Guinness World Records announced new record for Tallest Living Dog

Guinness World Records has just announced a new record holder for the Tallest Living Dog and the Tallest Dog Ever. Meet Giant George, a Great Dane from Tucson, Arizona.

George stands at 42.25 inches (more than seven feet from head to tail) and weighs almost 250 pounds. He's owned by David Nasser, seen in the above picture.

Guinness says it's currently searching for pet owners who think they might have record-breaking animals in the following categories: Dog with Longest Ears, Smallest Dog (Length), Oldest Dog, Smallest Cat and Oldest Cat. You can submit a proposal via http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com.

[Source: USA Today]

Dog Coat Stolen as Owner Shopped in Park Slope

Paws in the air, this is a stick-up!

A Park Slope pooch was left shivering in the buff after a coldhearted mugger stole his coat just days before a raging winter storm bore down on the city. Donna McPherson, 42, says she tied up Lexie, her 10-year-old Westie, in front of Ace Supermarket "for two minutes" so she could buy milk.

When she returned, his $25 green wool coat with leather trim and belt was gone. Fortunately, she said, Lexie wasn't wearing his pricier Burberry.

"How could anyone steal a coat off someone's back in the freezing cold?" McPherson railed to The Post. "I asked him, 'Where's your coat?' like he could answer me. I looked all over and could not find it."

McPherson, an investment banker, canvassed the neighborhood in search of clues. She assumed police would not take her seriously so she wrote about it on the blog Effed in Park Slope.

She normally doesn't leave Lexie outside stores, but thought it would be a quick stop. As she paid for the milk, she remembers hearing a "funny bark."

"I stuck my head out and everything was OK -- he was just looking at me," she said. "I was so angry, but in the end I was grateful that it was just the coat and not him."

McPherson said she knew she had to find a way to make it up to the traumatized Lexie. "I felt so bad, I bought him two new coats," she said. She still hopes to collar the crook.

"I walked around Park Slope sort of to see if I could see anyone with the coat and I didn't. It's totally bizarre," she said.

At Ace Supermarket on Seventh Avenue and Berkeley Place, employees insisted the neighborhood is normally safe for all mutts. "This is highly unusual for the area," said one.

[Source: New York Post]

Dog Miracle Rescue. 20 Miles Out To Sea

A dog was rescued from an iceberg floating 18 miles from land in the Baltic Sea. Sailors plucked the animal to safety after it got trapped on ice on Poland's Vistula river and drifted for more than 70 miles.

Rescuer Adam Buczynski said: 'He didn't even squeal. There was just fear in his big eyes.'

It’s thought Baltic’s problems began when he got trapped on ice on the Vistula River near Torun on Friday. A day later he was spotted in Grudziadz, 40 miles upstream, where fireman tried to reach the German shepherd-type mongrel. But thick ice made it too risky to launch a rescue craft despite Baltic floating just a few yards from the river bank. Another bid to save the stranded mutt was made at Kwidzyn, 22 miles further on towards Poland’s coast. After sightings dried up it was assumed the dog had perished.

But incredibly Baltic had travelled a further 50 miles to the river mouth before heading out to the ocean where finally his luck turned when scientists on a research boat spotted something odd moving amid the broken ice.

Natalia Drgas, of the Institute of Meteorology and Water Management, said: 'One of the sailors thought they had seen another seal but then he noticed it had legs, ears and a tail.'

However the men onboard the Baltica soon found saving the stranded dog was by no means plain sailing. First they tried to catch the dog in a net on a pole but when that failed they had to drop a pontoon with crewmen.

Seaman Adam Buczynski said: 'We tried to sail as close as possible but as we approached the boat pushed the ice and the dog was sliding off.

'The dog didn’t even yelp but you could see the fear in his eyes.'

With darkness falling and time running out Baltic was finally hauled on board in sub zero temperatures late on Monday. Captain Jan Jachim said if his ship had passed that way a few moments later the dog would never have been spotted amid the gloom.

He said: 'We were just at the right place at the right time.'

[Source: DailyMail]

Bulldog Gives Birth To 21 Puppies!

Paintings By Dog Sell for $1,700

Sam the painting hound mix isn't just painting for kicks -- er, wags -- anymore. Now he's cashing in on his talent, with some of his two dozen paintings selling for up to $1,700, The Telegraph reports.

"Sam is a regular renaissance dog and his abstract paintings are all the rage with the hip New York galleries," says owner Mary Stadelbacher who runs Shore Service Dogs in eastern Maryland. She says:

"Using his specialized training as a house-help dog, combined with my amateur art background, Sam is a fully trained artist ... He takes the paint-brush mouth piece and will approach the canvas and begin painting on the simple command of 'paint'."

