Author Archives: JackiSkole

The Evolution of Brownie to Bella

Posted on by JackiSkole

Naming a dog can cause as much consternation as naming a baby. After all, a name stays with a person – or a dog – for a lifetime (usually).

Last year, the most popular dog names were Bella, Bailey, Max, Lucy, Molly, Buddy, Daisy, Maggie, Charlie, and Sophie, according to VPI, a pet insurance company.  Spot, Rover, and Fido didn’t make the cut.

Giving pets “people” names dates back to the 1960s, but picked up during the 1980s, according to UC Berkeley anthropologist Stanley Brandes, who studied pet naming trends as revealed by gravestones at a pet cemetery outside New York City.  Today’s “pets-with-people-names-craze” as VPI calls it, reflects another evolution of the last several decades: treating dogs as kin.

Prior to World War II, Brandes found that pets rarely shared names with people.  In the first 50 years of the 20th century, stones were engraved with names like Brownie and Boogle, Hobo and Jaba, Punch and Pippie.

Kevin and I named our first dog – who we’ve always considered our first child – Gryffin.  We wanted a unique name that would have special meaning for us.  At the time I was reading the Harry Potter series on Kevin’s recommendation, so we looked to the boy wizard for inspiration.  Harry, we agreed, was too blatant a choice; Gryffin, short for Gryffindor, now that had a nice ring.

When we adopted Galen after Gryffin died, we turned to religion for inspiration.  In Judaism it is customary to name a baby after a relative who has passed away – it is said this keeps the person’s memory alive, and in a metaphysical way forms a bond between the soul of the newborn and of the deceased family member. It was a given for us that our new pup would be named after Gryffin. Going through “G” names we came upon “Galen,” the name belonging to an Ancient Greek physician.  As Kevin is a doctor, “Galen” held a welcome secondary meaning.  Then a web search revealed Galen means “calm,” which is, of course, the canine temperament we were hoping for in our new dog.

What I didn’t know when choosing Galen’s name or Gryffin’s, is that there are rules for naming dogs proffered by people reporter Jan Hoffman calls “self-anointed dog-naming experts.” Hoffman’s story in today’s New York Times recounts her family’s quest to find the perfect name for their Havanese.  Most interesting to me was the advice she got from the Monks of New Skete:  “Avoid human names.”  People who don’t, the monks say, tend to anthropomorphize their pets.

Hmmm.  Based on those popular dog names, there’s a lot of anthropomorphizing going on in America these days.

***

George Washington owned a dog named Lady. Abraham Lincoln owned a dog named Fido.

The monks would have approved.

Life and Death Decisions… Daily

Posted on by JackiSkole

Imagine: You are the director of an animal shelter. During the last week of February, your shelter took in 48 dogs. Now the spring birthing season — when intake numbers traditionally spike — is  upon you. You’ve been working hard to increase the shelter’s adoption rates, but you can’t call the shelter No Kill – not yet, not by a long shot; healthy dogs are still put down daily to make room for those that will inevitably come through the door. Unfortunately, your situation is echoed throughout the United States, primarily in the South, where studies show spay and neuter rates are lower than in any other region. This leads to more dogs having more litters, and that, of course, leads to more crowded shelters.

Now in comes a pregnant stray. Shelter volunteers name her Maple – she’s a friendly retriever mix with red-gold fur and a sweet disposition.

You get that all-too-familiar sick feeling deep in your stomach.

The law prohibits you from adopting out dogs that have not been spayed or neutered.  That means you can’t release Maple unless she is spayed, and spaying will kill her puppies.  If you hold Maple until she births her pups, you will have to kill other dogs to open up space for her litter.

You ask yourself:  Does it make more sense to euthanize puppies yet to be born or to euthanize those that are already living?  The decision is yours; you must make it.

***

In too many shelters across the country, shelter directors make life and death decisions daily.  There is just not enough room in overcrowded shelters to house all the dogs that are picked up as strays or surrendered by their owners.  These are healthy dogs, adoptable dogs, dogs that would make great pets.

