• Debate rages over stray dogs after fatal maulings in Mexico City

    AP

    Dogs are shown behind bars in a composite photograph after they were caught near where where a woman, her baby and a teenage couple were found dead and covered in dog bites. The attacks set off a debate about the city's love-hate relationship with its canine population, and the guilt or innocence of 25 dogs trapped near the scene of the nightmarish killings.

    By Adriana Gomez Licon and Michael Weissenstein, The Associated Press

    MEXICO CITY -- Police scoured a hilly urban park for feral dogs and tested dozens of captured animals on Tuesday in a hunt for those responsible for four fatal maulings that have set off a fierce debate about how to handle the thousands of stray dogs that roam this massive city.

    Authorities have captured 25 dogs near the scene of the attacks in the capital's poor Iztapalapa district, but rather than calm residents, photos of the forlorn dogs brought a wave of sympathy for the animals, doubts about their involvement in the killings and debate about government handling of the stray-dog problem.


    Activists started an online campaign protesting the dogs' innocence and calling for authorities not to euthanize them. Tens of thousands of dogs are euthanized each year in Mexico if they are captured by animal control officers and not claimed within 72 hours. Many people re-posted the images of the dogs staring sadly from behind bars at an animal shelter.

    The hashtag for the campaign became the top trending topic on Twitter in Mexico by midday Tuesday, with some users furiously accusing the authorities of cruelty to animals and others sarcastically calling the dogs "political prisoners" and mocking the fuss over the fate of the animals.

    With more than 20 million people living in greater Mexico City, many of them lacking the resources to properly care for pets, stay dogs are an established problem. Nonprofit organizations such as Compassion Without Borders and Mexico City Dogs appeal for donations to help address the situation, and a 2007 documentary, "Companions to None," focused on abandoned pets.

    Officials said they were testing the captured dogs' fur for blood and examining their stomach contents to determine if they were the killers of the four people whose bodies were found covered in dog bites in two separate incidents in recent days.

    Grim discoveries
    Neighbors of the Cerro de la Estrella park found the bodies of a 26-year-old woman and a 1-year-old child in the area on Dec. 29, authorities said. The woman, Shunashi Mendoza, was missing her left arm, and prosecutors said that both she and the boy had bled to death.

    Then on Saturday, visitors to the park found the bodies of Alejandra Ruiz, 15, and her boyfriend Samuel Martinez, 16, who had gone to the park Saturday afternoon and were found dead from blood loss. The girl called her sister at around 7 p.m. pleading for help, Milenio Television reported.

    Mexico City prosecutors said that due to the gravity of the wounds they believed at least 10 dogs were involved in each attack.

    Dozens of officers returned to the park Tuesday to capture more of the feral dogs, which live in caves and hollows in the area.

    "Officer, you're hunting for dogs again, but don't you already supposedly have the 25 killers in custody?" shouted Liliana Hernandez, a psychologist and self-described street-dog-rights activist who lives near the park.

    Hernandez said many people let their dogs out during the day because their cinderblock homes are too small to keep them inside. Residents of their neighborhood started running frantically to collect their dogs when police began seizing strays Monday night, she said.

    Official response
    The furor has forced a public response from Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera, who called for animal-rights groups to help study the guilt or innocence of the 25 dogs, and the broader effort to reduce the number of street dogs in Mexico City.

    "We're not taking any decision. The dogs are in a shelter and we have to check on their health," he told reporters after a midday press conference.

    He also said the government would launch a new program to spay and neuter dogs, sending 25 mobile surgical units to neighborhoods where residents would be encouraged to take advantage of free sterilization for their pets.

    Eduardo Verdugo / AP

    Police fan out as they search for stray dogs in a park on the hilltop borough of Iztapalapa in southeast Mexico City on Tuesday.

     

    © 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

  • Canadian province responds to sled dog killings with new rules

    Sled dogs rest after returning from a tour run by Outdoor Adventures in the Soo Valley north of Whistler, British Columbia, Canada in 2011.

    By Kari Huus, NBC News

    The government of British Columbia, Canada has published new regulations governing the handling of sled dogs — a move prompted by a grisly 2010 case in which a tourism company near Whistler killed as many as 100 animals that became "surplus" amid slumping business.

