Yahoo, a service-dog-in-training, got a unique Disneyland souvenir — for dogs, at least.
A photo of the young yellow Lab calmly posing as an artist draws a caricature of him riding a surfboard is going viral.
Yahoo lives in San Marcos, Calif., with a volunteer from the nonprofit Canine Companions for Independence (CCI), according to Buzzfeed News. He’s currently learning basic obedience and socialization skills. When he’s ready in a couple of years, Yahoo will be given free of charge to someone with disabilities.
The photo was taken Oct. 14 by the parents of a woman named Katie, who shared it on Twitter. As of Tuesday morning it’s been liked over 132,000 times and shared over 53,000 times.
“Based on that photo, Yahoo is practicing basic obedience commands as he waits for his photo [to be] taken,” Jeanine Konopelski, a spokeswoman for CCI, told Buzzfeed News. “That’s a perfect training and socialization for one of our dogs to get used to waiting and sitting at attention.”
The volunteer told Buzzfeed News that’s exactly why she and a friend took their service dogs-in-training to Disneyland. The always-crowded theme park would provide plenty of high-level distractions for the dogs, but also be a “fun trip,” she said.
Disneyland is not only the Happiest Place on Earth, but apparently also the Best Place for Training Service Dogs on Earth. In February, a guide dog-in training was treated to an obedience lesson from Pluto.
By next February, Yahoo will be trained to open doors, turn on light switches and pull wheelchairs — but not necessarily to ride a surfboard.
A Southern California man who lost his home also lost something very precious to him: his 3-year-old German Shepherd, Ginger. He had to give up his beloved dog since he could no longer afford to care for her.
The heartbroken man left Ginger at the Apple Valley Animal Shelter on Sept. 17. But Ginger missed him so much that after the shelter closed that day, she managed to escape — by jumping out of her kennel and figuring out how to open three doors with her paws.
After Ginger set off the doors’ security alarms, shelter staff was notified that someone was moving through the shelter “at a high rate of speed.” When the staff checked surveillance videos, they were surprised to see the “intruder” was actually escapee Ginger.
“She had to go through three doors and one of them wasn’t the push-bar kind. It was a handle,” Gina Whiteside, director of animal services for the shelter, told the San Bernardino Sun.
‘On Her Way to Her Old Home’
Ginger was found about 3 miles from the shelter a few days later. “We think she was on her way to her old home,” Whiteside told the Sun.
Back at the shelter, Gina was put in a more secure kennel. The shelter hopes “she will be adopted preferably by someone who knows this breed,” a spokeswoman told FOX 11.
“Ginger is a smart, resourceful dog,” the Apple Valley Animal Shelter wrote on its Facebook page Sept. 23. “She needs an experienced owner and a job that puts her greatness to use.”
I do hope Ginger finds a home — but since she obviously loves her dog dad so much, it would also be nice if she could be fostered until he’s able to get a new place to live, and I hope that happens very soon.
For information about Ginger and other pets available for adoption, call the Apple Valley Animal Shelter at 760-240-7000, ext. 7555, or email avasrescues@applevalley.org.
This story was originally posted Sept. 11, 2015. Bretagne passed away on June 6, nine months after celebrating her 16th birthday.
For nearly two weeks in September 2001, a Golden Retriever search dog named Bretagne, then 2 years old, dug through the rubble of the World Trade Center, searching in vain for survivors.
Fourteen years later, Bretagne (pronounced “Brittany”), who is now the last survivor of the nearly 100 search-and-rescue dogs dispatched to Ground Zero after the 9/11 attacks, celebrated her 16th birthday in style.
“After hearing Bretagne’s story and learning that her 16th birthday was coming up, there was no question in our minds that she deserved a Dog’s Best Day for the ages,” wrote Laura Hartle on BarkPost, which co-sponsored the celebration.
Bretagne and her pet parents, Denise and Randy Corliss, flew from their home in Cypress, Texas, to New York City late last month to enjoy that best day.
They stayed in a luxurious hotel suite courtesy of 1 Hotel Central Park. A two-layer birthday cake decorated with paw prints and biscuits was provided by Bubba Rose Biscuit Company. Bretagne was also awarded a Tiffany & Co. “Bone of the Dog Park” from Hudson River Park.
“Everywhere Bretagne went,” BarkPost notes in a video, “New Yorkers stopped in their tracks to thank her for her service.”
Last year, for the first time since 2001, Bretagne and Denise flew to New York and visited Ground Zero.
“Seeing this kind of took my breath away a bit,” Denise told TODAY.com in September 2014. “It’s so calm and peaceful now, unlike the chaos of before. After 9/11, everybody — all of us — felt such sadness. We all wanted to help. I just felt so honored that we were able to respond.”
