There are 345 stray dogs being found every day, yet why is it so hard to give a dog a loving home?

By SHONA SIBARY

Shona Sibary with her rescue centre dogs Juno (left) and Albus (right). More than 126,176 dogs have been picked up by local authorities over the past 12 months, but she found rescue wardens patronising

Last January we lost our lovely ten-year-old Labrador, Oscar. The vet found an inoperable tumour in his abdomen and gently suggested we take him home to say our goodbyes.
We cuddled him on the sofa and tried to feed him small morsels of his favourite cheddar, but it was obvious he was fading from us fast.
Nothing prepared me for the agony of having him put to sleep the next morning. The children clung to him and wept before leaving for school — the same children who, as toddlers, had swung from his neck, covered his nose with Buzz Lightyear stickers and attempted to ride him like a horse across the garden.

'Juno (left) is a Husky-cross-Pointer with piercing blue eyes. At the age of one, she was still deemed to be a "puppy" and we were still "officially" not allowed to have her,' said Shona

He was a family dog through and through. He’d seen me off at the front door to give birth to three babies and been there, waiting, each time I returned home — giving a gentle sniff to the tightly blanketed bundles, followed by a wag of approval.
Oscar’s death left us bereft and even though we’ve always owned a dog, it didn’t feel right, somehow, to rush into replacing him. But as winter thawed, so, too, did our resolve. By spring we were ready to share our lives with a four-legged friend again.
I started researching breeders on Google and was horrified to discover the price of a Kennel Club-registered Labrador puppy was £600 to £800. We’d paid £250 for Oscar in 2000.

'Juno and Albus have brought that wonderful doggy spark back into our lives - wrestling for space on the sofa and barking endlessly at washing drying on the line,' said Shona

It suddenly seemed hugely extravagant, not to mention socially irresponsible, to spend all that money on a dog when there are thousands of homeless mutts in rescue centres all over the country.
Figures by the Dogs Trust, the country’s largest dog welfare charity, reveal that the number of stray dogs in Britain has reached an 11-year high, with more than 126,176 dogs being picked up by local authorities over the past 12 months — equating to 345 stray dogs being found every day.

'I can't imagine our lives without Juno and Albus. Which is a shame, because they still don't legally belong to us,' said Shona

You would think, with so many strays needing a home, I’d have been welcomed with open arms at any dog rescue centre of my choosing.
But you’d be wrong. If I’d known then what I know now about the dog re-homing process, I’d have hot-footed it to the nearest pet shop, bought a goldfish and told the children to start bonding.
No one warns you of the ridiculous hoops you have to jump through and of the high-handed, often patronising manner of rescue wardens.

'If the rescue centre finds out we have broken any terms of our contract (ie that we have a two-year-old), they have the right, with police force, to remove Juno and Albus from our care,' said Shona

If we ever go on holiday abroad, we have to tell them. If for any reason we are unable to continue to look after the dogs, we are not allowed to give them away to family or friends — they have to go back to the rescue centre.
Oh, and Juno and Albus are micro-chipped back to the dogs’ home, so if they do ever find a gap in a fence and decide to run off, the dogs’ home will always know.
So there you have it. Barking mad or sensible measures? I’ll let you decide or, perhaps, we should let sleeping dogs lie.

source: dailymail

There are 345 stray dogs being found every day, yet why is it so hard to give a dog a loving home?

By SHONA SIBARY

Shona Sibary with her rescue centre dogs Juno (left) and Albus (right). More than 126,176 dogs have been picked up by local authorities over the past 12 months, but she found rescue wardens patronising

Last January we lost our lovely ten-year-old Labrador, Oscar. The vet found an inoperable tumour in his abdomen and gently suggested we take him home to say our goodbyes.
We cuddled him on the sofa and tried to feed him small morsels of his favourite cheddar, but it was obvious he was fading from us fast.
Nothing prepared me for the agony of having him put to sleep the next morning. The children clung to him and wept before leaving for school — the same children who, as toddlers, had swung from his neck, covered his nose with Buzz Lightyear stickers and attempted to ride him like a horse across the garden.

'Juno (left) is a Husky-cross-Pointer with piercing blue eyes. At the age of one, she was still deemed to be a "puppy" and we were still "officially" not allowed to have her,' said Shona

He was a family dog through and through. He’d seen me off at the front door to give birth to three babies and been there, waiting, each time I returned home — giving a gentle sniff to the tightly blanketed bundles, followed by a wag of approval.
Oscar’s death left us bereft and even though we’ve always owned a dog, it didn’t feel right, somehow, to rush into replacing him. But as winter thawed, so, too, did our resolve. By spring we were ready to share our lives with a four-legged friend again.
I started researching breeders on Google and was horrified to discover the price of a Kennel Club-registered Labrador puppy was £600 to £800. We’d paid £250 for Oscar in 2000.

