Pop Rocks & soda?
Posted on 02/15/2006 12:24:58 PM PST by afraidfortherepublic
An explosives sniffing dog died this morning after falling from a ramp at the George R. Brown Convention Center in downtown Houston.
The dog, Mikey, was part of a U.S. Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives unit involved in a security sweep of the convention center in preparation for the NBA All-Star game, said Franceska Perot, spokeswoman for ATF.
Perot said about 1:30 a.m. the unit was taking a break and the dog, a Labrador, was being put into the back of a truck when he suddenly bolted and went over the edge of a ramp.
The dog fell about 55 feet to the ground and was taken to a local veterinary clinic where he died. Perot said the dog, used for detecting explosives, may have seen a pigeon and instinct took over and he jumped at the bird.
"This is a highly trained animal but sometimes you can't train the instinct out of them,'' she said.
Doggie ping?
Sad, sad story.
Very sad about the dog. That said, I highly doubt the instinct in a trained lab would be to jump off a 55 ledge no matter what he was after.
The question needs to be asked.
Was this dog on duty last Saturday at the Armstrong Ranch?
Sad story, too bad he had to go out that way.
WOW....55 feet.......Dog Gone
My dog jumped off a 10 foot high deck going after a squirrel. He was lucky, it just knocked him out.
That is sad. At least he went fast, not like all the poor doggies who are being fed those Greenie veggie treats that are blocking up their esophaguses, intestines, and stomachs.
I have heard of this kind of thing happening before. The local priest had a beautiful Irish Setter. He used to allow the neighborhood kids to take the dog for walks. One day they took him to the park to play --- chasing sticks and such. On the way back they were crossing a bridge over some railroad tracks that had a solid concrete wall about 4 feet high instead of the typical steel railing. One of the kids not thinking took the stick he was carrying and threw it down to the tracks, and I guess I don't have to say what happened next. The poor kids were devastated.
Probably got whiff of the cleaning crew lighting up backstage.
That's the first I've heard about Greenies. What's the scoop? I give them to my lab all the time.
Please be careful. They don't dissolve in the body like, for instance, MilkBones do. They had a long segment on CNN today. It's probably worthy of its own thread as a warning. Many dogs have died from bowel obstructions caused by Greenies. Other smaller dogs have choked to death on them. Others have been saved by expensive surgery.
It's apparently worse than your dog swallowing a sock or a bone.
Our bolted throught a screen to join the children going down the street for a walk. Sadly is was a screen window in an upstairs bedroom dropped out and landed in the driveway.
Broke her leg.
There is a post on it but I saw it on CNN last night, here is the link.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/02/14/dangerous.dogtreat/
It took almost 12 hours to report this. Time to bring in the Feds for an investigation.
I disagree. I am the proud parent of two male Labradors, ages 8 and 10. Living on a cove off the Severn River in Annapolis, we sometimes get geese wandering into our yard. Labradors are, of course, bred to chase after geese, live or dead.
You could build a 6 foot high brick wall between my Labs and the geese, and I guarantee you that at the first "honk", the older one would jump the wall, and the younger one would go straight through it. That, sir, is instinct.
As someone who loves the breed, though, I am really saddened by the death of this young Lab. The one consolation is that if it really was the "BIRD" alarm that went off in his brain and caused him to jump, he died a happy Lab.
Sad.
Too bad Pitbull owners can't seem to grasp this
I saw the same segment and know I won't be getting any greenies for my dogs either.
Also, from personal experience, the real smoked bones can also be very dangerous for dogs. We gave our terrier mix one of these bones and he went to town on it. The next morning he seemed lethargic which was highly unlike him. He didn't improve after observing him for a couple of hours...no appetite, not interested in treats or going outside or any other activity that would have normally resulted in tailwagging, extreme joy. Took him to the vet, he had to stay 3 days because he had become extremely dehydrated and his system was chemically imbalanced.
"ATF's 'Mikey' dies on duty for NBA All-Star Game"
Actually he was killed while attempting to go AWOL.
Catnip will do it for many dogs.
Here ya go:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1578876/posts
Poor Mikey. Instinct overcame training. I don't expect much of my lab in her current role as beta joker, but I sure would hate to see that exuberent life extinguished. I hope his handler is comforted in having given Mikey a rewarding, happy life.
How does this compare, say, to dog biscuits
He saw the price of tickets.
Pop Rocks & soda?
Wow, thanks. I give him the really small ones and he appears to chew them just fine. Of course, this was also the dog that ate about four containers of rat poison and survived.
