Posts tagged "CockerSpaniel"

Were you bitten by a dog as a child? How did it affect the way you feel about dogs today?

My mom and my wife both were bitten as kids. Anna's bite was a lot more serious than my mother's, yet Anna loves dogs and my mom does not. What gives?

Anna's family got an English springer spaniel puppy when she was about four, and there seemed to be something wrong with her almost immediately. She snarled inexplicably and was very food territorial. They had to be sure not to walk behind her while she was eating. When Anna was six, the dog attacked her at the top of a set of stairs: "She knocked me onto my back and did not let go. She had my whole forearm in her mouth and bit me several times before my mother could pull her off of me."

She doesn't remember much about the aftermath other than (gross-out alert) "the blood and the tissue that I saw hanging out of the hole in my arm." Her mother cleaned the wound and took her to the hospital, where she got stitches in five places on her arm and a bandage she had to wear for weeks.

Rocco was once an unwanted pet. Now, the 18-month-old cocker spaniel is a necessity for the Fife Constabulary in Scotland. Rocco has been recruited to sniff out criminals' cash and illegal substances.

According to Sgt Davy McKelvie of Fife Constabulary, such dogs helped find £3 million ( $1,632,387) last year.

The dog recently completed six weeks of training and will be stationed at a ferry landing to help seize money. Rocco will work amongst a powerful force of 26 dogs.

Rocco's newly trained nose is now qualified to find large amounts of euro and sterling notes, which often contain large amounts of cash and illegal substances.

Keep up the good work, Rocco!

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Lookin' good, Sadie!

Once perilously close to death, Sadie, the cocker spaniel puppy that Oprah adopted from PAWS Chicago, appears on the June cover of O, The Oprah Magazine, along with her media maven mommy and four adorable shelter pups (who have all found homes, too).

The photograph was taken in February when Oprah visited PAWS Chicago --- a no-kill animal shelter --- to pose for the cover of the magazine's June issue, which is dedicated to animals and the bond we all share with them (as is the May 15th episode of her show). "One thing I know for sure," says Oprah. "I can't begin to repay my own dogs for the flat-out joy they bring me." In addition to Sadie, the talk show icon has two Golden Retrievers, Luke and Layla, and once had two deeply-loved cocker spaniels, Sophie and Solomon, who both passed away in 2008, and a dog named Gracie who passed away in 2007.

During the photo shoot, several precious puppies wriggled around Oprah, but it was a female blond cocker spaniel (then named Amanda, and subsequently re-named Sadie) who captured Oprah's heart.

"The dog chose me," Oprah reveals on the March 6 episode of her talk show, in which she introduced her "new love" Sadie to the world. "There were like six or seven dogs and she was on my shoulder nuzzling," Oprah explains. Photographer Pamela Hanson captured the tender moment when Oprah first met Sadie.

For those watching the show that day, who could forget when Oprah suddenly introduced Sadie's three blond brothers --- Ivan, Webster and Gordie --- and announced to the squealing studio audience that the male pups still needed homes. Unable to resist her own words, the long-time dog lover decided to adopt Ivan.

Tragically, just days later, Ivan contracted the deadly parvovirus and died. "I'd been through parvo 13 years before, with my brown cocker, Solomon," recounts Oprah. "It nearly killed him. He stayed in the hospital for 20 days. He was over a year old when he got it. Ivan was only 11 weeks. His young immune system wasn't strong enough to overcome it. Four days after we took Ivan to the emergency clinic, he died."

Sadie was also infected with parvo and fell gravely ill. "The first four days, she got increasingly worse," Oprah remembers. "At one point I told her doctor, 'I'm prepared to let her go. She shouldn't have to fight this hard.'" But Sadie battled back to a full recovery, rediscovering her fondness for warmed up chicken. "That's because that's what her mommy was making [for her] before she left [for the hospital]," smiles Oprah.

Reminiscing about the day of the cover photo shoot, Oprah has a confession to make. "Out of all the pups in that picture, Sadie was the one I felt an instant connection with." Sounds like true love.

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