Tom Phillips

A dog has recovered after needing emergency surgery – because it had swallowed a whole toy football.

Bracken the labrador finished up with the deflated ball stuck next to his heart after munching it while out of sight of his owner John Grant and would have died without surgery.

Mr Grant realised the two-year-ancient dog needed medical attention when he started coughing incessantly.

When Bracken was X-rayed at the University of Glasgow Small Animal Hospital, vets noticed an unexpected dark shape near the labrador’s heart.

Further tests revealed a congenital abnormality – a hole in the diaphragm between the dog’s chest and abdomen which meant part of his stomach could go into the space.

When surgical specialist Kathryn Pratschke operated, helped by vet Damian Chase, they were stunned to learn that the foreign object was a deflated toy football about 12cm (5 inches) long.

Mr Chase said: ‘Bracken had been fine and his stomach had been gradually moving in and out from this area in his chest, but because he had eaten this toy football it got stuck up there. Part of the stomach went and was sitting next to his heart with the football in it.

‘We were surprised because when we did the X-ray and scan we couldn’t tell what it was. He is a very lucky dog. He would have died without the operation.’

Mr Chase said the abnormality, called peritoneo-pericardial diaphragmatic hernia, can have catastrophic consequences, though many dogs with the same problem lead normal lives with the flaw going unnoticed.

Bracken needed two operations to right the problem, one last spring and one in January. He is now living life to the full at the Grant home in Lenzie, East Dunbartonshire – though where he found the football remains a mystery.

Mr Grant, 70, said: ‘I don’t know where he picked it up, though it may have been in the park in the long grass. “He is quite inquisitive and noisy and boisterous. He eats anything – plastic bottles, golf balls, stones and sticks.’

http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/817700-the-dog-who-swallowed-a-football

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Some fascinating links I’ve found this week:

• Where Have All The Werewolves Gone? — From the late 19th century on, anomal­ous primates like the Yeti, Sasquatch and Bigfoot nudged aside the wolfmen of ancient and stepped forward to occupy the niche of this fearsome man-like monster. What accounts for this curious transformation?
• The Tortuguero Prophecy Unravelled — Author Geoff Stray examines a Mayan inscription on Monument 6 from a small-known site called Tortuguero, in the state of Tabasco in Mexico, and the insights it might have into the meaning and reality of 2012 prophecy.
• Bigfoot, Chupacabras and Other Weird Creatures — For more than a century, there has been a legend in the ever-enigmatic mountains of the American Northwest. The legend is based on tales about enormous hairy creatures that walk upwards in the same way that apes do.
• All New Links

THE LATEST LINKS: Werewolves, Maya and 2012, Bigfoot and Chupacabras originally appeared on About.com Paranormal Phenomena on Thursday, March 18th, 2010 at 16:35:13.

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Terrible cloaked UFO or Brown Saucer Cloud?…

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Therealworldno.blogspot.com

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Captured in the middle of the night in a remote part of Scandinavia, this footage has so far defied explanation. ….

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A Russian Soyuz space capsule carrying a U.S. astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut from the International Space Station landed safely in Kazakhstan.

International Space Station – Space – Technology – Space capsule – Kazakhstan

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A man was sitting in his hot tub on the 4th of October at Moreton, Wirral, looking up at a clear sky when spotted a very bright light which started to ‘go at tremendous speed’ across the sky in different directions. ‘Twelve mysterious orbs’ were spotted shooting over Macclesfield in Cheshire, the witness said that they were moving too quick to be Chinese lanterns, they suddenly rose and disappeared from view. On the 5th of October Tina McGrory saw what looked like a ball of fire heading towards the earth at Glenmavis, Airdrie, Scotland. She reports: ‘Then it stopped and turned into three bright white lights in a triangle formation. It hovered for a while then went slowly changed direction hovered again then shot off into the sky.’ Over in Portsmouth the witness was in his back garden having a cigarette when he saw ‘a bright flame-like colour in the sky. The object looked as if it was a star without the bottom point on it, with an orange light going around it in a circular fashion.’ The UFO went horizontally quite quick across the night sky and it looked as though it was beginning to descend when it finally went out of sight.

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RIGHT: Buggs does an abstract painting while his owner, Carol Jensen, stands ready to help at her farm in Iron Ridge. Jensen taught her horse, a 13-year-ancient former barrel racer, to paint as way to keep him from getting into mischief during the winter when he is not as active. Photo: Mark Hoffman

With help, Buggs excels at painting

By Erin Richards of the Journal Sentinel
Posted: March 15, 2010

Iron Ridge — He’s prankish and clever, an artist with an attitude.

On excellent days he’s focused, his brush strokes smooth and long. Other days he knocks over the easel with his head, slathers paint on his assistant, or accidentally punches right through the canvas. Time to start over.

With a paintbrush between his teeth, Buggs, a 13-year-ancient quarter horse cross, produces novelty artwork that’s attracting a growing number of admirers in Dodge County and across the state. He’s a pioneer in a painting horse movement that’s emerged in recent years, fueled by YouTube videos and the Internet, and part of a worldly contingent of “animal artists” that includes everything from elephants and dogs to chimpanzees.

Owner Carol Jensen, a multimedia artist, jewelry maker and musician who taught Buggs to paint two years ago, envisions filling a gallery with her horse’s paintings one day, or maybe taking his show on the road, exhibition-style.

“I’m inspired by paintings I see, colorwise, and I reckon, ‘Oh, Buggs could do that,’ ” Jensen said recently, while dressed in a white button-up smock and mixing paint on the ground next to Buggs’ open stall door.

A few moments later she dabbed the brush in the paint, pointed the wooden handle at Buggs’ expectant mouth and instructed, “Up and down, up and down . . . ”

Jensen, 56, learned Buggs’ aptitude for painting while looking for ways to keep the restless horse occupied during the winter months, when poor weather keeps him cooped up in his stall. She had heard about people teaching horses to paint and figured that Buggs, whose personality equates to that of a smart child who acts up when bored, seemed like a excellent prospect. In October 2008 she started training the chestnut gelding to hold a stick in his mouth and target the tip on a designated area.

When he performed the action, she rewarded him by pressing a clicker and giving him a treat. Then she gave Buggs a paintbrush, went his head up and down, and praised him when he repeated the action on his own.

“At first I used a sketch pad and no paint, then I went from the sketch pad to stretch canvas,” Jensen said. “When he started poking holes through the canvas with the brush, I started using canvas board instead.”

By November 2008, Buggs’ first painting sold in a charity auction. Since then, he’s made about 30 more paintings with Jensen’s help.

Many of Buggs’ pieces line the walls of Jensen’s house in a colorful parade of abstract strokes, splatters, scrapes and mushes from the whiskers on Buggs’ chin.

“As far as freshness and originality are concerned, he’s got me beat,” Jensen said. “But my dexterity is better.”

Animal artists

Horse-produced art has attracted a honest amount of media attention in the last couple of years. Cholla the painting horse, with his own Wikipedia entry, has had watercolors showed around the world.

The earliest documented art-producing animal may be Congo, a chimp that painted and drew in the 1950s. YouTube videos show elephants producing art – the Milwaukee County Zoo’s elephant, Brittany, earned minor fame with her painting abilities – and dogs that wield paintbrushes.

Cheryl Ward, a Florida resident who started teaching her horses to paint in 2004, has coined the movement “interspecies collaborative action art” to reflect the partnership between human and animal. While Ward said the horses don’t know what they’re producing, she believes they get some sort of satisfaction out of the process.

“It’s honoring their innate abilities to use their bodies in search of food or something else that feels excellent,” Ward said. “It’s deeper than just a fun pet trick.”

In Iron Ridge at her Windy Hill Farm, Jensen sets up the easel outside Buggs’ stall a couple times a month. It’s up to her to select the hue of the acrylics, and to choose if she’s going to let him paint wet colors on top of each other, or do a base layer, let it dry and then bring it back to Buggs for another round.

When they work together, Jensen stops and surveys what Buggs has done so far. She may rotate the canvas, or choose a different-sized brush. Going minimalist requires diligence.

“I’d have to take it away pretty quickly,” Jensen said. “If I leave it up to him, he’ll just keep going.”

When not painting, Buggs performs a repertoire of crowd-pleasing party tricks – he opens the mailbox outside his stall, retrieves a package and hands it to Jensen. He picks up a rubber ball and drops it in the basketball hoop. He plays the keyboard with his nose, waves a checkered flag, and when it’s all over, drops his head and bows.

A few miles away at the Celtic Crossroads Café in Mayville, Buggs’ paintings pique many customers’ interests. Café owner Cyndy Beecroft said people have bought nine or 10 of Buggs’ paintings off the wall, ranging in price from $75 to $125, over the past year.

“I reckon Buggs’ artwork is pretty sweet,” Amy Tarleton, a patron at the café, said recently. “I’m not talented in art at all. It’s cool because he’s a lot better than I am.”

Tarleton said she’d consider buying a Buggs painting, if she had an available $125.

Tarleton said, “I reckon I would because who could say, ‘I have a painting done by a horse?’ I reckon that’s just fascinating.”

Buggs online
To see a video of Buggs, a quarter horse cross who paints pictures, and his owner, Carol Jensen, visit www.jsonline.com/video.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/87733497.html
(Submitted by D.R. Shoop)

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