ohmidog!

Chicago’s oldest pet store has decided to stop selling dogs purchased from breeders.

Sonja Raymond, whose family has been operating Collar & Leash since 1956, says the shop will deal only in adoptable dogs from shelters and rescues, according to CBS in Chicago

Raymond said she’d been considering the switch for five years – after noticing animals coming into the store with genetic defects and incurable illnesses, despite the assurances she received from her suppliers that the pups didn’t come from puppy mills.

“You know I had gone on the word of my distributors that I get my dogs from — that ‘Oh yeah these people are reputable, I’ve known them for years,” she said. “Within the past year I have found out they lied.”

Also pushing Collar & Leash to make the switch was the The Puppy Mill Project, a Chicago-based non-profit organization created to raise awareness about cruelty in puppy mills.

“We’d been in touch with the Puppy Mill Project Founder, Cari Meyers, for a long time, and realize it’s time we take this jump with them to help make a statement to put an end to puppy mills,” Raymond said.

“We will no longer buy and sell cats and dogs from mills and are proud to align ourselves with The Puppy Mill Project,” she said.

“It’s my biggest hope that as they become humane, other Chicago pet stores selling dogs and cats will follow in their footsteps, said Puppy Mill Project founder Meyers.

The store will hold a grand re-opening weekend Saturday and Sunday, April 6 and 7.

Ellen, one of the oldest of the dogs seized from Michael Vick’s dogfighting operation, passed away earlier this month at Best Friends, the animal sanctuary in Utah.

“Ellen’s health is failing,” Best Friends veterinarian Dr. Patti Patterson, said of the 11-year old dog. “Although we do not know the cause of her illness and deterioration, we have exhausted all diagnostic and treatment efforts that we feel could help Ellen.”

An unknown disease was causing weight loss and muscle loss and preventing her stomach from emptying. Despite a barrage of tests, the medical team couldn’t determine the source of the problems. With her quality of life deemed no longer at an acceptable level, the decision was made to euthanize her.

During her final two days, Ellen had a steady stream of visitors, according to the Best Friends website.

“I’ve never had a dog who was so affectionate,” says caregiver Maddie Haydon. “She bonded with everyone she met.”

Most people Ellen met, though, were met from a distance.

In accordance with court orders, the former Vick dogs taken in by Best Friends were not allowed to interact directly with Sanctuary visitors, or even volunteers – at least not until they were upgraded from “red-collar” status.

For Ellen, that day finally came last month.

Some visitors were hesitant to meet Ellen, even from afar, but when they did, she generally altered any mistaken notions they had about pit bulls.

“You could just see them change their perception,” said caregiver Tom Williams. ”She went a long way toward helping not only the Vick dogs that are here, but pit bulls in general. She helped to dispel the myths about them.”

One volunteer figured out early that Ellen was a lover, not a fighter.

Betty Grieb, though a fence separated them, spent more than three years reading to Ellen.

When Ellen’s status was upgraded, and Grieb got to meet her in person, “It was like a dream come true,” she said. ”I really loved her. She was such a sweet girl, so full of life.”

(Photo and video courtesy of Best Friends)

The world’s oldest living dog — according to Guinness World Records, anyway — has died at the age of 26 years and 9 months.

Pusuke, a mixed breed, died at his home in Sakura, Tochigi Prefecture, the Japan Times reported.

His owner, Yumiko Shinohara, said Pusuke suddenly refused to eat Monday morning, and appeared to be having difficulty breathing.

She said the dog died about five minutes after she returned home from running errands.

“I think (Pusuke) waited for me to come home,” the 42-year-old housewife said.

Pusuke received the Guinness certification as the world’s oldest living dog last December.

(Photo: Japan Times)

A University of Maine graduate student says he has found a bone fragment from what he believes is the earliest domesticated dog ever found in the Americas — one that walked the continent 9,400 years ago.

And where he found it — ensconced in a dried-out sample of human waste — gives proof that eating dog was part of America’s culture, at least before America was America.

Graduate student Samuel Belknap III came across the fragment while analyzing a sample of human waste unearthed in  the 1970s. Carbon-dating placed the age of the bone at 9,400 years, and a DNA analysis confirmed it came from a dog — as opposed to a wolf, coyote or fox.