    The Sled Dog Code of Practice is a step — a small one, according to critics — toward addressing problems in competitive and entertainment dog sledding that is mostly unseen.

    "The problem with this whole issue is these (breeding and training) operations are out of the public eye," said Debra Probert, executive director of the Vancouver Humane Society. "People see the dogs in public, but they don’t see what goes on behind the scenes."

    The sled dog slaughter came to light only when one of the employees of Howling Dog Tours Whistler Ltd. who were charged with killing the dogs by shooting them and slitting their throats applied for compensation from the Workers’ Compensation Board of British Columbia because he said he was suffering trauma from the task. The WorkSafeBC document explaining the decision to approve the compensation was leaked, making incident public in gruesome detail.

    Animal rights critics have long criticized major dog sled races — especially the 1,100-mile Iditarod across Alaska, which begins March 3. Mushers are adamant that dogs love the work, that they are bred to do it, and that no one loves the dogs more than they do. But critics say pushing the dogs to run 100 miles a day for two weeks is brutal. One or more dogs die in the race nearly every year, despite the volunteer veterinarians who attend to the animals.

    The new British Columbia regulations are primarily focused on the breeding, training, transportation and euthanizing of the animals. They spell out requirements for pens and tethers, exercise, socializing, grooming and nail care. And they say that euthanizing should not be a means of culling or population control.

    The standards disappointed some animal advocates, including the Vancouver Humane Society, which had advocated banning sled dog racing.

    And some were outraged that the regulations spell out how sled dog owners should euthanize dogs if they cannot race anymore and can't be placed in a new home. A diagram illustrates the proper way to position a gun at a dog’s head to ensure a clean kill.

    The Humane Society's Probert said that in any case the regulations and standards “have no teeth” because no resources were allotted for their enforcement.

    Nonetheless, the British Columbia regulations move the province ahead of other Canadian jurisdictions, where no specific regulations exist.

    Within the United States, Alaska currently has among the weakest legal protections for animals, with only a few lines in state law that require "minimum conditions" for "adequate" nutrition and care.  

    Just last month, an Alaska court found a sled dog breeder guilty of cruelty to animals after local authorities found 19 dead dogs and 168 more severely malnourished at his operation in Willow. Frank Rich was sentenced to 180 days in jail after pleading guilty to two counts of animal cruelty.

    A task force has just started formulating standards to elaborate on the law.

    "The challenge is to make them broad enough to encompass all sorts of dog lifestyles," including athletes like sled dogs, said Jay Fuller, veterinarian for the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. "We’d like to make clear standards for what is acceptable." 

    There is no question of barring dog sledding, which is protected by state law, he said.

    “Any regulations we adopt have to be consistent with state law, and the law says (the competitions) are OK,” Fuller said.

    "What I hope is that there will be a universal standard of care for all dogs," said Maureen O’Nell, executive director of the Alaska Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Animals, who is taking part in the meetings. She said that sled dogs are a particularly sensitive case, and some would like to create special rules for them.

    "The mushers are a strong community and I think there has been hesitation to what might somehow be perceived as anti-mushing,” she said.

    After the dog slaughter case in British Columbia, which emerged shortly after Whistler hosted the 2010 Winter Olympics, the dog sledding business took a hit.

    "When the incident occurred … it was a black eye not only for dog sledding but for Whistler," said Craig Beattie, general manager of Canadian Snowmobile, a Whistler company that provides outdoor adventures, including dogsledding tours. In order to reassure customers, he opened up his company's kennels to them and promised them full refunds if they felt there was anything amiss.

    He said the standards mandated by the government were already in place for their sled dogs, and he said he hopes they will be enforced elsewhere.

    "I think it will be way better for the animals, and for the people," said Beattie. "Obviously, the negativity will decrease toward the dog sledding."

    More from msnbc.com and NBC News:

    Follow Kari Huus on Facebook

  • More than 1,100 dogs in Chongqing rescued from dinner table

    Netease

    Volunteers in Chongqing work to rescue over 1,100 dogs that were destined for slaughter.

    By Ed Flanagan, NBC News

    BEIJING – Call it a Chinese New Year miracle. Earlier this week more than 1,100 dogs destined for the slaughterhouse in Chongqing were saved from an ignoble ending by a pet-loving Good Samaritan.

