‘The Way Some People Treat Animals Is Just NOT Acceptable!'

"Abandoned dog’s condition appalls shelter manager"

As the shelter manager for the Rogue Valley Humane Society, Margaret Varner is used to seeing abused animals. She thought she’d pretty much seen it all, but then along came Freedom.

Last Saturday, a couple dropped off the white pit bull mix they said they’d found in a ditch in the Sanitarium Road area near Merlin. The dog was emaciated. Her ribs were sticking out, and she weighed less than 40 pounds. All of her teeth had been filed down to the gum line so that her teeth roots are exposed. She had a few pressure sores where the bones rubbed against the skin and caused sores.

She had also given birth to nine puppies earlier that day. One puppy later died. “The puppies still had umbilical cords attached and were wet,” said Varner. “It just broke my heart. I couldn’t sleep because I kept thinking about what she had been through. And she is still a love. She just wants to snuggle up to you and be petted.”

Freedom was taken to a veterinarian on Sunday for emergency treatment. Varner estimates that Freedom is between 2 and 4 years old. Without teeth, it’s hard to determine a dog’s age.

Freedom was also full of tapeworms and had to be treated. She will be tested for heartworm later this week. If she has it, the shelter will have to hold off treating her until her puppies are weaned in another six weeks or so. The puppies will soon be dewormed as well, once they are a few days older. The white and brown litter has one female and seven males. “We’re hoping people will call in and give us suggestions for names. We’re trying to keep them all patriotic, though,” she said. Varner believes Freedom’s teeth were filed down to prevent her from attacking other dogs when she was forced to breed. “Her teeth are filed too uniformly to say she was a rock chewer or chewed on her kennel,” she said. “Someone had to do that to her.”

Currently, Freedom is being fed a mixture of boneless-skinless chicken breasts and puppy chow to give her more nutrients for feeding the puppies and to help her safely put on weight.

The Rogue Valley Humane Society has established a fund, Truman’s Fund, to help pay the medical bills of some of the most abused animals that come through its doors. The fund is named after a 5-year-old Great Dane that had been severely neglected and needed serious medical care earlier this year. “We can’t save them all, but we can help out some of them,” Varner said. The shelter manager is also disturbed at the number of pit bull mixes that have been dropped at her door in the last few months.

“In the last week alone, we have had three female pit bull mixes dropped off,” she added. Varner said shelter staff continue to work on educating the community and children about animal abuse, hoping to prevent more cases like Freedom. “The way some people treat animals is just not acceptable,” she said. “Freedom already has so many strikes against her. She’s a pit bull and they get a bad rap,” Varner continued. “She will be a special needs dog because of her teeth. I just wonder how much more this dog has to endure. It is just heartbreaking.”

THE PEOPLE THAT DID THIS TO THAT POOR DOG NEED THE SAME THING DONE TO THEM!

Political Plums Being Harvested Already - Leon Panetta To Head CIA ... Was Sean Penn Unavailable?

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President-elect Barack Obama has chosen former White House chief of staff Leon Panetta to lead the CIA, which has been widely criticized for harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects..."

I don't know who to feel the most sorry for - Obama for his stupid choice for CIA Director; Panetta for being so far out of his element; or the American people ... for having to suffer a fool in either office! Kiefer Sutherland, based on his "experience" as Agent Jack Bauer in the TV show 24, probably knows more about the internal operations of the CIA than does Leon Panetta. Panetta is best known as President Bill "Zipper" Clinton's Chief of Staff, and as a budget expert who tamed deficits in the Clinton White House. I'm confused ... how do either of these positions - or anything else in Panetta's résumé - qualify him him to oversee the largest single intelligence function of the United States Government?

So far, it appears that not only do we get a President with no proven qualifications, now he has shown himself to be foolish enough to surround himself with equally unqualified cabinet members. Or, does his Cabinet provide a buffer zone of deniability, selected by careful design to insulate Obama from policy failures? Is there more treachery afoot than meets the eye?

Obama's first really big mistake will be to turn his back on Israel. I could be wrong ... but I'm NOT!

The Third Time IS A Charm!