Finding homes for the country’s homeless dogs must be a priority, or shelters will continue to use euthanasia to control their populations, and euthanasia due to homelessness will remain the leading cause of canine death in the United States. But as the spring mating season is upon us, there is something dog owners can do to stem the flow of new litters: Spay and neuter your pets, and encourage others to spay and neuter theirs. Veterinarians say you and your pet will reap the benefits:

  • Altered pets live longer, healthier lives. (Females will not get ovarian or uterine cancer; males will not get testicular cancer and are less likely to suffer from prostate disease.)
  • Altered pets are easier to train.
  • Altered pets have less desire to roam, making them less likely to become lost or hit by a car.
  • Altered pets have fewer behavior and temperament problems.
  • Altered pets tend to be less aggressive, yet they remain protective of their families.

***

There is an abundance of information online regarding the reasons to, and the benefits of, spaying and neutering your pet.  Here’s a link to get you started, should you want to learn more:  American Humane Association.

Chip Chip Hooray!

Posted on by JackiSkole

Galen is a homebody. She joined our family at eight weeks old, and in the two years she’s been with us she’s never run away or shown any desire to be anywhere that we are not. Even when we unleash her during hikes at a local mountain preserve, she will forge ahead, but look back every few steps to confirm that our path hasn’t diverged from hers. My husband and I joke that we couldn’t lose her if we wanted to.

Loki is a wanderlust. He was pulled from the same North Carolina shelter as Galen, by the same rescue group. We offered to foster him while the rescue sought someone to adopt him, but we took too much of a liking to the little guy to give him to strangers. So we gave him to my mom, with the understanding that each winter he would spend six weeks with us, while she and my stepfather jet-set between New Jersey and Florida.

Loki was named by one of the rescue volunteers, and the name fits him quite well. The original Loki, according to Scandinavian mythology, was the Norse god of mischief, and the dog Loki is a mischief-maker. Mostly he makes his mischief by disappearing.

Several years ago, my mother installed a fence around her property to keep out the deer. It also served to keep Galen and my sister’s dog, Bear, from leaving. But Loki’s lust for adventure proved to be stronger than the fence’s ability for restraint. He would find rare spots where the fence and earth separated and squirm through. My mother would find him happily roaming the neighborhood; she’d bring him home, and a day or so later, he’d be gone again. She ultimately installed an electric fence to end his journeying.

Lokia journeyman

Loki
a journeyman

We, too, have an electric fence, so when Loki’s here, he wears Galen’s collar. But during his last visit, Loki got skunked. He stunk, and so did the collar – even after I soaked it in tomato juice, then vinegar, then dish detergent. I couldn’t bear to put it back on him, so I sent him outside in an old dog collar hoping he wouldn’t know the difference between it and the electric fence collar. For two days I outsmarted him. On the third day, I couldn’t find him – anywhere.

That night animal control called; Loki was safe and waiting for me at our local shelter. A microchip that had been implanted between his shoulder blades gave animal control all the information needed to identify him and me – the person listed “in case of emergency.”

That microchip proved invaluable that night, and it may one day save Loki’s life, as he proves time and again that he has a journeyman’s spirit. Galen is microchipped, too. We had the procedure done after we adopted her, before we realized our homegirl isn’t going anywhere.

***

You can learn more about microchipping your pet on the web. Here’s just one site: http://pets.webmd.com/features/microchipping-your-dog-or-cat

The Diva and The Pogo Stick

Posted on by JackiSkole

Galen is a mellow gal. Sure, she had a rambunctious puppyhood, committing such typical puppy crimes as chewing up my favorite slippers, teething on the wooden leg of a living room end table, and persistently and dangerously nipping at my daughters’ ankles. But by about eight months old, she shed her freneticness for a far less frenzied disposition. At two, her energy reserves still run deep, and she’s excruciatingly demanding when she wants to play, but more often than not she is a calming yoga breath sprinkled with a little diva.

Then there’s Loki.

A little over one year old, Loki is excitement unbound, a pogo stick, a whirling dervish. He explodes energy from the moment he bursts out of his crate in the morning until he runs back in at night. His ears tell his story – reaching upright from his head, they are alert, electric. Galen’s speak to her character, too:  They flop.

Loki is my mother’s dog, a mixed-breed rescue with a Doberman-colored coat whose most distinguishing feature — after his ears — is the Lone Ranger-like mask that wraps around his golden snout.  Loki is vacationing with us this winter, ping ponging back and forth between her home and ours two weeks at a time. We’re nearing the end of his second visit, but I don’t think its conclusion can come soon enough for Galen. The diva is tiring of the young whippersnapper. For her, he’s the houseguest who overstayed his welcome.

