This Poor Dog Proves Canines Can Be Allergic to Humans Too

Meet Adam, a rescued black labrador that was recently diagnosed with the most bizarre condition – he’s allergic to humans!

For several months, Adam had suffered from unexplained hair fall and skin inflammation. He was blistered and balding with wounds where he’d bitten and scratched himself. Robin Herman, who chose to rescue Adam despite his condition, tried everything to fix his illness. But she and the rest of the staff at Lucky Dog Retreat Rescue were totally perplexed about his condition, they just couldn’t figure out what was wrong.

“We fed him the best possible food, got him flea free, gave him baths twice a week, special baths from the vet,” she said. Although Adam started to look better with all the care, his skin condition wasn’t going away.

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Meet Bodhi, the Adorable Pooch Who Works as a Menswear Model for Famous Clothing Brands

Bodhi the dog has no time for silly pastimes like chasing squirrels or playing fetch – he’s quite serious about his high flying career as a top New York menswear model. The four-year-old Shiba Inu is well known in fashion circles as ‘Menswear Dog’ – he has landed paid modelling contracts with top brands such as Coach, Todd Snyder and Salvatore Ferragamo. He’s also a social media sensation with over 140,000 followers on Instagram.

Bodhi’s owners – Yena Kim, 27, and Dave Fung, 29 – came up with the idea as a joke; they dressed up their adorable Shiba Inu in a few fancy suits and hats. When they posted photographs on their Facebook page, the response they received was overwhelmingly positive. So they started their own Tumblr page featuring Bodhi dressed according to popular fashion trends.

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Veterinary Student Stitches ‘I Love You’ into the Skin of Dog He Operated on

In a bizarre display of love, a Polish veterinary student recently stitched the words ‘I Love You’ on to the skin of a dog that he operated on. The fourth year student at the University of Warmia and Mazury, in Olsztyn, then posted the image on to his girlfriend’s Facebook wall, so she could admire his handiwork. The grisly picture was immediately criticized by the couple’s friends and college mates for being grotesque and unethical.

The girlfriend, who is a member of the student council at the same university, defended the photograph: “What’s so unethical about it? He learnt to sew in order to help and is just showing his skill.” Read More »

Florida Entrepreneur Creates Purses Out of Dog Hair

Doris Carvalho, an entrepreneur from Tampa, has come up with an original way of combining her two greatest passions – veterinary science and fashion. She recycles dog hair that’s left over from grooming, converting it into high-end designer purses.

Doris loves her new job so much that she hopes to convert it into a business – she’s currently running a Kickstarter campaign to raise $15,000 toward that exact purpose. That’s just enough money to make her first line of 30 purses and pay for marketing.

“These handbags prove that high-end can be made eco-friendly from your pet for you,” she pointed out. “I turn this groomed dog fur that would be garbage anywhere else in the world into these handbags. I sterilize and I use them to make the thread, the yarn. It’s reused, recycled.”

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Loyal Dog Goes 15 Days without Food Guarding His Teenage Master’s Grave

When Indian teenager Bhaskar Shri passed away in a car accident, his loyal dog Tommy refused to leave his graveside for two whole weeks. The sweet old canine reportedly went without food the entire time, guarding the grave in the outskirts of Chennai city through 15 hot days and freezing nights.

Bhaskar was a construction worker who loved dogs dearly – he had adopted Tommy five years ago and the pair of them quickly became inseparable. When Bhaskar became victim to a terrible road collision, Tommy was heartbroken. The dog simply refused to part with his master and mourned by his graveside for 15 days.

Emaciated Tommy was finally rescued a fortnight later by Dawn Williams, an animal rescue officer at the non-profit Blue Cross of India. “I first spotted the brown dog sitting on a fresh grave one evening as I happened to walk past in the first week of August, but at the time I didn’t think anything of it,” she said.

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Amazing Dog Travels Four Miles Every Night to Feed Her Animal Friends

Dogs are amazing creatures and Lilica, a Brazilian stray, is a perfect example of that. She lives in a junkyard, hangs out with a motley crew, and she makes sure her friends never go hungry. Every night, Lilica walks four miles in the dark, braving the rush hour traffic, just to bring food back to the other animals in her ‘family’ – a dog, a cat, a few chickens and a mule.

Lilica was abandoned at a junkyard in San Carlos, Brazil, when she was just a puppy. Neile Vaina Antonio, the junkyard caretaker, took her in and cared for her. As she grew, she became friends with all the other animals in the junkyard. It appears that they offer each other warmth, companionship and solidarity.

Three years ago, Lilica was pregnant and had eight puppies. As her responsibilities grew, she knew she had to find a way to provide food for her cubs, as there was little to be found at the junkyard. That’s when she started going out at night, walking for miles, in search of scraps. During one of her nightly travels, Lilica was lucky enough to meet dog-lover Lucia, who took pity on her.

