A 16-month-old black Labrador was rescued from a shelter by the local police department. Instead of going to an expensive breeder the Chicago Police Department decided to give a rescue dog a chance at life and a new career.

The dog, Pantera, is now working in the organized crime division. Here are the details from the Chicago Tribune.

Officer Steve Martinez visited the Chicago Ridge Animal Welfare League at least four times before picking Pantera based on the dog’s “high degree of maturity and strong drive.” After extensive training in various drug detection techniques, Pantera became an official police dog, the youngest certified narcotics detection canine in city history.

Since joining the force, Pantera has recovered evidence and assisted in search warrant executions with the narcotics section, the department said.

This is such good news, and shows what great dogs you can adopt from the shelter. The Animal Welfare League, where Pantera had been dropped off, hopes the police department continues to adopt from shelters.  I hope so too, it sets a great example and maybe departments around the country will follow suit.

Share this entry with your pawple anywhere:

We’ve all been there, Dogsters. What happens when you have two dogs and one toy? I’ll leave the answer to you for this week’s photo caption contest. Submit your entry by commenting on this post below and you could be the lucky recipient of 50 Zealies.

The prize winner will be announced next Monday, July 20th. Good luck!

What Was I Thinking?

Photograph© 2009 MarkRogersPhotography.com all rights reserved.

Share this entry with your pawple anywhere:

In early May I posted about Hoggie,  the dog who saved his owners from a mountain lion attack. He suffered serious injury, ending up with over 100 stitches.

Hoggie is going to be honored at a parade this Saturday, he was chosen to be Grand Marshall.

Hoggie - the dog who tangled with a mountain lion in the Cleveland National Forest earlier this month – will be grand marshal in a parade in Arcadia on Saturday.

The Queensland Heeler-Labrador mix will wear a super dog cape at the Whiskers ‘n’ Tails Pet Fair & Parade on Saturday. The popular annual city event will take place at Arcadia’s City Hall and include a fair with animal-care vendors, local veterinarians, groomers, trainers, pet sitters and more.

“The whole story of Hoggie just gripped me,” said Leo Diaz, a city staff member who came up with the idea to honor the heroic dog. “How they raced down the hill to the vet to save his life. And the way Hoggie saved theirs. I was pulling for him the whole time he was in surgery. I can’t wait to meet him.”

Diaz also hopes people who live in the 56,000-person town close to the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains will learn from Hoggie’s story.

“We have a lot of hiking trails here and awareness is key when living in mountain lion country,” said Diaz.

Way to go Hoggie, a well deserved honor.

* Pic courtesy STEVE ZYLIUS, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Share this entry with your pawple anywhere:

A  small puppy was tied to a tree in Boston’s Back Bay area and left there. I guess this is just another sad sign of the times.

BOSTON (WBZ) -Investigators are trying to find the person who abandoned a puppy in the Back Bay Wednesday afternoon, according to a published report.

Boston’s animal control unit told the Boston Herald someone tied up the little pup to a tree outside the Westin Hotel at the corner of Dartmouth and Stuart Streets.

A hotel manager noticed that no one had picked up the dog, so he called police.

One man claimed to be the pup’s owner, according to the paper, but he couldn’t provide proof and left.

It’s believed the puppy is between three to six months old, and possibly a shepherd-lab or shepherd-akita mix. Whatever he is, he’s adorable. The pup is now at the local animal shelter and will be adopted out if not claimed within a week.

If the pup was stolen, which is a possibility, then he should be given back to the rightful owner. If this was an intentional act the owner should not get the dog back.  A small puppy tied to a tree for over an hour, the person responsible doesn’t deserve to own an animal. Who knows what would have happened if the wrong person got a hold of him, scary to even think about.

* Pic courtesy Boston Herald

Share this entry with your pawple anywhere:

After years of being used for breeding, 200 dogs are finally getting their chance at life. Thanks to a coordinated effort between Utah based Best Friends Animal Society and the National Mill Dog Rescue, located in Colorado.

More than 200 dogs that were rescued from certain death at puppy mills in the Midwest arrived Monday at North Shore Animal League America in Port Washington.

