The Creatures

Franz Marc was an Expressionist painter who formed Der Blaue Reiter group with Wassily Kandinsky. They were part of an artistic movement who were searching for spiritual truth through their art. Marc believed that colour had a vocabulary of emotional keys that we instinctively understand, much in the same way that we understand music. This language of colour was one tool that Marc used to raise his art to a higher spiritual plane; another was his choice of subject.

Franz Marc painted animals as they symbolised an age of innocence, like Eden before the Fall, free from the materialism and corruption of his own time. Animals in Marc’s art are seldom painted in isolation. They are viewed as idealized creatures in perfect harmony with the natural world they inhabit.

I am trying to intensify my feeling for the organic rhythm of all things, to achieve pantheistic empathy with the throbbing and flowing of nature’s bloodstream in trees, in animals, in the air.

Tiger is a typical example of Franz Marc’s painting style. It is a fusion of several influences: the expressive and symbolic use of colour that he discovered in the paintings of Van Gogh and Gauguin combined with the fragmented and prismatic compositions of various Cubist styles.

Blue is the male principle, astringent and spiritual. Yellow is the female principle, gentle, gay and spiritual. Red is matter, brutal and heavy and always the colour to be opposed and overcome by the other two.

The Tiger and its surroundings are composed of geometric shapes whose similarity suggests both the camouflage of the tiger in its natural habitat and the harmony between the creature and its environment. Colour is the main element used to separate the tiger from its background. Strong yellow and black shapes outline its form to convey the markings of the beast. The geometric shapes that make up its form are carefully scaled and simplified to represent the tiger’s features and its muscular body, while their rhythmic movement is echoed in the stylized shapes of the rocks and foliage of the background. This is indeed an idealistic view of nature – an image designed to lift its subject above the brutality of nature in the raw.

Franz Marc yearned for a life on a higher spiritual plane. In fact, before he took up art, he studied theology with a view to entering the priesthood. Ironically, his death was a sad contradiction of his hopes and dreams. He volunteered for service in the army at the start of World War 1 and never painted again. He was killed by a piece of shrapnel in 1916, during the assault on Verdun, the longest and bloodiest battle of the war.

The Creatures:  a poem by Glen Downie, a Toronto poet who won the 2008 Toronto Book Award for his collection of poems, Loyalty Management. He has also published fiction, non-fiction, reviews and six books of poetry.

Samurai Genji Cat Goes to the Bridge

This May 1, the cherry blossoms bloomed to mark the passing of my oldest friend in human years. Genji Cat was ninety when he crossed the Rainbow Bridge. He was named after the princely hero of  Lady Murasaki’s The Tale of the Genji, which some speculate to have been the very first novel.

Nearly nineteen years ago, my best girlfriend and I were watching Pet Sematary one dark and stormy night; the movie set out the exploits of Churchill, a British Grey cat who had come back from the dead.

The very next morning – I think it was in May, 1991 – a tiny grey kitten wandered into the backyard. He was so small, he fit in the palm of my hand. He that Brit Grey look to him, but also a silvery shimmer to his coat that made me think more of Russian Blue. It was a spooky coincidence!

No one put up signs in the neighbourhood about the tiny lost kitten so I kept him.

My friend suggested that we call him Churchill, but I was in a Japanese mood and named him Genji since he did, after all, have some princely attitudes. Of course, his name was unpronounceable for most of my relatives.

The name was a bit grand for the tiny kitten, but he quickly grew into it. His coat remained that beautiful Russian Blue silvery grey, so his nickname became Silver Boy.

One thing he loved to do above anything else was climb up on the bathroom sink in the morning and ask for the tap to be run at a drip. He preferred that to drinking water out of a bowl. It is serious entertainment for some cats!

He also enjoyed sitting on the edge of the tub while I was having a bath. He’d dip his tail in the water, but he could never quite figure out to do after it was soaked so he’d let it drip throughout the house after that. Over the years, we had many conversations at tub-edge about that, and it became The Story of the Tub Kitten Who Didn’t Know What To Do.

Genji had managed to sneak out the back door and over the fence twice in search of Ladies And Adventure, with one incident when he was the ripe old age of 15, involving 4 days off work and several hundred flyers. Some people called to say that they’d spotted a cat a block or two away with an unusual silvery grey coat. He was as nonchalant as possible when he finally returned, lounging on the neighbour’s patio in the June heat meowing at me, with only the tip of his tail twitching.

