Word: dogged
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Washington may get sleepy in the dog days of August, but the airwaves are alive with a political foodfight. From the left and the right, the unions and the corporations, political campaign ads are saturating our television screens with arguments for and against President Obama's health-care reform effort. They feature the staples of political advertising - fear mongering and comedy, comforting background music and ominous voiceovers. Depending on when you tune in, they promise either to cure your ills or turn America into Great Britain. And though the ad war is just getting started, it's time...
Bruno Piccinelli, head of UCIS, Italy's association of rescue-dog trainers, says the breeds, which are innately strong in the water, are trained from puppyhood until they are at least two years old to make water rescues. Dogs have long been taught to respond to specific types of water accidents and other emergencies as well as to use their keen hearing and sense of smell to assist in search-and-rescue missions - canines were used to help find survivors in the rubble of the recent earthquake in L'Aquila, for example. But now some 70 pooches have been authorized...
...dog days of summer have hit Italy hard this year. During my family's beach holiday on the enchanting island of Sardinia, the surprise star was Totò, a pint-size, black-and-white, eight-month-old mixed-breed from Naples whom our friends brought along to a house we shared near the southern town of Pula. Totò - named for the famed Neapolitan comedian, not Dorothy's pooch - has exactly one trick in his repertoire: misbehaving. He swiped everything from pasta al pesto to a half-pound of butter off the kitchen table, ran around the yard with...
Piccinelli, who notes that Scandinavian countries also use rescue dogs in places where lots of people gather near water, describes how the four-legged lifeguards operate: sitting up alongside their human counterparts, the dogs are trained to recognize signs of drowning. When they see someone in trouble, they paddle out to the swimmer, ideally together with their human partners, though they can also go it alone. The distressed swimmer can grab hold of the dog, which will then paddle back to safety with the rescued swimmer in tow, or the dog will drag the person in with its teeth, tugging...
...pictures from the world's ugliest dog show...