Are high profile abused dogs a ‘brand’?
Most people have heard about the case of Patrick, the Pit Bull mix who was repeatedly abused by his owner, Kisha Curtis. In 2011, Curtis left Patrick tied to the railing of her apartment for a week, before shoving the emaciated dog into a plastic bag and throwing him down a trash chute. Patrick was rescued just moments before he would have been compacted with the building’s garbage.
This past Tuesday Curtis pled guilty to charges of animal abuse, clearing the way for her criminal trial to finally proceed. As part of her guilty plea, Curtis has also agreed to forfeiture of Patrick, something she had fought against until now. Essentially, she was not only pleading not guilty to the charges, but was also demanding the right to have Patrick returned to her.
Unbelievable, right? After all, why would someone who so obviously didn’t care about Patrick’s welfare fight so hard to get him back? For the answer to that, we need to follow the money, which we can do in this case by simply reading the sentence that Associated Humane Societies of New Jersey (AHS) used to describe Patrick when fighting a court battle for their own custody of him –
(Patrick is a) “very valuable brand for commercial exploitation and fundraising”
As Nathan Winograd so succinctly summed up Patrick’s custody battle –
It is expected that the court will also determine whether Patrick is given to the only “loving home” which he has ever truly known: the home of the veterinarians who saved his life and want to keep him or whether he will be given to the Associated Humane Societies of New Jersey (AHS), which has sued those veterinarians (and the City of Newark) to gain custody of Patrick so that they could continue to exploit his name for money.
AHS is claiming “ownership” of Patrick because it was to their clinic that Patrick was immediately rushed for emergency treatment after being pulled from the trash chute of Curtis’ New Jersey apartment building. Once stabilized, the dog (as yet un named) was transferred to Garden State Veterinary Services (GSVS) in Northern New Jersey. Since it was St. Patrick’s day weekend, staff at GSVS named him “Patrick”, hoping that the “luck of the Irish” would help the severely starved and dehydrated dog survive his injuries.
Patrick’s recovery has been nothing short of a miracle, and the Veterinarians and staff of GSVS have been responsible for that, spending hours nursing him back to health. As the only loving home Patrick has ever known, a GSVS Veterinary Nurse who particularly bonded with Patrick has long hoped that Patrick will be allowed to live out his life with her, as a family pet, once the court cases are over.
AHS, however, has other plans. They want “trademark registration number 23699″ (that’s how they refer to Patrick in their court documents) to be returned to them, so that he can live out his life at the AHS Forked River Shelter that shares property with the AHS Popcorn Park Zoo.
Their reasons? Denying AHS ownership will, in the words from their court documents, “deprive AHS of its property interest in Patrick”, resulting in “significant losses” of “economic advantage”.
In other words, ‘we won’t be able to keep using him to raise money’.
AHS believes that what’s in Patrick’s best interest is to spend his life essentially on display at their zoo shelter, where he can continue to operate as a fund raising cash cow, and to that end they are suing both the City of Newark and the GSVS veterinarian that saved Patrick’s life. In fact, by even writing about Patrick, myself and any other bloggers could be violating what AHS claims is their ‘intellectual property ownership’ of any stories, articles or images of or relating to Patrick (affectionately nicknamed “Trademarky Mark”, I’m willing to bet).
Figure above taken from Court Filing of Associated Humane Societies Inc. Vs City of Newark and Garden State Veterinary Services
Read Nathan Winograd’s excellent full story on the fight for control of Patrick here, and the Patrick Miracle Facebook page has a step by step break down of Patrick’s history and current status.
You tell me – where should Patrick be allowed to stay? Is he a “fund raising brand”, or an abused dog who deserves a chance at a new life?
Swimming French Bulldog Dives for Rocks
A few summers ago, I was swimming in our pool while Elliott hung out poolside on the concrete patio. Out of the blue Elliot, for some weird Frenchie reason that only he could make sense of, decided he would simply walk off of the concrete and into the pool. The thing is? He didn’t even try to swim – not a stroke. He just sort of got this resigned look on his face, a look that said, “uh oh. I guess I’m drownded now”, and then he sank to the bottom of the pool.
I, of course, reached down and lifted him out, and he sort of shook himself, shrugged, and then tried to walk into the pool again. After that, Elliott didn’t hang out with me poolside, because some sort of invisible sirens in the deep blue pool water seemed to be calling him to a watery doom.
This is a kind of long winded way to say DO NOT TRY WHAT YOU SEE IN THIS VIDEO WITH YOUR FRENCH BULLDOG! Chances are that your French Bulldog, unlike the French Bulldog in this video, will NOT be able to swim, but will sink like a rock. Just ask Elliott.
With that out of the way, how cool is this cliff diving, rock fetching Frenchie?
Toronto Dog Park Poisoned & Barrie Dog Poisoned in Own Yard
A Barrie, Ontario Veterinarian is issuing a warning to other residents of the city to be on the lookout for poisoned hotdogs, after his own dog was poisoned this weekend.
The poisoned hotdog was left in Dr. Martin’s own yard, leaving no doubt that this was an intentional case of attempted poisoning.
“I let my dog out, and he was out in the backyard and I saw him eating something in the corner of the yard. I took a look at it, grabbed it out of his mouth and it was a hotdog that was sliced down the middle. there were three tablets.”
Martin says those tablets were extra strength Tylenol and his little dog Marcel swallowed one.
Martin rushed his dog to the animal clinic and then to the animal hospital to induce vomiting. He says the dose would have killed his dog because of his size.
Luckily Martin was able to get the drug out of his dog’s system in time.
“If I had just let him out and went back in the house he would have eaten the whole hotdog and he would have died that day or the next day,” Martin says.
Meanwhile in Toronto, rat poison has been found in the off leash dog park located inside High Park. The deadly poison, still in its packaging, was found in the popular dog park by two women walking their own dogs. They contacted police, who are actively investigated whether this was a deliberate poisoning attempt.
If so, it would not be the first time.
Last year, three Leslieville area dogs died after ingesting poison, and at least fifteen more dogs became seriously ill.
A High Park dog owner summed it dog owners’ fears, saying –
“This is becoming a common occurrence that happens every summer and dogs have died,” Phillips said. “It is concerning because some dogs eat everything and because this is such a big space you don’t notice what your dog gets into. It is hard to know who the suspect could be.”
Read more: http://www.torontosun.com/2013/06/27/dog-owners-concerned-after-rat-poison-found-in-high-park
This is a good time to remind people to be aware of their surroundings, and to be extra careful about letting dogs off leash. It’s also a good time to start training the “leave it” command, to reinforce that dogs should not eat random items they find on the ground.
A good overview is here – http://drsophiayin.com/blog/entry/dogs-who-eat-things-off-the-ground-training-leave-it