In the week following Sept. 11, 2001, Rachel McPherson went with her papillon Fidel to visit with thousands of New Yorkers who had been affected by the attacks on the World Trade Center.

During a crisis intervention program, Fidel walked up to one woman and put his paws on her knee.

She picked up the dog, crying, and asked, “How does this dog know that I am in such pain?”

It was stories like this that inspired McPherson to write Every Dog Has a Gift, out today. Through interviews with dog owners from around the country, and drawing from her experiences as founder and director of animal-assisted therapy program The Good Dog Foundation, McPherson writes of the many ways in which dogs can help humans.

“I think we need to rely more on animals and be much more aware of what’s going on around us,” McPherson said. “They’re always talking to us and sharing information.”

And helping — like in her story about an autistic boy that coped with his challenges through the help of a dog, and another about a homeless man that survived his struggles thanks to his loyal pooch.

McPherson, a former filmmaker, was working on a documentary about animal-assisted therapy when she became so taken with the work that she started The Good Dog Foundation. Through the organization, she influenced NewYork State law and helped make it possible for therapy dogs to enter health care facilities.

“Through therapy dog work, we’re spreading the word to a lot of people who are sick and in need about the benefits of having an animal,” McPherson says. “There’s a shift happening. People are beginning to have much more respect for dogs and their needs.”

The life-saving skills of a black Labrador have earned him a top medal in the British Army. Nine-year-old Treo’s job is to sniff out roadside bombs in Afghanistan for soldiers, and he has proved rather good at it.

In August, 2008, while working as a forward detection dog in Sangin, Treo found a “daisy chain” improvised explosive device (IED) – made of two or more explosives wired together – that had been carefully modified

and concealed by the Taliban at the side of a path. A month later, his actions saved another platoon from guaranteed casualties, again by finding a daisy chain IED.

Now he is being rewarded with the Dickin Medal – the animal equivalent of a Victoria Cross – the highest accolade for a military animal.

Treo retired and is now enjoying life with handler Sergeant Dave Heyhoe back at 104 Military Working Dogs Support Unit, in North Luffenham, Rutland.  Sgt Heyhoe said, “Treo’s work involves searching for arms and explosives out on the ground to the forefront of the troops. It’s very important. We are part and parcel of the search element. We’re not the ultimate answer but we are an aid to search. Another aid would be the metal detector – but Treo is a four-legged variety.”

Sgt Heyhoe says their relationship is now far more than a working partnership.

“Basically, me and the dog have got to understand each other and without that we can’t be effective on the ground. He must know when I want him to go somewhere to search. Everyone will say that he is just a military working dog – yes, he is, but he is also a very good friend of mine. We look after each other.”

Treo is the 63rd animal to receive the Dickin Medal – introduced in 1943 to honor the work of animals in war – and the 27th dog to receive the honor. Since its introduction it has also been presented to 32 World War II messenger pigeons, three horses and one cat.

[Courtesy of FoxNews.com]

When two female royal albatrosses at a New Zealand breeding colony embarked on a lesbian relationship, there were some raised eyebrows. But when the pair successfully incubated a chick, wildlife experts were delighted – and surprised.

The father – one of scores of males at the Taiaroa Head Royal Albatross Centre on the South Island’s Otago Peninsula – appears to have disappeared. He will play no role in the upbringing of his week-old chick and, just like an increasing number of children, this bird will grow up with two mothers.

“It’s quite unusual in the albatross population here at Taiaroa Head to have two females mating together,” Lyndon Perriman, the colony’s head ranger, told Television New Zealand. “Even more unusual than that is that the egg is actually fertile this season.”

While homosexuality is well documented in the animal kingdom, including among seabirds, Taiaroa Head – the only mainland albatross breeding colony in the world – has recorded only two previous instances of females setting up a nest together in the past 70 years. Neither resulted in a happy ending.

The latest pair had tried nesting with a male albatross during two previous breeding seasons, but the threesome did not work out. This time, the two females took turns sitting on the egg.

Sam Inder, the manager of the center, said: “It’s an unusual situation because we’ve had a triangle with one male and two females for the past couple of years, and obviously that hasn’t been terribly conducive to getting on with a breeding program. This year, the male left the trio, but obviously not before he had mated with one of the females.”

The male has not been seen since, and Mr. Inder told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: “My personal view would be having to live with two women might be just a bit demanding.”

