Dog historian, psychologist and Canadian Stanley Coren names 10 dogs that played key historical roles. Number four is the terrier — Welsh not Scottish — who comforted President Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis.

Meanwhile just yesterday, the ASPCA honoured dogs who had saved their owners’ lives. According to the New York Times, “a 2-year-old golden retriever named Toby, performed a modified Heimlich maneuver on his owner, Debbie Parkhurst of North East, Md., when she choked on a piece of apple. Toby pushed her to the floor and jumped up and down on Ms. Parkhurst’s chest until he dislodged the piece of apple.”

Oh yes, a cat was honoured too. Just goes to show…

{ 0 comments }

The New York Post reports that Ellen DeGeneres appears to have adopted and passed on a number of dogs.

{ 0 comments }

From the Associated Press:

The rescue group involved with DeGeneres gets criticism from one prominent pet expert, Tamar Geller, celebrity dog trainer and author of “The Loved Dog.”

“This whole thing was taken out of context,” says Geller. “It should have been handled much better. Yes, Ellen made a booboo. But you know what? She was coming from a good place.

“The rescue group may have won their battle — they got Iggy back — but they’ve lost the war,” Geller said. “They’ve given a bad rep to the entire rescue world. You know what? The punishment doesn’t fit the crime.”

Updated: Thanks to the commenters who pointed out that the attorney for Mutts and Moms maintains that the dog was offered to the hairdresser’s family but they declined to fill out the necessary forms.

{ 3 comments }

Apologies for coming late to this story about Ellen DeGeneres and her rescue dog, but better late than never.

Scottish Terrier and Dog News has mentioned in the past that we don’t always find dog rescuers to be the most easy people to deal with. In fact, we can now reveal that some Scottie dog resuers even called for a boycott and delinking of this site because in the past we have featured designer dogs. According to the rescuers, designer dogs or hybrids are more likely to be abandoned (although they don’t seem to have any statistical proof) and our publicity was making a bad situation worse.

Unfortunately, this situation was not atypical. Despite the good work they do, rescuers can be very prickly. In the Ellen case, she did indeed violate her contract by passing the dog on to her hairdresser instead of returning it to the rescuers. But why did the rescuers have to go and seize the dog? Couldn’t they have gone and checked out the new home and if everything was okay left the dog there?

Rescuer Marina Baktis, who runs Mutts and Mamas now says she would never give back Iggy to the family that DeGeneres handed him off to. “No, that is not a consideration at this point, no,” Baktis told Access Hollywood. “Not after the way we’ve been treated, no. We have been terrorized, it has been horrible.”

Indeed, Baktis has been subjected to unforgivable treatment at the hands of aggrieved Ellen fans, but her reaction seems childish. And what of Mutts and Mamas” silly stipulation that small dogs shouldn’t got to households with children under 14? According to those criteria, the Scottish Terrier News household wouldn’t qualify to rescue a Scottie.

All that said, in another incarnation, Scottie News has had some dealings with Ms. DeGeneres’ publicist Kelly Bush and we can testify that she is every bit as unreasonable and doctrinaire as the extremest dog rescuer. In fact the New York Post received a voice mail message from Bush to Mutts and Mamas saying:

“This is Kelly Bush. We are filing a legal case against you. We are going to be contacting the media. This is not going to be good for your store or your organization. You did not do the right thing. You need to call back. There is no reason for you to take this dog. Please call back before this gets further out of hand.”

And now Ellen has cancelled tapings of her show due to all the dog drama.

Luckily, the Scottie News solution: everyone should go on Oprah and work it all out.

{ 0 comments }