Fido’s Place

BY Jose Martinez
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Wednesday, April 22nd 2009, 4:00 AM

The Queen of Mean will get to throw dogs a bone after all - but that’s about it.

The trustees for Leona Helmsley’s estate said Tuesday they have started spreading her estimated $5 billion fortune by awarding $136 million in grants to charitable causes; a mere $1million is going to the dogs.

Helmsley, who died in 2007 at age 87, had ordered in a 2004 revision to the mission statement for the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust that its money go to “purposes related to the provision of care for dogs,” along with other charities.

A Manhattan judge ruled in February that the money was not limited to man’s best friend, allowing it to be spread among dozens of charities for sex abuse victims, Jewish day school students, the homeless and medical research.

“Throughout their lives, the Helmsleys were committed to helping others, through the innovations of medical research, responding to those in need during critical times, and in other areas,” the five trustees said in a statement.

“We now have the privilege of continuing their good works by providing support where it will make a difference.”

The biggest grant, $40 million, will add doctors, improve technology and finance an expansion of the Center for Digestive Diseases at New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell.

Other recipients include a center for the bowel disease program at Mount Sinai Medical Center, a charity that provides food in southern Africa and Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration, which is getting $2 million.

Among the canine causes, Helmsley’s $1 million gift will be split among 10 charities, including some that train seeing-eye dogs and dogs for the deaf, and another that trains inmates to raise puppies to become bomb-sniffers.

The Queen of Mean left $12million in her will to her beloved white Maltese, Trouble, while freezing out two of her grandchildren “for reasons that are known to them.”

Last year, a judge awarded the disowned grandkids, Craig and Meegan Panzirer, $6 million, and sliced Trouble’s cut to $2 million. The remainder was to be put into the charitable trust.

The grandkids charged Helmsley was not mentally competent when she signed her will.

jmartinez@edit.nydailynews.com

Charles Q. Choi
for National Geographic News

April 6, 2009
A medieval Hungarian town full of ritually sacrificed dogs could shed light on mysterious pagan customs not found in written records from the era, a new study suggests.

Roughly 1,300 bones from about 25 dogs were recently discovered in the 10th- to 13th-century town of Kana, which had been accidentally unearthed in 2003 during the construction of residential buildings on the outskirts of Budapest.

Researchers found ten dogs buried in pits and four puppy skeletons in pots buried upside down. (Related picture: “Dog Mummies Found in Ancient Peru Pet Cemetery.”)

These sacrifices probably served much like amulets to ward against evil—for instance, to protect against witchcraft or the evil eye, said study leader Márta Daróczi-Szabó, an archaeozoologist at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest.

About a dozen other canines were found buried under house foundations. These animals likely served as “construction sacrifices,” Daróczi-Szabó said.

During the Middle Ages it was customary in Hungary to lock sacrificial animals inside new houses or to slaughter the beasts as people moved in.

Sometimes dogs were beaten to death on the doorsteps or a chicken’s throat was slit.

Dogs were popular sacrificial animals in medieval Hungary, Daróczi-Szabó said. They were seen two different ways: They symbolized loyalty, but they also stood for the deadly sin of envy.

“There was a very big difference between the hunting dogs of the nobility and the scavenging pariah dogs of everyday life,” she said.

Surprisingly Widespread

Previous evidence of animal sacrifices—seen even under churches, in Budapest and elsewhere in Hungary—had been mostly isolated cases, Daróczi-Szabó noted.

But the new findings, described this month in the Journal of Veterinary Behavior, show that “sacrifices were not a rare phenomenon, as one may have thought from isolated finds,” she said. “It was practiced regularly in a Christian village.”

The fact that pagan customs such as animal sacrifice persisted for centuries side-by-side with the church is surprising, noted University of Edinburgh archaeozoologist László Bartosiewicz.

Christianity came to dominate the region after the first king of Hungary, Stephen I, began his rule in A.D. 1000. Under his reign, pagan rituals such as animal sacrifices were explicitly banned.

“One wouldn’t expect these practices in Christian times,” said Bartosiewicz, who did not participate in the new study. “It’s exciting to see what was sacred and profane back then.

“The great number of sacrifices we see [in Kana] will significantly improve our chances of interpreting what their meaning was,” he added.

“It’s probably the find of a lifetime. I can’t imagine lucking upon anything else of this scope.”