[Source: USAToday.com]

26-Year-Old Max May Be The World's Oldest Dog

When Janelle DeRouen of New Iberia, La., heard about Chanel, the 21-year-old pooch who made headlines recently for being the world's oldest dog, she knew she had to set the record straight. After all, she's the mother of Max, a terrier mix who celebrated his 26th birthday at home on Aug. 9.

After getting in touch with the Guinness World Records and giving them vital stats about "her baby" Max, who is 182 in dog years, the dog is a major contender for the title. So, at Max's 26th birthday bash on Sunday, there was definitely much to celebrate. "We had a gift table set up. He had other little doggie friends over," DeRouen tells PEOPLE Pets. "Me and my husband [got] him his own little sofa bed. He has his own little couch now."

Born in 1983, the "active" geriatric dog hasn't had many health problems over the years, says DeRouen, who first told her story to the U.K.'s Daily Telegraph. "The only time I had to bring him to the vet for something serious was for a tooth to be extracted. But that's it," she says. In recent years, he's had a few expected aliments. "He is starting to get cataracts, a little arthritis, but otherwise he's healthy."

[Source: MSNBC.com]

The Blind Dog and Guide Dog: BFF

It's not unusual for visually-impaired humans to rely on a guide dog - but now a shelter in the UK has found a blind border collie with his own inseparable canine companion.

Best friends Bonnie and Clyde were brought to the animal shelter in Norfolk after they were found wandering the streets in a rain storm.

When the pair are together Clyde, five, seems as capable as a fully sighted dog - but he won't move unless Bonnie, two, is close.

Bonnie guides him on walks or towards food and lets him rest on her when he becomes disorientated.

Cherie Cootes, who runs the Meadown Green Dog Rescue Centre in Loddon, Norfolk, said: "He totally relies on her the whole time. When she walks she tends to stop and make sure he's there - she does look out for him."

Vicky Bell, a spokeswoman for Guide Dogs for the Blind Association, said she had never heard of a dog voluntarily acting as a guide for another dog.

"There's absolutely no option of homing them separately - they have to go as a pair," she said. "This is a very unusual case - it's such a lovely story.

"Some dogs take to guiding better than others because they naturally have the right temperament."

[Source: SkyNews.com]

Interspecies Cuteness.

I can never, ever resist stories about unlikely friends. And this one is especially aww-worthy.

 

[Source: Fox.com]

Check Out This Adorable Animal Odd Couple!

It's the last thing you'd expect to see emerging from the woods of Tennessee - actually make that the last two things!

Their names, Bella, a once stray dog who wandered onto the property, and Tarra, the elephant.

They arrived at an elephant sanctuary one-by-one, but they tend to live out their lives two-by-two no matter what.

When Bella got sick last year and had to live in the sanctuary office, guess who stood vigil for three weeks? Tarra waited there. "We had no choice but to bring Bella down to see Tarra," said one of the workers.

[Source: Fox29.com]

Creative Grooming

In my quest for something fun and Friday-ish, I stumbled upon The Pet Blog's post on creative grooming. Check it out!

South Korean Scientists Engineer Glow-In-The-Dark Dogs. Seriously.

South Korean scientists say they have engineered four beagles that glow red using cloning techniques that could help develop cures for human diseases. The four dogs, all named "Ruppy" — a combination of the words "ruby" and "puppy" — look like typical beagles by daylight.

But they glow red under ultraviolet light, and the dogs' nails and abdomens, which have thin skins, look red even to the naked eye.

Seoul National University professor Lee Byeong-chun, head of the research team, called them the world's first transgenic dogs carrying fluorescent genes, an achievement that goes beyond just the glowing novelty.

"What's significant in this work is not the dogs expressing red colors but that we planted genes into them," Lee told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Scientists in the U.S., Japan and in Europe previously have cloned fluorescent mice and pigs, but this would be the first time dogs with modified genes have been cloned successfully, Lee said.

He said his team took skin cells from a beagle, inserted fluorescent genes into them and put them into eggs before implanted them into the womb of a surrogate mother, a local mixed breed.

The glowing dogs show that it is possible to successfully insert genes with a specific trait, which could lead to implanting other, non-fluorescent genes that could help treat specific diseases, Lee said.

The scientist said his team has started to implant human disease-related genes in the course of dog cloning, saying that will help them find new treatments for genetic diseases such as Parkinson's. He refused to provide further details, saying the research was still under way.