As time progressed, his once mighty samurai body melted away to skin and bones. Still, he had a good appetite, an eye for the back door and the ladies, and was spry.

This past week, like many old cats, he went downhill very, very quickly. A couple of days ago, I had looked at him and had the sudden realization that he might not make it to the weekend. He could still jump on the bed in a wobbly way. He was hardly eating, and he was crying more. The last bit was hard to gauge, as he had been a vocal boy for many years, preferring to sing at three in the morning, or to let me know that it was 6:30 and time to run the tap in the bathroom for him.

Last at night, I noticed a swelling on his jaw that I hadn’t seen the day before. It had to be an infected tooth. But at his age and in his condition, I didn’t feel that dentistry was an option anymore. With no muscle mass, the tentative way he was now getting around, and his most recent refusal of food or milk, it was only a matter of a very short time. So I called the vet for a morning appointment.

I made him as comfortable as I possibly could, and said goodbye to him. He had loved lying on the pillow, wrapping his paw around my finger and purring on end, so we did that. He had always been a velcro-kitty Lover Boy. He wasn’t up to purring last night, but his breathing seemed easier.

It’s wonderful that we have the option to ease an old friend across the Bridge in comfort and dignity, but terrible to have the responsibility. There are those of you who grasp this immediately.

During the night, my two shiba inu’s were a great help. My cherry blossom princess Kyoto, was the first to figure out that something was really wrong with Genji this time. She groomed him on the bed, and slept right up against him during the night. The kamikaze rescue puppy, Karinoe, wasn’t as sure but he stayed with us during that Dark Night of the Soul.

The next morning, at his usual early time, Genji had somehow made it up onto the bathroom sink, and was waiting for his water. I let the tap drip for a very long time for him. And I will never forget how fragile he was.

After his last visit to the vet, I bought a little pot of forget-me-nots. Flowers have been a big part of the past 24 hours. It seems as though the last time I really looked, there were only brave little crocuses. Now, suddenly, everywhere there is a riot of colour. How did I miss that?

I had stepped out at two in the morning last night to let the dogs have a pee and, as if for the occasion of Genji’s life passage, the weeping cherry in the back yard had suddenly come into bloom. In the stark porch light, its new blossoms were quite striking, like warm spring rain. Today, I see that the Japanese kerria, quince and flowering almond were all blooming.

It seems so unfair that, this May 1, Genji has departed and, while everything else is coming to life, he is missing it this time around and we are missing him.

But it’s not about us.

Godspeed, sweet Silver Samurai Boy. Enjoy the cherry blossoms with your many friends beyond the Rainbow Bridge.

Animals Make Us Human

Temple Grandin’s Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior  occupies a special place among the animal books of the last few decades. Grandin’s autism gives her a special understanding of what animals, whether house cats or cattle, think, feel and — perhaps most important — desire. There is a revelation on almost every page, and Grandin’s prose (she wrote with Catherine Johnson) is ungainly in the best possible way: blunt, sweet, off-kilter and often quite funny.

Grandin’s new book, Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals, also written with Johnson, picks up where Animals in Translation left off. It has a slightly different focus: she concentrates this time on the emotional rather than the physical life of animals, although the two are clearly related.

Grandin bases many of her observations in Animals Make Us Human on the work of Washington State University neuroscientist, Jaak Panksepp, who identified a series of core emotion systems in animals: seeking, play, care and lust (on the positive side) and fear, panic and rage (on the negative).

“The rule is simple,” she writes. “Don’t stimulate rage, fear and panic if you can help it, and do stimulate seeking and also play.”

There are provocative chapters here on dogs (she quibbles with some of the alpha-male ideas of Cesar Millan, television’s “Dog Whisperer”) and cats. Grandin is at her best, however, when she is talking about animals like cows, pigs, horses and chickens, as well as wild animals and those in zoos.

Grandin has designed humane and stress-free slaughter systems that are used now to process about half of all the cattle in the United States and Canada. There is some cognitive dissonance here. She is often asked “How can you care about animals when you design slaughter plants?”

Her reply is that “some people think death is the most terrible thing that can happen to an animal.” She argues that “the most important thing for an animal is the quality of its life.”

She adds: “The more I observe and learn about how dogs are kept today, I am more convinced that many cattle have better lives than some of the pampered pets. Too many dogs are alone all day with no human or dog companions.”