Some of you may or may not have noticed my site went missing for a few hours.  Actually it was suspended and an irrate author of an article that I had posted here reported me to my server host.
It is the first time in a year that I have ever encountered any problems or copyright infractions.
My entire site is based on bringing information from around the web into one site, one database. This site is for educational purposes and serves as a resource to all canine owners.
I have always given credit to all authors I have never tried to plagerize anything as my own.
This is completely permissible under the ‘fair use act’ . (please review my ‘Fair Use’ statement and disclaimer)
Apparently some people are more concerned about being compensated then helping educate.
What really pisses me off is that this author e-mailed me and asked me to remove the article, to which I promptly replied to and said that I would.
Before I had the opportunity to remove the article she had my site suspended, well before the time frame she had given me.

Let me make something abundantly clear to anyone and everyone, I repost ‘complete’ articles because frequently ‘links’ are no good or articles are removed in a certain time period. I post these articles because I find them informative and a good source of information.
I do not make money off these articles in any way shape or form.
I do this because I am trying to help…..not worship the almighty dollar!!!

The Associated PressPublished: March 19, 2009

Two dogs died in the name of sport this week, and this time it wasn’t Michael Vick’s fault.

Dizzy and Grasshopper were their names, and they met their demise in the Alaskan wilderness as the wind howled, temperatures dropped to 45 degrees below, and their owner began worrying about his own survival.

They were sled dogs, part of a pack of 15 ferrying musher Lou Packer through his first Iditarod, an 1,100-mile trek made even more grueling by high winds and deep snow. One other dog also perished in this year’s race.

Listen to race supporters and they’ll tell you that, unlike Vick’s dogs, the 5-year-old huskies died doing what they loved. Read the official Iditarod Web site and you’ll find out that sled dogs are pampered and loved by their masters.

They call it “The Last Great Race on Earth” and on Wednesday it was great for Lance Mackey, who had easy sledding as he drove into Nome to win his third straight Iditarod and the $69,000 plus the new pickup that goes with it. Mackey celebrated by hugging two of his dogs and giving them treats.

By the time searchers found him, the Alaskan doctor was on foot leading his dogs instead of the other way around as he struggled to find the trail.

Dizzy and Grasshopper were already dead.

“I think those two guys probably froze to death in the high winds,” Packer told the Anchorage Daily News. “I didn’t think it possible.”

The story Packer told the newspaper of his ordeal is just another that will live in Alaskan folklore. These are hardy people who brave the sometimes brutal outdoors because they’ve chosen it as their way of life.

They don’t have a problem with chaining up big packs of dogs and running them to within an inch of their life for sport. They accept the fact that the Iditarod is a part of the state’s heritage, and its biggest sporting event.

A lot of us in the Lower 48, though, just don’t get it.

As a dog owner, my first reaction on hearing that two more dogs died in this year’s race was one of sadness. My second was wondering why PETA wasn’t up in the Alaskan wild making a fuss about it all.

The animal rights organization, after all, seems to launch a protest every time Vick’s name is mentioned, and last month went to the absurd length of dressing up in KKK outfits at the Westminster Dog Show to protest what it said were attempts to create a “master race” of dogs.

Maybe they have an excuse. The event was outside of New York City, and they may not have had proper fake fur coats.

Barbara Hodges wasn’t in Alaska, either. But the California veterinarian was doing something she thought was more valuable, drafting a letter on behalf of the Humane Society Veterinary Medical Association to Iditarod sponsors like Exxon Mobil Corp. and Wells Fargo, asking them to withdraw their support from the race.

Hodges treats dogs and cats for a living, so she’s seen a lot of animal suffering up close. She’s also seen the studies that show sled dogs have abnormal lung changes due to prolonged heavy breathing, gastric ulcers from the stress of racing, and arthritis and other injuries that leave them crippled if they are fortunate to live long.

“We believe that this particular race compromises the health and welfare of the canine participants,” Hodges said. “The race would violate animal cruelty laws against overworking or overdriving dogs in 38 states and the District of Columbia. Of course, Alaska has no such law.”

Alaska isn’t about to get one, either. Short of an entire team of dogs dying, there’s not much that will change the opinion of most Alaskans that the Iditarod is a good thing and that dogs are, well, dogs.

Organizers have become savvy in recent years about how to deal with bleeding hearts when it comes to treatment of the dogs. They employ a team of veterinarians to keep the dogs healthy, give them checkups at key points in the race, and do autopsies for cause of death.

Two years ago, they suspended a top musher who was seen hitting and kicking his dogs after they refused to keep going on a stretch of ice. And just the other day, planes were called in to airlift dogs whose mushers had gotten stuck in the storm that snared Packer.

Still, how many dog deaths are reasonable? How many more must die before the fun is finally sucked out of the sport?

Yes, the race is an Alaskan tradition, one of the last great tests of endurance for dogs and their masters. There’s something to be said for that, even if the dogs, unlike humans, have no choice about competing.

