A pair of dog skulls uncovered in digs in Siberia and Belgium, each 33,000 years old, show dogs were domesticated long before any other animal, including sheep, cows or goats.

The skulls had shorter snouts and wider jaws than wild animals, such as wolves, which use their long snouts to hunt. It suggests dogs were used for companionship and protection.

Scientists used carbon dating to determine the age of the skulls, then examined the bone structures.

“Both the Belgian find and the Siberian find are domesticated species based on morphological characteristics,” said Greg Hodgins, researcher at the University of Arizona’s Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Lab.

“Essentially, wolves have long thin snouts and their teeth are not crowded, and domestication results in this shortening of the snout and widening of the jaws and crowding of the teeth.

“The interesting thing is that typically we think of domestication as being cows, sheep and goats, things that produce food through meat or secondary agricultural products such as milk, cheese and wool and things like that.

“Those are different relationships than humans may have with dogs. The dogs are not necessarily providing products or meat. They are probably providing protection, companionship and perhaps helping on the hunt. And it’s really interesting that this appears to have happened first out of all human relationships with animals.”

UNITED KINGDOM — A dog was caught in a hollowed out hole after getting stuck 20ft up an oak tree.

Tyson the Jack Russell was rescued by firefighters after dashing into the hollow tree and getting trapped halfway up.

It took more than six hours and a team of five men to free the tiny terrier.

Owner Stuart Smirk, of Carrbrook Village, Stalybridge, said: “My dad had been walking Tyson through Carrbrook Heritage trail when it happened.

“When he phoned me to say to he had lost Tyson up a tree I couldn’t believe it.”

Stuart’s dad Simon, 48, tried to coax down the dog – who the family adopted four years ago after he followed Stuart home from college – but failed.

Simon, an electrician for a stage lighting company, said: “It was only when I saw his nose poking out of a hole 20ft up that I realised he was in the tree.

“He just couldn’t, or wouldn’t, come down. My daughter Jenny and her boyfriend came out to help as well as Stuart.

“I contacted my brother and a local tree surgeon before finally being advised by the fire service to ring the RSPCA.”

RSPCA inspector Paul Heaton came out but even he couldn’t reach Tyson – so crews from Stalybridge fire station were called in.

They finally freed him after tying a rope around his neck and feeding it through the tree trunk to lead him down.

Demolition worker Stuart, 20, said: “He is a very mischievous dog but he’s never done anything like this before. “We’re all very grateful to the RSPCA and firefighters for all they did. Most dogs would be tired out by the ordeal but not Tyson, all he wanted to do when he got home was to play.”

Stalybridge crew manager Rob Steele said: “This was a bizarre one to say the least.

“Having served 21 years in the fire and rescue service I’ve seen plenty of cats up a tree but never a dog.”

William Tuttle, 45, crawled across the frozen surface in Fountain, Colorado after fearing Brock was drowning.

But, just as he reached the dog, the ice gave way and the father-of-two plunged into the freezing water.

He had just enough time to throw the animal to the shore but rescuers took 90 minutes to get Mr Tuttle back on to dry land.

The victim, who had been walking alone with the dog, was rushed by ambulance to Memorial Hospital but died a short time later.

His distraught daughter Megan, 19, said her only comfort is that her father’s last words were to tell her he loved her.

‘I told him I love him too,’ she told KRDO News 13. ‘It’s so hard. He’s not here anymore. He was such a great man.

‘You would never see him without a smile on his face. He was always so happy. He would help anybody out if they needed it.’

His son Taylor, 16, said he was proud his father, adding: ‘He’s my angel right now. He is. It wasn’t stupid. He did what he had to do.’

It is not known whether Brock was let off his leash or simply slipped out of Mr Tuttle’s before dashing on to the thin ice.

The father’s first instinct was to save the animal, who had only been brought into the nearby family home three weeks ago.

Casey O’Malley, who was fishing at the Willow Springs Pond, told KKTV 11 News: ‘He got down on his hands and knees, and then walked out towards and to the dog.

