Social media posts about "Hope," a dog animal advocates say was starving and dehydrated, led to a KEZI story and then to a response from the Eugene Police Department. Hope the dog, whose name is actually Zena, according to EPD, has since been put to sleep by her owner.

Animal advocates including Tamara Barnes of No Kill Lane County have complained about the way the case has been handled by animal services as well as about Lane County's policy of not filing criminal charges in animal neglect cases. A petition has been started at Change.org and a Facebook page, Justice for Hope, give details on the issue.

The KEZI story, which can be read or watched in its entirety here, starts off:

A group of local animal lovers say they saved a dog Friday after a friend saw the animal emaciated in the backyard of a home.

Gail Kiefer says when she got the call about the dog, now called Hope, she went to the house near the intersection of Bertelsen and Elmira, called animal control, and tried to track down the owner.

No one was home so she went into the backyard, took the dog, and rushed it to the Four Corners Vet Clinic where the dog got food, fluids, and medication.

The vet says he’s never seen anything like this. Kiefer says while she knows she could get in trouble for taking the dog, she couldn’t leave the dog to suffer.

The KEZI story led to a response from EPD, which talked to Zena's owner who said the elderly dog with heart disease had lost "a significant amount of weight" over the last year "but still seemed happy." That release is below.

News Release

February 24, 2015

Animal Welfare Case Information

After a local media report about a dog who was reported to possibly be neglected, there have been people concerned about the dog. Eugene Animal Welfare would like to clarify information about the dog and its situation.

On February 3 - there was a single report of a young dog that was possibly the victim of animal neglect in the Bethel area. Animal Welfare attempted to follow up on the original report five times between February 8 and February 18. An animal welfare officer went to the home on February 8, February 9, February 11, and February 15  and February 18. On February 15, the animal welfare officer took a police officer with him, and on another visit he asked roofers nearby if they could spot the dog in the backyard. They were unable to see the dog. Police officers and animal welfare officers are not legally permitted to enter private premises without probable cause, consent or a warrant.

On February 20,  a woman broke into the yard and stole the dog. She tried to leave the dog, Zena, at 1st Avenue Shelter, which can’t take dogs that have been removed from their owners without permission. Shelter staff provided water for the dog and instructed the woman to wait for Animal Welfare to respond to. The woman left the shelter with Zena prior to the arrival of the animal welfare officer and took her to a veterinarian in Santa Clara. The veterinarian also could not take the dog under that type of circumstance. The woman then called a third party, who had her take it take it to the vet at Four Corners. That third party  took the dog home after it was treated.

On February 22, Zena’s worried owner reported her stolen.  The owner had been away from home and had a dog sitter caring for the animal, which may account for not being able to get ahold of him.  A police officer was able to track the dog down and took it to an emergency vet for treatment. The veterinarian kept the dog overnight. According to the emergency vet, Zena is a 17-year-old, geriatric dog with cardiac disease and a heart murmur. Cardiac disease causes chronic wasting. According to the emergency veterinarian, who last checked the dog, she was in relatively good condition, despite her age, blindness and heart disease.

An investigation showed the owner had Zena on a healthy diet to try to put weight on and kept her mostly inside the house. The owner has had Zena since she was a puppy. He told police that over the past year, she has lost a significant amount of weight but that she still seemed happy. Yesterday, the owner made the difficult decision to humanely euthanize his well-loved pet.  

This is a difficult case to investigate as it involves people with good intentions who felt they were doing the right thing, but did not have all the information.    The pet owner was faced with difficult end-of-life decisions for his pet of 17 years. 

 

No Kill Lane County's response to the EPD release and updates are on the Facebook page. 

We all make mistakes, but The Register-Guard wins typo of the week with this one in the article "Final Frontier" from the Feb. 21 issue:

“'Microgreens will be the first cash flow boost,' Jason Waligoske said. 'That will be followed by mescaline, baby spinach, other greens."

In the print version, it appears after the jump under "Unusual varieties planned."

Indeed I would find it "unusual," and in fact a little trippy, if I were to find mescaline in my salad rather than mesclun mix.

The story continues, "'My wife is from Germany,' Jason Waligoske said. 'Some of that outlook is her desire for produce that is over there that is hardly ever seen here.'”

