Category Archives: Dogs

Snoring, slugs and sarcoptic mange: is it safe for cats and dogs to sleep on our beds?

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Dogs can carry bacteria and parasites, while cats smuggle in gory ‘presents’. So is it best to lock them out of the bedroom?

Vomiting on the bed. Snoring. The shedding of hair. The stealing of sheets. The passing of wind. Night-time face-licking. A higher-than-average chance of catching sarcoptic mange …

If I could sit my dog down and quietly explain the risks associated with him sharing the bed with us, this is the list I would read to him. But I know he wouldn’t listen. Oz, our young lurcher, would only warmly reimagine that scene he recently saw. When, on my birthday, the family let him come upstairs and on to the bed to wake me up. When he saw, for the first time, Upstairs Land. And then widdled with joy.

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‘He grabbed the lead and said: give me the dog’: can pet detectives stop the rise in animal theft?

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Dogs are more valuable than ever – which is why so many are being snatched. But some owners and pet detectives are fighting back

The village of Partridge Green in West Sussex on a gorgeous spring morning. The early mist has burnt off; a wood pigeon coos; a flurry of pink snow falls from a showy cherry tree; outside the butcher’s, an orderly, socially distanced queue has formed; a chap out for a morning spin motors along the high street in his vintage MG. It is, as my companion, Colin Butcher, says, a scene straight out of Midsomer Murders.

There are no murders today in Partridge Green, but it is a crime scene, and the crime is one that appears to be sweeping the nation. Butcher – ex-police (you can tell), then private investigator, now company director and chief investigator of The UK Pet Detectives – is on the case. He steps from his Range Rover wearing a fleece with an official-looking badge and “UKPD” emblazoned across the back; a twist on NYPD, except PD stands for Pet Detective. “I know the impact of seeing that UKPD – it’s such an international sign,” he says later, putting the jacket on before knocking at an address linked to his main suspect.

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‘Big bark but no bite’: Obamas mourn former first dog Bo

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Barack and Michelle Obama express sorrow at passing of ‘true friend and companion’

Former President Barack Obama’s dog Bo died on Saturday from cancer, the Obamas said on social media.

News of Bo’s death was shared by Obama and his wife, Michelle, on Instagram, where both expressed sorrow at the passing of a dog the former president described as a “true friend and loyal companion.”

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Turkmenistan dedicates holiday to enormous national dog breed

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The country’s president has also erected a gold statue and dedicated an ode to the Alabai dog breed

Turkmenistan marked a new holiday on Sunday dedicated to its national – and very large – Alabai dog breed, to which its longtime leader has already erected a gilded monument and written an ode.

The new holiday took place on the same day as a festival celebrating the Akhal-Teke horse breed, which Turkmenistan also considers part of its national heritage.

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Press play for Petflix: boom in gadgets for pandemic puppies as owners return to work

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The realities of ownership are dawning as the UK’s lockdown eases and the dogs left at home need to be looked after

Pet cameras and activity trackers are flying off the shelves. Demand for anti-chew sprays, automatic feeders and water fountains for pets has rocketed, and dog walkers and sitters are being inundated with inquiries.

As lockdown restrictions ease, dog owners are snapping up products and services that will enable them to monitor and care for their pets while they are out at work.

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The dogs keeping office workers company through lockdown

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Owners say taking four-legged friends to work helps tackle loneliness and livens up Zoom calls

“Dogs are just like ‘play, eat, sleep’ – they bring me back into the moment. I think we can all learn something from that,” says Carole Henderson, who has been taking her “furry backup” to the office for the last few months.

They are not so good at making the tea and things get a bit rowdy when the delivery man comes round, but Henderson’s labradors Barney and Rusty, and labradoodle Lily, have been her sidekicks for the last decade. As well as being excellent foot-warmers, they have helped her emotionally with getting through solo months in the office.

