They’re not as loaded as Leo na Helmsley’s pooch, but three dogs in western Maryland still have more money than they know what to do with. The dogs - a beagle named Buckshot and Labrador mixes named Katie and Obu-Jet - inherited $400,000 and a house in Hagerstown when their owner, Ken Kemper, died last year. The trio is worth about $800,000 altogether. The dogs, who were strays when Kemper adopted them, live at their house with caretaker Roy Grady.

“They don’t know they have more money than most people,” Grady told The (Hagerstown) Herald-Mail.

But they do enjoy the perks of their inheritance. On Friday nights, Grady treats them to a spaghetti dinner, complete with meatballs and garlic bread.

“They love it,” he said. “They know when it’s coming on Friday, too. They have that time clock.”

They also get top-notch veterinary care. When Katie sneaked out of a gate last summer and was hit by a car, she made 40 visits to the veterinarian’s office to mend her broken legs and hip. The bill was close to $6,000.

And unlike Helmsley’s dog, a pampered Maltese named Trouble who inherited $12 million from the late hotelier, they don’t court controversy. They seem content romping around their front yard.

“They’re the most loving dogs,” Grady said.

A fourth dog was included in Kemper’s will. Skye, a Jack Russell terrier, died of cancer earlier this month and is buried under a cross in the front yard.

Kemper worked for Voice of America, an international broadcasting service funded by the federal government. It was common for him to return to the United States with stray dogs from the Middle East and other parts of the world.

Each of the remaining dogs is about 10 years old. Karin Anderson, a longtime friend of Kemper and the executor of his estate, said when they die, she’ll probably donate their inheritance to an animal charity because that’s what Kemper would have wanted.

“He really loved animals,” Anderson said. “The man’s heart was so big, it needed its own ZIP code.”

Information from: The (Hagerstown, Md.) Herald-Mail, http://www.herald-mail.com

A Welsh police force is teaching its dogs to headbutt criminals because they are afraid dog bites are infringing on human rights, K9 Magazine reported.

The dogs, who will now wear muzzles, have been trained to leap at their targets, according to the magazine.

“Instead of biting, the dog is muzzled and launches itself like a missile at the midriff of the target,” Clive Wolfendale, the deputy chief constable of North Wales, told the magazine.

The new policy is a result of increased compensation claims from members of the public who have been bitten by police dogs.

A metal rod across the front of the muzzle helps absorb the impact of the strike and protect the dog, the magazine reported.

Today I received an interesting e-mail via our contact form from a person named Kristin promoting a contest that is apparently sponsored by large companies such as Kodak and Circuit City. I am not affiliated with this contest in any way and can’t endorse its legitimacy, but I have to admit it sounds pretty cool. Here’s the info:

I am currently working with Kodak to promote the Find the next Firedog contest - looking for a dog that represents the personality of Firedog - Circuit City’s technology services team, and thought that you might be interested in sharing this with your dog loving community. Pictures of retrievers and all other breeds, similar to what are posted on your discussion forums, can be entered into the Circuit City/Kodak Firedog Contest for a chance for your dog to become the next Firedog.

The grand prize winning dog will have the chance to star in a Firedog TV commercial along with other prizes, including:

- A $50,000 donation to your local humane society

- KODAK EASYSHARE V1253 HD Digital Zoom Camera

- KODAK EASYSHARE HDTV Camera Dock

There will also be 19 finalists who will receive:

- $1000 Circuit City gift card
- KODAK EASYSHARE All-in-One Printer
- $1000 donation to a local humane
society of your choice
- A portion of a $100,000 donation to a local humane society (based on a $1/vote for your picture)

Photos will be judged on the quality and originality of photo, and personality of dog. Once the final 20 photos are chosen, readers will be able to vote on their favorite photos to decide the grand prize winner.

For more information and a chance to win, please visit http://kodak.eprize.net/firedogcontest/ for all the details about the contest.

Submissions are accepted through December 8 th so, if you are interested, I would encourage you and your community members to enter soon! Feel free to contact me if you have any questions!

This is pretty hilarious. I guess some of you have probably already seen it, but for those who haven’t, it’s basically a bunch of clips of owners talking to their dogs and getting responses… in English ;).

The video speaks for itself. A fisherman hooks a fairly large shark, but before he can land it his dog leaps overboard and literally fights the thrashing shark out in the water. Amazingly the dog wins.

Dogs are a passion of mine; they always have been. I see so many dog breeders in the course of a day working for this website and am constantly in a battle with myself on whether or not to approve them. Sometimes breeders show up that may not actively participate in shows or test their breeding stock, but they appear to genuinely love the breed and their dogs and don’t have ridiculous numbers of dogs or litters. What do I do? Accept? Decline? It’s tough. At least, it was.

Today I was browsing through the Humane Society website and noticed a video they posted on the site. They claimed to have gone undercover at a couple dog auctions. I have honestly never heard of a dog auction, so I found myself clicking on the video and being completely unprepared for what I saw. A warehouse filled with rows of small cages piled on top of each other and in each cage was a scared dog, and some had five dogs packed in. That’s what was shown in the first thirty seconds. The rest of the video revealed the terrible conditions the dogs were kept in during these auctions (at least 7 hours without food or water; uncovered cages outside in the snow) and clips of the auction itself, with the auctioneer claiming that “it takes five years for a cow to pay itself off but a dog can pay itself off in six months” and “this right here will get you $2000 easy”. Every sentence out of his mouth was to advertise the monetary gain a dog would provide. I’ve always known that people treated dogs like this and thought them as nothing more than a paycheck, but to WATCH it happening gave me a slap in the face. These poor animals never deserved a life like this; they were unfortunately born into this life because of greedy, heartless people.

By the end of the video, I found myself more inspired than ever to do what I can to prevent dogs from suffering this kind of life and to stop people from abusing such innocent, wonderful animals. I logged into BreederRetriever to review the latest listings that were submitted to the Breeder Directory. The breeders that I once would have been “iffy” about now were red flags and my vision for the type of breeder that should be affiliated with the website was solidified even further: only respectable breeders that care for their dogs and the breed(s) they represent.

I’m dedicated to bringing in breeders who respect and appreciate their work and have a deep understanding of the respective breed. Club affiliations, health tests, show and/or working dogs and detailed information on the studs and bitches are only a small group of the qualities I look for in breeders.

Maybe we won’t put an end to the cruel treatment of dogs, but we definitely will not support their heartless business by letting them advertise on our site.

Please do not hesitate to tell us if a questionable breeder has been mistakenly approved–we strive to create a community environment and would greatly appreciate any and all input/help.

In the interest of privacy, I won’t disclose who sent it, but today I received an e-mail from a regional breed club president asking how we go about approving breeders on our site. The e-mail I wrote in response was so long I decided to post it here so others can have the information as well.

Hi XXX,

Thanks for taking the time to contact me. I really appreciate your concern and it’s comforting to see club members with a genuine interest in protecting their breeds.

I will try to answer each of your questions in order, and if I forget to address any of them please just let me know.

1. Why would a legitimate breeder want to be on the website?

Although it may not seem obvious at first, legitimate breeders that are concerned with the future of their breed(s) have a strong incentive to be listed on our site.

By increasing the exposure of reputable, ethical breeders, potential customers browsing the web are less likely to make irresponsible/ignorant purchases from backyard breeders and puppy mills.

As we all know, puppy mills have no qualms with spending money on advertising, which is why they are so visible online.

Based on their willingness to spend, these puppy millers are often the first breeders the average, perhaps uninformed, prospective owner will encounter.

And because the puppy mills are so quick to make sales, many of the prospective owners are quickly sucked into an unplanned purchase that not only hurts themselves, but the breed and puppies as well.

2. Is this for every back yard and or puppy mill breeder?

No, it is not, and we have worked very hard to make it this way. First of all, we provide listings entirely free of charge. This means we have no incentive to approve any breeder and can therefore make unbiased decisions.

3. Do you know what quality of breeder will be your web site and do you care?

It is very difficult to determine the legitimacy of a breeder over the web–a fact I’m sure you are aware of. Still, just because the task is a difficult one does not mean that we should resign ourselves to an internet overrun with puppy mills who ultimately hurt dogs, advancement of the breeds, the customers who buy from them, and even (albeit to a lesser extent) the business of legitimate breeders. Instead we need to do everything we can to encourage the ethical, devoted and legitimate breeders to increase their visibility so the puppy millers are not able to flourish unfettered.

How do we determine the legitimacy of a breeder, then?

There are a number of ways and we are constantly refining our procedures whenever we receive suggestions or think of something new.

A basic review process goes something like this:

1. A breeder submits their information to our website for review.

2. If the official club for this breed has chosen to participate in our volunteer-based program we initiated after discussions with various club leaders, an e-mail will automatically be sent out to a designated club representative. This e-mail will include the pertinent information submitted to our site by the breeder requesting a listing. Basically, this lets the breed clubs help us defend against puppy mills/backyard breeders by giving them the power to “veto” a breeder. If we receive a reply from the club representative informing us of a “shady” listing, we will immediately decline the application.

3. If we do not receive any message from the representative of the breed club, or if the club for this breed has not assigned us a representative to help review listings, Karla, a staff member at Breeder Retriever (volunteer), reviews the submission within a few days (time permitting).

4. Karla first checks the general information the breeder has submitted to our site and makes an initial assessment. You’d be surprised, often times we are able to identify puppy mills without even visiting their websites (i.e. their description mentions that they ALWAYS have absurd numbers of puppies, they can provide designer breeds, they wholesale/etc, etc).

5. If the basic information looks legitimate, Karla then visits the breeder’s website. Karla looks at a wide range of factors when reviewing a site, a few of which include membership with the official breed club, an active participation in showing or field work, the number of dogs and puppies owned by the breeder, the frequency of litters, the number of unique breeds bred, and other similar criteria.

After a review of this sort, Karla uses her best judgment and makes a decision as to whether or not the breeder should be approved.

It is imperfect, we know, but it is the best we have derived so far, and I cannot emphasize enough how open we are to help and suggestions, input, etc, that might contribute to our improvement in this area (or any other).

Are the parents Cerf Certified and OFAd?

Karla does her best to check these things, and this is one of the areas the official breed clubs who have enrolled in our “veto” program have been most helpful.

Are you charging in order to pay for the cost of your web site?

We do not charge anyone anything, period. Nowhere on our website will you find any fees or charges.

How do we pay for the cost, then?

I pay, out of my pocket, and I am thousands of dollars “in the hole” at this point. I don’t mind sharing the information that our server alone costs me $300 a month. Fortunately I happen to be a programmer, so I have done all the coding and design myself.

We have some ideas of how we could recoup this money in the future, but there are no concrete plans and of course we are open to suggestions in this area as well.

Because I have built this website single handedly in terms of the programming and design, I am passionately dedicated to its success. I believe that when people work hard and build useful services, the money has a way of taking care of itself. We’ll see, though.

I’ll conclude by saying that I eagerly invite you to participate in our approval process by assigning a club representative to take part in our “veto” program. There is no obligation on the part of the representative; however they do have direct access to us and a way of declining breeders who have submitted to our site.

Kris Kibak
www.breederretriever.com

Well, after about a month (or maybe even more) of going back and forth with the very helpful TRUST e staff, the certification process is finally complete for Breeder Retriever.

It was a (perhaps surprisingly) fun and interesting experience working with the folks at TRUST e to ensure that our privacy policy adequately explains how our Web site collects and uses information from our visitors.

Aside from going through at least 5 - 10 revisions of the privacy policy, obtaining our TRUST e certification required a number of coding changes that would make it easier (and more clear) for users to unsubscribe from any e-mails or notifications we may send out (although at this point we have not sent any such e-mails).

Ultimately, I feel that the TRUST e certification process was very worthwhile–not only because of the credibility and feeling of trust it gives our users, but also, and perhaps more so, because it helped improve the usability and information provided on Breeder Retriever.

It has been a while since my last post here on the Breeder Retriever blog, but the absence of posts should not be taken as any measure of activity. In the past few months Breeder Retriever has undergone some drastic changes. First, Chris Kelly decided to leave Breeder Retriever and return to the ‘real’ working world. While it’s sad so see Chris go I believe it is equally important for everyone to be happy in what they do, and for that reason we both agreed it was for the best.

As for the website, there are a number of questions worth mentioning. First relates to the Breed Recognition Game. If you haven’t given it a try, we strongly recommend you do! To summarize, the game tests your ability to recognize breeds based on the profile image we provide. In other words you will be presented with a photo—a German Shepherd, for example—and you will also be given six options to choose from. You select the breed you think the photo depicts and move on to another breed. Once you’ve completed all 157 AKC recognized breeds your score is stored and your overall ranking is presented on the high scores page.

While the game was around in the past and I believe I blogged about it before, it has recently been greatly improved. The code was edited to make the tool run faster and more efficiently, so the load times have been greatly reduced. I hope this will make the game even more fun.

We have also added some improvements to our breed information sections, largely due to input from our visitors. Thank you to everyone who contacted us with corrections and advice!

Some under-the-hood improvements have been made to the forums as well. These changes are less noticeable but should make it more difficult for spammers to post in our forums. If you haven’t registered in the forums yet I strongly encourage you to do so and become a member of our community.

What’s coming soon? I’ve written the code for a dog book review section that will allow users as well as staff to post book reviews—but I’m not ready to post it until there are a few reviews up! So hang tight—it’ll be ready soon.

As always, if you have any suggestions or ideas that you think would make this site better, please comment here or fill out our contact form on the site. I can’t stress enough how welcome and appreciated your input is.

We released a fun little game yesterday that I think a lot of you will enjoy. The game is essentially a test of your knowledge of the 157 or so AKC-recognized breeds, and the format couldn’t be any simpler: you are shown a picture of a dog and given a choice of 6 breeds to choose from - correctly identify the breed and gain 1 point for a total possible score of 157. I tested the game before it was released and got something like 150 - I thought I would do better Top scores can be found here.

In the next couple days, we are planning on making a few revisions to the game. The ideas that stand out in my mind are:

1. Changing the name to something a little more interesting. I was thinking something like “Breed Roulette” or “Name that breed!”

2. Creating an abridged version of the game for people who don’t have the time or patience to go through every AKC-recognized breed. I was thinking of a version with 30 or 40 randomly selected breeds shown.

If any of you have thoughts on the game, please feel free to share them in the forums. Have fun!