Owney is the name of the postal dog in 1888, he hops on trains that carried bags of mail around the country. He travel across the United States by rail and then globe-trotting to Mexico, Canada, Europe and Asia. Owney became known as a good luck charm as he traveled the country on mail trains. As he traveled the country, postal clerks would add tags to his collar from each stop, eventually Owney had so many tags they had to make him a special dog vest to put them on.
Owney died in 1897, the Postal Service had him preserved to create a lifelike replica of the dog using his own fur. The stuffed Owney is now at National Postal Museum, and now the Postal Service released a new Forever stamp with a picture of Owney. This stamp is released to commemorate the adventure and dedication of Owney.
Next month, the Postal Service is also releasing an Owney app that creates a 3-D, jumping, barking Owney on your screen. It will soon release an interactive e-book about Owney for the iPad.
A woman from California lives with almost 800 cats and 15 dogs. Lynea Lattanzio has been featured on a new series of Nat Geo Wild for living with her 12 acres of land, along with close to 800 cats and about 15 dogs. She runs the rescue home for cats called The Cat House On The Kings, the largest no-cage, no-kill kitty sanctuary in all of California.
Lattanzio said that she often gets cats flown in from New York from owners who decide their apartments are too small to house their pets. Lattanzio's mother wouldn't allow her to have a pet cat growing up. She began rescuing cats after her divorce and has since saved close to 19,000 felines. Some might say that she's crazy, but according to her: “I’m not crazy. What I do is crazy.”
A new Youtube video about a dog bites a shark. A guy from Australia upload this video of two dogs swimming with the sharks. The dogs are seen paddling back to shore when one dog dives underwater and attack the shark. The man can't believe what he just saw on that day. "He's giving him a bite! The dog is biting the shark," the cameraman screams.
The man who took the video believe that the dogs are protecting a “Dugong” who are in the shore that time. Luckily, the potentially dangerous shark swims off and no fight ensues. The shark species in this video is unknown. Dogs are known to have a strong relationship with Dolphins. Earlier this year, a set of dolphins rescued a Doberman Pinscher from the water. So this one proves that Dog-Shark relationship isn't as strong as the Dog-Dolphin.
K9 police officer from Fullerton sniffed out 20 kilos of cocaine, valued at $1 million, in a car during a traffic stop that leads to the arrest of its driver. The dog named Mueller discovered the cocaine in packets in a box in the trunk. Mueller was donated to the Fullerton Police department in December.
Mueller, together with his handler Police Officer Jonathon Miller stopped a Chevy Monte Carlo driven by Alfonso Cisneros during a routine traffic stop. During the stop the officer discovered that Cisneros was on probation for narcotics violations, then officer had his dog search the vehicle. The dog alerted on the trunk area and, on inspection, Miller found the cocaine in a box. Cisneros is being held on $3 million bail, and is scheduled to be arraigned at North Justice Center in Fullerton. According to Sgt. Andrew Goodrich of the Fullerton police said that this was Mueller's first major find since joining the department.
A Bernese Mountain dog that raced off after a mountain goat in Washington's Olympic Mountains and fell 150 feet down a cliff survived for nearly three days until a volunteer mountain rescue team managed to find her.
The five-year-old dog called Sasha was with her owner Gwen Hall and Jim Krieger on the summit of 5,944 foot high Mount Ellinor when she saw the mountain goat. Sasha disappeared after chasing the mountain goat. Gwen and Jim searched for her for two hours but could not traced her. No barks, no whimpers, nothing.
Gwen and Jim try to ask help from USFS but were told that rescue does not get involved in non-human rescue. Good thing is that there is an organization like Olympic Mountain Rescue who helped find Sasha.
Six volunteers from the said organization offered to try to help. On friday, after five hours of searching, they found Sasha. She was motionless on a narrow shelf on the side of the cliff because of her leg injury. The rescuers lowered water and food, and Sasha drank a couple of liters of water. Then they began the process of lifting the injured dog in a litter attached to ropes from above.
Sasha is now recovering after having surgery to repair tendons in her right leg.
Thanks to spay and neuter programs and public education campaigns the hard work of animal rescue groups across the country is paying off by saving millions of lives. Experts reported that fewer animals will die this year because sterilization is becoming part of responsible pet ownership.
According to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Humane Society International less than 4 million cats and dogs will be euthanized in the U.S. this year. The number sounds large, but it is down from the 12-20 million animals that lost their lives in the 1970s.
“The decline in the number of animals being euthanized each year comes as the pet population has boomed. In 1970, there were about 62 million pets, and today there are about 170 million,” Stephen Zawistowski science adviser for the ASPCA said an Associated Press interview.
Zawistowski said it took years of campaigning to change the thinking of pet owners about sterilization. And although animal rescue groups knew they could never “adopt their way out” of the pet overpopulation problem and find homes for every homeless animal, most owners did not think of sterilization as an automatic component of being a responsible guardian. Even veterinarians weren’t all proficient in spay and neuter surgeries.
Thankfully things have changed. Better medical procedures have made the surgeries easier on the animals and leave only a small incision. And mandatory spay and neuter laws in many cities have led more low-cost clinics that are easily accessed by the public.
Nearly every public animal shelter, rescue group and welfare organization has joined the effort to sterilize the cats and dogs in their care.
Spaying and neutering has become the law in some states, counties and cities. Many states require all shelter animals to be sterilized. Rhode Island requires most cats to be sterilized, and Los Angeles requires most dogs and cats to be spayed or neutered by the time they are 4 months old.
When pets are sterilized, their reproductive organs are removed so they can no longer breed.
Many dog owners leave for work and lock their pets in the house with dog foods and toys without a second thought. But a new study suggests that leaving your pets alone can cause distress and make them feel just as much isolation as children abandoned by their parents.
John Bradshaw, directors of the Anthrozoology Institute at Bristol University, who has studied pet behaviour for 25 years, said the situation represented a "real and ongoing crisis" for dogs.
Dr Bradshaw and his team put video cameras in the homes of 20 dog owners, all of whom claimed their pet was perfectly happy being left at home while they were at work. In fact, some were shown treading in circles around the doormat, while breathing heavily and whining, and one dog's trauma was such that it had to be referred to an animal psychologist.
In his book, In Defence of Dogs, to be published this month, Dr Bradshaw describes how his black labrador, Bruno, used to chew on his bed, the furniture and the wallpaper when left alone in the house. He explained how canines can become depressed if they experience long periods without company and may resort to causing damage in the home.
However, dog owners were warned not to punish their pooches as they will not understand why they are being chastised. "They have a different kind of memory. They cannot think back and realize what they did an hour ago is the reason their owner is cross with them," Mr Bradshaw stated.
The key to helping your dog to cope with being left alone, he said, is to teach it that seeing you leaving the house results in a positive outcome. This can be achieved by popping back after a short period to give it a treat or some attention, then slowly increasing the length of absence until the dog can be left alone all day.
Owney is the name of the postal dog in 1888, he hops on trains that carried bags of mail around the country. He travel across the United States by rail and then globe-trotting to Mexico, Canada, Europe and Asia. Owney became known as a good luck charm as he traveled the country on mail trains. As he traveled the country, postal clerks would add tags to his collar from each stop, eventually Owney had so many tags they had to make him a special dog vest to put them on. 