'Juno and Albus have brought that wonderful doggy spark back into our lives - wrestling for space on the sofa and barking endlessly at washing drying on the line,' said Shona

It suddenly seemed hugely extravagant, not to mention socially irresponsible, to spend all that money on a dog when there are thousands of homeless mutts in rescue centres all over the country.
Figures by the Dogs Trust, the country’s largest dog welfare charity, reveal that the number of stray dogs in Britain has reached an 11-year high, with more than 126,176 dogs being picked up by local authorities over the past 12 months — equating to 345 stray dogs being found every day.

'I can't imagine our lives without Juno and Albus. Which is a shame, because they still don't legally belong to us,' said Shona

You would think, with so many strays needing a home, I’d have been welcomed with open arms at any dog rescue centre of my choosing.
But you’d be wrong. If I’d known then what I know now about the dog re-homing process, I’d have hot-footed it to the nearest pet shop, bought a goldfish and told the children to start bonding.
No one warns you of the ridiculous hoops you have to jump through and of the high-handed, often patronising manner of rescue wardens.

'If the rescue centre finds out we have broken any terms of our contract (ie that we have a two-year-old), they have the right, with police force, to remove Juno and Albus from our care,' said Shona

If we ever go on holiday abroad, we have to tell them. If for any reason we are unable to continue to look after the dogs, we are not allowed to give them away to family or friends — they have to go back to the rescue centre.
Oh, and Juno and Albus are micro-chipped back to the dogs’ home, so if they do ever find a gap in a fence and decide to run off, the dogs’ home will always know.
So there you have it. Barking mad or sensible measures? I’ll let you decide or, perhaps, we should let sleeping dogs lie.

source: dailymail

Mystery of the DEAD herring: What made 20 TONNES of fish wash up on Norwegian beach?

By LEE MORAN

Washed up: Molly the dog seen walking around the tonnes of dead herring that have mysteriously appeared on a beach at Kvaenes in Nordreisa, northern Norway

Thousands of dead herring have been discovered washed up on a north Norwegian beach - prompting Doomsday predictors to hail it as another sign the world is set to end.
More than 20 tonnes of the fish is currently carpeting the beach of Kvaenes, in Nordreisa, with experts views differing on how they have come to be there. One thing is for sure, it will provide welcome ammunition to those believing the Mayan prophecy that 2012 will bring the end of Earth.

Jan-Petter Jorgensen, 44, was walking with his dog Molly when he found the stinky haul. He said: 'People say that something similar happened in the 80s. Maybe the fish have been caught in a deprived oxygen environment, and then died of fresh water?'
Experts have said the school could have been trapped by tidal waters after predatory fish - such as coalfish - chased them towards the shoreline.

Mystery death: One of the hundreds of blackbirds that fell out of the sky on New Year's Eve in Arkansas

Another theory is that the fish were washed ashore during a recent storm, or trapped in shallow waters and affected by freshwater from a river that flows into the bay.
Jens Christian Holst, of the Institute of Marine Research, said several factors could have come together at once. And he said he hoped they would be able to conduct tests on the dead fish to see if they had died of a disease.
The incident in Norway is not the only mass death mystery over the New Year.
On Sunday, 200 blackbirds mysteriously fell from the sky in a small Arkansas town - although officials now believe the birds were targeted by someone with fireworks, experts say.

Last month 25 dead horses were discovered at the bottom of a cliff near Glenn Innes, New England.
And similarly bizarre and unexplained massacres took place on the opening days of last year, with millions of spot fish washing up in Chesapeake Bay, Maryland, more blackbirds dying in Arkansas, and masses of marine life dying in a Louisiana bayou.

source: dailymail

Mystery of the DEAD herring: What made 20 TONNES of fish wash up on Norwegian beach?

By LEE MORAN

Washed up: Molly the dog seen walking around the tonnes of dead herring that have mysteriously appeared on a beach at Kvaenes in Nordreisa, northern Norway

Thousands of dead herring have been discovered washed up on a north Norwegian beach - prompting Doomsday predictors to hail it as another sign the world is set to end.
More than 20 tonnes of the fish is currently carpeting the beach of Kvaenes, in Nordreisa, with experts views differing on how they have come to be there. One thing is for sure, it will provide welcome ammunition to those believing the Mayan prophecy that 2012 will bring the end of Earth.

Jan-Petter Jorgensen, 44, was walking with his dog Molly when he found the stinky haul. He said: 'People say that something similar happened in the 80s. Maybe the fish have been caught in a deprived oxygen environment, and then died of fresh water?'
Experts have said the school could have been trapped by tidal waters after predatory fish - such as coalfish - chased them towards the shoreline.

