Articles about Animals
Meet Ruby, a Diabetic Alert Dog
Ruby is alerting Faith that her blood sugar is not within the 100-180 range. Photo by Type 1 Diabetes Foundation
Often, while in the middle of a deep sleep, I start dreaming about food—sandwiches, doughnuts, steak, peanut butter cups, gnocchi. It doesn’t matter what it is, I dream about it all. Slowly, I start to wake up. And that’s when I realize my blood sugar is low. I stumble into the kitchen, and in a half-conscious state, dig through the pantry and eat. The next morning, I go back to the kitchen and am ashamed of what happened during my “midnight feeding.” It’s amazing what combinations of food seem like a good idea when I’m half-awake. (Apparently, peanut butter goes with everything.)
This is just what life’s like for me, a type 1 diabetic. I was diagnosed when I was 3. Two-year-old Faith Wilson was diagnosed when she was 9-months-old. She doesn’t dream about food when she’s low. She doesn’t wake up. Life for her, her siblings, and her parents has been a nightmare. But things got just a bit easier a year ago when the Wilsons got Ruby, a British Lab.
Ex-Animal Shelter Manager Found Not Guilty
The Dallas jury in that animal-cruelty trial has spoken, the Dallas Observer reports, and its verdict on Tyrone McGill, the former shelter manager accused of letting a cat die in a wall, is: not guilty.
Money for Nothing: Ex-Manager’s Defense Points to Others in DAS Animal-Cruelty Trial
In the felony trial that began yesterday of Tyrone McGill — the former manager of Dallas’ city animal shelter, where a cat was allowed to die trapped inside a wall last year — the defense is taking this tack with prosecution witnesses who worked at the shelter under McGill: So, why didn’t you do something about the cat? The strategy if successful would tend to shift blame for the animal’s death from McGill, who ran the place, to the subordinates who pleaded with him to take care of the situation. Which is, well, an interesting theory of management accountability.
Tuesday’s testimony also revealed that when the cat was finally pulled out of the wall, dead and badly decomposing after being trapped for 15 days, its nails were worn down completely from clawing to escape.
While details like that are heartbreaking, what also continues to rile animal-activist observers like Jonnie England is that McGill has been on “paid administrative leave” — in other words, drawing his $66,122 annual city paycheck for doing nothing — ever since being indicted on the animal-cruelty charge 15 months ago. “If a police officer is indicted on a felony, he’s put on unpaid leave,” England says. She adds that McGill’s treatment, by contrast, is “unbelievably outrageous,” and an insult to Dallas taxpayers.
More like one of a series of insults coming out of this wretched incident.
Texas Rangers’ New Hand Signal Explained
My wife and I have assumed all season that the Rangers were trying to make their hands and forearms resemble a snake. As it turns out, they were going for a duck, as in “ducks on the pond,” the baseball terminology for runners on base.
How do I know? You can’t get a much more official source than this.
Eric Nadel Sends Photos From Comerica Park in Detroit
"Getting ready for game. It's 2:00 EST. Psyched."
UPDATE, 2:33 pm: It’s raining in Detroit. We could be in for another delay.
Texas Rangers’ radio play-by-play announcer Eric Nadel is at Comerica Park in Detroit where the Rangers are getting ready to embarrass the Detroit Tigers. He sent a few pictures he took as he walked into the park. I urge you to turn off the sound on your TV and tune in to 103.3 ESPN Radio and listen to Nadel and (Tim’s buddy) Steve Busby call the game. First pitch at 3:19 PM CST. GO RANGERS!
Jump for more pictures.
Photographer Helps Dogs Find Homes
CBS Sunday Morning aired a heartwarming piece yesterday about Dallas photographer Teresa Berg, who donates her time and skills to creating beautiful photos of dogs that are up for adoption.
Collin County Cattle Brands Online: The Best and Worst in Farm Animal Scarification
Came across the NBCDFW story about how Collin County has taken its registration of cattle and horse brands online. What used to take their clerks about 40 minutes to deal with in large printed binders now takes about two minutes.
But reporter Randy McIlwain is missing the story here. This new online database provides unprecedented access to information about the latest local trends in ritually scarring horses and cattle. So what’s hot and what’s not? While the traditional use of the owner or ranch’s initials continues to dominate the form, there are a few brave envelope pushers.
Cheers to Beth Billera of Parker, who places this classic Rolling Stones lips and tongue logo (at right) on her horses. Does this mean that Mick Jagger or Keith Richards can make a valid ownership claim on her livestock?
And cheers to Nathan Anderson of Melissa, for this almost avant garde use of but a single, understated line.
Meet Critterman, Dallas’ Best Children’s Entertainer
We added some new categories to our Best of Big D issue this year, many of them geared towards families with children. One of these new honorees was Critterman, whom we named the Best Children’s Entertainer.
Intern Kelsy McCraw caught up with Critterman, aka Dave Kleven, to see how an ordinary boy from Minnesota came to delight Dallas-area kids with his exotic animals. Between shows for 100-plus children at the Rockwall County Library with his “Texas Tails” program, which features an American alligator named Steve and a ferret named Slinky, he explained why it takes a kid-at-heart to keep the attention of pint-sized audiences. Here’s the video Kelsy made:
Caraway In Another Key Presentation?