‘At that point the owner did fall through the ice. He and the dog struggled for a second. The owner was able to get the dog up onto the ice.’

A woman who was close found a stick and tried to pull Mr Tuttle from the freezing water but was unable to free him as he frantically splashed about.

The alarm was raised and rescuers from the Fountain Fire Department eventually reached the victim and pulled him out.

Luckily a crew, who had already alerted about children on the ice, were half way to the pond when the 911 call was made, Fountain Fire Chief Darrin Anstine revealed.

But they were too late to save him.

Taylor says he is now concentrating on finishing high school and making his father proud when he graduates.

Trainer Liz Seely looks on as Tucker takes to the bow and sniffs the waves.

Killer whales in Puget Sound aren’t doing very well. They were placed on the endangered species list in 2005, and there are several hypotheses for why they’re not recovering.

In Puget Sound, a team of researchers is relying on a secret weapon with a killer nose to figure out what’s wrong with the orcas in Northwestern waters.

‘A Treasure Trove Of Information’

Scientists suspect lack of food, boat traffic and pollution are to blame, but no one knows for sure. Some think the answer might be found in the whales’ wake — specifically, their poop.

“It looks kind of like a combination of algae and snot. It varies in color, but it’s very mucusy,” says Sam Wasser, the director of the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington.

He likes to talk about poop, and he’s especially excited about killer whale poop. Scientists have developed techniques to analyze feces from all over the world. Wasser says it’s not gross; it’s scientific gold.

“We can measure the diet of the animal. We can get toxins from the feces, DNA so we can tell the individual’s identity, its species, its sex — and all of this is in feces,” he says. “So it’s literally a treasure trove of information.”

But finding wild animal poop, especially whale poop, isn’t easy, so Wasser has taken a creative approach to staffing his organization. He has Tucker, the team’s “scat-detection dog.”

Tucker is an 8-year-old black Lab mix. He’s what those in the dog world call “ball-obsessed.” He’ll do anything for a game of fetch — even if that means sniffing out floating whale scat from a mile away — because he knows that when he finds the scat, he gets to play with his ball.

With that information, Wasser’s been able to help prosecute ivory poachers in Africa, track wolverines in the Rockies, and better understand interactions between wolves and caribou in Canada.

Turns out, killer whales have the highest concentrations of toxic substances like pesticides and flame retardants of any creature on the planet. If scientists can understand more about the contaminants in these animals, they may be able to explain why they’re not recovering.

On The Hunt

The quest starts in San Juan Island’s Snug Harbor, where Wasser and his team conduct research on killer whales. White caps slap at the bow of their research boat as it heads out of the base into some pretty rough water. Tucker wanders back and forth across the bow, but doesn’t seem too excited.

“What he’ll do if he doesn’t have anything, is he’ll come back and settle down and sit right next to me,” says Liz Seely, Tucker’s trainer. She has him on a leash as the boat crisscrosses the waters where the whales last surfaced.

“When he gets excited, he’ll start standing up on the bow, wagging his tail, getting really animated. So for now, he’s just checking the scene.”

But as the team rounds a rocky outcropping, the radio pipes up with the identification numbers of a pod of killer whales spotted nearby. To the left, black dorsal fins emerge, several hundred yards away.

The team spends about 20 minutes bobbing along after the whales, but alas, Tucker comes up empty-snouted. The winds are too strong and the water’s too rough for him to lock onto a scent.

“No poop,” Seely confirms.

Despite this unlucky mission, the team will continue to collect samples from killer whales in these waters throughout the summer. In the past, they’ve been able to show that during periods of high vessel traffic — Fourth of July weekend, for example — the whales have higher levels of stress hormones in their feces. They can also tell when the whales are undernourished and connect that to lower fertility rates.

With orca populations in Puget Sound still disturbingly low, researchers believe the answers may lie in these floating globules of data. After all, a sample of whale poop is kind of like a snapshot of pollution levels in coastal waters.

And that’s a photograph worth looking at.

“We believe there is evidence she had them but it was in the context of the evacuation of the shelter,” said Hudson County New Jersey Prosecutor Edward DeFazio of Susan Kolb, 60, whose South African Boerboels were tied to several attacks.

“It looks like there was a misunderstanding in that somebody other than the owner should have removed the dogs,” the prosecutor said.

The dogs were returned a day after they were discovered missing.

After the attacks in 2008 and 2009, which sent three adults and a baby to the hospital, Jersey City impounded the 160- and 100-pound dogs.

They faced possible euthanization under the state Vicious Dog Law, but Kolb went to trial to defend them in Jersey City Municipal Court.

The dogs’ lives were spared as a result of an agreement reached in May 2009 in which Kolb promised in court to send the dogs out of state. Kolb’s violation of that court order has triggered new proceedings against the dogs in municipal court under the Vicious Dog Law. Their lives are again in the balance.

In January police found the dogs at Kolb’s home and she was arrested on warrants for unpaid municipal court fines and charged with criminal contempt of court in Superior Court. The dogs were impounded at the Liberty Humane Society pending the outcome of the new Vicious Dog proceedings.

On Saturday, the shelter was being evacuated when it was found that Kolb’s dogs were missing. Police went to Kolb’s home looking for them but they did not find her or the dogs and the man that answered the door was uncooperative. On Sunday, a man brought the dogs back to the shelter.

Kolb pleaded guilty to the contempt charge on Aug. 24 and is expected to get probation when sentenced on Oct. 7 by Superior Court Judge Lisa Rose. No new charges have been filed against her for the brief reunion with her pets this weekend.

Story by Elaine Furst for Dog Files

The so-called “Dog Days” of summer in the Northern Hemisphere officially came to an end this week when Sirius, the bright Dog Star, returned to the night sky.

Everyone talks about “Dog Days,” but few may know what the expression actually means. Some might suggest it signifies hot, sultry days “not fit for a dog.” Others, meanwhile, may say it’s the weather in which dogs go mad.

But the actual Dog Days, or “Canicular” days as they’re known, are defined as the period from July 3 through Aug. 11 when the Dog Star, Sirius, rises in conjunction (or nearly so) with the sun.

As a result, the classical Greek and Roman belief was that the combination of the brightest luminary of the day (the sun) and the brightest star of night (Sirius) were responsible for the extreme heat that is experienced during the middle of the northern summer. Other effects, according to the ancients, were droughts, plagues and madness.

A more sensible view was put forward by the astronomer Geminus around 70 B.C. He wrote: “It is generally believed that Sirius produces the heat of the Dog Days, but this is an error, for the star merely marks a season of the year when the sun’s heat is the greatest.”

In ancient Egypt, the New Year began with the return of Sirius. It was, in fact, the “Nile Star” or the “Star of Isis” of the early Egyptians.

This week, just before sunrise, Sirius can again be glimpsed rising just above the southeast horizon for those living in mid-northern latitudes. At more southerly latitudes, Sirius is already conspicuous, twinkling above the horizon at dawn.

Sirius is the brightest star of the constellation Canis Major, the “Greater Dog” in Latin. According to Burnham’s Celestial Handbook other names for it include “The Sparkling One” or “The Scorching One.”

The star appears as a brilliant white light with a tinge of blue, but when the air is unsteady, or when it is low to the horizon as it is now, it seems to flicker and splinter with all the colors of the rainbow. At a distance of just 8.7 light-years, Sirius is the fifth-nearest known star. Among the naked-eye stars, it is the nearest of all, with the sole exception of Alpha Centauri.

So regardless of how hot your local weather is, or has been, the appearance of Sirius — a star we most associate with the winter season — is a subtle reminder that the hottest part of the year is now behind us and a promise that a change toward cooler weather is now only weeks away.

Story by Elaine Furst for Dog Files

May 22, 2011 was a day that Joplin Missouri high school teachers Steven and Debbie Leatherman will never forget.

