You know, chicks as in females of the opposite sex.  Don’t get me wrong, I like baby chickens too. Especially with hot sauce.

Anyway, we all know that if you want to rough house it, you hang loose with a guy. If you want love and cuddling, your odds go up by having a female by your side.

This is nothing new. In fact it’s one of the unbreakable laws of the universe. Just like e=mc², so does female = unconditional love.

I know this, my sister Copper knows this, and a dog named Fox surely knows this. Check out his story.

After tumbling from a cliff path on to a small beach, pet dog Fox was unhurt but trapped.

However, he was none too friendly to the coastguards winched down 80ft to rescue him  -  barking, growling and backing away.

Then, his owner Jane Ravine explained why  -  the collie-huskie cross has a phobia of men.

Her 13-year-old pet, named after his love of chasing foxes, fears and has a ‘loathing hatred’ of males.

Funny, my father told me the same sentiment was expressed by a few dogs he met in college.

Fox, who had already spent one night stuck on the Cornish beach, had to wait a second night while a female rescuer was summoned.

Marige Zwager, 31, abseiled down and coaxed him over with dog biscuits.

Fox then jumped into her arms and licked her face before allowing her to put him in a safety bag.

If you’re in China and you’re put in a ‘Safety Bag’ it means your going home as leftovers.

Miss Zwager, a Dutch- born member of the RSPCA’s cliff rescue team, said: ‘I abseiled down with a colleague and took some dog biscuits to coax him to me. He was cold, scared and hungry but my female charms worked.

Like I said, it’s one of the laws of the universe. Nothing works as well as female charm. Nothing.

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I mean, what’s not to like? The camouflage? The ability to relieve themselves on a battlefield? It certainly can’t be the yummy  c-rations.

Then I realized the survey was talking about veterinarians, not veterans. That made me feel better.

Well, since I’ve stumbled upon the subject, let me just send a quick thank you for all the members of the armed forces. Without their sacrifice, the freedoms we enjoy in this country would most assuredly be replaced by the chains of totalitarianism.

I know that all dogs know this and are eager to provide support. Check out the study the Dept of Defense has on tap to figure out just how great of animals we are, courtesy of the Kansas City Star.

Can a canine companion soothe the volatile emotions of a soldier haunted by post-traumatic stress disorder?

It may sound far-fetched, but the Department of Defense wants to find out.

It is spending millions of dollars on medical research projects like this that may yield groundbreaking results but are too speculative for other government agencies to consider.

So the Defense Department is financing a $300,000 study that will pair troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with dogs trained to sense when their masters are about to have a panic attack and give them a calming nudge or nuzzle.

These psychiatric service dogs have been assisting people with a variety of mental illnesses since the late 1990s. About 10,000 such dogs are now in use.

“Absolutely beautiful animals. Very well behaved,” said Chris Kornkven, a Persian Gulf War veteran from Helenville, Wis., who stopped to pet the dogs.

“They seemed like they would be really helpful, particularly for individuals living alone,” said Kornkven, who has PTSD. “I think (a service dog) would give them some independence.”

The dogs can serve their owners in several ways. For example, they can sense when someone with bipolar disorder is becoming manic and give an alert by barking or nuzzling. The dogs also can provide a reality check to people experiencing hallucinations; if the dog does not react to voices, it is assurance that no one else is in the room.

I know I’ve helped my old man through his hallucinations. He still thinks that he’s writing this blog. Sorry pal, these words were formed in the mind of man’s best friend, and delivered through his paws.

Humans, they’re so self-absorbed.

Photo courtesy of GARVEY SCOTT/The Kansas City Star

Oh my! I just referred to myself in the third dog. Hmm…what does that say about me? Probably that I’m a narcissistic, bigheaded blowhard.

What can I say, guilty as charged.

But I won’t let your judgmental ways get in the way of a good old fashioned touching tale.

The kind of story where the heart is skewered through the middle and turned over an open fire. Unless, of course, you own a Ronco Rotisserie 6000. Your heart will still be skewered. It’s just that with the RR 6000, it will automatically be rotated for you, and you won’t have to worry about putting out the fire in your kitchen either!

But I digress. Here’s the story I refer to from 3News.

We all know that a dog can teach us a lot about friendship and unconditional love but in Tennessee, one family’s Rottweiler is offering an astonishing lesson in patience and loyalty.

