iBone Chew Toy Gives Sneak Peek at Dog-Centric App Store
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Russian PM Tracking His Dog Via Satellite
[Image courtesy of Picasa, thanks MJ]
10 Funny Pet Web Sites
Perhaps one of the most popular things to do on the Internet is upload and broadcast pictures of your beloved animals. Everything from pictures and videos to podcasts of pet shenanigans have found ample homes online. Unfortunately, the vast majority of pet sites are of the nausea-inducing "cute" variety. Since pets can induce hours of laughter (regardless of whether they're wearing Groucho glasses or ladies' hats or not), we here at Switched decided to scour the Web for funny pet sites, and we found quite a few. What follows is a sampling of our favorite funny pet sites, some old, some new. Funny, of course, depends on the mind of the beholder, but we'd be lying if we didn't admit that we pretty much guffawed at every last site on this list. Check them out....
1. Lolcats
Lolcats are funny pictures of cats doing dumb things with broken, misspelled English captions placed over them. The result is often hilarious, such as a cat jumping out of a toilet with the following caption: "I'M IN UR TOILET USIN' UR FACILITIES." The central hub for all things lolcat, icanhascheezburger.com, is currently enjoying a resurgence of popularity after a few months of hype-trend-overload. The site has been online for two years and now includes a constellation of sites for lolcats, loldogs and political lolz -- the same thing, but for dogs and politicians.
Dog Gets $18K Bionic Leg
We assume that Reg Walker has money to spare since he spent £10,000 (a little more than $18,000) to fit his eight-and-a-half-year-old American Bulldog, Coal, with a specially-designed prosthetic limb. What makes the implant unique is that the titanium alloy used mimics animal hide, so the skin and bone will grow and seal the prosthetic to Coal's body.
The successful surgery means that Coal can return to his normal place by his owners side. "He goes everywhere with me - he goes on tour, he's the only dog to have allowed into Live 8 and the only dog that has ever been backstage at the Royal Albert Hall," Walker said.
That's one lucky dog! [From: Daily Mail]
Dog Calls 911, Saves Owner's Life
We've all seen the "I've fallen, and I can't get up!" commercials and chuckled, but what if you actually did fall and weren't able to get up? What if you couldn't even push a button to call for help? What would you do? That's the situation Scottsdale, Arizona resident Joe Stalnaker found himself in this past weekend, and thankfully someone else -- his dog -- was there to help him .
Joe suffered a head injury during military training ten years ago, and has had crippling seizures ever since. He adopted his dog Buddy at the age of just eight weeks, and trained the now 18-month-old German Shepherd to check on him and to press a button on the phone to dial 911 in case of an emergency. Over the weekend when Joe suffered a seizure that left him unable to move, Buddy made the call. Amazingly, this is the fourth time since Joe has owned him that he's managed this feat.
You can hear a part of the call, and Buddy's whimpering for help, in the above video -- it's enough to make even a jaded blogger misty-eyed. [From: Telegraph.co.uk]
Joe suffered a head injury during military training ten years ago, and has had crippling seizures ever since. He adopted his dog Buddy at the age of just eight weeks, and trained the now 18-month-old German Shepherd to check on him and to press a button on the phone to dial 911 in case of an emergency. Over the weekend when Joe suffered a seizure that left him unable to move, Buddy made the call. Amazingly, this is the fourth time since Joe has owned him that he's managed this feat.
You can hear a part of the call, and Buddy's whimpering for help, in the above video -- it's enough to make even a jaded blogger misty-eyed. [From: Telegraph.co.uk]
Dog Swallows Owner's Cell Phone -- Whole
Take the case of Nero, a Doberman-Great Dane mix, from Valhalla, South Africa, who got himself into a little hot water when he swallowed his owner's cell phone. Driekie Boojens, daughter of the dog's owner Marie Matthews, was feeding Nero when he snatched the woman's Nokia handset right out of her daughter's hands and swallowed it whole.
Nero was rushed to the local animal hospital and had surgery the next day to remove the phone. While they were in there, vets also found a small collection of rocks in the dog's stomach. More evidence of the intelligence of our canine friends.