She worries about the “totally adversarial” relationship between animal advocacy groups and the livestock industry. She has kind words for companies like McDonald’s and Wendy’s (she has consulted for both), which are forcing their suppliers to treat animals more humanely. But she also praises activists. “The big companies are like steel, and activists are like heat. Activists soften the steel, and then I can bend it into pretty grillwork and make reforms.”

One of the major points in Animals Make Us Human is the importance of hiring and training good people to work with livestock. Strong, caring managers are needed; bullying and sadistic employees should be fired; and because turnover in these industries is high, constant training and retraining are necessary, as well as constant auditing from the outside.

Grandin is in favor of almost total openness — she’s among the writers who believe that slaughterhouses should have glass walls. “No animal should spend its last conscious moments in a state of terror,” she writes, and any visitor should be able to observe that they do not.

She loves solid, declarative sentences: “Cattle hate being yelled at”; “Pigs are obsessed with straw”; “Cows like to learn new things.”

We’re lucky to have Temple Grandin.

She has already written one very fine memoir, Thinking in Pictures . Human beings can often be made to feel like cattle, especially in large cities. What would she have to say about subways, housing projects, stadiums, prisons, office cubicles, long-distance buses, shelters for the homeless, elevators or the security line at an airport? What are her thoughts about urban planning in general?

This blogger would love to know.

Full review by Dwight Garner at New York Times, January 20, 2009.

No Christmas at the Shelter

I wonder what Bailey’s family was thinking.

I wonder what was going through their minds when they tied him to a fence and abandoned him in the Canadian winter.

Was he a cute golden puppy that grew too big for the family? Was he chewing on their shoes? Did he grow too big to be fun anymore? Were they no longer able to afford the vet bills? Did they take Bailey to the vet? Were they worried about losing their jobs? Did they figure it was easier just to leave Bailey tied to a fence than to take some responsibility to look after him or turn him in to a shelter?

What did they think would happen to him? Some kind Samaritan would take him home and love him forever? The authorities would shelter him and he would soon find a new, loving home?

They never could have anticipated, in their wildest imagination, that Bailey would be one of a handful of animals that survived the horrible blaze at the Durham Humane Society Shelter this week. But did it cross their minds that, had Bailey not had the double good fortune to end up in a no-kill shelter and survive its destruction, he might have been euthanized in a few short days?

A good death.

Does Bailey’s family think about the turn of events in the past short tragic week?

Bailey was one of eight dogs and two cats saved from the fire at the Durham Region Humane Society shelter in Oshawa. Most of the animals did not make it out alive.

The overcrowded shelter was in a run-down industrial area of Oshawa, a satellite of Toronto that is facing an evisceration of the automotive sector while Smilin’ Jim Flaherty contemplates his navel lint.

The shelter, run on the broken hearts of volunteers, could not afford a sprinkler system. The ultimate irony is that the shelter was hoping to move to a better location soon because of break-ins and vandalism.

The jury is still out on the cause of the fire, although the Fire Marshall seems to have ruled out arson, which would have been the worst, really unthinkable, scenario. In fact, the culprits could have been mice chewing on wiring in the ceiling.

No revelations will heal the hearts of the volunteers who cared for these precious creatures. We can only let them know that their work on behalf of animals in need is so very special. May they have the courage to pick up the pieces and continue on for the animals that need them more than ever.

Animal lovers across the country rallied to help as the news spread.

“It’s been crazy here,” said Richards. “People are very upset and some people have just been crying on the phone.”

Donations poured in to their website and offers of temporary locations, food and supplies kept staff hopping all day.

Whitby mother Candie Abramson and her sons M.J., 13, and Quinton, 11, arrived at the Animal Services shelter on Farewell St. with cash donations in lieu of Christmas gifts for their teachers.

“How many coffee mugs and boxes of chocolates do they really need?” said Abramson. “We thought this way would benefit the little people with four legs.”

Coincidentally, the 50 members of the Divine Light Spiritual Foundation in Oshawa had already picked the humane society for their annual charity donation.

“When we heard about the fire, we thought, `This is imperative, let’s get this done now,’” said Rev. Alva Folkes of the $5,000 gift.

Animal welfare workers were thrilled with the public response.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.
~ Margaret Mead

May those that were once Bailey’s family come to know how much poorer they are without him, especially during this season of giving.

And I wonder what Bailey is thinking, after losing his home and those he depended on, spending three days in a cold concrete cage, suffering through a frightening fire, and ending up in another cold concrete cage while, in a week’s time, thousands of boys and girls will be having sugarplum dreams of new iPods and Guitar Heros, and their parents, of HDTV.

More on the story at the Toronto Star.

What can you do?

If you are able to help the Durham Humane Society by making a donation to their trust fund or material donations, follow this link to their website.

If you’re not in the area, please consider a Christmas donation to a needy shelter nearby.

A Dead Moose in the Room

Earlier, we blogged about Matthew Scully’s important book, Dominion, which condemns factory farming, trophy hunting and other activities involving animals. At the time, Scully was speechwriter for George W. Bush.

He is also the man behind last night’s Republican convention speech by Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, which is interesting in light of Scully’s moral opposition to hunting and Palin’s love of the activity.

“We hunt as much as we can, and I’m proud to say our freezer is full of wild game we harvested here in Alaska,” she recently told Newsweek. Probably better than a short life in a factory farm, but there’s more.

Another report detailed the home where her parents “live amid hundreds of sets of trophy antlers and a taxidermy collection that includes a giant moose head and a full-grown mountain lion.” Then there’s the aerial hunting of bears and wolves. The AK Wildlife Alliance discusses the state’s pandering to corporate and special interests such as the Safari Club, which Scully lambasted in his book.

Time had this to say:

“But the story is more complicated than just the recycling of a Bush staffer into John McCain’s fold, and it tells you more about how McCain’s camp intends to use Palin than it does about the continuing influence of the current White House.”

“The clues are in the text itself. Scully started working on the vice-presidential speech a week ago, before he or anyone else knew who the nominee would be, and it’s not hard to pick out the parts that would have been the same regardless of who delivered it. Scully unspooled two centrist themes via Palin that have been key to the McCain message: the idea that the Republican nominee puts service to country ahead of career and the notion that he’s the true representative of Middle America. Both themes implicitly push Obama and Biden to the left, and Scully made them explicit with lines accusing the Democrats of élitism and talking down to working-class voters… Palin was shown as an average mainstream American looking to bring change to Washington, further bolstering McCain’s overarching message of reforming the wasteful Federal Government.”

‘Scully was a good choice to help moderate Palin’s right-wing image. A veteran of the early Bush White House, his specialty was crafting Bush’s pro-life message in a way that would not offend soccer moms or mainstream Catholics who get nervous around some of the more extreme Evangelical rhetoric.”

“Don’t be surprised, though, if the combination continues… If Palin was viewed as the most likely right winger to sell in the swing states, Scully is the right pick to help repackage her from a base pleaser into a bridge builder.”

Matthew, you got some ’splainin’ to do.

More on this story at The Statesman.

Caribou Barbie image from Mudflats.

Visit the Marking Time blog for an eloquent review of the Scully/Palin speech.

Some interesting observations on the Scully/Palin connection and hunting over at My Face is on Fire.

A choice of nightmares: Hunting and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

But Is It Journalism?

Kim Honey, a Toronto Star food scribbler, managed to generate readership for her employer this past week by regaling us with her dispatch of a little bunny at a foodie survival get-together.

Well, it wasn’t a survival course, exactly. It was a cooking class for locavores. That’s last year’s trendy buzz in these anxious days of global warming. Since it wasn’t rabbit hunting season, the writer bought a farmed one, although one not yet committed to a neat, square styrofoam package. So it was left to the writer to do the deed.

All beings tremble before violence. All fear death, all love life. See yourself in others. Then whom can you hurt? What harm can you do? ~~ Buddha

After cuddling the creature to calm it, and telling us that grown men, soldiers even, broke into tears when faced with the choice of killing a defenseless animal, the writer failed to render the bunny senseless on her first try. She handed it over to the chef, who humanely clubbed it another three times.

We’re not sure what redeeming qualities Kim’s rambling article had. We doubt that it was intended to enlighten us on the obscenity of factory farms, slaughterhouses and speciesism. Was she advocating that Torontonians eschew the strip mall foodmart and, instead, trap raccoons for the stewpot because it’s somehow trendier? We think so. Why else would a locavore drive all the way from the Big Smoke to Hanover at today’s gas prices, to learn bunny bashing?