Initially, rangers at the center were not sure whether the female pair would stay together, so they tried them out with a dummy egg. When they proved to be good parents, the original egg was returned to the nest. Now the ladies are taking turns to guard the chick and fly out to sea to fetch food.

There are about 140 royal albatrosses on the colony with wingspans of nearly 10 feet. This season 17 chicks have hatched from 17 fertile eggs, a rare 100 per cent success rate.

It is not the only same-sex pairing within the animal world on the Otago Peninsula, just south of Dunedin. Currently, two male yellow-eyed penguins – an endangered species like the royal albatross– are incubating an egg.

[Courtesy of TheIndependent.co.uk]

It’s time to dig up those old fur coats you regret buying on impulse 10 years ago and got no use out of. Besides, fur is no longer in fashion, it’s shunned by some of the hottest designers out there! Luckily, the Humane Society of the United States has come forth with a solution to rid of you faux-paux while helping animals in need (and gives you a chance to buy some faux-fur instead!)

The Coats for Cubs program helps orphaned, injured or sick wildlife by gathering fur coats and using them for nests, bedding or cuddly replacements for mom and dad. In 2009 alone, 2,687 fur items were donated.

“We use the discarded furs as bedding to give the animals comfort and reduce stress,” said Michael Markarian, the agency’s chief operating officer in Washington, D.C. “The fur garments act as a surrogate mother. It is a warm and furry substitute.”

The coats go to wildlife rehabilitation centers that take in baby raccoons, chipmunks, squirrels, coyotes, skunks and other animals, and has helped thousands of animals since it began in 2005 with the Fund for Animals.

Markarian said many of the coats are donated by people who find fur to be inhumane — whether the animals are trapped in steel-jawed traps or raised on factory farms. For those who have fur and no longer want to wear it, “This is a great way for them to give back to the animals,” he said.

Amber Ginter, 13, from Kingston, Ohio, spent last summer collecting fur coats as part of a community project affiliated with the Humane Society. She put a box in her church, wrote a letter describing the project in the church bulletin and collected 30 coats in two months, she said.

“It was kind of sad to see all the furs because you know they had to kill the animals to get them,” said Amber, who wants to be a veterinarian or zoologist when she grows up.

The Florida Wildlife Center in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. has used coats for wildlife babies in the past, but employees and volunteers had to scrounge for donations, twist arms, or scour garage sales and thrift stores. After becoming a Humane Society affiliate last June, the center got three boxes full of furs and are well stocked for baby season.

“It’s a remarkable, generous way to make good of a tragic beginning. I know young people are involved in this effort. Bravo for understanding this better than adults and for seeing a positive way to help other animals,” said Sherry Schlueter, managing director at the Florida Wildlife Center in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

The center houses what they believe is the largest wildlife trauma center in the United States, Schlueter said. Of the 12,000 animals cared for in 2009, just over 1,900 were orphaned babies, including about 1,000 gray squirrels, Virginia opossums and raccoons — those most likely to benefit from the furs.

The center is expecting at least 1,000 additional baby animals in 2010 because a nearby wildlife rehab center closed last year.

The coats are always needed, but they are especially welcome in one of the worst winters in memory, said Erica Yery, president of the Wild Bunch Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Alexandria, Va. Most of the baby animals she has now are raccoons who are making good use of the coats.

“They go in and snuggle up. Of course, they might tear it to shreds after a while,” she said. But she knows they like the fur — if they didn’t “they would just throw it out. They wouldn’t keep in it their nesting box.”

The coats are great, but caps and hats are even better, she said, because she doesn’t have to cut them and they are already rounded like nests.

The current Coats for Cubs coat drive technically ends on Earth Day, April 22, but the Humane Society will accept coats any time of the year, Markarian said. Donations can be shipped to the group or turned in to any Buffalo Exchange, which has stores or franchises in 14 states.

For more information and to make your own donation, please visit the Humane Society’s website.

[Courtesy of yahoo! news]

About 10 years ago, Cliff Richardson was living under a bridge, scratching out the troubled life of a drug addict. He was living amongst a community of homeless people residing there, but Richardson’s closest companion may have been Bullet, a small mixed breed dog so smart that she seemed to cross streets only when the light turned green.

One of the places Bullet would wander to was an alley off Seventh Place — a small side street just blocks from the bridge in the Arts District in Los Angeles — where activist Lori Weise had a makeshift kennel and free kibble for homeless individuals to feed their canines.