Nero is fine now. The twelve-year-old mutt has a large scar on his abdomen, but is otherwise healthy. The Nokia on the other hand, had to be put down. Nero's stomach acid simply proved to be too much for it to handle. [From: Telegraph]
Cell-Phone-Sniffing Dogs Unleashed on Jails
One of the most problematic items of contraband that are sneaked into prisons are cell phones. More than drugs or weapons, cell phones cause headaches not just for the corrections officers, but also for law enforcement on the outside. With a cell phone, criminal masterminds can continue to direct actions outside the prison walls and have unmonitored communication with potential suppliers of additional contraband. Cell phones are even sold and rented by prisoners for sky high prices.But in Maryland, prisons are fighting back with a trio of dogs trained to smell out cell phones instead of drugs. In a recent demonstration for the press, two dogs were charged with finding cell phones stashed in cells. In all but one of the trials, the dogs tracked down the phones in under 30 seconds.
Like drugs and people, cell phones have a unique scent the dogs are trained to pick up. Even so, it's still more difficult for dogs to sniff out a cell phone than, say, a brick of marijuana, 'cause phones just aren't that smelly.
Gosh, being a prisoner just keeps getting harder -- first they took away their pigeons, now they're taking away their cell phones. You'd think they did something wrong. [Source: Washington Post, Via: Textually]
New Security System Interprets Guard Dog Barking
by Will Safer, posted May 22nd 2008 at 11:00AM
When a dog barks, do you know what it is saying – or at least trying to say?A system designed by an Israeli tech firm is being employed by the Israel Prison Service to help guards understand when a guard dog's barking is "normal" and when the dog is stressed, which could mean that a dangerous situation is developing.
Guard dogs are often able to sense a developing situation well before people or automated systems recognize danger – but human guards often don't hear the dogs or ignore the barking until it is too late.
Watch a video demonstration here.
That's why the developers at Bio-Sense, a high-tech company near Tel Aviv, created the program to interpret dog barks. They recorded thousands of dog barks from a variety of situations, from playtime to cat encounters to real emergencies. They then analyzed the barking to differentiate between normal and emergency situations. Now they claim the system identifies when a dog senses a problem and when it is just, ahem, crying wolf.
This goes well beyond the the LED light that purportedly interprets what a dog's wagging tail means, although a group of Hungarian scientists have developed a fairly complex program to interpret the language of the Mudi herding breed. The Hungarian system does not appear to be used by anyone yet for practical purposes.
The system from Bio-Sense, however, is in place with more than 100 clients in Israel, from prisons that want to prevent jail breaks to farmers who are trying to prevent theft. [Source: USA Today.]
LED Gadget Translates Your Dog's Tail Wags
We've seen toys that claim to decifer dog barks (and even fancy computers that can decode the barks of a particular breed of dog better than humans can), but we still haven't seen a big glowing sign that spells out what your dog is trying to say -- until now.
Okay, truth be told, you still won't, at least not at home, unless you run to New York's MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) for a demo at the Elastic Mind exhibit, since this device is just a concept.
The proposed device would attach to the dog's tail, measure his or her WPM (Wags Per Minute) and use that to figure out what he/she is trying to say. It would then spell out your canine's message in LED lights in mid air as the your dogs tail wags, turning it into a tacky novelty message board.
From Engadget
Related Links:
Pet Adoption Web Site Created by 6th-Grader
A Maryland sixth grader has combined her interest in animals with a healthy dollop of Web-page-building skills to build a site that matches cats, dogs and other animals that need homes with people who are looking to adopt the furry friends.
Eleven-year-old Jennie Lupkin of Ijamsville, Md., went from matching pets at a local animal shelter with people placing requests on Craigslist but soon went well beyond, creating the site "Helping Animals One At A Time" (www.freewebs.com/frederickanimalcontrol/).
Lupkin -- who has a bichon frise dog, a hermit crab, two birds and fish -- posts pictures of cats, dogs and other animals that are waiting for adoption at the local animal shelter. The site includes highlights of pets in need of homes and encourages people to volunteer at local animal shelters. It also features a page where site visitors can leave comments. So far, response has been on the positive side.
Besides Lupkin getting lots of attention for her age, the site stakes a claim to perhaps a new type of matchmaking Web site, in the spirit of dating sites like Match.com or Jdate.com.
Everyone is looking for companionship. Maybe a little furry friend is in your future?
From Examiner.com.
Related links:
- Computer Interprets Dogs' Barks
- PetCell, the Mobile Phone for Dogs
- Truth About Cats and Dogs (and Photos)
