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Posted on November 20, 2009 at 10:39 AM HOUSTON—A woman was severely injured Thursday night when she was attacked by her pit bull. It happened around 8 p.m. at a home at Park York and Mason Road in west Harris County. Precinct 5 constables said the woman’s husband heard a commotion in another room, and when he went to investigate, he found his wife on the floor. The family’s pit bull was on top of her. Constables said the man moved the dog and called 911. The woman was taken via Life Flight to Memorial Hermann. Constables said she suffered...

POLICE are hunting a man whose dog attack another before the owner went on to shout obscenities and threaten a woman. The incident occurred at Freedom Park in Greenbank on September 29 at around 10.40am. The suspect's pitbull dog attacked a woman's dog, causing it to bleed. When the woman remonstrated with the suspect he began to swear at her, threatening to set his pitbull on her dog again and "rip your dog to pieces". The suspect was white, 6ft tall with blue eyes and short mousey brown hair. He is of slim build, with broad shoulders and was wearing...

Buddy Lou, a 10-year old tabby cat, has become the first feline death from H1N1 in the United States. It appears the cat acquired the H1N1 virus from the owner’s niece who had been sick with an influenza-like illness the previous week. H1N1 in cats: Buddy Lou’s illness The cat was brought to the Animal Clinic in Lebanon, Oregon, on November 4, with labored breathing and was initially diagnosed with pneumonia. His breathing worsened by the next day and the cat was admitted to the veterinary clinic for treatment with antibiotics and oxygen. Buddy Lou did not respond to treatment...

We all know dogs like to smell just about everything, including other animals' poo. Now scientists have figured out how to put the canines' odd pastimes to work to help sniff out the dung of endangered rhinos in Vietnam. The collected dung will help scientists to figure out how many Javan rhinos, also called Rhinoceros sondaicus, remain in the wild. The rhinos were considered extinct on mainland Southeast Asia until hunters in Vietnam killed one in 1988. Now two remaining populations exist, with an estimated 10 individuals in the forests of Vietnam and between 28 and 56 such rhinos on...

Sorry, kids—scientists have not discovered the first known bubblegum-blowing sea creature. But they have found the only known corals to eat adult jellyfish, a new study says. Opening wide--yes, that's a mouth--a mushroom coral ingests a roughly 4-and-a-half-inch-wide (12-centimeter) moon jellyfish (pictured) in the Red Sea in March 2009. And this coral wasn't alone. The study, led by scientists from Israel's Bar-Ilan University and Tel Aviv University, witnessed other corals dining on the jellyfish. Marine ecologist Jennifer Smith, who wasn't part of the study, agreed the find was unique, though she's "not entirely surprised." Mushroom corals, which have soft bodies,...

ATHENS -- To the Bulldog Nation, the Uga mascot is royalty, the lineage anointed to represent the University of Georgia. But to the Seiler family, the English bulldogs are family pets. That is sadly evident at times such as these. In only his second season as Georgia's mascot, Uga VII has passed away. Uga VII passed away suddenly Thursday morning at his home in Savannah. At 4 years old, he was practically a pup and had served as Georgia's mascot for not even two full football seasons when he unexpectedly succumbed to heart problems.

A company in the United Kingdom is about to lift the lid on a device that zaps lobster with electricity to kill them, and the inventor said Wednesday his humane alternative to boiling is about to give the entire industry a jolt. British entrepreneur Simon Buckhaven said the CrustaStun system, developed over the past decade by his company Studham Technologies Limited, near London, kills the lobster with an electric charge, so the crustacean feels no "pain or distress." "I am entirely aware this product will be greeted at first with some skepticism among people in the lobster industry in Eastern...

I had this idea that I was going to rope a deer, put it in a stall, feed it up on corn for a couple of weeks, then kill it and eat it. The first step in this adventure was getting a deer. I figured that, since they congregate at my cattle feeder and do not seem to have much fear of me when we are there (a bold one will sometimes come right up and sniff at the bags of feed while I am in the back of the truck not 4 feet away), it should not be difficult...

