Dog Stories

This sentence about the dog being perturbed made me laugh because yesterday my daughter went into our tiny little downstairs bathroom to quickly use the facilities before we went shopping (Christmas eve day) and I heard her shriek and then start laughing.

My dog was calmly lying wedged behind the toilet - I don't know how she got back there or why - but as she just got out of quarantine after three months where she'd been confined to a cage with no walks or other exercise - she'd gained quite a lot of weight.

Well she was wedged like a sausage in a casing - but she hadn't made a sound - no yelping or barking - just smiled and wagged her tail when my daughter showed up - like- 'Oh goody - now someone can help me get out of this jam.'

'Miracle' rescue: Woman buried in snow for 3 days found alive



A missing Ontario woman was found alive Monday afternoon, after spending three days buried under deep snow in an isolated field near the airport in Hamilton.

Hamilton police, who spent Saturday, Sunday and Monday searching for the 55-year-old Ancaster secretary, said it is nothing short of a miracle that she survived in what police describe as "horrific" weather conditions.

"The word miracle was used several times, given the circumstances," Insp. Bob Buck told CBC News on Monday.

"[By Monday], we thought we were in search and recovery mode. We were still optimistic, but we were quite surprised to find her."

Buck said the woman, a mother of one who works for the local Catholic school board, left her home on Friday to go for a walk, as she often does. She usually drives to a quiet location, parks her SUV, and explores the area on foot.

When she didn't come home Friday afternoon, her husband called police. By that time, weather conditions were "horrific" Buck said, with heavy winds, blowing snow and cold temperatures.

On Saturday afternoon, officers found the woman's SUV off Fiddler's Green Road and launched a full-scale search. About 20 police officers and trained volunteers searched the area with the help of all-terrain vehicles, snowmobiles and police search dogs.

The search team covered several square kilometres, but it wasn't until 12:30 p.m. ET on Monday that a police dog named Ace started pawing at the snow near a pond. The dog and his handler, Ray Lau, dug through the snow and pulled the woman out.

"She was covered in snow, you wouldn't even be able to see her because of blowing and drifting snow," Buck said.

The woman was able to speak, but suffering from hypothermia. She is now recovering in hospital, although police do not have an update on her condition.

Police didn't release her name, but she has been identified in media reports as Donna Molnar.


it was search dogs first time on a real assignment, pretty good first day on the job

"A while ago, Ace was rescued from a home where he didn't belong, and now he got to rescue someone. I can't describe the magnitude of that, what that means to me," Lau said.

This is the same dog of which djjd tells.

thanks for that news edgar, hadn't heard that part of the story

Picture of Ace the dog:

..... and this is the shoplifting dog:


Video of theft of $2.79 rawhide bone can be seen here:
http://www.examiner.com/x-1028-Pet-News-Examiner~y2008m12d26-Shoplifting-dog-caught-on-surveillance-cameravideo

Perfect job for a border collie, and great story..

These dogs decorate the tree - sooo cute!

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. " A German shepherd named Astro who has been missing from his family for more than 9 years is finally home.

The Geary family was shocked when they recently received a call from an animal control officer who said that Astro had been found.

The dog went missing from the Geary family’s Port St. Lucie, Fla. home shortly after the family adopted him. Since then, they have moved three times and ended up in Louisville, Ky.

On Jan. 29, 2009, an animal control officer in Tennessee picked up Astro after receiving a report about a dog running loose. Officers tracked down the family through a microchip implanted in the canine.

Dennis Geary says he wasn’t sure if Astro would remember him. But when they were reunited, the dog sat down and began licking him.

Thanks for bringing up this great thread, Edgar!

There is a similar story in The Odyssey (yes, by Homer, some 30 centuries before Astro and implantable microchips) of Odysseus (aka Ulysses) leaving for the Trojan War a few days after a puppy, whom they named Argos, was born in his palace. More than a decade later Odysseus returned, an old man: his wife, Penelope, his son, Telemachus, even his old tutor, never recognized him, but Argos, by then of course a very very old dog, went to sniff his old master's feet, sat down, and greeted him with a big smile and a wagging tail.

Your story is so similar......Argos then, Astro now - stunning continuity in Western Civilization! Thanks again

BROWNSVILLE " A South Texas mayor became so concerned about reports of a Great Dane being stuck on a second-story balcony that he alerted emergency workers, went to the location himself, scaled a fire department ladder and entered the apartment to help the dog.

