to move up and down
“He chased a couple of squirrels in the bush. But he always came back.” Loyal dog sticks by owner after woman spends 12-hours stuck in mud hole
When Sandra Van Alstyne saw the flashlights of a police search and rescue team through the trees, her leg had been stuck in the mud for more than 12 hours.
The 64-year-old left her house in Ontario’s cottage country at 10 a.m. Tuesday for a regular walk with her border collie. About a kilometre along a side road, the pair turned down a narrow path and stopped in a clearing to throw a Frisbee.
The dog dropped the Frisbee in a muddy patch, and when Ms. Van Alstyne bent to retrieve it, she felt her feet sink. “I took one step too far,” she said. “It just sucked me right in. (Gerry Van Alstyne)
Train forced to make emergency stop after elderly man ties puppy to tracks: police
Officials say a 78-year-old man tied a puppy to train tracks in the California desert, and an engineer had to use emergency brakes to keep from crushing it.
Riverside County animal control said in a statement Tuesday that Banjo, a 10-month-old poodle-terrier mix, is fine and up for adoption.
The train was near Mecca on April 2 when the engineer saw a man walking away from the tracks and stopped. (Riverside County Animal Services / The Associated Press)
PM’s cat becomes Reddit celebrity as Harper apparently mails glossy feline photo to letter writer
Do you want to talk to the Prime Minister about cats? Because the Prime Minister, apparently, wants to talk to you about cats.
Reddit user MyLastNameIsHO posted late Wednesday a letter a he claims a friend received from Stephen Harper responding to an inquiry about the cats at 24 Sussex.
In the thread named “Mr friend’s letter to the Prime Minister of Canada about his cats was replied to! (with his signature too),” the user presents the letter with a huge picture of the Harper family cat Stanley. (The Harper’s other cat Gypsy apparently has “no patience” for the camera). (Reddit user MyLastNameIsHO)
Laura Helmuth: Don’t be fooled — cats are evil
You know what animal makes a good pet? No animal.
Dogs will bite you to death and then eat your corpse. Snakes will asphyxiate you, escape, infest the Everglades and eat all its mammals. Pet parrots perpetuate a trade that upends ecosystems, and hamsters pass you dangerous zoonotic diseases.
But perhaps the worst pet of all, environmentally speaking, is a cat.
Domesticated cats started out as parasites on human civilization. Unlike other species, and admittedly to their credit, they domesticated themselves. When humans started growing grain, the crops attracted rodents that attracted cats. Wild cats evolved into housecats, and they were quite useful for thousands of years, killing disease-ridden rats and mice and protecting our food stockpiles.
But now that we have industrial farming, reliable food storage and mostly mouse-proof houses, cats are mere parasites again. Playful and often affectionate parasites, sure, and adorable when young, but a scourge on the landscape. (PMO)
‘That ball of fluff you own is a natural born killer’: New Zealand economist wants a nation free of cats
New Zealand economist Gareth Morgan wants you to imagine his country teeming with native wildlife, with penguins on the beach and birdsongs wafting through its cities.
And if that vision sounds enticing, Morgan wants you to consider his path to getting there: Gradually ridding the country of all its cats.
Morgan has launched a campaign against New Zealand’s felines through the website Cats To Go, claiming cats are a danger to local bird populations. (Getty Images/ThinkStock)
Poop, scoop and hang: The doo-doos and don’ts of dealing with your dog’s droppings
“Would you hang your kid’s dirty diaper on a shrub in your backyard?” asks Janice Palmer, a retired biology teacher and volunteer who plants native trees and shrubs in Sherwood Park. “It’s crap, for God’s sake, and it’s plastic in a natural area. It’s unsanitary, it’s unsightly and it’s disrespectful of other park users and it’s disrespectful of nature.”
