Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Here's a very sad situation at the U.S. Air Force Academy that I hope ends up with a different explanation than the obvious one.
The Air Force Academy security forces are investigating the poisoning of professor David Mullin's service dog, which he believes was harmed while he was teaching at the academy and the dog was waiting in his office last week.On Saturday, the dog, a black lab named Caleb, started acting sluggish, breathing heavy and refused to stand. Mullin took the dog to an animal emergency center where blood and other tests showed he had been poisoned with rat poison or a prescription drug used to thin blood. After several transfusions, Caleb improved but Mullin reports he's still being watched closely. Test samples have been sent to Colorado State University for analysis.
Here's the suspicious part: Mullin is an outspoken critic of proselytizing and coercion from Christian fundamentalists at the academy. In fact, he is the only named client out of around 250 people at the academy who are represented by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation in ongoing litigation about such issues at the Air Force academy. He is the very public face of those ongoing and deeply emotional battles over religious coercion. Ironically, Mullin is an evangelical Christian himself.
Does this prove that Caleb was deliberately poisoned in retaliation for that activism? Of course not. But it raises serious questions that need to be investigated. Mullin says that he has gone through his house to make sure that there was nothing the dog could have accidentally gotten into. He also points out that there are others at the academy who could easily gain access to keys to his office, which have not been changed in a decade.
I certainly hope this ends up being accidental rather than intentional.
Politics
Comments
Even if the dog was poisoned intentionally, remember, according to William Lane Craig it's okay if God told someone to do it.
Posted by: Skip | May 4, 2011 10:34 AM
But Christians are the nicest people who would give you the shirt off their backs!
Isnt that what we were told yesterday?
Posted by: Dave | May 4, 2011 10:39 AM
Ah, pardon my ignorance but - what's a 'service dog'? - Dingo
Posted by: DingoJack | May 4, 2011 10:42 AM
It's obviously an atheist who did it trying to make the noble Christians look bad. No wonder Christians feel oppressed in Amerika. The MSM is proving how biased it is by even reporting it, and so are you Ed. Why don't you care about the thousands of dogs killed in Pakistan?
Posted by: Science Avenger | May 4, 2011 10:44 AM
A service dog is a dog that helps disabled people, usually the blind or deaf.
Posted by: Aquaria | May 4, 2011 10:44 AM
If not, it would just more evidence that Christianity is going to the dogs.
Posted by: Phillip IV | May 4, 2011 10:45 AM
A service dog is a dog that is trained to help someone with medical issues. The most common are seeing eye dogs for the blind. In this case, the dog is trained to help Mullin with balance and dizziness problems.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | May 4, 2011 10:46 AM
Ugh, I've worked in emergency vet care, and rat poison is a horrible way to go. It stops the blood from clotting, and the animal slowly bleeds to death from the inside, as small tears in the intestines (which naturally happen) refuse to close and drain the blood into the abdominal cavity. Poisoning someone's dog is a horrible enough crime, but a service dog? They go through intensive training to help people live a normal life, and as expected, the person they serve becomes very attached. I know dogs are technically property in the eyes of the law, but I also know anybody who does this deserves to be slowly eaten alive by dogs like Elijah Wood's character in Sin City.
Posted by: Rob Monkey | May 4, 2011 10:50 AM
#1
Where was Craig when David Berkowitz was on trial.
"oh, god told you to do it, sorry about the arrest you can go."
Posted by: Mr Ed | May 4, 2011 10:54 AM
Warfarin, the "poison" in D-con is chemically the same as Cumidin (IIRC). It makes the critters hemmorage to death. The myth is that when rats and mice get insatiably thirsty (a sign that they are bleeding internally) they will leave the building where they were poisoned--this truism has been fairly well debunked.
If this was done deliberately than the culprit should be allowed a sort of trial by ordeal. If he can run a gauntlet of starving dogs and come out the other end, whole, he must be inncoent. Of course, before he runs he will be stripped naked and given a light basting of gravy.
Posted by: democommie | May 4, 2011 10:57 AM
In this case, the dog is trained to help Mullin with balance and dizziness problems.