Sitting on the front porch of Kathy Wilkes-Myers’ house, Ella is happy but not at home.

Ms. Wilkes-Myers says “if her eyes could talk, speak words I mean they’d speak volumes.”

Most humans would say that Ella is lost, but she’ll tell you it’s the other way around.

Her family has been missing ever since a serious accident in which Ella’s human mum Michelle Kelley flipped her car on July 1st.

Husband Joe Kelley described the accident saying “she slammed on the breaks and we went into a spin.”

Michelle Kelley also remembers the crash “I just remember slamming right into the mountain.”

A frightened Ella watched as the medics took Joe, Michelle and their three children away to the hospital.

Mr Kelley said “the last thing I’ve seen was her looking straight in the eyes before she ran up into the woods.”

From then on Ella was alone but she waited for her family to return for 13 days.

Ms Wilkes-Myers drove by the accident the day it happened and two weeks later she spotted a dog near the same spot.

“I saw a beautiful Rottweiler drinking water out of a ditch. She was starved and covered in ticks.”

Ms Wilkes-Myers brought Ella back to her rescue ranch where the two became friends. She also brought back a plastic bag full of clues hoping they could lead her to Ella’s owners.

It’s a pretty normal list of things- until you realise where Ms Wilkes-Myers discovered them.

“I found another little nest…where she had put all these personal items.”

Since Ella couldn’t find her family at the crash site, she decided to find everything that belonged to them.

Wilkes-Myers said “it just blew my mind…this dog was just trying to find some comfort.”

While searching the area, Kathy also found a notepad that led her to insurance agent April Bowers. Ms Bowers said when she got the phone call “I knew exactly who it was, whose dog it was…what was going on.”

And just like that the pieces came together and Ella was reunited with her family

Despite all they’ve been through, the Kelley’s never once forgot their dog and Ella never once forgot her family.

Better yet is this video of the Ella and her story.

It happened at my grandparents’ house. They have a few acres of wooded land where I was allowed to run free. There were always squirrels and woodchucks and birds and wild turkeys and a slew of other cool things running and flying around. You know, the types of things I usually only saw on Animal Planet.

It was late afternoon after a raccoon chase worthy of a KTLA helicopter breaking newsflash when I found myself in a strange part of the forest. Nothing looked, sounded and worst of all smelled familiar. I was lost.

I remember the trees as they spun around me while I looked skyward. Dazed and confused I ventured forth for minutes on end until I found a small opening between some trees. There, on the other side, was the interstate. Ahh, finally civilization! I knew it was the interstate because the road was paved. Had it just been a dirt road then I would have simply referred to it as the local highway.

I leaped through the opening onto the newly paved asphalt and galloped to the other side. I was ready to put my paw out and hitchhike home when I heard “Bo? Bo? Where are you?”

It was my father.

The sound of his voice stopped me in my tracks. I turned around. Protruding from behind a large tree was his familiar big fat head. He was quick to spot me, but before the command, “Bo come!” could be uttered, the outline of a sizeable truck grew larger as itbarreled down the interstate. Adorned with a shiny silver bulldog hood ornament, the red Mack truck traveled at an unsafe speed with twenty thousand pounds of cow’s milk in tow.

My father recognized the dangerous nature of the situation. He held firm on his side of the interstate telling me, “Stay! Bo Stay!” while extending his arm out straight like an overzealous crossing guard at the local obedience school.

What did he think I was going to do, run in front of a Mack truck? C’mon, if it was a Freightliner I may have considered it, but not a Mack.

The rush of air created by the passing truck blew my hair and ears back. I held my head high. I looked sexy, damn sexy. Heck, I should have been put on the cover of Dog Living Magazine. Yeah, I looked that good.

As the truck disappeared into the horizon, my father ran across the road and corralled me with leash in hand.

He was there to save the day and save it he did.

Well he didn’t really but I know he reads the blog so I’ll give him credit. I’ll say this, he did know the most direct way to get me back home for if it had been up to me it would have taken a lot longer. I appreciated his effort.

But not every dog is as lucky as me.  Take for instance Muffy, a canine in Australia. I’ll let the Times Online tell you her story.

Just like Lassie the adventurous collie dog, a scruffy pet named Muffy will finally return home after a nine-year, 2000km (1250 mile) odyssey down the east coast of Australia.

