6:44 p.m.
Despite the controversy, fired veterinarian Kristen Lindsey does have supporters in Washington County.
Shannon Stoddard stopped by the Washington Animal Clinic with balloons and a thank you note.
“She’s amazing. She’s caring,” Stoddard said. “She’s a good vet, so maybe her bad choice of posting something on Facebook was not good. But I don’t think she should be judged for it.”
Washington County Resident Preston Northrup said “all these people in the cities just don’t understand what goes on in the country and they get in an uproar. They ought to just mind their own business.”
But even if you think it’s okay that she killed this cat, you will have to admit that she showed astonishingly poor judgment posting it on social media while simultaneously identifying herself as a veterinarian. There’s a reason it’s called, “shoot, shovel, and shut up”.
The very idea that she “shouldn’t be judged” for this astonishingly poor judgment is beyond the realm of any logic. Poor judgment is EXACTLY what she should be judged for – and if you would actually allow this woman to practice medicine on your animal, then your judgment is extraordinarily poor as well.
“She’s amazing. She’s caring,” Stoddard said. “She’s a good vet, so maybe her bad choice of posting something on Facebook was not good. But I don’t think she should be judged for it.”
So in this person’s opinion it wasn’t the murdering of the cat that was a bad choice; it was the posting on Facebook that was a bad choice.
Acknowledging how horrible this episode is, what’s also fascinating is the exhibitionism displayed & the total lack of conscience about what she did — a completely amoral action.
Yesterday in the very early morning, a half-hour north of Seattle, a semi overturned as it was transitioning from one highway to another. It was carrying a load of 14 million bees. The backup lasted for hours and stretched for miles.
We drove right by the accident in the late morning, going in the opposite direction. It was a chaotic and disquieting scene. All day I thought about the many bees who must have been killed — all those little lives, snuffed out.
Twitter dubbed the accident #beenado and had a field day with bee-catastrophe jokes, complete with compilations of the best tweets, etc.
But it turned out that not only had many bees been crushed in the accident . . . even more of them were sprayed with foam and/or water to kill them, by firefighters who were getting stung. An estimated 10 million bees were killed in all.
And these were not free-roaming bees. They were migrant worker bees, which Bob Redmond, owner of Urban Bee Company, a local business, yesterday called “the backbone of our agricultural system.”
Redmond commented at some length on Facebook about the many requests he had gotten to “save the bees.” His very thoughtful, angry post shows the much larger context for what happened yesterday. Toward the end, his language echoes that of the No Kill movement:
“[T]he eventual response — save a few, and kill the rest — is woefully wrong. The real response —the one which every one of us can do right now: is to take action to develop our local habitats and economies. Take action to re-establish that ‘home’ that was once so casually dismissed, but which is harder to find in the face of monocropped, monochromatic, strip-mall, box store, tasteless culture and agriculture.
“Plant flowers, support local farmers and merchants. Try to say no to the greed that permeates everything, and embrace the good that permeates everything. Is that preachy? Yes, and so what. The alternative could not be more clear, handed down like an Old Testament plague, and sprayed with foam.
“Let’s get the message and transform ourselves. That will save some bees.”
Changing the subject drastically, love the artwork you post at heading of Open Threads, esp. today’s photo of Gustave Caillebotte & his dog Berger (Shepherd, or “Shep”). Used to teach Art History in a former life — did you know Caillebotte was an important collector as well as an artist & participated in some of the historic Impressionist Exhibitions? But I didn’t know about his dog!
TY Marianna. I know basically nothing about art but try to keep my eyes peeled for animal related photos and other art that I think people will enjoy. Please feel welcome – anyone – to send me a photo if you come across something you think would be good.
https://www.avma.org/News/JAVMANews/pages/150401a.aspx
Interesting report called Unmasking the Shelter Dog, some good ideas on training and enrichment for shelter dogs to help them get adopted and stay in their new home.
Also data on why dogs are surrendered to shelters.
