If you believe in eastern philosophy you will understand that everything in this universe is balanced. There is good and bad, day and night, yin and yang. That being the case if there is a beauty pageant, there should also be one for the opposite.

Well whether there is any “The ugliest” competition for human beings or not, there definitely is one for dogs. Every year in California, a competition is held for the ugliest dog in the world, and whether you believe it or not there are quite a few entrants for the prize every year.

The criteria is very simple, the ugliest looking dog gets the prize, but with the quality of the participants it isn’t easy for the judges to arrive at a consensus opinion.

This year the prize went to Yoda, a tiny dog 14 year old dog of mixed ancestry owned by Teri and Nicole. Even if people may not agree as to the bloodline of Yoda (some feel it’s a Chinese-crested Chihuahua), they all agree on one thing, that it is the ugliest looking dog in the world.

Yet, Yoda is luckier than quite a few of us because she is the apple of her owner’s eye. Now how many of us can say the same.

Nicole found Yoda in a bag in a lot. In fact Teri accepts that when she first laid eyes on Yoda, she thought that Nicole was bringing her a dead rat. Although with age Yoda has changed you can still see why Teri thought so even now.

Yoda is not a youngster. In fact she is so old that all her teeth have fallen out and she is therefore not able to keep her tongue inside her mouth. This means that she has her tongue hanging out perpetually. She’s got scraggly hair all over her body, and only her mother, or in this case Teri and Nicole can say that they love her as she is.

Seems like an utter waste of money right. Well there are more than enough congressmen who feel that the extra money spent is well worth it.

The issue is with regards to whether a dog or a machine is better at detecting bombs. There are a number of bomb disposal squads around the world that use dogs to detect bombs. Nobody disputes this.

The problem is that in certain cases the bombs may very well be implanted under the skin of the person which makes detection well nigh impossible.

The new machine is supposed to be able to not only see through baggage, but also through your clothes. The makers of the machine agree that it cannot see through skin, but it appears that the ability to see through clothes is more than sufficient for some people. As per their definition, the machine can see through clothes and detect modification to bodily contours, but cannot detect anything placed under it.

A few congressmen are fighting a losing battle because they feel that not only is a dog better at detecting bombs in a crowded atmosphere like an airport, it is also faster. Not only that, since dogs can be trained to sniff out cancerous growth in a person, it is possible to train them to sniff out bombs implanted under the skin too. This hasn’t been done so far, but even if a dog isn’t able to do this, how is it now way inferior to the machine that can’t do this either. Plus you don’t have total strangers looking at your “Bodily contours” and at the most will get a friendly lick.

Unfortunately for all their good qualities there is one thing that dogs lack and that is pull. It appears that most congressmen want a $100,000 machine that cannot do as much as a dog can do and are offering amazing explanations to convince others why the machine is better.

For instance, one particular congressman pointed that dogs also cost in the tens of thousands. Dog lovers just don’t know where he’s getting his dogs from.

Others feel that the training costs for a dog is also very expensive as is the maintenance costs and the number of dogs and handlers who are needed because the dogs have to work in shifts while the machine does not require any rest. As to whether the total lifetime costs will even approach $100,000 is of course not mentioned.

Our country being what it is, the sale has already been pushed through with only a few congressmen fighting a losing battle to wake up the collective conscience of their colleagues. They’ve got a long wait ahead of them.

Sunday the 17th of July, brought with the day the news about the needless death of a 53 year old man, Robert Walker. Betty Walker accidentally killed her husband while aiming at a neighborhood pet which was being held by her husband.

Betty and her husband, Robert walker were visiting with their son and his family, when discussions expressing concern about a neighbor’s dog arose. Robert Walker expressed his concern that the dog may one day get big enough to jump over the fence.

While the events leading to the shooting are not clear, Mrs Waker says that the dog was trying to attack children in the neighborhood, which led her to get her .38 revolver out and attempt to shoot the dog.

However, it is strange that at the time she shot the dog, her husband was actually holding the supposedly ferocious 8 month old puppy. She fired two shots, one injured the pet’s leg and the other missed the dog and accidentally killed her husband.

