Usually leaks are bad things when the subject is puppies, or the White House, but yesterday a cute leak squirted out from 1600 Pennsylvania, the news that its newest resident is a Portuguese water dog that the Obama girls have named Bo.
The Washington Post, who has been hot on the trail of this all-important story got the poop on the pup:
The little guy is a 6-month-old Portuguese
water dog given to the Obama girls as a gift by that Portuguese water
dog-lovin' senator himself, Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts. The
girls named it Bo — and let it be noted that you learned that here
first. Malia and Sasha chose the name, because their cousins have a cat
named Bo and because first lady Michelle Obama's father was nicknamed
Diddley, a source said. (Get it? Bo . . . Diddley?)
Bo's
a handsome little guy. Well suited for formal occasions at the White
House, he's got tuxedo-black fur, with a white chest, white paws and a
rakish white goatee.
President Barack Obama and the first Lady have been barraged with questions about the pooch ever since it became known that the girls were promised a dog if Mr. Obama won the election.
More, including a photo of the Obama's with Bo at the White House, after the jump.
"It is my belief that when you actually see this, America, with your own eyes ... that you are not going stand for it," Oprah Winfrey said of her talk show's expose on the horrors of puppy mills. Winfrey has said that her eyes were opened to the issue by a well-placed billboard off Chicago's Kennedy Expressway that read, "Oprah: Do a show on puppy mills. The dogs need you."
The group behind that billboard, and others like it across the country, is the Pennsylvania-based Main Line Animal Rescue -- and it's recently brought its anti-mill billboard campaign to L.A. (You can see it for yourself near Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank.)
Bill Smith, Main Line's founder, knows puppy mills firsthand; his group finds new homes for many former mill dogs (as well as strays and animals rescued from area shelters).
Many of Pennsylvania's puppy mill dogs come from a seemingly unlikely place: Amish country, where dogs are often kept in tiny rabbit hutches and females are euthanized or shot when they become too old to produce litters. And, owing to a legal loophole and secretive breeding practices, it's perfectly legal, according to a recent expose aired on ABC's Nightline for which Smith was interviewed.
"When they come out of the rabbit hutches they walk like crabs because they don't know what it's like to walk on a proper surface," Smith told Nightline. "They drag their bodies."
The puppy mill breeders can make upwards of a half-million dollars a year selling puppies to pet stores around the country, Nightline reports.
Submitter jazflwr sends this perplexing photo to the Times' photo-sharing site, Your Scene.
"Don't know how it got up my tree," she says of this enterprising rooster. Beyond just the how, we can't help wondering why he'd go up a tree. There are just so many questions here for which we will probably never know the answers.
No word on how long this guy remained up jazflwr's tree. Any guesses on his motivation?
It's kitten season again, and with it will come hundreds if not thousands of neonate kittens to the doors of L.A.'s animal shelters. (A neonate kitten is one that's too young to survive on its own. But without a mother, a neonate kitten will need a lot of human help to survive -- often more help than the overwhelmed staffs of local shelters can provide.)
Neonate kittens account for more than a third of the cats taken in at L.A.'s six city shelters, Department of Animal Services general manager Ed Boks writes on his blog. They also represent a huge percentage of animals euthanized by the shelters, accounting for more than 20% of all animals put to sleep in the shelter system last year.
Shelter staffers, stretched thin, are unable to provide the amount of care required for tiny kittens, which are extra-susceptible to upper respiratory viruses and other illnesses in shelters.
The good news? If a foster home is available, these needy creatures are sent there.
The bad news? If no foster home is found, the babies are put to sleep.
Being a foster "parent" to a needy kitten (or litter of kittens) may not be easy, but Animal Services offers assistance in the form of training, formula and bottles, veterinary care and 24/7 guidance over the phone to volunteers who participate in its Bottle Baby program. Fosters keep their tiny charges until they're 8 weeks old.
White rhinoceros Naruna was born last November at the Serengeti Park in Hodenhagen, Germany. She explored her outdoor enclosure recently, accompanied by her mother.
In the wild, white rhinoceros mothers reproduce only about every two to five years, and their offspring stay with them until they're about 3 years old.
White rhinoceroses are endangered in their native sub-Saharan Africa, where they've been hunted to near extinction by poachers. Their horns are believed to have medicinal benefits in parts of Asia and are used to make dagger handles in parts of Africa and the Middle East. It's estimated that there are about 11,000 left in the wild.
Santa Paula police officers who shot and killed a 15-pound mountain lion cub in February acted inappropriately, according to the findings of an external review released this week.
