Animal Radio® Show #665 September 1, 2012
Crate-Gate Scandal
Gerald Casale, Devo – Don’t Roof Rack Me Bro!
Gerald Casale, founding member of the punk/New Wave band DEVO, announces release of new DEVO song in conjunction with The Crate Escape: Seamus Unleashed, a mobile game satirizing Mitt Romney’s dog-on-car-roof scandal. DEVO is best known for its iconic 1980 Top 20 single, “Whip It,” and the band continues to enjoy worldwide popularity.The group feels that Seamus, who was an Irish setter, is a martyr, sort of an icon, resulting from the incident where Romney strapped Seamus to the roof of his car during his infamous family vacation to Canada in 1983.
Casale states, “You put a dog in a small wooden crate on top of a car in the middle of the summer and drive for hours on end, something bad is going to happen!.. Seamus showed how much he loved it by mounds of liquid poo coming down over the windows…. They had to pull over of course and they pulled into a gas station. They pulled the crate apart and hosed down Seamus, washed the car, and then in front of everyone, they put the crate back on top of the car, strapped it down and put Seamus back in the crate and took of!”
In releasing this single, DEVO has joined forces with Dogs Against Romney, an online advocacy group with more than 70,000 members on Facebook, and Censault LLC, a Dallas mobile/social game publisher, to help call attention to Mitt Romney’s “Crate-Gate” scandal.
The Crate Escape: Seamus Unleashed game will be launched as a free app for the iPhone and iPad. For additional game info and images, go to www.facebook.com/CrateEscapeGame
http://www.dogsagainstromney.com
Nearly Everything Your Dog Wants You To Know!
Stanley Coren, Do Dogs Dream?
Do dogs dream? Can they recognize themselves in the mirror or understand what they’re seeing on television? Are they more intelligent than cats?Stanley Coren explains that dogs do dream, and we know this for a whole bunch of reasons. Just as with dreaming humans, the eyelids in dogs also move behind their closed eyelids when they sleep. The eyes move in systematic ways, such as if a person were dreaming about a tennis match, their eyes were swinging back and forth under their closed lids.
Stanley states that, “Humans tend to dream maybe about 20 minutes out of every 90 minutes… But the average dog will dream about 3 minutes, something like that, out of every 25 or so minutes.” He goes on to mention that smaller dogs have more dreams, but they’re shorter and bigger dogs have longer dreams, but they’re more widely spaced.
So what is it that dogs dream about? “Sometimes we think we know, when a dog’s legs are twitching and it looks like he is running after something, but it turns out that when you dream, the muscles all turn off. If they didn’t turn off, you’d actually act out your dreams… So we now know that dogs dream doggy things. Pointers point at dream birds and Doberman Pinschers chase dream burglars.” So if dogs dream, does that mean when they look in the mirror they recognize themselves? Unfortunately the answer is no! For dogs, the major sense is smell, it’s not vision, and one thing you can say about mirrors is that they don’t have any smell.
In testing dreaming dogs, they are handled just like humans with little electrodes on their scalp and on either side of their eyes, as well as on important muscle groups.
Do dogs watch television? Yes! Dogs are also now able to watch television with new sets. They can recognize other dogs on TV, but won’t pay any attention to cartoon dogs. That is because cartoon dogs don’t move like real dogs.
When asked about a dog’s vision, Stanley responds, “Their vision’s crappy. If they drove cars, they’d have to have glasses!” A dog’s vision is around 20 over 65 and they are farsighted. They are also colorblind. Dogs see the world in shades of yellow and blue. What we see as red, they see as sort of a brown. What we see as green, they see as yellow. So when you throw a toy and you dog runs right by it, it’s not because they are stupid, it’s because it looks the same color as the grass.