Whoever poisoned the dog (if that is indeed the case) seems to have balance problems too. Anyone who would poison a dog because he didn't agree with its owner's religion, is quite simply NOT qualified to serve in any branch of the US military.
Posted by: Raging Bee | May 4, 2011 10:59 AM
This guy needs this pound dog I adopted. They told me he was part lab but turns out he's apparently all July Walker -- a type of hound dog with very long legs bred for running deer.
Anyway, as a puppy he once ate a half carton of cigarettes and later got in a cabinet and ate a whole bag of rat poison. And suffered no apparent deleterious effects from either as he's now 2 1/2.
He's super hyper, so I don't know that he'd make a particularly helpful service dog, however. He's also the perfect height so that when he's excited and runs to greet me he often nails me in a tender part of my body.
Posted by: Fifth Dentist | May 4, 2011 11:00 AM
I certainly hope this ends up being accidental rather than intentional.
You're entitled to hope for a pony, too, but sometimes it's just a pile of horse crap.
Posted by: anandine | May 4, 2011 11:02 AM
Ed:
Is it MS? I didn't ever think of trying a dog for my balance and dizziness problems... Of course, I wouldn't want to clean up after one, either...
Posted by: Aquaria | May 4, 2011 11:03 AM
What a terrible event. The optimist in me hopes this will spur the evangelical leaders to reject such methods. But the cynic in me expects they will tack the standard '...but you reap what you sow' caveat/tacit approval onto any public rejection.
Posted by: eric | May 4, 2011 11:18 AM
Oh that's what I thought, but I wanted to be sure. - Dingo
Posted by: DingoJack | May 4, 2011 11:20 AM
"Ironically, Mullin is an evangelical Christian himself."
I would change the ironically to "interestingly" or just leave it off. Those who are religious should be vehement at defending the 1st amendment, even if it means sacrificing some of their immediate interests. It's no different than defending free speech one finds offensive.
Posted by: Dave C | May 4, 2011 11:22 AM
democommie: If he can run a gauntlet of starving dogs and come out the other end, whole, he must be inncoent.
That's unnecessarily cruel. Why starve dogs just for a trial?
Posted by: abb3w | May 4, 2011 11:33 AM
Aquaria, one of my coworkers uses a service dog to help him manage his MS. He says he's glad to have him. If you're interested, a quick google search turned up lots of information, including this helpful primer from the National MS Society. But yea, no matter how well trained the dog is, it still poops.
Posted by: Abby Normal | May 4, 2011 11:33 AM
Warfarin, the "poison" in D-con is chemically the same as Cumidin (IIRC). It makes the critters hemmorage to death. The myth is that when rats and mice get insatiably thirsty (a sign that they are bleeding internally) they will leave the building where they were poisoned--this truism has been fairly well debunked
==============
Actually, warfarin itself (sold under the brand name Coumadin in the US and used to prevent blood clots) is not commonly used in rat poisons anymore. Instead they use similar, much more potent and longer-acting compounds that are similar chemically, so-called "super-coumarins". They all work by inhibiting the production of vitamin-K dependent clotting factors in the liver.
Posted by: Dr. Steve | May 4, 2011 12:05 PM
At the risk of nit-picking, Ed, you need to do a little research first:
Mullin stated publicly Guide Dogs for the Blind actually owned his dog, and that he's had him since he was a puppy.
However, Guide Dogs has explicitly stated they do not train dogs for any purpose but supporting the vision impaired; dogs that are trained don't go to their partners until they're almost 2 years old.
While the dog's illness is tragic regardless, but it would seem there's an open contradiction on the facts of the matter.
Posted by: JD | May 4, 2011 12:06 PM
I'm glad, at least, that the dog seems to be improving; there's absolutely no justification for targeting a dog. No matter what beef you have with the owner, his dog is an innocent.
Posted by: Merle | May 4, 2011 12:29 PM
"Ironically, Mullin is an evangelical Christian himself."
Dave C:
No, it's ironic precisely because evangelical Christians predominately and near-monolithically support positions or candidates who do not defend the separation of church and state but instead promote leveraging the power of their government to promote a supposedly non-sectarian version of their god.
