In Nashville, Tennessee, a dog who sat on doggy death row for more than a year before given a reprieve is now officially free from government captivity and headed toward TV stardom.
Prada, the 4-year-old pit bull mix that was ruled vicious and ordered put down, was released Thursday from Nashville's Animal Control facility, where the dog had been held since January 2011.
Prada was ordered put down after attacking several other dogs. A judge spared the dog's life after the Villalobos Rescue Center in New Orleans agreed to take the animal.
The center is featured in Animal Planet's reality TV show "Pitt Bulls and Parolees," which puts ex-convicts and abused dogs together so both man and animal can be rehabilitated
"Prada loves these people," Nicole Andree, the dog's former owner said after a representative from the rescue center came to Nashville to collect the dog.
Andree, a 35-year-old childless real estate agent, fought a lengthy court battle to spare the dog, vowing never to stop until she got Prada off death row. But she had to agree to give up her beloved pet to save the animal's life. The judge lifted the death order after Nashville lawyers said they would not object if Prada went to the rescue center. The dog, however, must stay there for the rest of its life.
Andree says she plans to visit Prada at the center. She believes the dog will have a good life there.
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How do you say "welcome home" in dog? We're pretty sure this Great Dane, Emmitt, nicknamed "Thunderpaws," got his super-excited message across.
The overgrown pooch was reuniting with his dad, Trevor Chowder, who was returning from deployment in Afghanistan after spending nine months apart.
The loving giant, who is normally not allowed to jump up (you'll see why when you watch the video — he's as tall as his human companion) stares into Trevor's eyes and gives him a hug while standing on his hind legs.
Here's another video showing a soldier and dog's reunion:
Reunion shows dog's unconditional love (VIDEO)
To say that this boxer, Chuck, was excited to see dad come home is an understatement. He jumps out of the suv to greet him! The family went through the same thing last year when he came home.
If you have a dog walker, you will want to watch the video.
Many say dogs are members of the family, and owners spend a lot of money to make sure their dogs are walked while they are at work or on vacation.
But a Kensington, Maryland woman says something just didn't seem right, so she decided to take a closer look. Yogi Carroll grabbed her video camera and a baby monitor to record exactly what her dog walker was doing when she visited her home each day.
Carroll says the agreement was for her dog walker to come in each day to spend a little time outside with her pet, two-year-old Wilson, and to make sure he did his business.
Carroll says she set up the cameras and even put tape around Wilson’s crate to determine if the dog walker had even bothered to open the crate.
After just a few minutes inside the home, the dog walker leaves the home. Carroll approaches the dog walker to ask for the key to her home.
Carroll says, “I'm here to get the key from you. I'm Yogi. I live here. I'm here to grab the key because I'm actually going to discontinue the dog walking service from now on."
The dog walker says, “Why is that?"
Carroll responds, "I'm guessing if I walk in there, you wrote ‘peed only,’ you didn't walk Wilson. That going to be true?"
The dog walker replies, "Yes."
Carroll walks into her home and finds Wilson in his crate and the tape still in place showing he had never been removed from his crate.
Carroll says she made this recording not only to confirm her suspicions, but to also warn others who may be concerned about their pets.
"So many people use dog walking services in this area,” says Carroll. “My friends are dog walkers, so not all dog walkers are bad. I know this is a hard industry to be a part of, but people need to be aware of what's going in and out of their house."
Carroll did not want to reveal the company who provided the dog walker. She said the owner of the company took swift action.
In Albuquerque, New Mexico, a cat name Meow can't help but waddle. He's one super-sized cat.
The 2-year-old orange and whitetabby tips the scale at nearly 40 pounds, and the Santa Fe Animal Shelter is on a mission to get the feline back into shape.
Meow's 87-year-old owner could no longer take care of him, so the pet was turned over to a shelter in southeastern New Mexico that called the Santa Fe shelter for help.
"The thing with this cat is when you look at it, certainly it's obese. You see that. But it's a sweet looking cat. His face is very sweet. It's just incredibly fat," shelter spokesman Ben Swan said Friday.
Meow has been placed with a foster family. He'll be on a special diet so he can start shedding some pounds. The goal is for him to lose at least 10 pounds so he can be put up for adoption.
The shelter plans to post updates on Meow's weight loss on its Facebook page.
It's not clear how the feline was able to gain so much weight in just two years. Adult cats typically weigh between seven and 12 pounds.