The dogs, purebreds that had been used for mass breeding of puppies, which are then sold to pet stores, had reached the end of their natural breeding lives and were about to be euthanized, rescue groups said.

Monday, an air-conditioned truck carrying dozens of cages pulled into the parking lot at North Shore Animal League America, where volunteers opened the cages and carried the dogs into the treatment building.

The dogs, including everything from shih tzus to Labradors, had suffered from neglect while at the puppy mills, rescue workers said. Most had matted fur and rotted teeth. Some had nails that had grown more than an inch long, and most had spent their entire lives in wire cages.

The dogs will be treated for medical conditions, spayed or neutered, and groomed at North Shore and several other area shelters before becoming available for adoption. The league plans to charge a $200 adoption fee for each dog.

I hope all the dogs are adopted and get a chance to live the life they were meant to live. Our boy Logan was in the same situation as the dogs above, a stud dog at a puppy mill who was used and abused. He may not have many teeth, and the ones he does aren’t pretty, but he’s the most beautiful Bernese Mountain dog in the world to us.

If you’re interested in one of the rescued dogs you can sign up for the North Shore’s e-mail alerts to be notified when they are available for adoption.

* Photo of pup courtesy North Shore Animal League

Share this entry with your pawple anywhere:

I’m not talking about the fun game on Dogster where you try and guess what breed a dog is by looking at a picture. Can you guess what breed of dog a person might own by looking at them?  According to one study the results show it’s possible.

A group of 70 people who do not own dogs were asked to match photos of 41 dog owners to three possible breeds – Labrador, poodle or Staffordshire bull terrier. They matched the owners to the dogs more than half the time. Yet given three choices, they should have been right only about a third of the time.

“This suggests that certain breeds of dogs are associated with particular kinds of people,” said study leader Lance Workman, a psychologist at Bath Spa University in the UK.

The analysis runs deep: Those who don’t own dogs used stereotypes to match the dogs to their owners, Workman figures. “These stereotypes persisted into judgments of the dog owners’ personalities: non dog owners considered the owners of each breed to share certain personality traits, such as level of conscientiousness and emotional stability.”

The real connection is only skin deep, however.

“But when we tested the dog owners’ personalities, we found no strong links between any particular personality trait and choice of dog breed, so any shared qualities are only skin deep,” Workman said.

The findings were presented at the British Psychological Society Annual Conference in Brighton. What do you think about the study?  Do you think some people look like their dogs? Give me a bark.

* In memory of Bo’s friend Bull Boy who left us too soon on March 28, 2009.

Share this entry with your pawple anywhere:

Since this is a dog blog, a couple times a month our boy Bo (woof!) 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. Okay Bo, take it from here…..

Some dogs are better than others. The same can also be said for humans, and if I take it one step further, I can even apply it to criminals.

That’s right, criminals. They’re not all evil to the core like the ones that kidnap dogs for ransom. No, there are kinder hearted thugs robbing and pillaging this great world of ours too.

But what makes a criminal, a good criminal?

Just check out this story of gun thieves in Jersey and you’ll know the answer.

SOMERVILLE, N.J. – Police believe three men used hot dogs to distract a dog and make off with seven guns.

Police found the raw hot dogs strewn about a Bridgewater home, where a Labrador resided.

Police tracked the hot dogs to a supermarket and officers used surveillance video to identify a suspect.

Ronald Elizondo, of Raritan Borough, along with Franklin Township residents Adrian McKoy and Tyshinue Haskins, are charged with burglary, conspiracy to commit burglary and other offenses.

Me thinks the lab was in on it. How else to explain uneaten hot dogs still strewn about the house?  Woof!

*Gimli reenacting what happened at the scene of the crime.

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.

Share this entry with your pawple anywhere:

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. Okay Bo, take it from here…..

There are few humans who are true heroes in my mind; Billy Purina, Tommy Treat and Carrie Kong are the only ones that come to mind.

Well I need to add a police officer from Kalama, Washington to that list. Although a dog would have had no problem jumping into the fray if the situation was reversed, for a human to jump in is unheard of.

Well, unheard of if your name isn’t Norton.

I think it’s best if you just read the story yourself.

A Kalama police officer soiled his uniform rescuing a stray dog from drowning in tank of sewage at the city’s sewage treatment plant Tuesday when the water-loving pup dove in for a swim.