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Spanish Town Installs World’s First Public Toilet for Dogs

A small town in Spain has come up with a new way of dealing with dog waste – a canine public toilet. Located along a busy thoroughfare in El Vendrell, northeastern Spain, the stainless steel contraption consists of two sections placed side by side – a doggy potty and a doggy urinal.

The potty is a raised steel platform with a covered hole. Dog owners need to lift the lid for their pets to defecate, and later press a handle to flush. Jets of water are released, which carry the excrement through underground pipes into the sewer system. Right next to the potty is the urinal – also a raised platform with small holes over which dogs can squat. The public toilet is the brainchild of dog-lover Enric Girona, who has spent over ten years observing and photographing dogs. Through his work, he recognized the need for a toilet for dogs, so he set about creating one himself. “Over the years, I’ve seen that if you train and raise dogs well, these animals can be just like humans,” he explained.

Girona invented several variants of the toilet, modifying each one as he learned more and more about dog behavior. The present version of the urinal, for example, doesn’t clean itself perfectly when flushing, because need to pick the odor so they are lured to the toilet. He also had the location in mind while designing these toilets, so they’d naturally blend into surroundings like parks and other public places. “You can’t have something that clashes with the setting,” he pointed out. “The design was done with the concept of being attractive.”

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Husky Dog Raised around Cats Actually Acts Like One

Tally, a shy husky mix, is a dog with a difference. While most dogs chase cats, Tally prefers to behave like one. Well, she can’t be blamed for it – she was raised around cats so, you know how it goes, doggy see, doggy do.

Redditor Dong_of_justice, recently put up photographs of the insanely adorable dog. She can be seen sitting around the house with her legs tucked under her body, and hanging out under the dining table or in boxes. And she never barks – the poor thing probably doesn’t even know that she can.

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Aviation-Themed Film Studio Opens Fear of Flying School for Dogs

For the first time ever, Air Hollywood, an aviation-themed film studio in Los Angeles, is offering a unique service for dogs – classes to help man’s best friend overcome fear of flying.

The idea for the school came to ‘Air Hollywood’ owner Talaat Captan, after he witnessed an uptight dog and an equally uptight owner struggling to pass through airport security. “There was a light bulb right on top of my head, saying, I have all these big facilities, millions of dollars’ worth of sets, why don’t I do something really useful? And that’s how it all started,” he said. So he developed the concept for the fear of flying school, and it turned out to be a big hit with pet owners.

“Getting to practice it, I would feel comfortable going on an airplane with my dog. I would know exactly what to do.” said Stacey Huckbea, one of the instructors at the school. The dogs and their owners are trained quite thoroughly on the entire aviation experience – checking in, going through the terminal, TSA screening, and boarding an airplane. The school also simulates take off turbulence and landing in a fake airplane that sits on a working sound stage used for TV and movie productions.

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Tiny Terror – Arizona Town Terrorized by Packs of Stray Chihuahuas

I always thought Chihuahuas were pretty harmless, but apparently they can be quite vicious in large numbers. The residents of Maryvale, a small town in Arizona, can certainly vouch for the fact. The town is filled with stray pooches that are terrorizing children and defecating all over the place.

Local animal control officials say they’re finding it quite difficult to control the Chihuahua population. They’ve received over 6,000 calls from frustrated residents – three times higher than any other town in the state. According to Melissa Gable from Maricopa County Animal Control (MCAC), these dogs aren’t spayed or neutered so they’re always looking out for a mate and having babies. This makes the problem worse.

“There’s a lot of dogs in the street,” said Stephanie Guzman, a resident. “People will start going crazy because they bark all night.”

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Huachito, “Bolivia’s Most Loyal Dog”, Still Waits for His Master Five Years after His Death

Huachito is an extremely faithful Bolivian dog, named after his famous Japanese counterpart, Hachiko. Just like Hachiko, who stunned the world with his loyalty to his dead owner, Huachito is mourning the death of his beloved human friend.

Huachito, ‘Huachi’, or simply ‘Hachi’ to some, is of an unknown breed. This remarkable dog has surprised the residents of Pope Paul Avenue, in Cochabamba, Bolivia, where he comes daily and waits for his master to return. Unfortunately, the dog’s owner passed away five years ago in a tragic accident.

According to Roman Lujan Bilbao, a local butcher, “It should be about five years since the owner died in a motorcycle accident. The dog has come and stood here ever since.” The locals have taken to feeding and caring for the dog while it waits patiently.

