Placemat from Dogstuff

Blewett Pass, in Washington, has an elevation of over 4,000 feet. So when people saw the young black labrador there, they stopped to help.

For nearly a week, travelers tried to catch the dog. He took food from them, then slipped away. Skiers, snowmobile riders, snowplow drivers, US Forest Service workers — all of them took turns feeding the dog and keeping an eye out for him.

Finally, “Blewett” was captured by the combined efforts of a Humane Society animal control officer, snowmobiler, animal rescuer and snowplow driver. And now he has a new home.

A Washington couple heard about Blewett when they returned home from a winter trip to Mexico, where their longtime black lab companion had just died. Blewett is adjusting well and seems happy.

Where did he come from? His new family has an idea. On the trip home, they said, Blewett looked up every time an 18-wheeler went by.

Which one is older? (Card from Dogstuff)

We’ve all heard that one human year equals seven dog years. Well, now there’s a new math for calculating your dog’s age.

Dogs reach their version of adulthood pretty quickly. So a 1-year-old-dog is 12 in human years, and a 2-year-old is 24 in human years.

Is a 3-year-old 36, then? No, after those first two years, just add 4 to get your estimate. So a 3-year-old is 28 in human years, a 4-year-old is 32, etc.

What if your 8-year-old dog (48 in human years) is acting like she’s 98? It may be time for a trip to the vet to see if anything’s wrong.

Dogs share many social behaviors with humans

It’s true that chimpanzees are the species most genetically similar to humans. But when it comes to behavior, scientists are turning more and more to dogs.

A new paper says that dogs have lived with humans for so long, and been so thoroughly domesticated, that they share many social behaviors with us.

These include cooperation, attachment to people, understanding human verbal and non-verbal communications, and the ability to imitate. (Don’t miss this video of a dog imitating human behaviors.)

Card from Dogstuff

Dogs may even think like us. According to lead author Jozsef Topal,

[a] shared environment has led to the emergence of functionally shared behavioral features in dogs and humans and, in some cases, functionally analogous underlying cognitive skills.

Studies show that dogs exhibit all three primary types of social behavior displayed by humans. They can respond to verbal commands to perform multiple tasks about as well as a 16-month-old child, researchers say.

Because dogs can be compared to wolves and also to humans, they are even more valuable to researchers. We can expect to see many more comparative studies in the future.

Sophia Bouzis has sometimes wondered whether her dog Sterling was really a sort of guardian angel. Now she has even more reason to think so.

On Monday, Sophia slipped in the mud and slid several feet down into a drainage ditch filled with rushing storm water.

As her head went under and her body was being sucked into the drainage pipe, Sterling, a standard poodle, grabbed her by the wrist. He pulled her up far enough that her head was above water and she could call for help.

Paperweight from Dogstuff

Her mother and sister, unable to free her, summoned neighbors and held Sophia up until rescue workers could arrive and pull her out. Sophia had scrapes and bruises, but no serious injuries.

And Sterling, as Sophia says, is “a really good dog.”

Lynne Engelbert has been doing canine search and rescue for 20 years, including Oklahoma City, the World Trade Center, and Katrina. The Mercury News has a good profile of her life (”I was raised by border collies,” she says semi-jokingly) and work.

Engelbert and Sweep

How does she stay motivated in such a grim occupation? “To be able to [recover bodies], to bring closure to the families, is truly a gift. It’s a blessing that I get back.”

In addition to aiding search and rescue operations, Engelbert is active in supporting training programs and facilities for the dogs.

They’d be happy with the port commissioners in Seattle.

Last year, the port purchased 12.7 tons of dog food to use in testing a new conveyor system. Dog food works better than sand and water, either of which can damage the system if containers break.

Once the new system was certified, the food needed a home. But the animal shelters in Seattle can only store so much — they don’t have room for all of it.

So the commissioners passed a resolution giving the food to the shelters — which in turn will pass most of it on to Northwest Harvest, which works with about 300 food banks and meal programs throughout Washington.

Rawhide bone from Dogstuff

“I’m not sure what the plan for distribution is yet,” spokeswoman Claire Acey said Tuesday. “But I can tell you for clients, particularly at the Cherry Street Food Bank in Seattle, their pets are tremendously important to them. We get a lot of requests for dog food.

“This will make a big difference for people, especially those who don’t have much else.”

A dog on scratched musher Alan Peck’s team died while being transported back to Nome. Officials say the dogs were healthy when loaded on the plane, which encountered significant turbulence during the flight.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has requested a criminal investigation into the dog deaths from this year’s Iditarod.

Dogs who develop cancer are increasingly being given experimental drugs and other treatments that may someday benefit humans.

Like Oscar, a bichon frise with anal sac adenocarcinoma and a poor prognosis. Instead of having Oscar put down, his vet contacted a research center, which shipped out a new drug to try.

Gift bag from Dogstuff

There are several reasons why it makes sense to offer cancer treatments to dogs. The mice that are usually used in cancer treatments are bred to develop tumors (ugh). But dogs, like people, develop tumors spontaneously.

Also, treatments that are highly effective in mice — 80 percent or better — may only be 10 to 15 percent effective in humans. Dogs are more genetically similar to humans than mice are. What’s more, they’re exposed to the same environmental factors. So there’s hope that treatments that work well in dogs will be more helpful to humans.

Handpainted figure from Dogstuff

The dogs benefit too. Most of the drugs and therapies used to treat them were developed in the 1950s. But now, they are receiving cutting-edge treatments in cases where there would otherwise be no hope. The potential is so good that the U.S. National Cancer Institute has established the Comparative Oncology Program to evaluate chemotherapy drugs in dogs.

Needlepoint pillow from Dogstuff

Two other dogs — Haley, a giant schnauzer, and Buddy, a golden retriever — were treated with the same drug given to Oscar. Buddy’s tumor shrank 40 percent, and Haley’s 77 percent. There’s now a trial underway with 10 dogs.

And Oscar? Five years later, he’s still going strong.