Additionally, the dog’s owner Lazarious Montgomery says that the pet was too small to jump over the fenced backyard where he was housed. His statement is confirmed by his cousin as well as others who claim that the only way the dog could have gotten out was if someone had actually picked him up.

Other witnesses have come forward and stated that at the time of shooting, the dog had not attacked anybody. While the dog’s owner faces possible charges, it is not clear what will happen to Mrs. Walker at this point.

The 2009 case of third degree murder, manslaughter and child neglect was concluded late last week as Jaren Hare, 21 and Charles Darnell, 34 were sentenced to up to 35 years in prison by a Judge in Florida.

The guilty sentence followed the death of Jaren Hare’s two year old daughter Shanianna who was strangled to death by Hare’s pet Burmese python. The date for Jaren Hare’s sentencing has been scheduled for the 24th of August, at one in the afternoon.

The pet python which belonged to Hare since she was 14 years old was not considered a threat by its owners. However, their misguided trust of this dangerous creature was evident when they lost their little child to it.

The python was usually housed in an enclosure covered only by a quilt. The night before the incident took place, the python actually tried to escape as he was hungry. He was then caught by Charles Darnell, bagged and put back into the enclosure.

The next morning however, Darnell found the snake missing from its enclosure. The eight foot powerful python was found on top of the young child, it had suffocated her to death and had even bitten her on her head.

According to Wtsp (http://www.wtsp.com/news/article/200978/250/Guilty-verdicts-in-Python-trial) The snake was removed from on top of the child forcefully, as Darnell stabbed the snake repeatedly to get it off the child. The child was rushed to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

Evidence proved that the pet python had not been fed for a month and that the actions of this wild creature were motivated by hunger. Defense stressed that it was the parent’s duty to protect the child adequately especially when housing a pet as dangerous as a python.

According to the foreperson in the jury “Even under the most remote circumstances, it was possible that the child could be injured. And it was their duty to make sure that there was no possibility that a 2-year-old would be bitten or in any way harmed… We feel extremely upset about having to make this decision, but we believe it was the correct one.”

So both the parties in the crime face a long jail sentence, with Charles Darnell facing more because of previous fellony charges. Joey Gilkerson, the child’s biological father says “Justice was served. I’m happy it was served.”

Another innocent victim in this needless death is Hare and Darnell’s child, who was born a month after this incident. As both parties have been sentenced to a long jail sentence, it is not clear at this point who will care for this two year old.

Julia, a German Shepherd cost her owners $230,000. You hear of rich people paying good money for useless things like Marilyn Monroe’s dress, or Michael Jackson’s underwear. Paintings that are just hung on the wall cost in the millions. But for a dog, someone who will be your friend and companion for years, many people feel that the cheaper, the better.

Well John Johnson, Julia’s owner feels that she is worth every penny of his money. This is because she’s not going to be a decorative feature in the home, but an employee.

What employment you may well ask. Well it’s protecting her master. Julia is trained by Harrison K-9 Security Services, the same company that provides dogs to Navy seal units. In fact that dog that accompanied the strike team to get Osama Bin Laden had a dog that was trained by K-9.

Julia is 3 yrs old and has been in the US for only 4 months. She is a trained Schutzhund, which means protection dog in German. After passing through this rigorous training, K-9 give her specific training for a few months, and also ensured that she is safe in a family environment, and according to Harrison Prather, the owner of K-9 Julia is by far the best dog he has trained among all the thousands that have gone before her.

Julia is a baby sitter, guard dog, body guard, newspaper fetcher, and anything else you want her to be all rolled into one. In fact Johnson says that he started purchasing guard dogs because he feels that they are more economical than using bodyguards.

Harrison also says that a guard dog is much better and gives an instance where a well know entertainer was being stalked. He hired bodyguards, but he stabbed one of them, went to jail, came out and then started where he left off.

