Owner of the dog killed in Mishawaka park attack speaks out

Wants to make park safer and defends the dogs who killed her pets

MISHAWAKA, Ind. – The owner of the Yorkie killed after a brutal dog attack at the Prickett Marina Dog Park on Tuesday shared her story with ABC57 to appeal to the community to make the park safer and to defend the three Greyhounds who attacked her pet.

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Eventually the dogs were separated.  Parker immediately rushed Tatum to the nearest animal hospital for emergency surgery.

“His one lung was deflated, his chest wall had multiple holes, had some shredding to it,” Parker, a Registered Nurse, described.  “His heart was bruised.”

Tatum died at the hospital later on Tuesday evening.  Parkers said the two Cairn Terriers that were also attacked suffered severe cuts, but are expected to survive.

Now Parker is determined to make the park safer, she is pushing for the City of Mishawaka to divide the park and separate small and large dogs.

“I just want to make sure things are corrected and I believe with this tragedy things will be corrected,” she explained.  “It would’ve been so simple to avoid this.”

She also explained that she’s sympathetic towards the Greyhounds that attacked Tatum.  According to the Mishawaka Police Department’s report on the attack the Greyhounds are named Butter Rum, Al Kiowa-Rocky and Bush.  ABC57 has found that they are all retired racing dogs who were adopted through Greyhound rescue agencies.  The Greyhound racing industry has received criticism for training dogs to race by teaching them to attack small animals.

“People have said, do you want those dogs put down?” Parker explained.  “Those dogs killed my dog, but I’m an animal lover and I do believe those dogs did only what they had been trained to do.

Video & News Link:-http://www.abc57.com/news/local/Owner-of-dog-killed-in-Mishawaka-park-attack-speaks-out-159264245.html

 

Cutting off the Financial Lifeline to Hare Coursing – A Cruel Blood Sport

The Republic of Ireland has become one of the last remaining countries in the world to allow hare coursing.

The cruel blood sport has already been banned in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and remains illegal in most civilised nations.

Coursing continues despite the fact that successive opinion polls since the 1960s have confirmed that a majority of Irish people want it made illegal. A Sunday Independent poll, for example, showed that eight in ten want this blood sport banned.

In 1993, the muzzling of greyhounds in enclosed coursing was introduced. As predicted by the Irish Council Against Blood Sports at the time, muzzling has failed to eliminate the cruelty from coursing.

Thousands of hares are snatched from the wild and chased by greyhounds. Some of the hares will be battered and mauled into the ground by the dogs. Some will sustain injuries so severe that they will die on the coursing fields. All will suffer the fear and stress of running for their lives.

Please join us in telling the Irish Government that it is now time to replace live hare coursing with drag coursing.

This would involve a simple transition from the use of live hares to the use of a mechanical lure. This lure is rapidly pulled along the ground and, through a system of pulleys, is made to emulate the sudden changes in direction made by hares. Drag coursing is practised successfully in several countries around the world, including the USA, Canada and Australia where live hare coursing is illegal.

We urgently need your help. Please respond to our action alerts below and help rid Ireland of this cruel blood sport.

News Link:-http://www.banbloodsports.com/

 

Despite a majority of Irish people wanting hare coursing banned, the cruel blood sport remains legal. Every year, thousands of hares are violently netted from the wild and forced to run for their lives in front of muzzled greyhounds. The Irish Council Against Blood Sports is campaigning for a total ban on this blood sport. Please help us save the hares from coursing cruelty by responding to our urgent action alerts below.

ACTION ALERT:

Urge the Irish Prime Minister to ban hare coursing.
Email Enda Kenny: taoiseach@taoiseach.gov.ie
Telephone: +353 (0)1 619 4020

Urge the Deputy Prime Minister to ban hare coursing.
Email Eamon Gilmore: eamon.gilmore@oireachtas.ie
Tel: +353 (0)1 6183 566

Urge Minister Jimmy Deenihan to”Stop Licensing Coursing”
Email: ministersoffice@tcs.gov.ie
Telephone: +353 (0)1 631 3802

For information on Irish Council Against Blood Sports campaigns, visit:
http://www.banbloodsports.com

Sign an online petition
https://www.change.org/petitions/taoiseach-prime-minister-of-ireland-support-…

Follow us on Twitter:
http://www.twitter.com/banbloodsports

Follow us on Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/banbloodsports

As the campaign to persuade the Irish government to ban hare coursing continues,financial sponsorship is keeping this horrific practise alive.

