KNBC Update on Gina Price and Rebel Ridge

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notorious puppy scum Gina Price

An early story that Los Angeles television station KNBC did on Gina Price of Rebel Ridge Kennels turned out to be a crucial piece of evidence in her trial.

Garcia: Our investigation unknowingly provided other pieces of the puzzle, like how many dogs she was selling.

In the footage, Gina Price admits to selling 280 puppies in one year, in contrast to her tax returns showing a negative income for the same year.


Price: Last year I sold 280 some puppies.

Garcia: At $1,600 each, that would mean she pulled in nearly half a million dollars in 2005. Yet according to this federal indictment, prosecutors say Price filed tax returns claiming negative taxable income for that year and the next. Gina Price refused to take the stand, but the jury still heard from her when prosecutors subpoenaed our investigation and played it for the jury.

Anna Garcia, KNBC reporter, has been covering the story since it first broke. In this story, she recaps the trial, and includes interviews with victim Richard Sproul and witness for the prosecution Attorney John Hoffman, of Wrong Puppy Fame.

Here’s the link to the full story, with video —

http://www.knbc.com/news/17314363/detail.html

I personally think that John deserves some sort of Frenchie Friend of the Year award. He’s been a tireless champion for our breed — and he doesn’t even own one!

Here you go, John — it’s the first annual “You Deserve a Frenchie Lick for Being Awesome” Award.

Frenchie with a candle fetish & Nell demands a retraction

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Veterinary Pet Insurance Announces First Winner in Monthly Contest Highlighting Bizarre Pet Accidents

from The Sun Herald —

BREA, Calif., Aug. 26 — Most people’s diets contain too much sugar. But for Sugar, the Jack Russell terrier, the problem was too much turtle. After meeting a wild turtle in the back yard, Sugar decided to have her new friend for dinner. Sugar’s method for disposing of the turtle’s shell — eating it — left her with a small piece of the shell lodged in her nasal cavity. After weeks of respiratory difficulty and inconclusive X-rays, veterinarians performed surgery and found the piece of shell, which Sugar’s owner, Ginger Reynolds, now has in a small glass tube.

“She started having trouble after eating the turtle, but we really didn’t think that part of the shell was stuck in her nose!” said Reynolds. “The veterinarians had never seen anything like it, and they did an amazing job given the unusual circumstances. Thanks to them Sugar is back to normal.”

Reynolds’ claim for Sugar’s surgery was one of more than 80,000 claims received in the month of July by Veterinary Pet Insurance (VPI), the nation’s oldest and largest provider of pet health insurance. A veterinarian’s note included with the claim caught the attention of VPI’s claims department: “Sugar was caught red-pawed eating a turtle.” The claim was considered among other unusual medical claims submitted in July and, at the end of the month, VPI employees voted Sugar’s claim the most bizarre of the bunch.

Though undeniably unique, Sugar’s claim was not without competition. Honorable mentions included Louie, a one-year-old French bulldog who ingested more than 50 tea light candles; Ember, a six-year-old mixed breed dog who chased and caught her own tail, breaking it in several places; Bubba, a two-year-old Boston terrier who was shut into a recliner; and Oakley, a ten-month-old Labrador who ate a box of disposable razors. All of the pets with a claim considered for the distinction have fully recovered and received insurance reimbursement for eligible treatment costs.

50 tea lights? Even Bunny couldn’t eat 50 of them. 20 maybe, but not 50 – although she did eat a clock radio on the weekend.

And now, a statement from Ms. Penelope —

Penelope would like me to point that she is not, contrary to my previous post, cranky. In fact, she’s merely discomfited by the fact that something the size and shape of a cantaloupe is lodged underneath her rib cage.

Point taken, Ms. P, and my apologies.


Penelope says “You carry this around all day and see how rainbows and butterflies you’d be feeling”.

School Kids Raise Money for Frenchie With Cancer

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French Bulldog School Counselor Recovers from Cancer

Sigmund Frog is a school counselor at Patton Elementary school in Austin, Texas. Unlike most school counselors, Sigmund works for a rather unusual pay scale — belly rubs and cookies.

Sigmund – better known as ‘Sig’ – is a brindle French Bulldog belonging to school counselor Kathy Moore. Moore discovered that kids related to her better when she brought Sig along to counseling sessions, and he’s been accompanying her to school ever since. Now, it would be unthinkable for kids to not see Sig along side Linda. In fact, some of them feel he’s a bigger part of their counseling than Moore is.

“The dog makes us happy because it, like, snuggles with us,” Spencer says.

“Good boy, Siggie,” says a student.

“Sig especially has a way of knowing when a child is really in need, and he will zero in on them,” Moore continues.

When Sigmund was diagnosed with cancer – a disease that can be prohibitively expensive to treat in dogs – the kids of Patton Elementary school insisting on helping to pay for his chemo treatments. Owner Moore was initially reluctant to accept their help, but finally relented —

“It gives the kids a stake in Sigmund getting well,” Moore says.

“I didn’t realize how important it was for them to feel like they were helping him,” Moore says.

Read the full article here.

It’s now four months later, and the kids at Patton Elementary are back at school – and so is Sigmund, his cancer almost beaten, and his chemo treatments almost over.

“We got great news that there were no reactive lymph nodes,” said Moore.  “That means there are no indications of more cancer.”

A summer long chemotherapy program helped, but Sig’s liver reacted poorly to the drugs. So, doctors tried again with a new chemo regimen and the dog responded well. There are still a couple of sessions left, but things are looking up, and Sig’s counseling appointment book is filling up.

Read the full second story here.

The students at Patton have their counselor back — and best of all, they have Sig’s shoulder to cry on, and his ear to whisper in.

His first client of the new school year is a child named Destiny. Destiny Arriaga made her way to the counselor’s office with the aid of a cane. She is blind, and though children at Patton are supportive and helpful, making one’s way in a school full of sighted kids has its pitfalls. So, Destiny has regular visits with Moore, and more to the point, with Sig.

“I love him, said Destiny. “He snuggles with me.”

Moore watches child and dog delight in each other.

Here are the two KXAN videos of Sig’s story — the first from May, and the second just released. After the jump, as the videos start playing automatically.

Read more →

Tula might possibly explode

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Poor Tula — I’m afraid if she gets any bigger, she might just possibly explode. She’s always been a petite girl, at about 18 pounds, so it’s fairly shocking to see her go from her normal lithe, active self to this, in under two months.

Tula is waay pregnant

And of course, what happens when way pregnant girls with big, big bellies lie on their backs?

Why they get stuck, of course.

Stuck!

Penelope continues to be about as unthrilled as it is possible for a dog to be about this entire experience. We caught her sending away for a copy of “Baby NOT on Board” the other night. I think she’s dropping us a hint.

Not. Happy.

Delilah thinks all the fuss is just borrr-ing, especially since her diet means she’s not getting any extra snackin’ time fall out (she’s rather voluptuous, I’m afraid).  Tessa, of course, is so sick of anything to do with puppies or pregnancy that she’s decided the best approach to take is studious avoidance (read: extra naps).

Delilah is bored

Ten days and change to go for Tula, and two weeks and change for Penelope… the count down continues.

Penelope Eats a Muffin

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Well, here we are coming up on week two of Penelope’s “I ain’t eatin’ that” hunger strike.

We had a “woo hoo” moment where she agreed to eat a leftover can of Prescription Diet A/D that I had sitting around from when Barb sent Bunny to live with us (she had her own “not eating that” phase during her pregnancy. Too bad it didn’t extend to electronics). Unfortunately, A/D isn’t ideal as a food for pregnant girls, and even if it was, Nell had decided by the next morning that she no longer liked that stinky food in can, and could she just have a glass of mineral water with lemon (no ice), puh-leeze?

Sigh, redux.

She ate some raw, de boned chicken here and there over the weekend, but not enough to make me confident she was getting enough nutrition, and raw boneless chicken on its own isn’t enough to sustain healthy growth in puppies.

Cait suggested a sort of dog food muffin that reminds me of the baked results you get from Essex Cottage Farms dog food mix. Since there are no suppliers of either or ECF food nearby (read: within a two hour drive), I decided to look for home made dog food muffin recipes.

The most common one I found was a fairly simple recipe in which you simply added a pound of ground chicken to a commercial corn meal muffin mix. Well, that sounded fairly promising – after all, Penelope was willing to eat those zuchinni banana muffins last week. I don’t like the idea of using a mix, however — I won’t bake for myself from a mix, so I certainly won’t do it for my dog, either. Too much sugar, too much hydrogenated oil, and too little control over the ingredients.

Instead, I used the following recipe of my own, which I feel is a healthier alternative, and which I’m calling —

Fussy Frenchie Meaty Muffins

Ingredients:

* 1/4 cup canola oil
* 2 tablespoons honey
* 2 large eggs
* 2/3 cup natural yogurt
* 1/2 cup yellow corn meal
* 1  1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
* 1 tsp. baking soda
* 1/8 tsp. kosher salt

* 1 cored, pureed red apple, seeds removed
* 1/2 of a medium sized zucchini, grated
* 2 cups ground chicken (we ground necks, bone included, and boneless thigh meat)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Spray two medium sized cupcake or muffin trays
2. Stir together dry ingredients in large mixing bowl. Beat together wet ingredients except for apple, zucchini and chicken in separate bowl. Fold wet into dry using a wooden spoon. Don’t over mix. Add chicken, apple and zucchini.
3. Drop two tablespoons of batter into each muffin cup. Don’t over fill. Bake 20  minutes, or until golden brown. Makes roughly 24 – 36 muffins.

So far, so good — Penelope loved hers, Tula reacted to them like they were little golden chunks of doggie crack, and the rest of the dogs looked so sad that they each got a 1/4 muffin with their dinner.

These would probably make nice little bait treats, by the way — and they smell quite tasty.