Categories
Critters

Rabbit Ridge: of Starving Dogs and Extreme Heat

The USDA has released a relatively complete set of inspections for Rabbit Ridge including the missing August 2nd inspection, as well as newer ones at the end of November. However, they did remove the inspection for November 29, but not before I got a copy (pages twothreefour, and five).

Though the inspections state that the USDA APHIS inspector was accompanied by a VMO, which I believe is a representative from the Missouri Department of Agriculture, the MDA shows no new inspections since August, 2011.

From the August 2 inspection:

There was a black Schnauzer puppy (with no ID, DOB 6-2-2011) who had recently had his ears cropped. The licensee stated that he cropped the ears himself in the Whelping Building when the dog was 3 weeks old. He said he gave the puppies a shot to put them down. He stated it was the same stuff the vet uses. He stated he used Rompun at a dose of 0.1cc/pound but no pain-relieving drugs. He stated he waited 10 minutes after injection before performing the surgery. He stated if bleeding occurred, he used blood stop sticks. The licensee showed the inspectors the table and equipment he used to conduct the surgery. The table was a wooden counter in a room containing a variety of items such as dog food, trash bins, a refrigerator, and medications. The walls, floors, and ceilings in that room were dirty and grimy, The licensee stated he dipped the equipment in rubbing alcohol prior to use. The bottle of alcohol he showed the inspectors contained a liquid that was discolored and yellow in appearance, did not smell like alcohol, containing a dead floating insect, and no cap. The licensee showed the inspectors the clamps and the razor blades used to cut the ears. The licensee is not a veterinarian and is not trained or qualified to safely conduct painful, surgical procedures involving the amputation of tissue.

But wait…there’s more…

The whelping building had a temperature of 98.8F with a heat index of 120.5F at approximately 1730 hours. There were 15 puppies showing signs such as: excessive wide mouths, panting, vocalizing, and/or tongue lolling. The puppies were lying separated from one another rather than close together. All of the puppies were lethargic and some did not respond to being stepped on by their littermates. One male Daschund puppy (DOB 21 June 2011) was propped against his water bowl, wobbling his head and then suddenly slumped over and fell on his side.

A heat index of 120.5 F. What could possibly exceed this?

Unfortunately, we found out in November. On November 29:

A black male poodle (identification number 143) is emaciated. There is virtually no fleshy covering over his ribs, hip bones, or back bone. The muscle mass over his thighs and shoulders is greatly reduced. His shoulder structures, including his scapulas, are very prominent with virtually no fleshy covering. The licensee stated that the dog has been moved from an outdoor enclosure to its current sheltered enclosure one week ago and was “normal” at that time. He stated that this dog has not previously been housed with its two current cage mates. One food receptacle with dog food was located in the outside half of the enclosure; the dog was in the sheltered part of the enclosure at the time of the inspection. The licensee stated he knew that the dog had difficulty going in and out of the dog door to move between the indoor and outdoor portions of the enclosure. He stated he had been trying to teach the dog to use the door and had propped it open slightly. Dogs can lose large amounts of weight due to poor nutrition, lack of access to food, or a variety of serious medical conditions.

From a follow up inspection, on November 30.

The non-compliant item has been corrected: the dog was euthanized by the Attending Veterinarian.

What more is there for me to say? To the USDA and MDA, what amounts to starving a dog to death is acceptable.

This is the “compromise” arranged by Governor Nixon. This, the result from the state legislature overriding the vote of the people to undermine Proposition B.

So Happy New Year Governor Nixon, MDA Director Jon Hagler, and Missouri representatives, such as Brian Munzlinger, who has complained because we in the animal welfare community have been harassing this fine upstanding breeder. Happy New Year, AG Koster, who seems to have found only four bad breeders among all the thousands in Missouri (and only seems interested in unlicensed breeders).

Congratulations on a job well done in 2011.

Categories
Browsers

Firefox: Continuous scrolling and continuous freezing

This morning I logged into Twitter, opened my HTML5 list, and started scrolling down the page to see what new outrage/toy/publication/conference was generating excitement today. Of course, I use “page” loosely, since Twitter uses the “continuous scrolling” technique to retrieve and display older tweets. You never actually get to the end of the page, you just keep getting more tweets.

I dislike the “continuous scrolling” technique with a passion that I usually reserve for governors who harass teenagers who tweet. Many times I have scrolled to an interesting looking tweet, which is suddenly moved out of view because of an awkwardly done “page” update that pushes the previously scrolled tweets out of view. The same happens, though not as abruptly, with Facebook and Google+—a less than clever use of technology to replace what the developers seem to think is beyond their users: to click the damn “More” link.

Worse than losing that tweet that piques my interest, though, is that lately when I’m using Firefox to scroll down the page of updates, the browser freezes up. At times, it can seem to unfreeze itself if I just patiently wait for it to deal with whatever internal upset it’s currently dealing with. Other times, I’ve had to kill the browser.

In the past few weeks, though, I’ve had Firefox freeze up to the point where I couldn’t use my Windows 7 system. I can’t bring up the task manager to kill Firefox. I don’t get any response from any key combination. The only recourse I’ve had in these circumstances is to hard boot my system.