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The Komondor – Nature’s Adorable Living Mop

The Komondor is undoubtedly one of the oldest and most unique-looking dog breeds in the world. It was mentioned for the first time in the Code of Hammurabi (a set of laws created by the Babylonian king Hammurabi around 1750 BC). However, the Komondor is nowadays considered Hungary’s traditional dog.

The first thing you’ll notice about these dogs is their resemblance to giant mops: indeed, their 2000-cord coat alone weighs around 15 pounds (30 kilos) and they are approximately three feet tall (a bit over 90 centimeters). The Komondor’s cords develop during its first two years of life and their length increases with time, as the coat grows. Thankfully, the dog doesn’t need brushing, but you do have to separate the cords, which may take a while, as they tend to get tangled. If the dog’s natural look is maintained, which means letting its corded coat grow long, you’ll be able to notice its distinctive rectangular shape. These adorable leaving mops were used as livestock guard dogs, and with their corded coat acting as camouflage they were especially useful for guarding sheep. The Komondor breed is believed to have been so efficient at its task that it nearly wiped out all Hungary’s wolf population.

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Meet Boomer the Dog, a Canine Stuck in a Human Body

Roll over and shake paws with Boomer the Dog – a man with a canine soul, who often roams the streets of Pittsburgh in a large dog costume, barking at every passing car and digging holes in the backyard. Boomer takes his persona very seriously and wishes everyone would treat him like a real dog.

Born Gary Matthews, Boomer is now a 50-something unemployed computer technician who lives by himself. He wears ears made from his long hair and a collar with a dog tag with his adopted name, Boomer the Dog. He rarely dresses as a human as he loves wearing his full size paper dog costume and getting on all fours. He eats dog food with his snout from a special bowl on the floor, barks, chases cars and digs for bones in the backyard like any other canine would. The guy even sleeps in his own indoor doghouse which, according to him, is much more comfortable than a human bed. Boomer, who resides in Pennsylvania, adopted his canine persona after watching the NBC hit show “Here’s Boomer” when he was only a child. The popular TV series was about a mixed-breed stray called Boomer who travels around helping people in trouble. This idea appealed to Mathews and soon, his fascination with dogs in general as well as with the star of the show took a life of its own and became his ultimate obsession.

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Disney’s 101 Dalmatians Inspires Dog Lover to Take in as Many Spotted Canines as He Can Find

Nelson Vergara loved the movie “101 Dalmatians” so much that after watching it, he couldn’t help himself from adopting any spotted dog that crossed his path. His love and dedication for Dalmatians is well known throughout his hometown of Santiago, Chile where he is called the “Dalmatian Man,” a name he got from the 42 liver spotted canines living in his backyard. Vergara is so obsessed with the popular breed that he even painted black dots on his white van.

“It all started because of that film,” Vergara says. “That was computer-generated. But I wanted to do the real thing.” But the true reasons behind his passion is to save the millions of stray dogs which roam Chile’s streets every day. The number rises even further during working hours when pet owners leave their dogs outside. These dogs are not very well taken care of either – they are never sprayed for fleas or neutered. Vergara’s intentions are purely humanitarian for he wants to raise awareness about the growing number of stray dogs which the country’s Humane Society considers alarming.

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China’s Bizarre Pet Craze – Puppies Painted with Toxic Varnish to Make Them Look Like Unique Breeds

In 2010, the Year of the Tiger,  a series of pictures showing orange puppies with black stripes caused controversy in China after they were posted online. Hoping to make a profit off them, some vendors had started selling striped dogs under the false pretense that they were a new breed.  At the time, everybody questioned the authenticity of those photos, not knowing if they were photoshopped, if the puppies where genetically altered or simply painted, but now everyone knows the truth. These are “one week puppies” a name that hints at their short life expectancy due to the toxicity of the varnish they are painted with. Believe it or not, they are still very popular in China.

It seems making your canine companion look like other animals using toxic varnish has become very popular in China. Pandas and tigers are especially sought after and dogs resembling these animals have been showing up in every city. “I have seen this kind of dog more than once in China, once in ZhuHai last fall and then in the city of Guangzhou. Both times the dogs were for sale from a street vendor, they were not all the same color, but they were all striped. The only thing I can think is that the stripes are spray painted on,” a woman wrote on a forum. The coloring process used in the case of the “Bengal dogs” (tiger-skinned dogs) must have required some powerful chemicals as the people curious enough to buy a striped individual reported that the dog was very ill. “I recently bought one of these dogs in Beijing China,” another person wrote . “I got it home and it was very dehydrated. I took it to the vet today and they confirmed that its hair had been dyed. It is a black dog, that gets to be about medium size. They dye the orange part, that’s why the orange is never around the eyes, or nose, and the stripes are so uniform. The vet stated that the dye would wear off in about 2 months, and that the dog would be healthy unless we continued to dye the dog,” he detailed.

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