The terrier-cross (or “bitsa” as her type of cross-breed is more affectionately known) was last seen by her owners on the Gold Coast in Queensland in 2000 ago when she took off from a friend’s house one day and never came back.

Incredibly, earlier this month, Muffy was discovered in Melbourne, Victoria, by the RSPCA, who had been tipped off by a good Samaritan concerned about a sickly looking, flea-ridden dog living in decrepit surroundings in a suburban backyard.

“We found her living in pretty awful conditions on a piece of cardboard, she had matted hair and was riddled with fleas and had a really severe dermatitis condition,” Victorian RSPCA inspector Gail Coulter told The Times.

After a vet cleaned up the scruffy white-haired dog and gave her medication for her bad skin condition, the welfare agency officers discovered the then-unknown pet had a microchip which meant she could potentially be traced to owners.

“We had to get the tracing department to track down the details because it was such an old microchip, and when we found the owner we rang her and said we’d found Muffy, and it’s fair to say she was pretty surprised,” Ms Coulter said.

On the Gold Coast, Natalie Lampard was stunned when the RSPCA phoned. “I just couldn’t believe it, it’s absolutely amazing,” Ms Lampard told The Times. “I told my daughter Chloe and she was just over the moon, she can’t wait to see Muffy again.”

Ms Lampard said Chloe Rushby, now 17, had been inseparable with the dog, which was her best friend when she was a child.

“They stuck together all the time and Muffy would sleep on Chloe’s bed every night,” she said.

While the RSPCA have confirmed the dog lived in filthy conditions in the house in Melbourne for at least a year, the real story behind the rest of Muffy’s journey – she somehow travelled across three states and the Australian Capital Territory – will never be known.“I’m sure she’s been through some incredible adventures over the years,” said Ms Coulter. “If only she could talk, she’d have a great story to tell.”

Obligatory video of the happy, sappy story is at the link.

A lot of you probably think that all New York City dogs are obnoxious, self absorbed and bark funny. To that all I can say is stop getting all your news from Cat Fancy magazine. NYC pups are no different than the ones in Kansas, Alabama or Hawaii. Well the ones in Hawaii are a bit happier.

Look no further than Husky, the son of a yellow lab-mix named Chile, and his heroic efforts to save his mother this morning.

The examiner.com has all the details.

The early Thursday morning rush hour on the Major Deegan Expressway in the Bronx was the setting of a dramatic and heartwarming scene as a German shepherd-mix protected its fallen mother who was struck by a car.

Around 6:30 a.m., May 14, a nine year old female yellow lab-mix, Chile, ran onto the Major Deegan Expressway and was hit by a car at exit 3. Her son Husky, ran to the rescue on the crowded highway. The dog ran around her body, protecting his injured mother by barking at traffic and police officers, even as they attempted to offer assistance.

When police managed to rescue Chile, Husky ran home through traffic, dodging vehicles as police tried to catch it.

Chile suffered a broken left leg. She had no ID at the time of the accident, but her owner saw the drama on TV, went to the vet center, and took her to an animal hospital where she will undergo surgery.

The owner told animal control that the other dog, who he also owns, is home now.

If I ever had a pup of my own, I would hope he/she would act as heroically as Husky. If not, at least I’d still have somedog to fetch my Pupperoni’s for me.

Here’s a video report.

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My favorite one involves a bone the size of a human, with plenty of meat still on it. Dogs have claimed to have spotted it, but say it was too big to carry back home.  When they go back to retrieve it, with radio flyer in tow, it’s always gone.

Well, here’s the latest ‘fishing’ story, but the good news is, it didn’t get away. And no, it wasn’t a tire they caught, but something much more precious.

Two fishermen were left reeling in surprise when they caught a DOG a mile out at sea.

At first when they spotted the animal swimming against the tide they thought it was an otter, but when they realised that it was a dog the two lifted him on board.

Freddie, a 14-year-old cairn terrier, was later reunited with his owner – who revealed that he dislikes water so much that he hates taking a bath and avoids walking through puddles.

He had become disorientated in the fog while on a walk with owner Jean Brigstock and had slipped into the water as the 73-year-old searched frantically for him.

And instead of swimming back to shore at Amble, Northumberland, he had mistakenly struck out for the deeps of the North Sea.

