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All in Animal Companions
The mayor of Béziers, a small city on France’s southern coast, has had it with dog poop. Robert Ménard has decreed that dogs walking on the main streets must have their DNA on file with the local government, so that negligent owners can be tracked down and fined when they fail to clean up after Fifi.
This week the goats returned to Riverside Park on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Charlie, Chico, Cowgirl, and Mallomar launched their summer’s groundskeeping job with a “ribbon chewing” ceremony to open the park’s new compost site, to which the four will be contributing over the next two months.
Scooter is a 7-year-old hairless Chinese Crested dog with some issues: a shock of unruly gray hair (the “crest”), a tongue that’s always hanging out his little maw, and a pair of hind legs facing the wrong way. Because of all that, Scooter has been crowned this year’s World’s Ugliest Dog. Congrats.
There were puns aplenty when Loki, a 5-year-old Rottweiler from Maryland received her “dogtorate” from the University of Maryland-Baltimore this week. With her new dogree confurred, Loki is now officially a dogtor, as declared on the school’s website.
In January we lauded Spike, the 23-year-old chihuahua recognized by Guinness Records as the world’s oldest dog. Now we learn that Spike is a mere puppy compared to Bobi, a Portuguese breed of livestock guardian dog known as the Rafeiro do Alentejo, who clocks in at a whopping 31 years old.
Balto was a world famous Siberian husky, the lead sled dog in a 1925 mission that delivered life-saving medicine to Nome, Alaska in abominably frigid conditions. Now scientists have analyzed Balto’s DNA to find out what made him so tough.
Over 2,500 dogs from more than 200 breeds vied for the coveted title – Best in Show – but only one would prevail. That would be a petit basset griffon Vendéen named Buddy Holly, the first of his kind to take top honors at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.
Researchers at Northeastern University, in collaboration with MIT and the University of Glasgow, taught a group of domesticated birds to call one another on tablets and smartphones. The birds seem to really enjoy it.
A 2-year-old chihuahua named Pearl has been officially recognized as the world’s shortest dog by Guinness World Records.
Australia has a few million too many cats: feral cats, which kill an estimated two billion animals annually; and outdoor house cats, which whack some 83 million native reptiles and 80 million native birds every year. To address the latter carnage, many municipal councils are imposing nighttime curfews on the furry murderers.
The York Police Department in York, Maine had to retire their comfort dog, Yukon the husky, after only five months on the job. Yukon called it quits after suffering from seizures brought on by stress.
A dog in Caseville, Michigan happened upon a Fitbit in her owner’s bedroom. Being a dog, she sized up the wireless fitness tracker and decided the device was edible.
This week the American Kennel Club crowned the French Bulldog as the most popular dog breed in America, a surprising elevation downgrading the Labrador Retriever to second place. The AKC’s ranking is based on its registration statistics.
The winner of Britain’s ugly dog contest – a 4-year-old Pug and Chinese Crested cross named Peggy – last week received her prize: a pampering makeover session and professional photo shoot at a grooming salon in Beverley, East Yorkshire.
A startup company in the UK is making dog food with a novel ingredient: larvae of the black soldier fly. Tuggs is the brainchild of Harry Bremner, whose 2021 master’s dissertation-cum-business proposal on dog food was so good, his advisor offered to fund it.
A Japanese Youtuber devised an elaborate setup in his aquarium that allows his fish to play a certain Nintendo video game. It was all going swimmingly until the fish went off the reservation, so to speak, and charged a few items to the credit card linked to the game.
A nearly blind, somewhat deaf chihuahua in Camden, Ohio is recognized this week by the Guinness World Records. At 23 years and 44 days old [as of January 20], the dog named Spike has been crowned the world’s oldest canine.
A study out of the University of Michigan finds that seniors who live with pets for five or more years have better cognitive memory than those who live without furry roommates. The researchers point out that their findings show correlation, not necessarily causation, but the case for cause is strong.
The documentary “Wildcat,” in which a young British war veteran suffering from recurrent depression and PTSD seeks solace in the Peruvian rainforest, is a visually beautiful and sensitive portrait of an ecosystem at risk.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul has just signed legislation that will ban the sale of dogs, cats, and rabbits at retail pet shops throughout the state, a move intended to end the inhumane conditions rampant in the commercial breeder industry. The ban kicks in December 2024.
