Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened. ~ Anatole France

A male cross-breed dog, Pusuke, is seen in this file photo from Dec. 24, 2010.

(ABCNews)…Pusuke, listed by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s oldest-living dog, died in Japan on Monday. He was 26 years old — or somewhere between 117 and 185 in “human years,” according to various calculations. There is no official method for converting dog years to human years.

The dog’s owner, Yumiko Shinohara, said the male cross-breed died at Sakura in the Tochigi prefecture, north of Tokyo, according to the Kyodo news agency.

Pusuke was reportedly eating well and staying active until Monday, when he lost his appetite and had difficulty breathing. Pusuke died peacefully, minutes after his owner returned home from a walk.

“I think (Pusuke) waited for me to come home,” she said, according to Kyodo.

Born in April of 1985, Pusuke was recognized last December as the world’s oldest-living dog.

The oldest-known dog on record, according to Guinness, was an Australian cattle dog named Bluey, who lived to the ripe old age of 29 years and five months before it was put down in November 1939.

In what is a world first, a long-haired Chihuahua named ‘Momo’ passed her exams to become a police dog in the western Japanese prefecture of Nara last fall.

The brown-and-white dog was one of 32 successful candidates out of 70 dogs, passing a search and rescue test by finding a person in five minutes after merely sniffing their cap.

‘Any breed of dog can be entered to become a police dog in the search and rescue division,’ said a Nara police spokesman.

But he admitted that news a Chihuahua had been entered may still come as a surprise to many.

‘It’s quite unusual,’ he said.

Television footage showed the seven-year-old Momo bounding across grass or sitting proudly, long hair blowing in the breeze.

Momo will be used for rescue operations in case of disasters such as earthquakes, in the hope that she may be able to squeeze her tiny frame into places too narrow for more usual rescue dogs, which tend to be German Shepherds.

The public response to the news of Momo’s selection took police by surprise, the spokesman said, adding: ‘The phone’s been ringing all afternoon.’

‘It’s quite rare for us to have a Chihuahua work as a police dog,’ the spokeswoman said.

Chihuahuas, named after a Mexican state, are the smallest breed of dog.

‘We would like it to work hard by taking advantage of its small size,’ a Nara police department official told the Sankei Shimbun daily.

The Australian yesterday revealed the story of animal rescue “guerilla” Hiroshi Hoshi’s mission to the plant to grab two Japanese Shiba dogs spotted wandering around on a webcam trained on the facility.

Yesterday, Mr. Hoshi said one of [TEPCO]‘s managers, who called himself Mr Igarashi, made a “ghoulish and bizarre” phone call to him soon after he rescued the dogs, suggesting they had become company property.

“He sounded that those dogs actually belong to TEPCO, because they were found at privately owned area of the plant,” Mr. Hoshi told The Australian. […]

Return our dogs, TEPCO demands

A MAN who snatched two dogs to safety from the grounds of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has revealed the plant’s disgraced operator TEPCO later rang him to assert ownership over them.

The Australian yesterday revealed the story of animal rescue "guerilla" Hiroshi Hoshi’s mission to the plant to grab two Japanese Shiba dogs spotted wandering around on a webcam trained on the facility.

Yesterday, Mr. Hoshi said one of the plant’s managers, who called himself Mr. Igarashi, made a "ghoulish and bizarre" phone call to him soon after he rescued the dogs, suggesting they had become company property.

"He sounded that those dogs actually belong to TEPCO, because they were found at privately owned area of the plant," Mr. Hoshi told The Australian.

"We will never give them away — we are the guardians of those two dogs."

The dogs, thought to be sisters, were first seen at the plant earlier this month, three months after the nuclear accident, and were found to have absorbed significant amounts of radiation.

Nevertheless, they have been given a clean bill of health and were given to a couple in Yokohama.

Mr Hoshi, 55, has been making a series of unauthorized missions into the radioactive zone to rescue distressed animals. Yesterday, he received an offer to collaborate on rescue efforts from an NGO called Japan Earthquake Animal Rescue, comprising Japan’s best-known animal welfare organizations.

The organization has government permission to operate within the 20km perimeter around the nuclear plant, but Mr. Hoshi has been critical of the slowness of its members to act to ease the suffering of the thousands of animals in the area.

"I am still deciding whether I should accept this offer to join forces," he said.

Sam Biddle — There may be many lost animals of Fukushima, but you can strike two off that list: daring civilians spotted two pooches on a Fukushima livestream, then slipped behind nuclear lines to rescue the "atomic dogs." This, my friends, is heroism.

The pooch raiders, part of the Hachiko Coalition of Japanese animal welfare enthusiasts, infiltrated the evacuation dead zone (and the perimeter of the plant itself) in search of two dogs they caught on the plant’s live webcam, roaming without food, care, or protection from constant radiation.

According to the Hachiko crew (itself named after a beloved Japanese dog, legendary in the annals of canine history), these dogs were not only a tragic sight, but posed a threat to humans—what happened if they got dosed up on radiation and then wandered back to civilization? TEPCO and the Japanese government have been letting critters roam free this entire time, despite repeated calls for a thorough animal removal plan.

So they did it themselves. Donning hazmat suits, the volunteers drove to the plant, found the dogs, and sped out of there to a nearby veterinary hospital, where the two dogs were decontaminated and treated for their radiation exposure. The furry couple received two and three μSv of radiation respectively, which is low for humans, but for dogs—we’re not sure. We’ll keep track of the atomic duo for you, but for now, they appear to be happy, healthy and in (non-radioactive) hands.

This is probably the single happiest story to come out of Fukushima, so go ahead and soak it up. [via Hachiko Coalition]

TOKYO (AP) — When Etsumi Ogino saw a news photo of a pack of shelties wandering through an abandoned town near Japan’s tsunami-damaged nuclear plant, she thought of her own 13-year-old canine Kein and jumped into action.

“My heart trembled,” said Ogino, a 56-year-old volunteer at an animal shelter in Chiba prefecture. “They looked just like my dog. I started searching for them right away.”

The picture that sparked the rescue.

She and others around Japan called Asahi.com, the website of the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, which had run the photo. An Associated Press photographer had snapped that photo and others of the dogs on an empty street in Minami Soma city, an area evacuated because of radiation fears.

On Saturday, the AP gave her details of where the dogs were spotted.

Ogino relayed the information to a team of animal rescuers called Sheltie Rescue. By then, the group had been getting emails from dog lovers around the country about the abandoned pack.

Through emails and Internet research it was established that the owner of the dogs was a breeder in Minami Soma. The group contacted the Fukushima city branch of the Japan Collie Club, tracked the owner down by phone at a shelter and got her go-ahead to rescue the dogs.

In the wee hours of Sunday morning, seven volunteers left Tokyo and drove over broken roads and past demolished houses to meet three other volunteers in the ghost town that Minami Soma has become. Some had prepared radiation suits and others wore simple vinyl raincoats.

The first two to arrive found the pack around the Odaka train station, near the owner’s home, where the AP team had last seen them.

“They were waiting for their owner,” said Tamiko Nakamura, a volunteer who went with the group from Tokyo.

The dogs had been left some dry food, and weren’t starving.

It took a while to entice them with snacks, and six or seven were bundled into each car. The group saved 20 dogs in all.

Most were taken to a veterinary clinic in Kanagawa prefecture just west of Tokyo. Others are being cared for by individuals in other areas.

The owner, worn down by the disaster and worrying about her dogs, was “extremely happy,” Nakamura said. She said the owner did not want her identity revealed.

Nakamura only regrets that some of the dogs in the pack ran away and countless others are still stranded in the evacuation zone.

“There are still some left behind,” she said. “I’m concerned about them and want to pull them out.”

Miraculous: three weeks after an earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan, a dog was found alive at sea by the Japanese Coast Guard. According to The Daily Mail, the dog survived by living in a partially submerged house that was swept to sea.

Rescuers had hoped to find more tsunami survivors living inside the house but after tearing the roof open, it was found to be empty apart from the dog.

Despite its three weeks at sea, the medium-sized brown dog seemed to be in reasonably good condition considering its ordeal.

The discovery of the dog is a rare glimmer of hope in Japan where thousands of people are believed to have perished in the disaster.

The nation is now gripped by the ongoing nuclear threat posed by the unstable Fukushima plant as workers continue to battle to restore vital cooling systems damaged by the quake.

Save a Life…Adopt Just One More…Pet!

