Saturday, March 26, 2011

Rollin' Along

Like many of us on this blue and white marble of a planet I wonder lately what in the heck we’re doing. We’re allowing guns in crowded public places, including those that serve alcohol; we’re bombing another Muslim country; we’re worrying again about run-away radiation and the price of oil. Some days it feels like we’re hell-bent on ridding the planet of our wacky selves.

And then I hear sparrows having an early happy hour in the holly bushes outside, watch a teenage boy walking the family dog through the park, and kick a soccer-sized ball, to my dog, Maisie’s, barking delight. There’s still a place for sanity in this world, for petting cats, observing migrating birds rest in our parks, and enjoying the vernal evening choirs of peepers.

Connecting with the non-shooting, non-bombing species helps keep us sane, and if pets help us be centered and more at peace, then bless us for having them. But keeping animals has become another Humongous Industrial Complex – a $41 billion dollar a year business is no joke*. So today I want to give a shout-out to Petco. I just went there to stock up on food and toothpaste for guess-who and they have signs- big and frequent signs – encouraging patrons to adopt pets, which is so great!

Now I know they’re not being altruistic – pets have to eat, brush their teeth, and wear funny clothes wherever they’ve come from. I doubt that sales of hamsters and parakeets is where Petco makes its profits, but still... It’s an important reminder that a lot of animals are abandoned or surrendered by their owners and they need homes. So “Hooray!” for Petco for helping raise awareness of a real need – our local ASPCA will accept and hopefully find homes for 6,000 cats this year. Six thousand, just in this area alone!

So here’s another big “Hooray!” for the Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and Humane Societies, that strive to put themselves out of business. I think that’s a very cool goal, to end cruelty to animals, don’t you?

Now if only human animals were seriously part of such a mission, what a wonderful world it would be.

*Interesting fact: the proposed U.S. military budget for 2012 is $553 billion, down $43 billion from this year’s request.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Forget Miss Kitty


Okay, I confess I was all cranked up to write about these two little ginger kittens, to go for the easy awww - who doesn’t love the little dickens? They tumble, chase and pounce and – oh God - when they first learn to purr!

Luckily I had a long drive home two Sundays ago, because our local public radio station interviewed Derek and Beverly Joubert who reported things that shook me out of my Pretty Kitty bubble– they film lions and have fallen in love with them. Which is tragic because within about fifteen years, unless things (ie. we the people) change a lot, we’ll inhabit a world without any. In other words, we will be the cause of their extinction somewhere in the neighborhood of 2026. I take that back – there might be a few still in zoos, but that too-small gene pool will peter out before long.

How is this happening? You know...planters poach their ranges, which cats need for hunting and for maintaining a healthy gene pool. And we have for centuries killed them in large numbers, chiefly for sport or for medicinal purposes (a bag of lion bones goes for big, big money in parts of Asia), and sometimes to protect livestock or human beings.

Did you know there are already more tigers in captivity than in the wild? I didn’t. All of the big predator cats, including leopards, cheetahs, and jaguars, are in danger. This reality seems so unstoppable and sad. Beyond sad –I feel that we’re on the verge of doing something that can’t be undone ever. Something that diminishes our lives and our planet’s being. Just knowing that such a beautiful creature as the lion roams the savannahs wakes us to wonder, to marvel at the delight and mystery of being alive. So if they are gone, we become less delighted, less enfolded in mystery and wonder- less alive.

I do appreciate that we have much to feel responsible for and sad about – the victims of earthquakes in so many countries, and the battles raging in too many countries, and the drought and famine that threaten so many. Human ingenuity and compassion could mitigate many disasters, but not one of our failures to do so threatens our own species to the degree that we have threatened others. That’s the problem, I think: our disregard for the survival of other animals, lives over which we now have near total control.

So what to do... I’ve been working on to making changes in how I live that I hope will lessen the pressure on those places wild animals need to survive. coffee, tea, beef, and oil are a few of the things I like to consume that take a huge hunk out of their habitat. I try to consume less, and pay a fairer price for more sustainably grown foods. I support only politicians who are for sustaining this delightful, mysterious world of ours.