Once the bodyguards were replaced by a guard dog the stalking stopped immediately. With more and more people entering into the rich class and wanting security services, Harrison says that there is currently more demand than supply.

Each dog is carefully chosen, and is usually trained in Germany. They are very expensive, but already the prices have started increasing. Harrison says that apart from the cost savings of having a guard dog, they are unquestionably loyal to their masters and can never be bought off, something that cannot be said about human bodyguards sadly.

The world has now gone full circle from humans being protectors of animals to animals protecting us.

The Mansfield council in England has adopted a new and unique way to ensure that dog owners collect their dog’s poop after them.

Any dog owner whose dogs poop outside and does not collect it is liable for a £50 fine. Yet this has not seemed to discourage a number of dog owners from just leaving their poop behind them.

In a unique twist, the Mansfield council has adopted a new and unique way to try to push dog owners into collecting the poop. All council workers will be issued with a pink, biodegradable paint with which they will paint over the dog poop.

This is supposed to shame dog owners into collecting the poop behind them.

Of course the Mansfield council will be losing out on a lot of money that they collect as fines, but they prefer to keep the environment clean rather than earn this money.

The same technique has been tried in a few different places and a reduction in the the amount of poop has been recorded. It is this fact that has prompted the Mansfield council to adopt this new technique.

If you own a dog in Mansfield and if you aren’t too particular about picking up after your dog, maybe this will prompt you to. Unless of course you are totally immune to the barbs that come your way from others who see a lot of pink in the area around your home.

Have you ever though that it would be nice to wake up with someone licking your face. Well Kelly Sears, has someone who will do this for her.

Theo wakes Kelly whenever she falls asleep by gently licking her face. In fact he sticks with her all the time to ensure that he’s by her side whenever she needs him to wake her up.

Kelly Sears is a 19 yr old from Chadwell Heath, Essex and Theo is her black cocker spaniel.

Kelly suffers from a very rare disease called narcolepsy which is disorder where a person falls asleep just like that. It’s almost like a fainting fit, except that Kelly does not faint, just falls asleep. She’s fallen asleep when climbing down stairs, when walking, when at school and actually was in such a bad state that she was even scared of going out because of it.

When she was presented with Theo the whole world changed dramatically for her. Theo was gifted by the charity group Medical Detection Dogs to Kelly when they found that he had the remarkable ability to predict an epileptic seizure.

Nowadays he’s Kelly’s new friend and companion, and in fact spends more time with her than her family or her boyfriend.

They go out together, and if she just nods off anywhere, gently licks her face until she wakes up. While earlier she whould be out for a couple of minutes at least, nowadays she’s back awake in a couple of seconds.

In fact Theo even wakes her up if she sleeps through her alarm.

With Theo around her family feel much safer on her behalf, they don’t have to constantly worry about her when she’s out. Also because Theo has a jacket which says, Medical alert dog in training, people are less inclined to think that she has fainted and don’t call for an ambulance anymore.

Theo has also been trained to fetch help if Kelly doesn’t wake up quickly. He does this by approaching someone and then asking them to follow him. He’s become so indespinsable to Kelly that he even follows her when she goes to the bathroom to wake her up if she falls asleep there. Even her boyfriend takes second place to Theo in Kelly’s life.

Made for each other is what we say.

Having pets these days is so difficult in some places. Apart from the laws governing them, many countries also mandate registering the dog. Well all this is part of our “secure” society and we accept it as such.

Yet in England, there is one council that is considering tagging dogs. What is so wrong with that you may ask? Well they want to only tag dogs that are considered “Potentially dangerous”. There’s a list of dogs that the city of College Park, Gainsville provides and anyone having these breeds of dogs need to get them tagged as well as photographed.

Obviously pit bulls and rottweilers are at the top of the list but so are the Doberman and German Shepherd.

Obviously people are scared of dogs biting them, but as most dog owners know, it is less the breed and more the owner who is responsible for the temperament of the dog. There are a number of put bulls that are very mild with strangers while there are documented cases of border collies biting people.