"If you go online, you'll see a lot of fat cats and these are people who have fed them just one thing, like meat or something that's not nutritionally balanced," Swan said. "Then the cat refuses to eat anything else and then they just get fatter and fatter and fatter."
Meow has one thing going for him. He's not the fattest cat out there.
That record belongs to Himmy, a tabby from Australia that weighed almost 47 pounds. The shelter said Guinness World Records has since stopped accepting applications for the record over concerns it would encourage people to overfeed their animals.
In Meow's case, the shelter is awaiting blood test results to make sure he doesn't have any additional health problems.
Shelter veterinarian Jennifer Steketee said the idea is for Meow to gradually lose weight by eating a special diet. He has already lost a couple of pounds since being turned in.
Steketee said the dangers of feline obesity are not much different than they are for humans — extra pressure on the heart and joints.
Swan said all the extra weight makes it tough for Meow to play. He had little interest in the super-sized toy mouse the shelter gave him when he first arrived and he couldn't squeeze much more than his head into the carpeted ring attached to the shelter's scratching post.
"He's very sweet. He's doing everything a normal cat would do except he loses his breath and tires easily," Swan said. "We're seeing what we can to do help him."
In this canine love story, ring around the collar was the intended effect. Scruffy Rubin and Snickers Carter had a wedding many couples dream of, featuring 100 guests, a wedding cake, open bar, receptionist and even security. But while the newlyweds are reportedly happy together, that are not actually human. The Desert Sun reports that actual humans Ernie Rubin and Ann Carter got together to throw Scruffy and Snickers a $5,000 wedding at the Palm Desert Resort Country Club in Palm Desert, California, on Sunday. "I'm not losing a son, I'm gaining a daughter-in-law," Carter told the paper. The ceremony was officiated by "priest" Harry Farber, who wore a black collar featuring novelty dog bones. As the two dogs, dressed in custom couture dress and doggie tuxedo walked down a faux grass carpet aisle , they were accompanied by a ring bearer, flower boy, groomsman and usher. However, it's worth noting that the groomsman was a Pug named Max. A live band serenaded them with a rendition of "You Light Up My Life." And while all of that sounds pretty over-the-top, Rubin and Carter turned the canine ceremony into a good cause by asking guests to donate to the Orphan Pet Oasis Humane Society of the Desert in North Palm Springs. "In planning this event Ernie and Ann wanted to make sure that a charity was involved and they felt strongly about what we do at the society," society representative Jennifer Hamilton told the Desert Sun. "The whole thing just took on a life of its own and kept growing and growing," Rubin said. "But that was OK because the donations we collected for the shelter were just amazing."
There's a joy and a love that only a pet can give us. This man, in his final days, only wanted to see his dog one last time. Thanks to some caring people, his wish was granted.
Two truisms of television, never work with animals and you never know what to expect on live TV — combined to send a Pennsylvania weatherman fleeing for his safety as thousands of viewers watched.
Kurt Aaron, meteorologist for ABC affiliate WNEP-TV in Scranton, Pa., was seconds from delivering the weather forecast on Monday from the station’s outdoor studio when a mama bear and her three cubs wandered on set.
Viewers who tuned into the 11 p.m. broadcast expecting to find out whether to prepare for rain or sun, instead saw Aaron running inside for cover.
Aaron was forced to report a shortened weather forecast from inside the station’s control room while he and the newscast’s anchors watched and narrated for viewers the wildlife right outside their window.
“I walked out there, and I turn around and I hear the sound, and the bear’s literally 10 feet from me,” Aaron explained, once he was safely back inside the studio. ”And I ran like I stole something.”
The crew left the bears alone as they explored the set through the rest of the evening’s newscast. Even a high-pitched alarm, also heard on-air, did not immediately chase them from the area.
“We are located at the base of a mountain and we’ve had raccoons, skunks and all sorts of critters and creatures come through our backyard,” Carl Abraham, news director for WNEP, told ABCNews.com today. “But I don’t recall us ever having a mother and three cubs roll on through.”
“Nobody was hurt,” Abraham said. “It’s just one of those things. It’s just Mother Nature, so there’s not much you can do sometimes. We don’t have any plans to change. We’ll always do it outside.”
Abraham says WNEP in the 1970s became one of the first stations to report the weather from an outside set. Rapid development in the area, he believes, is likely what sent the bears out of their natural habitat and to the news station.
“This was one of the rare times that we were forced, besides severe weather, to do the forecast from the inside of the building,” he said.
