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Something we have always known, animals are smarter than people.

My best friend of 16 years died Thursday. She was an Obedience Champion, #1 in her Breed in 2003 AKC, she had a Utility degree and OTCH points before arthritis took her out of competition. She knew about fifty words/expressions, she could swim like a mini tugbout, catch a frisby on the fly, retrieve anything with all her heart, climb a ladder, bark on command, drop food on command, find hidden objects on command, do the Schutzhund arm hold, and many other feats. She heeled perfectly off leash on Manhattan streets and parks recognizing the need to stop at every...

VIRGINIA BEACH When Rico woke from his nap Sunday evening, he was ready to play. But the two men who had entered GFY Clothing, a screen printing shop on South Birdneck Road, were in no mood for fun. They spotted Rico, a year-old pit bull, and one of them shot him in the head with a .45-caliber handgun. Despite the injury, Rico attacked, clamping onto one of the men’s arms and buying the shop’s employees enough time to escape. “I know for a fact he saved our lives,” said Chuck Smellinger, 34, one of the shop’s owners. “It was amazing,...

Gang kicked dog in air and threatened to do same to owner Lisa Kenyon March 20, 2009 A DOG was viciously attacked by a gang of youths while walking through Milnshaw Park, Accrington, with its owner. William Townsley, 66, was walking his 14-year-old partially-blind Cairn terrier Snoopy through the park at around 1pm on Monday. As he was passing the children’s play area, William said a group of around 18 Asian youths racially abused him, shouting obscenities before kicking the defenceless dog in the face and ribs. William, of Devonshire Street, Accrington, said: "I could hear them shouting racial obscenities...

OAKLAND — There are 33 seconds Mike Henrickson will never forget in his lifetime. Henrickson said it was in those quick seconds nearly two years ago that Antonio Russell hit him over the head with a pistol, knocked him to his knees, demanded his wallet and then shot — and killed — Henrickson's beloved 6-year-old pit bull, Benny. "In all of my 49 years of life, 33 seconds is all it took to flip my world upside down. I'd give anything to have my dog back," Henrickson wrote in a victim's impact statement that was read by his best friend...

A bushwalker airlifted from the top of Australia’s Mount Maroon yesterday, has now rescued his stranded dog in a daring mission. David Gibson braved wind and rain to save Diff the bull mastiff, even when emergency services said it was too dangerous. Diff’s barking alerted rescuers when owner David Gibson and his friend Mark Harrison were missing on the mountain. But the bull mastiff was left behind in worsening conditions after the RSPCA called off a rescue attempt because of terrible weather. Mr Gibson and experienced climber Mark Gamble hatched a plan to rescue to 65 kilogram beast. The plan...

Multi-millionaire dog receives death threats A dog left £6million by her late owner has been moved to a safe house after receiving death threats. Trouble, a small white Maltese, inherited her fortune from property and hotel billionaire Leona Helmsley. The dog came out significantly better in its owner's will than members of the Helmsley family - two of her grandchildren received nothing. But the so-called Queen of Mean's multi-million dollar trust fund for Trouble may have backfired. The New York Post reports that Trouble's new guardians have received around two dozen death threats directed at the bitch. Two months ago,...

I remember hearing a short while ago that the Islamic Republic Police had “arrested” dogs, as a part of their “fight against immodesty”. Today, a very good friend sent a set of pictures of the arrested dogs. Clearly, these dogs are not meant to live in the conditions they are being kept, but, anyways, they do not treat human beings anything better.

Man's best friend knows...instinctively

Fido's digs these days are as high-end as his masters' house. (Illustration by Monica Seaberry) Housing Boom Reaches Its Tail End: The DoghouseBY SAM ALIc.2006 Newhouse News Service \ [Newark, NJ] -- The housing market is going to the dogs. Literally. As real estate agents struggle with a slowdown in home sales, a new source of income has surfaced: selling doghouses to pampered pooches. Wipe that smirk off your face. The commissions are to die for. On a typical "human" house, commissions amount to about 5 percent of the sale price, with half the commission paid to the seller's...

OK, I know this is really stupid, but my best friend is in need of good thoughts and prayers.His name is Pepper and he is a year old Cocker Spaniel. We rescued Pepper when he was only a week old. He was so infested with tics and fleas that he was anemic and could not walk. After a few days of TLC and a trip to the vet he took over as head of the pack in this house. He is so smart that I sometimes forget that he is a dog. I only had to take him outside one...