It’s helped me to at least make a start. How about you? I’d like to know what your thoughts are about this issue. I’m looking for ways, corny, I admit it- to save what is left of the world we were born of and into, the world that has made us who we are, for better and for worse.

Photo credit: "Tally on My Suitcase" by Lucile Blanchard

"Cause an Uproar" video

Saturday, March 5, 2011


One with the Herd

A long-time feminist, the racehorse Zenyatta’s story grabbed my attention because her bodaceous, curvaceous self has held her own in a field dominated for centuries by finely bred and trained males. She is one joyously powerful female! I hope you saw her magnificent gallop-in-from-the-back of the pack loss-by-a-whisker in the last Kentucky Derby. Not usually a racing fan, I was on the edge of my chair! You can see her win the Breeder’s Cup in this cliphttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoyYGjCTQGk

Of course I’m not alone in thinking horses are divine creations. They are lifted up in the Koran: “When God created the horse, he said to the magnificent creature: I have made thee as no other. All the treasures of the earth shall lie between thy eyes. Thou shalt cast thy enemies between thy hooves, but thou shalt carry my friends upon they back. Thy saddle shall be the seat of prayers to me. And thou fly without any wings, and conquer without any sword.”

I can see the saddle as a place of a sacred communing. As my aunt, a long-time horse trainer, rider, and teacher put it: “Caring for horses and connecting with them as partners also connects us to the land and the larger world. It’s never just the person and the horse, it’s always the person, the horse and the environment that they are part of. They invite us into their world as accept us as part of their herd,with a (mostly) joyful, willing spirit.”

So I was greatly saddened when I read recently about horses being used to run drugs and then abandoned in the Southwest, and about horses being released into fields north of Dublin during this Great Recession. Because they are expensive to keep, horses have long been given up by those facing hard times. But to release them in the desert, or in a wintery no-man’s land is hard to understand.

Without decent food and water, these animals quickly weaken. From a March third copy of The Portlander, out of Oregon, we see some of the possible results of such abuse: “Additional tests show that all of the horses are in depressed states suffering from severe malnutrition. Veterinary exams also found that they horses suffered from hoof abscesses, rain rot, ear mites, skin sores, gingival abscesses and severe dehydration. They also displayed flaccid muscles that could barely hold their weight and swollen limbs from infection and lack of appropriate nutrition.”http://theportlander.com/2011/01/05/abused-horses-rescued-in-woodburn/

My source in Ireland tells me that – between the weather and the economy- this was a very harsh winter, and a horse can now be got for a cell phone. People buy them cheap in markets in Dublin, race them, and then abandon them again. (See www.ispca.ie. ) In a country that has long revered the beauty and intelligence of these animals, it’s shocking to see them abused.

These recent tragedies overlie too many cases of abandonment and abuse already happening around the world. If we sincerely cherish this web of life, we can all help by teaching children –early and often- compassion for all animals. We can help others understand what we take on when we take responsibility for our fellow creatures.

Bringing her love of horses wherever she goes, my aunt puts it this way: “Caring for the horses – in Hawaiian, that’s malama ka lio – means, of course, providing sufficient feed, water, shelter, sufficient space, companionship, a healthy environment. Ideally, it also means helping them learn to relax and trust us, their partners in the horse-human relationship.

Building trust between species is a vital step in insuring our mutual survival on our jewel of a planet.

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Photo: Sarah Blanchard and friends on a trail ride in Hawaii.

Lots of places, luckily, do minister to abandoned and abused animals, including the Irish S.P.C.A. mentioned above. Here’s a small sampling:

http://support.mspca.org/site/PageServer?pagename=acac_Nevins_AboutEquineandFarmACAC

http://www.freshstarthorserescue.org/category/blog/

http://www.azequinerescue.org/Rescue_help.html

http://support.mspca.org/site/PageServer?