Foxhounds kill a family cat and the hunt master tried to cover it up

NEWS AND COMMENT-UK: What I take from the story i.e. the overview, the big picture, is that this hunt master whose name is John Sampson, tried to hide the fact that his foxhounds had killed a family pet. That was his initial, instinctive behaviour which is telling, but it was videoed, as often is the case nowadays, and he was found out.

Foxhounds kill a family cat and the hunt master tried to hide it. Screenshot from video captured at the time by a neighbour.

John Sampson and his son Edward were on horseback exercising a pack of about 21 foxhounds in fields close to the estate of Trafalgar Fields, Madron, Penzance, UK. We are told by the Metro website that about six dogs broke free from the main pack. They entered a cul-de-sac on the estate where they chased and mauled to death a black tortoiseshell cat. The cat is described as black in the press but that is incorrect.

The owner of the cat was Carly Jose. Her neighbour, Charlie Knight, happened to be in the vicinity and was able to video the entire event. At the time, another neighbour, Peter Nicholls, spoke to Edward Sampson. 

RELATED: Foxhounds on an alleged illegal Christmas Eve foxhunt tore a seven-month-old kitten to pieces.

Nicholls was in bed watching TV when he heard the pack of dogs come by sounding "like a herd of elephants". He heard the cat meow and he jumped up and watched the events from a window. He then went outside and saw Edward Sampson with a whip in his hand.

He saw the cat dropped by one of the dogs. Edward Sampson scooped the body of the cat's body off the road with his whip and flicked it straight over the hedge into Nicholls's garden. 

Nicholls told Edward Sampson that he had seen the event and I guess having been found out Edward Sampson said that he was sorry and that he would come back "in a minute".

Nicholls then told Carly Jose. Mr Knight confirmed that Edward Sampson had tried to hide the cat because he said:

"A man appeared who picked up the cat, looked around, which I perceived to be him looking for witnesses, then threw the black cat over the wooden fence into the back garden. I saw the man fleeing, so decided to follow him to get a clear shot of his face for the video. He said to me he was coming back once he had sorted out the hounds."

That, for me, is the worst part of this event. The foxhunters tried to hide their criminal behaviour. I can say that with certainty because John Samson was successfully prosecuted for having a dog dangerously out of control. The prosecutors were unable to successfully convict him for criminal damage which surprises me.

Sampson denied both charges of being the owner or person in charge of a dog dangerously out of control in a private or public place and of criminal damage. As mentioned he was acquitted of criminal damage were found guilty of the other charge.

RELATED: Foxhounds Charge Into Cat Sanctuary. Ten Cats Missing.

Carly Joe provided an impact statement and said that the killing of her cat had left her feeling scared to leave her home and it had affected her family massively. She said that she was devastated and heartbroken and "I cannot imagine the suffering she has gone through".

She said "My children are not sleeping at all at night and they are so upset and terrified of it happening to another one of our pets".

Magistrates fined Sampson £480 and ordered him to pay £775 costs, £48 surcharge and £350 compensation to Ms Jose.

I'm left with one thought: the arrogant and callous attitude of this foxhound master. It's disdainful and disrespectful. They drove their dogs close to the estate. There must have been a foreseeable danger that the dogs would pick up the scent of a cat and with their strong hunting motivation attack the cat and kill her.

Casual and bold theft of 22-year-old cat is shocking

NEWS AND COMMENT-BOX HILL, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA: The home owner's security camera captured the entire event: a young woman walking by the front of the house and taking their cat. 

The video gives me the impression that she is walking to a set destination rather than out for a stroll. It's on a busy road. The cat is in the driveway looking out towards the road. The woman turns to look at the cat (whose name is Bob) and tries to pet him but he backs off. She tries again and he accepts. 

She then casually picks him up and walks off. The video quality is quite good and, therefore, I would expect the police to be able to identify the woman. This should be a slam dunk prosecution if the police are on the ball. Although it is hard to get the police interested in pet thefts. They are investigating apparently.