Police in the Lithuanian town of Kaunas arrested 22-year-old Svajunas Beniukas on animal cruelty charges after internet users helped police identify him and the bridge from which the small brown dog was thrown. The video shows a man holding the dog, called Pipiras, Lithuanian for pepper, and laughing as his friend records the event on his mobile phone. Checking that the coast is clear, he makes a joke about dogs flying and then drops the animal off the bridge. Crashing onto a farm track below, Pipiras yelps in pain, and lies twitching on the ground. But despite falling over 20...

This is the shocking video of a Labrador guide dog being savagely attacked by a pitbull-cross dog in a railway station subway. A 57-year-old blind woman was walking through Cricklewood station when her guide dog, Neela, a brown Labrador, was attacked by another dog. Transport police today issued the images in a bid to trace the violent dog's owner. Detective Constable Gerry Griffin said: “This dog was not muzzled and was dangerously out of control. “The woman was extremely distressed and feared for own safety. What made this awful incident even more harrowing was the fact that the man made...

HE has always been five miles from Gundagai [Australia] but now the nation's most famous dog and his tuckerbox are to be relocated to lure tourists to the town. Historians are outraged at the idea of moving the iconic statue from its spot of 77 years, just off the Hume Highway, to the far end of town to drag tourists through it. The town is split between those who want tourist dollars funnelled into their drought-stricken tills and those outraged at the changing of history. A consultant has been paid $20,000 by the Gundagai Shire Council to survey the community...

Kenton Rowe's fortune as a wildlife photographer would change in less than one second; the amount of time it takes for a shutter to open and close, the light burning a digital image onto a disk. And in that second, the mountain lion and her cub were forever captured, their likenesses then downloaded to a computer, printed to paper and presented to a panel of judges who would sift through 70,000 photographs at this year's National Wildlife Federation photo contest.

What a cat-astrophe! A ferocious feline turned her owners into a pair of scaredy cats in their Midtown apartment yesterday, holding them hostage at claw-point until the cops came to their rescue. Rosa Davila and her son, Victor Marte, 27, cowered behind a bedroom door at their pad on West 42nd Street about a half an hour while the raging Russian blue held them at bay.

Eight British tourists are suing a South African safari park after they became trapped by a pride of wild lions when their tour vehicle overturned. The group are claiming hundreds of thousands of pounds for injuries and post-traumatic stress allegedly suffered when they were exposed to the “threatening conduct of the lions” at Sanbona Wildlife Reserve northeast of Cape Town. One of the animals also stole a boot from the tourists, they say. Papers lodged at Cape Town High Court claim that the injuries were due to the irresponsible actions of Natasha Van der Merwe, a park employee. According to...

SPOKANE, Wash. -- Spokane County sheriff's deputies used a stun gun on an attacking pit bull dog. It didn't stop, so they shot it with a .45-caliber handgun, and it still kept coming. They finally killed it with a blast from a 12-gauge shotgun.

People Say Animals Are Preying On Larger Livestock. People living in major Valley neighborhoods... that coyotes have all but overtaken their neighborhoods. Don Hoopes and his 7-year-old son Jordan have a new ritual every night. They need to make sure all their animals are tucked safely inside, now that they know what can happen if they don't. Neighbor Richard Tate said, "I saw one yesterday morning trying to attack dogs in broad daylight." Tate's had a couple sheep slaughtered by coyotes already. He said they even tried to go after his ram. Tate said , "My concern is that if...

Archers will take to tree stands in Colvin Run Mill Park and Colvin Run Stream Valley in coming weeks to reduce the area’s burgeoning deer population, which poses a threat to motorists, hikers, flora and fauna, Fairfax County officials said. The Fairfax County Police Department’s Animal Control Division, working in conjunction with the Fairfax County Park Authority, began allowing select hunting groups into the wooded park areas on Nov. 16. Archery hunts also will be held at Laurel Hill Park in Lorton. Officials estimate the county is home to about 25,000 deer, or 60 per square mile, which is roughly...

INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev., Nov. 18 (UPI) -- Homeowners and authorities in Incline Village, Nev., say they're on the lookout for a marauding, 700-pound black bear . The bear, they say, has caused as much as $70,000 in damage so far this year, including havoc wrought inside a home it has broken into several times, the Reno (Nev.) Gazette-Journal reported Wednesday. "The deputies up there all say he's the biggest bear they've ever seen," Carl Lackey, a biologist and bear expert with the Nevada Department of Wildlife, told the newspaper. "He'll walk right by a trap. He won't go in them....

Mountain goats are no exception to the general rule among mammals that larger males sire more and healthier offspring. But University of Alberta researcher David Coltman has found a genetic quirk that might make female mountain goats think twice about their romantic partners. Big, heavy males mountain goats shove lightweight Romeos aside taking the eligible females for themselves. The larger males pass their physical attributes and mating success to their male heirs. But Coltman's data shows the daughters of the big, bruisers are routinely smaller and less fit than females produced by physically more modest fathers. Nature can be cruel...

Since being crowned "World's Tallest Dog," on Thursday by Guinness World Records, Titan, a 4 year-old Great Dane, has appeared on the Today Show and The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien. "It's been awesome," the dog's owner, Diana Taylor, tells Pet News Examiner. "I've been amazed at the response he's gotten from people." His website, Titan & Friends, received so many hits that it exceeded the bandwidth and was temporarily shut down. Taylor hopes to use Titan's newfound fame to help the public learn more about Great Danes and especially those that are all white. "Unscrupulous breeders will sell these...

WASILLA -- The story of Yukon Don Tanner and the four bears has a happy ending -- for Tanner, at least. A judge last week dismissed all wildlife charges filed against the well-known 59-year-old Talkeetna man who tells a wild story about the family of marauding grizzlies that visited his remote cabin north of Talkeetna last July. State prosecutors agreed to the dismissal, even though the wildlife authorities involved say they still don't quite believe Tanner's story. Here's the short version: Tanner shot a sow and her three male cubs in the space of a few minutes around 4 a.m....

SELDEN, N.Y. — A mother of seven is accused of running a house of horrors for pets at her suburban Long Island home, forcing her children to help torture them and burying at least 20 dogs in her backyard — animals neighbors now fear were beloved pets that mysteriously disappeared over the years.LINK

CLEVELAND — Slow and worry-free, it’s doubtful Mary came unglued after finding out she is actually a “he.” After all, Mary doesn’t have many stressors in her, uh, his life. “She’s very deliberate … she keeps a careful pace,” Cleveland Metroparks Zoo spokesman Tom O’Konowitz said Tuesday after word went out that zoo officials and handlers had mistakenly believed for 50-plus years that the massive land tortoise was a female. A routine physical exam earlier in the month revealed the tortoise was in fact a male. “This is definitely a first for us,” O’Konowitz said. “It came as something of...

Hilarious dashcam video from Taylor, TX. :^)

A hard road to recovery lies ahead for one little girl after she's attacked by a pit bull inside a neighbor's home. It happened in Bowling Green at Lee Pointe Apartments. The girl spent the entire Tuesday morning in surgery at Kosair Children's Hospital. The little girl is six-year-old Elisa Fannin. Her grandmother says she's now in stable condition after undergoing extensive surgery to her face. The family says Elisa was playing at a friends house when things went terribly wrong. "She looked at me with those eyes, and I just couldn't take it," said Elisa Skaggs, the grandmother of...

With all the unsettling animal news that crosses our desks, we're always pleased to be able to share a bit of good news. Our colleague Jim Tankersley reports from New Orleans on the progress that's been made on behalf of the no-longer-endangered brown pelican. Here's an excerpt: Federal officials announced today that they are removing the brown pelican from the endangered species list, capping a century-long recovery that started under President Theodore Roosevelt. The brown pelican is an avian fixture in Southern California and along the Gulf of Mexico from Texas to Florida, where Roosevelt established the first national wildlife...

Here’s a video that’s going viral on YouTube. National Geographic photographer Paul Nicklen traveled to Antarctica to photograph leopard seals in the water. After arriving, they came across one of the largest leopard seals his experienced guide had ever seen. What happened next you’ll have to see to believe: VIDEO LINK For more on this event, you can read this interview with Paul Nicklen, and check out the photographs that resulted in this gallery.

November 17, 2009 Caught On Camera: Hippos Kill Crocodile In Rare Clash [Pics in URL: 4 Images] Faced with the angry hippos, the crocodile decides to run across their backs Jonathan Clayton, Africa Correspondent Bathing hippos usually have a tolerant attitude towards their fellow creatures — until something snaps. And then, as this crocodile discovered the hard way, they are the most dangerous wild animals in Africa Vaclav Silha, a Czech wildlife photographer, had set up his camera on the banks of the Grumeti in the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania, to take pictures of a group of 50 placid hippos...

A Moving Video Showing An Excited Dog Welcoming A Soldier Home From Afghanistan Has Become A YouTube Hit. Six-year-old Gracie, a golden retriever, is seen jumping into the lap of her beloved master Lieutenant Andrew Schmidt, rolling over and wriggling in joy after he returned safely to his home in Springfield, Virginia, USA. The video was shot by his wife Jen, who opens the door of their house to let out a barking Gracie for the emotional homecoming.

A PYGMY hippopotamus has been shot dead during a pig hunting expedition in the Northern Territory. The hippo is normally native to the swamps of west Africa, in particular Liberia. The Northern Territory News reports, Nico Courtney, 27, was out spotlighting for pigs with his mate Rusty on a station in the Douglas Daly district 200km south of Darwin on Saturday night. "It was about 1am and running away from us - from the tail end it just looked like a big pig," Mr Courtney said. "We got out, had a look at it, and thought 'that's not a pig,...

Last Modified: Friday, November 13, 2009 at 11:49 a.m. THIBODAUX – A pit bull whose life was spared by a Lafourche judge after the dog attacked a woman in Larose last month mauled an animal-control officer Thursday at the Lafourche Parish Animal Shelter. The dog was put down shortly after the incident. Joe Lamartina, 63, the officer who was injured, said he owes his life to the efforts of a fellow officer, Kamie Burgos, who got between him and the 95-pound dog and helped him fight off the attack, during which he grappled with the animal on a concrete floor...

OTTAWA — Canada’s newly armed border guards have claimed their first victim: a hapless moose. The creature was felled by the duty sidearm of a border officer in late August, newly disclosed documents show. The incident — marking the first time a border-guard sidearm has been discharged on duty — occurred about 25 kilometres west of Creston, B.C., as an unidentified intelligence officer with the Canada Border Services Agency was driving on official business to Nelson, B.C. The officer was behind an RCMP vehicle when both drivers spotted an injured moose struggling in the westbound lane of Highway 3. The...

Just take a look at this astonishing -- and, yes, creepy -- video, shot in Denmark, of a massive swarm of starlings. Details here . Follow the You Tube link below to view....Click on "here" above to read a report...

Pennsylvania SPCA workers had the unwelcome task yesterday of sifting through the remains of five animals that apparently had been sacrificed, officials said. A passer-by found the beheaded animals - a dog, a cat and three chickens - near a bike path on Bingham Street near Roosevelt Boulevard in Olney about 1 p.m., said George Bengal, the PSPCA's director of investigations. "It looks like the act was done somewhere else, and the remains were left here in the park," Bengal said. PSPCA officials often see a rise in animal sacrifices at this time of the year, Bengal noted, because it...

9 Investigates: Pit Bulls Taken To Charlotte Shelter Costing Taxpayers Posted: 3:50 pm EST November 13, 2009 Updated: 6:34 pm EST November 13, 2009 CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- About 2,500 pit bulls come through pit bull row at Charlotte-Mecklenburg Animal Care and Control each year. Most never leave -- at least not alive. Eighty percent go to the euthanasia room. “Shelters are just inundated with pit bulls,” said spokeswoman Melissa Knicely. She said that poses a special challenge at Charlotte’s facility because pit bulls can't be adopted out. But most have to be kept at least 72 hours, which means they...

This animated North Western Hawk called, Rough Leg, sings it song perched in a high branch being very watchful !