The city is overrun with cottontail rabbits. You can’t walk out the back door without staring down a couple of haughty raccoons, and Lake Shore Blvd. is like Canada’s Wonderland for geese. ~~ Kim Honey

We checked out a few of her other foodie scribblings for further clues. She’d written a couple of times about the orgasmic glories of foie gras, but she didn’t mention participating in the inhumane gorging of the goose. She just loves eating fat. And cake icing.

She also did a piece for the Globe awhile back about abusing animals in art for shock value. She mentioned some of the more notorious pieces, including the Toronto Casuistry incident.

At the crux of the controversy is the question: What is the definition of art? And who decides what is art…? Is it up to the individual who creates the piece to declare it as art, or should society decide whether the work has any validity? ~~ Kim Honey

We’re guessing her rabbit piece wasn’t a whole lot different.

Sadly for Kim, not everyone was in breathless agreement with her article. Her editor allowed her space the following day to whine about the emails she’d received. It was silly. We’re surprised the Star ran it.

Let’s hope she sticks to rhapsodizing over cake icing.

Read more at Taste T.O.

In Memory of Harry

Since last summer, our online community has been closely following the story of Harry, a two-year-old Golden Retriever who had been fighting an aggressive sarcoma since Thanksgiving, 2006. It was during this same period that Harry’s two feline friends were battling acute renal failure from adulterated pet food.

Harry and his sister Lucy had been adopted at the same time, and Lucy was his constant companion throughout his too-short life, and his support through his radiation and chemotherapy treatments.

Sweet Harry was not only a lover but also a fighter, but in the end, this little boy crossed the Rainbow Bridge this past week – far too soon. We all love his mom’s stories and pictures of Harry and Lucy and the Golden Bone, and our hearts go out to a little dog who is now looking for her buddy.

This YouTube video celebrating Harry’s life was thoughtfully created by one of the members of our community who lost her own best buddy to cancer. Her tribute has a universality that touches all of us who have been fortunate to have had our lives enriched by these precious souls.

Godspeed, Harry. Saint Francis is watching over you.

The audio for Annie Lennox’ Into The West, so thoughtfully matched to Harry’s video, has been disabled. However, you can listen to it here. It will open in a new window and you can just minimize it while you watch the video.

Into The West

Lay down
Your sweet and weary head
Night is falling
You’ve come to journey’s end
Sleep now
And dream of the ones who came before
They are calling
From across the distant shore

Why do you weep?
What are these tears upon your face?
Soon you will see
All of your fears will pass away
Safe in my arms
You’re only sleeping

What can you see
On the horizon?
Why do the white gulls call?
Across the sea
A pale moon rises
The ships have come to carry you home

And all will turn
To silver glass
A light on the water
All souls pass

Hope fades
Into the world of night
Through shadows falling
Out of memory and time
Don’t say: «We have come now to the end»
White shores are calling
You and I will meet again

And you’ll be here in my arms
Just sleeping

And all will turn
To silver glass
A light on the water
Grey ships pass
Into the West

Into The West was performed by Annie Lennox over the ending credits to the third film in Peter Jackson’s adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy: The Return Of The King. This song was in part inspired by New Zealand filmmaker Cameron Duncan’s tragic early death from cancer. The song’s first public performance was for Duncan’s funeral. This won the Oscar for Best Original Song at the 2003 Academy Awards.

The Fioretti of Saint Francis

Fioretti di San Francesco (The Little Flowers of Saint Francis) is a florilegium – a collection of excerpts – divided into 53 short chapters, on the life of the fabled saint, which was composed at the end of the 14th century.

The anonymous Italian text, almost certainly by a Tuscan author, is a version of the Latin Actus beati Francisci et sociorum eius, of which the earliest extant manuscript is one of 1390 A.D. The text has been ascribed to Fra. Ugolino da Santa Maria, whose name occurs three times in the Actus.

The text has been the most popular account of his life and relates many colorful anecdotes, miracles and pious examples from the lives of Francis and his followers.

It is said that one day while Francis was traveling with some companions they happened upon a place in the road where birds filled the trees on either side. Francis told his companions to “wait for me while I go to preach to my sisters the birds”. The birds surrounded him, drawn by the power of his voice, and not one of them flew away. Francis spoke to them:

My sister birds, you owe much to God, and you must always and in everyplace give praise to Him; for He has given you freedom to wing through the sky and He has clothed you…you neither sow nor reap, and God feeds you and gives you rivers and fountains for your thirst, and mountains and valleys for shelter, and tall trees for your nests. And although you neither know how to spin or weave, God dresses you and your children, for the Creator loves you greatly and He blesses you abundantly. Therefore… always seek to praise God.