Bob's owners are of course distraught because they've lived with their cat for a very long time. The age of this cat is exceptional. Very few domestic cats live to 22-years-of-age. He's a tabby-and-white and described as friendly and courageous. The owner of the cat is Giuseppina Roberts. The captioning on the video is incorrect. You will notice that.

Casual theft of 22-year-old cat from driveway. Screenshot.

The woman simply wants her cat back. She is not bothered if the thief is prostituted or not. She is asking for the thief to bring her cat back and if she does it will be her Christmas present. She is a very controlled and sensible woman but I am sure that she is very distressed. 

Bob was taken in a week ago. She believes that he is already dead. He's blind in one eye and has one paw missing. And of course is very old. It is possible that he could already be dead but of course it depends entirely on how good the thief is in looking after domestic cats.

The outstanding feature of this new story is the blatant, callous, bold and reckless way that this young woman steals Bob. I hope she's caught quickly.

A quick update on Christmas day 2021. This 22-year-old cat has been reunited with their owner. The cat was handed into a shelter. It looks as though the story got back to the woman who stole the cat and she decided to give the cat up wisely. The interesting aspect of the story is that there was an opportunity to arrest her for theft when she gave up the cat at the shelter. Perhaps somebody else did it for her. Anyway the good news is cat and owner are reunited which is a great Christmas present for Giuseppina Roberts.

At last: a town in Vietnam is trying to phase out cat and dog meat

NEWS AND COMMENT-CENTRAL HOI AN: Central Hoi An town will trying to stop the sale of cat and dog meat at the end of 2021 under what is described as a Memorandum of Understanding with animal welfare organisation Four Paws. The reason? To create a tourist-friendly environment and to stop the spread of rabies. Also to improve animal rights 👍.

This is China but it is exactly same - Yulin meat festival. A family of dogs is about to feel immense suffering and pain before being eaten by people. Photo: Getty.

I would like to read between the lines and add that tourists from the West do not like to see cats and dogs cooked at stalls. It's a big barrier to enjoyment in what is I understand an interesting country to visit for a tourist. And of course I feel I should add that Covid has played a part here. I'm thinking of the wet markets in China where Covid might have started. These places are where disease can be spread from animal to person.

RELATED: How to stop the cat meat trade in Vietnam.

For me, it is amazingly good news. It is as if a small chip has been taken out of the edifice that is the cat and dog meat market in Asia. Perhaps the city administrators have seen the light or they had a eureka moment when they realised that eating domestic and stray cats does not sit that easy with Western tourists. To be frank, it should not sit easy with Vietnamese people either because often these are domestic pets and also often they are not killed under regulated conditions i.e. they are killed cruelly. I won't go on.

Julie Sanders, the Director of Companion Animals at Four Paws reminds us that about 5 million dogs and cats in Vietnam are killed for cat and dog meat and consumed. She says this presents a community health risk. She is hopeful that this initiative will be replicated in other places in Vietnam.

Nguyen The Hung, vice chairman of Hoi An People’s Committee provides with us a clue that this is more than simply about tourism. It is about animal rights. He said that the committee wants to bolster animal rights. It pleases me tremendously to hear that.

He believes that it will make the town a 'green' tourist destination. I take that to mean a family orientated tourist destination meaning suitable for all tourists. I wonder if Western tourists have complained to Vietnam's Tourist Association online about cat and dog meat in that country. I suspect that they have.

The weakness in this initiative is that Hung says that traders in cat and dog meat cannot be banned from selling it but only encouraged to change their ways. That, in contrast, displeases me tremendously because cat and dog meat is a deeply ingrained culture. 

It is going to be hard to stop. And perhaps for some people it is their only income. You wonder if it might be a good idea for the authorities to provide them with a little bit of compensation financially to encourage them find an alternative means of generating an income.