The Associated Press  reports that the fragment — which was the dark orange color characteristic of bone that has passed through the digestive track — was found in Hinds Cave in southwest Texas. 

The fragment provides the earliest evidence that dogs were eaten by humans in North America, and may have been bred as a food source, he said.

Belknap was studying the diet and nutrition of the people  in the Lower Pecos region of Texas between 1,000 and 10,000 years ago when he came across the bone.

Belknap and other researchers from the University of Maine and the University of Oklahoma’s molecular anthropology laboratories, where the DNA analysis was done, have written a paper on their findings, scheduled for publication in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology later this year.

The fragment is about six-tenths of an inch long and three- to four-tenths of an inch wide. Belknap said he and a fellow student identified the bone as a fragment from where the skull connects with the spine. He said it came from a dog that probably resembled the small short-haired dogs that were common among the Indians of the Great Plains.

Other archaeological findings have found evidence of domestic dogs in the U.S. as long as 8,000 years ago.

A 1980s study reported dog bones found at Danger Cave, Utah, were between 9,000 and 10,000 years old, but those dates were based on an analysis of the surrounding rock laters as opposed to carbon dating. In Idaho, researchers believed they’d found 11,000-year-old dog bones, but later tests showed them to be no more than 3,000 years old.

Worldwide, studies have found evidence of dogs going back 31,000 years from a site in Belgium, 26,000 years in the Czech Republic and 15,000 years in Siberia.

The earliest dogs in North America are believed to have come with the early settlers across the Bering land bridge from Asia.

Belknap said eating dogs was once common in Central America, and that some Great Plain Indian tribes ate dogs when food was scarce or for celebrations.

 ”It was definitely an accepted practice among many populations,” he said.

 
Just when I proclaim this quite a week for wieners (dogs and franks), there’s more late breaking wiener news: The world’s oldest hot dog — possibly the world’s first hot dog — has been unearthed at Coney Island, CNN and others reported.

CNN posted a story about the “discovery” of a “140-year-old hot dog” after officials at the Coney Island History Project put an “ancient” frankfurter — bun and all — on display, saying it was unearthed during the demolition of Feltman’s Kitchen, said to be where the first hot dog was made.

“1st Hot Dog,” read a sign next to the display. To the embarassment of CNN and others who picked up the story — to be frank, they didn’t check the facts — it was all just a publicity stunt, aimed at creating interest in an exhibition this summer of real artifacts from the Feltman’s site, the New York Post says.

“The recent discovery by an amateur archaeologist of the ‘140 Year Old Feltman’s Hot Dog’ encased in ice along with a bun, [and] an original receipt from Feltman’s, … was a publicity stunt in the grand tradition of Coney Island ballyhoo,” said Tricia Vita, spokeswoman for the history project.

She said that the hoax was an example of Coney Island’s history of P.T. Barnum-type hype. Even though the ancient hot dog was said to be found “encased in ice” by archaelogists, the story was gobbled right up.

(It was Barnum, I believe, who said a sucker was born every minute. That rate has increased to about every millisecond, thanks to the Internet.)

“I was surprised in the beginning at how many people believed it was true,” Vita said. “But after reading all the buzz about it on Twitter and the Internet, I’m not really that surprised because people want to believe these types of things are true.”

Paco Sosa, reportedly New York’s oldest dog, died last week.

The dachshund, owned by Bernadine Santistevan, of the upper East Sice, was 20 years old and five months in human years, according to the New York Daily News.

“He was such a gift in my life,” said Santistevan, who met the dachshund when he was a month-old. “He taught me that all life is precious. He was amazing in that respect.”

Paco Sosa had been having frequent seizures and neck pain for over a year, and suffered a particularly bad convulsion three weeks ago.

Santistevan said her dog was put down at a veterinary hospital. “He was very peaceful, very happy,” she said. “He let me know it was time to let go.”

Santistevan plans a “celebration party” in coming weeks for Paco Sosa, whose ashes she plans to scatter in the mountains around Taos, N.M.

(Click here for all of the Wiener Awards.)

Fox News reported yesterday that the world’s oldest dog has died.

Unfortunately, they were dead wrong about that dog’s identity.

According to the initial Fox report: “Chanel, a wire-haired dachshund, died at her owners’ home in Port Jefferson Station on Long Island, N.Y.”

