James Bryan, a homeless man living in Florida, woke up the morning of May 8 to find that his pet dog was missing. The dog, a blue pit bull named Handover, was the only remaining tie to Bryan's previous life, before he'd lost his farm, his home, and nearly all of his other personal belongings.
Well, it's more or less official now: owning a dog is great for your heart health. (Unless that dog is Herbert, the asshole dog that tried to bite me when I nicely volunteered to walk him. Fuck you, Herbert.)
Here's something sad you can bring up and then immediately regret bringing up at dinner tonight: a toy fox terrier beloning to Twilight actress Ashley Greene died in a fire at her apartment this morning.
A watermelon, viewed from above, casts a greenish shadow on a white table. Two small figures on a putting green are spied from behind a distant tree. A horse with cow-like markings stands in field. Dogs, of course: a Shih Tzu and a Boxer sitting against an electric blue void. A Sheepdog next to a ball. A Corgi and a Lab at awkward, physically impossible angles, splayed out against the ground. And some kind of hound mix, maybe, grey and monstrous, sitting outside the White House, separated from the seat of power by iron bars, staring ambivalently out of frame.
In February, a hacker named Guccifer revealed to the world the hidden artistic talents of George W. Bush, releasing to The Smoking Gun a handful of photographs of oil paintings by the former president that had been taken from personal Bush family emails. The images were well-received by critics and laypeople alike, but they represented only a small portion of the budding outsider artist's oeuvre. Little more was being made available: In an interview with an Atlanta television station, his art teacher said he'd painted "over 50 dogs," tantalizingly few of which were actually shown on the broadcast. Otherwise, the Texan Master was silent. The world was crying out for more Bush art, more raw talent, more lush brushstrokes—more dogs—and nothing was forthcoming.
On February 10th, dog handler Robert Chaffin and his charge, a fluffy three-year-old Samoyed named Cruz, shared a steak and a hotel room as they prepared for the Westminster Dog Show. Six days later, while at a show in Colorado, the cuddly "marshmallow" began vomiting up blood. Within hours, Cruz was dead.
Welcome to our science-like new feature, "Hey, Science," in which we will have our most provocative scientific questions answered by real live scientists (or related experts). No question is too smart for us to tackle, theoretically speaking. This week, experts answer the question: Do animals get mental illnesses, just like humans? Or is your dog just dumb?
A dog can be a political double-edged sword: treat it well and you get lots of good press; treat it shitty and, well, just ask Mitt Romney how that worked out for him. Florida's Republican (and wildly unpopular) Gov. Rick Scott is the latest politician to fall victim to dog-loving media. The Tampa Bay Times reveals that shortly after being elected governor, the Scott family returned a rescue dog they had adopted during the campaign back to its previous owners. Yikes.
Dogs: why are they so racist? You know the type: prancing along as merry as can be until a human of a certain skin tone walks by, and then—bang!—all the barking and snarling and biting. It's been a source of uncomfortable comedy for years. Some dogs are just racist. But why? We turned to the real live dog psychology experts to find out.
Today isn't just human Christmas, you guys. It's also pet Christmas, where people wrap and give gifts to their pets despite the animals having literally no idea what's going on. Nonetheless, watching cats and dogs gnaw and tear at wrapping paper to uncover a gift is undeniably cute, so let's all warm our hearts by watching pets — like Mac the puggle, who just could not wait to get his reindeer chew toy in the video above — open their Christmas presents.
Like most pet owners, Upper West Side resident Gary Rintel wanted to remember his beloved Astro, a short-haired collie/Great Pyrenees, after the mutt passed away. However, instead of holding a nice funeral, or naming his next pet Astro Jr., Rintel took the unusual step of making a hat out of the dog's fur. Weird and sort of creepy, right? Well, Rintel wasn't quite finished; he also spent $140,000 to have Astro cloned twice. The results, as you might expect, are like something out of a horror movie.
