The Cove

If you are up for the gruesome reality it portrays, the award winning documentary, The Cove, shines a movie camera into the behind the scenes world of the not so "theme park-esque" reality associated with capturing the dolphins regularly used for those marine park dolphin shows. Filmed in the genre of a thriller, the film-makers sneak into the locales where dolphins are culled from the wild and the picture is not too pretty.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the documentary packed them in at Sundance where it won the audience award for documentaries. The WSJ notes some of the film's highlights:

--the rounding up of the dolphins in the wild which involves planting metal poles in the water and hitting them, sending the noise sensitive dolphins into a nearby cove, where nets are waiting for them
--fishermen and divers sort through those rounded up, looking for the easy-to-train bottlenose dolphins and moving the others into another hidden location where they are killed for their meat

Like I said, it is not pretty, but the action takes place in the Japanese fishing village of Taiji and features Ric O'Barry, who trained the dolphins for the television show, Flipper. After he saw the animals he worked with die in captivity, he became an advocate for releasing dolphins from marine parks around the country.

Not a bad mission, if you ask me, who admits to having gone swimming with dolphins in Florida at a marine mammal facility as well as watched many others participate in theme park shows. The swimming was incredible--but nothing compared with actually swimming with them in the wild, in New Zealand. The shows were fun but those dolphins should have been performing those tricks in the wild for each other.

Go see the movie if you need any more convincing.

Miami International Racino?

So have you ever flown through or to the Miami airport? Better yet, have you ever tried to drive to or from the Miami airport? It is a nightmare, even for those who know it well and live there. Under construction for at least the last decade or so (at least it seems that way), every entrance or exit is a traffic accident waiting to happen--and that is before you even try to find your gate or check your luggage. Trust me. Most people find a way to fly around Miami even if it means driving a little farther to their ultimate destination.

But now comes word of a reason horse lovers might actually want to fly to Miami--the plan by county administrators to add slot machines to the airport. Trouble is, there is a provision in the state law that requires horse racing to accompany the slots. Which means that somehow, county administrators would have to operate horse races at the Miami airport!!

Truly, the concept is only totally absurd if you have ever flown to or from the Miami airport--if not, it is simply completely ludicrous. Ideally, the state law that ties slot machines to horse racing would permit the two activities to take place in two different locations, but just in case it doesn't, county administrators have proposed the creation of race track on a section of Miami International's employee parking lot!!!

Mind you, they're not thinking thoroughbreds--they require too much room--but Quarter horses. "The site is sufficient to accommodate a J-loop track that will allow for races of distances generally conducted at quarter horse race meets," reads the application on file with the state's Division of Pari-Mutuel Wagering states, according to the Miami Herald. In all honesty, could I make this up?

I get it that the slots might be able to bring in the cash needed to finally finish the construction to the airport, but can't you just see it now? "Ladies and gentlemen, we are delayed until after the fifth race. You still have time to place your bets." Or better yet, "Your flight has been canceled but if you hang around and play the slots for a while, we can probably get you on the next one."

But wait, there's more. Marc Dunbar, a lobbyist for Gulfstream Race Track (which loves the idea, especially if some of those days required to obtain slot machines at the race track are run at their facility up the road), notes that in Lexington, Kentucky, the airport is directly across the street from Keeneland.

Which somehow is all the more reason to place one in a parking lot.

Del Mar Highs and Lows

Opening day at Del Mar, Wednesday, July 22, featured the highs and the lows of racing on one card. First the highs: record attendance which was an all-time Del Mar record with 44,907 in the house. Beautiful weather; beautiful track; beautiful card...What could go wrong?

Lots. In the third race, 8 year old gelding Mi Rey, stumbled, veered to the right and lost his rider, Rafael Bejarano. Bejarano was then trampled by the horse behind him and suffered multiple facial fractures. The horse, Mi Rey, pictured above, fractured his ankle (reminiscent of Barbaro's fracture although it was a front ankle not a rear one) and was euthanized on the track.

The events happened early in the stretch run of the six furlong race, in plain view of many of those 44,000 plus spectators. Need I say more?

"It was an emotional rollercoaster," concluded Del Mar Turf Club President and CEO Joe Harper. "You hate to see something like that happen any time, but especially when you have a crowd that includes so many people who may come to the races only once a year."

The jockey is expected to recover, though he will face multiple surgeries to put his face back together again. Not so many of those "once a year" fans who may never come back again.