The review determined that the officers should have used different means for handling the situation and noted that "no person was placed in immediate jeopardy" by the cub's presence. Our colleague Ari B. Bloomekatz reports:
Santa Paula Police Chief Steve MacKinnon said he requested
the review. He said that dealing with mountain lions was a new issue for the
department. "The thing that's unusual for us is we've had no mountain lion calls
for the last five years," MacKinnon said.
Yet the department has received
"21 separate calls in the past six weeks," he said.
"It's extremely
unusual; the experts don't have an explanation" for the rash of cougar
sightings, he said.
MacKinnon presented the results of the review, conducted by
Larry Nichols, a shooting expert with the Burbank Police Department, on Monday
to the Santa Paula City Council.
The review included suggestions for what
the supervising officer on scene could have done differently, including ordering
officers to hold a perimeter and not to "engage, corner or agitate [the]
mountain lion and to wait until Fish and Game arrived, only to shoot if they are
attacked or to protect another person from being attacked."
While MacKinnon defended the officers involved, noting that they had essentially "no training or point of reference in which to manage this call for service," he wrote in a memo that the department has taken steps to ensure such actions won't be repeated in the future.
Officers have been encouraged to use bean bag shotguns as an alternate means of dealing with mountain lions, and senior officers and supervisors have received training from the Mountain Lion Foundation to learn how to properly handle encounters with the big cats.
-- Lindsay Barnett
Photo: A sign in Foothill Ranch. Credit: Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times
When can we expect a new first dog to trot down the steps of Air Force One?
First Lady Michelle Obama would only say "soon ... so soon" when questioned about the dog's arrival -- expected any day -- according to the Associated Press.
Today the anticipation over the Obamas' new puppy grew to a fever pitch in an exchange between the president and reporters:
Q: When is the dog coming?
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, man, now, that's top secret. (Laughter.) That's top secret.
Q: Exactly.
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, no, no, this is tightening up. Any of you going to be at the Easter Egg Roll?
Q: Oh, yes.
THE PRESIDENT: That's big. (Laughter.) That's big. So we look forward to seeing you on Monday. Thanks, guys.
Does this mean we can expect to meet the new first dog at the annual White House Easter Egg Roll? Of course, it looks like the first family will keep us guessing until the last possible moment.
Can these rumors be true? Only time will tell -- but it looks like we don't have long to wait. In the meantime, if you can't get enough of presidential pets, check out the Associated Press' great photo gallery (including the Coolidges' pet raccoon and Caroline Kennedy's pony, Macaroni).
-- Lindsay Barnett
Photo: President George W. Bush's dogs Barney, bottom, and Spot disembark at the White House. Credit: Larry Downing / Reuters
Mona Ramouni, a Michigan woman who became blind shortly after birth, wanted to have more independence. But for Ramouni, who is a practicing Sunni Muslim, a leader dog was not an option. Many Muslims view dogs as unclean, and Ramouni, who lives with her family in the suburbs of Detroit, respected her parents' wishes that she not bring one into the home.
However, according to Dawud Walid, executive
director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations' Michigan chapter, many Muslims see horses as "regal animals."
Enter Cali (short for Mexicali Rose), a miniature horse who stands 2 1/2 feet tall and weighs about 125 pounds. Cali is one of a small number of miniature horses that's been trained as a guide animal in the U.S. "I want a horse that will be a partner for the next 30 or so years. ...
What I really want is to be able to take her places and go places with
her that neither of us ever would have been able to do without each
other," Ramouni told the Associated Press.
Miniature horses often live into their 30s, making them superior to leader dogs in at least one way: longevity.
"It's made [Ramouni] so much more empowered," said
Kelli Finger, a coworker at Ramouni's workplace, where she proofreads textbooks in Braille. Cali has also gotten along well with other, more conventional, guide animals at the office, Finger added.
Chicago's Brookfield Zoo is home to three endangered ape species: orangutans, western lowland gorillas and white-cheeked gibbons. In honor of its ape residents, the zoo is celebrating Ape Awareness Month throughout April. And among those apes honored this month are Sophia, a 27-year-old female orangutan, and her 6-month-old daughter (who hasn't been named yet).
In the wild, young orangutans stay with their mothers for six or seven years. Mother orangutans only give birth about once every eight years. Orangutans are endangered in their native Borneo and Sumatra, due in large part to logging.
Orangutan is a Malay word meaning "person of the forest."
Another great photo of mother and baby after the jump!
A divorced couple brought an intriguing case before Michigan family court Judge Cheryl Matthews this week. Anthony Scully, who remained in Michigan after the couple's 2002 divorce, and his former wife Karen Scully, now of Florida, appeared in Matthews' court yesterday over the disputed ownership of dog semen.
Mr. and Ms. Scully, both of whom breed bullmastiffs, divided ownership of the dogs they'd once shared when they divorced: Four stayed with him, and she took the remaining two with her to Florida.