I'll keep an eye on him.
Lesson learned: Don't throw your left over hotdog over the railing if the dog is not secured.
The ATF has racked up it's share of other people's pets over the years. Guess they're going after their own, now.
One time we had the Dread Boston Salty down at our friends' beach house, which is actually on a canal, and the algae on the canal was so thick and green that Salty thought it was grass and tried to run out on it.
Lucky for us, he was wearing his harness, so we just fished him out and cleaned him off . . . and it took more than one bath to get the fishy smell off him.
If Mikey would have lived, would he have also received a letter from PETA, begging him to take up a safer profession?
I had a Lab/Dalmation cross who always went riding with me. He jumped up and over the rail of a bridge down to the highway below and broke his pelvis. I can still see him flying thru the air.
How no car hit him, I don't know. I bailed off my horse, handed the reins to another rider, climbed over the barbed wire fence at the bridge approach, slid on my butt down the embankment, about 35 feet+. When I got to him and picked him up and got to the side of the road where a van had stopped, the passenger in the van asked me why I had thrown my dog from the bridge!!!
He healed up, but it cost me a bundle. Wish I still had him. He was a great riding companion.
Instinct is hard to control in an animal.
Probably died from smelling all the drugs carried by the thugs from the NBA.
Thank you for the heads-up on CNN. In future, I will excerpt only from that site.
"may have seen a pigeon and instinct took over and he jumped at the bird."
or maybe he saw a shoelace and went to enforce the NFA since it may be a machine gun....
Here is an FR link on situation in OKC where a K9 followed a suspect over a bridge but lived because he landed on the suspect that died at the hospital:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1540102/posts?page=17#17
you will have to scroll up - this is the bottom of the posts.
BATF cannot even keep their working dogs safe. They are criminally incompetent and corrupt to the CORE.
Wonder how many honest gun dealers, gun collectors, and gun buyers he has harrassed over the years due to his master's desire to negate the 2nd Amendment.
How about firewood...my friend's Yellow Lab's treat of choice...?
I have a way of training it out of them...illustrated by the following anecdote:
My friend took in a couple of 3-year-old dogs, a Golden Retriever and then a Yellow Lab, and decided to put in an Invisible Fence(tm) to allow them to run in the backyard.Mikey shoulda been trained to fear those electric pigeons!
During the training period, a squirrel ran by, and the retrievers bolted for it, only to hear the warning and get zapped. They came running back to the porch.
The next time, a rabbit ran by, and again, off like a shot they went...and again, warning sound and a zap and they came running back.
But these dogs ain't dumb...they've learned.
Now, sometimes if I sit on my friend's back porch, watching the dogs playing, and a rabbit or squirrel decides to visit, I get treated to the rather pathetic sight of these two hunky hounds hightailing it to the house--scared to death of those dangerous little animals that they've learned can zap them with electric shocks! :-)
I was at the pet supply store today getting food for our cat, and saw Feline Greenies. They come in meat flavors but allegedly clean cats' teeth. We brush the cat's teeth several times a week - a tube of kitty toothpaste lasts us for months. Why on earth would I buy Feline Greenies, even if I believed they were safe? (And I don't) One small packet had only 3 or 4 pieces in it and it costs $1!
Our dogs when I was growing up always got Nylabones. As far as I know, those are still thought to be safe. It's the chewing that cleans dogs' teeth anyways, not the "greens" in the Greenies.
Whoops, wrong Mikey.
The dog died for his country. RIP Mikey.
What a sad loss for such a sad mainstream sport.
I grew up with a most handsome Irish Setter owned by the folks across the street. He was a nice animal, but would never be a candidate for doggie Mensa.
My fat cat was pushed off my bed 2 weeks ago and broke her hind leg. $1600 spent so far and she still refuses to go to work sniffing for stuff at a stupid allstar game for ex-street thugs........I can't really blame her for that.
But the best dogs I have ever seen or owned were all mutts from the shelter. I had one that I get a tear in my eye to this day thinking about. Just a mutt but the most loving and loyal creature ever put on this earth and probably the most easily trained dog I have ever seen. Like all of us, she made mistakes, but she never made the same mistake twice.
When we took her from the pound, probably only a day or so from being put to sleep, she was past the "cute puppy" stage. I think it was one of the best decisions I (or actually my kids) ever made. ;~))
I have done some tough things in my life, but I have to say that putting her down when the time came after 11 wonderful years was the hardest damn thing I have ever done.
Bottom line: "Breeds" are nice, but IMHO, there is nothing like a mutt.
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