GLENDALE, AZ – A miniature schnauzer is credited with saving his owner’s life.

“You’re thinking you’re going to die,” said Bethe Bennett from her hospital bed at Banner Thunderbird Medical Center with her dog still by her side.

Last Friday, Bennett fell in her kitchen, broke her femur, and passed out.

“I would still be there,” she said. “Nobody was coming to check on me until Monday or Tuesday.”

Bennett’s service dog, Danny, licked her face until she awoke.

“I asked him to get me the phone,” she said.

Danny hasn’t picked up the phone with his teeth in years, she told ABC15, but he still remembered what to do after some coaching.

“It took him a few minutes,” Bennett said, “he was going back and forth.”

Danny eventually brought Bennett the phone, which she used to call 911.

“I never dreamed he would save my life.”

Bennett, who writes books about her dogs under the penname Bessie Mac, said she now plans to write future tales about Danny.

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.”

Trouble and the cloned dog, Double Trouble.

Would you pay $50,000 to clone your beloved dog? What if it cost less? So many questions arise as technology and science get cheaper and cheaper.

– Kenn

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.

Max always makes eye contact.

In a new study, dogs who were spoken to or who had direct eye contact with a person were more likely to follow that human’s gaze as it moved across the room than if the person didn’t make direct eye contact with them.

The skills are equivalent to what is seen in 6-month-old human infants, say researchers, who published their findings online Jan. 5 in Current Biology.

“These results support the notion that dogs are sensitive to the cues signaling humans’ communicative intent in a way that is analogous to preverbal human infants,” said study author Jozsef Topal.

“Dogs were domesticated for the purpose of working with people, so it’s essential that the two species are able to communicate,” said Adam Goldfarb, director of pet care issues at The Humane Society of the United States. “Even though most dogs have transitioned away from their work of herding or hunting, they’ve retained their communication tools.”

More and more research is illuminating the uncanny human-like qualities of Canis lupus familiaris, better known as the domestic dog.

One study in the July 2011 issue of Learning & Behavior found that domesticated dogs were more likely to beg food from a person looking at them as opposed to someone who wasn’t paying attention.

And canine-intelligence expert Stanley Coren has found that dogs have the developmental abilities of a human 2-year-old, with the average dog capable of learning the meanings of 165 words.

In the new study, 16 pet dogs watched videos of female actors turning towards a plastic pot.

In the first experiment, the actor gazed directly at the dog and said in a high-pitched voice, “Hi dog!”

In the second experiment, the actor said “Hi dog” in a low-pitched voice but didn’t make eye contact.

Using eye-tracking techniques, which are already commonly used to study infant behavior, the researchers determined that the dogs were more likely to follow the human turning toward the pot when they had both been spoken to and received direct eye contact. Saying “Hi dog” in a low-pitched voice without the direct gaze didn’t cue the dogs in to the human’s intent.

Eye-tracking techniques are also likely to be useful in studying other aspects of dogs’ cognitive processing, such as memory skills and reasoning abilities, said Topal, who is an associate professor in the Comparative Behavior Research Group at the Institute for Psychological Researches, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, in Budapest.

“The [dog's] gaze was only triggered when preceded by communicating intent. It does seem to be that dogs do look at humans and follow gestures,” said Dr. Nicholas Dodman, director of the Animal Behavior Clinic at Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine in North Grafton, Mass. “This is intuitive to anyone who owns a dog, that dogs seem to be more in tune with us than some scientists believe.”

“This should reinforce that if we want our dog’s attention, we should be clear about it,” Goldfarb said. “For those people who talk to their dog in a baby-talk voice, they should keep it up. Your dog knows that you’re talking to him or her and will pay more attention.”

Dogs being walked by men are four times more likely to threaten and bite other dogs and dogs on a leash are more likely to act aggressively than dogs off the leash.

These are just a couple of revelations about dog walking behavior from an extensive new study that examined how a dog’s age, sex and size, as well as the owner’s sex and use of a leash affect how canines act on their walks.

The study, accepted for publication in the journal Applied Animal Behavior Science, surprisingly found that the sex of the owner had the biggest effect on whether or not the dog would threaten or bite another dog.