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Dog interrupts live weather report from Moscow – video

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A correspondent's live weather report was interrupted by a dog who snatched her microphone and ran off with it. Nadezhda Serezhkina, who works for the Russian-language broadcaster Mir TV, could then be seen running after the dog who still had the colourful microphone in its mouth. The dog, and the damaged microphone, later joined Serezhkina for the end of her live broadcast

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Joe Biden’s dog bites second person in a month

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German shepherd Major ‘nipped someone while on a walk’, according to first’s lady’s press secretary

Joe Biden’s dog Major has been involved in its second biting incident in a month, the White House has said.

The dog “nipped someone while on a walk” on Monday, according to Jill Biden’s press secretary, Michael LaRosa. The animal “is still adjusting to his new surroundings”, he said. The individual was seen by the White House medical unit “out of an abundance of caution” and returned to work without injury.

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‘What appointments did these dogs have to keep?’: long lunches and brief liaisons in a radical new dogumentary

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To mark National Puppy Day, Elizabeth Lo’s acclaimed film Stray gives humans rare insight into the canine gaze, courtesy of homeless mutts in Istanbul

From the moment Zeytin makes her first appearance in Elizabeth Lo’s feature Stray, there is no doubt you are in the presence of a unique spirit. As she surveys an Istanbul side street at dawn, her features are alert, her gaze is uncompromising and her deep, dark eyes sparkle with intelligence. There’s something of Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen about her, or maybe Brad Pitt in one of his less kempt moments. But non-dog comparisons don’t do her justice. This is one indomitable bitch.

Lo first encountered Zeytin and her friend Nazar on a 2017 casting trip to Turkey, and knew immediately that she had found the star she was looking for – which is to say, a dog who could carry a human film. “We were wandering through a busy underground tunnel filled with people when suddenly these two giant stray dogs streaked past us,” she says. “They were running with such a sense of purpose and it was so intriguing. What appointments did these dogs have to keep?”

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Lady Gaga’s dog walker describes ‘close call’ after he was shot in robbery

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On social media, Ryan Fischer says ‘healing still needs to happen’ after he was attacked while walking three dogs

Lady Gaga’s dog walker, who was shot last week during a robbery in Hollywood when two of the singer’s French bulldogs were stolen, has described the violence and his recovery “from a very close call with death” in social media posts on Monday.

Ryan Fischer’s posts included pictures taken from his hospital bed, where he says a “lot of healing still needs to happen” but he looks forward to reuniting with the dogs.

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Rings of steel: dog owners buy metal collars to deter thieves

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Spate of audacious and often violent robberies leads to boom in sales of high-security animal accessories

A spate of dognapping in recent months has led to growing numbers of owners buying lockable, steel-core collars and leads that cannot be severed by bolt cutters as they walk their pets.

Dog theft has risen as animals available to buy have become scarcer since the pandemic began. The average cost of a puppy doubled to nearly £1,900 last year, and some breeds are worth more than £6,000.

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Will Covid-19 sniffing dogs allow fans back into sporting events?

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The Miami Heat will employ canines to sniff out the virus among fans attending games. But can dogs be trained in time to work at the Super Bowl?

Nearly 100 million people are expected to watch Super Bowl LV in Tampa, the first time the big game has been held during a pandemic (the World Series has survived two). But only 22,000 of those viewers, 7,500 of them vaccinated healthcare workers, will be in actual attendance, representing just one-third the capacity of Raymond James Stadium. Social distancing and face-coverings will be enforced. The first few rows will be kept clear as a buffer between the field and the fans. By this stage of the pandemic, everyone should be aware that, at any one time, a portion of the population is composed of asymptomatic carriers who can infect others they come into contact with. As a result, any large gathering has the potential to become a super-spreader event with wide-reaching consequences. Large-scale testing at gatherings such as sporting events is limited by the availability of trained personnel, equipment, money, and the time it takes for the results of the actual test to work.

But an unconventional solution may be in the works.

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You can teach an old dog new words, researchers find

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Canines in Hungarian study appear to pick up unfamiliar terms through play

Whether you can teach an old dog new tricks might be a moot point, but it seems some canines can rapidly learn new words, and do so through play.