[Source: Associated Press]

North Carolina Dog Eats Owner's Cash

The family dog in one household in North Carolina may have been feeling the stress of the economic slump when he ate his owner's money. Augie, a 2-year-old greater Swiss mountain dog, consumed the $400 that Kelley Davis earned working overtime as a physical therapist.

Davis, 42, of Apex, N.C., said she'd planned to deposit the money a week ago, but it wasn't in her pocket when she went to retrieve it. Instead, Augie "deposited" the cash in a different way over the next few days, she told FOX News on Friday. She thinks he's done, she said.

Davis said when she took Augie for a walk last Saturday, she found parts of three $100 bills and five $20s in his excrement. She washed them with a garden hose and is hoping to exchange them for intact, non-digested cash.

A professor at the North Carolina State University Veterinary School said the money shouldn't hurt the animal.

[Source: FOXNews.com]

Yellow Lab Puppies Dognapped in Kentucky

A Kentucky-version of Cruella DeVille is suspected of swiping a litter of puppies and their mom - only this time they're 10 Yellow Labs instead of 101 Dalmations. And instead of turning them into coats, as the dastardly Disney character wanted to do, the owner of the purloined pooches suspects the thief plans to mate the pups with poodles to create Labradoodles.

"That's the kind of designer dog (President-elect) Obama is looking to get for his daughters," said Jeanne Lane of Gravel Switch, Ky. "I'm just sick with worry about the dogs."

Lane is the owner of Penn's Store, which claims to be the oldest country store in the country. She said the momma dog, Dixie, and the daddy dog, Boston, appeared on her doorstep one day last September and "we adopted them."

"We tried to find their owners and had no luck," Lane said. "So we took them in and built them a little shed behind the store. The customers loved them because they were so loving to everyone who came in." Dixie had her litter two weeks ago "and they were just the cutest, fattest little puppies," Lane said.

Then, last Wednesday, they vanished. Lane said she went to feed the dogs and noticed Boston's dog collar had been torn off and he was "looking so sad."

"Then I realized Dixie and the puppies were gone," she said. "I was heartbroken. But I knew they couldn't have gotten out by themselves and I knew they wouldn't have wandered off on their own." Lane said she called the sheriff and while she waited recalled recently receiving a call from a "pushy" woman who claimed to run a dog rescue operation in central Kentucky.

"She was telling me I let the Labs run loose and wasn't taking care of them," said Lane. "I told her I was taking good care of Dixie and Boston, but she kept insisting she could do a better job." Lane said she has shared her suspicions with the law. Boyle County Deputy Sheriff Derek Robbins is hot on the trail of that woman - and the missing Labs.

"I'm keeping Boston beside me all the time, because I don't want to lose him too," Lane said. "I really feel like I have a Cruella DeVille situation on my hands."

[Source: Daily News]

Face of Jesus Appears in Dog Door

A miracle-making doggie door is growing in value as shoppers are outbidding each other online. Two years ago, Roger Bowman spotted an image of Jesus on a doggie door. It was posted last week on eBay with a starting bid of $990.

Two job layoffs and the housing market crash put Bowman's family in an economic hole, the family said last week. They were hoping that their "gift from above" will pull them out. After telling his story on November 28, Bowman reports that the bidding as of Monday was up to $1,185. "I think it created a calm and happiness in our house and that's a miracle," says Bowman.

Before the sighting, two unruly dogs ran the house. Bowman planned on getting rid of them, putting one to sleep. Once he saw the imagine, things changed. Some are calling the change a "divine intervention."

"I believe it was divinely created. It's too much of a coincidence," says Bowman. "The dogs created the image that saved their lives." Bowman's 12-year-old son says the door creates all kinds of miracles from making his family happier to fixing things.

"Our ice machine was broken for a long time and it wasn't working yesterday, but then today there is ice," says son Sean Vasquez. "I guess it's the miracle of Jesus." Now, Bowman hopes the divine doggie door will perform one more miracle and help his family get through the tough times. Bidding for the doggie door started on Tuesday and will end on December 5th. For more the complete story of the divine doggie door, check out ebay.com

[Source: KESQ.com]

It's a Pelican-Eat-Dog World

This improbable picture was taken at an exotic bird farm in Germany and shows the extraordinary moment when a one-year-old pelican body-searched a dog in search for a missing meal. Captured by the owner of the bird farm, Roland Adam, they show how Petri the Pelican took exception to the theft of its meal.

"I was preparing foods for the birds in our outdoor kitchen, when I noticed Petri at my side looking for a snack," explained the 38-year-old. "I decided to feed her one of the chicks I had been preparing when Katijina raced in, caught the frozen bird mid-air and gobbled up Petri's dinner."

