Dog Paddle Song

For the first day of summer:

“Sing it boys!”

I love the footage comparing the young boy’s swimming style to the dogs’.

Mt. Labrador

Mt. Labrador is one of the most bizarre, beautiful and little known rock formations in North America. The outcrop, which bears an amazing resemblance to the breed that shares its name, is located on a remote section of the southern coast of Maine.

The stunning cliff is an outcrop of Cutler complex anorthosite rock. Anorthosite is a somewhat rare, and quite beautiful, form of intrusive igneous rock and, in an odd twist to our story, a plagioclase mineral called Labradorite is a common constituent of anorthositic rocks.

As igneous rocks cool, well developed systems of joints are generated by the tensile stresses of shrinkage. The high temperature minerals in anorthosites also undergo higher rates of chemical weathering than minerals in low temperature rock types like granite do. This combination of factors means that anorthositic rocks undergo high rates of physical and chemical weathering and are therefore known for eroding into dramatic natural features.

Some other unusual examples of anorthosite outcrops can be found in the Black Giants of New Zealand, parts of the New Jersey Palisades, at Minnesota’s Split Rock lighthouse and – most abundantly – the mountains of the moon.

The billion year old rocks of Mt. Labrador are were first exposed during the Pleistocene glacial period and then later modified by digital erosion.

Popular largely only with mountain climbers, Mt. Labrador doesn’t attract many other visitors because of it’s remote location — about 50 miles west of Portland and 50 miles away from anything else.

Chelonians of Fire

Today we bring you the latest installment in a series of inspirational videos featuring non-traditional species competing in agility:

“I believe that God made me for a purpose. But He also made me fast, and when I run, I feel His pleasure.”
— Eric Liddell in Colin Welland’s Chariots of Fire

Just A Little Kinky

I LOL’d when I found this video because I sang my own version of this song to the pack this morning. Be happy I posted the video. My voice is not this good and you do not want to see me in skimpy lingerie…

Pied Pooper?

via Oddly Specific

Around the Web

From Davidoss Flickerpage

Hat tip to SouthernRockiesNatureBlog  for this link to the makers of a documentary on the suicide dogs of Overtoun Bridge.  I’d heard the story of Overtoun Bridge before and suspected, as Dr. Sands apparently did, that some unique set of environmental factors was the key to the mystery.  I’ve stolen borrowed loved so many things I’ve read there that I have finally belatedly gratefully added Chas to our blogroll.

YouTube teaser for Suicide Dogs of Overtoun Bridge documentary:
  

In the “astonishingly stupid holiday gift ideas for pets” category YesBiscuit provides a link to The Fabuleash and ThePoodleAndDogBlog posts on jaw-dropping idea of Rear Gear.  I post these together because I suspect that the same kind of person who’d pony up $375 to walk her precious darling on a Swarovski crystal studded leash might also prefer not to watch Fifi’s bunghole wink as the dog drags her down the sidewalk.

And from Regretsy – quite possibly the worst idea ever conceived in pet-related intimate apparel.

Truth in Advertising

From ProbablyBadNews

This lends a whole new meaning to the term housebreaking…

Temptation

Japanese television.  Bizarre.  Incomprehensible.  And curiously intriguing.

[gigya width=”400″ height=”345″ src=”http://www.metacafe.com/fplayer/1005991/japan_tv_show.swf” quality=”high” wmode=”transparent” allowScriptAccess=”always” ]

IMO – the black lab was being tortured, the shiba must have been drugged and the chimp, well, he was a very good sport.

Head in the Clouds

For your weekend entertainment, a couple of whimsical end-of-summer treats from the Daily Mail:

Could this be the world’s biggest Great Pyrenees?

A very fluffy Poodle!

Or, you could have chartered a private flight

Image from padraicyclops' flicker page

Or (Hebrew for light) is a truly pampered pooch.  The eight-year-old boxer’s owner recently booked the entire business section on a Paris to Tel Aviv flight so that he could ride in the cabin with her.  USAToday reports:

The woman said her dog experienced extreme anxiety after being placed in the cargo hold on their last flight together, which was in 2006. For this trip, she is quoted by UPI as saying she thought it would be a better idea just to buy out the entire business class section so that she and the dog could enjoy the four-hour flight together. As for El Al, the airline allows pets in the passenger cabin, though it’s unlikely that a full-grown boxer would fit within the size requirements for that in a typical situation.

Flying dogs on airlines really stresses me out. It stresses me out enough that husband and I, who rarely travel without dogs, drive even on long cross-the-country trips. That said, even if I had 30-odd thousand dollars to spare, I don’t think I’d use it to charter an entire section on a passenger flight for the beasties to share with us.

I am surprised that the airline allowed her to do this.  Though given that that the airline was El Al, I’m sure there were plenty of security-related hoops for Or to jump through.  I wonder if a private charter flight would have been a cheaper option…