Stanley Coren is a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of The Intelligence of Dogs and other bestsellers about dogs. He, his wife, and their two dogs live in Vancouver, British Columbia.
http://books.wwnorton.com/books/Do-Dogs-Dream
Most Fatal Virus
Bill Wasik & Monica Murphy , Rabid
The most fatal virus known to science, rabies kills nearly 100 percent of its victims once the infection takes root in the brain. A disease that spreads avidly from animals to humans, rabies has served throughout history as a symbol of savage madness, of inhuman possession. And today, its history can help shed light on the wave of emerging diseases, from AIDS to SARS to avian flu, that we now know to originate in animal populations.Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy got the idea to write a book on rabies when Monica, who is a veterinarian, would come home and tell Bill stories about rabies and just how scary and amazing it is. Monica tells us that, “Rabies still has the highest case fatality rate of any known disease. Even though it is rare in this country... meanwhile, around the world, 55,000 people a year die of rabies.” As far as the survival rate from rabies, Monica states, “There are a few scattered cases of survival and those have all occurred in the last several years.” The horror stories of vaccinations given in your stomach after rabies exposure are no longer true. The vaccinations are now delivered in four individual vaccines, delivered over a couple of weeks, and are given in your arm.
The rabies virus actually crawls up your nerves from the bite sight to your brain. Once it reaches your brain, you have the irreversible deadly disease. Bill tells us, “That the amount of time that the virus takes to get to the brain actually depends a bit on how far from the brain it is. So if you get bit on your neck by a bat then you might develop the symptoms of rabies in a week, but if you get it bit on your foot, then it could take months or more than a year to develop rabies.”
People just don’t understand how the wildlife in your own backyard can be dangerous. In fact all states except for Hawaii, are affected by bat rabies. In the East, raccoon rabies are a big problem, while in the west, skunk and fox rabies are am issue.
It is important to keep your pets vaccinated because they are often the conduit between the wildlife and us. While your indoor pet is pretty safe from contracting rabies, be aware that there has been a case where a rabid bat got into the house through a chimney and bit the cat.
Bill Wasik is a senior editor at Wired and was formerly a senior editor at Harper’s; he writes on technology, media, and crowd dynamics. Monica Murphy holds degrees in public health from Johns Hopkins University and in veterinary medicine from the University of Minnesota. They are married and live with their son and whippet in Oakland, California.
The Dogfather's Grooming Tip with Joey Villani
Brushing The Hard To Brush Cat
Joey recently received an email about a shedding cat that doesn’t like to be brushed and is leaving hairballs all over the house.Joey’s solution is to go out and get yourself a pair of heavy work gloves, like suede. You will also need some cheesecloth and a sponge.
Dampen the sponge and wet the cat down. This will moisten the coat and make the hair stick. It is important that the coat be wet, but don’t try a squirt bottle, as most cats are afraid of the noise.
Put one glove on your hand, opposite of the one you normally use. That way, you can use your free good hand to hold the cat. Then wrap the glove with the cheesecloth, adding tape if you need to make sure it stays on.
The cheesecloth will act almost like Velcro and will grab the hair. All you need to do is to pet your cat like you normally do. Hopefully your cat likes to be petted! Just pet them all over their body, from their head to their tail and their legs.
When you are done, you will probably look like you are holding your cat in your gloved hand because of all of the hair that just came off your cat!
If your cat has long hair, it is a little more challenging, because you need to get the knots and tangles out first. If your cat won’t let you do this, you will then need to take them to a professional groomer and have it done. But once they have been professionally groomed, you can keep up their coat with this process.
Don’t force your cat to do anything they don’t want to do, because a cat bite is dangerous. Cats clean themselves, therefore they have a lot more bacteria in their mouths than a dog does. When they bite you, this bacteria gets down under your skin and 9 times out of 10 and will lead to an infection that will require medical treatment.
