You can  help choose the HSUS 2009 Dog of Valor, the polls are open and they want your vote.

Vote for your favorite Dogs of Valor Finalist!

The Humane Society of the United States created the Dogs of Valor Awards to honor and celebrate dogs who have performed an extraordinary act of courage by heroically helping a person in need. Finalists for this year’s award, sponsored by PetPlan Pet Insurance, were chosen based on the significance and impact of their heroic actions.

Our panel of celebrity judges, including Benji (with the help of her humans, Joe and Kathleen Camp), Ron Burns, Randy Pobst, and Judge David Young, will choose a Valor Dog of the Year and three Runners Up. Now we want to hear from you!

Cast your vote for your favorite heroic hound before the voting closes on Friday, May 15 2009 at 5 PM Eastern Time. The Finalist who receives the most votes will be named this year’s People’s Hero winner!

Go to the HSUS website to learn about the 15 finalists in contention. All of their stories are amazing,  this is going to be a very tough decision.

You know what won’t be a tough decision after reading the stories?  Going out and adopting a dog from a shelter. As I’ve mentioned before, when you adopt from a shelter you save a life, you’ll see from these stories it may be your own.

*Boo, renamed Hero, is one of the finalists, pic courtesy HSUS site.

An unwanted Rottweiler who had been living outside tied to a tree was rescued by a Livonia, MI man. Boomer came to live with his new owner about a week before Christmas, he ended up being the best gift John Bates ever received. He rescued Boomer, now Boomer has rescued him.

Early Tuesday morning there was a house fire where Bates, his girlfriend, and her two daughters live.

The fire started in a living room wall in the home on Rayburn between Merriman and Middlebelt. The family had had a fire in the fireplace the evening before, and the fire may have spread to the wall space through a hole in the brickwork, Donnelley said.

The 2-year-old Rottweiler, Boomer, alerted owner John Bates at about 5:15 a.m.

“He kept putting his cold nose right into my face. He was bouncing around,” Bates said, adding that that was unusual behavior for Boomer. The family’s other dog, a 1-year-old bull mastiff named Princess, was right behind Boomer.

“I thought they had to go the bathroom real bad,” Bates said.
He got out of bed, let them out the front door, turned on the light in the living room and saw 4 to 8 inches of smoke on the living room ceiling coming from around the fireplace.

He woke up his girlfriend, Lisa Bowden, and her two daughters, Monica, 11, and Julia, 18, who got safely outside the house.

Bates moved into the residence in November, at that time he checked one of the smoke detectors but found the battery wasn’t working. He didn’t bother replacing it.  The fire marshall on the scene emphasized the importance of making sure all smoke detectors are in working order.

If it wasn’t for Boomer the family would have died.  I have the feeling he will never have to worry about being unloved again.  Way to go Boomer, you are Dogster’s dog hero of the day.

* If you’re looking for a lifesaver you can adopt Buck, he’s a handsome 2-year-old rottie mix. Adoptable w/in 50 miles of Lowell, IN.

Pebbles the Chihuahua and her owner may be small in stature, but both have a big spirit. Beverly Burkitt went out for a one hour walk in the woods on a mountain range in Wales. She had her dog Pebbles and phone with her, but somewhere along the way dropped her phone.

Beverly is not quite 4 feet tall, she has dwarfism, and she also has asthma. Things got scary when she lost her way and was stranded overnight in very cold temperatures. In order to avoid hypothermia she used Pebbles as a blanket, because of her small size he fit perfectly over her legs.

Medics finally found Beverley and Pebbles and escorted her to safety, and health checks, before she returned home to Colwyn Bay.

Beverley, 45, said: “Pebbles lay across my legs overnight and kept me warm.

“I was wearing a coat but it wasn’t as warm as Pebbles.

Thanks to Pebbles she survived the night without any complications. It just goes to show, size doesn’t matter when it comes to heroes. Nice job Pebbles, hope you got a big treat.

* Chichi the cute Chihuahua

A good partner is not easy to find.  It’s that much more important to find the perfect match knowing your life may be in their hands. As in the case with Jess Havin and his partner Earp, a police officer and his K-9.

