As much as I might look askance on the styles and practices of other dog owners at the local park, the very idea of the government testing and regulating and taxing dog ownership to this extent is utterly horrifying. Yet it is at least under consideration in Britain, according to [Read more →]
Just another tale of a dedicated pooch staying beside a lost child and keeping her warm through a cold night. The story is from Arizona and features a a Queensland Heeler (or “Australian Cattle dog”) named Blue, and a three year-old girl named Victoria. The girl apparently wandered away from her home in a place called Cordes Lakes at about 5 p.m. last Thursday. The area being rugged and abutting state park land, finding her constituted a challenge that immediately demanded rescue teams, volunteers, ATVs, night-vision goggles, and a concerted attempt by local law enforcement to interrogate registered sex offenders in that locale. The night would get cold, falling to the mid-30s Fahrenheit, and the girl had been dressed in a t-shirt when she disappeared.
Despite the best efforts of all the people and resources that could be summoned, the night passed without the little girl being located. With sun-up, a rescue helicopter took off. Around 7:30, after being in the air only about five minutes, the rescuers saw the dog in a dry creek bed roughly a half a mile from the girl’s home, and then saw the girl too. [Read more →]
This story is a double winner for Yours Truly, highlighting as it does both the best and noblest aspects of man’s best friend and the importance of the right of Americans to bear arms under the Second Amendment.
The events happened early in the morning of last Monday, February 15th, in Ashtabula County, Ohio. [Read more →]
In Los Banos, California, last Saturday, a hunter waded into the water to retrieve his decoy ducks and almost found himself in Davy Jones’ Locker. (Well, alright: the bottom of a pond hardly qualifies as Davy Jones’ Locker, but I just love the expression and would like to see it return to common usage — or enter it for the first time — whether used appropriately or not.) The hunter had left his loaded shotgun on the ground, apparently, and his female Labrador stepped on it. The story (which I suppose only the hunter and the dog can fully vouch for) is that her stepping on it caused the safety to disengage and the shotgun to fire, hitting the man, who was about 45 feet away. [Read more →]
In Canada (British Columbia), in a town called Boston Bar, a Golden Retriever got in between a cougar and an eleven-year-old boy, quite possibly saving the boy’s life. From CTV:
According to RCMP, the boy went to retrieve some firewood at his family’s home in Boston Bar, about 200 kilometres northeast of Vancouver.
A cougar began to charge across the yard at the boy.
The dog stepped in and engaged the cougar, which was much larger than the dog. [Read more →]