The major sponsor is Greyhound and Pet World, which gives massive financial backing to hare coursing events. In particular it sponsors the annual marathon three-day hare coursing “festival” in which captive hares are terrorized and subjected to horrific injuries for three successive days on a converted racecourse.

Click the link below to send a message to Greyhound and Pet World, asking the company to cease all financial sponsorship of hare coursing in Ireland.

Link:-http://banharecoursinginireland.over-blog.com/article-cutting-off-the-financial-lifeline-to-hare-coursing-105484931.html

Animal Cruelty Charges ‘A Witch Hunt,’ Says Accused

East Northport couple denies SPCA allegations; says agency stonewalled attempts to prove innocence.

The East Northport couple accused of starving their dog has hired an attorney to defend them against what they say are bogus charges from the Suffolk County SPCA.

“It’s a witch hunt,” Kathleen Jackman said on Monday. “[Charlie] was constantly fed and cared for. He was like a member of the family. It’s so upsetting to me, it’s consuming my life. Obviously whatever we had to say made no difference.”

Kathleen and her husband, Stephen, were issued a field summons for misdemeanor animal cruelty earlier this month, one year after an unnamed individual found their 10-year-old Greyhound rescue dog named “Charlie” roaming the streets in a thunderstorm, emaciated. Read our initial coverage here.

The Suffolk SPCA claims the investigation leading up to the charges was extensive, but the Jackmans maintain that the agency stonewalled their attempts to provide documentation and testimony supporting their side of the case.

“I told them to investigate, that they could do whatever they wanted to do — to interview friends, to talk to my neighbors — no matter what I said to the [investigator], he said ‘I cannot give you any information.’ We have much documentation in our favor and much documentation that was presented to the person that came to our house numerous times, unannounced. Lots of documentation which is not being brought to the forefront,” said Kathleen.

“I just assumed that the truth would come out, but it hasn’t.”

News Link:-http://northport.patch.com/articles/animal-cruelty-charges-a-witch-hunt-says-accused

BBC “Thousands Of Racing Greyhounds Vanish Each Year”

A startling BBC investigation uncovers huge gaps in greyhound racing regulation in Northern Ireland.

Leading British animal welfare campaigners say that thousands of Ireland’s racing dogs are simply disappearing every year. Because no single government entity has been assigned the responsibility of monitoring the dogs and their welfare, they say that over-breeding has run rampant, and that breeders are killing off non-performers in large numbers.

Many retirees are rehomed by charities, while some are put down humanely by vets – and both provide statistics that help advocates account for dogs after their careers end. Those doing the math say the numbers don’t add up.

Campaigner Richard Hambleton from Carrickfergus said: “There’s 25,000 dogs retired each year in racing, on average, across the British Isles.”

Hambleton and others concerned with Greyhound welfare in the UK say that of those 25,000, untold numbers go unaccounted for. They want the government to step in and take control of the industry, and in light of this news, politicians are taking notice.

Social Democratic and Labour Party environment spokesman John Dallat said he was troubled to learn that the industry is run with so little oversight. He said he plans to change that.

“To be honest I am absolutely astonished that we do not have legislation that protects the industry against these people who quite clearly should not be in it,” he told Radio Ulster.

“It may well be that there is a dark secret there that we need to start to looking at and taking responsibility for,” he continued. “In doing so I would be absolutely certain that we are helping the industry, not hindering it, because no industry needs the kind of people who put dogs into bags with a stone and drop them into the sea. That’s disgusting.”

Meanwhile, industry insiders vehemently dispute the claimed number of dogs retiring from racing each year. Irish Greyhound Board welfare officer Barry Coleman is one of them.

“I don’t know where you got that figure. It is the first time I have heard such a figure,” he said. “I would not believe that there would be that many looking for homes at the end of their racing careers. We would re-home greyhounds from Northern Ireland because greyhounds would also race in Dundalk and Lifford which are border tracks and many of the Northern Ireland people would come over.”

Hableton, on the other hand, says that the figures come as no surprise, and that Ireland’s Greyhounds are being executed en masse.

“…to replace this (the 25,000 retired annually) they need more dogs but the problem is you breed dogs but you only put one forward out of the litter. That means the rest of the litter is put to sleep.”