Skipping forward to the present, past Richardson’s repeated run-ins with the law and multiple “state vacations” as he calls them, and he still makes a habit of visiting Weise and her dogs on Seventh Place. But now when Richardson stops by, instead of just grabbing some dog food, he helps walk, socialize and train her pack of more than a dozen rescues.

Last year, Weise, who runs the nonprofit Downtown Dog Rescue, secured a $20,000 grant from the Annenberg Foundation to support her program Jobs With Dogs. The project seeks to employ homeless, low-income and under-employed individuals to walk and socialize the dogs, some of which are up for

adoption.

The initiative is not new: Weise, who houses the shelter at the Modernica furniture warehouse where she’s the manager, has been active in the field since 1989. Downtown Dog Rescue started as an small no-kill shelter that took in homeless dogs off Skid Row, socialized them, spayed and neutered them when possible, and found them homes. Along the way, Weise has always sought to build relationships with and sometimes employ people from Skid Row and beyond. That’s why she provided the free food to the men and women of Skid Row who kept dogs, a practice that she says is far less common today than it was in the 1990s.

“When I was talking to Annenberg and asking for this grant, I basically said, I’m going to do this work whether you give me the grant or not,” Weise said. “It’s just that it’ll really help me to expand what I’m already doing.”

Richardson, who has always had an affinity for dogs, was assigned one of Weise’s most timid rescues, a caramel-colored pitbull named Kylie. He and friend Tony Sperl, an animal activist who helped Richardson reconnect with Weise, would show up and walk a pack of Weise’s dogs a few times a week. On Sundays, they would participate in Downtown Dog Rescue’s weekly dog training classes at the Coliseum, Richardson always pairing with Kylie.

“Kylie is a dog that’s basically un-adoptable,” Weise said. “She’s not going to bite you, she loves other dogs, but you take her to an adoption [event] and she’s just going to cower and shake.

“But Cliff was able to really connect with this dog. Not even the lady that rescued her could do that.”

The one-year Annenberg grant allows Weise to pay Jobs With Dogs participants about $10 per hour. The program extends beyond dog walking and training. Weise has also hooked up with the gang intervention organization Homeboy Industries, employing that group’s members to distribute anti-dog fighting fliers to stores around town. The fliers include a tipline to report dog fighting.

Then there are cases like Henry Acosta, another Jobs With Dogs participant who has battled drugs and anger management issues since he was a teenager. The South Los Angeles resident has worked on and off at Modernica doing maintenance tasks for about 10 years. He quit a few times, and Weise fired him a few times.

“Lori always gave me a second chance,” Acosta said.

Acosta helps with another Downtown Dog Rescue project, Operation Safety Net, which works mostly with older women in South Los Angeles who need yard work and maintenance in order to keep their dogs. Acosta is an apprentice in the program, learning skills such as fence building, all the while helping to ensure that another dog with a home doesn’t end up on the streets or at the pound.

Though Acosta does not yet walk the dogs, he sees them and hears them every day when he’s working at Modernica.

“One thing I’ve realized is that all these dogs have different personalities,” he said. “There’s the timid ones, the rowdy ones, the playful ones — they’re just like human beings.”

Please visit downtowndogrescue.com for more information.

[Courtesy of LA Downtown News]

Missy, an eight-year old cat, owes her life – and her mobility – to her family and vet technician. And now, she’ll be known as the first feline in the world to get a complete knee replacement.

Vets believed she was close to death after she was run over by a car, but she made a recovery after undergoing pioneering new surgery to rebuild her limbs and fit a specially-made metal joint.

The eight-year-old family pet had been lying injured in a bush for two long days with one hind leg broken in eight places and the other with a completely dislocated knee before she was found by her owners.

“I heard a tiny little cry coming from the bush and I knew she was calling me,” said owner Louise Morris from Petworth, West Sussex.

Dr. Noel Fitzpatrick, the vet who performed the operation at his clinic in Guildford, said, “It was a case of  putting Missy to sleep forever or developing an artificial knee, which had never been done before. Amputation was not an option since the other hind leg was broken in eight places.”

The skin and tendons at the back of her other foot had died due to crushing of the blood supply and the tissue had all fallen off, leaving raw bone exposed.

In order to regrow tissue and cover the bone, a collagen mesh made out of pig’s bladder was used. The various broken bones were then placed in a scaffolding of pins called a SPIDER (Secured Pin Intramedullary Dorsal Epoxy Resin Frame) until the bone and tissue healed.