They were at the scene of a murder, one dead, the other locked up in the house refusing to come out.  Earp was sent in to help take down the knife wielding man who had just killed his wife. Earp, an 8-year-old German Shepherd, had never been ordered to attack before. Prior to this he was used as a drug sniffing dog, to find guns, or to scare people.

SAN DIEGO - San Diego police Sgt. Jess Havin knew every minute mattered when he scooped up his bloodied partner and bolted to the cruiser they’ve shared for five years.

It took one minute to escape the chaos of the home where two people lay dead and load his partner into the back. It took five more to race to the hospital, lights flashing and siren blaring in the “code 3″ of police jargon.

“We don’t have a policy where you run a code 3 for an animal,” Havin said. “I don’t care. I did it. I’d do it again.”

Earp had been stabbed in the throat and received life saving surgery to repair the carotid artery that was severed. Doctors said he would have died if Havin hadn’t used a “code 3″, cutting the normal 10 minute drive in half.

The Police Department won’t decide whether Earp will retire early or return to the force until the end of a mandatory 14-day rest following the attack. Either way, he’ll live out his retirement at Haven’s home in Alpine.

Police dogs typically retire when they are about 8½ years old because they start becoming less “driven,” Havin said.

“This dog will slide right into it, especially because the last two nights he’s been sleeping in the bedroom,” Havin said.

We wish Havin and Earp the best, what a great team.

* Wonderful pic of Havin and Earp courtesy Howard Lipin/Union-Tribune

Since this is a dog blog, a couple times a month our boy Bo thought it would be nice to get the news through a dog’s eyes. When Bo decides to share his thoughts you’ll always see the tag Bo Knows. This post is  a tribute to Endal, from the prior story, who went to Rainbow Bridge on March 6, 2009.  Okay Bo, take it from here…..

Modern day dog’s are so much more technologically advanced than me and my generation. Just read this story on dogs using ATMs. In my day, all that was ever taught to ‘assistance dogs’ was how to write out a check. Time flies when your begging for food…

They might not be able to help if you forget your Pin, but these dogs can get your money out without paws-ing for thought.

The pooches are among an army of ‘assistance dogs’ who have been trained to withdraw money from cash machines for their disabled owners.

They are adept at inserting and withdrawing cards at ATMs to help owners in wheelchairs who are often not able to stretch far enough to do it themselves.

A spokesman for charity Canine Partners, which trains the dogs, said: ‘They put in the card and take it out and take out the money and give it to the person in the wheelchair.

I wonder whether they’re also trained to accept the ATM surcharge when prompted?

‘They can’t put in the Pin but a person in a wheelchair can go sideways on and do that.’

The article fails to mention the number of dogs that require re-training. You know, they’re the ones that secretly peek over their owner’s shoulder to find out the pin number. Then, once they have it, they abscond with the card, only to return when the account has been bled dry. Typically funds are spent right away on things such as chewey’s, plush toys with squeakers intact, and Pee Cologne.

Up to 30 dogs are trained each year and the charity is hoping to double that figure next year. It takes two years to train them, in which time they also learn to load the washing and pick up items from shop shelves.

What? They’re not trained to do the windows too?

Now in a wheelchair, he said that one day he was struggling to retrieve his cash from an ATM when Endal jumped up to reach for the card, money and receipt with his mouth.

One of the graduates of the scheme is ten-year-old Endal, who helped start the ATM service by chance.

The labrador’s owner is Allen Parton, a Gulf War veteran who lost the feeling down his right side after an accident in 1991 while serving as an officer in the Royal Navy.

You know Endal was thinking, “Dude! I’m starving. Just grab the money and let’s go get us some grub…C’mon just grab it. Do I have to do everything for you?”

Then he grabs it and says to his owner, “Let’s go…and no, I ain’t doing the windows when we get home.” Woof!

The funniest dog blog, written by a dog, on the internet. Commentary on the latest animal news stories of the day. Read a chapter from my upcoming book, BAD TO THE BONE.