ohmidog!

 A law requiring dog breeders to provide fresh food and water, daily exercise, veterinary care and sanitary shelter was passed by the North Carolina House Thursday, with help from the governor’s wife.

Ann McCrory, who normally leaves the politics to her husband, released a statement Wednesday supporting House Bill 930.

“… Passing legislation to establish basic standards of care for large commercial dog breeding facilities is a very important issue to me, and to people across our state,” she wrote.

“ … I hope you and other members of the General Assembly will continue to advocate for this bill, and other legislation establishing higher standards for commercial breeders. These policies increase our quality of life in North Carolina and ensure better care for dogs across the state…”

The bill sets basic standards of care for operations that use more than 10 females for breeding.

Many say it is a watered-down version of previous attempts to pass a puppy mill law, but add that the compromise is better than nothing in a state some breeding operations have been relocating to in an attempt to avoid regulation.

“North Carolina is the only state in the Southeast without puppy mill laws,” explained Caleb Scott, President of North Carolina Voters for Animal Welfare told Fox 8 News. “We are a puppy mill destination in North Carolina because we have no laws on the books. Puppy millers gravitate to our state.”

The minimum standards required by the bill, as it has been amended, would notapply to breeders of hunting dogs, sporting dogs, field dogs, or show dogs.

It now heads to the Senate.

WRAL described Ann McCrory’s letter as her “first foray into public advocacy” since her husband took office.

The McCrory’s have a Labrador Retriever named Mo.

(Photo: Erin Hull / The Daily Tar Heel)

Compared to his litter mates, all born from a champion, Jim, as a pup, didn’t seem to have what it was going to take to be a hunting dog, so a Louisiana breeder, back in 1925, let him go at half price.

At home in Missouri with his new owner, Sam VanArsdale, young Jim didn’t take to the training, preferring to lay in the shade and watch the other dogs go through drills.

One day, Sam decided to take him hunting anyway, and was surprised when Jim pointed to a covey of quail, held still until his owner fired and immediately fetched a bird on command.

That was just the first of many surprises. Jim, a Llewellin Setter, would go on to become a nationally recognized hunting dog,  an expert on a few other things as well, and, as some tell it, exhibit something close to superpowers..

One day, the legend goes, VanArsdale, weary from hunting, said to Jim “Let’s go over and rest a bit under that hickory tree.” Jim led the way — not to just any tree, but to a hickory. VanArsdale asked Jim to go to a walnut, which he did. Then a cedar, which he did. Then to a stump, which he did, and then to a tin can. Again — though he hadn’t been taught any of those words — he did.

According to the website for Jim the Wonder Dog, he could locate a car by make, color, state of origin, or a license number. From a crowd he could select the “man who sells hardware”, and the one who “takes care of sick people”, or the “visitor from Kansas City”.

“He carried out instructions given to him in any foreign language, shorthand, or Morse Code. He was capable of predicting the outcome of future events. He chose the winner of seven Kentucky Derbies, The World Series of baseball and the sex of unborn babies.”

After a performance in 1935, an article was written about his skills, first referring to him as “Jim the Wonder Dog.” Jim performed at the Missouri State Fair, was featured in Ripley’s Believe It or Not, and appeared before a joint session of the Missouri Legislature that was called to witness his talents.

Though Van Arsdale spoke only English, Jim seemed to understand, and follow commands, in any language. A University of Missouri veterinarian once said that Jim “possessed an occult power that might never come again to a dog in many generations.”

He is buried in Marshall’s Ridge Park Cemetery, where he’s said to receive more visitors than any of the humans interred there.

In 1999, a park in the town of Marshall was opened in his honor, just across from what used to be the Ruff Hotel (seriously), where Jim lived with VanArsdale, its manager.

At “Jim the Wonder Dog Memorial Garden,” there’s  a bronze statue of him. More recently, a building has been procured that will serve in part as a Jim the Wonder Dog Museum.

And that, believe it or not, is the story of Jim.

(Photos: From Jim the Wonder Dog website) 

Another hunter has been shot by his own hunting dog.

Billy E. Brown, 78, was on a hunting trip near Wesley Chapel, Florida, when his dog triggered a loaded rifle. He was shot in the thigh and remains hospitalized, in critical condition, after surgery.

Authorities said Brown and a fellow hunter were driving down a rough road in a pickup truck, with Brown’s dog, Eli, sitting between them. Eli got excited and bumped a Browning .308-caliber rifle, which discharged.

Brown is general manager and executive vice president of the Withlacoochee River Electric Cooperative.