Mystery death: One of the hundreds of blackbirds that fell out of the sky on New Year's Eve in Arkansas

Another theory is that the fish were washed ashore during a recent storm, or trapped in shallow waters and affected by freshwater from a river that flows into the bay.
Jens Christian Holst, of the Institute of Marine Research, said several factors could have come together at once. And he said he hoped they would be able to conduct tests on the dead fish to see if they had died of a disease.
The incident in Norway is not the only mass death mystery over the New Year.
On Sunday, 200 blackbirds mysteriously fell from the sky in a small Arkansas town - although officials now believe the birds were targeted by someone with fireworks, experts say.

Last month 25 dead horses were discovered at the bottom of a cliff near Glenn Innes, New England.
And similarly bizarre and unexplained massacres took place on the opening days of last year, with millions of spot fish washing up in Chesapeake Bay, Maryland, more blackbirds dying in Arkansas, and masses of marine life dying in a Louisiana bayou.

source: dailymail

Putting the PAN in chimpanzee: Kanzi loves nothing more than a good fry-up, skipping a few million years of evolution in the process

By DAVID DERBYSHIRE

Skill with a skillet: After slaving over a hot stove, Kanzi tucks in to his creation

Eagerly he collects wood from the ground, snaps the branches into small pieces and carefully balances them in a pile. Then, taking care not to burn himself, he gently strikes a match and gets ready for a fry-up.
Like all red-blooded males, Kanzi loves messing around with a barbecue. But then, as these extraordinary pictures show, Kanzi is no man. He is a bonobo - pygmy chimpanzee - and his love of fire is challenging the way that we think about our closest relatives in the animal kingdom.
For although bonobo apes and larger chimpanzees use twigs and leaves as tools, none has ever shown such skill for cooking food.

Kanzi is one of eight bonobos in the care of Dr Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, one of the world’s leading experts in ape behaviour and language. She believes 31-year-old Kanzi’s fascination with fire reveals a deep intelligence.

Kanzi carries his barbie in a backpack (left) before finding some dry wood and breaking it down to size

Dr Savage-Rumbaugh, of the Great Ape Trust, in Des Moines, Illinois, adds: ‘Kanzi makes fire because he wants to. He used to watch the film Quest For Fire when he was very young which was about early man struggling to control fire. He watched it spellbound over and over hundreds of times.’
He was also fascinated by the camp fires his keepers made to cook food. And he was encouraged to interact with humans and copy them. At the age of five, he was making small piles of bone dry sticks.


The chimp searches for the perfect site for a camp fire then carefully piles sticks onto a bed of dry leaves

He was taught to use matches, a skill he picked up quickly. There’s something eerie about watching Kanzi strike a match. The way he then holds the flame - taking care not to burn himself - is remarkably human.
‘Fire is one of the most important factors in our evolution,’ says Dr Savage-Rumbaugh. ‘When humans learned to control fire and to domesticate dogs we began to feel a new level of safety which freed us to become creative and to create more sophisticated cultures.’
‘Fire enabled us to cook meat, which helped break it down and meant we could eat more of it. Plants we cooked on fires were made more digestible. In short, cooking led us to eating better, which meant we developed large brains.
‘We sat around in communal groups cooking, stoking and simply watching the fire - a situation in which language and conversation started to develop.’

His hands look almost human as he strikes a match and, with a look of satisfaction, watches the smoke start to rise

Kanzi - the name means Treasure in Swahili - does not stay close to make sure his fire stays lit. But he does throw on more wood from a distance. And he has learned how to cook. He will take a marshmallow, stick it on the end of a twig and hold it carefully over the flames, ensuring it doesn’t burn.
He can place a grill pan on the fire and cook hamburgers. When he has finished with the fire, Dr Savage-Rumbaugh asks him to put it out using a bottle of water. He will carefully pour the liquid over the flames until it has been extinguished.
Kanzi is now incredibly passing on his skills to other apes. His son Teco, who lives in the same research centre, watches Kanzi as he solves problems. The researchers believe he may learn to make fires, too.

Healthy flames, it's time to set up the barbecue and then get the pan on

Kanzi, who weighs 12st, is the brightest of the apes at the Great Ape Trust. With two other apes at the centre, he uses paper keyboards to communicate with Dr Savage-Rumbaugh and fellow primatologist Liz Pugh.
In conversation with the researchers he points to symbols, known as lexigrams, on the keyboards representing different words.

A few treats go in and Kanzi stirs them expertly

He has learnt to ‘say’ around 500 words through the keyboard, and understands 3,000 spoken words.
Bonobos are one of the most endangered species and there are around 10,000 to 50,000 left in the wild, all in Africa’s Democratic Republic of Congo. They share 98 to 99 per cent of their DNA with us.
For Kanzi’s own safety, he is only allowed to make fires under close supervision. But his behaviour raises fascinating questions.

