A dangerous dog has ‘escaped’ from a death row kennel in Cardiff on Tuesday, as persons unknown sprung the dog on the very day that time elapsed for any appeals against its destruction.

The dog, a Staffordshire cross with the name of Tank, was responsible for biting nine people on May 25th in Cardiff. Tank was in the care of a 14-year-old girl, who was found guilty of having an ‘out of control’ dangerous dog. An order for Tank’s destruction (more…)

‘We have the technology to rebuild him’ – that was the line associated with Lee Majors as the Bionic Man, a man who was rebuilt using the latest technology to create an indestructible man. Coal, the American Bulldog, has also been rebuilt using bionic technology, at least his front left paw.

Last year Coal had his paw amputated because of cancer, and as he also had osteoarthritis in his other three legs he would have been too weak to stand on three legs, so faced being put to sleep.

However Reg Walker, his owner, couldn’t bear to lose beloved dog and stumped up the £10,000 required to give Coal a new (more…)

The largest number of puppies ever recorded in a litter was from a Neopolitan Bull Mastiff called Tia, in Manea in Cambridgeshire.

Tia gave birth to 24 puppies! That’s a huge amount, considering a normal size litter even for the Neopolitan Bull Mastiff breed is around six to eight puppies.

Imagine having to look after twenty four of these great big beauties…

Tia’s owners, Damian Ward and his girlfriend, Anne Kellegher, had thought it would be quite a large litter after their vet did a scan and thought there would be around ten puppies, so imagine their shock when they had (more…)

The economic downturn being experienced in the UK has caused a great many pedigree dogs to be abandoned by their owners. This is happening because the middle class owners are finding it difficult to pay for the dogs’ upkeep.

As a result, many expensive pedigree dogs are being handed in to rescue shelters to be re-homed. Some are being dumped on the streets to fend for themselves.

Susan Tonner is the manager of the ‘Dogs Trust West Calder’. She says their dogs’ home is full, with all of its sixty places occupied, and dog owners looking to re-home their dogs are facing (more…)

Homer the Labrador survived a train accident in true ‘Heroes’ style recently, when it appears the Train ran him over, but he somehow survived as the wound cauterised itself from the heat of the train.

Homer, from Wiltshire, disappeared one day when he was out walking with his owner, Ray Bratton. Ray couldn’t find Homer for three days, until he came across him near a railway line. Homer had a wound that stretched from his stomach to his backbone, having clearing been run over by the train. (more…)

Stray dogs are becoming a real problem within the UK as a staggering 96,892 strays were picked up by councils in 2007, working out at 11 dogs per hour for the year. These figures came from The Dogs Trust, via a research from GfK NOP.

According to Chris Lawrence, the veterinary director with the Dogs Trust, the number of strays picked up in 2007 was actually fewer than that in 2006. He added the number of stray dogs in the UK is still too high though. (more…)

We’ve already heard this week how a sniffer dog is helping to tackle the plight felt by the bumblebees by seeking out their nests for researchers, and now sniffer dogs are tackling the problem of DVD piracy.

Currently DVD piracy in the UK is a £200 million business. After the United States of America, Britain has the second biggest pirated film market with a reported 49.5 million illegal DVDs sold in 2007.

In order to battle the problem police sniffer dogs have been trained to detect the plastics that around found in DVD packaging. Two black Labradors, named Lucky and Flo, have were trained in Northern Ireland and have proved very successful at detecting the plastics used in the illegal DVD packaging. So much so that the dogs have become marked canines. The gangsters have put a bounty on their heads to the tune of £17,000. (more…)