I got disoriented once, turns out I peed in my food bowl and drank out of the toilet bowl. But hey, at least I didn’t find myself in the middle of the North Sea.

Mrs Brigstock said: ‘It was a beautiful day, and I was taking him on his usual walk, but all of a sudden, a heavy sea fret set in quickly, and I couldn’t see Freddie anymore.

‘I knew he hated water so I thought he’d head for the dunes rather than the sea. It really didn’t enter my head that he would swim.

But Freddie was found three quarters of a mile out to sea after a long doggy paddle and was rescued by trawlermen Jimmy and Alan Thompson from Red Row, Northumberland.

She said: ‘He looked like a drowned rat when they found him.

Well he didn’t really look like a drowned rat, because if he did, he’d be dead.

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COLUMBIA, Mo. – After years of helping authorities look for murder victims and survivors of natural disasters, a search-and-rescue dog named Molly has been rescued herself.

Surgeons at the University of Missouri College of Veterinary Medicine on Thursday installed a pacemaker in the 5-year-old chocolate Labrador retriever’s heart. She needed the surgery after being diagnosed with a complete electrical heart blockage.

I love chocolate labs, they taste much better than the vanilla ones, so it’s great to see Molly get help.

Owners Allen and Alicia Brown of Saginaw were overwhelmed with offers to help pay the more than $2,500 in surgery, vet and travel costs after The Joplin Globe reported on Molly’s need for the pacemaker.

I have to ask, only because I pace around the house all the time, why any dog would need a pace maker? Nevermind, my father just told me it regulates the heart not the ‘pace’ you set as you ‘shark’ around your parents.

Medical technology company Medtronic Inc. donated the device, and a Kansas businessman offered to anonymously pay up to $2,000 of the cost.

“It surprises me greatly,” Allen Brown said. “There’s just been such an outpouring of public support for her.”

Search and rescue of the charity kind.

The Browns are volunteers with the Newton County K-9 search-and-rescue unit, which doesn’t have a budget. Allen, a paramedic, and Alicia, a nurse, put in hundreds of hours searching for bodies during emergencies. The unit has five certified dogs and three others in training.

The Browns noticed that the usually energetic Molly, whose full name is The Unsinkable Molly Brown, became lethargic and out of breath last month. Veterinarians believe she had a heart attack.

Although unsinkable, Molly was listing pretty badly.

Allen Brown drove Molly to Columbia on Tuesday night after her heart rate fell to 38 from a normal 80.

Patrice Graham, another member of the K-9 search-and-rescue team, spearheaded efforts to help the Browns pay for the surgery.

“I know that everyone is tight, but these people do a lot of volunteer work,” Graham said. “If she could save one more life or recover one more body for a family, it would be worth it.”

…and even if she doesn’t, it’s still money well spent.

Should you need to bring the subject up to your owners, here’s a great video you can share.

Buddy the lap dog is back in Mark Hench’s lap after a months-long odyssey that included a dognapping in California and a mysterious reappearance in Texas.

Hench? Most likely short for Henchman, me thinks. So when dealing with Henchman is it really that surprising that a dognapping occurred? I think not.

“He is a wonderful dog, just a complete joy and very well-behaved,” said Gloria Pollock, the last of a string of volunteers who brought the Bichon Frise to Hench’s doorstep in Fort Collins on Saturday afternoon.

Hench had the bed, the food, the dish and the leash ready for Buddy and immediately reattached to the dog he considered “my little son.”

Hench was living in Ventura, Calif., last year, when he bought Buddy from an animal shelter.

“I had him for about three months,” Hench said. Then one day someone riding a bicycle grabbed Buddy and pedaled off, according to an account relayed by a neighbor.

Is it me or is there something strange about a bicyclist grabbing a dog and pedaling away with it? Seriously, who was the dognapper, Lance Armstrong?

For three months, Hench scoured the streets of Ventura, looking for any sign of Buddy. Hench then got sick and had to move to Fort Collins to be near his daughter. Months later, Hench was in a car when his cell phone rang.

An animal control officer from Fort Worth, Texas, said a microchip scan of a moppish little dog had identified Hench as the owner. Could he swing right by and pick up the dog?

So there is an upside to bagging and tagging us dogs. And all this time I thought it was just so Big Brother could watch our every move.