Going back to the case of Dr. Lindsey — if she had posted a photo of herself beside a deer or holding up a big fish we wouldn’t be so upset, would we? Part of this has to do with cats having really arrived as companion animals — this is such socially deviant behavior. Our vet in FL treated birds & then went out & hunted doves — quite a paradox. There are so many issues packed into this case.
Agreed. There’s a gender issue too, I think. Male hunters have had pictures taken of themselves beside their dead prey for more than a hundred years. It’s only recently that we have young, pretty, female hunters taking selfies after killing giraffes and other large wild animals. Those images are repellant in part, I think, because our expectations of women are different from those we have of men — the images make us think about the issue of killing in a way we’re less likely to do when men take these kinds of pictures. (Although thankfully, that seems to be changing.) In the case of this Texas vet, she has violated two norms at the same time: women are supposed to be compassionate, not cruel, and it’s only okay to kill wild animals, not domestic ones.
I agree Karen that there is definitely a gender bias there for the reasons you mentioned. And with you Marianna about the companion animal aspect. I just saw a post this morning of a friend’s son posing with a turkey be shot and that’s considered normal and a healthy part of growing up as a boy. So there are several issues that make this woman’s post particularly noteworthy to people. It’s that she’s a woman, a veterinarian and people assume that vets love animals (in my experience they don’t all really love or respect animals), the victim was a cat (and people became more upset when they found out he was an owned cat versus a feral because ferals still suffer stigma), the manner in which she killed him was inhumane (i saw some people argue that if she wanted to get rid of him she should have live trapped him and use euthanasia solution to kill him since she is a vet. They didn’t seem to question whether she should have just left him alone), and that she bragged so shamelessly on Facebook. So there are differences between her case and people like my friend’s son’s picture that gets people angry but there is also hypocrisy there. I don’t eat animals so I am personally saddened by the pictures of hunters with their kills but most people who eat meat have no qualms about letting someone out of sight kill the animals they eat as long as they are animals our culture has deemed appropriate to eat (so no horses, dogs, or cats). You both brought up some good points.
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I, too, am not a meat eater and don’t like to see pictures of hunters with their trophies. I can understand why someone would hunt deer if they used that to feed their families (in my area, they do yearly culls of deer because the population quickly gets out of hand) but many donate their kill to the local food banks. I don’t like it, but I get it.
However, this woman bragged shamelessly on a social media site, made some very disparaging remarks about feral cats and then posted in an arrogant way with her “kill”. To me, this shows sociopathic tendencies and she probably would work well as a vet in a high kill facility.
And all those who think we city folk just don’t get that that’s how things are done in the country, well I have more thoughts for them. And all of those who support this woman are as bad as she is.
Just tragic, especially for the cat and those who loved him.
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Exactly, db. I was thinking that she’s made herself unemployable (as a vet), but then there are places like MAS who would welcome her with open arms and talk all day long about how competent and caring she is, never mind that she’s manifesting sociopathic behaviors.
There are rumors, btw, that this poor cat was first trapped in a leg hold trap set out on the property. One of his hind legs does appear bloodied in the photo. Now his poor owners have nothing but painful memories of their little boy. I wonder if she ever gives any thought to the human pain she caused with her happy go lucky slaughter?
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People eat fish. Even the woman who posted the picture of her posing next to the giraffe she killed was donating the meat to locals. This is equivalent to a trophy hunt at best. And that is a stretch.
This was a cat. She wasn’t planing on eating him. She set a bear trap out to get him before she shot him in the head. You can see where one of his back paws was shredded. There are laws against those and hunting as a whole in urban settings. What if a child had wondered over there and stepped on that?
And there is very strong evidence this was someone’s pet. Not just a “stray Tom”. There is a link posted to a FB page with the evidence of that further up the comments.
She had no way of knowing if that cat was a pet or not. She could have killed one of her client’s pets for all she knew.
The sheriff is saying the vet hasn’t been arrested because his office hasn’t yet determined if the photo is real.
