September ended.

and I still didn't want to wake up.

In these days, our freedom is being sold for the promise of future devastation, and the dog blogging has taken a requisite back seat.

So my Furry Friends, until the crisis has resolved, one way or the other, I leave you with these links to study, absorb, cry over and act upon.

Ludwig Von Mises Institute

Bernanke Out. Paul In.

God save us.

Cougars versus Dogs

Previously, on the Dog Scoop, Ms. X had published a series of Dog versus Wolf posts showing what happened when man's best friend came face to face or canine to canine with his ancestors. Well, wolves aren't the only predators we face. In Oregon, the human and canine inhabitants are increasingly coming face to face with... cougars.

According to the story from KOIN News, the state's cougar population has risen to 6,000. Now I'm not a wildlife biologists, but I can do a little math. The entire state of Oregon is 97,052 square miles.

A typical cougar has a range of 50 to 150 square miles. If we're even conservative, 6,000 times 50 is 300,000 square miles. In fact, according the to Columbus Zoo fact sheet, "Except for mothers and their young, adult cougars like to live alone" and "a male cougar is very protective of his territory". So if even half of those cougars are adult males, we're still talking about 150,000 square miles to support all those cats.

Overpopulated?

Ms. X is not a wildlife biologist. According to the news articles, the cougar population has risen substantially since hunting with dogs was banned in 1994.

What a shame. Too bad the legislature that approved the ban couldn't ban the cougars from hunting the dogs.

From Here to There

Well I promised you the fascinating road from here to "Biting the Hand that Pets the Dog", and you shall have it.

It started yesterday when I clicked over to Nathan Winograds' blog to see what the No-Kill guru was up to. Mr. Winograd has a great blog, and I have listed it in my "Cures for Ennui". He brings a heck of a lot of common sense and rational thinking to a novel thought - No Kill Shelters can be successful. No Kill shelters really can contribute to reducing the unwanted pet population even further, without any anti-human petamongering or Nazi animal control laws. In other words, a win-win.

So, once at The No Kill Blog, the top post was his interview of The Dog Man of Kansas City. Brent Toellner has his own blog, the KC Dog Blog, another site that is, you guess it, hitting the "Cures for Ennui".

At first glance, the Kansas City Dog Man appears to be another welcome voice of common sense and rational (though hardly libertarian) thought. (So rare in dogdom these days). And the Kansas City Dog Man (ok, so I like typing Kansas City Dog Man. Wonder if he's a star? ;-) ) highlighted the Chicago Tribune story "No Pets for You!" Now this story is a great read too; don't stay up past your bedtime with all this reading, but do have a gander at the comments while you are over in the Tribune land.

Because in the comments, someone linked to, (you guessed it) "Biting the Hand that Pets the Dog".

A lot of times comments are more interesting than the actual story. It's one thing I love about the internet, you could find the most obscure news story in the world, and SOMEBODY will post in the comments that they personally know the victim (villan) and the whole story is a gross misrepresentation. The victim (villan) is actually Mother Theresa back from the dead.

Sometimes the comment section is good to gauge the tone of the general populace, and sometimes its just full of idiots clinging with religious fervor to their pet neurosis and psychosis. And sometimes, the comments section will be full of links and information that enhance the story. The Tribune article comments were mostly the latter.

MUST SEE TV!

Yes, I'm shouting it. You simply HAVE to watch this program. Informative, captivating and tragic.

The BBC did a series on Pedigree Dogs, exposing the dark side of the showring. Let's just say they got an awful lot right.

It was troubling though, to read some of the comments the videos got on YouTube. So many people jumped up right away to blame "irresponsible" breeders who wouldn't do genetic testing / health screening. One thing I am sure of, the readers of this blog were not the ones equating genetic testing with good health.

The readers of this blog would know if there was a simple, concise solution to the morbidity of dogdom, it is the open registry.

Property Rights and Rescue Wrongs

A blogger from Illinois wrote an instant classic in 2005 about dog rescues.

Regrettably it has taken 3 years for Biting the Hand that Pets the Dog to travel the internet to Ms. X's attention, or I surely would have posted it years ago.

But now that we have it, READ it! And soon I will post the path I took to find it. That to, will be worth reading.

A Big Doggie Sugar to....

Chef Gordan Ramsey!


According to the Daily Mail, the famous and highly acclaimed Culinary Specialist boldly vocalized one of the silent dreads of parenthood.

'My biggest nightmare would be if the kids ever came up to me and said "Dad, I'm a vegetarian"

It's scary indeed to think someone you love could be so crudely divorced from Nature.

This might be a good moment to plug a new link, on the right hand side of the page, down below the boob jobs at peta. "Health and Nutrition" is a fabulous resource for the importance of animal protein and fat for our health and well being. When you read the writings of the Drs. Eades, remember our furry friends are even more evolutionarily carnivorous than we are.

One of Ms. X's very few 'life do-overs', if we got such things, would be to rescue the pup of her childhood from his vegetarian dog food. Now he wasn't fed the crap from any errant altruism, the adults with the purchasing power were simply very afraid of the quality of the animal products in commercial kibble. No, they had not heard at that time that Soy was far more dangerous.

Animals, predators in the wild, will pick the weak and very young for their carnivorous delights. We humans on the other hand, select the strongest, fattest and most vigorous. We are repulsed by disease and dazzled by babyfaces. I wonder if this proclivity has served to advance our status in the food chain?

A Room Full of Geniuses

Are dogs getting smarter? Or are people getting dumber?

The first question, at least, was bandied about at a conference of behaviourists in Europe recently, according to an article in the Daily Mail.

Over the course of the conference the scientists revealed startling facts like "animals abide by social rules".

The Canine Science Forum in Budapest also revealed that "dog barks contain information that people can understand". Room full of geniuses there.

Dr. Takaoka from Japan went a bit further. She performed a study where the dog was shown a picture while listening to a voice recording. According to the article, "if the gender of the face did not match that of the voice, the dogs stared longer, a sign that their expectations had been violated."

Ah, so that's what is happening when I make a funny noise and my dog stares at me, and sometimes (really! I have evidence!) cocks his head to the side. I, Ms. X, his loving owner and master, have violated his expectations.

Fortunately, there are people dedicated to helping us deduce these things.

Heck, I made up a joke for the occasion.

How many behaviorists does it take to change a light bulb?

Answer: At least 20. 12 to analyze and hypothesize about the motivations for changing the bulb, one to actually change the bulb, and 7 to author a paper revealing that science has proven that sitting in a dark room will motivate someone to change a light bulb.

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