Fioretti tells that in the city of Gubbio, where Francis lived for some time, was a wolf “terrifying and ferocious, who devoured men as well as animals”. Francis had compassion upon the townsfolk, and went up into the hills to find the wolf. Soon, fear of the animal had caused all his companions to flee, though the saint pressed on. When he found the wolf, he made the sign of the cross and commanded the wolf to come to him and hurt no one. Miraculously the wolf closed his jaws and lay down at the feet of St. Francis.

“Brother Wolf, thou doest much harm in these parts and thou hast done great evil…” said Francis. “All these people accuse you and curse you…But brother wolf, I would make peace between you and the people.”

“As thou art willing to make this peace, I promise thee that thou shalt be fed every day by the inhabitants of this land so long as thou shalt live among them; thou shalt no longer suffer hunger, as it is hunger which has made thee do so much evil; but if I obtain all this for thee, thou must promise, on thy side, never again to attack any animal or any human being; dost thou make this promise?”

In agreement the wolf placed one of its forepaws in Francis’ outstretched hand, and the oath was made. Francis then commanded the wolf to return with him to Gubbio.

Meanwhile the townsfolk, having heard of the miracle, gathered in the city marketplace to await Francis and his companion, and were shocked to see the ferocious wolf behaving as though his pet. When Francis reached the marketplace he offered the assembled crowd an impromptu sermon with the tame wolf at his feet. He is quoted as saying: “How much we ought to dread the jaws of hell, if the jaws of so small an animal as a wolf can make a whole city tremble through fear?”

Gubbio was freed from the menace of the predator. Francis, ever the lover of animals, even made a pact on behalf of the town dogs, that they would not bother the wolf again.

These legends exemplify the Franciscan mode of charity and poverty as well as the saint’s love of the natural world. Part of his appreciation of the environment is expressed in his Canticle of the Sun, a poem written by the saint in Umbrian Italian shortly before his death in 1226, which expresses a love and appreciation of Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Mother Earth, Brother Fire, and all of God’s creations personified in their fundamental forms. In Canticle of the Creatures, he wrote: “All praise to you, Oh Lord, for all these brother and sister creatures.” His Canticle is believed to be among the first works of literature, if not the first, written in the Italian language.

It is an affirmation of Francis’ personal theology as he often referred to animals as brothers and sisters to Mankind, and rejected material accumulation and sensual comforts in favour of “Lady Poverty”.

Image: Saint Francis instructs the Wolf, Carl Weidemeyer-Worpswede, 1911

No Stray Dogs at the NATO Summit

Prime Minister Harper’s security detail has a different breed of assailant to guard against while he attends the meeting of NATO leaders in Bucharest this week: the city’s infamous stray dogs.

The New York Times published the following article on the subject, which is very similar to one published by Italian Corriere della Sera and by the International Herald Tribune. It is suspected that Romanian authorities sent a press release in order to create panic around the non-killing law, which could be approved next week by the Parliament. Romanian animal protection organizations are extremely concerned about the campaign started by Romanian newspaper Evenimentul Zilei, which is likely to jeopardize their efforts to have a non-killing law based on the “neuter and release” strategy.

Here is an excerpt from the New York Times article:

Special squads of dogcatchers are already stationed along the road from the airport to the Palace of the Parliament, where the meeting will be held this week, to prevent the beasts from harassing delegates on foot or nipping at the wheels of their motorcades.

Meanwhile, the rest of the city remains under a worsening canine occupation.

The city government reports that 9,000 people are bitten each year here by dogs, though those numbers include bites by strays and pets. Officials will not venture a guess at the number of strays, and estimates of the semi-feral population in the local news media range from 30,000 to 200,000 dogs.

But everyone agrees that the problem has been growing recently, thanks to a January law that prohibits the city from euthanizing the dogs. Also unable to spay or neuter the dogs and return them to the street, city officials are facing severe overcrowding at the pound and a paralysis of policing.

“Because the shelters are full, we cannot capture the dogs,” Simona Panaitescu, director of the city’s administration for animal supervision, said of the canine Catch-22. “We are stuck in the middle.” The city used to nab 1,500 dogs each month, according to Ms. Panaitescu, of which 80 percent were put down and 20 percent adopted.

