that's also a little over one percent of the population. So why kill pets when we could think about housing them? Why are we the only country that has kill pounds?

Pounds don't work because:

1. They're run by the health department. Their catch and kill technique is an easy and quick way to keep cities disease-free. 
2. Pounds manage themselves. They don't have to answer to anyone so no one enforces laws like spay/neuter laws. 
3. Killing doesn't lower the number of pets, instead it opens a window for puppy mills, kitten mills, pet shops, and internet backyard breeders. 
4. Pounds aren't "shelters"; they're a place to throw away a pet. If they never existed, people would think twice about getting a pet. 
5. Laws protect pounds so that they don't have to disclose facts. Like this one: there's a 50 to 99 percent chance of the animal being killed.  In most pounds we've volunteered at, pets are dragged to the "bump room" unsedated, and killed with a heart stick. This isn't "humane euthanasia." 

Our goal is to make shelters no-kill or to privatize them. Let's tell our local representatives that the cities would save taxes and lower pet numbers by having:

• Free spay/neuter clinics like humane free clinics using third and fourth year veterinarian students. For every tax dollar we'd spend on spay/neuter, we'd save $10 on housing, killing and disposing of pets. 
• City dog trainers, since in my years of volunteering I've seen that most dogs are surrendered to pounds because they're untrained. 
• TNR programs for feral cats to be trapped/neutered and the returned back to a cat colony, since 75 to 80 percent of pound killings are cats.

Let's stop the broken cycle of killing and promote volunteer-based no-kill rescues. Let's rewire the brain to a "pro-live" movement and find new, creative ways to help homeless animals. Animal rights activists should fight for the animals' right to live, not the right to kill them.

How To Solve The Wild Horse 'Problem'

By the Barbi Twins
On Dodo.com September 18, 2014

The wild horses are federally protected by the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971, managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and graze on tax paid land. This bill was later amended to rid the horses so the land could be used for government business. In 2004, an amendment called the Burn Rider Act allowed round-ups to rid them. Their loopholes for these amendments are usually false claims, like wild horses are "feral" and basically a pest on the land, despite recent news that fossils of horses were found in Wyoming, making horses more native than most animals in America.

The BLM also claims wild horses were overpopulating, when in fact they take less than one percent of the land and gradually the herds are getting smaller. It is actually cattle that takes up most of the land (90 percent), and which are not native to the environment. Cattle and horses have always co-existed. But now the BLM wants all the land cleared, including the cattle, so they told ranchers to sue them in order to legally cull horse herds from the land, letting horse advocates blame the ranchers.

Indeed, in the BLM's own words, there is ten times more land available than needed per animal. Still, as of August, the BLM predicts "excess" horses will eat grass and cause weeds to grow on federal land. The BLM contracts two agencies to get "scientific" data on the horses. Since both agencies list their priority as using federal land for profitable government business, their research is biased against the horses.

The first agency, USGS Fort Collins Science Center (FORT) is paid by many government agencies and policymaking groups to generate evidence to back the client's desired policy. FORT does wild horse population and fertility control studies for the BLM. These studies are used to say it is right to get rid of wild animals in order to expand profitable government businesses, like solar and wind power.

The other agency, the USDA-Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) says it “provid[es] wildlife damage management assistance to protect agriculture, natural resources, property and health and safety," meaning the BLM pays APHIS to show them how to get rid of wild horses. There is no direct public control of APHIS, and no clear mention of their role on BLM web pages on horse roundups.

The only way to stop this is not to complain to the BLM, who was a part of the deal and just taking orders, but instead to complain to your elected representatives that were part of the legislation that made it possible to get rid of our federally protected wild horses. Congressional reps may not like animals, but they need your vote. Tell them to use our taxes to protect our horses, not try to get rid of them. And stop all horses, domestic and wild horses from horse slaughter.

Sadly, horse slaughter has and will always be legal until we pass the anti horse slaughter bill, named this year the Safeguard Act (read it here). This bans horse slaughter permanently, as well as the transport to other countries for horse slaughter. It's been sitting in Congress for 11 years without passing, because most people don't know about it. There are temporary bans on horse slaughter. For example, this year we have an annual ban that cuts USDA funding to inspect horse slaughter plants. The slaughter of wild and domesticated horses is a big business that the government wastes taxes for overseas profit. If this bill passed, it would be almost impossible to get rid of the wild horses in large amounts from slaughters' kill buyers.

#Justice4Mustangs

Read Original Article:  On Dodo.com