"I asked, 'Am I being punk'd?' " Matthews said Wednesday afternoon. "I said, 'Is this a 'Candid Camera' thing?' " ...
Anthony Scully, through his attorney, said the semen is his, and that his ex-wife, in moving to Florida, gave up claim. Karen Scully, who appeared in court via teleconference, claimed she has ownership, since the dogs that provided the semen once belonged to her.
"I never had to make an argument quite like this," Anthony Scully's attorney, Ryan Mae Steele of Northville, said. "I had a genealogy tree, listing who had puppies, who provided the semen. It was a lot to take in."
Matthews, an admitted dog lover, ruled that it was not a divorce matter and told the couple they would have to fight it out in civil court.
Oakland County Circuit Judge Leo Bowman will take over the case from Matthews.
Bullmastiffs -- large, slobbery and lovable dogs classified in the AKC's Working Group -- often sell to puppy buyers for $2,000, according to the Detroit Free Press.
--Lindsay Barnett
Photo: A bull mastiff competes in the Westminster Kennel Club dog show
New Yorkers were in for a surprise this morning: a humpback whale, reportedly about 30 to 40 feet in length, surfaced near Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in New York Harbor.
The whale was first reported to authorities around 8 a.m. and remained in the area for several hours. From the New York Times:
Petty Officer Annie Berlin, a spokeswoman for the Coast Guard, said: "It is fairly close to the shipping zone. We want to make sure that not only the animal is not in danger, but that the vessels traveling in and out of New York Harbor are also safe."
She said that the whale, at 11 a.m., was about one mile from the Verrazano Bridge.
Petty Officer Schulein said the whale was not too far from Brooklyn. "It's right near Bay Ridge," he added. "It's right off of Belt Parkway." By 1:15 p.m., it had moved near Coney Island, the Coast Guard reported.
The last known sighting of the whale was at 2:24 p.m. in Ambrose Channel south of the Verrazano Bridge by a Coast Guard crew and representatives from the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation. The Coast Guard suspended its security zone around the whale at 4 p.m. as it continued to move south.
Paul J. Browne, the Police Department's chief spokesman, said that two Police Department harbor launches were dispatched and gliding in the waters near the whale around noon. "The whale does not seem to be in distress," said Mr. Browne.
Last night, the Coast Guard was called to Rockaway Beach when it was reported that a whale was trying to beach itself there. When the Coast Guard arrived at Rockaway, the whale was nowhere to be found. It's unclear whether the incidents are related, but Berlin told the New York Times that she didn't see "why it wouldn't be the same whale."
A procession -- led by a cow covered with a blanket of flowers -- begins at 2 p.m. The blessing ceremony, presided over by Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, begins after the procession.
Music, informational opportunities for pet owners, pony rides for children and a petting zoo will also be on hand. Dogs, cats, snakes (like the boa constrictor at right), turtles and iguanas have been blessed in previous years' ceremonies.
Parking is available at lots on Main, Los Angeles and Alameda streets near the El Pueblo Historical Monument. For more information, call (213) 625-7074 or (213) 485-8372.
-- Lindsay Barnett
Photo: Cardinal Mahony blesses a boa constrictor during the 2001 Blessing of the Animals ceremony. Credit: Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times
Last month, the Ventana Wildlife Society captured an ailing California condor in California's central coast. The bird, an adult male, was found to be suffering from lead poisoning and brought to the L.A. Zoo for treatment. Once there, an X-ray revealed that the condor, identified by his studbook number 286, had also been shot. (The shotgun pellets found embedded in the bird's body were not believed to be the cause of the lead poisoning; since condors are scavengers, it's believed he was exposed to lead as a result of eating the carcasses of animals killed with lead ammunition.)
"We were alarmed when one condor was found shot," said Ventana Wildlife Society Director Kelly Sorenson. "Now with two birds in such a short time, we are deeply concerned."
Although both birds are still alive, it remains unclear whether either will be able to return to the wild. ...
The male is in critical condition and remains alive only because veterinarians have been sustaining him with a feeding tube, as the bird has a disabled digestive tract due to the lead poisoning.
The female has a better prognosis, though one pellet damaged a bone in her left wing and it is uncertain if she will regain the ability to fly.
The group Defenders of Wildlife has offered a $1,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of the person or persons responsible. The Center for Biological Diversity followed suit, establishing an additional $30,000 reward for information on the shootings.
Schomaker has said he never intended to harm the 6-month-old cat, named Shadow, and only exposed her to marijuana because he'd heard of others calming their pets by blowing marijuana smoke in their faces.
According to Schomaker, Shadow, who was adopted by Vieux two months before the incident from friends who she said were abusive to the cat, had behavior problems. Fearing Shadow would be euthanized if they relinquished her to an animal shelter, Schomaker said he resorted to his unorthodox method for relaxing Shadow.
