Animal Shipping Mishaps in the News
Guess who got really lucky?
Two years ago, just before Christmas, my friend Paula answered the phone to an inquiry about one of her Abyssinian Kittens. The caller was from New Jersey, and was very interested in buying a male kitten as a Christmas gift for his wife. Paula explained to him that it was far too cold to ship a kitten to New Jersey at that time of the year.
Some people, apparently, don’t get the whole ‘no flying kittens in cold weather’ connection.
From the SF Gate:
On January 22, Connecticut resident Heather Lombardi was eagerly awaiting the arrival of her new, not-so-furry family member, Snickers, an 11-week-old, 3-pound hairless kitten that she had recently purchased from a breeder in Utah. Snickers was to be shipped in the climate-controlled cargo area of a Delta airlines flight.
But what was to be a joyous reunion turned into a nightmare when Lombardi opened Snicker’s carrier and discovered that she was icy cold and couldn’t move her head or paws. The kitten died from hypothermia a short time later.
While I am sorry for Heather’s loss, I have to wonder about any breeder who would stick a 3 lb, hairless kitten into a cargo hold in Utah in the coldest month of the year. Yes, the cargo area on planes are ‘climate controlled’ – but what about the tarmac?
If you’ve flown for any length of time, you’re familiar with the sight of cargo transporters sitting waiting on the tarmac to be loaded on to planes, or sitting waiting to be brought into the terminals. Those waits have killed countless dogs and cats over the years, and are yet one more reason why I will NEVER fly one of my puppies in cargo.
When Paula tried to explain to her caller that she couldn’t ship his kitten due to the weather, he had a great solution –
“Ship it to me Fedex – those guys can get anything anywhere”.
Paula passed on his suggestion, but over in Minneapolis, one woman decided that even if Fedex couldn’t, the USPS could.
From the Star Tribune –
The postal worker was stunned when the package moved by itself and fell to the floor. Then came the sounds of heavy panting.
Within minutes, she and co-workers had unwrapped a tightly sealed box and rescued a 4-month-old puppy that a Minneapolis woman tried to mail to Georgia.
“It’s just crazy,” said Minneapolis Police Sgt. Angela Dodge. The air holes the woman punched in the box were covered up with mailing tape, and the priority mail trip would have taken at least two days, she said. “It was supposed to be a birthday gift for a family member. It would have been kind of traumatizing to get a dead puppy”
The puppy, a Schnauzer/Poodle miss named “Guess” (which I suspect is short for “guess how lucky I am to be alive” or maybe “guess what some idiot put inside this postal box”) is doing just fine, and is recovering at Minneapolis Animal Control.
Since MAC is a kill shelter, let’s hope Guess’ stay there is short, and that he’s not another celebrity dog recsue who ends up falling through the cracks and being killed.
Mailed Puppy Alive & Well at Minneapolis Animal Control: MyFoxTWINCITIES.com
Whistler Dog Slaughter Stuns Canadians
Howling Dog team photo, from their website archive
Living near the Bruce Peninsula, I’ve always been tempted to try a day of dog sledding. I’m not usually one for outdoor winter sports, but sledding has always appealed to me. I’ve got a great deal of respect for the historic traditions behind sledding, which for so long was a major method of transportation and survival in the Far North. I’ve even teased American friends on occasion by telling them that we’re thrilled to finally have our mail delivered by truck, instead of by dog sled (and it’s somewhat scary how many of them have actually believed me, initially, at least. The giggling usually gives me away).
Of course, in the last century dog sledding has become more and more anachronistic. Most Inuit get around by snow mobile now, and dog sledding has been relegated to either the diehard old timers, or to tourists, like me, who’re looking for a taste of Tundra adventure. The “adventure tour” craze has led to a glut of “dog sledding” companies, which will take tourists out for an hour or even a few days.
One such outfit in British Columbia was banking, big time, that the Vancouver Winter Olympics were going to be an economic goldmine for them. With the post Olympic tourism slump came the reality that they had an awful lot of high energy dogs to feed, exercise and care for.
Their solution? Slaughter them all, by shotgun.