I can see Galen’s brewing frustration. At the start of Loki’s visits, Galen’s happy to engage him. They fang fight, they play tug with the carcasses of stuffed animals that have long lost their stuffing, they race around the backyard – Loki giving chase and Galen showcasing her speed and agility. But as one day spills into the next, she becomes less enamored with his playful ways. She starts to ignore him when he nips at her back legs or nibbles on her ears to encourage another round of fang fighting. She stands her ground in the backyard when he runs at her to initiate chase, sometimes even permitting him to deliver a body blow that she simply shrugs off. Alas, Loki doesn’t know what it means to give up, so when his entreaties become just too much, Galen seeks the refuge of her crate. It is the one and only place she is completely free from him.  He will stick his snout in the doorway, but he knows better than entering further.

I take Galen aside and tell her that Loki will only be with us for a few more days, and that when he’s gone she will miss his doting. She cocks her head quizzically, and looks at me. “Please speak my language,” she seems to say. “Ask me if I want a cookie.”  But I know that when Loki’s gone Galen will miss him.

We’ve been through this before.

After his first two-week visit, Galen acted relieved to see him go. But she quickly found that life without a suitor had a downside. Who else was going to spend hours with her sniffing around the backyard?  Who else was going to gaze at me with big brown pleading eyes and persuade me to dole out extra treats? Who else would accede to her demands to play every time she demanded?

Right now, Galen may be giving Loki the cold shoulder, but he’ll leave, and during his two-week absence she’ll start to yearn for her pogo sticked playmate.  And then Loki will return, and the games will begin… until the diva decides she’s had enough.

Black is Beautiful

Posted on by JackiSkole

When Kevin and I lived in Philadelphia taking Gryffin to the dog park was a staple of our day.  We met lots of dogs (people, too, of course), but one pup stands out in my mind for her sheer beauty. Athena was a Rottweiler, regal in stature and longer and leaner than the breed standard.  Her coat – glossy black fur patched with gold – wrapped pure muscle.

I thought about Athena when I read an article in Tennessee’s Johnson City Press about a prejudice many people have against large black dogs.  This prejudice keeps black dogs from being adopted from shelters, leading to high euthanasia rates.  The director of the Washington County/Johnson City Animal Shelter told the paper that during times of overcrowding black dogs are first to be killed, because they are less likely to be adopted than their lighter-colored contemporaries.   “People walk past (the black dogs) and don’t even really see them and don’t look at the personality,” she said. “A lot of people think the large black dog … might be menacing. It might be a threat.”

There’s a name for this phenomenon: Big Black Dog Syndrome.

I admit to being a little stunned. I find black dogs beautiful – and also, sensible.  (As someone who wears so much black that I’ve had college students ask me if my wardrobe includes any other color, it would be a pleasure to own a dog whose fur didn’t mar my clothes as Gryffin’s did and Galen’s does.) But apparently, there are those who don’t share my sensibility or my eye for beauty.

Anthropologist Amanda Leonard is the founder of The Black Dog Research Studio and writes about Big Black Dog Syndrome (BBDS), which she defines as “the extreme under-adoption of large black dogs based not on temperament or health, but rather on the confluence of a number of physical and environmental factors such as size, color, the kennel environment, the “genericness” of black dogs, and the Western symbolism of black as representative of evil.” Lest anyone think this is farce, she cites a representative from the Humane Society of the United States who, in 2011, told MSNBC that BBDS “is not a hoax… it is something commonly accepted by shelter workers as truth.”

Recently Petfinder added numbers to the anecdotes.  A survey of its affiliated shelters and rescue groups found that most pets are listed on Petfinder’s website for 12.5 weeks, but less adoptable dogs, which include senior, special needs and black dogs, spend up to four times as long.  And interestingly, BBDS is not breed specific — Labrador Retrievers, Chows, Rottweilers, Pit Bulls, German Shepherds, Newfoundlands and mixes of these breeds are shunned equally.

There is hope that today’s discrimination against big black dogs won’t be tomorrow’s. That’s because Leonard has found that much of the prejudice is unconscious.  Once people are made aware of it, she writes, most move past it.  There are also simple strategies shelters can employ to make black dogs appear less intimidating, like putting a bright-colored bandana on a black dog, and not grouping black dogs together, instead putting them in runs beside lighter-colored canines.