No one was hurt, but both parties required extensive bathing afterward, said Kalama Police Chief Bruce Hall.

“The officer did his duty in someone else’s doody,” Hall cracked Tuesday evening.

Tuesday afternoon, Officer Jeff Skeie (pronounced “Shay-ah”) was on kennel-cleaning duty at the city’s small animal shelter. Skeie, a former Castle Rock city councilman who has been with the Kalama police force three years, allowed two dogs out of their pens into the fenced yard to exercise and play together.

One of the dogs was a young, energetic chocolate Labrador retriever police had picked up as a stray about two weeks earlier. The Lab was scheduled to be adopted out that afternoon.

The chocolate Lab bounded up the steps leading to the digester [sewage container]. Skeie hollered at him to stop, but the dog flung himself joyfully into the brown soup “just like any dog jumping into a swimming pool,” the officer said.

The dog started paddling, but because the tank is pumped with air bubbles, he wasn’t buoyant.

He pulled the dog to the wall and hauled him out by the scruff of the neck, smearing “bio-solids” all over the sleeves of his uniform.

Then the wet dog shook himself vigorously, spraying Skeie head to toe in liquid sewage.

The not-so-sweet smelling officer gave himself and the dog a quick rinse at the outdoor faucet before going home for a long shower. About an hour later, the stray dog’s new adoptive owner, Gretchen Procop, arrived to take the chocolate Lab home.

She named him “Hershey.”

I can’t come up with a better last line than that. Woof!

The funniest dog blog, written by a dog, on the internet. Commentary on the latest animal news stories of the day. You and your pets are sure to love it!

Share this entry with your pawple anywhere:

Thanks to Cristy for barking this heartwarming story to me.  Randy Dely, from Georgia, just got reunited with his Labrador Retriever Ace after five long years.

Ace’ recently showed up at Michelle Golden’s Beauregard home without a collar and Golden took him to Auburn University’s School of Veterinary Medicine where she works in the pharmacy.

Staff members scanned him and found he had a computer chip with his owner’s information.

Dely is from Americus, Ga. where he serves as Webster County’s Sheriff. His dog somehow ended up more than a hundred miles away.

There is something to be said about microchipping your dog.  It seems every time there is a reunion story it was thanks to being able to track down the owner via microchip.

Glad to hear Ace is back where he belongs.

* Midnight posing as Ace, what a beautiful girl.

Share this entry with your pawple anywhere:

After losing their beloved dog Edgar and Nina Otto got the chance to do what’s only been done a few times before. They had their Yellow Labrador Retriever cloned, dubbing him “Lancelot Encore.”

This little miracle of science cost the Otto’s $155,000 dollars, and has some people questioning their decision. The Otto’s live on a 12-acre spread in West Boca, FL along with a small menagerie, including many other dogs, but they always felt there was something different about Lancelot.

Lancelot always occupied a special place in their hearts: Edgar called Lancelot “an unbelievable, humanlike dog, a true companion.” Thus the Otto’s had the foresight to have DNA frozen from Lancelot six years ago.

Then, last June – six months after Lance’s death – they learned the Northern California biotech firm BioArts International was holding a dog-cloning auction. They threw their hat in the ring, and won.

The cloning didn’t come cheap - the Otto’s shelled out $155,000 for the opportunity. But it worked. BioArts partnered with Dr. Hwang S Woo-Suk, of the South Korea biotech research firm Sooam, to bring a second Lancelot into the Otto household.

The Otto’s aren’t hurting for money, Edgar’s father was the co-founder of NASCAR, and he started a successful medical company.  Although the couple did say that Nina sold some of her jewelry to help pay for the creation of Lancelot Encore.  So, should they be questioned about what they do with their money? Would someone question if he bought a Lamborghini instead of a Ford?

Edgar Otto donates considerable sums to his local Humane Society, he has also promised if they choose an 11th dog it will come from a shelter. I personally would choose to use the $155,000 to help dogs that were already here, although I understand missing your dog so much that you want an exact duplicate.

What would you do with the money? Give me a bark.

* Photo courtesy Today Show, msnbc.msn.com.

Share this entry with your pawple anywhere: