clever dogs

On The Pet Museum I came across a link to a list of VID (Very Important Dogs). A couple of connections to Australia drew my attention. Firstly, the game little Yorkshire Terrier, Smoky, who assisted his soldier friends in The Philippines and New Guinea in World War Two

and

the talented black labrador who can sniff out American foulbrood, a deadly disease of honey bee hives. He doesn't look too comfortable in his protective suit, I must say, but he'd be in too much danger of being stung if he didn't wear it.



Thanks, Curator, I always find something of interest when I visit The Pet Museum.

in Australia dogs help conserve an endangered species

Great article today in The Age newspaper about  dogs in our national parks.

Usually we hear only complaints about dogs and native animals, and I do understand that we can't take dogs into areas where we need to protect native creatures.

But this is a video with a difference. An exciting discovery has been made, a camera shot of a spotted quoll in a place where they have not been seen in recent times.  So sniffer dogs have been brought in to try to locate scat (poo) of spotted tiger quolls.

I really enjoyed the film, but unfortunately, on this occasion the dogs did not find any quoll scat.



You might want to read more about the quoll conservation program in Cape Otway, which is where the highly trained sniffer dogs come from.

Reading about these dogs reminds me of the hunting dogs who were trained to kill rabbits but ignore grey-headed albatross.

Aren't dogs amazing?