    The China Daily reported that 1,137 dogs were rescued on Monday from the back of a flatbed truck by a 40-year old blogger and volunteer at the Chongqing Small Animal Protection Association (CSAPA) surnamed Peng. Peng found the dogs crammed into tight cages that were stacked high atop each other. 

    The dogs, who had been condemned to slaughter for food, were instead rescued and taken by CSAPA volunteers to an abandoned pig farm where they were given food, water and medical treatment.

    In such cramped quarters, the dogs were reported to have been in poor health and some were found already dead inside their cages. By Thursday 16 dogs had died from injury or distemper while another 30 dogs had been sent to a veterinarian hospital in Chongqing for treatment.

    Netease

    The rescued dogs soon became a sensation in this central Chinese metropolis and hundreds of volunteers and donations began flooding in. One man donated nearly 1,000 square feet of warehouse space to house the dogs for free while there is now enough food to feed the dogs for the next 20-30 days.

    But the biggest immediate concern right now is finding enough professional volunteers to help take care of the dogs during the busy Chinese New Year holiday when most people empty out of the big cities and head back to their hometowns.

    Long term, many people are wondering how they will find homes for so many dogs. The CSAPA predicts about 20 percent of the dogs will eventually be adopted, but the majority of them will likely never be claimed. The association is now considering whether to solicit donations to build dog houses for the remaining animals.

    China has seen a rash of similar animal rescues in recent years. In April of last year, animal lovers banded together and raised $17,960 to pay a truck owner who was holding 580 dogs in cages.

    China currently has no animal cruelty laws – a notion made problematic by the still large agrarian population – but as of October of last year, regulations issued by the Ministry of Agriculture require dogs and cats to be quarantined before being shipped around China.

    More photos from the rescue can be seen here.

  • Bears rescued from a bile farm in Vietnam

    There's a market in Asia for the digestive fluids of bears for use in traditional medicine. To feed the demand, thousands of black bears in Vietnam and China are held in small cages and drained of their bile via catheter or a hole in the abdomen.  

    Animals Asia via Reuters

    Veterinarians conduct a health check on a moon bear at a bear bile farm before it was transported to a rescue center in Vietnam's southern Binh Duong province in this handout photo taken November 29 and released on Monday. According to Animals Asia, 14 bears had been rescued from the bear bile trade in a farm in southern Vietnam and transported to a bear rescue centre in Tam Dao, near Hanoi. The bears show significant health problems including missing and maimed limbs, indicating that they may have been captured with bear traps in the wild. One of the four owners, Mr Nguyen Ngoc Tien, decided to give up his share of the farm to Animals Asia. This is the first time in Vietnam that a bear farm has given up a significant number of bears without any demand for compensation. Across Asia, an estimated 14,000 moon bears are being held in captivity on farms and milked for their bile because it's believed to be effective in the practice of traditional Asian medicine despite the availability of inexpensive and effective herbal and synthetic alternatives.

    AP reports: Nineteen bears were recently rescued from such an operation in Vietnam.

    In the 1980s, China began promoting bear farms as a way to discourage poaching.

    The bears were housed in small cages, and the green bitter fluid was sucked from their gall bladders using crude catheters, sometimes creating pus-filled abscesses or internal bile leakage. Many bears die slowly from infections or liver ailments, including cancer.

    The idea caught on in Vietnam and elsewhere as demand grew alongside the region's increasing wealth. Bear bile products are also illegally smuggled into Chinatowns worldwide. An informal survey by the World Society for the Protection of Animals found 75 percent of stores visited in Japan selling bear bile products, followed by 42 percent in South Korea. In the U.S. and Canada, it was about 15 percent.

     

    Animals Asia via Reuters

    A moon bear is seen inside a cage at a bear bile farm before it was transported to a rescue center in Vietnam's southern Binh Duong province.

    Animals Asia via Reuters

    A moon bear is seen inside a cage at a bear bile farm before it was transported to a rescue center in Vietnam's southern Binh Duong province.

    Last year, a farm in northern Vietnam was raided for selling bile to busloads of South Koreans, who watched it being extracted as part of their sightseeing tours. Some of the farms in Vietnam are owned by South Koreans and Taiwanese.

    "They're more organized and bigger. They're run like a business now," said Bendixsen. "It's part of a package tour."

    More information: