Dogs Do The Darnedest Things

In Burnley, UK, Ruswarp the Border collie dog who stayed by his dead owners side for 11 weeks back in 1990 is being honored with a statue. Ruswarp stayed by his owner Graham Nuttall through snow and rain when he had trouble walking. Neighbors searched for Nuttall for weeks and couldn’t find him. When they finally found him by a mountain stream, Ruswarp was there standing guard over him. Ruswarp was so weak that he had to be carried.

Ruswarp is reminiscent of another  heroic dog, Greysfriars Bobby.

Read more about Ruswarp here…

Marjorie Knoller, the San Francisco lawyer who allowed the 2 vicious 100+ pound Presa Canario dogs she was caring for to kill her neighbor Dianne Whipple in 2001 - may be going back to prison. Knoller served 16 months of a 4 year sentence in prison before she was paroled for the crime, which had been reduced to involuntary manslaughter. A superior court judge on Friday reinstated the jury’s original second degree murder conviction.

The judge ruled after listing some of more than 30 incidents in which Marjorie Knoller’s dogs bit or lunged at other people, and there was even a veterinarian’s letter warning that the dogs were dangerous.

Knoller now faces 15 years to life in prison when she’s sentenced on Sept. 22, 2008.

Knoller will be held in jail until her sentencing, without bail, since she faces a possible life sentence, has no community ties and can be considered a flight risk.

I say it’s about time irresponsible dog owners get exactly what’s coming to them!

Bernann McKinney, who paid over $50,000 to have her beloved pit bull Booger cloned by the South Korean biotech firm RNL Bio, now has 5 Booger Jr’s. She is also now the subject of controversy. Questions were being asked if McKinney was in fact Joyce McKinney, a former Hollywood beauty queen who was involved in a Mormon sex slave kidnapping over 30 years ago.

The young Joyce was convicted of wrongful imprisonment & spent 3 months in prison. The controversy arose when people thought they recognized McKinney from her younger, “wilder” days - in which she also posed nude for men’s magazines.

Side by side pictures show the uncanny resemblence. Although Bernann McKinney initially denied that it was her, she recently admitted to it.

The revelation about McKinney was not the first bizarre twist relating to South Korean cloning. Hwang Woo-suk, a scientist once revered as a national hero, became a global embarrassment after it was revealed in 2005 that he faked evidence to bolster claims of what would have been breakthrough research on cloning human stem cells.

People love dogs…and purebred dogs are a favorite. Thieves are no different. Dognappings are on the rise with the economic downturn. In the first five months of 2008, the American Kennel Club noted three times as many dog thefts as the year before.

Purebred or designer pups can cost thousands of dollars. And many are small enough to grab up & put in a jacket without anyone noticing. Toy breeds, puppies, and purebred dogs that look expensive or unusual are the most vulnerable. Among the stolen breeds tracked by the AKC in 2008 are Yorkshire terriers, poodles, Pomeranians, shih tzu & bulldogs, to name a few. With so many websites & other outlets where you can sell a dog, many people won’t ask questions if they can buy a designer pup for half the going rate. But not only are the dogs being sold, they’re also being stolen to claim rewards, & given as gifts. Around the holidays are prime dognapping times.

It seems that dognapping is a crime of opportunity. With the economy the way it is today, anything that can bring in money is fair game. And with many breeds of dog going for thousands, sadly stealing an unattended dog is a no-brainer.