There is a lovely walk of about 2km just outside our town which mostly consists of a footpath/sidewalk along the road. Unfortunately, the local doggie heads have found that it’s an ideal place to take their vermin for a shit resulting in little piles of the stuff every couple of hundred meters. With the weather starting to improve, we can only look forward to more shit for the decent people of the town to walk in.
I’m living in Ireland all my life - 60 years - and I NEVER saw any dog lover with a pooper scooper or any other means of picking up their dog’s shit.
It would be wonderful, when they acquire their ‘dog’, if they could equip themselves with ordinary manners also.

How to have sex with a child in Ireland and get away with it
Bertie Ahern resigns. Clampdown on tax dodgers. Coincidence???

Just another reason for doggie lovers to be proud.
From RTE News

Almost 16,000 greyhounds were destroyed in Ireland last year, but some of the doomed animals are finding new homes overseas thanks to a mother and daughter duo from Co Tipperary.
With the help of a dog lover from Prague, Deirdre and Gina Hetherington from Mullinahone are finding the dogs loving families in the Czech Republic.
Gina says one of the causes of the problem is the fact that only a small number of the greyhounds produced in Ireland every year make the grade for the track.
She volunteers to take in the unwanted dogs and get them neutered, vaccinated, and microchipped and get them homes.
‘Once a dog leaves here, there’s no more kennels. They go straight into a couch or a sitting room,’ says Gina, the Manager of the PAWS Animal Rescue Charity (left).
She says her charity is forced to look overseas because ‘in Europe they see greyhounds as a novelty. They’re very pretty, very elegant animals. Whereas in Ireland they see them racing around the track after a little hare with a muzzle on them. So it’s a whole different attitude.’
‘PAWS should be commended on this,’ says local vet Alan Ahearne. ‘Logistically it’s a big ask. Bringing all these dogs from Ireland and having all the documentation for the EU pet passports. It’s great that 27 dogs are going to Europe that otherwise would’ve been put down.’
The dogs are met in Prague by Lucie Miric (below), the owner of the Yorkieland Dog Salon in the Czech capital and the owner of 10 dogs. ‘When I heard about it I was really terrified. And I would like to help,’ she said.
‘Czech people love dogs. In Prague, there’s a statistic that we have five and a half dogs for every one person. For example in Czech parks you can see more dogs than kids! I get so nervous, but my husband tells me to relax, it’s just dogs. But it’s not just dogs for me. After the transport I feel like a hero.’
The transportation is overseen by Deirdre Hetherington, the President of PAWS: ‘It’s absolutely thrilling. They treat these dogs like we treat poodles at home. We have so many of them that we have to keep them in kennels in Mullinahone, but once they arrive here they no longer know what a kennel is. They no longer know any kind of abuse because they are pets.’

In today’s Irish Mirror we have the horror story of a litter of pups being fucked into a hedge and left to die by a ‘doggie lover’.
Of the ten pups found, six had to be put down. It would appear that the animals were kept in a cattle shed as they were all covered in shit.
Our famous and useless ISPCA were involved for the photo shoot. If these people were doing the job for which they collect enormous amounts of money, there would be a lot less cruelty.
The organization said that in 2007 it received 6,000 calls reporting cruelty and in 2006 14,000 were killed by lethal injection. Man’s best friend….BOLLOCKS!
The ISPCA (Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) are just a bunch of inepts. I phoned and emailed them over a period of months concerning two dogs who were left to struggle about in muck and their own shit in a small backyard during a wet Winter.
They didn’t even bother to investigate my complaint. They asked me ‘had they got access to water’.

LESS DOG LOVERS=LESS CRUELTY
The cruelty to dogs on this website comes from Limerick in Ireland. In this city people keep horses in their backyards and allow them to roam freely wherever they want.