THE secret slaughter of at least 10,000 racing greyhounds by one man has been exposed by an undercover investigation. For the past 15 years David Smith, a builders’ merchant, has been killing healthy greyhounds no longer considered by their trainers to be fast enough to race. He buries them in a one-acre plot at the back of his home in Seaham, Co Durham. Last week The Sunday Times covertly filmed Smith on two consecutive days receiving greyhounds from trainers before killing them with a bolt gun, dumping them in the plot and covering over the “graves” using a mechanical digger....

A US dog has won an award for saving her owner's life by dialling a phone number that alerted emergency services to her owner's diabetic seizure. Belle the beagle triggered a call to an ambulance crew by biting on her owner, Kevin Weaver's, mobile phone. The dog was trained to detect potential diabetic attacks by licking and sniffing Mr Weaver's nose to check his blood sugar levels and pawing him. Belle resorted to dialling for help when Mr Weaver fell unconscious. The dog used her teeth to press the number nine key, which the phone was programmed to interpret...

Pit bulls on the loose went on a rampage Thursday and terrorized a southwest Philadelphia neighborhood. The dogs escaped from their backyard at 53rd Street and Cedar Avenue and ran several blocks through the neighborhood, attacking several people. Their rampage ended with a policeman shooting one of the dogs.

Shreveport Police have arrested a man and charged him with an unusual form of animal cruelty. 56-year old David Powell was taken into custody Friday afternoon at his apartment in downtown Shreveport. Animal control officer Rick Quillen says witnesses say they saw Powell being "unusually affectionate" with a neighbor's dog and saw pictures on Powell's computer of him having sex with the animal. Powell was taken to Caddo Correctional Center and booked on one charge of simple animal cruelty. A misdemeanor. Officers also seized Powell's computer during the arrest. It's now being examined by a expert at the Caddo D.A.'s...

(CBS) You weren't seeing things if you thought you saw a German shepherd in the audience during President Bush's State of the Union address Tuesday night. Rex, a 5-year-old German shepherd who served as a military bomb-sniffing dog, was "seated" near first lady Laura Bush, as was his handler, Air Force Tech. Sgt. Jamie Dana. Dana and Rex trained together for three years before deploying as a team to Pakistan and then to Iraq, according to the White House. On June 25, 2005, they were riding in a Humvee in Kirkuk, Iraq, when a roadside bomb exploded, injuring Dana. "The...

Thanks to his Lab, hunter avoids death By Bill Wundram BRENT Teel was going down for the fourth time in deep water. His waders, filled with water, kept sucking him deeper into the cold Mississippi River. Wader straps were tangling around his neck. Water was up to his nose. “I knew I was going to die. I was choking, but could yell for my dog, Junior. He had been circling me in the water. That black Lab knew that I was in big trouble. He swam to me. I grabbed onto his collar and he pulled me at least 20...

September 2, 2005 -- Thousands of abandoned pets are on the brink of drowning or dying of thirst as a result of Hurricane Katrina, and many more are feared dead, animal-rescue groups said yesterday. Despite very limited access to evacuated areas, rescue efforts have begun, with teams from FEMA, Noah's Wish and the Humane Society racing against time. Many people who ended up in shelters were forced to leave their pets behind because the Red Cross and the Louisiana Superdome don't allow animals. "I'm guessing we're going to have tens of thousands of animals affected," said Dick Green, manager of...

Just thought I'd share with Freepers a warning. A few years back, I was able to get ahold of a whole bunch of CA valley wine grapes. I sat in the kitchen, and the mutt, of course who always gets a bit of what I'm eating tried one. He loved it! So over the next few minutes or so, I ate a couple cups worth, and he must have had twenty or thirty. Sadly, the hound will have to forego any more grapes. He didn't even get sick, but I find out on the tv tonight grapes and raisins are...

Spartanburg, South Carolina (FOX Carolina News) - People living in one Campobello neighborhood say they'll do whatever it takes to get seventeen-year-old Cory Williamson out of there before someone is seriously hurt. Williamson is in jail accused of raping his neighbor's dog. Sylvia Jones says she wouldn't have believed it had she not seen it with her own eyes. "When I got here we were laying on the deck looking at him and he had his pants down and he was doing sexual activity with the dog like a man would do to a woman." Renee Hulburt says her family...

WOODLAND HILLS, Calif. May 13, 2005 — A border collie and golden retriever mix from Missouri has won the National Hero Dog award for alerting her owner that her husband was pinned underneath a tractor. Eight-year-old Shannon, who lives on an 80-acre farm in Washington, Mo., accepted the 23rd annual National Hero Dog award Friday with her owners Ted and Peggy Mandry. The award does not honor trained rescue dogs but "a companion animal that's well-treated and has bonded with the family, so they somehow know what to do and step up to the plate when there's trouble," said Madeline...

