A black and tan female dog got herself in a rather precarious predicament on Tuesday morning.  She was stranded on the median on I-80 in Reno, NV, during peak morning rush hour.  Too afraid to move, which was a good thing for her with the traffic, she stayed near the center of the freeway between the two cement jersey wall barriers.

Concerned motorists called the NHP and it wasn’t long before Trooper Brett Tierney arrived and rescued the scared girl. He just picked her up and popped her in his vehicle, then transported her to the Regional Animal Services Center.

She wasn’t wearing tags or a collar but Trooper Tierney hopes the dog’s owner comes forward to claim her and if not, there will still be a happy ending for this little girl.

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Well, it’s that time of the year again and the Fourth of July is almost upon us. No doubt there will be many celebrations this weekend so I wanted to take the time to pass along some great health and safety tips for your dog from the ASPCA.

Fourth of July Safety Tips

For many people, nothing beats lounging in the backyard on the Fourth of July with good friends and family,including the four-legged members of the household. While it may seem like a great idea to reward Rover with scraps from the grill and bring him along to watch fireworks, in reality some festive foods and products can be potentially hazardous to your pets. The ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center offers the following tips:

• Never leave alcoholic drinks unattended where pets can reach them. Alcoholic beverages have the potential to poison pets. If ingested, the animal could become very intoxicated and weak, severely depressed or could go into a coma. Death from respiratory failure is also a possibility in severe cases.

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Looks like Corpus Christi, TX and the sentencing Judge, Judge Martinez, don’t give a damn about dogs or animals and don’t take animal abuse very seriously.  Wastes of human life, 44-year-old Daniel Luna and 45-year-old Norma Luna, who abandoned this once beautiful German Shepherd, Shepp, to suffer a cruel and painful fate, were charged with 4 counts of animal cruelty; not feeding Shepp properly, not providing sufficient water, providing no medical attention for the dog’s injuries, and allowing Shepp to be tied up at an unoccupied property, misdemeanor charges.

They could have faced jail time but good ole Judge Martinez, in a plea deal, sentenced them to one year probation and $900 in fines!!!

A year probation and a fine!! You’ve got to be kidding me!!  This poor dog suffered in the sweltering heat for a month, little to no food and water, bone protruding, open sores, maggots and they got a year’s probation!! OMG!! Where the hell is the justice in that??

Look at these faces! These are the faces of heartless monsters who are getting away with killing, with torture. I am so angry and incensed that I can barely write! I am beginning to think they need to take the word “justice” out of the phrase justice system!

Take a moment to read Shepp’s story, to watch the video and if you still have dry eyes, I will be amazed! HERE

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It’s always touching and amazing what a dog brings into someone’s life, even more so for therapy dogs and those they being comfort and more to.

When Joe Logan of Wheaton, IL, took his dog, Redbelly, out for a walk on Friday morning, Redbelly decided to mix a little heroism with his business.  He alerted Logan to something by barking and pulling him toward some bushes.  When Logan investigated, he found an abandoned newborn baby naked in the bushes next to a garage.

“I heard a little whimper, a tiny whimper,” Logan said, and when he followed Redbelly the dog led him to a shivering naked infant, umbilical cord still attached.

“He looked like a newborn,” Logan said. “He was very dirty, twigs and leaves around him, it was overwhelming.”

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Looks like Newport New, VA cop, Rashad I. Brown, 32, is gonna walk free and clear since the city voluntarily withdrew its animal cruelty charges against him. And I thought I couldn’t get much angrier over this then when the Judge returned the two abused dogs back to this POS with their fresh bruises and abrasions that a vet treated.

On March 16, responding to a neighbor’s complaint that they witnessed a man kicking one of dogs, and heard him beating another, animal control officer Angie Gromlich went to Brown’s St. Thomas Drive apartment only to be confronted by an arrogant and belligerent Brown siccing his dog, Lilly, a Labrador retriever on her.  Brown was arrested and charged with two counts of animal cruelty and could have faced a maximum of 12 months in jail and a fine of up to $2,500.

