Golden retriever adopts tiger cubs at zoo
Three cubs at Kansas zoo abandoned by their mother Monday
Associated Press
CANEY, Kan. - A dog at a southeast Kansas zoo has adopted three tiger cubs abandoned by their mother. Safari Zoological Park owner Tom Harvey said the tiger cubs were born Sunday, but the mother had problems with them.
A day later, the mother stopped caring for them. Harvey said the cubs were wandering around, trying to find their birth mother, who wouldn’t pay attention to them. That’s when the cubs were put in the care of a golden retriever, Harvey said.
Harvey said it’s unusual for dogs to care for tiger cubs, but it does happen. He said he has seen reports of pigs nursing cubs in China, and he actually got the golden retriever after his wife saw television accounts of dogs caring for tiger cubs.
Puppies take about the same amount of time as tiger cubs to develop, and Harvey said the adoptive mother just recently weaned her own puppies.
“The timing couldn’t have been any better,” he said.
No difference for dog
The mother doesn’t know the difference, Harvey said. He said the adopted mother licks, cleans and feeds the cubs.
The Safari Zoological Park is a licensed facility open since 1989 and specializes in endangered species.
It has leopards, lions, cougars, baboons, ring-tailed lemurs, bears and other animals. It currently has seven white tigers and two orange tigers.
Because white tigers are inbred from the first specimen found more than a half-century ago, they are not as genetically stable as orange tigers.
The zoo’s previous litter of white tiger cubs was born April 23, although one of the three has since gone to a private zoo near Oklahoma City.
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Fat Cat Is Victim Of Foreclosure
‘Prince Chunk’ Falls 2 Lbs. Short Of World Record
BLACKWOOD, N.J. — Turns out, the economy is the reason a 44-pound cat found lumbering the streets of New Jersey became homeless.
The Camden County Animal Shelter said the cat’s owner came forward to say she had to abandon the tubby tabby because her home was foreclosed.
Shelter director Jennifer Anderch said the older woman recently lost her home and could not keep the 10-year-old cat, whom she called “Powder.”
The shelter has been caring for the cat — who became a local media sensation this week and was dubbed “Princess Chunk” — since it was found on Saturday wandering the southern New Jersey suburb of Voorhees.
‘Princess Chunk’ and shelter volunteer Deborah Wright will be guests on News 4 New York today at 5 p.m.
It also turns out that the princess is a prince. A veterinarian who checked the cat Thursday on “Live with Regis and Kelly” determined it’s a “he.”
In a week with headlines about presidential politics, suicide bombings in Iraq and big baseball trades, the cat has also captured the nation’s attention.
In fact, Anderch has changed her voicemail greeting to identify herself as “Chunk’s publicist.”
Wright says the cat eats normally despite its girth.
The largest tabby on record weighed 46 pounds, 15 ounces. That cat, who lived in Australia, died in the 1980s. The Guinness World Records has since dropped the category, fearing cat owners might harm their animals in an attempt to break the record.
Hundreds of people have called seeking to adopt the cat. Anderch’s voice mail greeting says she’s getting up to 15 calls an hour about the cat.
Powder was due to appear Friday on “Good Morning America” and closer to home later in August. She’s scheduled to meet the public at the shelter’s pet “adopt-a-thon” at a pet store in Cherry Hill on Aug. 17.
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Lion Video - 35 Years Later
There’s a video making the rounds and I posted it a couple of weeks ago. It’s of a lion cub that was bought in the 60s by two men in London. When he was a year old he was already 185 pounds, and they had to give him up. They took him to Africa to be reintroduced to the wild. A year later, they went back but were told he wouldn’t remember them. They finally found him at the refuge, where he runs to them and jumps up, hugging and licking them.
Well, the Today show found the two guys and talked to them this morning. There is video of their interview and a slideshow of pictures here: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/25929574/
Here is the written story and followed by the original video that’s on You Tube.
By Mike Celizic, TODAYShow.com contributor
July. 30, 2008
The years have been kind to the two young men who cavorted around Austin Powers-era London with a pet lion named Christian, creating an enduring legacy that has deeply touched millions through a medium undreamt of then: the Internet. Today, John Rendall and “Ace” Bourke are as dashing as they once were hip — and they remain as devoted as ever to preserving the world’s endangered wildlife.
“This is Christian’s legacy. It’s an extraordinary story,” Rendall told TODAY’s Meredith Vieira from Sydney, Australia, Wednesday after he and Bourke watched the heartwarming film of their reunion with Christian that’s garnered millions of hits on YouTube.