I'm told that there are 2,500 dogs and cats in this town and 70-90% are vaccinated against rabies. My online research tells me that more than 70 people in Vietnam are killed each year by rabies; nearly always from a bite from a rabid dog. Is rabies a problem in Vietnam? It is and it has been for more than 40 years.

Over the preceding five years on average 350,000 people annually have been bitten by mainly dogs and some cats and another website tells me that more than 80 people have died of rabies as a consequence.

The story comes from vnexpress.net. They do not publish a picture of a cat meat trader which I think is telling. It tells us that such photos are objectionable. They are. I can't show them either as advertisers  find them unacceptable. That's a reason for the proposed phasing out of this archaic business. 

They eat cat meat under the superstition that is cures arthritis and other diseases. I'm sorry to say it but it is idiotic because there is not one iota of science behind that superstition. But as a consequence millions of cats and dogs have been killed and consumed. All on the basis of superstition. It's time to move into the 21st-century and apply a bit of common sense and science, please.

Thug jailed for stealing two hairless cats and other items

NEWS AND COMMENT-BARNSLEY, UK: He is a father which I think compounds the problem. His name is Jordan Reynolds-Walsh and he's been convicted of burglary. He targeted two properties in the Goldthorpe area of Barnsley, UK.

Jordan Reynolds-Walsh. Photo: Yorkshire Live.

A woman was told by the police that her property had been broken into. She is the owner of two Sphynx cats. When she returned to her home she soon noticed that her two cats were missing as well as white goods and power tools.

The next day she saw two men carrying large bags from a house in Cooperative Street, Barnsley, to a Carr House flat. The police searched the Carr House flat. They found power tools and bank cards in the name of the victim. They also found the burglar's ID amongst the items.

They found one Sphynx cat in the bathroom and the second had been hidden behind a bath panel. Both were returned to their owner. He had left a can of larger with his fingerprints on it in the property! That convicted him.

Reynolds-Walsh had burgled another property earlier. He had ransacked a house in Cooperation Street on July 22 and stole a variety of items including a ring with sentimental value. He had smashed the door to the home. The repair charges were £1000.

Reynolds-Walsh admitted his crimes. The lawyer defending him said that he had lost his job as a scaffolder (scaffolder's are the worst form of human life by the way). His life had "spiralled out of control" and he had turned to drink and drugs. That was the statement in mitigation against his sentence which was two years and two months in prison.

The interesting aspect of this story is the theft of two rare purebred cats. On purely financial level they were worth stealing because the combined value is probably around £2000 or thereabouts. The difficulty he had, in his carelessness, was how to deal with them. How to care for them pending their sale? And because they are very noticeable it would be very difficult to sell them. It could be done but I would think that it would raise suspicions in the purchaser.

And of course they would be vulnerable to harm as they were in the care of this criminal for a while who had no idea how do care for them. The story does highlight, however, the value of purebred companion animals. I suspect that many more valuable pets are stolen than people are aware of in the UK. Dogs are particularly at risk.  The UK has deteriorated in recent years in respect of an increase in crime thanks largely to the ineffectiveness of the police and the lack of trust they have engendered through their own well-publicised criminality.

I live near Richmond Park, a famous and beautiful park in Surrey. There is currently a poster attached to the railings at Ham Gate, one of the entrances to the park that I frequently use. The poster contains a plea to find a dachshund dog lost their a while ago. It is highly likely that the dog was stolen. Dog owners let their dogs off the lead in the park which can be irresponsible because they harass the deer. There is also the risk that if they end up out of sight of their owner, which is entirely possible, they can be stolen by another user in the park who casually befriends the dog and then takes them home.

Dogs have a grasp of human vocabulary equivalent to a one-year-old infant

A well-publicised study concluded that dog owners reported that their dogs responded, on average, to 89 words and phrases. It varied, depending upon the circumstances and the dog, between 15-215 words and phrases. The researchers provided participating dog owners with 172 words and phrases separated into seven categories which the owners then rated. 