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Major Steven Hutchison, a Viet Nam vet, wanted to sign back up for duty after the 911 attacks but his wife persuaded him not to. After her death from breast cancer, Hutchison returned to active duty as part of a group of older seasoned soldiers that helped to train.

‘He’d been a soldier all his life, and that’s what he wanted to do,’ said his brother, Richard.

‘He hadn’t been drafted and he didn’t have to go, and he chose that he felt he could serve and make a difference,’ said US Army spokesman Lt Colonel Nathan Banks.

After a year tour of Afghanistan, Hutchinson’s life was taken on Mother’s Day when a roadside bomb exploded near his vehicle in Basra. At 60, he is the oldest casualty of the Iraq war. But like many US soldiers, this veteran and hero wasn’t alone. About 6 week previously he informally adopted a puppy and like many other soldiers, he did everything he could to keep his puppy, Laia, name after Princess Laia from Star Wars, safe and with him, including defying the military order of no pets.

Hutchison’s unit found Laia at just 1 month old in Basra. The local vet said he would have to euthanize the dog unless they adopted her as a mascot. As policy, soldiers are not supposed to adopt strays, and Hutchison defied orders to get rid of the dog, even moving her from base to base, his friend, Sgt. Andrew Hunt, told the SPCA. “He ignored this request several times up until it began to move toward punishment,” Sgt. Hunt said. “See, you couldn’t ever tell the Major he couldn’t do something, he [was] a stubborn old goat set in his ways. It was an endearing quality we loved about him.”

“Whenever Laia was around, his demeanor and personality changed 1000 percent,” Hunt told the SPCA. “He was never without a smile, he was so much happier in life, it was amazing.” (MSNBC)

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A new Guinness World Record has been set at Petropolis Pet Store Carnival where 184 dogs got married breaking the old record of 179 canine couples.  And too boot, the best part of this was that over 100 dog also found new forever homes as part of the adoption even that was also being held.  What fun!

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In December 2008, Alexander Gregor, 23, Hilton Head Island, SC,  was arrested and charged with 4 counts of animal cruelty, one for each of two dogs he adopted from shelters then tortured and killed and two more for abusing his then girlfriend’s dog on two separate occasions.

This week Gregor pleaded guilty to the charges before 14th Circuit Court Judge Perry Buckner and actually had the audacity to ask that he not be sent to jail after brutally taking the lives of two innocent dogs and brutally abusing another. Like many other caught abusers he pleaded remorse but luckily Judge Buckner wasn’t buying it.

“I have never had a case in my career on the bench or as a lawyer in which I feel displayed more cruelty to animals than this case,” he said to Gregor as he sentenced this waste of human life to 2-5 years in jail.

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Children born with glycogen storage disease type 1A, the genetic disease stops the body from being able to correctly store and use sugar between meals, used to rarely live past infancy. Now, if diagnosed early they can do fine but will need constant treatment which consists of precise dosages of cornstarch every 4 hours.

In dogs, this same disease is usually fatal because they would need to be treated with sugar dosages every 30 minutes.

“Without treatment, these dogs all die,” said David Weinstein, M.D., M.M.Sc., director of the UF Glycogen Storage Disease Program and co-investigator on the study. “People usually survive because they are fed so much as infants. But by 4 to 6 months of age, they will have developmental delays and a big liver. If it is diagnosed at that point, the kids can do fine. If it is not diagnosed, then the kids get exposed to recurrent low sugars, and they will end up with brain damage, seizures or they will die.”

Recently a dog was treated with gene therapy at the University of Florida and has so far survived 20 months and this break through may put scientists one step closer to developing a treatment for children with this disease.

The goal of gene therapy is to restore the faulty enzyme so the body uses sugar properly, said Mah, a UF assistant professor of pediatric cellular and molecular therapy and a co-investigator on the study.

The dog, which comes from a line of dogs genetically prone to the disease, received its first dose of gene therapy the day after it was born, Mah said. The dog improved at first, often going as long as two to three hours without needing additional glucose to supplement its diet. But several weeks later the progress stopped.

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