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.
Nepal is celebrating the festival of Tihar, its equivalent of Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights. In Nepal, on the second day of the feast, special honour is bestowed on dogs.
On this day, called Kukur Pooja or Kukur Tihar, its canines are garlanded, adorned with the Hindu powder of blessing, the tika, and given festive food including sweetmeats - jalabis.
Best literary reference to dogs (in books I've read):
The majority of Terrans were six-legged. They had territorial squabbles and politics and wars and a caste system. They also had sufficient intelligence to survive on that barren boondocks planet for several billions of years.
We are not concerned here with the majority of Terrans. We are concerned with a tiny minority-the domesticated primates who built cities and wrote symphonies and invented things like tic-tac-toe and integral calculus. At the time of our story, these primates regarded themselves as the Terrans. The six-legged majority and other life-forms on that planet hardly entered into their thinking at all, most of the time.
The domesticated primates of Terra referred to the six-legged majority by an insulting name. They called them "bugs."
There was one species on Terra that lived in very close symbiosis with the domesticated primates. This was a variety of domesticated canines called dogs.
The dogs had learned to achieve a rough simulation of "guilt" and "remorse" and "worry" and other domesticated primate characteristics.
The domesticated primates had learned how to achieve simulations of "loyalty" and "dignity" and "cheerfulness" and other canine characteristics.
The primates claimed that they loved the dogs as much as the dogs loved them. Still, the primates kept the best food for themselves. The dogs noticed this, you can be sure, but they loved the primates so much that they forgave them.
- Introduction to Schroedinger's Cat, by Robert Anton Wilson. A great book, you should go read it today. Or start it at least, it's a long book.
Don't worry, we'll have more cats falling off stuff tomorrow!
Have any other literary references to dogs and cats? Write us!
- Pete, Bull Terrier
- Skip, Rat Terrier
- Blackjack, Manchester Terrier
- Manchu, Pekingese
- Rollo, Saint Bernard
- Sailor Boy, Chesapeake Bay Retriever
- Tom Quartz and Slippers, Cats
- Emily Spinach, Garter snake
- Algonquin, Pony
- Maude, Pig
- Josiah, Badger
- Jonathan, Piebald rat
- Dr. Johnson, Bishop Doane, Fighting Bob Evans, and Father O'Grady, Guinea pigs
- Baron Spreckle, Hen
- Eli Yale, Macaw
- Fedelity, Pony
- Gem and Susan, Dogs
- A one-legged rooster
Socks (born c. 1991) was the pet cat of Bill Clinton and the Clinton family. After the Clintons left the White House, Socks was given to Clinton's secretary, Betty Currie.
Space exploration has been populating the solar system with manmade hardware for half a century, and last month marked the 50th anniversary of Sputnik, the planet’s first artificial satellite. But an even more significant breakthrough occurred less than a month later, on Nov. 3, 1957, when space hardware began carrying life forms into long-duration orbits.
This Saturday marks the 50th anniversary of that milestone mission — the Russian Sputnik 2 launch that put a dog named Laika into orbit. Most of the remembrances of "Muttnik" may focuse solely on the first dog in space and her sad fate. But in the annals of the expansion of earthly life to the universe beyond, the full story is much more profound.
If "Sorry" and "Monopoly" have become stale, or if you just can't stand leaving Fluffy out of the hijinks, now you can play a board game with your dog.
Funagle, by Darf Inc, works like this: Players have one minute to "funagle" their dog into performing activities called out on removable tags that make up the game board. To funagle is to use your voice, treats and gestrures to get a dog to do a task. If your dog does the activity, you win a tag. Tags are stored on bone-shaped carabiners. The player with the most tags on their carabiner at the end of the games wins.
DEFINITION OF FUNAGLE - fu*na*gle (pronunciation: fuhn-ney-guh-L), verb, to finess a dog into performing an activity using treats, verbal and gestural communication.
According to the company press release, Funagle can be played by two to four people and one to four dogs. The game comes with a board, 50 tags, a die, four bone-shaped carabiners (to hold the tags) and a sand timer. The game is available at select dog boutiques, pet stores, doggy day cares, game stores, gift stores and at from the Darf Inc website.
It was pointed out to me today that I neglected to include the greatest song ever about a missing cat: Murder (Or a Heart Attack) by The Old '97's. This song proves that even big rock stars aren't immune to doing anything for their pets.
See a live performance here:
Audio quality isn't great, but we recommend buying the album, called Fight Songs, anyway. You can buy it here.
Or just read the lyrics, written by Rhett Miller:
And the hole
In the screen is barely big enough for you
And not near enough for me to go
And the whole damn complicated
Situation could've been
Avoided if I'd only shut the window
CHORUS:
And I may be leavin' myself open
To a murder or a heart attack
But I'm leavin' the back door open
'Til you come back, 'til you come back
And I may be movin' myself closer
To a real untimely end
But I'm leavin' the back door open
'Til you come home again, 'til you come home again
And I told
The neighbors, I put pictures up
And handed out some flyers at the show
And the whole town speculating
Situation could've been
Avoided if I'd only shut the window
A discovery about the genetics of coat color in dogs could help explain why humans come in different weights and vary in our abilities to cope with stress, a team led by researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine reports.
A pair of dogs have become guardians of Korea's ancient palaces, trained to sniff out termites that damage the wooden buildings. The Cultural Heritage Administration said it's the first time dogs have been used to guard the palaces since Korea won its independence. It's also the first time animals have been used to help preserve the nation's cultural landmarks.
Samsung Life Insurance donated the two termite sniffing canines to the Cultural Heritage Administration on Wednesday, and the pair demonstrated their skills at Geunjeongjeon main hall of Gyeongbok Palace. The dogs are English Springer Spaniels named Woori and Boram. During the demonstration they successfully detected termites in eight barrels and pillars at the Chosun Era palace.
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