Dogs Surfin' in the USA!

Even though I live at the Ocean half of the year I'm not a surfer dog.  I was born and rescued in Dallas, TX and lived there for 12 years before I found my house on the Jersey Shore.  Too late for me at this stage of dogdom to start surfing but I LOVE DOGS WHO SURF.

And even though it appears Summer is over, eighty brave pooches are taking their doggy paddle one step further when they hit the waves this weekend at the 6th annual Surf Dog Surf-A-Thon.

Helen Woodward Animal Center will host the largest surfing dog contest in the country, presented by Eukanuba, on September 11, 2011 at Dog Beach in Del Mar, California.

The fun will include costume and stunt competitions as well as vendor booths. But most importantly, as this story details, the dogs will hit the waves to raise awareness and money for orphaned pets while promoting responsible pet ownership.

Located in San Diego, Helen Woodward Animal Center is a unique, private, non-profit organization dedicated to saving the lives of animals and enriching the lives of people. For more than 30 years the no-kill animal center has provided humane care and animal adoption for orphaned animals, as well as animal-centered educational and therapeutic programs for people.

The competition will kick off with a special 9/11 tribute honoring all of the dogs involved in the search and rescue efforts in New York and Washington, D.C. following the events of September 11, 2001. 

For more information about the Surf Dog Surf-A-Thon, click here. And to all of my  BlogPaws friends who enjoyed meeting very special people, especially Mike Arms,  from the Helen Woodward Animal Center at BlogPaws 2011 here's to you.  We love you guys!!!

Cutest Puppy and Dog Video - circa 2007. Smiles Guaranteed

Animal Domestication, Foxes and Me - See for yourself!

Fox or Me?

More than one person has told my Mom that I look like a Fox from the back!  Well, here's a fascinating story from National Geographic. It turns out that some researchers tried to compress 15,000 years of breeding from foxes to dogs in just a few years, and they succeeded. In only nine generations they were able to breed a fox that was friendly to humans.

That's interesting enough, but it gets better. Here's a quote from the story:

Selecting which foxes to breed based solely on how well they got along with humans seemed to alter their physical appearance along with their dispositions. After only nine generations, the researchers recorded fox kits born with floppier ears. Piebald patterns appeared on their coats. By this time the foxes were already whining and wagging their tails in response to a human presence, behaviors never seen in wild foxes.

We just think that's amazing. The only thing they were breeding for was friendliness to humans, and they got floppy ears and coats that were more of a mixture instead of being all uniform.

Fox

Me

So may be there is something to what those researchers came up with.  There's a little fox in all of us MUTTS!  Nothin' wrong with being Foxy right? BOL!  Why don't you send pictures of your foxy tails to  me. I'll post them on my blog and we can vote on the tail that looks most like a fox and the winner will win a new foxy collar from Up Country! The Foxy Tail drawing will run from Sept 3 thru Sept 10th.  Send your Foxy Tails to customerservice@MyGenChan.com.  Photo needs to be taken from the posterior position and be clear. Be sure to include your name and email address so we can contact you!

Healing Through Helping: Veterans Provide Training for Shelter Dogs

I’m so proud of being a MUTT and I’m especially proud of the Mutt in this story because he found someone who needed him as much as he needed that someone. Sometimes the best healing power comes through helping someone else.

Just ask a Mutt named Legs and a Navy veteran named John Picray, participants in the Veterans & Shelter Dogs program, which is part of a study at the Research Center for Human/Animal Interaction at the University of Missouri’s College of Veterinary Medicine.

More than a hundred dogs have already gone through the training, which aims to make the shelter dogs more adoptable while at the same time benefiting the trainers.

“When people come back from the military, they are changed,” said Rebecca Johnson, the MU professor and lead researcher of the veterans/shelter dog project. “Many of them come home with some degree of post-traumatic stress,” she said. “Working with the dogs is relaxing and rewarding.”

The vets and the dogs are monitored to see how their relationship affects them, and adoption rates will be compared with shelter dogs who don’t receive the training. Dogs that show exceptional train-ability in the program may also be candidates to become permanent companions for veterans with debilitating post-traumatic stress disorder.

For more about the dogs and veterans involved in this program, and how service dogs can help vets suffering from PTSD, here’s the full story from KC Pets.

Oh and if you haven't signed up on my blog yet you'll be missing out on my Monthly drawing for Up Country, Inc goodies! 

A Mixed-Breed Dog Did What?!

So, today I heard about this great story through my doggie network and wanted to share and give a Woof-out to my fellow pup pals who are also genetically challenged dogs just like me! Guthrie, a mixed-breed dog who lives in Arizona, was adopted by a little girl and her family and the dog, Guthrie, has been helping the young human girl learn to read!  There is a program called Paws for People where our kind go to become therapy dogs.  According to a important paper from Tufts University, "This component of the human-animal bond could specifically help to address the low self esteem commonly seen in students struggling with reading, while providing them the support and confidence they need to practice and improve."

The tiny human, Bailey Benson, is 10 years old and reads books she thinks her dog Guthrie would like to hear. I think that's really considerate of her, although I believe we would all agree that we are happy just to snuggle with our humans every chance we get!  To see how this unusual reading club of two made this happen wag on over to my blog       MUTTeringsAndThings.blogspot.com.

9 - 11 Canine Hero Retires - Abby a Dedicated Lab

Eleven days after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, Debra Tosch arrived at Ground Zero with her partner Abby to search for survivors.

“We turned this one corner and there it was: the collapsed towers. It was overwhelming, like, where do you even start?” Tosch recalls.

Abby, a black Labrador trained to lead rescue teams to trapped victims in disaster areas, was more assured. “She knew it was time to search,” says Tosch, the executive director of the Search Dog Foundation.  Once this very special team arrived find out what happened here.

Dog Napping on the Rise Across the Nation

This MUTTering raises my hackles! Dognappings have risen 50% percent in the country in the past year, Lisa Peterson, communications director for the American Kennel Club, told "Good Morning America." Is this yet another sign of our economy? Dogs have been stolen from pet stores, from breeders and from right under their owners' noses at home. Some of the brazen thefts have even been caught on tape.Coveted breeds are stolen then advertised on Craigslist, Facebook, classifieds, etc.  GenChans*, former mutts, like me are being dognapped and sold to laboratories or sold as 'bait' dogs. Desperate people will do desperate things so please don't set your furry family member up to become a statistic in this crime.


Here is the story, reported by ABC News, of John Husky and Dina Martinez of Venice, Calif., as they felt the effects of this growing trend firsthand.The couple were devastated when their 4-month-old dog, Mr. James Brown, went missing. Find out what happened to their dog and some of the incredible things owners are doing to protect and monitor their furbabies.


We hope you haven't lost any of your pets this way but tell us if you have had any experience like this and what happened.


*GenChan® - the first 'breed' for mutts and mixes and a humorous acronym for the genetically challenged dog.