A sad story to be sure. Again, there is a war on cats. They are treated as second class pets, too often regarded as vermin, with animal shelters leading the way by killing them en masse and/or dumping them back on the streets without trying to find their owners or get them new ones if they need it. Shelters are the very institutions that should be protecting cats from harm and yet they are the perpetrators of harm and setting the worst example for the public. Can you imagine the pain of losing your cat, having a so-called shelter pick him up then dump him back on the street only to be killed by one of these psychos?
I posted on the former employer’s Facebook page thanking them for taking swift action and someone responded that the staff had known about the post for at least two days and didn’t do anything about it until the pay went viral. So just reaffirms my experience that not all vets really like animals. They like owned animals by paying clients but not necessarily animals as a group.
Ugh. Until the *post* went viral. I always think i edit so well.
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Changing subjects from cat to dogs…… Big dogs. A judge in Oregon has ordered all Tibetan Mastiffs living next door to the plaintiffs debarked plus payment of $240 thousand dollars paid to the plaintiffs. Defendants claim that these neighbors antagonize the dogs to make them bark. Regardless, debarking is cruel and outlawed in some states. The judge should have ordered the dogs be moved to another location IMHO.
They are LGDs (and yes, regardless of what the ATMA insists, Tibetan Mastiffs are entirely capable of doing LGD work), the only reason they’d have been barking “constantly” is if something was antagonizing them. When the reporters came out to do the reports on the farm they had to antagonize the dogs to get them to bark, they weren’t “just barking constantly”. Never mind that LGDs are protected by law in most areas because they’re vital to keeping away predators. And there HAVE been big cat sightings in that immediate area. The area is zoned to allow livestock and LGDs. Moving the dogs to another location wouldn’t have solved the problem because then the defendants would have started losing livestock again, which is what drove them to LGDs in the first place.
Just like de-barking isn’t going to solve the problem for the same reason. Basically the neighbors are fighting to have the defendants LIVESTOCK killed.
I know it hurts my heart to think about all those bees killed. I am trying to do more this year to plant bee friendly plants but individual people’s yards can’t make up for the vast monoculture that affects bee’s ability to find food. I wish i could have a hive of my own. Not to get honey but just because i really like social insects and bees are awesome.
This is the only link I can find to the letter itself. It shows Munoz wrote it, and no real reason was given for firing him. The union is challenging his termination
Update:
6:44 p.m.
Despite the controversy, fired veterinarian Kristen Lindsey does have supporters in Washington County.
Shannon Stoddard stopped by the Washington Animal Clinic with balloons and a thank you note.
“She’s amazing. She’s caring,” Stoddard said. “She’s a good vet, so maybe her bad choice of posting something on Facebook was not good. But I don’t think she should be judged for it.”
Washington County Resident Preston Northrup said “all these people in the cities just don’t understand what goes on in the country and they get in an uproar. They ought to just mind their own business.”
http://www.kbtx.com/home/headlines/Veterinarian-Brags-About-Killing-Cat-with-Bow-and-Arrow–300293461.html
There will always be people who think it’s okay to kill stray animals. Or to beat a child with a belt. Or to transport puppies on the roof of a minivan (http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/caged-puppies-car-roof-trigger-dozens-911-calls-30413192).
That’s why we have laws.
But even if you think it’s okay that she killed this cat, you will have to admit that she showed astonishingly poor judgment posting it on social media while simultaneously identifying herself as a veterinarian. There’s a reason it’s called, “shoot, shovel, and shut up”.
The very idea that she “shouldn’t be judged” for this astonishingly poor judgment is beyond the realm of any logic. Poor judgment is EXACTLY what she should be judged for – and if you would actually allow this woman to practice medicine on your animal, then your judgment is extraordinarily poor as well.
This page is to bring justice for the cat who was murdered with a bow by Kristen Lindsey, DVM.
https://www.facebook.com/JusticeforTiger?fref=nf
“She’s amazing. She’s caring,” Stoddard said. “She’s a good vet, so maybe her bad choice of posting something on Facebook was not good. But I don’t think she should be judged for it.”
