Like every Darth has a Luke, and every yin has a yang, for every good movie dog put on celluloid, there is one really awful example of the breed. At least one.
Here is our list of the worst movie dogs ever:
10. Frank: the alien dog from Men in Black
9. Toto: from the Wizard of Oz
8. Bruiser: from Legally Blonde
7. Buddy: from Air Bud
6. Underdog, Hooch and Beethoven: all from the movies of the same name
5. The Shaggy Dog: from the god-awful Tim Allen movie
4. Odie: from The Garfield movies
3. Scooby Doo: "live action" movie version only. Obviously Scooby Doo the cartoon dog was the greatest dog on TV. Ever.
2. Precious: from The Silence of the Lambs (super creepy!)
1. Frank, the alien dog from Men In Black. Yep, so bad we had to list him twice.
“If you’re going to take your dogs with you to restaurants and coffee shops, you have to be mindful of others at all times, says Rudd. “If a restaurant is crowded on a particular night, we’ll go somewhere else. And it’s important that your dog is very well socialized around both people and other pets. I never let them beg at the table or feed them off my plate.â€
Everyone knows dogs have a better sense of smell than humans. But here at the Dolce Vita doggie blog, we always want to know not just what but why. Thanks to Newsday for the informative article giving us what we want:
Sniff sniff sniff.
You can actually see a dog's nose hard at work, picking up a scent wafting through the air, following the invisible trail a rabbit left in the yard, or investigating your pants leg for evidence of a secret meeting with a cat.
No one knows for sure how much more scent-sensitive dogs are than humans: a thousand times? Ten thousand?
But what is known is that a dog's nose has many more odor receptors, and an olfactory (smell) center that takes up much more room in the brain.
Human beings have about 5 million odor receptors, while dogs, depending on the breed, may have more than 220 million. The small human nose devotes only a postage stamp-sized area to odor receptors.
The average dog nose has a mucous-y scent receptor area which, if spread out, would cover a Kleenex tissue. A dog's nose - moist on the outside, as well as the inside - acts as a magnet to scent molecules in the air and on the ground.
Sniffing - a string of quick inhales and exhales - helps a dog rapidly identify a scent. Each deliberate sniff widens the dog's nostrils, allowing him to pull in more scent-laden air.
According to researchers, a sniff also temporarily straightens the dog's nasal cavity, allowing odor molecules to proceed directly to receptors deeper in the nose.
The contact between molecules and receptors generates nerve impulses, which travel along the olfactory nerves to the brain's huge smell center.
Presto: Scent decoded.
(Meanwhile, Jacobson's organ, a special chamber above the roof of a dog's mouth, has its own scent receptors. These transmit nerve impulses to the brain's hypothalamus, an area associated with social and mating behavior.)
The average dog's ability to detect a few scent molecules in a trillion others has created a whole industry built on canine noses.
Dogs sniff for hidden drugs in cars and planes, follow the trails of hikers missing in the woods, and find the remains of people in the rubble left behind by earthquakes and bombings.
Now, scientists are testing the ability of dogs to detect the distinctive smell markers of various cancers.
So far, it seems that dogs are good at detecting melanoma, the deadliest skin cancer. Dogs also have been trained to detect the waste products of lung and breast cancer cells, simply by sniffing a patient's breath. And some dogs can identify people with bladder or prostate cancer by picking up on odors in urine.
Dogs trained to detect certain cancers, scientists say, might someday help screen whole villages of people in remote areas without easy access to lab tests.
A dog's sensitivity to scents can even be used to calm it down, in a kind of canine aromatherapy.
Researchers in Northern Ireland found that dogs riding in a car filled with the odor of lavender spent more time sitting quietly, less time racing from window to window and yapping in the driver's ear.
A highly recommened book by the Dolce Vita doggie blog.
An overview:
“Our dogs see us through more than they put us through,†Ken Foster writes in Dogs I Have Met, his collection of stories from readers whose lives were changed by the unexpected arrival of a dog in need. Foster’s new book introduces us to: a pit bull named Jimmy that is recovering from a hit-and-run in Oakland, California; a woman in Costa Rica who opened her house to fifty-five strays; a pit bull that raises a piglet as its own; a hemophiliac dog trained as a therapist; and the Ninth Ward dogs that returned with their owners to rebuild New Orleans.
Ever wondered if you need to turn the light on for your dog? Turns out, you don't need to.
As pointed out in Science Daily today:
"Dogs have evolved to see well in both bright and dim light, whereas humans do best in bright light. No one is quite sure how much better a dog sees in dim light, but I would suspect that dogs are not quite as good as cats,†which can see in light that’s six times dimmer than our lower limit. Dogs, he says, “can probably see in light five times dimmer than a human can see in.â€
Dogs have many adaptations for low-light vision, Miller says. A larger pupil lets in more light. The center of the retina has more of the light-sensitive cells (rods), which work better in dim light than the color-detecting cones. The light-sensitive compounds in the retina respond to lower light levels. And the lens is located closer to the retina, making the image on the retina brighter.
But the canine’s biggest advantage is called the tapetum. This mirror-like structure in the back of the eye reflects light, giving the retina a second chance to register light that has entered the eye. “Although the tapetum improves vision in dim light, it also scatters some light, degrading the dog’s vision from the 20:20 that you and I normally see to about 20:80,†Miller says.
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