Police and the B.C. SPCA are investigating “horrific” reports that the general manager for a Whistler tour company slaughtered at least 100 healthy sled dogs last year, dumping their bodies into a mass grave.
The employee at a dog-sledding company now owned by Outdoor Adventures Whistler filed a WorkSafe BC claim for post-traumatic stress in May 2010 after shooting dozens of dogs to death.
“It’s horrific,” Marcie Moriarty, general manager for SPCA cruelty investigations, told ctvbc.ca.
“I’ve seen some pretty terrible things, but reading this [claim], I had to put it down at times.”
The slaughter was conducted on April 21 and 23. In his claim, the worker wrote that he had killed 70 dogs, but the company corrected that number to 100.
The dogs were killed because of a “slow winter season” after the Winter Olympics, according to WorkSafe BC documents.
The owners of the company aren’t denying that they ordered the employee to kill the dogs – heck, they even upped the final total, as noted above. In fact, their only defense is that they “assumed” that the slaughter had been done in a “humane manner”.
Outdoor Adventures says the cull was conducted by the manager of its subsidiary company Howling Dog Tours.
“It was our expectation that it was done in a proper, legal and humane manner. We only learned otherwise on Friday, January 28 when we read the WCB ruling for the first time,” Outdoor Adventures said in a release.
From the employee’s report, the last thing anyone could call the deaths of these dogs is “humane” –
.. The worker describes chasing after a dog that survived a shot to the face: “Although she had the left side of her cheek blown off and her eye hanging out, he was unable to catch her.”
Another apparently dead dog was dumped into the grave. “‘Nora,’ who he had shot approximately 20 minutes before, was crawling around in the mass grave he had dug for the animals. He had to climb down into the grave amidst the 10 or so bodies already there and put her out of her misery.”
According to the claim, the dogs panicked as they watched their compatriots being killed, and attacked the worker as he finished his job.
At one point during the slaughter, he ran out of ammunition and had to kill an aggressive dog with a knife.
“By that point he wanted nothing more than to stop the ‘nightmare’ but he continued because he had been given a job to finish,” according to the documents.
“He stated that he felt ‘numb.'”
As much as I want to feel sympathy for this employee, who claims he was “just following orders”, I fail to see how anyone who describes himself as being “emotionally attached to the dogs” could then kill them in such a gruesome manner.
You couldn’t put an ad on Craigs List? You could call the local shelters? You couldn’t call the police, and tell them you were being ordered by the heartless automatons who sign your paycheck to slaughter perfectly healthy dogs?
I’m sorry, but I’m not buying it. When you choose to follow the orders of monsters, you become a monster yourself, and this whole thing is nothing short of monstrous.
3 dogs, 2 provinces, 16 volunteers, 1,037 km
Our rescue relay route
Well, that was pretty much the most impressive rescue relay I’ve ever seen first hand.
Three dogs, two provinces, 13 teams of volunteer drivers, 5 different rescue groups (that I can think of off hand – there might be one or two more, and at least TWO of them don’t even ‘work for’ the actual breeds involved), and a rough total of 1,037 km of driving for everyone involved – and all to get three dogs into their new homes.
End of the day, two collies in new foster homes, one REALLY handsome Frenchie boy being fostered in Beamsville, and I went on a shopping spree at the weird Asian food market.
Did you know you can get a 10 lb bag of goat pieces for $5.99, and that there at least SIX kinds of yam? Also, “Lobster Flavored Shrimp Crackers” don’t taste like shrimp -or- lobster, but rather like somewhat salty packing foam.
Photos of the new boy as soon as Karen has assessed him. He’s definitely dog aggressive – some dogs, at least – but his surrender form says “good with cats and kids”. Well, we think that’s what it says – it’s all in French. It might actually say “good at EATING cats and kids”. One small words, such a big difference.
For all of their help with this rescue relay, our thanks go to Pug Canada Rescue, Greyhound Transport, Collie Rescue Network, Pug a Lug Rescue, the Montreal SPCA, the individual volunteers, the over night home care volunteers and the final fosters. You guys rock, especially Cheryl Lamb who whipped all of us into shape.
Go team Collie/Frenchie Relay!