When Raquel Rodriguez's puppy went missing in early 2005, the family checked nearby animal shelters and posted signs but eventually gave up hope. On Tuesday, Rodriguez got a shocking call from a local animal shelter. "They said, 'We found your dog,' and I was like, 'What dog?"' the 37-year-old mother of two recalled. "They told me it was a white poodle and I started shaking all over. That dog had been missing for four years." Princess, a white toy poodle mix, was rescued by animal control officers this week after she was found wandering a busy intersection near Florence Avenue...

Animal welfare activists and pet lovers Friday demanded that a dog that survived being thrown off the sixth-story roof of a Brooklyn building this summer be allowed to live. After months of working to rehabilitate the 1-year-old, brown-and-white pit bull mix named Oreo, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said it planned to euthanize her because of her unpredictable aggression. But that reasoning was rejected by hundreds of people across the country in e-mails, calls and Twitter messages to the ASPCA. At least one pet sanctuary in New York offered to take in the dog. "The...

Soldier returns home, his dog goes crazy, and sounds like it starts to cry.

The one that didn't get away     Nibble ... Sean and his massive catch GEOFF ROBINSON         By RICHARD MORIARTY Published: 12 Nov 2009     AN angler has netted a giant catch — a huge catfish weighing more than new heavyweight world boxing champion David Haye. Sean Kinnear, 27, was amazed when he felt a fierce tug on his fishing line and pulled in the 9ft monster, which weighs a whopping 17 STONE. He waged a 15-minute battle to land the beast, which hits the scales at an incredible 233lb 6oz — more than...

Call it a Hail Mary pass that sailed out of bounds. The National Football League, represented by Covington & Burling and Faegre & Benson, claimed in an appeal to the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals that Minneapolis federal District Court Judge David Doty had shown bias against the league in his appointed role resolving labor disputes between the league and the players. In particular the NFL asserted that the 79-year-old judge abused his authority when he overturned an arbitrator's decision and let quarterback Michael Vick keep a $20 million bonus paid by the Atlanta Falcons. It also pointed to...

Pitbull Kills Elderly Owner in Peru LIMA – An 85-year-old man who owned a pitbull bled to death after being brutally attacked in the leg and face by the animal, which apparently became enraged after being punished, Peruvian media reported Thursday. Santos Garcia died Wednesday at the Casimiro Ulloa Emergency Hospital after suffering severely torn muscle tissue in one of his legs and the loss of part of his nose, his upper lip and right eye, the El Comercio newspaper said. The elderly man had punished the dog two days ago for destroying some household objects and did so again...

IT WAS stray cats and dogs she loved, so in the end Daina Silins gave them her $3 million estate. The former dentist from Newport, in Sydney's north, was found slumped in her armchair three days after her death last November. The first sign she had died was when a neighbour's dog, which she used to feed, was found scratching at her door, The Daily Telegraph reports. The tall Latvian-born woman with long dark brown hair never married and never owned any animals, but animals were always on her mind. Her cluttered Barrenjoey Rd home had dozens of books on...

A misconstrued text message announcing the passing of a beloved pet has sparked a flurry of diplomatic activity in Canada. Transport Minister John Baird sent a message reading: "Thatcher has died". Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper was soon informed that 84-year-old former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had passed away. But it was actually Mr Baird's beloved cat, named after his political heroine, who had died.

Video at link.

Two pit bulls that killed a Pomeranian and attacked a golden retriever were stolen from the Sallisaw Animal Shelter early Sunday. Randy Freeman, Sallisaw animal control officer, said the pit bulls are considered dangerous animals. The owners, Ashton and Keith Darcy, said the two dogs have never been aggresive toward them. Freeman said he gave the Darcys a notice stating the dogs were vicious and needed to be maintained properly after the two dogs killed a Pomeranian on Oct. 24 in the Denton Acres neighborhood. Freeman said the dogs escaped from their back yard six days later and attacked another...

Sabi a sniffer dog who went missing in action after a battle in Afghanistan has miraculously been found safe and sound after more than a year in the desert reports the Associated Press .