In the 1960s, a group of African-American artists, musicians and writers launched a cultural movement called Black is Beautiful to challenge European aesthetics of beauty and to dispel notions that blackness in skin color, facial features and hair is inherently ugly.  Animal welfare advocates should embrace this mantra as well.

Black is Beautiful… on people and dogs.

Time is what you make of it

Posted on by JackiSkole

When Gryffin died, Kevin and I were shocked – shocked because we’d had no warning, shocked because he was only ten. We used to joke that we’d have him “forever” – or at least for 14 or 15 years. After all, he was a mutt, and they outlive their pure-bred brethren, don’t they?

Gryffin

Gryffin

Two months later — still floundering in the fog of grief, we adopted Galen; she was eight weeks old, four weeks younger than Gryffin was when we adopted him. It never dawned on me not to adopt a puppy. The younger the dog, my subconscious whispered, the more time before good-bye.

With thinking like mine, what’s to become of older dogs on the rescue circuit? Fortunately, there are (many) people wiser than I am, who know that time truly is what you make of it.

My second guest post comes courtesy of Jane from Knoxville.

Goldie was ten when I first saw him. He was brought to a meet and greet that the Golden Retriever rescue group I was working with was participating in. His coat was thin and patchy and shaved from mid-tail to mid-hip. The bare space was covered with a long series of broad stitches. What had been there, I was told later, was a growth the vet tech described as having the size and appearance of “an exterior brain” on a stalk. He was thin. He weighed 52 pounds. His eyes smiled softly, as softly as his tail wagged whenever anyone came up to greet him. Few did. Most were occupied with the gorgeous, blonde, two year-old, fluffy Golden girl I was attempting to hold.

Goldie

Goldie

I kept looking back over my shoulder at him. He would return the glance. At the end of the event, he would have to go back to the vet’s—not for any medical reason, only because he had no foster.

I watched as he introduced himself gently to anyone who would come up to him. And I couldn’t stand the thought of him in a cage. I asked a leader in the group if I could take him home. She smiled when I asked. I think she knew that’s where he’d stay.

And stay he did in my studio apartment with me and the Shih-tzu a generous woman had given me a few months earlier when she decided he needed a chance at more attention than he was getting. Me, Oreo, and Goldie in my tiny apartment.

But Goldie was happy. I am not sure how many of the ten years he’d lived had been outside, but the old boy loved the air conditioning, the soft carpet, the eight cups of dog food I gave him daily to get his weight up and being close by, so he could stick his big wet nose over the edge of the bed whenever he felt like it. He didn’t seem to mind that the apartment was small.

A walk was good, too. He and Oreo and I, a comical looking mismatched bunch, would make our perambulations around the complex and he would stop to greet, in fact, he would insist on greeting whoever we passed. I have come to call it “Goldie running for mayor.” Soon, little scaredy Oreo was following right behind him and whoever we happened on to had better not be in too much of a hurry to stop and socialize with these unlikely twins. Or they would get an affronted look. A really affronted look.

Once we passed some boys playing soccer. Goldie’s head came up. He was alert. His big ears swiveled forward. He watched, stolid and earnest. The tail flicked back and forth. I could tell he was remembering. I could tell that as surely as if he had said it out loud. And it was a happy memory. But he didn’t yank on the leash and try to join in. He seemed to know he couldn’t do that now. But he could cheer them on. Even if it was from the sidelines. It was a lesson.

It was by no means the only lesson. Goldie was chosen to be a “Ruff Reading” dog. I accompanied him to the kindergarten class where tiny, delighted students practiced by reading him books about frogs and birds and sometimes even dogs. After a couple of books, he’d put his big head on a small lap and lick the book maybe or stick out a paw as big as one of the kid’s hands in thanks. And they would pet him. And pet him some more. When the teacher wasn’t looking, a kid or two would run over and sneak a kiss on his head. And he would lay there calmly. I think he was smiling.

Puppies and young dogs are full of their own delights. Adopt an old dog and you’ve come as close as you may ever get to having an angel in your house.

Once, when I took Goldie to the vet, a man said. “Now there’s an old guy. How long do you think you’ll have him?” I have no idea why someone would ask a question like that. The answer is this:  All we’ve got is this minute. And the next one. And the next one. And however much love we can fit in them.