The new total knee replacement implant was designed by Dr. Fitzpatrick,Professor Gordon Blunn and Mr. Jay Meswania of OrthoFitz Implants. It is made of two parts which are linked together with a hinged mechanism so that the knee ligaments – which had all been shredded – would no longer be required and the knee could no longer dislocate. Uniquely, the implant was custom-designed based on a scan of Missy’s knee and
exactly fitted Missy’s measurements, both in terms of the size of her bones and the range of motion of her knee joint. The three-inch long implant is made out of stainless steel and is bonded to the thigh bone and the shin bone using cement.

Dr. Fitzpatrick added: “The most difficult thing about the operation was miniaturizing the implants and matching the hinge motion to allow walking, running and jumping, which cats do a lot of. A human patient with a knee replacement would probably walk and maybe even run but would rarely expect to jump.”

The operation took two-and-a-half hours to cut the old damaged knee out and replace it with the new implants.

After twelve agonizing weeks of treatment, her owners were over the moon to take Missy home to pamper her and treat her to her favorite chicken dinner.

Ms. Morris now faces a huge vet’s bill but said, ‘Missy is a valuable member of the family and we would do whatever possible provided she has a good quality of life.”

She added, “Noel is a genius. He makes it possible for animals to have the same level of care as humans.”

Homebound and unable to move about by himself safely, Sergeant Clay Rankin, a Gulf War and Iraq War veteran who suffered brain and spinal cord injuries in 2004, started looking for a service dog to help him. Through the help of Lori Stevens of Patriot PAWS, Rankin found Archie, an 8-year-old black Labrador retriever who now helps him everyday. “I started seeing that there’s life after injury,” Rankin says. “Archie’s not a dog. He’s much more than that.”

The 2009 ASPCA Humane Awards luncheon at New York’s Pierre Hotel on Thursday was a celebration of animals, like Archie, and people who help animals avoid hardship and animal cruelty.

Piano-playing sensation and Cat of the Year, Nora, stayed at home in Philadelphia because “she doesn’t like to leave her studio,” but her owners, as well as Dog of the Year Archie and many of the human honorees spoke before the 450 teary guests of the society.

Archie, who was in attendance Thursday, allows Rankin to move about without a scooter or wheelchair. In addition to his physical injuries, Rankin suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. Archie was not trained to help Rankin deal with his PTSD, but “it was an unintended benefit,” says the war vet. Archie wakes Rankin from his nightmares, and he believes that the canine can smell the chemical changes occurring in his owner’s body.

“When I start going into a flashback, he takes his nose and starts punching on my arm,” Rankin says. “When I get real stressed out, he’ll put his head on my lap and just loves me.”

Other honorees included Kid of the Year, 11-year-old Monica Plumb, creator of PetMasks.com; Law Enforcement Officers of the Year Tim Rickey, Kyle Held, Sergeant Terry Mills and Sergeant Jeffrey Heath of Missouri, who organized a dog-fighting sting, making over 100 arrests and saving over 500 dogs; and Lifetime Achievement Award winner Richard O’Barry, who after spending decades capturing and training dolphins, has since devoted his life to untraining and releasing them from captivity.

[Courtesy of People Pets]

Not only do dogs enrich the lives of their humans; they may also be trying to save our lives without us even realizing it! Dogs are detecting cancer; some are trained to do so, and others instinctively know something is not quite right.

Gill Lacey, who was featured on CBS’s 60 Minutes in 2005, was saved by her Dalmatian, Trudi. Trudi began sniffing a tiny mole on Gill’s leg. That mole was a malignant melanoma, which could have easily spread and put an early end to Gill’s life, had it not been detected so early.

Just because your dog is intently sniffing you does not mean you should run with alarm to your doctor. A dog’s nose is 10,000 to 100,000 times more sensitive than that of a human. A dog also has a larger portion of brain and nervous system devoted to the olfactory sense. Thus, a dog’s interpretation of his surroundings is greatly affected by the information obtained from his nose.

[to read more, click here]

On Monday morning, Debby Brown was ecstatic, having been reunited with her tiny dog Lexi 21/2 days after the pet was taken from her Cadillac Escalade parked behind a Concord, Calif., restaurant.

But it was a tough weekend for the Concord woman, who offered — and paid — a $10,000 reward to get back Lexi.