“We propose that the occurrence of threat and biting in dogs on a walk may have some connection with aggressive tendencies and/or impulsivity in people,” Petr Rezac and his team wrote, adding that “dogs are able to perceive subtle messages of threat emitted by another dog. Simultaneously, dogs are unusually skilled at reading human social and communicative behavior.”

Rezac is an associate professor in the Department of Animal Morphology, Physiology and Genetics at Mendel University. He and his colleagues studied close to 2,000 dog-dog interactions on owner-led walks held in the city of Brno, Czech Republic. Observations were made in the mornings and afternoons at 30 different areas of the city where owners frequently walk with their dogs.

By far the most frequent interaction of dogs of all ages in public places was body sniffing, which should not come as a surprise to most dog aficionados. Other expected conclusions: males sniff females more often, males and females prefer play with each other than with members of their own sex, adult males mark the most, puppies play together more than twice as often as adults and 11 times as often as seniors, and dogs prefer to play with similarly sized individuals.

WATCH VIDEO: Scientists find that cats and dogs drink liquids using entirely different methods.
The presence, or not, of a leash can make a big difference.

Dogs off a leash sniffed one another more often than dogs on a leash. They also threatened each other twice as often when on a leash.

“This is most likely a reflection of the frustration dogs feel when the leash prohibits them from expressing normal greeting behaviors,” Inga Fricke, director of Sheltering and Pet Care Issues at the Humane Society of the United States, told Discovery News. The problem, she said, even has a name: “leash frustration” or “leash aggression.”

Lisa Peterson, spokesperson for the American Kennel Club, said dogs prefer to run around each other when they first meet.

“They can’t do this run-around behavior when on a leash and they likely feel more threatened,” Peterson said. “They are also more inclined to resource guard, with the owner being the resource. It’s as though they are communicating, ‘He is my owner. I don’t want you to have him because he feeds and cares for me.’”

Another finding from the study is that female dogs enjoy playtime with males as well as other females, but males are a bit less inclined to play with other male dogs.

“That makes sense,” Peterson said, “because females rear litters of puppies and must play with them. It’s a nurturing thing so they are probably genetically predisposed to play more.”

As for the connection between male owners and dog bites/threats, Peterson said it could be a cultural phenomenon perhaps tied to how men train their dogs in the study’s region.

Fricke added, “The increased incidence of bites when dogs are being handled by males, rather than females, may simply be a reflection of dogs mirroring the emotions of their handlers; if their handlers are acting either defensively or assertively upon meeting, their dogs are likely to sense and reflect that.”

Meanwhile, a majority of pet owners (61%) Kroger surveyed said they would be willing to spend between $100 and $1,000 to save Fluffy or Fido’s life.

Another 15 percent is comfortable spending between $1,000 and $3,000 for life-saving medical care for their pet.

“Determining how much we are willing or able to spend to sustain the life of a pet is a decision none of us ever wants to make, but given the rising cost of pet health care, it’s often an inevitable one,” said Dr. Jennifer Coates, a Colorado-based veterinarian and author. “Even for young pets, planning ahead and budgeting for the costs of pet health care, including cat and dog insurance, can help you feel more prepared when facing a serious health situation with your pet.”

When asked what they fear most about their pet’s well-being, about one in four of dog owners said cancer (27%), followed by hip/knee/leg injury (17%) and getting hit by a car (16%). The biggest concern for cat owners was kidney disease (19%), cancer (17%) and injuries sustained by fights with other animals (10%).

Only a small percentage of the pet owners surveyed by Kroger said they have pet insurance – 4 percent of dog owners and 2 percent of cat owners. However, 61 percent of dog owners and 48 percent of cat owners said they would consider purchasing pet insurance if it costs under $20 per month.

Interestingly, at least half of pet owners (55% with dogs/51% with cats) would be interested in adding their pets to their own health insurance plans, if such a thing were allowed.

“Americans spend more than $13 billion a year on pet health care,” Dr. Coates said. “Veterinary care has become increasingly more sophisticated and expensive, with some life-saving treatments running as high as $5,000 or more. Those potential out-of-pocket costs are what make pet insurance a prudent investment. And from an emotional standpoint, pet insurance keeps owners from having to ask that dreaded question, ‘how much can I spend to keep my pet alive?’”

The online survey was conducted in April of more than 300 adults ages 18 and older who own at least a cat or a dog.