Goldie had to have another surgery to remove some golf ball sized cysts on his back and neck. More fur shaved. More stitches. The girls at the vet’s office who let him sit up front with them in the reception area called him “Frankendog.” But now he has a dense curly coat of gold and silver. He weighs 70 pounds. And he will be 12 in May. Oreo licks his ears and lies down next to him on his bed.

I thank him for being here. For making the minutes full ones.

Grab a tissue… or two, or three

Posted on by JackiSkole

You’ve probably seen the heartrending photo of a Labrador retriever lying in front of his owner’s flag-draped casket. If not, here it is:

casket

The dog is Hawkeye; his owner, a Navy SEAL, was killed in Afghanistan in August 2011, when a rocket-propelled grenade hit his Chinook helicopter. The photo – and the story – went viral as an iconic depiction of the profound bond between people and their pets.

Now comes Tommy, a seven-year-old German shepherd in San Donaci, Italy, who has been attending mass for the last two months at the church where his owner’s funeral was held and where, before she died, they attended mass together daily.

Tommy in Santa Maria Assunta church

Tommy in Santa Maria Assunta church

You can read the full story here.

But so far as I know, only one dog has been memorialized in bronze for his exceptional loyalty.

In 1924, Hidesaburo Ueno, a professor at Tokyo Imperial University adopted an Akita he named Hachiko. Each morning, dog and owner would walk to Shibuya Station, where Ueno would catch a train to the university.

Each evening, Hachiko would return to the station to welcome the professor home. But on May 21, 1925, Ueno didn’t return; he’d died after suffering a stroke during a faculty meeting. From that night on, for nearly ten years, Hachiko returned to the station at precisely the time Ueno’s train was due to arrive.

A newspaper story about the loyal Akita lured people from all over Japan to visit him. In 1934, a bronze statue of Hachiko was erected in front of the station’s ticket gate with the dog on hand for its unveiling. During World War II, the Japanese melted the statue to use its bronze for the war effort, but in 1948, the original sculptor’s son created a replica, which still stands today. The statue is said to be one of the most popular meeting places in all of Tokyo.

Hachko's statue in Shibuya Station

Hachko’s statue in Shibuya Station

Hollywood knows a good story when it hears one, and Hachiko’s was too good to pass up. Thus:  Hachi: A Dog’s Tale, A True Story of Faith, Devotion and Undying Love hit U.S. theaters in 2009. The story is true only in the Hollywood sense; produced for an American audience, it is set in a quaint New England town, and the professor is played by a very handsome Richard Gere. Joan Allen is Gere’s wife, and Jason Alexander is Carl, the train station attendant. My family rented the movie a couple of years ago and cuddled on the couch to watch it, without any notion of its Japanese roots.

Reading about Tommy started me thinking about Hachi, the movie, and then Hachiko, the dog. And then I thought about my dogs. For me, Galen is more than a companion or a best friend – she is a deeply loved member of my family, as was Gryffin before her. I’m not alone in my thinking. A 2011 Harris poll found 92% of dog owners considered their pooch part of their family.

Back to Hachi:  The movie is definitely worth watching.  Just be sure to grab a tissue… or two, or three.

Actually, grab a whole box. If you’re anything like me, you’ll need it!

***

I can still see my first dog. For six years he met me at the same place after school and convoyed me home—a service he thought up himself. A boy doesn’t forget that sort of association.

– E.B. White, author of Charlotte’s Web and Trumpet of the Swan

They think, therefore they are

Posted on by JackiSkole

One of my favorite and most difficult courses in high school was AP Social Studies with Mr. Grasso. He introduced me to philosophy, and if not for his class, I’m not sure I would have gotten through the one philosophy course I took in college. Some of his teachings have even stayed with me after all these years, like Rene Descartes’ “Cogito ergo sum“ – “I think, therefore I am.”

I came across Descartes again recently, in an unlikely place.  I was reading Patricia McConnell’s For the Love of a Dog: Understanding Emotion in You and Your Best Friend. It turns out that Descartes, the French philosopher, mathematician, and writer regarded as the Father of Modern Philosophy, was a dog killer.  Descartes believed that dogs did not have the capacity to think, that they had no emotions and no feeling, even for pain.  McConnell writes:

[Descartes] illustrated this principle by nailing live dogs to barn walls and eviscerating them. While the dogs writhed and screamed, he told the crowd of onlookers that their struggles were merely automatic movements of the body – no more felt by the dog than a clock feels the movement of its hands.