Pit bulls and rottweilers get a bad name because they are involved in the maximum number of dog fatalities anywhere. Combined they make up 73% of all dog fatalities.

Yet without knowing the specific cases on each of these fatalities, it would be improper to comment on them, but all dog lovers know that a dog is a highly intelligent animal, and unless provoked they very rarely attack without reason.

Of course the breed makes a difference and a pit bull or a rottweiler is a whole different ball game from a pug.

Yet if you are looking at just dog bites, the cocker spaniel comes right at the top with the most number of bites recorded. Many dog bites from small dogs go unrecorded simply because they are not as serious as bites from bigger dogs.

Treating all dogs as potential criminals just because they belong to a breed is really not the right way to go about this.

If we don’t like ethnic profiling because we feel that it is immoral, how is it possible to justify breed profiling. Just because 10 dogs bite people we want to treat thousands of them as criminals. There have been enough and more cases of pit bulls saving the lives of others, so where does that come in.

Maybe the people who drew up this law don’t have dogs, what else explanation can there be.

Most people do not like strays. It almost seems like people start to equate stray animals with dirt on the street, something to be removed and deposited elsewhere.

Yet it is this same stray that has been the savior to a mother and son. In Port Charlotte, FL, a mother, identified just a Angela to protect her privacy, and her toddler son were in the car park of a playground when a young man approached them with a knife in hand.

As to what exactly his intentions were, is not known, but considering the knife in his hand, the minimum that Angela expected was to be robbed.

Luckily for Angela, her Guardian Angel was around to help her, but in a very surprising manner. A pit bull terrier, appeared out of the blue and chased after the man, baring its teeth and displaying aggression.

The potential robber, wisely not wanting to pit his knife against a pit bull’s teeth turned and fled.

What’s even more surprising was that when Angela opened her car to keep her son inside, the dog too jumped on to the back seat and waited till the police came.

Nobody knows where the dog came from, or what it was doing there. The police believe that rather than being a stray, it was probably lost because it seemed to be a healthy dog, and was very mild mannered around people.

As of now the dog has been assigned the name of Angel by Angela because he came to her like a Guardian Angel. Because she did not own the dog it has been placed in an animal shelter, but if his owners do not come to claim him in 5 days Angela plans to adopt him. Why turn away an Angel from your door.

Many of us own pets of some kind, dogs, cats, birds, horses and anything else that catches our fancy. In fact statistics show that the number of households that have pets have been growing steadily and now approximately 63% of all households have some kind of pet or the other.

We may not all fawn over our dogs, or treat our cats like kings and queens. We may think that feeding our horse and giving him a pat is more than sufficient. But we would never leave them cooped up in a vehicle and leave the vehicle out in the sun with all the windows up.

Even the most thoughtless among us is not deliberately cruel, which is more than can be said about Margaret Nickerson – Malpher of South Dakota. At 71 yrs there is a lot that we can forgive Margaret for, but leaving 15 dogs and two cats inside a van with the windows up when it was 85 degrees outside is not something that can be overlooked very easily.

Margaret’s story is that she had been moving from one of her homes in SD to another in Maine, and had just stopped at Motel 6 for a nap. This nap extended to about 6 hrs by which time one of the dogs had died and the others were following him fast.

Thanks to a Motel 6 employee who saw a dead dog inside her room, police were able to track her down, and what a sight met their eyes.

The dogs were hardly able to walk, and all of them were seriously dehydrated. Two of them were actually so serious that veterinarians feel that they had suffered some organ failure due to the excess heat.

Thankfully the police were up to the task and even before the SPCA came to the scene, the dogs had been taken out of the van, hosed down with water and placed under a fan. The SPCA officials then took them to an air-conditioned room where they slowly recovered.

Now a week later, everything is fine for the dogs. Even the most seriously affected have recovered, and a few of them have even found homes. Everything is hunky dory for everyone except Margaret who is facing 17 counts of animal cruelty.

Sadly it looks like this is not the first time for Margaret and she has already been convicted for animal cruelty in Maine in the past. Why do people get away so easily with killing animals.