Elections in India’s Uttar Pradesh state are literally going to the dogs as several candidates are reportedly using stray dogs as billboards to make sure their campaign messages reach as many people as possible.

At least two candidates – one in Rae Bareli and another in Ballia district – have been attaching their campaign banners and posters to stray dogs in their areas and letting them roam around. Photos of these walking, barking advertising billboards went viral on social media this past weekend, angering animal protection activists, and inspiring all sorts of memes. But despite the negative feedback to the advertising tactic, one of the candidates who admitted to using dogs to get his message out there has no regrets.

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Echo, a two-year-old Harlequin Dane, has been turning heads everywhere she goes after her owner dyed her coat purple, blue, pink and turquoise.

Sierra Schoon, a 22-year-old woman from Grand Junction in Colorado, has been coloring her psychiatric service dog, Echo, using pet-safe dye, ever since the dog was about six-months old. The young dog groomer said that she uses vegetable-based Arctic Fox hair dye, and that Echo loves to just sit there and be pampered for three or four hours, while she applies the dye. Apparently, the dog also loves the attention she gets when they go out for walks, as people tend to get very confused by her unusual look.

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A zoo in Xianning, Central China, has sparked outrage on social media after it was revealed that it had tried to pass off a Rottweiler as a wolf.

Footage showing a visitor to the Xiangwushan Zoo in Xianning, Hubei province, visiting the wolf enclosure only to find a Rottweiler resting inside went viral on Chinese social media last week. The man who recorded the video, a certain Mr. Xu, can be heard saying “Woof! Are you a wolf?” to the dog, which doesn’t seem to concerned with the fact that it looks nothing like a wolf. Xu later told Chinese journalists that he asked the zoo staff about the animal, and they told him that they used to have an actual age, but it died of old age.

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The world is full of pampered pets, but while some depend on their owners wealth, a lucky few have their own fortunes. And no animal is as wealthy as Gunther IV, a beautiful German shepherd and member of the world’s richest dog dynasty.

It’s hard to imagine any animal being the beneficiary of a fortune of nearly $400 million, but such a lucky pet actually exists. Gunther IV, a descendant of Gunther II, the original world’s wealthiest animal, is worth a reported $375 million. He lives in a multi-million-dollar mansion in Miami, has a full staff looking after him, included his own maid and butler, spends his days playing and swimming, and eats only the finest food money can buy, including caviar and truffles. Gunther also has his own corporation, whose employees manage his assets and make sure the dynasty’s fortune keeps growing.

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A UK man who had spent around £300 on vet bills after his pet dog started limping, learned that there was nothing wrong with the animal, and that he was allegedly only limping out of sympathy for him.

Russell Jones was left unable to walk without limping after breaking his ankle in an accident last year. One day, while out on a walk with his dog Billy, Russel noticed that the canine was limping as well. On another occasion, as he was limping around the house, his partner Michelle noticed that Billy was sort of copying him, so they called a vet to have the dog checked out. Only after paying around £300 ($410)  for X-rays and checkups, did he learn that Billy was only imitating his gait out of sympathy.

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Wen Junhong, a 68-year-old woman from China, has been adopting stray animals for over two decades, and now shares her home with 1,300 canines, 100 cats and four horses.

When Wen Junhong adopted her first stray dog, twenty years ago, she had no idea that she would one day be taking care of over 1,000 dogs, but today she has over 1,300 canines in her care, and plans to take in even more of them. The dedicated animal lover gets up at 4 am every morning, cleans up the pens of about 20 to 30 barrels of waste, cooks over 500 kg or rice, vegetables and meat for the animals, and makes sure her “pets” are in good health and not fighting among each other.

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The Germans are known for their machine engineering, but it turns out that they’re not to shabby when it comes to genetic engineering either, and the jagdterrier, a living breathing hunting machine, is a perfect example.

Literally German for “hunt terrier”, the jagdterrier is a hunting dog developed in Germany between the two world wars, in a time when German nationalism and feeling of superiority were at an all-time high. Hunting cynologists Walter Zangenberg, Carl Erick Grunewald, and Rudolph Friess decided that the popular Fox Terrier was being bred more as a show dog, and less as an efficient hunting machine, so they started working on a new breed of terrier, one that would be superior to British and American breeds.

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A loyal pooch reportedly managed to walk 60 km back to his home after being forgotten by his owners in a highway service area 26 days prior.