Hard booting a system is not a good idea, and it’s one I shouldn’t have to be taking. However, when your system is frozen and your laptop fan is whirring like mad, you take desperate measures. Desperate measures that came close to losing my system today.

I hard booted up my less than one year old Toshiba laptop after a Firefox/Twitter freeze this morning, except that rather than the Windows prompt asking me if I wanted to start Windows in Safe Mode, I got the ominous message that the system could not find my hard drive. I tried again in a couple of minutes, but received the same message. Waiting a short time later, I was able to get to the Windows restore/repair dialog, and tried an automatic repair. This seemingly failed, and I was faced with having to restore my system using the Toshiba recovery program, which basically overwrites your disc with a brand new installation of Windows.

Before taking such a drastic step, I tried to restart my system one more time, and this time, success!

Right now, I’m backing up all of my writing research folders to my internet site, and various other files to external USB drives. I’m also using Google Chrome to write this, because, frankly, I’m wary of using Firefox for anything at this point.

It is not the browser company’s fault that web sites use JavaScript to create some chi-chi clever effect that taxes the browser’s resources, and that most of us don’t really need, and didn’t really ask for. However, it is the browser company’s fault when it can’t deal with whatever good or bad JavaScript it encounters. No browser should allow any JavaScript to freeze the application up so badly that it has to be forcibly closed. And no browser should ever be so badly coded that it can literally crash the OS.

The only extensions I use with Firefox are Firebug, AdBlocks, and Web Developer Toolkit. I suppose one of these three could be to blame for the freezing problem, but it’s the responsibility of the browser company to ensure that its extension environment is solid so that an extension can’t cause these kinds of serious problems.

Whatever happened to my favorite Firefox of bygone years? Whatever happened to the rock solid but still innovative browser I once depended on? In its desperation to beat out Chrome and it’s aggressively pushed schedule to release new browser versions seemingly every few weeks, Firefox has become increasingly erratic and unstable. I could live with the mouse cursor landing in the web page just below a form field when tabbing (and having to click on the field to realign), but I can’t live with the freezing and crashing.

After all these years, I’m going to have to switch to another browser. Right now, I’m typing this post using Chrome, but I’m not overfond of Chrome. It’s not a bad browser, but the same issue with Firefox also applies to Chrome: aggressive release schedules and seeming indifference to stability. (“Stability? We don’t need no stinken stability!”) Apple’s support for Safari on Windows seems tepid, at best, which leaves Microsoft IE and Opera. The newer versions of IE are actually fine products, and Opera seems to have found the right point between implementing the latest gewgaw and delivering a stable product—but dammit, I’m used to Firefox.

Categories
Critters

Cattlemen, all in a dither

The Missouri Cattlemen got together, and worked themselves up into a froth of anxiety about HSUS.

You know that HSUS has to be doing something right when a meeting of cattlemen talks more about HSUS than cattle.

Michael Parson was doing his usual: using his elected position to bully non-profits because he doesn’t agree with them.

Anyway, as I wrote in a comment to the post:

I find it disturbing that an elected official, Michael Parson, would advocate government investigation of a non-profit, solely because he disagrees with the non-profit.

Point of fact, I find such attitude to be chilling, in its disregard of the fundamental freedoms on which this country was based.

How far will this man go to protect large agribusiness in this state?

As for the comment about HSUS and grassroots, I remind the people at this event that the people of this state voted for Proposition B. It was legislators who overrode the will of the people, in order to further corporate agribusiness agenda.

You can pretend to be on the side of the people–but the facts speak otherwise.

The agribusiness folks are frenzied because of the Your Vote Counts campaign. After all: can’t have us uppity people in the urban areas having a say in how this state is run. And how dare we voters in Missouri actually disagree with the legislators?

Categories
Critters

Puppies may be going away

I am considering discontinuing this site. I want to focus more generally on animal issues, rather than only puppy mills in the state of Missouri. I’m also running into difficulties with getting records from the state and the USDA. Especially, and surprisingly, the USDA.

Without the power of a team of lawyers behind you, it’s sometimes difficult to kick through the walls agencies put up to prevent access to data. The USDA has not been helpful lately. At all. Without the information, though, I can’t really expose bad breeders. Plus I just can’t afford to pay for more inspection reports from the state.

I am starting up a new site devoted to issues related to animals, but it’s more general and not specific to just Missouri. I guess we’ll see if I post again whether I maintain this site or not. Trying to do both probably means I do neither well.

Categories
Burningbird

Kernel panics and nodes

Something is up with my VPS (virtual private server) the last 24 hours. I’ve twice had memory spikes that caused a kernel panic, which basically flat lined my system.

I did find out I was using an outdated Linode kernel, so hoping this might have led to the problem. Otherwise, I’ll have to indulge in some detective work.

I run my own email server, too, so if perchance you sent me an email in the last 24 hours, you’re not a spammer, and you’re expecting an answer, you might want to re-send. I shouldn’t be losing any email, but life is funny that way.

And if you see my site down, no worries: I’ve not packed up my marbles and run away from the web. I’m just dealing with some technical issues.