Just over a week ago, a duck hunter in Utah was shot when his dog triggered a 12-gauge shotgun resting in his boat.

Professional dog hunters from Texas (where else?) may be called in to help “solve” Fayetteville, N.C.’s  stray dog problem.

A Fort Worth, Texas-based outfit called the “Dangerous Animal Task Force,” or DATF, for short, offered its services to the city in a letter last week to Mayor Tony Chavonne, the Fayetteville Observer reported.

The Observer reported earlier this month that up to 150 “wild dogs” are roaming city neighborhoods, ”killing pets and threatening residents,” and that the county’s Animal Services Department had limited resources to capture the feral canines.

(There is no city animal control office, which may help explain why there’s a problem in the first place.)

DATF (no, that’s not them in the photo — just a generic posse) has proposed sending four representatives to the city who would spend two weeks hunting the dogs with tranquilizer darts.

The darts would include GPS chips that — assuming the darts stay intact — would allow the hunters to find animals who kept running after being shot. The animals would then be taken to the county animal shelter.

I’m sure you can guess what would happen there — although that part of it isn’t being talked about much.

City Manager Dale Iman briefed the City Council this week about the “task force,” saying,  ”I think we have a good chance of making an impact.” The  two-week “deployment” — to use DATF’s terminology —  would cost $29,000, with the city and county splitting the cost.

According to the group’s letter, its mission is to assist law enforcement and other local authorities in emergency situations, natural disasters and other events in which dangerous animals are involved.

The company’s website — it does not appear to be a non-profit organization, though it does seek donations – is a pretty bare bones affair, peppered with photos of violent animals and Homeland Security and FEMA logos. It offers no information in the way of actual cases it has handled.

Nobody asked me, but my advice to Fayetteville would be to think hard about calling in hired guns. Their shoot- first-ask-questions-later approach could easily lead to some pets being bagged along with the so-called feral dogs — and while the professional hunters will only be tranquilizing them, some missing and wandering pets could be swept up, and subjected to step two.

Rather than a gun-toting dog posse, wouldn’t it make more sense to seek help from a group like Best Friends Animal Society or the Humane Society of the United States, who could evaluate the animals as individuals, rather than as trophies?

There was a time in America when bounties were placed on dogs. Calling in gunmen is a little too reminiscent of that for me.

I’m not disputing that many or even most of the dogs to be hunted are dangerous — but does a generation or two living back in the wild make them hopeless cases?

If Michael Vick’s dogs, after what they went through, could be rehabilitated and become family pets, don’t these deserve a chance? And why isn’t anyone speaking up for them?

On a dreary Labor Day in 1937, Key Underwood wrapped his faithful hunting companion of 15 years in a cotton sack, buried him in a three-foot deep grave in a meadow in northwest Alabama and used a hammer and a screwdriver to chisel his dog’s name into a rock: Troop.

Since then, 184 more hunting dogs from across the U.S. have been laid to rest in the remote wilderness of Freedom Hills — all of them coonhounds.

The Key Underwood Coon Dog Memorial Graveyard is, according to its website, the only cemetery in the U.S. that allows only coonhounds.

The burial spot was a popular hunting camp “where coon hunters from miles around gathered to plot their hunting strategies, tell tall tales, chew tobacco and compare coon hounds. Those comparisons usually began and ended with Troop … He was the best around.”

Troop, who was half redbone coonhound and half birdsong, was known throughout the region as the best, according to the website, and after his burial, other hunters started burying their favorite coon dogs at the same site.

The coonhound cemetery’s headstones are crafted of wood, rock and sometimes sheet metal, and they pay homage to dogs with names like Patches, Preacher, Smoky, Bean Blossom Bomma and Night Ranger. Often, etched along with the names, are brief tributes such as one that reads: ”He wasn’t the best, but he was the best I ever had.”

In a 1985 interview, Underwood said he once received a letter from a woman in California, asking why other breeds couldn’t be buried there.  “You must not know much about coon hunters and their dogs,” he responded, “if you think we would contaminate this burial place with poodles and lap dogs.”

To qualify for burial in the cemetery, the dog’s owner must claim their pet is an authentic coon dog, a witness must testify to the same, and a member of the local coonhunters’ organization must be allowed to view the coonhound to confirm its breed.

“We have stipulations on this thing,” says the cemetery’s caretaker, William O. Bolton, secretary/treasurer of the Tennessee Valley Coon Hunters Association. “A dog can’t run no deer, possum — nothing like that. He’s got to be a straight coon dog, and he’s got to be full hound. Couldn’t be a mixed up breed dog, a house dog.”