The way Krissie the cat is filling in for Miranda the dog, she just might just warrant a Mother of the Year nomination.

Miranda is a dachshund, one of 31 dogs recently plucked away from a Union Grove dog hoarder. Twenty-seven of the dogs were discovered March 25 crammed into dog carriers in a locked storage unit, without food or water and covered in feces.

Days later their hoarder, Susan A. Ball of Union Grove, gave up four more dogs she had in her home.

Ball has been charged with four misdemeanors for her actions. Many of the dogs in her possession were dehydrated and malnourished, including a pregnant dachshund since dubbed Miranda.

“At first they thought her puppies were dead,” said Jody Halladay, senior humane officer and animal services director at Countryside, 2706 Chicory Road. “Then somebody thought they felt some movement, and she got very sick.”

Monday night Dr. Tom Mano at Racine Veterinary Hospital, 5748 Taylor Ave., performed a Caesarean section on the dachshund, and two female puppies were born alive.

But there was no way their sick mother could care for them. That’s where Krissie came in.
Krissie had been a stray cat, trapped and brought to Countryside. She moved into a foster home with Jim and Joyce Bates of Mount Pleasant, who almost constantly shelter dogs and cats for Countryside.

In Krissie’s case, she was pregnant. Her three kittens are now a bit more than a week old.
Tuesday, Miranda’s two pups entered the Bates’ home near Regency Mall. Then they entered Krissie’s litter.

The Bateses first rubbed kittens against both puppies to give them that smell. Then they placed the kittens back and added the puppies.

Voila! The mother cat is now nursing three kittens and two puppies.

“We’re wondering if the cats are going to bark or the dogs are going to meow,” Joyce quipped.
She said that Krissie responds to the puppies’ whimpering by checking to make sure they’re OK.

“She’s gone from a trapped (stray) cat to a heroine now,” Bates remarked.

In about eight weeks, when the puppies and kittens are weaned, Krissie and the pups will go to Countryside for adoption. The kittens will follow when they’re about 12 weeks old.

The fate of Miranda — who the vet hospital’s staff named partly for a character in “Sex and the City” — is less certain. She had been vastly underweight, debilitated in several ways and undergoing the stress of pregnancy. As of Friday she was still extremely sick, not eating and on intravenous fluids only, said Liz Dahlstrom, practice manager at the vet hospital.

But if Miranda recovers, it might be some time before the clinic’s staff will give her up to Countryside and adoption.

“When the dog came over here, everybody fell in love with her,” Dahlstrom said. “We’re pretty attached to her.”

It’s a sobering – and sometimes overlooked – statistic from the Iraq War.

Of the more than 22,000 troops injured in the conflict, more than 500 have come home as amputees.

A New York organization and a Chicago-area teenager are coming to their aid through the VetDogs program, which provides service dogs to such veterans.

“From when the soldier gets wounded and loses a limb, the treatment and rehab is first class,” says Mike Sergeant, the chief training officer for the program, which was started last year by the Guide Dog Foundation for the Blind in Smithtown, N.Y. “But (there’s) a comment that has been made to us, from the veterans: Once they go home they truly are forgotten. I think the best comment I heard, when we issued a dog (recently), was, `This dog is my ticket back to the real world.’”

Since its founding 60 years ago, the Guide Dog Foundation for the Blind has been providing guide dogs, at no charge, to blind individuals. Included in that group are U.S. military veterans.

“One of the original tenets of our mission statement was to provide guide dogs for returning wounded who were blind or visually impaired,” says Jeff Bressler, the foundation’s chief marketing officer.

About three years ago, after studies indicated that the number of blind and visually impaired Americans was going to double within the next 20 years, the Guide Dog Foundation ratcheted up its involvement with the Veterans Administration, and has provided more than 30 dogs since that time.

And last April, the organization began VetDogs, a program that provides service dogs for amputees from Iraq and Afghanistan. The dogs help the vets with balance and fetching, and are taught to react in emergencies. They also serve as friends.

Jose Ramos lost his left arm and suffered back and leg injuries when he deflected a rocket east of Fallujah in 2004. In January, the 26-year-old former Marine with 3/1 Scouts Sniper platoon became the first veteran to receive a dog through the program. His new partner is Stryker, a 2-year-old male Lab.

“One of the hardest things for people to realize is, when you get out of the military, in a way you’re sort of thrown out,” he said from Washington, where he and Stryker were undergoing training at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. “A lot of us weren’t ready to get out. But due to the injuries we had to get out, and you lose all those brothers that you had in the service. You still talk to them, but talking to them on the phone isn’t the same as being with them all the time, which you’re used to. Stryker kind of fills that void.”

Ramos says Stryker assists him in getting up and down stairs and into bed, and fetches anything he might drop, such as his keys or wallet. In addition, Stryker goes with Ramos to George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., where he’s studying international relations and trying to double-minor in Arabic and Islamic studies. Ramos was recently named to the President’s Commission on Care for America’s Returning Wounded Warriors, a bipartisan commission investigating the treatment of wounded service members.

“He wears a vest with pockets, and he’s trained to carry 10 pounds,” Ramos says. “So when he goes to school he can help carry books.”

But the training – the dogs and then the dog-veteran team – is expensive, close to $40,000 according to Sergeant. That’s where Ari Schiff of Lincolnwood, Ill., comes in. A junior at Francis W. Parker High School, he wants to raise $30,000 to donate to the cause.

Schiff, 17, says he learned about the need for the dogs last August when he met a Marine Corps captain during a Colorado rafting trip.

“I asked him what the most important need was for soldiers coming back to the States,” Schiff says. “And he said a lot of guys needed guide dogs because it’s not a federally funded service.”

Schiff’s nascent efforts have included speaking to teachers at school and going door to door. He has raised about $6,500, a start at paying a debt, he figures.

“I really appreciate everything people in the military are doing for us,” says Schiff, who hopes to attend the U.S. Naval Academy. “This is a good way to pay them back.”

A bird that is on the protected species list, a killdeer, makes a home in a very unusual place, a work site.

It’s located on Suburban Road off South Higuera Street in San Luis Obispo.

Work at that site has come to a halt while the expectant bird waits for her eggs to hatch.

For all the reasons a construction project could be delayed, this is the perhaps one of the strangest.

It’s all because of a Kildeer, a type of bird that’s related to the endangered, Snowy Plover.

When an expectant mom nested at a San Luis Obispo construction site, work there came to a halt.

The mom to be sits on her four eggs in what may sound like the perfect nesting spot. But the construction site is anything but a heavenly hatching place.

“I have no idea what she was thinking,” said Plant Manager Hal Bradley.

It seems the expectant mother bird and her feathered mate found lakefront property in the center of a construction site.

“It’s not unusual for them to find a body of water and nest near it,” said Bradley.

“It’s not really a body of water,” said Action News Reporter Stacy Daniel.

“No it’s not, but it is to her apparently,” Bradley laughed.

Not wanting to interrupt nature’s birthing process, the construction crew called in an expert for some advice.

“The workers saw a bird, they immediately put cones around it and called their managers, called in a biologist and we modified the buffer slightly but, basically they did what they should do to protect the bird while it nests,” Biologist Greg McGowan.

So for now, the construction of a concrete wash out area is on hold, at least until a bird of a different kind, a stork makes a delivery.

“We’re going to let her do her thing and give her room and hopefully they’ll find a new place once she hatches out and gets them to a point where they can fly,” said Bradley.

The eggs are expected to hatch within the next 25 days or so.

The hatchlings will need to stay in the area for a little while longer.

So, it looks like the construction project will be put on hold for about a month.

Environmental experts said the construction crew did the right thing by calling a biologist.

Even though the bird is not endangered, special measures need to be taken to ensure the eggs are not harmed before they hatch.

A baby elephant has been rescued – by the nose – moments after his mother apparently tried to crush and drown him.

The drama took place just seconds after the baby was born in a zoo.

Pori, a 26-year-old African elephant, shocked onlookers by appearing to stamp on her new son.

She then began rolling him in her enclosure before putting him in water, in an apparent attempt to drown him. Visitors at Friedrichsfelde Animal Park in Berlin screamed to alert keepers, who lured Pori away from her child with bread and apples.

Members of the public then pulled the baby out of the water to safety.

He was given a tranquilliser and painkillers.

Amazingly, the baby was later reunited with his mother by zoo staff who said she had not been trying to kill him after all.

Although the mother killed her first baby in 2005 by accidentally crushing him, keepers think her behaviour yesterday was down to a failed bid to make the calf stand up.

Elephants usually nudge their young to help them take their first steps. Claus Pohle, deputy director of the zoo, said: ‘It only looked like she wanted to stomp him. All is well with Pori and her son. She is a proud and loving mother.’

A long-running custody dispute over two dogs lost in Hurricane Katrina ended Tuesday when the Florida women who adopted the animals after the storm agreed to give them back.

“This is what we wanted from the beginning, our dogs being back home,” Doreen Couture said at an emotional news conference.

Steve and Doreen Couture and their two children lived near New Orleans, when they dropped their dogs off at a temporary shelter before fleeing Katrina in 2005 and didn’t immediately reclaim them. In the chaos that followed, the animals – a St. Bernard and a shepherd mix – ended up at a shelter in Pinellas County, and were adopted.

The Coutures eventually learned of the dogs’ whereabouts and sued in court in Florida last year to have them returned. The new owners said they adopted the dogs in good faith and vowed to fight.

On Tuesday, Tampa prosecutor Pam Bondi, who adopted the St. Bernard and spent thousands of dollars nursing him back to health, said she decided to give him back after getting to know the Coutures and visiting them in Louisiana. The family lost most everything they had in the storm.

The dog, named Master Tank, was renamed Noah by Bondi.

“Master Tank/Noah will be going back to Louisiana, and thanks to these good people, I will be a big part of his life,” a tearful Bondi said. “I will get to visit him, he will come here to see me. We’ve developed a great relationship.”

Lord of the Rings actor Viggo Mortensen has a veterinarian’s bill after emergency surgery saved Brego, his mount in the film trilogy, the horse’s minder said.

A small bowel tear almost did what the films’ villains Saruman, Sauron and the black riders could not – kill the trusty steed of Mortensen’s heroic character, Aragorn.

The actor bought the Dutch stallion after filming and lives in semi retirement in New Zealand on the North Island property of Ray Lenaghan, the horse’s minder.

Lenaghan, himself a veterinarian, noticed Brego was in trouble two weeks ago. The horse was rushed to Massey University’s equine hospital.

“It was very clear from the moment he arrived he was in a critical state,” said equine surgery expert Frederik Pauwels.

“We anaesthetised him, made a mid-line incision into his belly,” and found that “part of his bowel was stuck,” Pauwels said.

He said Brego would have suffered a “pretty nasty death” without surgery, but has come through well.