The problem was, the dog wasn’t in distress. The bigger problem came when the surprised dog owner found Mayor Pat Ahumada standing in his kitchen Tuesday.

“He broke into my house,” the owner, who asked not to be identified, told the Brownsville Herald. “My dog is very well taken care of. He shouldn’t have done that.”

Ahumada, a dog lover whose zeal for the animals has caused problems before, said a local TV station called him to say a dog was stuck. Ahumada called animal services, the fire department and the police.

“He looked to be stuck on the balcony,” Ahumada said. “I didn’t know the condition of the dog or if the building was abandoned. ... The animal’s paws were hanging out from the railing and he was struggling to get up.”

The dog’s owner explained that the 14-year-old dog has little mobility, and one of its greatest pleasures is passing the day on the balcony where it can watch the passing traffic.

In 2007, the city informed Ahumada that his six dogs doubled the city’s legal limit for one home. That same year, Ahumada picked up a dog thinking it was stray and gave it to a family. When the original owner asked for the dog back and the family refused, the issue ended up in court.

Two years earlier, before he was elected mayor, Ahumada was charged with theft after taking a dog from the Brownsville Animal Shelter. He claimed the dog was not being properly cared for and the charge was dismissed

TODAYShow.com contributor
updated 10:04 a.m. CT, Tues., April. 7, 2009
Australian cattle dog Sophie Tucker spent her life as a pampered house pet, but when the going got rough, showed mettle that could put her human counterparts on “Survivor” to shame.

The plucky pooch was separated from her owners when she fell overboard in choppy waters, but swam five miles to an island, surviving on a diet of wild goats for four months until miraculously being reunited with her family.

“She surprised us all,” ecstatic owner Jan Griffith told the National Australian Associated Press News Agency. “She was a house dog and look what’s she done, she’s swum over five nautical miles, she’s managed to live off the land all on her own. We wish she could talk, we really do.”

Sophie’s mind-boggling survival story, chronicled on TODAY Tuesday, began as Jan and husband Dave took their pet along for a sailing trip off the coast of Australia last November. When the sea grew rough, Sophie dropped into the water.

“We searched well over an hour,” Jan Griffith told the Brisbane Times. “We thought once she hit the water she would have been gone because the wake from the boat was so big.”

Not so. Sophie " named after the bawdy American vaudeville entertainer " dog-paddled her way to the remote island of St. Bees, in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. The island, largely bereft of humans, is known for its koala bear population, but island rangers were taken aback by the sight of a seemingly wild dog in their midst.

Griffith said she was told Sophie looked thin and mangy when first spotted, but told the AAP “all of the sudden she started to look good and it was when the rangers had found baby goat carcasses, so she started eating baby goats.”

Becoming wild in the wild
The family’s inside dog underwent a fundamental personality change to survive in the great outdoors. “She had become quite wild and vicious,” Griffith told the Brisbane Times. “She wouldn’t let anyone go near her or touch her. She wouldn’t take food from anybody.”

After four months, rangers finally managed to trap the dog. And when news broke that a wild dog had been captured on St. Bees, the Griffiths met up with a ranger’s boat bringing Sophie back to Australia’s mainland " and saw, it was indeed Sophie in tow.

The story of reuniting is one for the ages. “She’d been ferocious in the trap, but we called her and she started whimpering and crying, and so did everybody,” Griffith told NBC News.

“They let her out [of the cage] and she just about flattened us,” Griffith told the AAP. “She wriggled around like a mad thing.”

Sophie not only showed amazing adaptability living in the wild, but returning to domestic life " the Griffiths reported the dog’s transition to house dog once again has been seamless.

The dog’s survival story has even animal experts scratching their heads. Australian veterinarian Vicki Lomax told the Brisbane Times that Sophie’s is a hardy breed, but virtually no dog would have been likely to survive what she went through.

“Cattle dogs are probably the most suited type of dog to survive something like this, but it would have been a major ordeal for her,” Lomax said. “Five nautical miles is an incredibly big distance for any type of dog … she is lucky she wasn’t taken by a shark.”

This last was one of the more amazing dog tales I have read. I suppose that if it were about a collie or beagle, it might seem more amazing still.

I just posted this on Kuvacz's thread about the Grateful Dead going on tour again, but you may have missed it there - and it truly is riotously funny: