SOME VERY IMPORTANT DOGGY WORLD RECORDS

Smallest Dog:

The very tiniest dog alive right now is a long-haired chihuahua named Boo Boo.  This cute little girl is 4 inches tall and weighs 2 pounds.  She lives in Raceland, KY with her mom, Lana Elswick.

But there is an even smaller dog on record, who was a Yorkie named Sylvia.  She belonged to Arthur Marples of Blackburn, England.  When Sylvia died in 1945, she was only 2 years old.  At that time, she was 2.5 inches tall at the shoulder, and she weighed 4 ounces.  I tried to find a picture of Sylvia, but I couldn't, so you will just have to use your imagination!


Biggest and Heaviest Dog:

The dog with this record is Zorba, an Old English Mastiff owned by Chris Eraclides of London, England.  Zorba was born on September 26, 1981, and in November of 1989, he weighed 343 pounds, was 37 inches tall at the shoulder, and measured 8 feet, 3 inches long from nose to tail.








Tallest Dog:

Giant George, who is a Great Dane, was officially measured at 43 inches tall on February 15, 2010.  This made him the tallest living dog and also the tallest dog ever.  George has a lot of fans, so his dad, David Nasser, made a website and a YouTube channel for him.  Also he wrote a book called Giant George:  Life with the World's Biggest Dog.




Longest Tongue:

The dog who has the longest tongue right now is Puggy, who is owned by Becky Stanford.  Puggy's tongue is 4.5 inches long.  You might think that a dog with this name would be a pug, but Puggy is actually a Pekingese.  Ms. Stanford and her husband adopted Puggy after he was given up by his breeder because Puggy's tongue was too long.  Since there's not much room in his mouth for anything besides his tongue, Puggy actually chews with his tongue, and his food has to be chopped into little pieces for him.

The longest tongue ever on record for a dog belonged to a boxer named Brandy, whose tongue was 17 inches long.










Longest Ears:

In September, 2004, a bloodhound named Tigger set the record for the longest ears on a dog.  His right ear measured 13.75 inches and his left ear 13.5 inches.  Tigger was owned by Bryan and Christina Flessner, and he won many show titles over the years, including more than 180 Best of Breed awards.  Sadly, Tigger died in October 2009.





Oldest Dog:

The oldest living dog is a Japanese mixed breed named Pushuke.  He was born in April of 1985, which can be proved because his birth is listed in the local pet register.  Pushuke's mom is Yumiko Shinohara, who is a 40-something housewife.  She first got Pushuke when she was a girl of 16.  In the summer of 2008, Pushuke got hit by a car and almost died, but after several hours of surgery, he managed to survive.

The oldest dog ever on record was an Australian cattle dog named Bluey, who died in 1939 at the age of 29 years, 5 months.  Bluey lived in Australia with Les Hall, and he worked herding cattle and sheep for almost 20 years.






Best Tracker:

In 1925, a Doberman named Sauer tracked a livestock thief for 100 miles across the Great Karroo in South Africa, just by sniffing out the thief's trail.  Sauer was trained by Detective-Sergeant Herbert Kruger.







Longest Jump:

In 1849 at Brecon Lodge, Glouchestershire, England, a greyhound named Bang jumped 30 feet when he was chasing a hare.  While making the jump, Bang cleared a 4-foot, 6-inch gate and landed on a hard road, which injured his pastern bone.


Highest Jump:

Another greyhound set the record for the highest jump, and this was done on October 7, 2006.  The dog was named Cinderella May a Holly Grey, and she was competing in the Purina Incredible Dog Challenge National Finals when she went over a jump that was 68 inches high.





Fastest 100 Meters on a Skateboard:

You have probably seen videos of Tillman the English Bulldog on YouTube.  He likes to ride skateboards and surfboards, too.  Anyway, on July 30, 2009, he skateboarded 100 meters on a level parking lot in 19.678 seconds during the X Games XV in Los Angeles, and that's how he set the record.





Most Tennis Balls Held in the Mouth:

This record was set by a golden retriever named Augie on July 6, 2003.  Augie managed to get 5 tennis balls in her mouth all at one time.  It's not too surprising that a golden set this record because goldens are mostly crazy about tennis balls.  Augie lives with the Miller family in Dallas.






Fastest Time to Pop 100 Balloons:

Anastasia, who is a Jack Russell Terrier, popped 100 balloons in 44.49 seconds, which is a world record.  After that, she was pretty famous, so she got to be on Live with Regis and Kelly, appear in some commercials, web advertisements, and print campaigns.  Anastasia is owned and trained by Doree Sitterly.








Most Steps Walked Down by a Dog Facing Forward Balancing a Glass of Water:

You might wonder why anyone would teach a dog to do this trick, and the answer is "To set a world record, of course!"  Anyway, an Aussie/border collie mix named Sweet Pea went down 10 steps while balancing a 5-ounce glass of water on her forehead, and that is how she set the record on January 5, 2008.  Sweet Pea is owned and trained by Alex Rothacker, who also taught her to jump rope on 4 legs or 2 legs and to walk up stairs on her hind legs.  Another world record that Sweet Pea set was for the fastest 100 meters walked by a dog with a can balanced on its head, which she did in 2 minutes and 55 seconds.




Well, I hope you are properly impressed by all these fabulous world records set by dogs.  I know I am!  And I'm not just impressed, I'm also getting tired thinking about jumping and skateboarding and balancing things on my head.  So maybe I'll go lie down now and see if I can set a world record for napping!

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EUROPEAN HARES

European hares started out in Europe, and that's how they got their name.  Since then, they spread out into western Asia, and they also got introduced into some other places such as South America, Australia, New Zealand, and a little bit of the U.S.  There are plenty of hares around, so they are not endangered.  But farming has given them less land to live in, and some farmers think of them as pests because hares eat crops.  So there is a lot of hunting of hares by people and also by predators such as eagles, foxes, coyotes, and wolves.

Dark red = original range
Bright red = introduced areas

Hares like to live in open fields and pastures, near hedgerows and woodlots.  They do not burrow in the ground, like rabbits do.  Instead, they have their babies in shallow nests called "forms."  But I have told before about this difference between rabbits and hares, and I am sure you remember it!

European hares mostly hang out by themselves, unless it is the mating season.  They come out around dusk, and they graze all night, and then they go to bed about dawn.  In the summer, they eat grasses, herbs, and field crops.  During the winter, they eat stuff like twigs, buds, and the bark off of shrubs and young trees.  Two or three adult hares can eat as much as one sheep, which pretty much explains why farmers don't like having hares in their fields.

The breeding season for European hares is really long, like from January to August.  But during this time a female hare is only ready to mate for a few hours during one day of a 6-week cycle.  So when a female is ready, the males compete with each other to find out who gets to be the lucky guy.  If a female isn't ready, she will fight off a male by boxing with him and biting his ears in a vicious way, which serves him right for being so pushy!

But then when a female is ready, she starts running really fast, with all the males chasing her.  After a while, some males start dropping out of the race, and when there is only one left, that is the one who gets to mate with her.

All of this crazy mating behavior is called "March madness," which you might have thought was about basketball, but if you thought that, you were wrong!  Of course, like I said, the mating goes on for several months, but in March and April it's the craziest.

The baby hares, who don't have a burrow to protect them, are born with hair, and they are able to do a lot of stuff very soon after birth.  The mother hare puts some babies in one form and some in another, farther away, just so a predator won't get all of them at once.  Then she travels around from form to form to nurse the babies.  By the time they are a month old, the young hares can get along all by themselves.

So that's the story of European hares, except I forgot to mention that they can run as fast as 35 miles per hour.  Oh, and did you know that the original Easter Bunny was a European Hare?

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DOGS WHO LIKE TO HUMP

Humping is that thing that boy dogs do to girl dogs when they are making puppies.  It's also called mounting.  And sometimes it happens when no one is even thinking about making puppies at all.  But you probably already knew that.  And you've maybe even had a dog hump you sometime in your life, even if you are a human and not a dog yourself.  Which might have led you to ask, "Why the heck do dogs do that?"

On Wednesday when Mom came home from the Humane Society, she had bruises all over her thigh because she got humped really hard by an English bulldog named Bam Bam.  There are two English bulldogs at the shelter right now, and the other one's name is Pebbles.  These two dogs are 4 years old, and they might be littermates, but even if they aren't, they have at least always lived together since they were puppies.  So now the Humane Society wants to try to keep them together when they get adopted.

Bam Bam

Pebbles and Bam Bam are sort of cute, in that smushed face, bulldog type of way.  The first time Mom took them out in the yard, Bam Bam spent the whole time humping Pebbles.  But on Wednesday, he was not humping Pebbles so much anymore.  Instead, he was grabbing onto Mom's leg really, really hard with his legs and feet and toenails, and he was so strong that he was almost knocking Mom over.  She could not ignore the behavior or walk away from it, which is what you are supposed to do with unwanted doggy behavior, because she could not get loose from Bam Bam without prying him off her leg first.

Pebbles

Anyway, this is one of the most extreme examples of mounting that Mom remembers seeing in a dog.  Of course, there are small dogs who do a lot of humping, but they are not so strong, and they don't practically knock you over or bruise your leg.  But if they hump you all the time, it can be pretty annoying and embarrassing.

So why do dogs do this mounting business if they are not making puppies?  Well, there are a bunch of reasons, and here's a list of them:

1.  It can be a dominance thing.  Puppies in a litter will mount each other long before they are old enough to do the real sex thing.  They are just trying to work out who is the "top dog."  This can also happen in any group of dogs living together.  Sometimes female dogs will hump male dogs or other female dogs.  And sometimes male dogs will hump other males.  This does not mean they are gay!  It's how they get to be the leader of the pack.

2.  It's all about being excited.  Some dogs get really aroused when they play or are in other exciting situations, and the way they work out some of their energy is by mounting.  Sometimes they will even mount a toy or a sofa or a person's leg -- just because they don't know what else to do with themselves.

3.  It's because of insecurity or stress.  Mom thinks this may be what's going on with Bam Bam, because he and Pebbles are not used to living in a shelter.  And then when they get some attention, he gets all excited and starts humping.

4.  It has to do with screwed-up hormones.  For example, it might happen that when a girl dog is spayed, she will end up with her male hormones drowning out her female hormones, and then she will start doing the mounting thing.

5.  It's an obsessive/compulsive disorder.  Yep, dogs get them, just like humans do!

6.  It feels good, so a dog just keeps doing it, and it gets to be a habit or OCD.

7.  It might be some sort of medical problem that is making the dog feel all itchy and irritated in the genital area.

8.  It's a good way to get attention.  Even being yelled at is better than being ignored!

9.  It's playing at making puppies.  Dogs learn things like how to hunt, mate and do other useful stuff by practicing with littermates or other dogs.


Okay, so now that you know why dogs mount, how can you get them to stop?  Spaying or neutering may help, but if the dog has already got in the habit of humping, that may not totally solve the problem.

You can ignore the behavior and walk away from it, like Mom tried to do with Bam Bam.  Then you should reward behavior you want, which Mom did by giving Bam Bam treat when he was not trying to hump her, which wasn't very much of the time!

You can distract the dog from humping by having him sit or go get a toy.  If one dog keeps humping another dog, separate the dogs and keep them apart when they can't be supervised.  If a dog gets so excited while playing that he starts mounting, then the play should stop so that he can calm down.

Socializing dogs at a young age and exposing them to exciting situations helps a lot.  Also, dogs will not feel so stressed if they have a regular schedule and plenty of exercise.  There are some drugs that can help, too, especially if a dog tends to be obsessive about humping.

My brothers Barry and Mel used to mount me sometimes, which I found really annoying.  They mostly only did it when we were playing with Mom and they got excited.  And they were pretty good about quitting when I snarked at them.  Now that we are all a little older, they have stopped that humping nonsense, which I think is a very good thing!

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MORE LATEST NEWS!

Wow!  Did you ever notice how latest news keeps happening all the time?  Well, I already have some more of it to tell you about, so here goes.

First of all, Mom went to some thrift shops and to an estate sale Saturday, and she found some Valuable Treasures that she thought might make us rich.  For one thing, she found an original watercolor painting, and it was signed "Chagall," so right away, Mom thought it was probably worth thousands or millions of dollars.  And this is because Marc Chagall was this famous French artist who liked to paint strange things such as chickens and goats and people all sort of floating in the air.

And in this painting that Mom found, there was a half chicken, half woman in the air with the Eiffel Tower behind it, and also a vase of flowers, and it all seemed very Chagall-ish.  And best of all, the painting only cost $10, so Mom figured we would make a bundle on it, if it was really painted by Mr. Chagall.  I was very excited, because if we made a ton of money by selling this painting at some famous auction house, we would be able to buy a truckload of dog treats and other yummy stuff.

But sadly, when Mom started looking online at Mr. Chagall's paintings, and especially at his signature, she didn't think the signature on the painting she bought looked like the way Mr. Chagall usually signed his name, which was that he made loopy L's, and the L's are just straight lines on our painting.  So it's possible that our Chagall is not the real thing, but I prefer to believe that it is, and that we will still get rich by selling it, because I think it would be really fun to be rich!

Anyway, another Valuable Treasure that Mom bought on Saturday was a hand-painted Delft pottery jug thing with a handle and a cork.  Mom says it might be what is called a cruet, but she's not sure what it is exactly.  On the bottom, it says it came from the Hoppe Distilleries in Amsterdam, which is a city in Holland.  You can tell that this cruet thingy comes from Holland because one of the paintings on it is a windmill, and there are lots of windmills in Holland.  Also there are lots of wooden shoes and tulips.

Mom paid about $10 for this Delft pottery piece, and she thought it might also be worth Big Bucks, but maybe not millions of dollars, like an original painting by Chagall.  So Mom looked on the internet for a while, and she found a cruet like hers on eBay, but the one on eBay didn't have its little top anymore.  The seller on eBay wanted $16.99 for that cruet, so Mom thought hers must be worth at least $20, since it had all its parts.  And that would make it worth more than the Chagall painting, which is probably a fake, even though I wish it were real.

Okay, so that's enough about Valuable Treasures, except I will tell you that yesterday Jacen lost his "family jewels."  Mom took him over to the Humane Society with her, and Dr. Regan did the surgery, which only took like 3 minutes, and then Mom brought Jacen back home with her after she finished playing with dogs.

Mom thought Jacen would be kind of tired and would want to rest, but no!  He was totally crazy and full of energy, and after Mom put him in his crate, he kept climbing up the sides of it and then jumping back down, and he spilled his water dish three different times, which made a big mess for Mom to clean up.  Finally, she let him out to run around a bunch, which was what he wanted to do.  He doesn't seem to be sore or anything.  I asked him if his surgery hurt, and he said, "What surgery?"

Oh, and guess what!  Now Jacen is all the time trying to play with Chloe and Charlie.  He jumps on their shoulders and grabs the back of their necks with his teeth.  This is exactly like what the lions do to the antelopes in those nature shows Mom is always watching, so I guess it is a cat thing.  Anyway, sometimes Chloe and Charlie will actually play with Jacen a little bit now before they start growling at him.  This makes Jacen very happy, and it makes Mom laugh.  And that's all the latest news for the moment.

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EGYPTIAN MAU CATS

My feline brother and sister, Charlie and Chloe, and also my foster kitten brother, Jacen, all keep telling me I need to write more in my blog about cats.  This is silly because I am a DOG, and I prefer to write about DOGS!  But in order to stop all the kitty pestering I've been getting, I finally agreed to write about a type of cat called the Egyptian Mau.

This breed of cat is very, very old, and in fact it might be the very first, original domestic cat.  In ancient Egypt, cats were worshipped, but I can't imagine why.  It would make lots more sense to worship dogs, if you ask me.  But no one asked me.  So anyway, you can see pictures that the Egyptians made of spotted cats, and these were probably the very earliest Egyptian Maus.  The word mau even means "cat" in the Middle Egyptian language.

Egyptian Maus are probably descended from African wild cats.  They are the only naturally spotted domestic type of cat.  If you shave the hair off an Egyptian Mau --which would likely not be easy to do without getting clawed -- you will find that the skin is spotted, too, and not just the fur.  There are other spotted cat breeds, such as the Ocicat and the Bengal cat, but these breeds were made by mating domestic cats with wildcats to get the spots.

An interesting thing about Egyptian Maus is that they can run really fast, like over 30 miles an hour, which is almost as fast as a greyhound can run.  The reason these cats can run like this is because (1) their back legs are longer than their front legs, and (2) they have an extra flap of skin that lets them stretch out their back legs really far when they are running.

The modern version of the Egyptian Mau breed got started in 1953 when the Russian Princess Natalie Troubetskaya, who was exiled from Russia, met the cat that belonged to the Egyptian Ambassador to Italy.  She asked him to get her some Egyptian Maus, and she started breeding them.  By 1968, Maus had become champions in some official cat organizations.  British breeders tried to make Egyptian Maus by crossing Abyssinians, Siamese, and tabbies, but these cats did not look like real Maus.  Instead, they became the start of the Ocicat breed.

Egyptian Maus are small to medium in size.  They are slender and muscular, and they come in several different colors, such as silver, bronze, smoke, black, and blue/pewter.  Cats with those last two colors can't be shown, but they can be bred.  All Maus have green eyes, but not just any color of green.  Their eyes are supposed to be "gooseberry green."

These cats can be sort of aloof and shy, just like basenjis.  But Maus are very loving and loyal with their people, and when they want your attention, they can be really demanding.  Since they have short hair, Maus don't need much grooming.  They don't usually have health problems, and they can live a long time.

This breed is still pretty rare.  As of 2006, there were 6,741 Maus registered with the Cat Fanciers' Association, and the Governing Council of the Cat Fancy was registering fewer than 200 kittens each year.  But if you want a Mau kitten, you can probably find a breeder who will sell you one for a lot of money.  There is also a rescue group working in Egypt to save native Maus.  They have lots of cats who need homes, but it's kind of complicated to get them to where you live.  Anyway, if you want my opinion -- which I'm sure you do -- you should just adopt a cat from your local shelter.  Or better yet, you should adopt a dog!

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A BOOK YOU SHOULD READ

Last week Mom and I finished reading a book called A Dog's Purpose, by W. Bruce Cameron.  This was a totally excellent and wonderful book which I think should be required for all dog lovers to read.  What happens in the book is that a dog keeps getting born again and again as a puppy, and each time he remembers the lives he had before.  He decides that he needs to find his purpose in life and do whatever that purpose is, and after that, he won't have to keep coming back.

The whole book is told by the dog himself during his four lifetimes, and sometimes the book is funny, and other times it is sad.  But if you like dogs at all, you are sure to like this book.  Mom says that everybody thinks about what the meaning and purpose of life is.  Even humans do this.  And when you read A Dog's Purpose, it will help you think about what your life is all about.  Also, I will just mention that this book was on the New York Times bestseller list, and that means lots of people bought it.

There is a whole website just about this book, and you can find it here:  http://www.adogspurpose.com . On the website, you can watch a little video about the book.  The video is called a "trailer," which Mom and I thought only movies had, but this trailer is about a book, so go figure.

Mr. Cameron, who is the author of the book, is a journalist who writes humorous columns.  He has also written some other books, such as 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Daughter.  This book was so popular that there was a whole TV show was made out of it.

The latest book that Mr. W. Bruce Cameron has written is called Emory's Gift.  It is about a grizzly bear that a 13-year-old boy and his father are trying to save.  I haven't read the book yet, so I can't really tell you any more than that.  Mom says maybe we can read it soon.  I think it will be good, but probably not as good as a book about a dog!

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MORE INTERESTING WORDS

HULLABALOO

As you should know by now, I like to tell you about words that are fun to say, and hullabaloo is one of those words.  Also, it turns out to have a connection to dogs, so that makes it an even better word to talk about.  A hullabaloo is a big, noisy commotion.  Sometimes it involves people who are making a racket to protest something that they are angry about.

Now, here's the doggy part.  This word started out in England during fox hunts, because the hunters would call out "halloo-balloo" to the hounds to get them excited about chasing the fox.  A fox hunt is a very noisy event, once it gets going, with all the dogs baying and the people shouting.  So that's how a hullabaloo came to mean a loud commotion.

SHIBBOLETH

This is a Hebrew word, and it means the part of a plant that has grain in it, such as an ear of corn.  But that is not how we use this word today in English.  Now a shibboleth is something that shows where you come from or what group you are part of.  But in the past, a shibboleth was sometimes used to test whether you were an enemy that ought to be killed.

The way all this got started was because in the Bible, in Judges 12:5-6, there was a test that the Gilead people gave to the Ephraimite people who were trying to sneak back home after the Gileadites had already defeated them in battle.  So whenever a person from Ephraim tried to come back into Gilead, they were asked to say "shibboleth," but in their language, there was no "sh" sound, so they would say "sibboleth," and then they got killed.  I know this is a not-nice, bloody story, but I did not make it up.  I am just telling it to you like it is in the Bible.

During World War II, American soldiers in the Pacific area used the word lollapalooza as a test of whether people who were hiding were native English speakers or not.  This word worked for that because the Japanese usually say "r" instead of "l", and they could not pronounce lollapalooza correctly.

Other types of shibboleths are things that people who grew up at the same time in the same country all share, like TV shows, songs, and stuff like that.  Or shibboleths might be shared experiences that people had in places like college or the military or working in the same office.

SCUTTLEBUTT

I think a lot of people probably know this word, and it's a funny one to say because it has "butt" in it.  What it means is rumors and gossip and other such stuff that is interesting to talk about.  But in the beginning, a scuttlebutt was a big wooden cask that was on the deck of a sailing ship, and it held fresh water for the crew to drink.  So when the sailors got thirsty, they would gather around the scuttlebutt and and talk while they were getting some water.  This is the same thing that happens nowadays in an office where people stand around the water cooler and talk about the latest gossip.

You might also be interested to know that a butt, which is a wooden barrel, holds two hogsheads of liquid.  This is the same as 126 US gallons.  They had some pretty strange names for measurements back in the old days, if you ask me.

HUBRIS

Hubris is a word that comes from Greek, and it means extreme pride or arrogance.  If you have a bad case of hubris, you might get so out of touch with reality that you think you are perfectly wonderful and fabulous in every way, even if you are not.  In Ancient Greece, hubris was a legal term, and showing hubris was a crime because it meant that you were shaming or humiliating somebody else just to make yourself feel good.  Some examples of hubris are what today we would call assault, rape, theft, mutilation of a corpse, or heresy.

Nowadays, hubris is like the pride that goes before a fall, or the pride that blinds a person.  It means being so confident in your own abilities that you don't use common sense.  It means ignoring moral laws and feeling that you can do no wrong.  And I will just add that if you have hubris, I would really prefer that you stay far away from me!

SCRIMSHANKER

This word came from the British Navy in the late 1800s.  It means a person who avoids their work or responsibilities.  It especially describes someone who tries to get out of serving in the military during wartime.  But it can also just mean anybody who is a shirker or slacker.  Another use of the word is for people who are tight-fisted and who try to avoid paying for their share of anything.




So anyway, that's today's vocabulary lesson.  I hope you have learned some new words and that you will use some of them as soon as you can!

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