Of course those who are religious should defend the 1st Amendment, but history teaches us that right-wing authoritarian types only fight for liberty on their tribe's behalf, and to hell with everyone else when they're in the majority. Consider how Catholics who were once marginalized now are a key ally of those with theocratic impulses, e.g., most of the key players at Fox News are Catholics. Once they've secured their liberty, then they become democracy advocates at the expense of individuals who are outside their tribe.
Posted by: Michael Heath | May 4, 2011 12:31 PM
there's absolutely no justification for targeting a dog.
There's abosolutely no justification for targeting Mullin in any way, period.
If you don't like his opinion, stand up in public and say why. This effort to silence him shows that the person who committed this* is both (i) a personal coward who doesn't want to take responsibility for their actions, and (ii) an intellectual coward who doesn't think they can win on the battlefield of ideas.
*Assuming for the moment it wasn't some horrible accident, which AFAIK hasn't been categorically ruled out yet.
Posted by: eric | May 4, 2011 12:43 PM
Wow, JD, that is useful information that totally changes the context of the story. Does that fill your pedant quota for the day, or will you be doing some grammatical review this afternoon?
Posted by: Rory | May 4, 2011 12:43 PM
JD, Lying Fuckbag for JESUS:
Are you working from your desk or the cockpit, Top Cross?
I'm still waiting for your boss's contact information; shoudln't take you as long to provide that as it did to look up and post something as completely fucking irrealavent as what you just did.
You're a fucking waste of resources and a traitor to your oath. Why not walk the walk, you KKKristianist piece of shit. Walk away from your nice, well paid job and get "REAL with JESUS". Oh, wait, that would mean actually, gasp, sacrificing something for your beleifs.
Posted by: democommie | May 4, 2011 1:30 PM
1. Mullin did not claim that GDB trained his dog, so the duration and purpose of their training program is irrelevant.
2. If you bothered to look into the matter, you would find out that some of GDB's puppies are found to be unsuitable as guide dogs for the blind. These dogs are released from the program early, and some of them become service dogs for other issues.
Posted by: Anton Mates | May 4, 2011 2:41 PM
3. When nit-picking, it's best to make sure your own research is complete. Otherwise it gives the impression that you're just grabbing for anything that might distract people from the main issue.
Posted by: Anton Mates | May 4, 2011 2:45 PM
DingoJack: A service dog could be the stereotypical seeing-eye dog, or it could be a 'hearing ear', a 'fetching jaws', a 'seizure-smelling nose', or any number of things. My fiancee's dog can tell when she's about to have a migraine, but he's far too neurotic otherwise to be trained as a real service dog.
Posted by: Mike Crichton | May 4, 2011 4:11 PM
Does the building in which this happened have a rat problem? Is the maintenance staff using rat poison? The answers to these questions could make the "accident" explanation a lot more or less plausible. If the use of rat poison for pest control is not part the SOP for that building (and that is exactly the sort of thing I would expect any large, high-occupancy, government-owned building to have rules about), I find it highly unlikely that people working there would "innocently" bring in their own rat poison and deploy it without telling anyone. On the other hand, if rat poison *is* being used by the staff, other people here have mentioned that dogs do tend to get into the stuff. I suppose another possibility is that there was some very, very old rat poison from back when people worried less about such things, and the dog found it.
Posted by: Paul | May 4, 2011 6:59 PM
Obviously not. If he believes in the separation of church and state, or that Christian servicemembers should respect the rights of others, then he must be one of those so-called "Liberal Christians" and not a real Christian at all.
Posted by: Paul | May 4, 2011 7:08 PM
Aquaria, one of my coworkers uses a service dog to help him manage his MS. He says he's glad to have him. If you're interested, a quick google search turned up lots of information, including this helpful primer from the National MS Society. But yea, no matter how well trained the dog is, it still poops.
You'd think I'd have seen that at the MS site, as much as I'm over there. But, yeah, the upkeep of a dog is a huge concern, and not just for the pooping. I don't go outdoors much, anymore, and that wouldn't be fair to a dog. It just seemed like a neat idea so that I could get out more by myself. :(
Posted by: Aquaria | May 4, 2011 9:58 PM
woah. "fighter pilot for ..."
i guess the enzyte didn't work for him...
Posted by: VikingMoose | May 5, 2011 11:05 AM