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The AP brings word that Lucky and Flo, the two darling black Labs who have become international sensations for their keen ability to sniff out illegal DVDs and CDs, are in grave danger. After their first practical stakeout and bust while on loan to the Malaysian government netted a bounty of nearly $3 million in bootlegged discs and six arrests, the Malaysian pirating mafia reportedly put a bounty on their cute, poochie heads:

Lucky and Flo, the two Labradors who helped sniff out nearly 1 million illegal discs last week within days of joining Malaysia's anti-piracy effort, have been moved to a safe house, a news report said Thursday.

The New Straits Times reported that a source had tipped off officials about a bounty offered for killing the sniffer dogs, who are on loan for a month from the Motion Picture Association of America. The amount was not disclosed.

''The dogs are a genuine threat to the pirated disc syndicates, thus the instruction to eliminate them,'' Firdaus Zakaria, the enforcement director of the Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs, was quoted as saying.

As calls fly across town from material-hungry TV producers looking to secure the rights to our panting heroes' globetrotting exploits, we'd like to remind everyone that while their still-unfolding story appears to contain the seeds for the next great canine adventure series (with possible CGI-enhanced voicing by multi-talented spouses Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr.!), there are two very real lives at stake here that might at any moment be snuffed out by the silencer-muffled gunfire of Malaysia's stealthiest doggie assassin.