Confused and slightly irritated by missing out on the proffered snack, Petri decided to scour every inch of the Rhodesian ridgeback - named Katijina - for the discarded chick.

"It was hilarious," said Mr Adam. "We have so many animals on the farm that they are very tame and at ease with each other. Katijina is no different and she was more than happy to allow Petri to come in for closer inspection."

Me Adam's exotic bird farm is in Hoerstel near Osnabrueck and houses everything from ostriches to flamingos. "You see a lot of things on my farm but I have never seen anything like this before and I just had to get my camera to prove it was real," he said. "But I suppose when it came down to it, Katijina was just too quick."

[Source: Telegraph.co.uk]

Revealed: Most Unusual Dog & Cat Names

After years of tracking the most popular names for pets, Veterinary Pet Insurance (VPI) set out to find the most unusual cat and dog names from among its more than 465,000 pets insured nationwide. VPI employees selected 50 unusual dog names and 50 unusual cat names, and then voted for the 10 most unusual names in each category. Check out these winners, listed in order, with the most unusual at the top. Now sit. And read.

Dogs
1. Rush Limbark (enjoys listening to the conservative radio talk show host)
2. Sirius Lee Handsome
3. Rafikikadiki
4. Low Jack (a corgi mix with very short legs)
5. Meatwad
6. Peanut Wigglebutt (a dachshund puppy who shakes her tail so hard she falls over)
7. Scuddles Unterfuss
8. Sophie Touch & Pee (an excitable golden retriever with an unfortunate habit)
9. Admiral Toot
10. Spatula

Cats
1. Edward Scissorpaws (a playful paw leaves a scratch right under the owner's eye)
2. Sir Lix-a-lot
3. Optimus Prrrime
4. Buddah Pest
5. Snoop Kitty Kitty
6. Miss Fuzzbutt
7. 80 Bucks
8. Sparklemonkey
9. Rosie Posie Prozac (an ex-boyfriend spots neurotic tendencies)
10. Toot Uncommon (perfect for the Egyptian mau breed)

[Source: Chicago Tribune]

Baby Monkey Gets His Own Guard Dog

A Chinese zoo has given an orphan monkey its own guard dog to stop it from being bullied by bigger primates.

Keepers at Jiaozuo City Zoo said the monkey was always being bullied and they had intervened to save his life several times. "So we put a dog in the monkey cage, hoping he can protect the orphan," a zoo spokesman told the China News Network.

The zoo said the dog, Sai Hu, does his job very well. "Whenever the baby monkey gets bullied, he dashes up and drives the others away. And the baby monkey is also very smart. Each time he smells danger he runs to jump on the dog's back and holds on tight.

"The alpha male monkey has been really unhappy since we sent in Sai Hu. He tried to organise several ambushes on the little monkey, but they all failed because of the dog," added the spokesman.

[Source: Ananova]

Update on Golden Retriever and Tiger Cubs

Back in July, we were smitten with this story about a Golden Retriever who adopted 3 tiger cubs that were abandoned by their mother. The cubs have just finished weening and are absolutely adorable. Check 'em out on The Today Show!



[Source: msnbc.com]

Dog Nurses Tiger Cubs

Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks? The mother of these tiger cubs couldn't produce enough milk, so zookeepers in Hefei, China, enlisted this dog. She began work when the cubs were one day old, on May 2, when this picture was taken. This isn't the first time a dog has played wet nurse to tigers at the Hefei zoo, which organized a similar arrangement with another dog last year.

It may not even be the oddest recent example of cross-species suckling. As of February, India's Namatia Ghosh, 46, was still breastfeeding the pet monkey her husband found orphaned several years ago. "He is my son," she told BBC News. Not to be outdone, Hlah Htay, 40, helped a Burmese zoo feed two tiger cubs in April, according to the AFP news service.

The cubs had been separated from their aggressive mother. Tigers are born toothless. In the wild they nurse for about six months but begin eating meat after six to eight weeks, when the mother begins sharing her kills.

[Source: National Geographic]

Inflatable Poo Raises a Stink

A giant inflatable dog turd brought down a power line after being blown away from a Swiss museum.

The artwork, entitled Complex S***, was carried 200 metres on the night of 31 July, reportedly breaking a greenhouse window before it landed again. The sculpture, by American artist Paul McCarthy, was equipped with a safety system that should have deflated it. The fake faeces has been returned and will remain on display at the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern until October.

McCarthy is well known for his inflatable artworks, two of which - Blockhead and Daddies Bighead - were displayed outside the Tate Modern in London in 2003. The Zentrum Paul Klee, which opened in 2005, houses a collection of about 4,000 works by the noted Swiss painter.

[Source: BBC News]