Christian had been in Africa for a year when the video was shot. Raised in a London furniture shop, he was introduced into the wild by George Adamson, who, with his wife, Joy, had raised and then rehabilitated an orphaned cub named Elsa — an experience Joy turned into a book that became the hit movie “Born Free.”
But it was Christian, not the famed Elsa, who inspired Adamson’s associate, Tony Fitzjohn, to establish the George Adamson Wildlife Preservation Trust when Adamson was murdered by bandits in Kenya in 1988. Out of the trust grew the Mkomazi Preserve in Tanzania, which has established the first breeding program for the endangered black rhinoceros.
“If we hadn’t made that spontaneous decision to buy Christian, have him in London, take him to George, [get him] successfully rehabilitated, the George Adamson Trust would not really have existed,” Rendall said. “And now there is a game park — a national park — as a direct result of Christian’s life. It’s a wonderful, wonderful endorsement.”
Overwhelming response
Rendall and Bourke are silver-haired now. With scarves knotted loosely around their necks, they spoke from beneath the soaring arch of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, delighted to talk about a story that’s at once 39 years old and forever new.
“It is pretty extraordinary footage and quite humbling. But it is sort of very beautiful, the response,” Bourke told Vieira. “I suppose, 35 years later, to find that people are so fascinated by it and have so enjoyed it, is slightly overwhelming … and all the comments on the YouTube site, they’re so positive. It is marvelous that so many people are getting so much enjoyment out of it.”
They retold the story of going to London’s Harrods department store in 1969 out of curiosity. A friend had told them she had asked the manager of the exotic animal department if she could buy a camel, and with classic British aplomb, he had dryly asked, “Would that be one hump or two, ma’am?” The two young men, who had grown up in Australia and recently graduated from college, were keen to see such a place.
At the store, they spotted a 35-pound lion cub in a little cage. Like kids enthralled by a puppy in a pet store window, they had to have him.
“It was an irresistible sight,” Rendall said. “We were rather shocked when we saw this cub in Harrods in a department store in a very small cage. Not only was he totally entrancing, we must be able to do something better for him. He can’t stay in a cage this size,” he remembers thinking.
They named him Christian and took him home to their pad in the Kings Road, the hippest address in the hippest part of London — Chelsea.
A happy cubhood
Pictures from those days show the juvenile lion chewing on a basket, eating off a woman’s plate and lounging in the back of a Mercedes convertible. (Last year, Bourke and Rendall had told The Daily Mail in London that Christian also toured town in a Bentley.)
“We were working in a pine shop, which was a very trendy furniture shop at the time in a very trendy part of London, the end of the ’60s, the beginning of the ’70s,” Rendall said. “It was a very creative, a very exciting time to be living in London. It almost seemed natural to be living with a lion and to have him sitting in the back of a car going up and down the Kings Road.”
But after a year, Christian had grown to 185 pounds and could not stay much longer as a house pet. No matter how much he loved his two-legged roomies, wild animals get bored in such settings. Ultimately, they can get in trouble.
Bourke told TODAY that they were fortunate enough to meet Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna, the married actor and actress who had portrayed the Adamsons in “Born Free.” Through them they got an introduction to George Adamson. They got the lion to Adamson at a perfect time, and Adamson was able to introduce him to a habitat that neither Christian nor his ancestors had seen for five generations.
The reunion that has opened countless tear ducts came a year later. Rendall and Bourke said that everyone asks them if they were scared watching a lion start to approach them, first at a walk and then at a run. What if Christian was so thoroughly rehabilitated he no longer saw them as friends, but as hors d’oeuvres?
Love and excitement
“We had such a beautiful relationship with him,” Bourke said. “There was such trust between us and such love. He ran toward us with such love and excitement in his eyes, and we felt exactly the same way. We were just so excited to see him, looking so big and healthy. The story had just turned out so beautifully, when it could have had a very different ending.”
Christian liked to snuggle and nap with his owners.
Rendall referred to the film in describing the reunion. “You can see in that clip his body language,” he said. “When he first starts seeing us, he’s looking, looking. Is it us? Is it us? And then suddenly, he says, ‘Right, this is them.’ And down he comes. And there wasn’t a moment that we ever doubted that it was going to be a wonderful greeting … we never doubted it.”
Bourke and Rendall saw Christian a final time in 1974, by which time he had doubled in size and was now king of the jungle, with a pride of lionesses and a batch of cubs.