Engel said another rumor "came out a couple of weeks ago [and] was in a local newspaper. "It said that during a search of a woman's bag, U.S. soldiers with a team of dogs were sniffing through her bag. She had a Koran in her bag. The dog pulled the Muslim holy book out of the bag with its mouth and that the soldiers started laughing." http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/5/18/115508.shtml

Naperville police are crediting a woman’s 100-pound dog with saving her from further harm by an assailant near her apartment. Sgt. Joel Truemper said the woman, who police did not name, had taken her dog for a short walk around 11:30 p.m. Thursday when she was jumped from behind, knocked to the ground, choked and punched in the face. The woman’s dog, a Great Pyrenees, bit the attacker in the face and chest, she told police. Truemper said there was no blood trail left by the assailant and a check of area hospitals for men seeking treatment for dog bites...

Dog saves man's leg A man had his leg saved from amputation after his dog licked it better. Mitch Bonham, 45, was told he would lose the limb after it began turning black following an accident while in the Royal Navy. But then his Jack Russell Milo began to lick Mitch's leg for up to four hours a day. When he returned to the doctor he told him it was healed reports The Sun. Mitch, 45, from Barry, South Wales, believes the condition Sudeks Atrophy which affected his right leg up to the knee was caused by a broken toe...

A year ago — with the help of her faithful mutt, Cookie — former fashion model Carina Schlesinger scratched, punched and kicked with all her strength to ward off a would-be rapist in Central Park. Yesterday, as she relived the dramatic sex assault — this time alone, getting cross-examined on the witness stand in Manhattan Supreme Court — the courageous Copenhagen native showed the same fighting spirit. "But I locked eyes on him!" the stunning woman insisted as the accused fiend's lawyer grilled her on apparent inconsistencies in her initial descriptions to cops. "His eyes, I will never forget," she...

A man who tries to break into an east Wichita home is surprised by who is there. The burglar thought the house was empty. Instead a child home alone helps foil the home invasion. The ten year old girl would normally be at school. Instead she was home sick, alone. But she wasn't completely alone. She had the family pet, a pit bull terrier to keep her company. Around 11:00am Tuesday, an intruder came to the home, perhaps thinking no one was there. As he kicks in the door he yells "where's the money?" Once inside, he was confronted by...

A former fashion model took the stand in Manhattan Supreme Court yesterday, describing her would-be rapist's jet-dark eyes, his battering fists, his sick demands — and how she was saved by her mutt, Cookie. "My dog saved my life," said Carina Schlesinger, the victim of last year's brutal Central Park attack, testifying as the first witness in the attempted-rape trial of career thug Tito Rodriguez.

From The Antelope Valley Press in California comes the story of our K-9 contingent in Iraq. Chief Warrant Officer Peter Zorba, of Squadron HMM-764 "The Moonlighters" writes: I fly into Baghdad almost every night, but this night's mission was a special ASR (assault support request). A Marine K-9 had been killed and another dog wounded earlier in the day and we were going there to pick up the dead K-9, the wounded K-9 and their Marine handlers. How these Marines were attacked, whether in contact with insurgents, a sniper or an improvised explosive device (IED), we never knew. We took...

A 911 operator a few days ago in eastern Washington received a strange call. "I heard a dog barking.. it was very insistent. Then it would stop, and a few seconds later, start again. I knew there was something wrong" When police arrived, at first there was no answer. Then, after a minute or so, there was struggling and pounding on the other side of the door. They tried the door again, and it was unlocked. The caller then led the police to the owner of the house, a somewhat elderly woman who was on the floor and unconscious. She...

My dog and I are so close that it amazes me. One thing we sometimes do is to synchronize breathing. This is complicated, but it isn't. It's very basic. If I recall correctly (which I'm sure I don't), people breathe at a rate of about 70 per minute; dogs breathe at a rate of about 120. Almost twice. For us to synch, I need to speed up and he needs to slow down. We have gotten this right a couple times. It doesn't happen often. It's much like sex. What is interesting, however, is the attempt. When I can feel...

Sangeeta, a mother of three boys, looks down on her eldest son, Dinakaran, seated, and the dog that saved his life, Selvakumar Sunday, Jan. 2, 2005. Sangeeta could only carry two of her boys and had to leave Dinakaran to fend for himself when a tsunami crashed into their village on Dec. 26, 2004. Selvakumar pulled Dinakaran out of the family hut and nipped and nudged him up a hill to safety. (AP Photo/Chris Tomlinson )

A PET dog has saved a toddler from drowning in a dam at a property north-west of Melbourne. The 18-month-old girl was fished out of the dam at the Maryborough property around midday yesterday after the family's border collie raised the alarm, emergency services said. The dog alerted the toddler's mother to the emergency by running back and forth between the house and the dam, a Rural Ambulance spokeswoman said. The child and the dog, who was barking and seemed distressed, were inseparable, she said. "Apparently she was blue when she was fished out of the dam," the spokeswoman said....

