Happy News by Valigator

[Valigator]

Iraq

When the temperature regularly exceeds 120 degrees, asphalt and concrete streets tend to be a tad toasty on the toes - even through tough combat boots. The norm for all who work outside in Iraq this time of year is to be hot or very hot - no one could really blame another for panting from the heat. But imagine if the job also entailed treading on the baking paving- barefoot.


Until now, such has been the daily duties of Sweep, Scratch, Bob, Will, Jess, and Muttley.


They are the six English Springer Spaniels whose security detail work is that of checking vehicles for explosives. Their duty stations are the entry points for the high walled, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Gulf Region Division and the Project and Contracting Office compounds in the International Zone (IZ) in Baghdad, Iraq. This is the organization leading the massive Iraq Reconstruction effort of over 3,000 projects upgrading and improving the Iraqi infrastructure.


Though canine they be, these faithful few serve and protect as diligently as their human partners. And like the soldiers and security professionals with whom they work, they should receive care packages from home as well.


This very thought originated in the conscientious mind of activated Navy Reservist, Commander Renay Wilson who has been in Iraq nearly six months now. A Department of Defense employee as a civilian, she works as an Equal Employment Opportuny Officer at McChord Air Force Base in the State of Washington when not deployed. In the IZ she is the Deputy of the Program Analysis and Integration Office.


Not long ago, she contacted her friend Brenna Hargraves, a veterinarian technician at the Banfield Animal Hospital, and described "in-country" working conditions - sometimes harsh for both man and beast. As a result the Wild Side Pet Store and the Petz Edge catalogue ordering company for the Banfield Hospital in the PetsMart organization - all of Puyallup, WA - recognized a need and "doggedly" proceeded to resolve it.


The result was several boxes of highly applicable products for the specific use by this pack of four legged protectors - who each wear what appears to be a perpetual smile - along with their much more serious acting comrades, Max, Frodo, Kai and Jake, the German Police perimeter attack dogs.


Included were booties to protect their feet, grooming brushes, anti-itch shampoo, ophthalmic eye drops and ointment, pet wipes, cooling blankets, toys, and treats. Accompanying these kind and welcome gifts were several notes written by hospital staffers and their children - all which will be answered by the security officer handlers who so dutifully care for their dogs.


During the opening of the priority mailed boxes, Sweep, representing his fellow dog-faced troopers, eyed a particularly attractive rubber bone and claimed it with quick clamp of his canines. One not to speak with his mouth full, his expressive brown eyes fully expressed his gratitude!

[Steverino]

That story just made my afternoon! Thanks hon!

[Tater]

When I was in Kuwait a few years ago the military working dogs would get care packages.

[rubicon]

That is cool and those dogs are awesome. I get searched when I go on government property and and am always amazed by those four legged soldiers. Also am surprised at the many different breeds enlisted.

[gspsonny03]

Thanks Val. Great story. That made my day.

[Valigator]

Notice the good news always has Dogs in it????

A family's dog is being lauded as a heroine after waking an 8-year-old girl when a fire broke out at their home. Katarina Scholz jumped from her bed about 4 a.m. Thursday and followed her barking 2-year-old bull mastiff, Daisy, downstairs to alert the rest of the family, Suffolk County fire officials said.


The girl and her dog plus mom Teresa, dad Paul and brother Jake, 4, fled the home uninjured. Another brother, Paul Jr., 10, was sleeping over at a friend's house.


''Daisy is definitely going to get filet mignon for dinner, and Katarina can have as much ice cream as she wants,'' Teresa Scholz told Newsday. ''My husband always yelled at the dog for going in the flower beds, but now we're going to build one just for her. She deserves it.''


Two other family dogs, Chihuahuas, died in the blaze, which was being investigated by the county's arson squad but wasn't considered suspicious.


The home was severely damaged; it took 75 firefighters about two hours to extinguish the blaze.


''Luckily the little girl and her dog were able to get everybody out of the house in time,'' Huntington Manor Fire Department Chief Dane Martin said. ''It's one of those incredible stories that you only read about in the newspapers.

http://www.happynews.com/

[Valigator]

Gun-Toting Granny Still Firing at Age 82
From Associated Press
August 04, 2006 8:22 PM EDT
JANESVILLE, Wis. - Not even triple-bypass surgery has kept Rita Roherty from the shotgun shooting that has been her life's passion. The 82-year-old great-grandmother underwent surgery last year, and then recovered to win a bronze medal in the women's shooting division of the Badger State Games in June.

She hit 91 of 100 clay pigeons to take third place in the competition, three years after winning the gold.

"When a gun fits you, it don't kick," she said of her pet Browning Lightning 12-gauge over-under shotgun.

Roherty, born Rita McAuliffe in 1923, had 14 children in 28 years of marriage before her husband, Donald Glynn, died.

Then she met George Roherty, who took her trap shooting on the couple's first date in 1973.

"It was a very good couples thing to do," she said.

She says she shoots because she likes competing. When she won her gold medal in shooting, she hit enough clay pigeons to tie a woman half her age, then won in a shoot-off by hitting all 10 pigeons, she recalled.

She said she intends to keep shooting as long as she can still hold the gun, and she'll take on men as well as women.

But be forewarned - Roherty admits she sometimes can't resist asking competitors, "You let an old lady beat you?"

[Valigator]

A 75-year-old man says he saved a small dog from a hungry coyote by bashing the animal on its head with his flashlight.


Herbert Doran said he was taking his daughter's 11-year-old bichon frise, Jenna, out for a nighttime walk near his suburban home when the coyote appeared.


''I had just enough time to jerk Jenna's leash and step between them,'' Doran said Monday. ''He tried to get around me, and I could feel him brush my legs.


''When he went down to grab her by the neck, luckily I had my flashlight and I bopped him on the head. That stunned him, and he looked at me and I shone the light in his eyes and yelled at him.''


The coyote slowly backed off and left, he said.


Police found no trace of the coyote after the Thursday night episode. A police department official said he knew of no previous sightings in the village, about 30 miles north of Manhattan.


Coyotes have become more visible in the suburbs north of New York City, and one was captured in the city's Central Park earlier this year.

Happy news.com

[Valigator]

By David Fleshler
South Florida Sun-Sentinel

August 14, 2006



The alligator's massive jaws and powerful tail mark it as a relic of the dinosaur age, a primitive creature that would appear to have little in common with humans. Yet scientists are studying aspects of alligator biology that could lead to new medical treatments and a better understanding of threats to the environment.

In the bayous of Louisiana, researchers have discovered that alligators have a ferocious immune system that can take down a vast range of viruses, bacteria and other infectious microbes, including HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

And in the lakes and marshes of Florida, they have found that the reptiles are extraordinarily sensitive to pesticides, fertilizers and other pollutants, making them a useful early-warning system of possible hazards to people.

Because of the alligator's potential value to human health, scientists have proposed adding it to the short list of animals whose genes will be sequenced.

"We know so little about the alligator," said Michael Zasloff, dean of research and translational science at Georgetown University Medical Center and an expert on animals' immune systems. "This is an animal that after injury in its swamp, heals. So they can and they should be studied much more extensively to know how a vertebrate in water can experience such severe, terrible injury and recover."

Like the giraffe's neck and the hawk's eyesight, the alligator's immune system is an adaptation to its environment and behavior. Alligators engage in brutal territorial fights in swamps that teem with bacteria and other microbes. After the thrashing stops and the wounded combatants separate, those with the strongest capacity to resist infection tend to survive and can therefore produce offspring.

Mark Merchant, associate professor of biochemistry at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, La., first wondered about the alligator's resistance to disease as a youth, hunting and fishing in the bayous of southeast Texas. So many alligators were missing legs or had deep scars across the belly. Why did they otherwise seem so healthy?

As a scientist, Merchant headed back to the swamps. He snared alligators, drew their blood and returned them to the water. At the lab, Merchant and his team found that alligator blood serum killed all 16 strains of bacteria exposed to it, while human blood serum killed only six. Among the eradicated bacteria were E. coli and strains that cause dysentery, salmonella, and strep and staph infections. Alligator blood also killed the herpes simplex virus and a strain of HIV.

"Their immune system is very, very broad acting," said Merchant, who has published several papers on the subject. "It takes down practically everything. It kills all types of bacteria, many types of fungi and viruses. So it's of great interest to us."

As a growing number of microbes develop resistance to antibiotics, scientists are searching the animal and plant worlds for sources of new drugs. But it's difficult to translate resistance to disease in animals to resistance in people. You can't, for example, cure AIDS merely by injecting alligator blood into a patient.

As a first step, Merchant and other scientists have begun studying the proteins at the heart of the alligator's powerful immune system. They're short chains of amino acids, called peptides, which attack invading microbes.

Zasloff, the Georgetown immune system expert, said several drugs derived from animal peptides are in development, although none has received government approval for use in humans.

Zasloff said that while peptides from alligators and other animals can kill germs in laboratory experiments, they could be toxic in people or they could fail to function without the specific white cells that deploy them in the original animal's body.

"In the test tube, there's no problem," he said. "But in the body we have to worry about whether the anti-microbial peptides will go where they have to go and kill what they have to kill."

The alligator's potential benefit to human health has led scientists to propose sequencing its genome, the long chains of nucleic acids that make up its DNA. The National Institutes of Health's National Human Genome Research Institute has paid for the sequencing of several species that have some bearing on human health or basic biology, such as the fruit fly, Norwegian rat and the mosquito that transmits malaria.

Travis Glenn, a biologist at the University of Georgia who is coordinating efforts to sequence the alligator genome, said the National Institutes of Health turned down a proposal last year but appeared inclined to approve it this year or next.

Despite their stout resistance to what nature dishes out, alligators have turned out to be vulnerable to man-made chemicals. In the lakes and marshes of Florida, biologist Lou Guillette in 1994 found some of the first evidence of chemicals that may be disrupting the reproductive systems of animals and humans.

In Lake Apopka, site of a pesticide spill in 1980, he found male alligators with underdeveloped genitals and female alligators unable to produce healthy eggs. As he expanded his research, he found the same problems among alligators in lakes and marshes that hadn't experienced such a catastrophe, including Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades of western Broward County.

Guillette's work was an early indication of the vast range of pesticides, fertilizers and other chemicals that could obstruct the functioning of hormones. Known as endocrine disruptors, these chemicals interfere with the body's production of the hormones that regulate growth, behavior and the development of sex organs.

These problems were most widespread in lakes and marshes near farms, where pesticides and fertilizers would wash into the alligators' habitat. Guillette, distinguished professor of zoology at the University of Florida, and teams of graduate students have spent years exploring polluted and clean lakes to draw blood samples, examine alligators and collect their eggs. They exposed the eggs to minute amounts of pesticides, fertilizers and other chemicals and found that these substances led to imbalances in estrogen, testosterone and other hormones.

Meanwhile, physicians were recording troubling trends in humans. Using data from the past few decades, they found an increase in testicular cancer, low sperm counts, malformed penises and premature female puberty. Many scientists think the common cause lies in the huge number of chemicals that came into daily life in the last few generations.

"Some of Lou's [Guillette's] early work was really key in bringing attention to this issue," said Elaine Francis, national director of pesticides and toxics research for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "He has consistently demonstrated that this is an ongoing issue that needs to be dealt with."

The EPA plans to screen thousands of pesticides and other chemicals for their ability to disrupt the endocrine systems of people and wildlife. But scientists say it's impossible to pin problems on any single chemical.

"If we can actually show there are problems in these wildlife populations, it raises a flag for our own health," Guillette said. "It doesn't mean that everything we find in wildlife we're going to find in humans, but we have to look at that. If we're finding there are abnormalities in wildlife, we need to address those issues and how we are in fact dealing with the ecosystem and the world around us."

[Steverino]

I personally was very touched by the tender yet heart-warming story about the 85 year old man bashing the skull in of that coyote. A lone tear rode down my cheek when I thought of that poor, poor coyote


Sure would like to know as to the make and model of that flashlight. A Mag-lite could sure do some damage...deep thoughts to ponder. Thanks Val!

[Valigator]

No problem, the Prozac must be kickin in...se how happy I am????

[Valigator]

GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colo.

A Labrador retriever rescued a 9-year-old survivor of Hurricane Katrina from a river after the boy's raft hit a log and he fell overboard, authorities said.


Ryan Rambo, 9, whose family moved to this western Colorado town last year after the hurricane struck their Marrero, La., home, fell into the Roaring Fork River on Sunday, Garfield County Sheriff Lou Vallario said.


The 2-year-old Lab, named Zion, jumped in the river and swam to Ryan after he began screaming for help, said Chelsea Bennett, 13, the dog's owner.


Ryan held on to Zion as the dog swam back to the bank. The boy suffered only a scratch, said his mother, Deana Rambo.


''How ironic, isn't it?'' Deana Rambo said. ''We come here to get away from flood waters, and he nearly drowns in the river.''