“He still recognized us,” Rendall said. “He was with wild lionesses. He had a litter of cubs and his genes had been passed on back into the wild. After that time we saw him, he was never seen again. It was like a final farewell … he was completely integrated back into the wild.”
The experience moved Rendall, who lives in London, to devote his life to conservation; today he is a trustee of the Adamson Trust. Bourke, who became a dealer in Aboriginal art in his native Australia, is also a supporter of preserving wildlife.
Both hope that the millions of people who have been so moved by the clip contribute to the cause.
“We’re just hoping that people who have enjoyed this clip — it’s a phenomenal number — if they would want to contact the George Adamson Trust through www.wildlifenow.com and support us and support conservation, it would be wonderful to contribute to George’s memory,” Rendall said.
To learn more about the George Adamson Trust and how you can support the preservation of wildlife, visit wildlifenow.com.
Here is the original video from YouTube.
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Update on Katie!
From Anissa/West Hancock K9 Rescue:
Katie was released from the University of MO in Columbia Veterinary Hospital this afternoon. She is on her road to recovery now. She is completely deaf and her good remaining leg still has some nerve interference causing her to walk on her knuckles, but that should resolve itself. However, it could require another surgery down the road. Her vision is believed to be okay and normal. She is still very underweight, but on a good note the frontline worked extremely well and she is flea free now! She will be transported to Peoria, IL, where her new foster mom from Joliet will meet us. She will then be in the wonderful hands of Great Dane Rescue, Inc., 
so I hope you all follow her ever after story and continue to support her. She will have a long road ahead of her, getting back on track and learning to deal with her silent world. She is an amazingly courageous young girl and truly has inspired me with her spirit. I believe the surgery bill is going to be covered. Thank you all so much for your help.
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CCRF Needs Your Help!
The poster reads:
Dear Friends of Animals,
Meet Murray and Mickey. These two tiny creatures were removed from an animal horder’s home. Sadly, she had allowed her many dogs to breed with each other causing many to have health problems. Poor Murray requires surgery on both of his eyes to correct a condition called Cherry Eye. Little Mickey is sadly blind.
Please consider making a donation for Murray’s eye surgery today by clicking here. This pint-sized little guy would love to have clearer vision right away! Thanks you for caring about Murray and Micky.
Donations can be made by clicking here or mailing to our address below:
Chicago Canine Rescue
2227 W. Belmont Avenue
Chicago, IL 60618
A Happy Ending for Malkey!
Hey, this is Kate Curler - I adopted a cat by the name of Gnocchi that I renamed “Malkey” - short for Greymalkin.
She was the little cutie who came in and hated other cats. You put her up on the shelf and she was a nervous wreck. I saw her and adopted her the next day. At Midsommerfest, I stopped by your booth and you remembered her! You asked me to send a photo of her - it’s attached. She’s very happy - she sits in the window all day and shows off for people who walk by. Very social with everyone but cats!
Thanks again - I love her!!!!!!
Filed under Animals | Comment (0)Update on Katie, the Great Dane Pup
From Anissa:
Katie will have her leg amputated Friday morning…there are no bones intact enough to save it. She is dragging the other leg due to compressed nerves in her pelvic area because of a thin fracture. Dr. Cook believes with time that should correct itself and if not, they can go back in and clear the calcification around the nerves - so she should regain most if not full use of her remaining leg. They also tested her hearing and she is completely deaf…AND due to the impact of whatever happened (which we may never know), the pupil in her left eye shifted to what is known as Horner’s Syndrome causing her to look down in that eye. She will be seen by an ophthalmologist Friday morning as well to determine if any treatment can be done. These injuries are at least 2 weeks old! I do not know exactly what the total is going to be for her yet. Her doctors will call me tomorrow after her surgery. I will send out an update after I hear from them.
If you are able to help with a donation, I have set up a paypal account so you can go to paypal.com and enter westhancockk9@mchsi.com. All donations are tax deductible so please include your mailing address. My mailing address is West Hancock Canine Rescue, 2040 Keokuk, St. Hamilton, IL 62341.
I appreciate everyone’s help and please continue to say a prayer for her, she is not out of the woods yet.