The Corliss family has had Bretagne since she was a puppy. After Denise learned that civilians and their dogs can join federal emergency response teams to help out after a disaster, she and Bretagne began taking training classes together. She told TODAY.com she spent 20 to 30 hours a week training with Bretagne.
In 2000, she and Bretagne were accepted into Texas Task Force 1. Less than a year later, their very first deployment was to Ground Zero.
Bretagne worked 12-hour shifts for nearly 14 days. Like so many of the search dogs there, she became depressed when she found only human remains. To boost the dogs’ morale, some workers buried themselves in the rubble so the dogs could discover living people.
The human responders were more distraught than the dogs. At one point Bretagne walked over to a firefighter sitting on the ground. Denise called for her dog to come back, but Bretagne ignored her.
“I was surprised that she wasn’t listening to me — it was like she was flipping me the paw,” Denise told TODAY.com. “She went right to that firefighter and laid down next to him, and put her head on his lap.”
After Ground Zero, Denise and Bretagne worked at several other disaster sites, including New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. Bretagne officially retired at the age of 9, but continued doing volunteer work as a service dog at an elementary school. She helps students with learning disabilities by being their audience as they read aloud to her.
Last year, Bretagne was a finalist for the Americane Humane Association Hero Dog Awards.
“She still has this attitude of putting her paw up and saying, ‘Put me in, coach!’” Denise told TODAY.com. “She absolutely loves it.”
“Bretagne’s Best Day” was documented in a touching video by BarkPost that shows this old girl is still a puppy at heart. Be sure to have plenty of tissues handy.
Move over, Mary-Kate and Ashley. There’s a new and even cuter pair of twins in the world, and they each have four legs.
For what’s believed to be the first time ever, a pair of identically genetic puppies have been born in South Africa.
Dr. Kurt de Cramer, a veterinarian in Mogale City, has helped deliver hundreds of litters through Caesarean section — but this particular birth was much different.
The mother, an Irish Wolfhound, had a strange bulb by her uterus. At first Dr. Cramer thought it was just excess fluid around one of the puppies. He carefully made an incision and removed the puppy.
To his surprise, there were two male puppies inside the bulb, attached by their umbilical cords to one placenta.
“When I realized that the puppies were of the same gender and that they had very similar markings, I also immediately suspected that they might be identical twins having originated from the splitting of an embryo,” Cramer told BBC.
The other five puppies in the litter each had their own placenta.
Until now, only humans and nine-banded armadillos were known to be able to produce twins. To confirm that dogs can as well, Cramer sent blood samples from the twins, named Cullen and Romulus, to experts.
“The twins looked very similar,” Carolynne Joone of James Cook University in Australia told BBC. “But pups from the same litter often do, [and] there were small differences in the white markings on their paws, chests and the tips of their tails. I wasn’t sure they were monozygotic [identical] at all initially.”
DNA profiling of the blood samples showed that Cullen and Romulus are indeed identical twins. When the puppies were about six weeks old, samples of their tissue also confirmed it.
Are These the First Twin Puppies Ever Born?
This is a difficult question to answer. “There have been rumors about twins in dogs before,” Joone told BBC. “We just happened to be lucky enough to be able to confirm it genetically.
“It has taken so long for us to find a monozygotic pair, so they are probably rare. But so many of them will have been born naturally and blissfully unaware.”
Some animals, such as horses, have been known to have had identical twin fetuses that did not survive. When two fetuses share one placenta in a horse or most other animals, they don’t get enough nutrients and oxygen from the mother to stay alive. Cramer had previously seen two puppies sharing a placenta in 2014, but they had died before he performed a C-section on their mother.
Like human twins, Cullen and Romulus were a bit smaller than the other puppies when they were born, but have caught up to their littermates. Both are healthy and doing well, BBC reports.
Troy, a Pit Bull who lives in Amsterdam, “pawed” it forward to his rescuers. He hand — er, mouth — delivered a gift to the police officers who saved his life.
While walking through Rietlandpark with his owner last month, a bee stung Troy’s neck. Troy went into shock and couldn’t walk. When his owner yelled for help, he was fortunately heard by officers at the Piet Heinkade police station across the street from the park.
The officers rushed Troy and his owner to a veterinarian. Because they got him there so quickly, Troy was able to make a complete recovery. The veterinarian said Troy would not have been so lucky if it had taken longer for him to get treatment for the sting.
Today Troy showed his appreciation to these heroes — with a box of popsicles.
“Troy gives his saviors ice cream as a thank you!” Politie Amsterdam posted on their Facebook page, along with a photo of the happy dog making his delivery.
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