According to local media, the 7-year-old dog, named Dou Dou, was forgotten in a by a Chinese family in a motorway service area when they stopped for a break on a long trip. Apparently, no one noticed that Dou Dou was missing until they arrived at their destination, several hours later. They reportedly went back to look for the pet the very next day, but found no trace of him. Luckily, the fluffy canine was able to return home by himself, after nearly a month. He was filthy and emaciated after the 60km walk, but otherwise ok.

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A Mexican animal rights activist has been praised as a hero by animal lovers around the world after it was reported that he sheltered around 300 stray dogs and many other animals in his home to protect them from a hurricane.

On October 7, at around 5:30 in the morning, Hurricane Delta made landfall in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo. Hours before, Ricardo Pimentel, an animal rights activist from the town of  Leona Vicario, was busy making sure that the facilities at the Tierra de Animales animal shelter he founded were prepared for the strong winds and heavy rains that were about to hit the region. The most radical thing Pedro did was fill his own house with over 300 hundred dogs, as well as some cats, chickens, rabbits and even a hedgehog, to make sure they were safe from the hurricane.

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A dog in China recently made national headlines for being found alive and well after spending over a month trapped under the ruin of his master’s following a landslide.

On July 8, the people of Cangbaotian village, in China’s Guizhou Province had to be hastily evacuated before most of their homes succumbed to a terrible landslide. Only a handful of the 130 buildings in the village were left standing, and despite being unable to retrieve most of their possessions before the evacuation, residents weren’t allowed to return until the area was deemed safe by authorities. Earlier this month, one man who returned to see if anything could be salvaged from his collapsed home was shocked to hear barking coming from under the rubble.

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Moo, a 7-month-old Dachshund from Florida, has a head that doesn’t quite match the rest of his body. He has the black and brown head of a Dachshund, but below the neck he is all Dalmatian.

One look at Moo and it’s easy to see why many people assume that he is wearing some sort of costume or pajamas the first time they see him. His unique look is not the consequence of some mysterious condition, he was just born like that, and he’s actually a healthy and happy little dog. With over 21,000 followers on Instagram alone, Moo is also on his way to becoming an Instagram influencer.

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Borzoi hounds typically have longer snouts than most other dog breeds, but one specimen is getting a lot of attention these days for having potentially the world’s longest snout, with a length of 31 centimetres.

Two-year-old Eris is a white Borzoi Sighthound from Richmond, Virginia, who has been getting a lot of attention online for her unusually long snout. Ever sine Eris’ owner, Lily Kambourian, posted a photo of her nose from an angle that really showed how incredibly long it was, people have been fascinated by her schnozzle. Lily says that it was quite obvious that Eris and her siblings had an overbite (a genetic defect) since they were only puppies, but she didn’t care, and she certainly never expected this to become her most popular trait.

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Blaze, an outgoing Labrador Retriever from Finland became an overnight internet sensation after photos showing his color change from black to white went viral on social media.

Blaze was born with a pure black fur and stayed that way for most of his life, but last year, his human master, Santeri, noticed a small white patch on his ear. He didn’t think too much of it, but the patch kept getting bigger, and before long it spread to the 10-year-old pooch’s face and torso, gradually turning his black coat, white. A photo showing Blaze’s transformation over the last year was recently posted on the Facebook group Dogspotting Society, where it received over 32,000 likes and nearly 3,000 comments from people all over the world.

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People passing by the Mega shopping center in the Russian city of Kaliningrad every day have gotten used to the blue sweater-wearing husky calmly waiting for something or someone on the cold pavement. He’s been dubbed the Russian Hachiko and the comparison actually makes some sense.

The clean blue sweater that the Russian Hachiko wears every day is a clear indication that he is not some stray, but just to make sure people don’t chase him away, his owner, a woman named Svetlana, always hangs a hand-written home next to the dog explaining that he is simply waiting for her to get off work so they can go home together. Apparently, the dog howls from morning til dusk if left alone in his owner’s apartment, so she prefers to take him with her in the morning, and leaves him outside the Mega shopping center, where he waits for like a good boy.

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A six-year-old Labrador Retriever from Canandaigua, New York recently set a new world record befitting his playful personality – most tennis balls held in a dog’s mouth at once.

Finley the dog loves tennis balls so much that he has developed a very special skill – picking up and holding up to six balls in his mouth, without any assistance from a human. His owners, the Molloy family, first noticed the pooch’s talent when he was two years old. Back then, he could fit up to four tennis balls in his mouth at once, but before they knew it, Finley started showing up with five balls between his teeth, and then finally with six, which stretched his cheeks to the extreme.

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