The practice of tethering or chaining dogs is never a good one. If you don't have a fenced yard or a way to contain your pet in an area that allows him to exercise, maybe you shouldn't own a pet.
I'm all for pet adoption, but people should remember that dogs need ample room outside in their homes. A small dog needs less room, but there should be enough space to run and stretch and do his business. City dogs need to be taken out regularly.
Never chain or tether a dog. It's just not safe.
I wrote about this issue earlier this year, but it continues to remain in the forefront in many communities. Over the weekend in Huntington, W.Va., a group of citizens chained themselves to posts and trees at a local park to support a local ordinance that would make it illegal to tether dogs during inclement weather.
Chaining a dog under any conditions is unacceptable. Let's hope these folks got their point across - and that they push for a more stringent law after this one passes.
To those of us who count our dogs and cats as members of the family, hearing the results of a recent poll was no surprise. My wife and I nodded when we saw the story. In many ways, our lives are centered on our three Dachshunds and cat.
I'm sure some will disagree, and that's fine. Anyway, it was interesting to read that an Associated Press-Petside.com poll this week found that half of all American pet owners consider their pets as much a part of the family as anyone in the household. Another 36 percent said their pet, while not a full member, is still a part of the family.
That's 86 percent who feel their pet is at least a part of the family. Personally, I can see why.
We worry when they're sick, we get anxious when they don't eat all their food, we buy them toys to play with and we appreciate their companionship. That's love.
The poll also found that single people were more likely to say a pet was a full member of the family than married people (66 percent of single women vs. 46 percent of married women). Also, men were less likely to call their pet a full member of the family. Another 42 percent said they take their pets on vacation.
The fact is, we love our pets. And they love us back. Isn't that what we expect from family?
I never cease to be amazed at the things dogs can be trained to do.
At airports, they can sniff out drugs and explosives. In prisons, some are being used to find prisoners' banned cell phones. Several have also been taught to detect certain cancer cells.
In other words, dogs have more skills than just fetching the morning paper.
Now comes this news, reported by Reuters: In England, dogs are being trained to warn their diabetic owners when their blood sugar levels fall to dangerously low levels. Amazing, eh?
In a survey last year at Queen's University Belfast, researchers found that 65 percent of 212 people with insulin-dependent diabetes reported that their pets reacted when they had hypoglycemic episodes. The dogs barked, whined, licked or offered some other form of awareness.
The Cancer and Bio-Detection Dogs research center in Aylesbury, England, is working with 17 rescue dogs to teach them to detect subtle changes that can occur when a person is about to have an attack.
Claire Guest, chief executive of the research center, told Reuters: "Dogs have been trained to detect certain odors down to parts per trillion, so we are talking tiny, tiny amounts. Their world is really very different to ours."
Different, perhaps. But what would we do without them?
When one of our three Dachshunds bark, they all bark. My wife hates it. I love it.
I consider their barking to be a deterrent - to strangers, to would-be intruders, to anyone who might lurk around our neighborhood. She just considers it unwanted noise.
I wonder what she'd think if she heard Daz, a German Shepherd Dog that recently put himself in the Guinness Book of World Records for the loudest bark - a hefty 108 decibels. That's about as loud as a chainsaw.
And I'm sure she'd love to hear the 30 dogs that set the record for loudest collective bark at the same time during a competition in a north London park. Their bark mark was 115 decibels, akin to a jet plane taking off.
"He is the loudest dog in the world," Peter Lucken, Daz's owner, said, "but I don't really notice how loud he is."
I say congratulations to the winners. My wife says, "Shhh."
No matter how you feel about the issue of cloning, here's a story you're likely to find uplifting.
On Wednesday in Los Angeles, a former Canadian police officer whose German Shepherd Dog helped locate survivors trapped in the rubble after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks was formally given his beloved companion's descendants - all five of them.
The puppies were cloned after James Symington won a contest organized by BioArts International, a startup based near San Francisco that focuses on animal reproduction, human genomics and stem-cell industries.
Symington and his dog Trakr were among the first K-9 search-and-rescue teams to arrive in New York following the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. Trakr worked virtually nonstop for 48 hours and found the last human survivor at Ground Zero. He died in April.
Symington (pictured above with his pups) entered BioArts' competition to find the world's most "cloneworthy" dog and was presented the puppies - named Trustt, Valor, Prodigy, Solace and Déjà vu - in L.A.
Although he's aware that cloning is full of ethical questions, Symington said he hopes the pups will follow Trakr's lead and become search-and-rescue dogs.
"I respect that cloning's not for everyone," he said. "But there are few dogs that are born with extraordinary abilities, and Trakr was one of those dogs. I look forward to the day that these puppies can follow in Trakr's footsteps and play an important role in other rescues, like Trakr did."
If you're considering cloning your pet, be aware: It's expensive. The average cost is $140,000 per dog.