Everyday we read or hear another story about pets and other animals being abandoned in record numbers while at the same time we regularly hear about crazy new rules and laws being passed limiting the amount of pets that people may have, even down to one or two… or worse yet, none.

Nobody is promoting hoarding pets or animals, but at a time when there are more pets and animals of all types being abandoned or being taken to shelters already bursting at the seams, there is nothing crazier than legislating away the ability of willing adoptive families to take in just one more pet!!

Our goal is to raise awareness and help find homes for all pets and animals that need one by helping to match them with loving families and positive situations. Our goal is also to help fight the trend of unfavorable legislation and rules in an attempt to stop unnecessary Euthenization!!

“All over the world, major universities are researching the therapeutic value of pets in our society and the number of hospitals, nursing homes, prisons and mental institutions which are employing full-time pet therapists and animals is increasing daily.” ~ Betty White, American Actress, Animal Activist, and Author of Pet Love

There is always room for Just One More Pet. So if you have room in your home and room in your heart… Adopt Just One More! If you live in an area that promotes unreasonable limitations on pets… fight the good fight and help change the rules and legislation…

Save the Life of Just One More…Animal!

Recent and Seasonal Shots

As I have been fighting Cancer… A battle I am gratefully winning, my furkids have not left my side. They have been a large part of my recovery!! Ask Marion

Photos by the UCLA Shutterbug are protected by copyright, Please email at JustOneMorePet@gmail.com or find us on twitter @JustOneMorePet for permission to duplicate for commerical purposes or to purchase photos.

By JoAnn, Marion, and Tim Algier This past week, we lost our dear family member Rocky who had just outlived his “huep – na-napbdad”, Tom, by just a few months. His perspective would have been interesting!! Just this side of heaven is a place called Rainbow Bridge. When an animal dies that has been […]

By JoAnn, Marion, and Tim Algier This past week, we lost a dear family member, Rocky, who had just outlived his “human pet-dad”, Tom, by just a few months. It certainly would have been interesting to know what they thought and what experiences they had had in common!! Just this side of heaven is a […]

Bristol Palin: Fellow SixSeeds blogger Zeke Pipher has a great question: If they were dead puppy parts, or parts from homosexual babies, or babies that self-identified as adults, it’d be a different story. Meaning, it would be a story. But as it is, the fact that these fetuses don’t look like puppies, and their sexual […]

Family and friends of G.R. Gordon-Ross watch his private fireworks show at the Youth Sports Complex in Lawrence, Kan., Friday, June 28, 2013. (AP Photo/Orlin Wagner) Mercury News – Originally posted on July 02, 2013: The Fourth of July is one of my favorite holidays. Hot dogs, potato salad and, of course, fireworks. But Independence […]

Very few dogs have the experience of being parents these days and especially seeing their litters through the process of weaning and then actually being able to remain part of a pack with at least part of their family. Apachi is our Doggie Dad. He is a Chiweenie and here he is is watching his […]

By Marion Algier – Just One More Pet (JOMP) – Cross-Posted at AskMarion Anderson Cooper met Chaser, a dog who can identify over a thousand toys, and because of whom, scientists are now studying the brain of man’s best friend. Chaser is also the subject of a book: Chaser: Unlocking the Genius of the Dog […]

By Tamara – Dog Heirs – Cross-Posted at JOMP Quebec, Canada – Animals will be considered “sentient beings” instead of property in a bill tabled in the Canadian province of Quebec. The legislation states that "animals are not things. They are sentient beings and have biological needs." Agriculture Minister Pierre Paradis proposed the bill and […] […]

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Great Book for Children and Pet Lovers… And a Perfect Holiday Gift

One More Pet
Emily loves animals so much that she can’t resist bringing them home. When a local farmer feels under the weather, she is only too eager to “feed the lambs, milk the cows and brush the rams.” The farmer is so grateful for Emily’s help that he gives her a giant egg... Can you guess what happens after that? The rhythmic verse begs to be read aloud, and the lively pictures will delight children as they watch Emily’s collection of pets get bigger and bigger.

If You Were Stranded On An Island…

A recent national survey revealed just how much Americans love their companion animals. When respondents were asked whether they’d like to spend life stranded on a deserted island with either their spouse or their pet, over 60% said they would prefer their dog or cat for companionship!