As tornado sirens sounded around them, the Leathermans quickly headed to the safety of their concrete-walled storm shelter basement with their 10-year-old Cocker Spaniel, Sugar. Sugar quickly became panicky however, and bolted back upstairs to her own “safe area,” a spot under one of the beds. Debbie Leatherman tried to pursue her, but Leatherman’s husband grabbed her and pulled her back into the safety of the shelter and closed the doors above them.

Minutes later when they emerged from the shelter, debris was all that remained of their home and their beloved Sugar was missing.

Thankfully however, a few days later it was learned through a Facebook page that a dog resembling Sugar had been taken to the Joplin Humane Society. A good Samaritan had found the injured animal in a flooded storm ditch several blocks from the wreckage that was the Leathermans’ house. Paralyzed, Sugar had been unable to pull herself to safety and was in danger of drowning had she not been rescued when she was.

As the Joplin Humane Society was unable to care for Sugar, the Leathermans rushed her to the University of Missouri Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital, where veterinary neurology technologist Stephanie Gilliam and Fred Wininger, an assistant professor of neurology and neurosurgery examined her. There it was determined that while Sugar had no use of her hind legs, she did have pain sensation in her paws. It was then determined Sugar had sustained a traumatic T12-13 intervertebral disc rupture and required immediate surgery.

Within hours, Wininger performed a surgical procedure known as a hemilaminectomy, which allowed him to decompress the disc that was pushing on Sugar’s spinal cord.

Two days after the surgery, Gilliam, who provides rehabilitative therapy to veterinary neurology patients, began electrical stimulation on Sugar’s hind limbs to help prevent muscle atrophy. Sugar received the treatment once per day for seven days. Gilliam also began underwater treadmill therapy once per day to find signs of movement in the dog’s hind limbs.

Then on June 6, two weeks after the tornado, Sugar began to show movement in her hind legs for the first time. Gilliam and the neurology team continued the underwater treadmill therapy once per day and started additional therapeutic exercises to help Sugar strengthen her muscles.

A little more than a week later, on June 14, Daniel Leatherman collected the family’s beloved pet to continue her recovery at home. “We are so warmed by everything that has been done,” he said. “It has given us back our family.”

Story by Elaine Furst for Dog Files

Adrianna Carabetta, 7, of Munson holding her puppy Shadow.

In a town still reeling from the devastation and destruction caused by Wednesday’s tornado, one bright spot emerged Saturday morning.

A dog that had been sucked out of its owner’s home in Monson, Massachusetts by the tornado and trapped in the rubble of a nearby home for three days, was rescued.

“It emerged, literally, all fur and four legs, in the arms of a Massachusetts State Police trooper who crawled under the rubble of a collapsed house after neighbors heard a puppy’s call for help,” said Massachusetts State Police spokesman David Procopio.

Trooper Brian Pearl was on patrol about 8 a.m., when he turned into the hardest hit area of the town and a woman started waving him down.

“She said, ‘We found a dog hiding or trapped under a collapsed roof,’” Pearl said. “You could hear the dog barking, but you couldn’t see it. He was way, way, way under there.”

“He climbed into and under the rubble on his hands and knees toward the sounds,” Procopio said. “There, under the remnants of a home that had collapsed Wednesday evening, he saw the dog.

After three unsuccessful attempts, he snagged the dog and pulled it to him and then out of the rubble to safety. It was a puppy, a dark brown Sharpei-Chow mix.

Remarkably, as word of the rescue spread, a couple from a nearby street came to tell Pearl they had been searching for their Sharpei-Chow mix, Shadow, who they said had been sucked out of their home by the tornado.

“Audrey Carabetta told Trooper Pearl that she and her family searched everywhere for Shadow and posted pictures online, all with negative results. The family thought he had died,” Procopio said.

The puppy was a gift to the Carabetta’s daughter, Adrianna, 7, who had been battling cancer for the last two years. Adrianna is now in remission.

Shadow was hungry and tired, but not hurt. “It was very gratifying,” Pearl said.

The Carabetta’s and Shadow are now staying with family.

Story by Elaine Furst for Dog Files