“We got so many calls, about 40, and some of them wanted to meet us,” said Brown, who had posted fliers all over the East Bay region. “It was scary sitting in those parking lots, waiting, afraid of getting robbed. … It’s been a very stressful few days.”

Her ordeal began Friday night, when Brown and her boyfriend left the Elephant Bar on Willow Pass Road and found a window of their vehicle had been smashed. Lexi, a 2-year-old, 3-pound Chihuahua-Yorkshire terrier mix — a ‘chorkie’ — was gone.

So Brown posted fliers promising a $10,000 reward, no questions asked, for Lexi’s safe return. That brought out the callers — most of whom, of course, didn’t have Lexi.

She called a pet detective, who told her that chorkies are in demand and that dognappers target them for breeding purposes. Brown even called a psychic.

She tried to meet with a few of the people who called over the weekend, claiming they had Lexi. None of them showed, she said. Then Brown received photos of her pet via e-mail, convincing her that this was the real deal. And indeed, early Monday morning, Brown and her boyfriend met with people in a parking lot in Alameda, Calif., where the cash and the dog were exchanged.

Lexi’s disappearance underscores that people should not leave pets where they can be snatched, said Elena Bicker, executive director of the Walnut Creek, Calif.-based Animal Rescue Foundation. Small breeds such as chorkies may be especially vulnerable, given their size and increased popularity, she said, adding that disreputable breeders look for them.

Adding microchips to animals can often help bring them back safe, she said.

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” Bicker said. “And this certainly was a pound of cure.”

Because Brown had promised the reward with no questions asked, she was loathe to pursue the matter. She was far more jubilant than bitter Monday. “I’m so surprised I got her back.”

Paying the money, she said, was worth it.

“She’s my life, she’s our baby,” Brown said. “I used to laugh at people like me and say ‘It’s just a dog.’ But she is a member of the family.”

Jake was an abused and neurotic rescue dog who scared visitors and didn’t play well with others. As far as Jim Gallagher was concerned, he was nothing but another mouth to feed and another source of bills. One day Gallagher found the sofa in shreds, with stuffing scattered everywhere. Weeks later, Jake destroyed yet another sofa. This “free” dog was costing Gallagher hundreds of dollars, and the Boulder Creek (Santa Cruz County) resident didn’t like him. That is, until the day Jake saved his son.

He was a lean and wild-looking collie mix with a silky red coat, and I thought Jake would be good protection for our family – until the time we were walking in the nearby hills and came upon a family of wild pigs. Jake ran for his life.

Eventually, we added a goofy, good-natured mutt named Riley and a shelter cat named Spot to our family. None was fond of our 4-year-old son, Joey, who often stepped on tails or yanked ears. They left the room whenever he entered, but otherwise paid little attention to him.

Then one cool autumn afternoon Joey went missing. We looked in all the obvious places but without any luck. It was getting late and the sun would soon be setting. We called the police, who immediately dispatched a helicopter. We lived in a rural area not far from Morgan Territory Regional Preserve. The rolling landscape is thick with California oak, grazing deer, wild pigs, coyotes and the occasional mountain lion.

I looked in the gully behind our house and trekked down the dry creek bed. I stepped over the barbed-wire fence and continued down the steep path underneath the dense foliage of oak and bay trees. By now I was searching hundreds of yards into the neighboring rancher’s property. I was also worrying about mountain lions.

I went farther than I had ever been before. There was no way Joey could have gone this far, not by himself. Fighting a wave of panic, I decided to resume my search closer to the house. Just as I was about to return home, Jake came bounding out of the bushes. He turned around and headed back down the gully. He was doing a perfect imitation of Lassie – it was obvious that he wanted me to follow him.

He had never done anything like that before, so I followed him an additional 100 feet down the trail. To my utter amazement, there was Joey. He was sitting in a little clearing, and standing just inches away were Riley and Spot, both calm, but watchful. Joey’s lower lip was starting to quiver. He had been brave, but was beginning to realize that he was lost.

Dogs have been man’s faithful companion for thousands of years, and on that day Jake showed me why. Our local grocery store carries cow-leg bones, but at 10 bucks apiece I was usually too cheap to buy them. The day after Joey’s rescue, Jake and Riley each got one of those bones and Spot got a catnip toy. Unaware of their hero status, they spent the day blissfully gnawing away. They earned their pet food and vet bills for life, and my family’s eternal gratitude.