RICHLAND, Washington (AP) -- Leana Beasley has faith that a dog is man's best friend. Faith, a 4-year-old Rottweiler, phoned 911 when Beasley fell out of her wheelchair and barked urgently into the receiver until a dispatcher sent help. Then the service dog unlocked the front door for the police officer. "I sensed there was a problem on the other end of the 911 call," said dispatcher Jenny Buchanan. "The dog was too persistent in barking directly into the phone receiver. I knew she was trying to tell me something." Faith is trained to summon help by pushing a speed-dial...

Military Working Dogs Protect Forces, Bases During Terror War By Donna MilesAmerican Forces Press Service LACKLAND AIR FORCE BASE, Texas, Sept. 3, 2004 — Army Col. David Rolfe's military career has gone to the dogs. As director of the Defense Department's Military Working Dog Program based here, Rolfe and his staff are responsible for the health and welfare of some of the most unheralded members of the fighting force: its estimated 2,300 working dogs. These dogs, along with their handlers from every military service, are deployed worldwide to support the war on terror, helping to safeguard military bases and...

Dog Saves Family During Fire Tyler Alerted Sleeping Owner Of Fire Monday POSTED: 12:32 p.m. EST February 18, 2004 READING, Mass. -- One Boston-area family has learned that sometimes heroes come from the most unlikely places -- even the pound. Television station WCVB reported that Tyler, a German shepherd/Shar-Pei mix, has been credited with saving the lives of his owners after fire broke out in their home. Monday night, the Costa family lost their home of 55 years after an apparent electrical fire started in the basement. Margaret Costa said she, her husband, and her son were asleep, but thankfully,...

The family of a man who died went to a funeral home to make arrangements for the service and found his missing dog outside the building. Polo, a three-year-old Labrador and German Shepherd mix, bolted from home after the death of his 73-year-old master, Ed Crossan. Mr Crossan's daughter, Donna, said: "He got out and we went to look for him but couldn't find him. We finally had to just go to make the arrangements." They pulled up in front of the Wade Funeral Home on Radcliffe Street about a mile away from the Crosnan family home, and immediately spotted...

I drive a couple of hundred miles each week so my border collies can embrace their destiny—or is it their ancestry?—by herding sheep at a farm. When I'm there, I'm always amazed at the scores of people who show up with all sorts of dogs, from avid herding breeds to bewildered mutts. Their owners are all eager to expose them to the ancient art. "I do agility, obedience, and therapy dog training," the owner of a Lab/shepherd mix told me, "and I'd love to add herding. We have Thursdays and Fridays open." America has enriched its children to the bone...

''Operation Devil Dog'' aims to cool Marines' canine heroes By CATHERINE KOZAK, The Virginian-Pilot © May 16, 2003 An Outer Banks animal-help group is lending a hand to raise money for loyal four-legged Americans in the Middle East desert that need to chill out. After Patti Bourexis, a volunteer with the Coastal Humane Society, saw pictures of Marine dogs deployed with the U.S. military, she tracked down the nonprofit North Carolina museum that is collecting dollars to buy cooling vests and pads for the hot dogs. ``I really believe that the dogs are troops, just like the humans are troops,''...

A real Dog of War has been hailed the hero of a British Army raid on an Iraqi stronghold.Explosives sniffer dog Buster unearthed a hidden cache of arms from an enemy camp in the southern Iraqi village of Safwan. The Springer Spaniel's find was followed by the arrest of 16 Saddam Hussein supporters.Brown-eyed Buster, who is five, took part in a raid launched by 200 troops.His handler, Sergeant Danny Morgan, 37, of the Royal Army Veterinary Corps said: "The soldiers had found nothing so I unleashed Buster and sent him in."The rule is that the dog always goes first in...

<p>Domesticated animals look - and act - differently from than their wild counterparts. Why?</p> <p>The experiment was derived out of a discussion student Brian Hare had with his adviser, Michael Tomasello, an expert in primate behavior at Emory University. They were talking about how bad chimpanzees were at understanding human social cues. Despite being the heavyweights of animal intelligence, chimps were insensitive to what seemed to be obvious hints: They failed to pick up a cup hiding food even when the experimenter stared at it, pointed to it, and even tapped it. Tomasello wanted to talk about what this meant about the limits of nonhuman intelligence. Hare, a pet owner, had a down-to-Earth response: ''My dogs can do this.''</p>