Confiscated Airport 'dog in boot' disappears from USPCA Lost: one Houdini dog with a knack of  hiding the oddest places... Remember Max, the black lab mix, who was rescued from a car's 'boot' by the USPCA? Turns out it was an accident and the owner wasn't charged. However, over the holidays, the USPCA lost poor Max and blamed it on a large quantity of rescued dogs (4,500/ year)  to staff/limited resources ratio. "There had been an mix-up over the labelling of two Labrador collie crosses and we had not realised that a dog which went missing just before Christmas was the airport dog." Last month, the USPCA recommended prosecuting the dog's owner. (Has anyone checked the USPCA's car 'boot'?)

Related:  Owner 'baffled' at dog found in car boot UK 'A man who flew to England while his dog was locked in the boot of his car today denied that he left the pet there deliberately. ...' Airport police rescued the barking dog from the boot, averting a slow and   painful death. [Belfast Telegraph] (okay, just how does a dog lock itself in a car boot?)

How Rover catches the frisbee... like a linear optical trajectory (lot) of basebase players...  [New York Times] (our dog won't deign to catch a frisbee)

Animal attacks in today's news:
Golden eagle makes meal of dachshund Sweden 'A golden eagle made a meal of a dachshund hunting dog in Sweden after experts warned the cold spell sweeping northern Europe was forcing hungry birds of prey closer to towns and cities...' [Yahoo! India World]

Dog killed protecting owner from gunman IN 'A dog was fatally shot when it attacked a man who was holding a gun to its owner's head, driving the intruder away...'  [Indianapolis Star]

Chihuahua saves boys from ferocious 80 pound pit bull  'In 2002, a Chihuahua named Toby saved the lives of two Mississippi boys who were attacked by an 80-pound pit bull terrier... Although permanently disabled, Toby lived and has received numerous awards since...' According to Merritt Clifton, editor of Animal People, such an event is quite rare in dog mauling cases. Most dogs would egg each other on... not intervene...

According to Clifton's statistics: 'Pit bulls, Rottweilers and their mixes accounted for 72 percent of the 1,488 dog attacks causing bodily harm to humans, according to a Washington state man who has been tracking dog attacks since 1982. The breeds also accounted for 66 percent of the 816 attacks on children.' [Durango Herald] (Most dogs attacks aren't even reported; how flawed are these statistics... )

Dog News is back. I apologize for the outage. Family flus and a conversion to an XP computer caused the outage. The XP computer was the more annoying experience of the two. I applied Service Pak 1 (SP1) and enjoyed a blue screen of death, courtesy of Microsoft upgrades. Even applying a zillion more patches didn't help... I found a really handy resource for keeping up with patches  WindowsXP SP2; this site provides a quick list of all the patches Microsoft may compile for Service Pak 2. Other links: Windows XP Stuff :: The Stuff You Want, WinOScentral Forums - Windows XP, and B i n k W i n d o w s X P.

For a slick firewall to put behind your router firewall (you are using one, aren't you), try the free Agnitum Outpost. I like it alot.  I also tried Tiny Personal Firewall 4 (uninstalled it... too complicated) and Zone Alarm's Free Firewall (uninstalled it: not as many features as Agnitum). Smoothwall still works like a champ and remains my favorite firewall.

A handy online feed viewer: View Feed is an easy way to catch up with a zillion weblogs. You don't need an aggregator or any software -- just go there and start reading. (found via the handy referer logs).

okay, cough, cough... Dog News is back ...(if this posts: I'm not even going to try to get MyPictures to work).