Month: July 2025

I send out this DawnWatch alert having just received the profoundly disappointing news that the owner of Ryder, the carriage horse who collapsed and then later died, has been cleared of animal cruelty charges. We have better news regarding owls, with a Los Angeles Times front-page story letting us know, “An owl-culling plan hits a roadblock.” That paper has also covered the impact of ICE raids on the Los Angeles pet shelter crisis. And media coverage from New York, including that in the Daily News, points to a shelter population crisis causing the Animal Control Center to close its door to new intakes.

Angelenos,
If you are as disappointed as I was to see a fluff piece on the Pamplona bull run in today’s Los Angeles Times, you may wish to weigh in. Titled, " Just a small stampede of women running with the bulls at famed Pamplona festival" the article, by Miguel Oses and Suman Naishadham, appears on page A4.

Sadly, the biggest animal news of the last week, likely to affect the most animals, is a lawsuit filed by the Trump administration against the state of California, attempting to overturn the animal welfare laws based on Prop 12 (which the Biden administration unsuccessfully attempted to overturn) blaming them for the high cost of eggs nationally. In happier legal news we saw PETA sue the American Kennel Club for the harm done for French Bulldogs, a New York legislator is attempting to ban the sale of captive birds as pets, and the courts have denied a new trial for Joe Exotic, the star of Tiger King. I will also share, below, a new Washington Post story on the plight of immigrants working in the horse racing industry.

I hope you and all your loved ones of every species had a safe and happy 4th. We had cause...