After the spiritdog http://www.thespiritdog.wordpress.com brought the truth about the Iditarod Great Sled Race to my attention I did a little research. Instead of writing an article about the horrors of this race, I am doing one better….. I found a petition being circulated that I am posting for all to read and the link to go sign it!!!!
http://www.petitiononline.com/luxycat/petition.html

To: Governor Frank H. Murkowski
Hundreds of dogs are abused and exploited every year in Alaska’s Iditarod dog sled race—a dangerous trek of more than 1,000 miles. Today’s race has absoulutly nothing in common with the original Iditarod, which was intended to deliver an emergency supply of diphtheria serum to hundreds of lives at risk. Today’s participants, almost none of whom are indigenous Alaskans, are motivated only by the cash prize the race offers.
Usually, dogs are forced to run four- to five-hour stretches with very little rest. They are forced to endure biting winds, blinding snowstorms, subzero temperatures, and the very real danger of falling through treacherous ice into freezing waters. Almost every year, several dogs die of “sudden death syndrome,” which means that they are literally run to death.

Through the years, the death toll has surpassed 120. Studies have indicated that the dogs have a high incidence of ulcer-related illnesses and deaths because of the anti-inflammatory drugs that are frequently used to mask their injuries and allow them to run farther and faster.

In July 2002, the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine detailed a study of airway-passage disease in dogs who had recently completed the Iditarod—81 percent of the dogs studied had abnormal accumulations of mucus or debris in their bronchial tubes that resulted in injury and inflammation.

In a March 20, 2004, Santa Rosa Press Democrat article, Dr. Paula Kislak, president of the Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights, stated that “[w]ith a buildup of lactic acid and other chemicals from muscle degradation as a result of extreme exercise, toxicity in the liver and kidneys may not cause death for days or weeks after a race.”

Besides the obvious cruelty, dogs also pay an awful price behind the scenes. Not every puppy born is a fast runner, and for those who do not make the grade suffer a death sentence—by bludgeoning or drowning—for not possessing monumental stamina and speed. Manuals and articles written by top mushers blatantly recommend killing dogs who do not measure up. One musher equates it to “weeding a garden.” Almost invariably, those who are left after the “weeding” are to spend their entire lives in cramped, substandard kennels that are rarely or never inspected by any regulatory agency. Many kennel operators keep dogs tethered on short ropes or chains or cram them into tiny confined spaces. In 2003, an Ohio man was charged with cruelty to animals for keeping and transporting 14 huskies, whom he claimed to be training for the Iditarod, chained to barrels on the back of a homemade trailer.

In October 2004, nearly 30 malnourished sled dogs were seized from David Straub, who has run the Iditarod three times, last in 2002. Straub was charged with 17 counts of cruelty to animals, and the dogs were taken to a local animal-care facility.
Greg Cote, sports columnist for The Miami Herald, wrote last March about the Iditarod, “The bizarre competition involves 65 ‘mushers,’ drivers along for the ride as their slaves—16 dog teams, at least at the start—do the hard labor, at times encouraged by their masters’ whips.” He calls the race “a grotesque shame masquerading as sport” and explains that the abuse of the dogs constitutes a violation of cruelty-to-animals statutes across the United States.

USA Today sports columnist Jon Saraceno, who refers to the Iditarod as “Ihurtadog,” has called it an embarrassment, an outrage, and “a travesty of grueling proportions.” In an article published during the 2001 race, Saraceno wrote, “It’s really shameful marketing carried out on the backs of defenseless animals.” He also stated, “Injury and death are Iditarod partners.”

Fox sportscaster Jim Rome has termed the Iditarod the “I-killed-a-dog sled race” and pointed out in an article following the completion of last year’s race that two dogs died during the race and several others were removed from the race because of injuries, including a group of dogs who had been mangled by a snow-making machine.

George Diaz, sports columnist for the Orlando Sentinel, said of the Iditarod in a March 2000 article, “Although the fluff coverage in the Anchorage Daily News promotes the Iditarod as ‘Alaska’s great race,’ it is nothing more than a barbaric ritual that gives Alaskan cowboys a license to kill.”

In an article entitled “Iditarod’s Bone of Contention Repels Some Marketers,” Bruce Horowitz of USA Today calls the Iditarod a “public relations minefield.”

After last year’s race, Hartford Courant Sports columnist Jeff Jacoby wrote, “The supporters of this race have the audacity to call the Iditarod a sporting event. The truth is it’s closer to the scourging scene in Mel Gibson’s new movie [The Passion of the Christ].”
With all these facts and comments from the media I am urging you to please make this cruel “sport” a part of the past. Please, let’s evolve into the peaceful beings we strive to be.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned