Pet News

S.D. ranch saves, nurtures mustangs
he smell of sage fills the air and prairie dogs chirp as a battered white truck bounces over the arid scrub grass field. Karen Sussman scans rocks, fence lines, tree stumps and low spots, looking for the vague shape that might be her missing foal.

Rogue dog breeders using Internet
Type 'Yorkies for sale' into an Internet search engine, and hundreds of Web sites come up.

An excuse to bring your dog to work
You feel so guilty on Monday morning as those big brown eyes watch you head out the door to work. Sure, every day can't be the weekend, your dog seems to say. But couldn't I come along and just curl up under your desk?

States attempt crackdowns on puppy mills
Bob Baker has seen the worst of the worst in his 27 years as an animal cruelty investigator. There was the Missouri breeder who would skimp on food by skinning dead dogs and feeding them to other dogs in his kennel. There was the South Dakota breeder who used a handsaw to amputate the leg of a pregnant Rottweiler, injured in an attack by another dog, in hopes that the Rottweiler would survive long enough to give birth to another litter.

Candidates and their pets
Fourteen dogs, six cats, 14 fish, two turtles named Cuff and Link, three birds and a ferret have a stake in who wins the White House. These are the pets of the presidential candidates. Most of the contenders have animals at home and among the four who don't, Barack Obama is under pressure from his two daughters to get a dog if he wins.

Pet kangaroos enrage Australians
Australian conservationists are upset to learn that kangaroos and their smaller cousins, wallabies are being exported to be kept in confined spaces as pets, according to Wednesday's Daily Telegraph newspaper.

USDA OKs chickens fed tainted pet food
About 80,000 chickens that were fed contaminated pet food scraps can be released for processing because testing showed meat from the birds is safe to eat, the Agriculture Department said Friday.

Lawyer: Fugitive dog in Portugal
A provocative professional soccer manager ended a high-profile spat with authorities over his Yorkshire terrier by shipping the dog out of the country Friday, a family lawyer said.

Australian public prosecutor has a dog of a day
The top law officer in the Australian state of Tasmania himself has a criminal record after being convicted for letting his pet dog wander the streets of Hobart.

Dog bites down slightly among letter carriers, but still more than 3,000 bitten
For a mail carrier looking to escape dog bites, New York City is the place to go, and California is the place to avoid.

Rabies found in Wyoming school's pet bat
Catching a bat in a school basement and keeping it as a classroom pet is a great way to learn about rabies.

Bill would limit sales of dogs, cats to university research laboratories
It's the nightmare of pet lovers everywhere: Their beloved Fido or Whiskers gets lost, is scooped up by animal thieves, then sold to be dissected in a university research lab.

Dogs, Cats and Other People
Last year, a manicurist brought a $300,000 claim against country crooner Tanya Tucker when one of Tanya's dogs allegedly bit the woman who had been booked to do her nails.

San Francisco lauded for pet perks
An abundance of pet-friendly hotels, off-leash dog parks and vegetarian restaurants helped this city place first Monday on an animals rights group's list of America's most humane cities.

How to teach your cat litter box lessons
Americans adore their felines - or so it seems. We own more cats than any other type of animal companion. Still, millions of them end up in shelters every year, where, according to ASPCA estimates, 70 percent are destined for euthanasia.

Calif. probes animal rescue group
A California-based animal rescue group that received millions of dollars in donations after Hurricane Katrina has shut down amid a state investigation into how it spent the money.

Tainted food kills 2 dogs in Puerto Rico
Two dogs in Puerto Rico died of kidney failure after eating dog biscuits that were among the 100-plus brands of pet foods and treats contaminated with an industrial chemical, a veterinarians' group said Saturday

FDA asks if pet food tainted on purpose
Imported ingredients used in recalled pet food may have been intentionally spiked with an industrial chemical to boost their apparent protein content, federal officials said Thursday.

Pet food recall expands to third company
A third company on Friday recalled pet foods made with an imported Chinese ingredient only recently found to have been contaminated by an industrial chemical.

Imported food rarely inspected
Just 1.3 percent of imported fish, vegetables, fruit and other foods are inspected _ yet those government inspections regularly reveal food unfit for human consumption.

Berlin's cub creates sales frenzy
Thousands of people line up at the Berlin Zoo each day to see Knut the polar bear cub, and his button-eyed face has become inescapable for many others who live far from the capital.

Tainted pet food linked to sharp uptick in kidney cases in cats
Cases of kidney failure among cats rose by 30 percent during the three months that pet food contaminated with an industrial chemical was sold, one of the nation's largest chains of veterinary hospitals reported Monday.

Fla. shelter fire kills dozens of cats
A fire gutted the local Humane Society headquarters, killing dozens of animals including nearly all of the cats in the building, authorities said.

35 cats and dogs die in Long Island fire
At least 35 cats and dogs died in a house fire, while a slew of other animals, including possums, crows and a 7-foot-long python, were rescued, police said.

Wal-Mart dog treats join pet food recall
The recall of pet foods and treats contaminated with an industrial chemical expanded Thursday to include dog biscuits made by an Alabama company and sold by Wal-Mart under the Ol'Roy brand.

China probing tainted wheat gluten blamed for U.S. pet deaths
China is investigating U.S. claims that a Chinese company exported contaminated wheat gluten implicated in pet deaths in the United States, a Chinese official said Friday, the first time the government has weighed in on the issue.