The setting for the event was The Lodge, the swanky strip joint off Northwest Highway owned by Dawn Rizos. But believe it or not, the No. 1 attraction at tonight’s cocktails-and-dinner bash there had four legs and answered to the name Mel. He’s one of about 50 pit bulls rescued a few years ago from Michael Vick’s notorious dog-fighting stable. Mel, who was used as “bait” to train the other dogs to attack, was later adopted out of Utah’s Best Friends Animal Society by Richard Hunter, a Dallas radio personality, and his wife Sunny. Sunny (shown here with Mel in photo by Jeanne Prejean) is the manager of VIP services at The Lodge.
The dinner was held to tout something called “Headlights & Hounds,” a bikini car and bike wash at the Lodge Saturday whose proceeds will benefit Best Friends. The noon to 6 p.m. event costs $20, and includes a good scrubbing by the Lodge dancers. (Of your vehicle.) Mel will be there, too, with Hunter, who addressed tonight’s gathering and noted one person who wasn’t in attendance: Dwaine Caraway, the then-Dallas mayor pro tem who famously presented Vick with a key to the city. “I invited [Caraway], but he couldn’t attend,” Hunter said drily. “He had a previous commitment … presenting a key to the city to Walker Railey.” Railey, of course, is the former Dallas minister who was acquitted of trying to strangle his wife in the 1990s.
Dallas Daters Dig the Word “Symphony.” Fort Worth Goes for “Loving.”
I love emails like the one below, because they make blogging easy. Many thanks to the FrontBurnervian who brings us the following cool study about the tendencies of Dallas daters.
This is fascinating. Media artist Roger Luke DuBois joined 21 online dating sites to see how singles from different parts of the country describe themselves in their dating profiles. He then mapped the responses — literally on map — by replacing the names of cities and towns with the words used by people in those cities and towns to describe themselves and their ideal dating partners. Each word appears in the place it’s used more frequently than anywhere else in the country. Here’s his explanation.
Here’s the map of Texas.
Having grown up with the innate and utterly reasonable chauvinism that knows Dallas to be sophisticated and Houston crass, I was delighted to see that Dallas daters most use the word “Symphony” in their profiles, while Houston goes for “Rich.” Also, it’s nice to see that Fort Worth is “Loving.” And “Clubs” makes sense for Austin when you consider the music scene.
Other towns are more puzzling: Amarillo=”Setting”; Abilene=”Decision”; Waco=”Exception”; and San Antonio=”Correct.”
Leading Off (5/23/11)
District Has No Policy for Teacher Intervention of Student Attacks: At Boude Storey Middle School a teacher watched as students gagged and bound a special needs student with duct tape and cords. At Seagoville, here’s video of a geometry teacher with his hands in his pockets, watching one of his students get pummeled multiple times in the face by another student. Oh, and in this video a teacher maintains his authoritative position at the podium while two students – one shirtless – move into a ring of desks and box it out. Yeah, I would say the district needs a policy about teacher intervention.
Zoo Finds Birds That Flew Away During Outdoor Demonstration: Bethany told you over the weekend about the two macaws that escaped from the Dallas Zoo. No, they weren’t taken during the Rapture. No, they didn’t escape on a wacky cross-country adventure where they met a talking fox, an armadillo, and a cute squirrel voiced by Chris Rock who cracked well-timed jokes. They were about a dozen blocks away in an Oak Cliff neighborhood.
Man Calls Fire Department, Ends The Night Arrested: An Irving taxi cab driver called the fire department when a small fire broke out in his apartment. After it was extinguished, the firefighters discovered suspicious substances and illegal weapons in the man’s home, so they called the FBI. The man is now in jail.
Dallas Zoo Missing Two Birdies
Two Blue-Throated Macaws, to be exact. Bruno and Deluca flew the coop during a performance in the zoo’s bird show, “Soar.” Or so they say. I have my own theory.
Herbert Hunt’s Day at the Races
Buoyed by post-race concerts by the Randy Rogers Band and Ted “The Whackmaster” Nugent, Lone Star Park at Grand Prairie attracted its biggest opening-weekend crowd since 2004. In the big throng yesterday were H.L. Hunt scions Caroline Rose Hunt and Herbert Hunt, both there to support an annual fundraiser for the Retina Foundation of the Southwest.
While Herbert’s brother Bunker Hunt is famous for his involvement in the Thoroughbred racing game, Herbert said he’s never been that interested in the sport, even though the seventh race Sunday was dubbed the Nancy and Herbert Hunt Maiden Turf Mile in the couple’s honor. Bunker “offered to let me in on it at the beginning,” said Herbert (pictured), surveying the track with his wife from a clubhouse box. “But I said I didn’t want to invest in anything that ate while I slept.”
Wild Hogs on Rampage in Fort Worth Neighborhood!
Here’s the story. After the jump, what to look for. Be safe people!
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