"I know for sure this isn't the first time someone has done this," he has said. "I'm just the first one to get caught." He also faces additional drug charges as a result of the incident and is scheduled to reappear in court April 20. Vieux is due back in court May 4, Nebraska's KOLN/KGIN radio reports.
The cat was reportedly in good condition; she was removed from the home and taken to the Capitol Humane Society in Lincoln.
-- Lindsay Barnett
Photo: Acea Schomaker used this homemade bong, consisting of a piece of garden hose attached to a duct-taped Plexiglass box, to calm the 6-month-old cat, he has said. Credit: Associated Press
Submitter The Yella Dawg says this troupe of kittens is "ready to compute" after the arrival of new software (or, more importantly for them, the arrival of a new box).
"Cats can be poisoned by ingesting one or two leaves or flowers," said Wilson Rumbeiha, assistant professor of pathobiology and diagnostic investigation at Michigan State University.
Symptoms can start within 30 minutes of ingesting leaves or flowers, Rumbeiha said. The first symptom is depression, followed by vomiting, loss of appetite, and loss in body weight. Acute renal failure starts at about 48 hours post-ingestion.
"Easter lily poisoning is a problem of indoor cats and affects cats of either sex and all ages," he said.
From clinical experience, between 50 percent and 100 percent of cats poisoned by Easter lilies die from the poisoning, he said. This is because the toxin is not yet identified and there is no antidote.
Dogs are apparently unaffected by the unknown toxin present in Easter lilies.
Should your cat accidentally ingest either the flowers or leaves of an Easter, tiger or Asiatic hybrid lily, it's important to get him or her to the vet as soon as possible. Intravenous fluids and other supportive therapies have shown to be very effective treatment if given within six hours.
Thailand's Sriracha Tiger Zoo is one of the world's foremost places to see odd couples in harmony: pigs and tigers snoozing together is a common occurrence at the zoo, near the resort city of Pattaya.
According to the Daily Mail, the zoo prides itself on creating "happy families" from the different species that call it home. Pig mothers care for tiger cubs (but the zoo's 10,000-strong crocodile population keeps to itself).
The zoo, which opened in 2007 and covers 100 acres, has 400 Bengal tigers in residence (no word on how many pigs). More photos after the jump!
About three weeks ago, Nash spoke her first word since the attack ("Lisa," the name of her nurse). "We gave each other a hug. It makes you cry," Stephen Nash told the Associated Press of the brothers' reaction to the news.
The improvements in Nash's condition are heartening -- doctors originally feared she'd suffer permanent brain damage and blindness due to the severity of the injuries she sustained during the brutal attack by a chimp named Travis.
The lawsuit filed by her family against Travis' owner, Sandra Herold, lists "traumatic facial injury [including loss of her nose, upper and lower
lips, eyelids and the bony structures in her mid-face]." The $50-million lawsuit accuses Herold of negligence in failing to take precautions that would have prevented the attack. "Any future settlement or court verdict would take into consideration the pain associated with the catastrophic, life-altering nature of Charla's injuries and her loss of ability to work," reads a statement on the Charla Nash Trust website, which was set up after the attack to collect financial contributions toward her medical care.
Doctors doubt Nash will remember the attack; she does know that she's in Cleveland but has been told that she was the victim of an accident. Michael Nash says that, with her level of sedation reduced, she'll probably start asking questions soon; a trauma expert will be there when she does.
Anxious Obama dog watchers, it looks as if you won't have to wait too much longer -- but for the remainder of the week, the president isn't likely to get closer to a canine than he is in the photo at right.
But, perhaps adding credence to CBS White House Correspondent Bill Plante's comment that "[w]e know that it's already been picked out," another Washington insider is saying today that the future first dog has not only been chosen, but is already studying at the heels of an obedience instructor. From Chicago's WBBM Newsradio:
Senator Durbin says the dog has been going through training while the president and the first lady have been traveling.
Durbin did not comment on what kind of dog the Obamas are getting or where the dog is coming from.
Durbin is an appropriate person to comment on the pet search; he's one of a select number of legislators to receive a perfect score of 100 on the Humane Society Legislative Fund's Humane Scorecard, which ranks congressmen and women according to their votes on animal protection issues.
A first-time mother, lioness Joy, gave birth to two cubs in February at Switzerland's Zurich Zoo. The cubs, named Jeevana and Jasraj, were allowed to explore their enclosure for the first time today.
Joy and her cubs are Indian lions, also called Asiatic lions. Although they're critically endangered in the wild, the species (which is genetically distinct from African lions) is still quite famous in its native habitat and even appears on the emblem of India.