Well, he [Hench] was about 750 miles away and disabled.

So, Rescue Angels on Wheels got involved, alerted a few volunteers on their database and arranged a car transport from a Texas foster home to Colorado Springs, then to Highlands Ranch, and finally to the Fort Collins mobile home park where Hench lives.

“We made a brief stop at a groomer in Arvada, and she prettied him up for the big event,” Pollock said.

She is hoping Buddy’s story brings home two points to pet owners.

“First, the importance of microchipping,” Pollock said. Most shelters have a three-day hold before an animal can be euthanized, although the Denver Dumb Friends League and the Boulder Valley Humane Society, to name two, almost always keep the pets until a home is found.

“That microchip saved Buddy’s life,” she said.

Pollock also said Buddy is “a beautiful example of the wonderful dogs that can be adopted through shelters and rescues.”

They’re already vaccinated, spayed or neutered, and give the gratification to their new owners that they are saving a life, she said.

If you feel warm and fuzzy inside, then go to your owner right now and demand they adopt a brother or sister for you. If they refuse, hit ‘em where it hurts. Start peeing in the house. They love that.

That’s why I like this story about Hike, a border collie, taking the vacationing thing into his own paws and heading off for a little seaside get away.

A missing border collie was reunited with his owner after catching a bus to the seaside more than 20 miles away.

Worried owner Emma Ward printed posters and contacted dog wardens, unaware Hike was on the number 11 Arriva bus near her home in Connah’s Quay, Flintshire.

But four-year-old Hike was discovered 40 stops later under a seat after making the 23m (37km) journey to the coastal resort of Rhyl in Denbighshire.

Under the seat, huh. Apparently Hike wanted a vacation but didn’t have the means to pay for it.

Ms Ward said: “I was over the moon to get him back.”

Must be Ms. Ward is an astronaut. For you pups out there too young to remember, the first astronaut was actually a dog, Laika. No not Luka, she lives on the second floor, upstairs from you.

She added: “I live in between two pubs and there’s an alleyway which I let Hike go out into.

“Everyone round here knows him and he’s always somewhere close by, just doing his own thing. He always comes back when I whistle him. But this time he didn’t come back and I knew something was wrong.”

She also contacted the dog rescue home where she spotted Hike two years ago, and alerted local dog wardens.

“I had phoned everyone, including the vets in case he had been knocked down. But then the call came from a dog warden to say he was absolutely fine and had got the bus to Rhyl.

“I was so relieved to see him. But when I got there to pick him up, he was playing ball with the driver – he didn’t have a care in the world.”

Of course not, he was still on vacation. I suspect however the growing knot in his stomach signaled the end of his time off was near.

BRECKENRIDGE, Colo. (AP) – A dog was found alive and in relatively good shape after spending eight days trapped in the rubble of a building that exploded, critically injuring the pup’s owner.

Good Times Adventures is a snowmobiling and dogsledding business. Mislanski, a company van driver, was house-sitting for managers who lived in the upstairs apartment when the building exploded.

Good Times?

Lulu, a Springer spaniel, was rescued Sunday after the owner of the business that had been housed in the two-story building heard her whimpering.

“We turned off the radio and started calling out Lulu’s name. Then we heard some yelping,” Brian Holt, owner of Good Times Adventures, told the Summit Daily News in Tuesday’s editions.
After 45 minutes of frantic digging, we found her laying in a crawl space under 15 feet of rubble,” he said.

I have it on good authority that, roughly translated, the yelping meant, “Hey, I have a two story house on top of me. Get it off of me. Oh…and why have you waited eight days to start calling my name?”

Lulu’s owner, Brian Mislanski, had been critically injured in the April 19 explosion and remained at St. Anthony Central Hospital in Denver on Tuesday.

“I’m happy,” Mislanski told The Associated Press on Tuesday. He declined to comment further, but friends who are caring for Lulu said they took her to visit him – with permission from the hospital.

A two word quote about a minor miracle? Quiet rivers run deep…or maybe the AP reporter lost his pencil and forgot the real quote.

Veterinarian Christine Murphy said Lulu suffered mild dehydration and had some trauma to her left eye. She probably survived by drinking melting snow and eating food she found in the debris, Murphy said.

Let’s hope that melting snow wasn’t yellow.