Glow-In-The-Dark Puppies and Other Weirdness

Got your attention, huh? Yes, we will talk about glow-in-the-dark puppies, but first, a few tidbits for you.

You may wonder why Mistress Chilli Chinchilla is blogging rather than outside 'enjoying this gorgeous day'! (so says every singe radio station I've turned on today.) That's because Mistress Chilli hates--yes, hates--the heat. The sun is okay in small doses (Vitamin D!) but this heat, as far my secretary and I are concerned, sucks. Duh--I wear a chinchilla fur coat 24/4. My secretary, I don't know what her problem is. Probably better that she stays inside--she hasn't looked good in shorts since 1987. Still has a decent rack, though, so once in a while you'll catch her in the occasional tank top.

So, I am done hating on the weather. Here's those tidbits I promised mixed with my general crankiness:

What the (&*(% is up with y'all having everything under the sun (hah, hah) this weekend? Even I, Mistress Chilli, who can hop like a mini kangaroo, cannot jump fast enough. Heads up to you guys--journalists cannot be everywhere at once. Bloggers, yes. Twits (sorry, that's what you are), yes. Journalists--by that meaning flesh-and-blood human beings who spent many years in school and then later many more years taking their beatings and honing their craft--no. Physically impossible. Which makes me think that the organizers of these things don't care about flesh-and-blood journalists attending; they'll just blog about it themselves and give objective reporting their best shot (cough, cough.) Or they just all came to the educated guess several months ago that this weekend, the weekend of April 25th-26th would be the first 'nice' weekend of the outdoor season. Wow, they hit that one on the head this year.

Pick Your Protest
With that said, here's two events going on for those whose tempers flare as the temperature rises. On Saturday and Sunday, Best Friends brings their nationwide protest against pet stores that sell puppies to American Kennels, a tres chic pet store on Lexington Avenue not too far from my alma mater, Hunter College. If you want to join, just stop by with your favorite hand-made sign. Honestly I'm with Best Friends on this one--there is no way (no way) a 'reputable breeder' would ever sell through a pet store. (Although there are people out there who think there is no such thing as a 'reputable breeder' and they are all scum of the earth. Let's table that for a second.)

Serious breeders want to know where there puppies are and who they're with. If you've ever been to a dog show, you know why. Some of these animals can cost thousands upon thousands of dollars. The more ribbons they've won, the higher the price their owners can command for the fruit of their doggie loins. Believe me, people, these guys have a more meticulously researched and documented lineage than Queen Elizabeth. No way are they going to let the pups of their prized pooches be sold willy-nilly. Now, that said, do some breeders dump off their non-show quality pups at pet stores--"overstock", shall we say? Sadly, yes. So even if you do buy directly from a breeder (and the Humane Society of the United States has a checklist for you to check out) you should also ask them what they do with the 'pet quality' dogs they can't sell.

Where I will stop short, however, is when some of these groups use protests like this to jam their foot into the door of a larger agenda of NPOBAE(no pets owned by anybody, ever.) I'm not saying this is (or isn't) the case with Best Friends, but it's a crafty trick other have used with much success.

Still fired up over pet-store puppies? Cool off with a long walk downtown and then get fired up again on Sunday, April 26th, with Queens Councilman Tony Avella, who has emerged as New York's possibly first-and-only "Pet Friendly Party" candidate for Mayor. At high noon, protesters are expected to descend on the steps of City Hall to protest the general state of Animal Care and Control of New York City. (That's p.c. speak for the pound.)

This one's another mixed bag o'feelings. On the one hand, protesting the AC&C and executive director Charlene Pedrolie is like shooting fish in a barrel (okay, bad analogy.) The AC&C is in charge of euthanizing pretty much every unwanted animal in New York City. Thousands of them. Every year. But that's because other agencies (looking in your direction, ASPCA) 'outsource' this awful activity to them. Kinda like sending out your dirty laundry. Except in this case you don't get your clothes back. Instead, you open your closet and have a brand new wardrobe--every day! Before my friends and colleagues start screaming at me from the A: what am I saying that is not already plastered (albeit less colorfully) on your front door?

On the other hand, the AC&C has not been doing much to prove the protesters' wrong. There was a scary outbreak of some weird canine flu at one of their shelters earlier this year which resulted in the quarantine of not only that shelter, but a large upstate one as well because dogs were transported there. And most recently, they killed a 90-something year-old woman's dog by accident. You can't make up publicity this bad. Do some of the people who are whipping up this protest have a personal axe to grind against the AC&C and its supporters, like the Mayor's Alliance for New York City's Animals and the head of the AC&C herself? Yes, they do. But that doesn't mean problems don't exist. I just hope Councilman Avella, who is generally a nice guy and who is making a dark-horse run for Mayor, doesn't get too bogged down in this particular quagmire. It's a lot deeper than it appears on the surface.

Glow-In-The-Dark Puppies and a Bo Obama Update
Okay, enough local news and my opinions on them. I promised you glow-in-the-dark puppies. Seems like those crazy Korean scientists are at it again. In 2007 they cloned some glow-in-the-dark kitties. Now they've done for dogs what they've done for cats. Here's the quote that got me:
Ruppy (ed note: Red+Puppy, get it?) is transgenic, meaning she has genes from another animal. Scientists said they hope this will pave the way to model human diseases in dogs, whose relatively long life-span could make them better study subjects than other animals.

The creature they crossed her with is a sea anemone. If they do a DNA test, is this animal technically a dogfish? A water dog?

Which segues nicely into the latest about the world's most famous Portuguese Water Dog, Bo "Pseudo-Rescue" Obama. Glam First Lady Michelle tells Black Voices the following about having a new puppy in the house:
"It was like 10 o'clock. Everybody was asleep and we hear all this barking and jumping around," Mrs. Obama said. "The president and I came out and we thought somebody was out there. And it was just Bo. He was playing with his ball. And it was like there was another person in the house.

Um, Michelle? Sweetie? You and the President sleep in possibly the least-private, most heavily protected bedroom in the world. There are people surrounding you 24/7 whose job it is to take a bullet for you. If you think you need a dog to keep robbers and would-be assassins away I am very, very scared about what the Homeland Security budget looks like for the rest of us poor schmucks.

Okay, that's it for me. The sun is starting to turn a corner in the sky and it may soon be safe for me and other typewriter vampires to emerge. It's been a while, so hopefully this lengthy round-up post will keep you occupied for a while. For further reading, I've inserted links for you below. As always, feel free to holla back.

But first, make sure you check out New York Tails Magazine's world-famous Calendar of Pet Events for the tri-state Metro area. We're always posting more on there, so check back often. Just to be safe, bookmark it. Put it in your Favorites. Mail yourself a love letter with a print-out of the URL.

After than, download our very cool interview with The Choke to your iPod with guest host Victoria Wells. Yes, she is the same hot goth babe from Dogs 101. Quite a musician herself, too. She sings our City Pound intro on Pet Life Radio.

American Kennels On Lexington Avenue -- Puppy Mill Protest
An article that sums it up nicely by our colleague at the Daily News, Amy Sacks

Michelle Obama Asks: Honey, Did You Hear Something? Oh, Wait, It's Just The Damn Dog (title mine)

You Crazy Koreans! Glow In the Dark Puppies!
(Now You Have No Excuse for Tripping Over the Dog On The Way To The Bathroom!)


Or To Trip Over The Cat, For That Matter!