Accurate enough — not to mention fair and balanced — but a bit off, timing-wise. Chanel died at age 20 nearly five months ago.

It was the new World’s Oldest Dog who died this week: Otto (above), also a dachshund, residing in Britain.

Otto, nearly 21, was officially crowned the most senior canine in the world by the Guinness Book of Records in October of last year, after the timely death of Chanel.

On Wednesday, Otto’s owner took him to the vet, who recommended that Otto, suffering from stomach tumors, be put down, according to the Daily Mail

Peter Jones, 68, said he and his wife Lynn, 53, were devastated by the loss. The dachshund-terrier mix was playful to the end. They attributed his longevity to “plenty of love, plenty of good food and regular check-ups at the vets.”

Describing his pet’s final day, Jones, of Shrewsbury, said: “He slept in my bed. He woke up in the morning and he gave me the usual kiss…I was having a bath, he wanted to play, and he brought me his ball. But as soon as I bounced it a couple of times he went asleep again. He was absolutely cream crackered.” (British readers, translation please.)

Most who would pick up the story from the British press got it right. But apparently the folks at Fox News goofed up in Googling, came across the old stories on Chanel (left) and re-reported her death instead.

Others would go on to repeat the error (though we’d hope they’d have it corrected by now), including Shortnews.com.

A new world’s oldest dog will be named by Guinness.

Rest in peace, Otto.

And you, too, Chanel.

Otto — a nearly 21-year-old dachshund mix from across the pond — has been proclaimed the world’s oldest dog by the Guinness Book of World Records.

To be precise — for all those who will be coming out of the woodwork saying their dogs are older — Otto is 20 years and eight months, the UK’s Daily Mail reports.

Owners Lynn and Peter Jones, from Shrewsbury, entered him for the title with Guinness World Records after learning of the death last month of the previous title holder, a 21-year-old dachshund  in New York named Chanel.

Otto’s claim to the record was approved this week. Mrs. Jones, 53, has owned Otto since he was six weeks old.

They attribute his longevity to “plenty of love, plenty of good food” and regular veterinary check-ups.

Otto has arthritis, and doesn’t appreciate walks like he used to. “He gets about ten yards down the road then looks back over his shoulder as if to say ‘I want to go home,’” Mrs. Jones said. “But he’s still playful. He can still jump all over people when they come round.”

The oldest dog on record was an Australian cattle dog named Bluey, who lived to 29 years and five months before having to be put down in 1939.

By day, Army Maj. Steven Hutchison — a Vietnam veteran who came out of retirement at age 59 to fight in Iraq — was rough and tough, crusty and disagreeable, a man with little respect for the rules.

He violated one of them nightly, sleeping with his arms wrapped around Laia, a stray yellow puppy he had taken in from the streets.

Hutchison died in May, killed when a roadside bomb exploded near his truck — the oldest soldier to die in the Iraq war. But Laia lives on.

Laia was transported back to the U.S. by Operation Baghdad Pups, preserving not only the pup, but — as described in the Detroit Free Press yesterday — the memory of Army Maj. Steven Hutchison, as well.

“Whenever Laia was around,” Hutchison’s “demeanor and personality changed 1,000%,” Sgt. Andrew Hunt wrote in an e-mail to Hutchison’s family. “He was never without a smile; he was so much happier in life.” When a senior officer ordered Hutchison to get rid of the dog or face disciplinary action, Hutchison sent her into hiding with a friend at a far outpost on the border of Iran. The puppy broke free and ran away, returning one day to Hutchison’s base with a broken leg.

The day Hutchison was killed, Laia was spotted chained up outside a tent by Jerry Deaven, an employee of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in Detroit. He was visiting Iraq to research terrorist funding.

“What’s going to happen to her, now that the major is gone?” Deaven asked. A few members of Hutchison’s team said they wanted to take her, but they were getting redeployed. “If I didn’t take the dog, they would have had to put the dog down,” he said. Read more »

Chanel, the wiry-haired dachshund who held the Guinness World Record for oldest dog, died Friday, People Pets reports.

Chanel was 21, according to her owners, Karl and Denice Shaughnessy.

Chanel gained notoriety this past spring after an appearance on the Today show where she was presented with an official certificate as the world’s oldest living pooch.

She will be listed in the 2010 edition of Guinness World Records, scheduled for publication this October.