Help This Great Dane Puppy
From the West Hancock K9 Rescue:
I have been hit with several medical emergency dogs lately and this poor girl needs donations to save her life! This girl got her from a friend and “I believe she has a broken leg”!!! So she surrendered her to us. She is only 8 weeks old, already 20 pound and is emaciated, was full of fleas and her back right leg is broken in 3 places…to complicate matters, she is dragging her “good” leg. It is believed she has some nerve damage in her lower back, could be caused from all the swelling. I have been on the phone with Columbia Missouri’s vet college and their outstanding team of orthopedic specialist. They want to operate on her in the morning. They can not just amputate her badly broken leg because she needs it to help rehab her “good” leg. I have contacted the national Dane rescue and they are going to take her but we need help with her surgery costs. She will stay at the hospital for min of 3 weeks for rehab after surgery. Her estimate with out seeing her, just the emailed xray pictures, is $1,600-$2,100. I don’t have those kinds of funds. If you can help at all I have set up a paypal account for her expenses at paypal.com and enter westhancockk9@mchsi.com and follow with your information. Mailing address is 2040 Keokuk St. Hamilton, IL. I have to put at least half down in the morning. She is currently at my vet’s office in Hamilton, IL 217-847-3911 and they have her on pain meds and I will head out here around 6:30 am, it’s a 2.5 hour drive from me. All donations are tax deductible through 501c3 so please include your mailing address with your donation. Thank you all so much!! She will be very grateful for your help in saving her!!
Anissa Sadeghi, West Hancock Canine Rescue
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The Truth About “Designer Dogs”
Below is a story from today’s Chicago Tribune about the hidden ailments and issues behind designer dogs. Puppy Mills are pumping out these very expensive and in demand dogs at the expense of humane treatment, genetics and health. And you don’t need to spend a fortune by buying from and supporting these people - there’s plenty of them in the shelters when people expect the perfect dog (or something that doesn’t need any time or attention) and don’t get it. Read on…
Not all cute and cuddly in land of ‘designer dogs,’ humane society says
‘Designer’ offspring of purebreds are at risk of being exploited as are their owners, Humane Society says
By Melissa Patterson, Chicago Tribune reporter
The puggles, maltepoos and labradoodles scampering along Chicago streets are bred to be cute and customizable, pet industry experts say.
Labradoodles (Labrador/Poodle Mix)
But these high-priced “designer dogs” are also increasingly exploited by abusive breeders at puppy mills and unscrupulous sellers, leading to more sick puppies and unhappy owners, according to the Humane Society of the United States.
Made fashionable by celebrities like Jake Gyllenhaal and Jessica Simpson, hybrid puppies—the offspring of two purebreds—often go for more money than purebreds, which can range from $200 to $2,000 per dog.
Maltepoo/Maltipoo (Maltese/Poodle mix)
Hybrid puppy breeding operations are cropping up in rural areas from Pennsylvania to Kansas, animal advocates say. But a hot spot for hybrid owners, said pet industry insider Laura Bennett, is much closer to home.
“Urban areas—the Chicagos and the New Yorks and the L.A.s and the San Franciscos”—are where wealthier clientele prefer custom-made puppies, which are often bred for non-shedding coats, compact size and friendly disposition, said Bennett, pet blogger and CEO of Embrace Pet Insurance.
But owning a designer dog can come at a price beyond the original cost.
Tracy Mattes of Woodridge fell in love with her cockapoo Jake through a cage at a Downers Grove pet shop in 2005. But by 2006, Mattes discovered her puppy had a myriad of serious and costly health problems, including severe allergies, a juvenile cataract, a digit on his paw that needed to be removed and a kneecap that popped out of place.
“His veterinarian bills are through the roof,” she said.
Cockapoo (Cocker Spaniel/Poodle mix)
On top of Jake’s almost $700 price tag, Mattes estimates she’s spent more than $6,000 in surgeries and other vet care. Three-year-old Jake takes two medications per day and requires at least once-a-month vet checkups.
Puppies bought from pet stores or Internet breeders are much more likely to have been born in a puppy mill and therefore develop health problems, said Kathleen Summers, deputy director of the society’s Stop Puppy Mills campaign.
The Humane Society estimates there are about 10,000 puppy mills nationwide.
Puggle (Pug/Beagle mix)
But Erika Burklow, manager at Happiness is Pets in Orland Park, disputed the assertion that pet-store puppies have been abused. Her store’s owners hand-pick their puppies from private owners, keep records of genealogy and licensing, and offer warranties against certain health issues, she said.
“In general, you’ll hear the vet . . . say go the pound and get yourself a mutt ’cause you’re probably going to be better off with it,” veterinarian Derrick Landini said.