And for dessert... he pops a marshmallow on a stick and toasts it with care

What would happen if he was released into the wild where other bonobos could copy his behaviour? And could wild bonobos learn how to master fire independently just like our own ancestors?
You don’t have to be a fan of the Planet Of The Apes movies - in which intelligent apes threaten mankind’s supremacy on the Earth - to find those questions disturbing.


Just right: The barbie ape enjoys his pud... whose turn to do the washing up?





source :dailymail

Putting the PAN in chimpanzee: Kanzi loves nothing more than a good fry-up, skipping a few million years of evolution in the process

By DAVID DERBYSHIRE

Skill with a skillet: After slaving over a hot stove, Kanzi tucks in to his creation

Eagerly he collects wood from the ground, snaps the branches into small pieces and carefully balances them in a pile. Then, taking care not to burn himself, he gently strikes a match and gets ready for a fry-up.
Like all red-blooded males, Kanzi loves messing around with a barbecue. But then, as these extraordinary pictures show, Kanzi is no man. He is a bonobo - pygmy chimpanzee - and his love of fire is challenging the way that we think about our closest relatives in the animal kingdom.
For although bonobo apes and larger chimpanzees use twigs and leaves as tools, none has ever shown such skill for cooking food.

Kanzi is one of eight bonobos in the care of Dr Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, one of the world’s leading experts in ape behaviour and language. She believes 31-year-old Kanzi’s fascination with fire reveals a deep intelligence.

Kanzi carries his barbie in a backpack (left) before finding some dry wood and breaking it down to size

Dr Savage-Rumbaugh, of the Great Ape Trust, in Des Moines, Illinois, adds: ‘Kanzi makes fire because he wants to. He used to watch the film Quest For Fire when he was very young which was about early man struggling to control fire. He watched it spellbound over and over hundreds of times.’
He was also fascinated by the camp fires his keepers made to cook food. And he was encouraged to interact with humans and copy them. At the age of five, he was making small piles of bone dry sticks.


The chimp searches for the perfect site for a camp fire then carefully piles sticks onto a bed of dry leaves

He was taught to use matches, a skill he picked up quickly. There’s something eerie about watching Kanzi strike a match. The way he then holds the flame - taking care not to burn himself - is remarkably human.
‘Fire is one of the most important factors in our evolution,’ says Dr Savage-Rumbaugh. ‘When humans learned to control fire and to domesticate dogs we began to feel a new level of safety which freed us to become creative and to create more sophisticated cultures.’
‘Fire enabled us to cook meat, which helped break it down and meant we could eat more of it. Plants we cooked on fires were made more digestible. In short, cooking led us to eating better, which meant we developed large brains.
‘We sat around in communal groups cooking, stoking and simply watching the fire - a situation in which language and conversation started to develop.’

His hands look almost human as he strikes a match and, with a look of satisfaction, watches the smoke start to rise

Kanzi - the name means Treasure in Swahili - does not stay close to make sure his fire stays lit. But he does throw on more wood from a distance. And he has learned how to cook. He will take a marshmallow, stick it on the end of a twig and hold it carefully over the flames, ensuring it doesn’t burn.
He can place a grill pan on the fire and cook hamburgers. When he has finished with the fire, Dr Savage-Rumbaugh asks him to put it out using a bottle of water. He will carefully pour the liquid over the flames until it has been extinguished.
Kanzi is now incredibly passing on his skills to other apes. His son Teco, who lives in the same research centre, watches Kanzi as he solves problems. The researchers believe he may learn to make fires, too.

Healthy flames, it's time to set up the barbecue and then get the pan on

Kanzi, who weighs 12st, is the brightest of the apes at the Great Ape Trust. With two other apes at the centre, he uses paper keyboards to communicate with Dr Savage-Rumbaugh and fellow primatologist Liz Pugh.
In conversation with the researchers he points to symbols, known as lexigrams, on the keyboards representing different words.

A few treats go in and Kanzi stirs them expertly

He has learnt to ‘say’ around 500 words through the keyboard, and understands 3,000 spoken words.
Bonobos are one of the most endangered species and there are around 10,000 to 50,000 left in the wild, all in Africa’s Democratic Republic of Congo. They share 98 to 99 per cent of their DNA with us.
For Kanzi’s own safety, he is only allowed to make fires under close supervision. But his behaviour raises fascinating questions.

And for dessert... he pops a marshmallow on a stick and toasts it with care

What would happen if he was released into the wild where other bonobos could copy his behaviour? And could wild bonobos learn how to master fire independently just like our own ancestors?
You don’t have to be a fan of the Planet Of The Apes movies - in which intelligent apes threaten mankind’s supremacy on the Earth - to find those questions disturbing.


Just right: The barbie ape enjoys his pud... whose turn to do the washing up?





source :dailymail