Free Republic

What's with the animal face references?

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) told a voter that she “already has a dog” when the 2020 White House hopeful was asked about her choice to replace Vice President Mike Pence. The voter asked Warren at a Town Hall in Lebanon, N.H. on Sunday if she ever whispers to her dog Bailey, “Who is going to be my Mike Pence?” “I already have a dog,” Warren responded. The crowd cheered in response to the senator's deadpan joke.

A New York state family is trying to get Guinness World Records recognition for their dog's unusual trick -- fitting six tennis balls in his mouth at once. Cheri and Rob Molloy of Canandaigua said their daughter, Erin, brought golden retriever Finley home when he was just a puppy and she was a senior in college. Finley always had an affinity for tennis balls, and they noticed when he was about two years old that he would try to fit as many into his mouth as he could. The dog, now 6 years old, has developed the skill to the...

A Massachusetts man attempting to save his neighbor from a dog attack accidentally shot and killed him with a crossbow, officials said. Police are investigating the incident as an accidental death, according to a release from the Berkshire District Attorney’s office. Police from Adams received multiple 911 calls on Wednesday at approximately 12:09 p.m. “for a reported mauling in progress.” Investigators believe that the man, described as a good Samaritan by the district attorney’s office, heard a commotion coming from his neighbor’s apartment and rushed over to help. The man retrieved a crossbow and shot at one of the pit...

Dog detectives might be able to help save ailing citrus groves, research published Monday suggests. Scientists trained dogs to sniff out a crop disease called citrus greening that has hit orange, lemon and grapefruit orchards in Florida, California and Texas. The dogs can detect it weeks to years before it shows up on tree leaves and roots, the researchers report. Advertisement “This technology is thousands of years old – the dog’s nose,” said Timothy Gottwald, a researcher with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and a co-author of the study. “We’ve just trained dogs to hunt new prey: the bacteria that...

Scientists argue that friendly wolves sought out humans.In the story of how the dog came in from the cold and onto our sofas, we tend to give ourselves a little too much credit. The most common assumption is that some hunter-gatherer with a soft spot for cuteness found some wolf puppies and adopted them. Over time, these tamed wolves would have shown their prowess at hunting, so humans kept them around the campfire until they evolved into dogs. (See "How to Build a Dog.") But when we look back at our relationship with wolves throughout history, this doesn't really make...

Cats like to act like they rule roost – as anyone who lives with one will tell you. And now scientists have found that it really is the cat, and certainly not the owner, who is responsible for harmony in the home. Experts at the University of Lincoln have discovered cats are the 'key player' in maintaining good karma when its sworn enemy, a dog, is brought into the household. For although they may be descended from wolves, with big, loud barks and fearsome teeth, dogs are likely to find themselves bullied mercilessly if they live with a cat.

Sometime around the invention of agriculture, the cats came crawling. It was mice and rats, probably, that attracted the wild felines. The rats came because of stores of grain, made possible by human agriculture. And so cats and humans began their millennia-long coexistence. This relationship has been good for us of course—formerly because cats caught the disease-carrying pests stealing our food and presently because cleaning up their hairballs somehow gives purpose to our modern lives. But this relationship has been great for cats as species, too. From their native home in the Middle East, the first tamed cats followed humans...

Goats Form Intense Connections with Humans, Too It's the first time a creature raised for food has evolved intense, meaningful connections with people. Photo: A goat relaxes at the Buttercups Sanctuary for Goats, United Kingdom. Credit: Christian Nawroth Goats have surprisingly just been added to the very short list of animals that are known to communicate in very direct and complex ways with humans. The other two animals, dogs and horses, are often raised as companions to humans, so the goat findings -- reported in the journal Royal Society Biology Letters -- mark the first time that an animal...

They have lived in our homes, been members of the family, slept on our laps for over 10,000 years. Yet it is only recently that science has begun to answer how it is that cats and dogs came to be our most prized companion animals - discovering, along the way, how the domestication of cats and dogs actively helped change the course of human history. "Domestication," says scientist Carlos Driscoll, "is evolution that we can see." Driscoll is a researcher at Oxford University and the National Cancer Institute in Maryland, where much of the world's leading work on cats has...

