Lately, I’ve been spending a fair amount of time dreaming about the day when I’ll be able to have a dog. When I’ll have the type of schedule and the space that allows me to care for one of the four legged creatures I so adore. I miss having a dog more than I miss eating meat (or dairy on my vegan days) and even though the thought of settling down or committing to somewhere to live and work fills me with a huge sense of dread and horror, I am comforted in knowing that when that day of settling comes, it means I get to once again embrace a furry companion.

It was with a huge smile then that I found an old op-ed piece by Jonathan Safran Foer about our connection to animals, specifically dogs. In the piece, Foer discusses how children relate to animals, factory farming and a special friend, his great-dane lab mix George (a lady dog FYI).

An adorable lab puppy (Credit WENN)

In a lot of ways, it all comes down to the quote that you’ll find after the jump

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Saudi Arabia’s religious police have banned selling dogs and cats and walking them in public. The head of the religious police said the ban was due to:

“the rising of phenomenon of men using cats and dogs to make passes at women and pester families … [and] violating proper behavior in public squares and malls.”

Guess I’m going to have to figure out a new way to approach women next time I vacation in Riyadh…

takepart by following the progress of a renewable energy bill in Congress.

A creature resembling a cross between a wolverine and a jackal just washed up on the shores of Eastern Long Island, New York.

No one’s really sure what it is (NY Mag has more about the photo’s origins), but what is sure is this:

You don’t want this as the off-spring of one of your pets.

So takepart by learning about neutering or spaying your pets.

Growing up I cherished those nights that I would get to spend with Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit, Jemima Puddle-Duck, Tom Kitten and the rest of the gang. Potter’s friendly and furry cast of characters was inspired by creatures that she would smuggle into her house as a child. Today is the late storyteller’s birthday, so in celebration watch the video below - part one of her classic Tale of Peter Rabbit (The PR story starts 3 minutes in)

The link to the second part of the story is after the jump

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Trakr, the hero rescue dog who sniffed out survivors from the ruins of the World Trade Center after 9/11, has won a competition to be cloned. The German Shepherd was picked as the “most clone-worthy” dog in a contest presenting dog owners with an opportunity to clone their pet, free of charge by the California company BioArts International. Trakr and his owner James Symington were among the first search and rescue teams to arrive on the smoldering site of Ground Zero on September 11, 2001. The pair also found the last human survivor at the scene of the disaster, located under 30 feet of wreckage.

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Some folks are willing to spend a fortune for exotic felines, and unscrupulous, greedy breeders are happy to exploit these fancy cat fanciers, judging from the recent seizure by Dutch authorities of three exotic cats from a Delaware breeder, Lifestyle Pets. The large, leopard-like cats caught the eye of customs officials concerned that their sale might be a violation of the international treaty known as CITIES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora.

Lifestyle Pets claims that the cats are a trademarked breed called “Ashera,” which it sells in the U.S. for $22,000 to $27,000. The Ashera, according to Lifestyle, is a “proprietary blend” of exotic bloodlines, including African Serval and Asian Leopard, two species of cats that are protected by the CITIES treaty”along with their offspring.

One of the three alleged Asheras had been sold to a Dutch couple for roughly $40,000; the other two were on their way to another country. But other breeders who spotted pictures of the confiscated kitties recognized them as Savannahs, another exotic breed that sells for a mere $5,000 to $6,000.

Lifestyle Pets is an offshoot of Allerca, the company that created a supposedly allergen-free cat back in 2006 which it now sells for $7,900. But the company has never submitted any peer-reviewed proof to back up its claims, and the company’s founder, Simon Brodie, has a long history of dubious business dealings in his native Britain, as BendWeekly reports:

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The chill in the air still says “winter,” but NYC’s Union Square Greenmarket was ablaze today with the happy harbingers of spring: daffodils, pansies, tulips, ranunculus, all blooming their vibrantly hued little heads off. I couldn’t resist taking out my iPhone to snap some shots of all the flower-filled flats.

My floral euphoria was short-lived; I reflexively checked my e-mails, and my heart  sank when I saw one from our friend Jen with the subject heading “Our Dear Lloyd”" :

It is with a very heavy heart that I’m telling you that our dear Lloyd passed away yesterday.  I am too tearful to talk on the phone, so please accept this e-mail note instead.

Our precious marmalade cat would have been 18 next month.  I know many people feel their pets are special, but Lloyd was truly unique.  He was meant to be with us.  He literally reached out and poked us at the animal shelter in New York City many years ago — “hey, pick me!” “

 

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I’ve found the perfect pet for my fellow blogger Katie Halper! Like so many folks, Katie’s allergic to cats, and with her wacky whirlwind schedule she can’t afford to be tied down by–or, rather, leashed to–a dog. But she’s awfully fond of pigs. So fond, in fact, that she refuses to eat them. I’ll bet Katie would just love one of these pocket-sized piggies! They’re a brand-new breed with the potential to sway the rest of us swine-eaters, according to Andrew Sullivan:

Is this the pet of the future? I hope so. Pigs are extremely intelligent, as emotionally evolved as dogs, and our society’s brutal treatment of them in hog farms is, quite simply, indefensible. I know: I still eat bacon. And I shouldn’t. But the key to protecting these creatures, and improving their treatment, is seeing them as Churchill did. Maybe breeding them into cute pets will help. We’d never treat dogs the way we treat hogs.

You can see the whole series of mini-pig portraits here, and find out what’s being done to halt the hog farms at factoryfarm.org.

So we’re in the middle of a housing crisis - it isn’t good. But when you take away the newspaper headlines, the influence it has on the campaign and the people who are struggling to figure out what to do - what do you really have left?

The answer is more cute and cuddly than you might think. What you have left are cats and dogs - pets left behind by their owners:

Pets “are getting dumped all over,” said Traci Jennings, president of the Humane Society of Stanislaus County in northern California. “Farmers are finding dogs dumped on their grazing grounds, while house cats are showing up in wild cat colonies.”

In one such colony in Modesto, two obviously tame cats watched alone from a distance as a group of feral cats devoured a pile of dry food Jennings offered.

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By Giulia Rozzi

Looks like the higher-ups at Palm Beach Community College believe that pets deserve more benefits that domestic partners.

According to PBCC the reason that employees pets rather than thier domestic partners have health insurance is due to fear of increased costs of future benefits (I don’t get it either) and not because of any homosexual discrimination. None the less many are outraged by this logic and are calling upon college officials to reconsider this decision.