The dog chasing the postman may be a clichéd concept, but you might be surprised to learn that, in Britain alone, over a hundred people a week are admitted to hospital following dog attacks – the majority of whom are postal workers, electricians and telecom engineers! Read the rest of this entry »
It’s always an exciting day at the dog health blog when we get news of a canine achievement or record breaker. Today, however, we’re especially excited to report that there is a brand new Guinness World Record holder for the “Tallest Dog in the World”! Read the rest of this entry »
A service has been set up to allow the Godless to care for the pets of all the believers of the “Rapture”. For $110 for a 10 year contract, you can rest assured that all the non-believers will house your stranded pets. Bart Centre, 61 of Eternal Earth Bound Pets writes on his website, “If you love your pets, I can’t understand how you could not consider this”
For everyone else, there is always the saner option of dog insurance.
The police have been criticised for wasting time and money creating ‘dog blogs’; web logs like this one, but supposedly ‘written’ by police dogs to help promote the work of police dogs. The latest police force to set up a dog blog was Cambridgeshire, where the public weren’t too impressed; “we hear that police forces are overstretched and officers have too much paperwork, yet someone seems to have enough time to write hundreds of words about the life of a dog” said one fuming spokesperson.
With such public distaste in the air, I decided to check out the dog blog for myself and make my own assessment. What I found was a very informative, 700-word article about the early life and training of a police dog called Lukas; written in the first person, as if by Lukas himself. It will have cost next to nothing to produce, yet is a highly engaging insight into the life and role of a police dog, which may well serve as a brilliant way to make children more interested in the force as a whole.
As a spokeswoman for Cambridgeshire police explained, “The blog costs nothing to produce and is written by the corporate communications team, whose role it is to promote the work of the force.”
If you want to check it out for yourself, you can find it here. I think you’ll agree that, if ever there was a waste of taxpayer’s money in this country, it is certainly not a few hundred words of information about police dogs. Long live the police dog blog!
A new study has indicated that dogs could provide a near-perfect model to help us understand human complex diseases.
Many animal lovers know how predisposed dogs are towards genetic problems, especially immune-mediated diseases. Nova Scotia duck tolling Retrievers, for example, are at great risk from diseases like systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE); a combination of a rheumatic disease and steroid-responsive meningitis. Although this sounds like a lot of long words without a lot of meaning (to most people), the findings of a recent study into this disease in this breed of dog have had some profound implications.
Nova Scotias were developed in Yarmouth as a hunter-retreiver and descend from a tiny number of dogs that managed to survive outbreaks of the canine distemper virus, which killed thousands. The theory is that, due to their exceptionally strong inherited immune system, Nova Scotia’s are now much more prone to immune-related ailments. An investigaion into this theory, however, has discovered something even more interesting; that the SLE disease involves multi-genetic inheritance – like most autoimmune diseases in humans! As various types of genetic risk factors are easier to trace in dogs than in humans, this could mark a huge leap forwards in understanding and curing complex diseases.
For the record, this study shouldn’t be confused with animal testing or anything of the kind. That is something the Dog Health Blog is firmly against.
Here are the Dog Health Blog, we’re against hunting and find it a little sad that lots of our canine companions were bred for that very purpose. Perhaps that’s why we couldn’t help but chuckle when we read that a Californian hunter has been shot…by his own dog! Of course, it’s never funny when somebody gets shot, but sometimes you can’t help but appreciate the irony – read on!
Apparently the man in question was out hunting ducks with his friend and faithful black Labrador (we don’t know her real name, but we call her Rambo). After a hard day of needless killing, the men decided to pack up and head home; so our guy scrambled out of his hunting blind and headed over to collect his decoys…leaving his gun unattended on the floor. How was he to predict Rambo would step on the gun, disengage the safety and pump his left shoulderblade full of shot? It could happen to anybody I suppose…anybody who carries a shotgun around anyway. Having never spent a day shooting animals for fun, I’m afraid none of us here is qualified to say quite how stupid this man’s mistake was; what we do know is that he survived and has been released from hospital. So that’s a good thing…right?
I can’t help to wonder whether his Labrador tried to retrieve him after he’d been shot…they say instincts die hard!