A Massachusetts woman was mauled to death by the family dog while suffering a seizure, according to a report. Melissa Astacio, 44, was having a seizure around 5:30 p.m. in her Somerset home when the 8-year-old pit bull attacked her, news station WJAR reported. Her daughter, Heaven, was calling 911 for help when the dog named Amigo pounced on the woman, who had a history of seizures. “I don’t think he was trying to attack her,” her daughter told WJAR. “I think the dog was just trying to help my mom but he’s just a dog and he didn’t know...

The world of Rory, a five year old Havanese, to Joseph Blanchard's "Catnip Cape." They take our hearts for a reason. And let's not forget to make our opinion of the Dems' disgraceful actions known. Trump Impeachment Memes - Hit Me With Your Best Shot - Pat Benetar

An off-duty Secret Service agent fatally shot a dog that charged at him in Brooklyn on Monday night, police said. The agent fired one shot at the dog, striking the animal, on Caton Place near East 8th Street in Windsor Terrace about 9:45 p.m., cops said. Police said the agent saw the dog coming at him as he turned a corner.

A woman has been charged with murder after her dog was involved in a fatal mauling in Rockcastle County. Police say they were called to a home on Pug Lane Friday morning. According to an arrest citation, a female at the residence had been involved in an altercation with a man at the home and during the struggle she had turned her pit bull loose on the man. Troopers arrived at the home and had to shoot the dog as they were not able to attend to the victim due to the dog's aggressive behavior.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, was slammed by the animal rights organization PETA on Thursday for not being a good role model. The New York Democrat could have influenced her millions of social media followers by adopting a rescue mutt from a shelter, PETA argued, but instead the congresswoman took home a purebred French bulldog. “AOC had a chance to set a compassionate, responsible example in the face of the homeless-animal crisis, but instead, she apparently inadvertently contributed to the problem,” PETA President Ingrid Newkirk said in a letter. “PETA is urging her supporters not to follow her lead in this case...

Zoë is the NFL’s first emotional support dog. The smallest 49er offers a big assist to players and staff alike at Levi’s Stadium. The one-year-old French bulldog spends most of her time in the player engagement office where the team can visit her between practices and before and after games. She is working this week, leading up the big NFC Divisional Playoff at Levi Stadium on Saturday. The Niners are the first team in the NFL to have a registered emotional support pooch. Zoë’s talents are many: they include an irresistible charm, the ability to carry a ball quite a...

We’ve reached a barking point in American history. (Yeah, I’m sorry for that one.) A few years ago, for the first time ever, the number of dogs in this country surpassed the number of children under eighteen. According to Statista, there are 90 million dogs in America today, up from just 68 million in 2000. And a higher percentage of American households own dogs than ever before. By contrast, there are just over 73 million children. That still sounds like a lot, but as a percentage of the population, children have never been rarer. In 1960, for instance, over one-in-three...

Togo - Official Trailer | Disney+ | Streaming Dec. 20 An Original Movie starring Willem Dafoe and Julianne Nicholson, “Togo” is the untold true story set in the winter of 1925 that treks across the treacherous terrain of the Alaskan tundra for an exhilarating and uplifting adventure that will test the strength, courage and determination of one man, Leonhard Seppala, and his lead sled dog, Togo. The poignant and emotional adventure debuts on Disney+ on Dec. 20, 2019.

<p>A Southern California woman punched a mountain lion Thursday and tried to pry its jaws open to save her dog from an attack in her backyard, officials said.</p> <p>The unidentified woman suffered a minor cut after the mountain lion attacked her miniature Schnauzer in the city of Simi Valley near Los Angeles, police Sgt. Keith Eisenhour told KNBC-TV.</p>

Nickolas B. Monroe, a 26-year-old resident of Walnut Avenue in Bunnell’s Mondex neighborhood, shot and killed a dog Thursday (Dec. 5), firing at the animal in front of its owners, a 15-year-old girl and a 17-year-old boy. The teens had just asked permission from Monroe to look for their dog, a Great Pyrenees, who’d strayed onto Monroe’s property. The dog, according to Monroe, had previously gone onto his property many times and killed more than a dozen of his chickens, and his owners had been warned. The incident took place Thursday evening. James Smith, 59, a resident of Walnut Avenue...