Dog Clothing, Products, News and Tips

Boris the dog is big enough to be seen from space…kind of.

The three-year-old bull mastiff tips the scales at a whopping 196 lbs, and was tracked laying in the garden by a Google Earth satellite.

His huge brown body can clearly be seen stretched out in his favorite position.

The massive mastiff lives with the Milner family who run the Tudor Grange Hotel in Bournemouth, Dorset.

They were stunned when they zoomed in on their property online and saw the brown blob in the garden.

Fran Milner, 24, whose parents Bob and Carol run the hotel, said: “My brother-in-law was on the internet one day when he decided to look at a satellite picture of our hotel.

“He zoomed in a little way and noticed a big brown blob on the grass in front of the sundial.

“Then he realized it was Boris. He was in his favorite place. He loves lying there because it is a bit of a sun trap.

“We all had a look and couldn’t believe it. I knew he was big but didn’t think he was big enough to be seen from space.”

The satellites used to take the Google Earth images operate at an orbit of between 300 and 450 miles up in space.

The Milners have owned Boris since he was eight-weeks-old.

The average size of a bull mastiff is 126 lbs but they suspected he would be on the large size as his dad was also enormous.

Fran said the fact he regularly wolfs down a full English breakfast could have something to do with it too.
[Source: The Sun]

First celebrated in 1999, Take Your Dog To Work Day was created to celebrate the great companions dogs make and to encourage their adoption from humane societies, animal shelters and breed rescue clubs. This annual event encourages employers to experience the value of pets in their workplace for this one special day to promote pet adoptions.

On June 20, 2008, businesses, animal shelters and pet-care professionals from around the world will work together to better the lives of shelter dogs everywhere. Thousands of businesses will open their doors to employees’ pets on this day in celebration of the great companions dogs make. Pet Sitters International invites your business to Join us! as we celebrate a decade of working dogs!

We are asking every business–great and small–to become a true friend of the canine community by helping Pet Sitters International promote pet adoptions in a positive and proactive way! Explore our site to learn how you can participate, register your business and spread the word.

[Source: Take Your Dog to Work]

Dressed in plain clothes and driving white hybrid Toyotas, 14 agents in the Sanitation Department’s Canine Task Force fan out across the five boroughs each day to enforce the city’s “pooper scooper” law, which went into effect 30 years ago and became the model for other large cities.

The city’s 311 complaint line received about 3,000 complaints about dog waste last year, up from 2,100 in 2004, and so the Sanitation Department has added seven agents to the task force. In the first 11 months of the current fiscal year, which ends on June 30, they handed out 869 summonses, an increase of roughly 40 percent over the same period a year before.

The maximum fine, $100, which has not changed since the law was passed, is likely to go up soon: A bill increasing it to $250 is awaiting Gov. David A. Paterson’s signature. A spokesman for the governor said on Wednesday that Mr. Paterson was reviewing the measure.

(The parks department, which issues the tickets in city parks, has discretion to fine $50 to $1,000.)

The most summonses have been issued in the Bronx, with 335 in the first 11 months of this fiscal year, compared with 215 in Brooklyn, 157 in Queens, 109 in Manhattan and 53 in Staten Island.

“The more people you put out there, the more summonses you get,” said Sanitation Commissioner John J. Doherty, who wrote his first ticket as a sanitation enforcement agent in 1973 to a couple who didn’t curb their dog. Curbing dogs, or making them go in the gutter as opposed to the sidewalk, was the law at the time. (It is still on the books, but rarely enforced.) “We put more people on it. But still it’s not always easy to catch someone.”

To issue a summons, the agent must witness the dog doing its business and the owner walking away. With about a half-million dogs spread across the city’s 305 square miles and an offense that can take less than 30 seconds, the odds are against the agents. Most agents find only one or two so-called K-9 violations in progress each day. (The task force also issues $200 fines for dogs that are off-leash, and for throwing household trash in city garbage cans.)

[Source: The New York Times]

The campaign, which runs until August 15, kicked off with the launch of www.benefulbestfriends.ca, in which consumers are invited to upload pics of themselves with their dogs to win cash prizes of $10,000, $5,000 and $2,500. Weekly draws for digital cameras are woven into the initiative, and users are encouraged to vote for their favourite entries.

Online presence includes banners on Sympatico/MSN in June and July, driving users to www.purina.ca and www.walmart.ca. TV spots will air on CMT and the W network in June. The brand will also participate in the upcoming Woofstock event in Toronto on June 7 and 8.

Nestle Purina PetCare’s senior strategist for Beneful and Purina One Sharen Hills says the campaign is intended to “creatively introduce the Beneful brand to dog owners… The program is the first of its kind on the brand and involves user-generated content, which is exploding right now.”

Spider Marketing partner Christine Ross says celebrating the long-standing relationship between dog and owner will “ultimately drive brand awareness. Our creative approach tries to engage the consumer at every level and is designed to communicate the brand’s credentials while adding to Purina’s pet owner database nationally.”

[Source: Media in Canada]

Better preventative care, medicine, vitamins and food are making pets live longer, but leading to one costly side effect: higher medical bills, the Washington Post reports. Think of them as baby boomers on four legs. They’re older and fatter - just like the country at large. About 44% of the country’s dogs are older than 6, compared with 32% in 1987, according to the Post. And 45% of U.S. pets are overweight or obese, according to the Assn. for Pet Obesity Prevention.

But also like humans, they are racking up larger medical bills. According to the American Veterinary Medical Assn., spending on veterinary medicine doubled to $24.5 million in the last decade, the Post reports. So pet owners are now opting for expensive surgeries and preventative procedures - such as with the dog above, who was getting hip replacement surgery - when in the past a vet would resort to euthanasia.

“Many of the pet owners are baby boomers no longer burdened with the cost of raising children and are willing to use whatever disposable income they have to increase the quality of life of their furry - or scaly - companions,” the Post’s Nancy Trejos writes.

“Certainly we have seen an increasing level of sophistication in the last five or 10 years. As we see the bond between pet owners and their pets grow, they are demanding more sophistication,” said Ron DeHaven, an officer of the AVMA. “It rivals human medicine.”

One suggestion for those looking to limit pet bills: avoid purebred dogs, which usually have more health problems than your run-of-the-mill mutt.

[Source: Los Angeles Times]