Listen up dog lovers, we have good news! China may be set to ban the eating of dogs; a practise that may date back thousands of years, but causes unfathomable suffering to hundreds of thousands of dogs every year. Law professors and legal experts are joining forces to propose that eating dog meat causes so many social problems that it simply shouldn’t be allowed to continue. On top of this, they claim, the animal cruelty involved in the dog meat trade is simply unacceptable on any level.
Although the initial draft proposal simply suggested illegal sale or consumption of dogs should be punishable by up to 15 days in prison (or a fine of 500,000 yuan for businesses); the new revision demands thousands of butchers and dog restaurants to be shut down altogether!
There is, of course, opposition to the movement; mainly in the form of traditionalists or people who call the proposal hypocritical. The former blame the middle class and their love for all things cute; the latter can’t understand why dogs and cats deserve special treatment. Why, they ask, should the government take action to protect dogs and cats when there is still so much human suffering in China? Furthermore, why should it only be dogs and cats that are protected; what about all the other animals that suffer for our food? Should there be pet insurance for sheep?
What do you think readers?
Last time I explained that Horizon: The Secret Life of Dogs revealed some fascinating insights into the intelligence of dogs. Today I’ll summaries what they discovered about the fascinating process of domestication, which led to the special bond we share with our canine friends.
As many people know, dogs are descended from wolves. Of course, trying to keep a wolf as a pet will almost certainly end up messy because, although they are very cute as puppies, the older they get the more aggressive they become. You’d also struggle to find pet insurance, but that’s beside the point. An experiment into the development in silver foxes in Siberia, however, has discovered a process whereby the aggression can actually be bred out of an animal! By only allowing the least aggressive foxes to breed, scientists have managed to create a generation of tame, friendly foxes – as domesticated as dogs. What they suggest this that their experiment was a sped-up version of the process of domestication; our long-term involvement with dogs has meant we have literally made them into our friends. How amazing is that?!
For the most amazing part of all, however, you’ll have to wait until next time…
Having watched Horizon: The Secret Life of Dogs last night, I thought I’d summarise the findings in a couple of posts, for the benefit of those people unfortunate enough to have missed it. Essentially, it was an insight into the intelligence of dogs, their relationship with humans and, most interestingly, the process of domestication that has led to this social arrangement between our species.
I expect most readers will agree they have something of a special relationship with their dog; especially those of you who have had other pets with which to compare. Having experience of thousands of animals and their owners, I know dog owners feel the closest to their pets – there certainly seems to be a special bond between us and them.
Well, now we have science on our side, providing evidence to stop us looking quite so much like mad hermits! Secret Life of Dogs revealed dogs using six different types of bark to communicate with their owners and, even more astonishingly, learning to respond to up to 340 different words! Betsy the Border Collie, for example, can even fetch her owner a huge variety of objects by merely being shown a picture of it – I know children in secondary school that probably couldn’t do that! In fact, the first ever IQ test was actually a picture-recognition task (though it is widely accredited as being utterly useless).
Next time I’ll tell you what they discovered about the domestication of dogs.
No matter how many times we say it, every year thousands of people fail to take onboard the old adage; a dog is for life, not just for Christmas.
Now, more than ever, pet centres across the country are experiencing a surge in abandoned pets as the first depression Christmas season comes to a close. Despite being in difficult financial circumstances, thousands of people insisted on investing in pets for Christmas, only to realise they can’t afford to keep them. On Christmas day itself the RSPCA received 22 dogs and 11 cats in the south-west of England alone! Animal charities blame a lack of forward thinking amongst new owners, who don’t consider the costs of food, pet insurance and the many other little expenses that are involved in owning a pet.
Hence, despite temperatures of -8 degrees, record numbers of pets were abandoned by their owners or handed over kennels over the holiday season. In December, 35 dogs and 60 cats were abandoned in Worcestershire and Manchester Dogs Home were forced to take in 108 new dogs! With even less people adopting pets during the recession, many homes simply don’t have room for the extra animals!
Without a doubt people need to start thinking more before getting a pet and, if they are going to do it, more need to consider adopting one from care.
