Editor: My first wish for the new year is that the dog next door, Buster, will find a home where people love him and won’t leave him alone when they go on vacation. At least six different times this year his owners have driven off in their Jaguar for a vacation leaving Buster alone with food and water for days on end. When they came home the first time I offered to watch Buster, and I also gave them the name of my dog sitter, a dog walker and told them about Sonoma Dog Camp. The second time they did it they said they saw nothing wrong with what they were doing. I complained to the police and their landlord – neither did anything.
My second wish for the new year is that wineries will stop using “aversion therapy” on their sheep. Wineries who use this practice use the UC Davis Extension method of letting their sheep gorge on grape leaves every six months and then inject them with lithium chloride to make them sick to their stomachs so they only eat the weeds and not the grape leaves and grapes. Does this practice bother anyone else? If so ask questions before you buy a bottle of wine. The option for vineyards is to only use the sheep before bud-break or use small sheep or herders.
As Gandhi said, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”
Jennifer Hainstock
Sonoma
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