The Pibble/Parolee Connection Keeps Growing!

With thanks to Villalobos Rescue folks, who got the program started, and who now do their 'good doggy" work here in New Mexico.

View more videos at: http://nbcphiladelphia.com.

After Two Events, 10-Time World ASP Champ Kelly Slater' Atop the Table, Again

He tied for fifth at the first event, the Quicksilver, Gold Coast, in OZ, and finished second in the next, also in Oz, at the Rip Curl event at Bells Beach.

Here's the stinger for the Bell's event; if you let it run, there are highlights from the whole event. It wasn't massive, as it's been in previous years, but there were challenges. Mick Fanning and Sally Fitzgibbons--both from Oz--emerged winners.

Swimming with a Polar Bear! No, REALLY!

ABBOTSFORD, CANADA: Grizzly man Mark Dumas, 60, is the only man in the world who can touch a polar bear. And as these incredible pictures show the fearless bear handler from Abbotsford, British Columbia, even goes for dip in his swimming pool where he and 16-year-old polar bear Agee enjoy a watery cuddle together. Mark and wife Dawn, 60, train the 60-stone (800lb) friendly beast - the world's largest land predator - to star in high-budget TV adverts. She has even performed in movies like 'Alaska' in 1995 when she was just a few weeks old. With his incredibly intimate bond Mark wrestles on the grass with Agee, kisses her, puts his head in her huge jaws, and even bear hugs her as she rears up on her hind legs to over seven feet. Mark and Dawn have owned Agee since she was six weeks old and the colossal mammal even lived in their home as a cub where she played with the family dogs and was bottle fed.

Pibbles: Up-side Down

Very Kewl: Cheetah and Golden Retriever Bond in Zoo

Baby cheetah and puppy pal celebrate 1st anniversary together at Busch Gardens

TAMPA - Busch Gardens Tampa is celebrating a milestone anniversary for a very special relationship.

Monday, April 16 marked the one-year anniversary of the first time park guests got to see an 8-week-old male cheetah cub and a 16-week-old female yellow Labrador puppy start to strike up a friendship that the park’s animal experts expect to last a lifetime.

The pair – later named Kasi and Mtani by park fans via a Facebook poll – spent only supervised play times together at first. Now, a year later, they live together full time at the park’s Cheetah Run habitat and even travel together to schools, events and television studios, helping the park’s education team teach the public about the plight of cheetahs in the wild and the importance of Busch Gardens’ conservation efforts.

Park guest can see Kasi and Mtani daily at Cheetah Run, where they spend a portion of each day playing together on the habitat, training with their keepers and exercising with the habitat’s lure system, designed to encourage the animals to do what cheetahs do best: run and chase.

This video is not of the animals named in the story, but apparently it is not all that uncoimmon for captive cheetahs to be paired with domestic dogs at zoos all over the world. The animale in the vid are at the San Diego Zoo.

Although this is Busch Gardens’ first cub-and-puppy combo, it is not uncommon in the zoological community for a single cheetah to be raised with a canine companion. “Male cheetahs are social and often live together in coalitions,” said Tim Smith, a zoo manager who works with the cheetah team daily. “This social bond will be a very similar relationship, and they will be together for life.”

Cheetahs are included on both the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) list of vulnerable species as well as on the US Endangered Species Act list of threatened species. Only approximately 12,400 cheetahs remain in the wild.
Copyright 2012 Southern Broadcast Corp of Sarasota All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Nellie McKay (M-Kai): The Dog Song

TAKE MY WORD FOR IT: FOLLOW THE LINK!!!!

This is so funny, I wept!

A Very "Hip" Pet

Getting Along...

Pibbles bond not only with their people...

Honor the Elderbulls: They'd do it for you...

Shania. Age 12. Lives in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Nicknames = Poops McGavin, Pooper Troops, Niah, and Shizzy. Has also lived in Arkansas and New Mexico. Likes playing dress up, sun bathing, mani-pedis, rolling in stinky things, going for walks, fetching sticks in the water, sleeping with 3 year old Savannah, wrestling with her BDF (best doggy friend) Memphis, car rides, sleeping in, and being with her family. Shania is growing old gracefully with a family that includes: two adults, one 3-year-old girl; two other Elderbulls (UNO and Memphis), an elderheeler (Bella), a ninja cat (Sushi), and 10 backyard laying hens of whom Shania has been known to share a snack with.

The family is expecting a second baby due on Shania’s 13th birthday in June. Shania’s mom writes:

“If there has ever been an animal that has changed my life and the way I use to view the world according to stereotypes, it’s Shania. Abandoned at an animal clinic I worked at when she was about 5 months old, no one would take her home because they were afraid of her breed. For a month and a half she lived in the kennel area of the clinic until Christmas Eve of 1999, I took her home to spend Christmas with her. The greatest gift I received that year was my parents agreeing that this was the dog for our family and allowing her to stay. I didn’t know anything about pit bulls but I committed to learning what I could about them so I could prove popular opinion wrong.

I’ve never gotten it all right with Shania but we have been right for each other from the beginning. Her presence has encouraged me, helped me get over heart breaks, patiently waited as I finished college, stood with me on my wedding day, and now shares her wise old dog heart with a 3-year-old little girl. I tell her all the time that she has to live forever because I don’t know who I will be without her. In a way, she’s my soul-mate. In the words of Willie Nelson, she’s my angel that flew too close to the ground. She’s the epitomy of aging gracefully: always enjoying today and never wishing for more tomorrow.”