Well done dog lovers!
More pictues of cruelty to dogs

Dangerous dogs loose in the city
By Donal O’Regan
TWO loose rottweilers terrorised the city’s northside on Wednesday night, after which Gardai and the LSPCA were inundated by calls from members of the public.
Noel Shinnors, LSPCA Inspector said the two dog have been loose for weeks.”I’m in fear of a person being killed. I received numerous phone calls from the Gardai and worried members of the public,” said Mr Shinnors.

The dogs were spotted near the Super Valu in Corbally, St Mary’s Cathedral, St Senan’s school, St Mary’s Park and the Dublin Road.
“I chased them for about two hours,” said Mr Shinnors.

“I found the dogs outside St Senan’s school and got the dog loop out to try and catch them,” said Mr Shinnors.

However, the dogs were too vicious to capture.
“One of them jumped up and came at me. He was baring his teeth and growling. There was no way I could catch the two of them on my own,” said Mr Shinnors.

He said it wasn’t even his job to catch the dog.
“It’s the dog warden’s job but there was no answer to back me up,” said Mr Shinnors.

The Limerick Leader rang the pound at 12.05pm but there was no reply. The answering machine said their opening hours were Monday to Friday, 9.30 to 12.30.

The dogs are believed to be still at large.

A doctor’s advice on children and dogs
From the Health Section of the BBC website:

‘Don’t leave children with dogs’
Hospital admissions for dog bites have doubled in 10 years
Children should not be left alone to play with dogs, doctors say.
In the British Medical Journal, London Deanery and Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Trust medics also called for children to be taught how to approach dogs.
Paediatrician Rachel Besser also wrote that dog owners should face mandatory classes on pet control.
A five-year-old girl from Merseyside was killed by a pit bull terrier-type dog recently, and hospital admissions for dog bites have doubled in 10 years.
NHS figures show that 4,133 people were admitted to hospital last year suffering dog bites, almost double the number in 1996. More than a fifth were children under nine.
We must stop placing blame on the dogs themselves and focus attention instead on who holds the lead at the other end - or who isn’t holding the lead
Paediatrician Rachel Besser
Ms Besser, from training body the London Deanery, argued that the Dangerous Dogs Act does not work, because it only covers four breeds and just 764 people were prosecuted under it in 2005.
“Most dog bites to children at home happen when the child interacts with the dog in the absence of adult supervision,” she wrote.
“We must stop placing blame on the dogs themselves and focus attention instead on who holds the lead at the other end - or who isn’t holding the lead as the case may be.
“It is clear that not all dog owners appreciate that children should not be left unsupervised with a dog.
“Just as some parents are obliged to take parenting classes, I would like to see equivalent mandatory classes for expectant dog owners to teach them about the responsibilities of dog ownership.”
She also called for measures targeted at children to help educate them on how to approach dogs.
Responsibility
Marina Morgan, of Royal Devon and Exeter Foundation Trust, agreed young children should not play with dogs unless they were closely supervised.
We should be careful not to demonise all dogs
Inga MacKellar, of the Association of Pet Behaviour Counsellors
She said children should be taught to “treat dogs with respect, avoid direct eye contact and not to tease them”.
And she added: “They should also not approach unfamiliar dogs or disturb one that is eating, sleeping or caring for puppies.”
Chris Laurence, veterinary director of the Dogs Trust, said: “The advice offered is largely common sense but it is surprising that there are a large number of dog owners who fail to follow simple and practical pieces of advice like this.”
Inga MacKellar, of the Association of Pet Behaviour Counsellors, said there was an onus on owners to take responsibility for pets, but agreed such a blanket ban on unsupervised play was appropriate.
But she added: “We should be careful not to demonise all dogs.”

Another ‘badge of honour’ for the stupid dog lover
According to a report on BBC TV there has been a 40% increase in dog attacks in the UK in the last four years.
Young children and teenagers are the most likely groups to be treated at hospital after a dog bite.
It seems that there is a similar trend in that country as in Ireland whereby the smaller the brain of the doggie thug, the bigger the ‘crotch sniffer’. With teenage thuggery on the rise in both countries, the last thing society needs is these ‘people’ walking about with large carnivores.