Well, my most recent round trip to Utah has come to a relatively mild conclusion. During the last month I managed to put 2,855 miles on my Honda VTX. About 1,738 miles of that was getting to and from, and the other 1,117 was logged just cruising around Davis and Weber counties with my bro and BFF, Steve Farver. Steve’s lovely and talented wife, Kat, even performed a magnificent impromptu concert for us while I was there, although she was suffering a cold at the time. I did get to spend some time with three-fourths of my children and my grandchildren, most of whom were in wonderful Australia for 3 weeks visiting my son-in-laws people. My eldest son, Gene, and my youngest son, Kevin were there, but conflicting work schedules made visiting difficult. My youngest, Katy, was noticeably – but not unexpectedly – incommunicado during my stay. I keep hoping that on one of her 20-something birthdays she’ll actually grow up! But, that’s her problem …

The ride over was beautiful, but a bit warm on the deserts of Nevada and Utah. I always overnight in Winnemucca, Nevada in both directions, and on the way to Utah I met an interesting man from Finland, who loved motorcycles. We spent several hours talking about motorcycles we had each owned before I had to bring it to an end, so I could get some rest before my departure for the final leg in the morning. Bedtime came early that night – 8:30pm. And, getting-up-time came unexpectedly early at 3:15am! By 3:30 I was on I-80 eastbound, and wondering how that hot desert country could be so cold in the wee hours. I estimated the temperature to be about 40º, and stopped probably ten times to warm myself up before 8:00am. When I reached Utah I learned about ‘interpolation’. That's when the sign says “SPEED LIMIT 70”, and that’s only a suggestion. If you’re only doing 70mph you’re relegated to the right-hand lane … with everybody honking at you, shaking their mailed fist at you, and talking about yomomma (no, that is not a reference to Barack). The number 70, in Utah, translates to roughly 85. I discovered this phenomenon again at the intersection of I-80 and I-15, where traffic was just whizzing along, bumper-to-bumper, 4 lanes wide, at 85mph. At this point, realizing that I was astride the smallest thing on the highway was just a bit disconcerting, after 800+ miles of virtually no traffic .

I took some pictures while there, including one of my bro, Steve, cruising down the causeway that runs to - and back from - Antelope Island on his Yamaha V-Max at 65mph … I know he was doing 65 because I checked the speedometer on my bike as I took the pic (I think I’ll post some of those pics when I get my camera back ... I forgot it when I left my daughters house on my return trip).

The return trip was also relatively uneventful. There was the road construction on US 95 northbound, about 35 miles north of Winnemucca, Nevada, where I got to sit for about 15 minutes. The most interesting part of that stop was when the woman driving the NDOT Pilot Truck brought traffic from the other end of the construction zone, then swung around, backed up, and dropped the rear of the truck into a gravel filled ditch. After watching her spend about 6 minutes burying the front of the rear axle in the rear of the gravel hump, I told the lady flagging that I was going to move up and give her a clue, because she obviously didn't have one. The suggestion was: “Back straight up into the sagebrush, turn to the right, and come out about 15 feet to the right, where the surface is relatively flat and solid.” She did that and, shortly thereafter, we were off to the other end of the construction zone.

My first animal encounter was with a desert jackrabbit that galloped across US 95 just ahead of me. I considered us both to be lucky. Then there was the bird that apparently had failed physics in flight school, and didn’t realize that my rate of closure at 70mph was 102.6667 feet per second. Luckily for him, he swerved at just the right moment. My next, and final, animal confrontation was with a cow and her calf, standing in the middle of US 95, just kinda hanging out about 40 miles east of Adel, Oregon (population 79). I had to come to a complete stop until she made up her mind which direction they were eventually going to move.

Then there was the 40 miles of Mixed Donkey Doodoo Dodging (it was wild burro poop, but I couldn’t come up with a scatologically referenced alliteration to work with the word “burro”). Actually, it looked as if Billy-Jim-Bob had held a cattle drive along the two-lane road the recent past, so I nicknamed it the “Cow Pie Highway”. With almost-constant swerving, I managed to avoid the fresher specimens, but occasionally I clipped a dry, dusty dung dollop.

Then, outside of Klamath Falls, Oregon, I once again entered the fearsome Valley of The Ten Thousand Grasshoppers! Undaunted, I pushed on, and, much to my relief, there was no horde of large, airborne insects this time. I hit maybe two of them – one became a windshield decoration, and the other a splat on the side of my boot.

Other than 4 more delays for road repairs along OR 95 and OR 140, nothing particularly noteworthy occurred on my return trip. I spent ten hours on the bike that last day of my trip, and required a transplant of the gluteus maximus when it ended. I felt as if I had just been released from a lengthy stint in a Greek prison! I am now seriously contemplating the insertion of a hospital-grade gel pad … under the cover of my bike’s saddle.