i Still Love Dogs

Last Surviving 9/11 Ground Zero Search Dog Celebrates Sweet 16th

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.

Happy Sweet 16th, Bretagne!

Photos via Twitter; YouTube

Montreal SPCA Takes a Stand Against Proposed Pit Bull Ban

Breed-specific legislation (BSL), which includes Pit Bull bans, is very expensive to enforce and has not proven to increase public safety anywhere it’s been enacted. Yet for some reason, Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre thinks it’s a great idea and wants to enforce it in the city, starting in January 2017.

Almost all major animal welfare organizations, including the RSPCA, SPCA, Humane Society of the United States and more, are opposed to BSL because it punishes dogs based on their looks instead of placing responsibility where it belongs: on the dog’s owner.

The Montreal SPCA, which is the leading organization for animal welfare in Canada, also opposes BSL — so much so that it announced it will no longer provide dog-control services to the city if officials vote this month to ban Pit Bulls.

“We hope that the proposed animal control bylaw will not be adopted on Sept. 26 and that we will not have to alter the contracts we currently have with boroughs,” Alanna Devine, the Montreal SPCA’s director of animal advocacy, said in a statement.

“We’ll be forced eventually to euthanize hundreds of dogs in good health,” said Benoit Tremblay, the SPCA’s executive director.

Despite the Montreal SPCA’s stance, and the fact that more than 1,500 people have shown up at protests and over 21,000 people have signed a petition opposing it, the ban will likely be passed.

“The Coderre administration is moving forward with its balanced bylaw on animal control,” Anie Samson, the vice-chair of Montreal’s executive committee, told CBC News. “The safety of all our citizens is a priority for our administration.”

There is nothing “balanced” about an unfair bylaw that only punishes dogs because of the breed they happen to be.

Better Alternatives to BSL

The Montreal SPCA has a very helpful infographic on its website that should be reviewed closely by city officials (and anyone who thinks Pit Bulls are inherently dangerous). Instead of a breed ban, offficials should consider more effectively preventing dog bites by using these suggested alternatives instead:

Enforce existing laws requiring dogs to be on leash in public places
Enforce existing laws relating to the mandatory licensing and identification of dogs
Adopt laws that prohibit aversive training methods
Adopt laws that prohibit the use of guard dogs
Adopt laws that prohibit the permanent chaining of dogs
Adopt laws to regulate the breeding and sale of dogs

“Our mission is to save animals, to care for them, protect them from cruelty, and find them homes for life,” the Montreal SPCA wrote on its Facebook page. “We will not, due to biased criteria, euthanize dogs in perfect health who present no danger to the community.”

Merci beaucoup, Montreal SPCA.

Photo via Facebook

Happy News: Pit Bull Stabbed Saving Woman’s Life Has a New Home

There’s a happy update to the story about Hero, a 7-year-old stray Pit Bull from Baldwin, Ga., who was stabbed five times on July 22 while saving the life of a woman he didn’t even know.

When Hero lunged at the man attacking the woman, the man started stabbing the dog.

Hero was lying in a pool of blood when police officers Timothy Clay and Daniel Seely arrived at the scene. They rushed him to the nearest animal hospital, where they gave him his appropriate name.

“I don’t think we could have let that dog suffer and die,” Sgt. Clay told WATE. “We felt like we needed to get that dog some help after what it had been through.”

Hero almost didn’t make it through surgery, but he managed to pull through.

Despite Hero’s ordeal, he recovered and is a very mellow and social dog, according to Carla Welch, founder and director of the Fighting for the Bullys rescue organization in Knoxville, Tenn.

“He has had a bum back leg and a bum front leg, but he gets around fine and he’s looking for a good friend,” she told WATE.

“He’s very laid back, very sweet,” she told WBIR. “He likes to talk to you. He’s going to make somebody a great companion. Hero will get his second chance. He will get a fantastic family, and he will finally get his happily ever after.”

They Were Looking out for a Hero

Welch was right. Two months later, Hero has been adopted by Sarah Simpson and her family, which includes two other dogs.

Simpson tried to apply to adopt Hero weeks ago, but had difficulty getting the online application to work. So she and her husband, David, went in person to meet the Hero they were looking for at a Petco adoption event last weekend.

“I’m really excited to give someone who’s never had a home, a home,” Simpson told WATE today. “And I say ‘someone’ because dogs to me are more than just dogs. They’re people. They’re your family.” Nice!

Welch said it’s bittersweet to say goodbye to Hero. “We’re bonded already, and I try not to, but with this boy you can’t help it. He’s very amazing,” she told WATE, wiping away what she said were tears of joy.

“He’s healthy and awesome now. He loves everybody. He’s just a great boy.”

Photo via Twitter

Two Cute! Identical Twin Puppies May Be World’s First Ever

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.

Photos via YouTube

Woof-hoo! Celebrate National Dog Day August 26

Prepare to treat your pooch even better than usual Aug. 26 — it’s the 12th Annual National Dog Day, a holiday intended to encourage people to recognize the number of dogs needing to be rescued, as well as to honor pups who save lives, keep us safe and bring us comfort.

National Dog Day was created in 2004 by pet lifestyle expert and author Colleen Paige. Since then, it’s been celebrated each year on Aug. 26.

“I founded National Dog Day to honor dogs, to give them a ‘day’ to show our deep appreciation for the historical connection of companionship with one another,” Paige says on the official National Dog Day website. “For their endearing patience, unquestioning loyalty, for their work protecting our streets, homes and families as police K-9s, military working dogs, guide dogs and therapy dogs.”

She was inspired by her rescue dog, Sailor, who “was tortured and starved when I found her in the shelter at 7 months old, and she taught me what unconditional love and trust really meant.”

The National Dog Day website has plenty of suggestions for ways to celebrate with your pooch, such as buying him a new toy, throwing a party and/or teaching him a new trick.

If you don’t have a dog, you are asked to donate $5 to your favorite rescue or shelter. And whether or not you have a pooch, you can also celebrate by spending some quality time Aug. 26 (or better yet, any day) visiting the lonely dogs at your local shelter.

I wish you and your pooch(es) a very Happy National Dog Day!

Photos via Facebook