Tag Archive for puppy

Beware those Doggy Eyebrows

Come on, now, dog-lovers. We all know that our furry friends manipulate us. Now science has proven it. It seems that dogs can move their eyebrows whenever they want to, making their eyes bigger and reaching into our hearts (really a hormonal reaction). In fact, they move their eyebrows more often when making eye contact with humans than they do when engaging in their all-time favorite activity–eating. They know it gets to us, and they have a deep need for eye contact with humans, a need that wolves, their relatives, don’t have.

Read about the study done by a team at University of Portsmouth’s Dog Cognition Centre, published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, titled The Science of Puppy Dog Eyes.

That’s NEWS?!

Is my definition of “news” outmoded, narrow, or what?  I saw a “news” item in one of those little boxes that Comcast uses on their TV screen-saver.  It informed me that an actress and animal lover, Kaley Cuoco, had “adopted a cute puppy named Chester.”

Oooooooooooooooooooooooooo…kay……

 

Something to Bark At

This is National Puppy Day.  Not an officially-sanctioned day, just something Colleen Paige dreamed up in 2006 to call attention to dogs and the joy and love they bring to people.  AND to make more people aware of the horrors of puppy mills–the more than 8,000 backyard breeders and puppy mills in the U.S. that supply pet stores. At these places, dogs are often kept in unsanitary, cruel conditions, then killed when they can no longer produce puppies.  The motto for today is “Adopt Instead of Shop!”

I agree with that.  Here’s a picture of my 10-year-old “ooops” puppy (adopted from a family).  Her name is Riley Casey O’Donnell.  She, like all my dogs before her, is a constant lesson on how to give unconditional love, even when the recipient doesn’t seem to deserve it.

downsized_0610131521