Photos of the day
A rabbit jumps over a hurdle at an obstacle course the 5th Open Rabbit Sport Tournament on Aug. 28, 2011 in Rommerz, Germany. Eighty rabbits competed in light-weight, middle-weight and jumping-for-points categories. Rabbit Hopping is a growing trend among pet rabbit owners in Central Europe and the first European Championships are scheduled to be held later this year in Switzerland. (Ralph Orlowski/Getty Images)
Cats missing, wolverines being blamed
The northern B.C. town of Kitimat has become a dangerous place for kitties — and residents say a family of wolverines is to blame.
As of Thursday, more than 80 cats have gone missing, while sightings of four wolverines — a male, female and two young — have been reported around town.
“They’re the most vicious animals I know,” Kitimat Mayor Joanne Monaghan told the Vancouver Province. “They can kill a bear, an elk, a deer.”
Oh boy, Oh Boy OH BOY! A Jack Russell dog runs during a race at the 2011 Taipei Pet Show inside the Nangang Exhibition Hall in Taipei July 15, 2011. The show will run from Friday to July 18 and has about 130 exhibitors and 600 booths this year. REUTERS/Nicky Loh. More of today’s best photos.
Missing dog found 4,000 kilometres from home: Pollux had been given up for dead, having wandered out of her Quebecois owner’s house more than a year ago never to return. But as it turns out, that stealth black lab is very much alive, albeit across the country in B.C. Just how the lab made it all the way to Kamloops remains an unsolved mystery. “I guess only the dog knows,” said Sarah Gerow
Mila, a dachshund and Vancouver Canucks fan, supports her favourite team during Woofstock, North America’s largest festival for dogs, June 12, in downtown Toronto. (Aaron Lynett/National Post)
Photos: Dog, bear hug
An orphaned bear cub wandered into a family’s back yard in Podvrh, Slovenia about a month ago. The family has not officially adopted the bear cub, named Medo, but they and their dog have bonded with him; the family plans to build a fenced-in area for the cub. (Srdjan Zivulovic/Reuters)
Toronto motion would restrict pet store sales to rescue, shelter animals
Critics proposed the ban as a way to address the number of unwanted pets, to discourage impulse purchases of cats and dogs in pet stores and the overpopulation of feral cats, along with the treatment of the animals in pet shops.
Councillor Glenn De Baeremaker is proposing that all retailers certify their animals are obtained from either a registered humane society, a registered shelter or rescue group or a municipal animal shelter (Photo: David Mdzinarishvili/Reuters)
Poodle dropped by eagle, found by B.C. nursing home
She’s a vagabond toy poodle named May by SPCA staff after she fell out of the sky earlier this month and landed on the grounds of the Shorncliffe Nursing Home in Sechelt, B.C.
And how she came to be flying over the nursing home is explained by the deep talon marks in her back and sides, showing she was probably the unwilling passenger of a hungry eagle that had picked her up but eventually found her 18 pounds too much to hold.
May — her ribs broken and her body lacerated — was found by nursing staff on May 2 and delivered to the Sunshine Coast SPCA.
Animal ethicists call for ‘impartial’ terminology
Animal ethicists are calling for a new vocabulary about animals, shunning words such as “pets,” “wildlife,” and “vermin” as derogatory and even suggesting “animal” is a “term of abuse.”
Common language on fauna betrays an “anthropocentric bias” and impedes an understanding of our interaction with the non-human species sharing the planet, argue the editors of the first academic journal dedicated to animal ethics in their debut issue.
Instead of “pet,” the Journal of Animal Ethics suggests “companion animal.” Rather than “wildlife,” they are to be called “free-living.” “Differentiated beings” or “non-human animals” is preferred to simply “animals.”
Words such as “vermin,” “beasts” and “critters” are stricken completely, along with similes such as “sly as a fox,” “drunk as a skunk,” “eat like a pig,” “slippery as an eel,” “breeding like rabbits” and “stubborn as a mule.”
“We will not be able to think clearly unless we discipline ourselves to use more impartial nouns and adjectives in our exploration of animals and our moral relations with them,” the editors write. (Photo: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