Farm animals killed by out-of-control dogs
This is regular problem in Ireland…packs of uncontrolled dogs roaming the countryside at night mostly attacking sheep.
Doggie lovers should be taken to a farm where a flock of sheep have been torn asunder by their ‘pets’ so that they might think again about having a ‘pet’ in the first place.

Dublin City Council has announced a ‘crackdown’ on doggie lovers who like to take their vermin out onto the street or green area for their daily steamer. There are two main reasons why this won’t work…there won’t be enough resources put in place and the biggest culprits will be those who voted for the plan.
Imagine being a dog and you’re bursting for a shit since 11am but, you have to wait until evening until your ‘owner’ gets home from work. He/she watches TV for a while until eventually your discomfort becomes so acute that you have to start squealing and yelping to be allowed out. The proud owner thinks that he/she has an exceptionally smart dog who wants to go ‘walkies’ when, in fact, doggie wants to go ’shitties’. Owner takes out the dog lead and nothing else and off the two go to the nearest green area where doggie has a nice big shit and uses the rest of the green to drag his asshole around in order to get rid if the ‘extra’.
This is the scenario that millions of dogs have to go through every day because their cruel owners, in their stupidity, think that doggie only needs a shit in the evening. And if anyone else wants to use the green area…TOUGH!

The photo is from Torrevieja, Alicante, Spain Summer 2007. When it rains, this and all the other dogshit is washed straight onto the beach.
DON’T FORGET TO BRING YOUR KIDS!

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From todays Irish Independent:By Paul Melia

Beware - covert pooper snoopers are on the prowl
Wednesday February 13 2008

DOG owners beware — Big Brother is watching you.

Dublin City Council, tired of having to clean up dog litter from the capital’s streets, is to mount covert operations aimed at catching offenders.

Mobile CCTV units and officials working undercover will mount surveillance operations to police blackspots, including Clontarf and Sandymount strands, as part of its efforts to catch offenders. And owners who claim little Fido was caught short can expect no mercy. The city plans to step up its enforcement activity and has promised more prosecutions and fines.

The new regime was revealed yesterday in the council’s Litter Management Plan 2008-2011.

The plan will also see celebrities used to front advertising campaigns aimed at reducing specific litter problems such as cigarette butts, chewing gum and fast-food wrapping, while a multilingual campaign will be launched aimed at telling people of all nationalities that littering is not acceptable.

The city council currently collects 25,500 tonnes of litter from the streets each year, and has a budget of €37m for 2008.

Yesterday a range of new measures aimed at tackling litter were proposed. They include:

l Construction sites will have to be kept neat and tidy or contractors will face prosecution. Industrial estates will also have to ensure skips and waste containers and not a source of litter waste, while management companies and landlords will have to keep premises clean.

l A name and shame campaign will be extended to include businesses, public bodies and individuals found littering, and a list of prosecuted offenders will be published annually.

l Council vehicles will be painted with anti-litter messages to help promote the message that people who drop litter are themselves “pieces of filth”.

l Concert promoters will have to submit litter management plans to the council, and will have to pay the city to clean up if they are not complied with.

“Dog litter is a major issue, especially for kids, and it’s very much an eyesore,” spokesman Hugh Coughlan said. The council also proposes introducing by-laws later this year which will require businesses to agree practical measures to tackle litter outside premises.

Businesses will have to provide a certain number of bins, and must draw up specific cleaning plans, which must be approved by the council.

Residents’ associations will also be provided with free litter-picking equipment and bags, and gardai will be drafted to help in specific enforcement campaigns against graffiti and litter.

A littering tip-off system will also be introduced, where people will be able to report illegal dumping via a website or through mobile phones.

Litter bins will be mapped using satellite technology to show the distribution of the bins across the city, with bins to be power-washed once a month.

Another 15 staff will be employed to tackle litter, and €750,000 a year will be spent removing graffiti.

- Paul Melia

Nice doggies.

The Truth
About Dogs
An Inquiry into the Ancestry,
Social Conventions, Mental Habits,
And Moral Fiber of Canis Familiaris
Stephen Budiansky
(Viking)
There are 55,000,000 or so dogs in the United States. We spend around $5,000,000,000 a year to feed them. Five billion dollars is roughly ten times what we spend on annual food shipments to the starving children in Africa, India, and South America. Our annual vet bills for dogs reaches $7,000,000,000 which is roughly thirteen times what we spend on annual food shipments to the starving children in Africa, India, and South America.Dogs bite a million people a year in this country, at an annual cost to us (medical, insurance, lawsuits) of a billion dollars, which is roughly twice what we spend on annual food shipments to the starving children in Africa, India, and South America. And our dogs aren’t biting that guy sneaking in the bedroom to steal the family jewels: dog bites are like shooting people. Most bites (and bullets) are “friendly” — eg, they are aimed at someone nearby, a member of the pet-owning family, say; the mailman; the guy from next door jogging down the street; a neighbor’s kid.

One of the great problems in Mexico City is dried dogshit, mixing with the dust of the streets, the smog of cars — forming a toxic, lung-damaging pollution. Humans can be infected by sixty-five different diseases through dog feces, urine, or saliva. American dogs have an annual crap production of two million tons, which is more than three times etc etc. Budiansky says,

Two million tons is a difficult figure to comprehend. By way of comparison, the United States each year produces 3 million tons of aluminum and 4 million tons of cotton.

Then,

The 4 billion gallons of dog urine generated each year in the United States…could fill all the wine bottles from a full year’s output of the vineyards of France, Italy, Spain, and the United States combined.

http://www.ralphmag.org/AH/dogs.html

From todays Irish Independent
Texas mayor quits after admitting dog theft

By Stephen Foley
Monday February 04 2008

The mayor of Alice, a tiny Texas city, has resigned in disgrace after admitting she stole her neighbours’ shih tzu and told them it had died.

Grace Saenz-Lopez was rumbled three months later when the dog was booked into a poodle parlour under an assumed name, and it is now at the centre of a custody battle. The third-term mayor fell in love with the puppy, a pure-breed called Puddles, while looking after it during her neighbours’ holiday last summer - sending her career on a tragic arc that may yet end up behind bars.

She has been hounded by calls for her resignation since admitting that the dog, which she had renamed Panchito, was indeed the missing Puddles. Along the way, Mayor Saenz-Lopez has lied to the Gutierrez family, to reporters following the mysterious story, and the police. She was charged last month with concealing and tampering with evidence.

Ms Saenz-Lopez and the Gutierrez family go to court this morning to battle for custody of Puddles, which the former mayor says was being neglected by the family. “I do not know what they will decide, but I can tell you that I did at the time what I thought was best for Panchito and what I felt was right in my heart,” she wrote in her resignation letter.

Ms Saenz-Lopez told the Gutierrezes that she had buried Puddles, who had died while they were on a weekend break, but when a friend heard that the mayor had dropped off an identical dog at a local grooming parlour, the family became suspicious.

Although she admitted the dogs were one and the same, she refused to hand it back, and local councillors began to fear that her behaviour was becoming more and more odd. At one point, she phoned police to report Panchito missing, pointing the finger at the Gutierrezes, but the puppy was later traced to her identical twin sister’s home in nearby Ben Bolt. The sister has also been charged.

Homero Canales, who represents Ms Saenz-Lopez, said at the time of her indictment: “She loves the little dog. She told me that if she were a single woman, she would not care if she went to jail for the rest of her life before she would give the dog back.”

City councillors moved this week to have Ms Saenz-Lopez ousted from the post she has held since 2003, concerned that the city of 20,000 inhabitants was attracting national news attention for all the wrong reasons.

Bowing to the inevitable, she apologised and resigned. “I am proud to have served the greatest citizens in the world, the citizens of Alice,” she wrote. “It was never my intent to bring any negative exposure to our city.”

- Stephen Foley