Wow.

McConnell points out that as recently as 1989, educated folks shared Descartes’ crazy ideas. One philosopher she cites argues that because dogs can’t feel anything “concern about them is unethical, because it takes time and money away from helping humans.”

Again: Wow.

I hope anyone who’s spent any time with a dog would see the outrageousness of all this. On a daily basis I see the wheels in Galen’s head spinning (though my husband will often point out that at times they spin quite slowly). Case in point:  A couple of weeks ago, I walked into our laundry room, which doubles as a mud room, and began lacing up my sneakers. Galen followed, and  upon seeing the sneakers started wagging her tail and smiling, as she presumed we were either going for a walk or heading to the backyard to play with her favorite purple ball. Unfortunately for her – and for me – my destination was the supermarket. When I told her so, her tail quit wagging and her expression turned from expectantly happy to sad, leaving me guilty and wondering, “Couldn’t I have chosen a different pair of shoes?”

Galen’s connecting a walk with my sneakers could have been more Pavlovian than intellectual, but the only explanation I have for why her tail wagging stopped and her face fell when I told her she wasn’t coming with me is that she understood.

Fortunately, anecdotes such as this – that point to an intellectual capacity in canines or a thought process of some kind – are starting to have the support of science and scientists who study human and canine brain structure and brain chemistry. It’s just too bad the science wasn’t there for Descartes. Then he could have extended his cogito to canines:  They think, therefore they are, and taken a dog or two as a pet rather than using them for sadistic experimentation.  

Galen

Galen, with her favorite ball. Despite others littering our yard, she will play with no other.

Dogs aren’t the only ones to drop the ball

Posted on by JackiSkole

Albuquerque, New Mexico has a puppy problem. In December, city shelters took in 347 abandoned or surrendered puppies. That number, of course, doesn’t include all the adult dogs that also entered the shelter that month. So what will become of all these potential pets? The shelters and rescue groups will do their best to adopt them out. But the reality is that a number of the dogs – and puppies – will be killed.

According to the city’s Animal Welfare Department, “Every year, thousands of kittens and puppies are born into short lives of suffering and death in Albuquerque because people did not spay or neuter their pets. There are simply not enough homes for the animals that are born because of this type of neglect.”

This “neglect” is certainly not unique to residents of Albuquerque; all over the country there are people who find one reason or another not to spay or neuter their pet. But the city is launching a campaign it hopes will result in fewer litters. The campaign is one part media blitz – public service announcements, banners on buses, and water bill inserts will proclaim the import of spaying and neutering – and one part action – the Animal Welfare Department will offer free and low-cost surgeries to low- and moderate-income residents.

I learned about the public service announcement via a KOAT-TV news story on the web. I love the PSA. I dislike the news story.

First, the PSA. The idea behind it: If you think an unintended pregnancy is a serious problem for you, you should know it’s just as serious for your pet – and its offspring. In one scene a good-looking young couple sits at a kitchen table with an open pregnancy test in front of them.

Woman: I can’t believe this is happening.
Man: It was your responsibility.
Woman: I should have gotten her spayed when I had the chance.
Cue the cat: It jumps onto the table and meows loudly.

In another scene a man is watching TV when the phone rings. Upon answering it he hears a male voice yell, “Your boy got my girl pregnant!” The “boy” is the handsome husky viewers see chewing a bone on the couch. “I knew I should have gotten you neutered,” the man says to his dog.

It’s a great ad: Hopefully the humor will get people watching and the message will get people acting.

Now to the news story, which you can watch here. It got my journalism hackles up for two reasons. First, the light, fun tone of the story belies the seriousness of the issue it’s covering. For example, the reporter leads into her story saying of the city’s problem, it’s “a cute one.” Second, and this is really what’s most significant, is nowhere in the news story does the reporter explain the tragic consequences of pet overpopulation. It’s not crowded shelters, as mentioned in the piece. It’s the unnecessary euthanizing of healthy animals. This fact – perhaps the most important in a story about pet overpopulation – was completely left out.

What do you think? Am I critiquing this story through an advocate’s eyes rather than a journalist’s? I don’t think so. What I do think is that the city of Albuquerque deserves kudos for its campaign. As for KOAT-TV, it dropped the ball on a very important story.