Apparently, the impounded dogs are to be released on the streets again, once the NATO Summit has concluded.

The local debate flared up earlier this year when two women were mauled by stray dogs in separate attacks. A Japanese businessman was killed in January 2006 when he was bitten in the femoral artery.

The stray dogs of Romania are one of the longest running stories in Eastern Europe. Their population first exploded when the Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu demolished thousands of houses to make way for an ill-considered reconstruction plan. Residents forced to move into tiny apartments had no room for their dogs, which they then put out on the street.

Throughout Romania, dogs can be seen trotting along the sides of roads and peering from perches on trash bins. At night, their baying and barking provides a constant backdrop, like the honking of car horns in big cities.

Ioana Pirvulescu, a representative of the animal-welfare group Four Paws in Bucharest, said she hoped that a new law permitting authorities to parole spayed and neutered dogs could pass as soon as next week, after the NATO meeting ends.

“Most of the dogs are peaceful and quiet dogs,” she said. “Living on the street is not easy. In a few years, they will disappear.”

She’s right; with an effective TNR (trap-neuter-return) policy, that might just happen.

Another side to the story

Visit Save the Dogs to read what the mainstream media are not telling you.

There are persistent rumours of silent night-time massacres around Bucharest Airport to rid the area of stray dogs and cats before the Nato Summit. Save The Dogs is unable to verify the rumours, even if in the past the authorities have used drastic methods to make a city seem more western when big international events were scheduled. What they can confirm is the intense activity of the dog-catchers observed by the President Sara Turetta in the area of the main road that leads to the airport recently. The association has frequently picked up stray dogs and cats from the airport, an area chosen by many Romanians to abandon their puppies and kittens.

Reports and videos

Ontario Animal Protection Law Gets an Overhaul

While the Canadian Parliament dithers over Senator Bryden’s do-little Animal Cruelty Bill S-203, Ontario is stepping up to a much-needed and long-overdue overhaul of its 90-year old provincial legislation.

Long-time animal protector, Hugh Coghill, the Chief Inspector with the Ontario SPCA, struggled to compose himself as he spoke to reporters.

“It’s a great day for the animals in Ontario, and that’s what we’re focused on,” he said, then took a deep breath. “Sorry. Been waiting a long time for it.”

The province’s Animal Protection Act is considered by many to be a point of shame for the province. Animal advocates claim it currently does little to ensure creatures receive the proper care and the people who mistreat them get punishments they deserve.

But today, the government introduced legislation that will strengthen the Act with new measures, including new rules on the province’s 50 roadside zoos that will impose higher standards for owners and allow the Ontario SPCA to inspect them and making animal cruelty a provincial offence carrying stiffer penalties.

“It’s going to be good news for all people who love animals,” Community Safety and Correctional Services Minister Rick Bartolucci said. “I would hope that those people who have stewardship of animal care will say we’ve gone from worst to first with this legislation.”

“We always try to get people to look after their animals in a proper and humane way. And if they don’t, this legislation gives us the tools to be able to deal with it in a far more effective manner,” says Coghill.

For many, this overhaul is long overdue as Ontario has some of the most lax animal protection laws in the country. Currently, the province’s small zoos aren’t held to any standards, with many animals forced to live in filthy and flimsy pens without clean drinking water. Animal cruelty is only considered a provincial offence if the creature is involved in a commercial breeding operation.

The standard of care for animals in a commercial operation includes adequate food, water and space. However, these guidelines don’t apply to pets, who are considered possessions.

While opposition parties are pleased to see a proposed change to this legislation, they’re still waiting to see if the Liberal overhaul has any real teeth and adequate funding.

“Right now, they don’t have the budget to do the work that they’re supposed to be doing,” Ontario NDP Leader Howard Hampton said.

“If we’re going to take this issue seriously, the Ontario SPCA has to have a consistent level of funding that will allow them to do the work — something that isn’t there now.”

The proposed legislation has several aims, including:

• making it a provincial offence to cause distress to an animal
• stiffer penalties, which include jail terms, fines and lifetime bans on animal ownership
• inspection rights at facilities where animals are kept for sale or exhibit
• banning animal fighting
• and protecting veterinarians from liability when reporting allegations of cruelty.

To read the full OSPCA Act, as it currently stands, click here. To read the proposed changes, click here.