No finger pointing or blaming--just the continual story of what the sport entails. Nobody likes to see it happen or be reminded of the danger inherent in every race, but there it is, front and center when you least expect it. Trainer Vladimir Cerin put it into whatever perspective there is on the situation with this remark: 'Things just happen. Thousands of people die in car accidents every year in this country and not all of them from people drinking. This is an exciting sport, but sometimes things just happen. And people get hurt as well as horses."

Just a reminder of everything the sport is racing for and against every single day.

Capstone Presentation



For those of you who have 23 minutes to kill or who are just curious about my Capstone presentation for my MLA, here it is.

Thanks for watching.

Oh, and the missing parrot, has been returned--see Saturday's post.

Lowdown on the Low-down

My daughter, who recently graduated with an undergraduate degree in biology, explored the genetic components of one aspects of the dog's anatomy--the shape of its nose. The premise behind her theoretical experiment was that by changing the one gene that is responsible for the shape of a nose, she could induce either "pug" or "snout" noses in lab rats.

The research was, of course, hypothetical so we will never know if she is right but recent research on the gene responsible for short legs in dachshunds may provide a clue. It turns out there is a single extra copy of a gene that is responsible for the breed's short legs.

According to a post of the TierneyLab blog of the New York Times, Heidi Parker, a geneticist at the National Institutes of Health's National Human Genome Research Institute, recently reported in Science, that the extra copy of the gene was acquired by mutation at least 300 years ago.

This extra gene causes overproduction of a protein that actually stunts the growth of the legs of such breeds as dachshunds and basset hounds. Once the gene appeared, breeders could select for it when looking to breed dogs with short legs. The basset hound was intentionally "designed" with short legs, according to Parker, so that people on horse back could keep up with it during hunts.

The dachshund's long body and short legs are, of course, ideal for burrowing into holes to flush out vermin--the job for which they were bred--but also have created the tendency in the breed for members to develop spinal issues. Ironically these issues are often related to those short legs--back injuries resulting from jumping on or off furniture.

Owners of short legged breeds usually adore their pooches just for this trait, so it is interesting to note that those low slung profiles are really developmental disorders.

Find That Bird!

Missing from the Philadelphia Zoo: a sun conure parrot that made its escape at the end of the "free flight" performance on Wednesday, July 22. Apparently this parrot figured out the difference between the great outdoors and the aviary in which it lives (although I will say the aviary is brand new, very spacious and beautiful) and took off for the great beyond.

Now zoo officials are trying to track it down. This particular species of bird is hard to miss. It has a bright yellow head, an emerald green rear and orange around both eyes. Zoo officials believe that it got lost at the end of the show but we will, of course, never know if the parrot chose freedom over stardom.

The birds that participate in this free flight show go through months of training, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, and "are supposed to come back." Not so this particular parrot who is young, about five or six months old. "We want to do everything we can to search for it and bring it back safely to its zoo family," said zoo spokesperson, Bill Larson.

Meanwhile, the bird should be fine on its own in the "wild" until the winter. Richard Farinato, senior director of animal-care centers with the Human Society of the United States speculates that the bird could survive on seeds, bugs, bark and even bird seed from a bird-feeder. It has a band around one leg but no other identification and no implanted GPS.

So, depending on your point of view, either wish him a safe trip to the southern hemisphere or hope he lands on the grounds of a birder who will alert the animal rescue team at the zoo. So far, no parrots to report on the dog-infested borders of our backyard!

Cruella de Ville in Real Life

Glenn Close, as in the actress, is a true dog lover. In fact, she is one of the brains behind the catalog fetchdog that features lots of nifty devices for the canine set. The summer catalog came recently and the Glenn Close charitable pick caught my eye.

Made by the footware company, Vibram, the toy in question is a "chewy shoe" and it was created in honor of the veterans who actually rely on their products. It is called DogTags Chewy Shoe and can be ordered on their website. $2 from every purchase goes to support veterans.

And here's another inspired way that pets are helping veterans. PuppiesBehindBars.com trains prison inmates to train service dogs that are provided to veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Service dogs are used by many veterans who have been either emotionally or physically traumatized during their tour(s) of service.

To learn more, check out FetchDog.com/DogTags and read Glenn Close's interview with Bill Campbell and his service dog, Pax. It seems that the Cruella de Ville role was truly just that!