Animal Radio® News with Stacey Cohen
More Americans Travel With Pets
More Americans are taking their pets with them when they travel. Nearly half of those answering a new TripAdvisor poll say their four-legged friends will be accompanying them on at least one trip over the next 12 months. In addition, 56-percent intend to stay at pet-friendly hotels, which is up 5-percent from last year. Meanwhile, 35-percent will be bringing Fluffy and Fido to a vacation rental, compared to 24-percent who did so in 2011. Nearly 75-percent add that they usually don't have a tough time finding places that allow them to lodge their animals with them. Nearly 60-percent take their pets on the road with them because they enjoy the animal's company.Devo Set To Release Song About Mitt Romney's Dog
Devo's latest track is inspired by, of all things, Mitt Romney's family dog, Seamus. The GOP presidential hopeful has been criticized for a family road trip that took pet pooch Seamus from Massachusetts to Ontario in a kennel strapped to the roof of the Romney family car. Titled "Don't Roof Rack Me, Bro! (Remember Seamus)," Rollingstone.com says Devo's new song will serve as a launch pad for founding member Gerald Casale's "Remember Seamus" campaign. The track was released as a digital single on August 25th. Devo is also involved in a number of other Seamus-related projects, including the smartphone game "The Crate Escape: Seamus Unleashed," released on August 26th, or "National Dog Day." The new wave punk vets are best known for their 1980 hit "Whip It." The band's last album, "Something for Everybody," was released in 2010.Rabid Beaver Attacks Boy Scout
A Boy Scout leader is recovering after a rabid beaver attacked him during a swim in the Delaware River in early August. New York's "Poughkeepsie Journal" reports the scouts acted quickly to help the leader and then stoned the animal until it died. Assistant scoutmaster Normand Brousseau was with another leader and four scouts when the animal attacked him. The animal bit the man in the leg, buttocks, arm, hand and waist before the scouts pulled him to shore. Health officials in Dutchess County say a rabid beaver attack is unusual.$25,000 Reward For Information on Puppy Thrown From Car
The Suffolk County SPCA is upping the ante in hopes of finding the person who threw a pit bull puppy from a moving car on Long Island. Suffolk SPCA Chief Roy Gross says a reward of $25,000 is now being offered in the case. Gross says the puppy that has now been named "Joey" was tossed out of a moving vehicle in a black plastic bag The malnourished animal suffered several neck fractures and bite marks on its neck. Gross says it's 50-50 whether the dog will survive. Gross says calls have been pouring in to the SPCA with offers to pay for "Joey's" treatment and requests to adopt him if and when he recovers.500 Missing Canaries
Police in Florida are still looking for a suspect in a case involving some 500 missing canaries. According to Miami's WFOR-TV, the victim, Manuel Sanchez, has been keeping canaries for the past 20 years. The 87-year-old man says someone broke into his home earlier this summer and made off with all of his feathered companions. The thief allegedly sold the birds to three local pet stores, where each canary goes for about $20-to-$30. Sanchez was able to recover 150 canaries, but police are asking anyone with more information on the birds to come forward.Rain Washes Away Michael Jackson Poop
One man's hopes of selling bird droppings he says bore a resemblance to the late King of Pop have been washed away. The seller, Brandon Tudor of Oswego, Illinois says he immediately noticed the likeness to Michael Jackson when the droppings hit the windshield of his 1996 Cadillac Seville last week. "The Courier-News" says the 29-year-old father of three put the windshield up for sale on eBay with a starting bid of $500,000 but his hopes of turning a profit with his Jackson image droppings, bottomed out. The paper says rains washed away Tudor's windshield art.Sheep Races
A sheep named Lingonberry is celebrating this week after winning Scotland's first town center sheep race. According to BBC News, knitted jockeys rode the animals through the streets of Moffat. Onlookers were able to place small bets on the races, which took place in several heats throughout the day. Organizer Thomas MacDonald says he hopes the races will turn into an annual event that lasts over an entire week rather than just one day.NEWS UPDATE Brought To You By ScoopFree.com. Free Shipping on trays plus up to $20 off your first subscription.
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