This latest study used family dogs including German and Australian Shepherds and a Labrador Retriever, which were given special training over an 11-week period to identify volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the breath of patients.

The researchers worked with 220 volunteers, including patients with lung cancer at early and advanced stages, patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and healthy volunteers. The dogs took part in a number of tests to see if they could reliably distinguish compounds in the breath of lung cancer patients and even if they smoked.

The dogs were asked to sniff glass tubes containing cotton impregnated with samples of breath from those taking part in the study and had to lie down if they detected a VOC from a lung cancer patient.

The dogs successfully identified 71 samples with lung cancer out of a possible 100. They also correctly detected 372 samples that did not have lung cancer out of a possible 400.

“In the breath of patients with lung cancer, there are likely to be different chemicals to normal breath samples and the dogs’ keen sense of smell can detect this difference at an early stage of the disease,” said study leader Thorsten Walles of Schillerhoehe Hospital in Germany where the study was conducted.

“It is unfortunate that dogs cannot communicate the biochemistry of the scent of cancer,” said thoracic surgeon and fellow researcher Enole Boedeker. Boedeker also said the dogs “were very excited by the ‘game’ and were rewarded by treats when they got it right.”

Previously, research and anecdotal reports suggested dogs, usually Labrador Retrievers and Portuguese Water dogs, can sniff out bladder, skin, lung, breast and ovarian cancers.

Lung and breast cancer patients are known to exhale patterns of biochemical markers on their breath, which can be traced to tumors which exude tiny amounts of chemicals not found in healthy tissue.

Trained dogs have also picked up skin cancer melanomas by sniffing skin lesions, while even domestic pets have raised the alarm with agitated behavior that led their owners to seek medical advice.

Professor Stephen Spiro, deputy chairman of the British Lung Foundation and lung cancer specialist, said, “A dog is said to be a man’s best friend and this breakthrough could show that our canine counterparts could offer more than companionship.”

Story by Elaine Furst for Dog Files

Evan Moss’ seizures come quietly in the night. When they strike, the 7-year-old’s parents have to give him medicine to make them stop, or risk brain damage. But to do that, they have to know they are happening. Lisa and Rob Moss live in fear of missing one.

The seizures are so silent that even if Rob and Lisa sleep in the next room with a baby monitor to listen, they can’t hear them, so Evan sleeps with them in their bed. “We go through life pretty much not well-rested and with a strong addiction to caffeine,” says Lisa Moss.

But a service dog specially trained to detect seizures and alert Evan’s parents could help insure that Rob and Lisa don’t miss a seizure and also make it possible for Evan to sleep in his own bed.  The catch? A dog like that costs about $13,000.

To raise the money for the dog, the family discussed the usual options: a 5K run, a dinner with a band, a lemonade stand.

As almost an afterthought, they came up with the idea of self-publishing a short book Evan had written as part of his application for the dog. Initially, they modestly hoped maybe they could sell 150 at $10 apiece. But Evan has now sold 10 times that many copies of the 26-page “My Seizure Dog”. A July 24 book-signing alone drew an estimated 650 people to a local coffee shop, and at one point Evan’s book ranked 125th in sales among all the millions of books on Amazon.

And as it turns out, none of the profits from book sales needed to go towards the cost of Evan’s dog, because donations alone have topped $26,000 — more than twice what the Alexandria, Virginia boy needed for his dog. The additional thousands of dollars, plus proceeds from the book, will now make up the difference between what four other children’s families have raised and the cost of their service dogs.

Evan’s dog, which will be trained by the nonprofit 4 Paws for Ability on how to pick up a scent-related chemical change in Evan’s body that precedes a seizure, will be ready for the family to pick up next June. The dog will be either a poodle or a poodle mix, Lisa Moss says, because poodles are less likely to aggravate her dog allergy.

Since Evan’s dog hasn’t yet been selected by 4 Paws, the Mosses don’t know how it will alert them to an impending seizure. Some dogs bark, others nudge parents, says Karen Shirk, the nonprofit’s founder

Still, Lisa Moss says, “that’s a really big task to put on an animal. At the beginning, we’re basically going to have a boy and a dog in our bed. At some point, Evan will be back in his own bed with a dog.”

As for Evan, he’s already making plans to write “My Seizure Dog 2” after he gets his new companion.

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