So in this person’s opinion it wasn’t the murdering of the cat that was a bad choice; it was the posting on Facebook that was a bad choice.
Acknowledging how horrible this episode is, what’s also fascinating is the exhibitionism displayed & the total lack of conscience about what she did — a completely amoral action.
Here’s a blog post from Best Friends about the elimination of stray holds for cats in Arizona. Looks like it passed? Or is it only partly passed?
http://blogs.bestfriends.org/index.php/2015/04/17/get-out-of-jail-free-card-for-cats-passed-by-arizona-legislature/?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=blog
I haven’t read the linked post but AFAIK, the bill passed the legislature and it’s up to the governor to sign it or not.
Yesterday in the very early morning, a half-hour north of Seattle, a semi overturned as it was transitioning from one highway to another. It was carrying a load of 14 million bees. The backup lasted for hours and stretched for miles.
We drove right by the accident in the late morning, going in the opposite direction. It was a chaotic and disquieting scene. All day I thought about the many bees who must have been killed — all those little lives, snuffed out.
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/rolled-semi-spills-load-of-bees-at-the-i-5-and-i-405-interchange/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=article_left
Twitter dubbed the accident #beenado and had a field day with bee-catastrophe jokes, complete with compilations of the best tweets, etc.
But it turned out that not only had many bees been crushed in the accident . . . even more of them were sprayed with foam and/or water to kill them, by firefighters who were getting stung. An estimated 10 million bees were killed in all.
And these were not free-roaming bees. They were migrant worker bees, which Bob Redmond, owner of Urban Bee Company, a local business, yesterday called “the backbone of our agricultural system.”
Redmond commented at some length on Facebook about the many requests he had gotten to “save the bees.” His very thoughtful, angry post shows the much larger context for what happened yesterday. Toward the end, his language echoes that of the No Kill movement:
“[T]he eventual response — save a few, and kill the rest — is woefully wrong. The real response —the one which every one of us can do right now: is to take action to develop our local habitats and economies. Take action to re-establish that ‘home’ that was once so casually dismissed, but which is harder to find in the face of monocropped, monochromatic, strip-mall, box store, tasteless culture and agriculture.
“Plant flowers, support local farmers and merchants. Try to say no to the greed that permeates everything, and embrace the good that permeates everything. Is that preachy? Yes, and so what. The alternative could not be more clear, handed down like an Old Testament plague, and sprayed with foam.
“Let’s get the message and transform ourselves. That will save some bees.”
https://www.facebook.com/urbanbee/posts/943550822343156
Changing the subject drastically, love the artwork you post at heading of Open Threads, esp. today’s photo of Gustave Caillebotte & his dog Berger (Shepherd, or “Shep”). Used to teach Art History in a former life — did you know Caillebotte was an important collector as well as an artist & participated in some of the historic Impressionist Exhibitions? But I didn’t know about his dog!
TY Marianna. I know basically nothing about art but try to keep my eyes peeled for animal related photos and other art that I think people will enjoy. Please feel welcome – anyone – to send me a photo if you come across something you think would be good.
https://www.avma.org/News/JAVMANews/pages/150401a.aspx
Interesting report called Unmasking the Shelter Dog, some good ideas on training and enrichment for shelter dogs to help them get adopted and stay in their new home.
Also data on why dogs are surrendered to shelters.
Going back to the case of Dr. Lindsey — if she had posted a photo of herself beside a deer or holding up a big fish we wouldn’t be so upset, would we? Part of this has to do with cats having really arrived as companion animals — this is such socially deviant behavior. Our vet in FL treated birds & then went out & hunted doves — quite a paradox. There are so many issues packed into this case.
Agreed. There’s a gender issue too, I think. Male hunters have had pictures taken of themselves beside their dead prey for more than a hundred years. It’s only recently that we have young, pretty, female hunters taking selfies after killing giraffes and other large wild animals. Those images are repellant in part, I think, because our expectations of women are different from those we have of men — the images make us think about the issue of killing in a way we’re less likely to do when men take these kinds of pictures. (Although thankfully, that seems to be changing.) In the case of this Texas vet, she has violated two norms at the same time: women are supposed to be compassionate, not cruel, and it’s only okay to kill wild animals, not domestic ones.
I agree Karen that there is definitely a gender bias there for the reasons you mentioned. And with you Marianna about the companion animal aspect. I just saw a post this morning of a friend’s son posing with a turkey be shot and that’s considered normal and a healthy part of growing up as a boy. So there are several issues that make this woman’s post particularly noteworthy to people. It’s that she’s a woman, a veterinarian and people assume that vets love animals (in my experience they don’t all really love or respect animals), the victim was a cat (and people became more upset when they found out he was an owned cat versus a feral because ferals still suffer stigma), the manner in which she killed him was inhumane (i saw some people argue that if she wanted to get rid of him she should have live trapped him and use euthanasia solution to kill him since she is a vet. They didn’t seem to question whether she should have just left him alone), and that she bragged so shamelessly on Facebook. So there are differences between her case and people like my friend’s son’s picture that gets people angry but there is also hypocrisy there. I don’t eat animals so I am personally saddened by the pictures of hunters with their kills but most people who eat meat have no qualms about letting someone out of sight kill the animals they eat as long as they are animals our culture has deemed appropriate to eat (so no horses, dogs, or cats). You both brought up some good points.
I, too, am not a meat eater and don’t like to see pictures of hunters with their trophies. I can understand why someone would hunt deer if they used that to feed their families (in my area, they do yearly culls of deer because the population quickly gets out of hand) but many donate their kill to the local food banks. I don’t like it, but I get it.
However, this woman bragged shamelessly on a social media site, made some very disparaging remarks about feral cats and then posted in an arrogant way with her “kill”. To me, this shows sociopathic tendencies and she probably would work well as a vet in a high kill facility.
And all those who think we city folk just don’t get that that’s how things are done in the country, well I have more thoughts for them. And all of those who support this woman are as bad as she is.
Just tragic, especially for the cat and those who loved him.
Exactly, db. I was thinking that she’s made herself unemployable (as a vet), but then there are places like MAS who would welcome her with open arms and talk all day long about how competent and caring she is, never mind that she’s manifesting sociopathic behaviors.
There are rumors, btw, that this poor cat was first trapped in a leg hold trap set out on the property. One of his hind legs does appear bloodied in the photo. Now his poor owners have nothing but painful memories of their little boy. I wonder if she ever gives any thought to the human pain she caused with her happy go lucky slaughter?
People eat fish. Even the woman who posted the picture of her posing next to the giraffe she killed was donating the meat to locals. This is equivalent to a trophy hunt at best. And that is a stretch.
This was a cat. She wasn’t planing on eating him. She set a bear trap out to get him before she shot him in the head. You can see where one of his back paws was shredded. There are laws against those and hunting as a whole in urban settings. What if a child had wondered over there and stepped on that?
And there is very strong evidence this was someone’s pet. Not just a “stray Tom”. There is a link posted to a FB page with the evidence of that further up the comments.
She had no way of knowing if that cat was a pet or not. She could have killed one of her client’s pets for all she knew.
Just saw this on Twitter:
http://www.seattlepi.com/news/texas/article/Texas-veterinarian-fired-being-investigated-for-6208622.php
The sheriff is saying the vet hasn’t been arrested because his office hasn’t yet determined if the photo is real.
A sad story to be sure. Again, there is a war on cats. They are treated as second class pets, too often regarded as vermin, with animal shelters leading the way by killing them en masse and/or dumping them back on the streets without trying to find their owners or get them new ones if they need it. Shelters are the very institutions that should be protecting cats from harm and yet they are the perpetrators of harm and setting the worst example for the public. Can you imagine the pain of losing your cat, having a so-called shelter pick him up then dump him back on the street only to be killed by one of these psychos?
It seems the sheriff has determined that the cat killed was in fact owned and reported missing.
http://www.kbtx.com/home/headlines/Veterinarian-Brags-About-Killing-Cat-with-Bow-and-Arrow–300293461.html
I posted on the former employer’s Facebook page thanking them for taking swift action and someone responded that the staff had known about the post for at least two days and didn’t do anything about it until the pay went viral. So just reaffirms my experience that not all vets really like animals. They like owned animals by paying clients but not necessarily animals as a group.
Ugh. Until the *post* went viral. I always think i edit so well.
Changing subjects from cat to dogs…… Big dogs. A judge in Oregon has ordered all Tibetan Mastiffs living next door to the plaintiffs debarked plus payment of $240 thousand dollars paid to the plaintiffs. Defendants claim that these neighbors antagonize the dogs to make them bark. Regardless, debarking is cruel and outlawed in some states. The judge should have ordered the dogs be moved to another location IMHO.
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/couple-awarded-settlement-decade-dogs-barking-30412128
They are LGDs (and yes, regardless of what the ATMA insists, Tibetan Mastiffs are entirely capable of doing LGD work), the only reason they’d have been barking “constantly” is if something was antagonizing them. When the reporters came out to do the reports on the farm they had to antagonize the dogs to get them to bark, they weren’t “just barking constantly”. Never mind that LGDs are protected by law in most areas because they’re vital to keeping away predators. And there HAVE been big cat sightings in that immediate area. The area is zoned to allow livestock and LGDs. Moving the dogs to another location wouldn’t have solved the problem because then the defendants would have started losing livestock again, which is what drove them to LGDs in the first place.
Just like de-barking isn’t going to solve the problem for the same reason. Basically the neighbors are fighting to have the defendants LIVESTOCK killed.
Those poor bees. At least there are people who care about them.
I know it hurts my heart to think about all those bees killed. I am trying to do more this year to plant bee friendly plants but individual people’s yards can’t make up for the vast monoculture that affects bee’s ability to find food. I wish i could have a hive of my own. Not to get honey but just because i really like social insects and bees are awesome.
Honesty in cat advertising:
http://gothamist.com/2015/04/20/cat_cranky.php
Wonder if it worked . . .
But no one WANTS to kill, right?!
http://money.cnn.com/interactive/pf/pet-fines/
And another case to further the point of the article I posted above:
http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/20/pf/animal-control-fines/
Audit finds that NYC animal shelters are unsafe and poorly operated: http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Animal-Shelters-Harming-Cats-and-Dogs-Comptroller-300599121.html
This link might answer some questions regarding the H3N2 strain of canine influenza making the news in the Mid-West.
http://news.vin.com/VINNews.aspx?articleId=36524
Safety first!
http://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/national-international/Sea-Lion-Pup-Waddles-Away-From-Water-Near-Fort-Bragg-Gets-Ride-Back-to-Sea-300961331.html
Memphis. Again.
http://www.myfoxmemphis.com/story/28874482/animal-shelter-says-euthanizing-dog-was-accident
Miami-Dade fires a whistle blower:
http://www.examiner.com/article/miami-dade-animal-shelter-faces-animal-cruelty-allegations-fires-whistleblower?hc_location=ufi
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/miami-dade-animal-services-whistleblower-offers-eyewitness-testimony-to-inhumane-mass-killing-at-shelter-113352514.html?hc_location=ufi
https://www.facebook.com/TheHiddenTruthBehindTheBars?hc_location=ufi
This is the only link I can find to the letter itself. It shows Munoz wrote it, and no real reason was given for firing him. The union is challenging his termination
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10204315042859051&set=gm.969291949769904
A dog was left inside of an Animal Control truck for five days without food or water in Chicago:
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2015/04/24/dog-left-in-animal-control-van-for-days/
They are going to investigate themselves on the matter.
This article has more details about the incident:
http://abc7chicago.com/680593/
They’re trying to skirt around how long she was left there. And of course, no charges will be filed.
If anyone else had done that, they would be jailed. And rightfully so.
So how is that two million dollar overhaul working out for them? If this is them improved, what kind of horrors did they pull off before?