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All in Animal Companions
For the third time in five years, Fred the labrador has adopted an orphaned brood of ducklings. Fred is the 15-year-old resident dog at Mountfitchet Castle, a living history museum in Essex, England.
It’s been known for some time that dogs can identify the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus with a sniff, but now we know a dog’s olfactory ability is so precise it can detect even long covid cases. The new research is published in Frontiers in Medicine.
Winkie Winkerton left her condo above the sink on June 25 after 11 years of happy living in upstate New York. She was at least 16. The good people at Heart of the Catskills, a humane society in Delhi, drove two hours for a prearranged meet and greet at the Kingston Petco, where I waited with a carrier. “Not everyone wants a senior cat,” said her chauffeur. Since no one picked up the black cat sitting in the next cage, I got her too.
The chihuahua mix named Mr. Happy Face has issues. The little guy has tumors, neurological problems that make standing or walking a struggle, has to wear a diaper, and holds his head at an odd angle. In spite of these medical problems – or because of them – Mr. Happy Face is a winner: he just took the World’s Ugliest Dog honors in Petaluma, California.
They called him wrinkled and jowly, and now they call him the best. Trumpet the bloodhound has won Best In show at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, held for the second year in a row in Tarrytown, NY.
This is a picture of two friends: the beagle Daisy Mae and the diva Sheila Nadler in what she calls her “domicile” on West 72nd Street. I have been thinking of both a lot recently.
Cats love catnip. They eat it, roll in it, and clearly get a buzz from it. Most cats also love silver vine, a plant not closely related to catnip. Even big cats – like jaguars and tigers – will enjoy a good chew.
On March 13, a 3-year-old husky named Leon disappeared from the Iditarod, having slipped his collar at a checkpoint roughly halfway through Alaska’s annual sled race. Three months and 150 miles later, Leon has been found “understandably skinny but seemingly healthy,” Iditarod spokesperson Shannon Markley told the Associated Press.
A visit to the dentist can be pure terror for small kids, but a clinic in Quito, Ecuador has found a soothing presence that can calm the most anxious nerves: a dog named Aldo.
