What can be done about dog caught in middle of divorce?

ABA-TIPS animal law committee founder and family law practitioner, Barbara Gislason, answers the question in this Macon.com advice column...

Giant Free-Roving Robotic Cages Could Be the Healthy Future of Fish Farming

Check out Popular Science for one man's vision for the future of fish farming...

Iowa citizens' group blasts governor for factory farm bailout request

MONDAY, AUGUST 10, 2009, DES MOINES, IOWA

Members of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement today blasted Iowa Governor Chet Culver for requesting a $50 million, taxpayer-funded bailout of the factory farm industry last week. CCI leaders said Culver's request is nothing more than pandering to well-financed corporate ag groups at the expense of everyday people and our environment.

Read the rest of the press release here...

Therapy dogs start work at Texas courthouse

August 21, 2009

HOUSTON - You've heard of jury duty, but what about courthouse doggy duty? Yep, you read it right.

Dogs will start reporting to the Harris County courthouse as early as next month. But it’s not a doggy daycare--these dogs have a job.

A new program called "paw and order: SDU, the Special Dog Unit, is about to launch on the courthouse second floor.

Read more in Kristine Galvan's article on Houston's Fox-TV online.

Who speaks for family farmers?

Interesting viewpoint from today's Minnesota Daily Globe.... Opposition to factory farming isn't limited to the animal rights/welfare communities....

Animal law specialists speak for those who can’t

Fort Worth Business Press
BY ELIZABETH BASSETT

August 10, 2009

When it comes to animals in the Texas courts of law, the most frustrating thing may be that decisions are largely based on a precedent set in 1891.

The case, Heiligmann v. Rose, dictated through the state Supreme Court if an animal is wrongly killed all the owner can recoup is the market value of the animal. The owner can’t get sentimental value or emotional damages, and yet the destruction of an inanimate object like a family heirloom can warrant huge sums be awarded.

“You’re going to allow someone to recover sentimental value for a brooch but not your dog?” asked Randy Turner, partner in the Hurst firm Turner & McKenzie P.C.

Click here for more on how Randy Turner, Don Feare and Yolanda Eisenstein are out on the forefront of Texas animal law trying to change this...

Michael Vick round-up

You'd have to be living under a rock not to have heard that Michael Vick is back in the NFL - signed earlier this week by the Eagles. Not for a large sum of money, by pro-football standards, but the very decision is - not surprisingly - generating quite a bit of controversy.

Here's the latest on his first practice in Philly, more on the Eagles' controversial decision to give redemption a try - as well as what some view as an even more controversial decision by HSUS to do basically the same thing.

Are these genuine beliefs or thinly-veiled pre-texts for publicity? You decide. If nothing else, hopefully the water cooler debates taking place around the country will continue to focus the spotlight of shame on the problem of dog fighting nationwide.

New tests shed light on how dogs think, smartest breeds

By Sharon Jayson
USA TODAY

TORONTO — A presentation on "How Dogs Think" drew a crowd Saturday as a psychologist, canine researcher and author of a 2004 book by the same name told the American Psychological Association that the newest research strategy for understanding dogs is to use tests meant for very young children.

Read the rest of the USA Today article... or click for the press release by the American Psychological Association for more on this interesting research.

Animal law round-up

Sorry it's been a few days... here's a bunch of things from the past couple of weeks I haven't had time to post yet. A shout-out to my intern, Elizabeth, for her suggestions here as well:

The Winnipeg Sun is reporting that TV legend and animal rights advocate Bob Parker will travel to Canada next month to press the city of Edmonton to transfer an elephant out of its solitary housing at a local zoo in Bob Barker wants Edmonton elephant released;

The legal wrangling over the fate of puppy mills continue to rage across the country, as described in Sides Far Apart Over Puppy Mills, in Saturday's Ohio Springfield News-Sun;

In Pet trusts offer animal lovers peace of mind, Florida's Osceola Sentinel-Tribune takes a look at this growing area of law this past Wednesday;

The Orange County Register reports on a rather constrained ruling in a veterinary malpractice case in California this past Tuesday;

In Australia, despite its relatively huge leaps in animal law issues in the past few years, a July 21st article reports: Study finds little awareness of factory farming, and

A very thoughtful article from the July 20th Palm Beach Post about the cognitive dissonance that Florida (as really a microcosm of the rest of the nation) suffers from when it comes to defining and responding to animal cruelty in What constitutes cruel? Florida's animal cruelty law is surprisingly vague.

The Shifting Frontiers of Animal Rights

Activists yawn as animals lurch toward a hybrid future.

Tim Cavanaugh | August/September 2009
Reason Online

Sometime after the 14-year-old retired actor and chimpanzee Travis Herold was shot and beheaded by Stamford, Connecticut, police in connection with an aggravated assault against 55-year-old Charla Nash, but before former Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick finished serving a federal prison sentence for conspiring to violate the civil rights of dogs, South Korean scientists announced the birth of a beagle that glows in the dark.

Read the rest here... and a shout-out to blog reader Bruce Korol for the heads-up on this interesting commentary!

Update on NJ dog "custody" case

Animal law attorney Gina Calogero was back in court last week over Dexter - the pug at the heart of a "pet custody" battle - now that the case is back on remand from the NJ appellate court.

Read the latest on this MSNBC update....

Looks like we're having an impact...

Consider these facts: Ninety-five law schools now offer at least one course in animal law. A publication exists called the Journal of Animal Law and Ethics. The World Bank has created a publication on animal welfare.

That's not such an unusual sentence to read anymore (although I think the number is really more like 140 and the writer neglected to mention the journals at Lewis & Clark, Detroit College of Law and Stanford)... but for the fact that it comes from the Cattle Network: The Source for Cattle News.

The writer warns that animal rights activists are turning to religious themes, thrive on conflict and induce guilt in consumers. It cautions that

pet owners are particularly vulnerable to the guilt on which animal activists thrive. Pet owners have to find a way to deal with a certain cognitive dissonance in their lives: they live with some kinds of animals as pets/companions, while they eat other kinds.

Really? Yeesh. I liked that line a lot. Click here for the rest of the article. Probably my favorite comment, however, was when it encouraged the agriculture industry to take the lead in shaping the debate:

Don’t make HSUS the subject. If you talk to PETA, you’ve lost.

Seems to me if they feel the need to write that, perhaps they already have... ;)