Dogs have a grasp of human vocabulary equivalent to a one-year-old infant. Image: Pixabay.

The owners could add words and phrases. The 'goal of the study was to develop a reliable, valid and comprehensive instrument designed to estimate the number of words and phrases to which domestic dogs reportedly respond consistently and differentially' in the words of the researchers.

The researchers are from Dalhousie University, Canada. The research is published online in Applied Animal Behavioural Science. The classic response to the phrase "Good girl/Good boy!" was usually tail-wagging or a treat-seeking behaviour.

Different languages?

Clearly the dogs responded to the English language in the study. We have to presume that dogs in different countries respond to different languages in the same way. It would be interesting to find out if dogs find understanding some languages more difficult than others. I would doubt it, but it is a possibility. This is not discussed in the report that I've seen.

Commands

In all, 165 owners participated. Their dogs recognised the names of their owners and phrases concerned with eating such as "treat" and "dinner". They also responded well to objects that they can chase such as "ball" and "squirrel". And of course we would expect that commands that are commonly used such as "sit", "wait", "no biting" and "no jumping" to be commonly understood and they were.

The researchers concluded that a dog's ability regarding vocabulary is equivalent to a one-year-old human.

Commands make up a substantial proportion of words and phrases spoken to dogs. The response is normally immediate and consistent. This allowed the participants to assess their dogs' reaction accurately. Dogs appeared to respond to commands relatively easily and their owners used a preponderance of commands when communicating.

Nouns

They state that nouns may be more difficult to teach to ensure that dogs' responses to them are selective. They state that only "select dogs with extensive training appear to learn to respond selectively to object words".

Several of the participants selected the word "toys" to add to the provided list. The researchers expected to see responses dependent upon the dogs' age. However, there was no correlation between the age of the dogs and how well they were responded to words and phrases. The age of the dogs varied between five months and 14.6 years.

Dog's age

They concluded that "word-based responses in dogs may not increase systematically with age as it does for human infants". Dogs depend upon training rather than life experiences to understand words and phrases.

Purebred

Owners added their own words and used more verbs if they lived with a purebred dog compared to mixed-breed dogs. This is probably because purebred dogs had already received some sort of training from their breeder and perhaps it is because the owners of purebred dogs might in general be more experienced in training dogs.

Dog breeds

More experienced dog owners are likely to use more words and phrases when communicating with their dog. The purebred dogs responding the best were the toy-companion and herding dog breeds. Therefore not all purebred dogs are equal in their abilities to respond to human language. Herding dogs are more likely to be better as they are bred to excel at human interaction. And toy-companion dogs are also specifically bred to interact with people but not for work purposes but for entertainment and companionship.

In contrast, sports-gun dogs responded less well to words and phrases compared to toy-companion and herding dogs. A factor in this difference may be "differences between owners of different breeds rather than dogs belonging to different breed groups". This implied that the behaviour of the owners had an effect upon their dogs' understanding of what they were saying.

The researchers stated that dogs have learned to respond to human non-verbal and verbal cues in a way that is unmatched by any other animal.

Cats

What about domestic cats? As usual, researchers prefer to work with dogs because they're more pliable and obedient. They perceive cats as being unmanageable in a research environment. That's my perception. But it would be nice to know how cats compared to dogs. They would no doubt compare badly. This is essentially because the domestication of the dog was about working dogs. Working dogs interact with their humans all the time. This has generated an ability to respond to human language. By contrast, domestic cats only fleetingly were working animals when they were first domesticated. They are companions for company and entertainment. They don't have a history of having to understand human commands.

Train cats

That said, cats are trainable and Dr. Bruce Fogle believes that cats should be trained at least to a certain extent so that they can understand what you want which in turn benefits the human-cat relationship. Training cat would result in less cat relinquishment to shelters. There is no doubt in my mind about. It needn't be complicated or demanding. Just some basic commands would do. Of course, in the best homes there is always an informal level of mutual training.