While young children are known to quickly pick up the names of new objects, the skill appears to be rare in animals.

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Who’s a good boy? The unbreakable bond between humans and dogs

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Our centuries old love of dogs has never been stronger. So what does a study of ‘man’s best friend’ say about us?

Why is he here? Why is my dog lying at my feet in the shape of a croissant as I write this? How have I come to cherish his warm but lightly offensive pungency? How has his fish breath become a topic of humour when friends call round for dinner? Why do I shell out more than £1,000 each year to pay for his insurance? And why do I love him so much?

Ludo is not a special dog. He’s just another labrador retriever, one of approximately 500,000 in the UK (he’d be one in a million in the United States, the most popular breed in both countries). Ludo has a lot in common with all these dogs. He loves to play ball; obviously he’s an expert retriever. He could eat all the food in the universe and leave nothing for the other dogs. He is prone to hip dysplasia. He looks particularly attractive on a plush bed in a centrally heated house very far from the Newfoundland home of his ancestors.

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How Boncuk the dog waited days outside Turkish hospital – video

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Boncuk, a devoted pet, spent days waiting outside a hospital in Trabzon, Turkey, where her sick owner Cemal Senturk was being treated. Boncuk followed the ambulance that transported Senturk to hospital before making multiple visits to front door. According to Senturk's daughter, Aynur Egeli, she would take Boncuk home but the dog kept going back. After six days apart Boncuk and Senturk were reunited when he was discharged

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‘I lost all sense of perspective!’ The broadcaster whose dogs became superstars

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Millions of frustrated sports fans began following Andrew Cotter’s ultra-competitive labradors Olive and Mabel in the first lockdown. Has it changed the trio’s lives?

Did anyone convey the topsy-turvy world of pandemic life better than two ultra-competitive labradors? When the first lockdown was announced back in March and sports events were cancelled across the country, the Scottish commentator Andrew Cotter found himself staring at a grim year ahead. And so he decided to simply continue commentating … on his dogs.

“You can feel the tension,” he said in his soothing soft Scottish accent, over a video of his dogs, Olive and Mabel, racing to empty their bowls. “Olive focused, relentless, tasting absolutely nothing.”

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‘Covid-19 has an odour, and the dogs are detecting it’: meet the canine super-squad sniffing out the virus

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They’re loyal, diligent – and have unbeatable noses. Could dogs play a key part in the fight against the pandemic?

A single-storey building in a lonely rural business park, a few miles from Milton Keynes on a grey autumn day. It looks like a location for a bleak thriller: where a kidnap victim is held, perhaps, or the scene of a final shootout. Inside, though, something kind of cool is happening.

In a brightly lit room, four inverted metal cups have been placed on the red carpet, each containing a small glass jar. One of these contains a smell: a “training odour”. Into the room bursts Billy, followed by Jess. Billy is a labrador, and Jess his human trainer. Billy bounces about the place, clearly super excited. He sniffs at everything – furniture, people, the cups – wagging ferociously. When he sniffs at the cup that contains the smell, another trainer, Jayde, indicates success with a clicking noise. Billy is rewarded with his favourite toy, a well-chewed rubber ball, and a chorus of “good boy”.

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Dogs and owners may share resemblance in diabetes risk

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Research shows people who have a dog with type 2 diabetes are 38% more at risk of having disease themselves

It’s said that dogs resemble their owners, but the similarities may also extend to their risk of diabetes, research suggests. The same cannot be said of cat owners and their companions, however.

Previous studies had hinted that overweight owners tend to have porkier pets, possibly because of shared health behaviours such as overeating or not taking regular exercise. To investigate whether this extended to a shared risk of type 2 diabetes, Beatrice Kennedy, of Uppsala University in Sweden, and colleagues turned to insurance data from Sweden’s largest pet insurance company, using owners’ 10-digit national identification numbers to pull their anonymised health records.

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