Recreational pot has been legalized in Oregon, so why deny fans of fresh hallucinogens and hard-to-find produce a little peyote-type snack to munch with their microgreens?

Update: Kitzhaber has resigned and Oregon has the nation's first openly bisexual governor.

Portland media has been having a field day (or rather field month or two) with Gov. John Kitzhaber's troubles and the back and forth question of whether he plans to step down or not. Now, as the story gets weirder, it's gone national with the New York Times, Christian Science Monitor and the Washington Post, among others, tracking Oregon's non-lethal version of OJ Simpson's slowspeed chase down the freeway. 

Here's the WaPo's summary of what it calls "The Long, Bizarre — and Dumbfounding — Saga of Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber."

Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber (D) had decided to resign his office Tuesday over continuing questions about his fiancee's actions as a consultant, according to the Oregonian. Then, on Wednesday, he reportedly changed his mind.

The governor is pretty clearly holding onto his career by a thread. As summarized over on GovBeat, first lady Cylvia Hayes was guiding state employees on the implementation of a new policy even as she was doing private consulting work for a group pushing the same policy. The story has taken several turns, most recently with the Oregonian, the state's largest newspaper, calling on Kitzhaber to resign. A recall effort has also been launched, as has a criminal investigation by the state attorney general. And tangentially, there's that whole matter from last year about Hayes havingmarried an 18-year-old Ethiopian to secure a green card for him in exchange for $5,000. She neglected to inform the governor of this before the media unearthed it.

In its article, "Love and Politics Collide as Scandals Plague Oregon’s Fourth-Term Governor," the NYT kicks off with more on the enviro aspect of the Hayes saga and the fact Kitzhaber is a long-term governor:

The inquiries stem from contracting work that Ms. Hayes, 47, a clean-energy consultant, performed and was paid for while living with the governor and advising him on clean-energy issues. Those issues have long been a priority of Mr. Kitzhaber’s administration, but now they are bound up in, and perhaps undermined by, questions of whether love and politics got too cozy in the governor’s mansion.

But the deeper trouble is that after 12 years in office, the governor’s enemies and critics — and erstwhile supporters, who think he has simply stayed in office too long — have grown like compound interest over everything from his laid-back management style to the disastrous rollout of the state health insurance website, which never fully worked and cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

Today's latest was the news that Secretary of State Kate Brown — who would take the governor's seat should Kitz step down — was rushing back from Washington DC, leading politcos to speculate he was ready to leave. Before her plane landed, Kitzhaber announced he was in fact not stepping down.

Here is Brown's press release in response and you can hear more about it via KLCC.

As the Christian Science Monitor reports, fellow Dems such as state Treasurer Ted Wheeler are calling for Kitz to step down. 

Willamette Week, which broke the Hayes saga originally, is now saying Kitzhaber's office sought to destroy thousands of documents.

The Oregonian, which has been birddogging the issue as well is now providing live updates. 

Anyone taking bets on which late night and news-satire or commentary shows Oregon will be on tonight? This almost beats the attack owls.

Video of law enforcement officers beating a Ducks game attendee with police batons was posted on Facebook by Kim Bliss and is swiftly making the social media rounds. The footage from the game in Santa Clara, California is disturbing particularly in view of the recent attention to police brutality and overzealous use of force the Eric Garner and Michael Brown cases have wrought.

Those cases of course involve white officers shooting and killing unarmed black men, and minorities are disproportionately affected by police brutality — despite what Bill O'Reilly might think — and that's quite different from beating a fan at a Ducks game, but perhaps an incident like this helps bring the discussion of excessive use of force to a larger white population who think "that wouldn't happen to me." 

Bliss writes in her post, which you can see below with the video, that the man getting hit with the batons "was there with his son and tried to go down the wrong pathway" and says the police had a Taser out right before she began to record. 

Update: The Facebook post has been taken down, but Deadspin has the video here.  The sports news site says it has confirmed with the Santa Clara Police Department that its officers were involved.

Still image from the video.

"I would do it again — as soon as I get this bag of chips open."

"What's queefing?"

Grandmas, weed and Cards Against Humanity

"I don't feel as high as they look to me."

And you complained about Meghan Trainor's "All About that Bass" for its lack of feminism and because it made the skinny girls feel bad? Well how do you like it now that it's an anthem for Darth Vader and the Empire?