It’s been a pretty wonderful week in the world of dog news, perhaps that’s because we’ve celebrated Valentine’s Day and everyone’s feeling the puppy love, who knows? Get the lowdown of the best doggy news in our weekly pupdate – The Scoop!
Puppy love in the Big Apple
Big cities can be a hard place to find true love. Not anymore, thanks to a gorgeous Golden Retriever called Louboutina. The loveable doggy, called Loubie for short, is often found at the corner of 17th Street and 5th Avenue, bang in the middle of the famous shopping district of Manhattan. New Yorkers and passers-by can get free hugs from Loubie, who’s dad, Cesar, takes her to ‘work’ roughly three days a week. We can only assume the rest of the week he’s keeping all the hugs to himself, how selfish.
Loubie, who learned to hold paws at the age of three, has moved on to hugs and even shares a kiss with visitors. And she’s feeling the love, too, now that she has more than 18,000 followers on Instagram.
Luckily, Loubie is ‘fluent’ in several languages, including English, Spanish, French, and Italian… so maybe we could borrow her on this side of the pond for a while…
Hey, big spender!
Valentine’s Day came and went this week, and here at DogBuddy HQ we had a few blushes as bouquets arrived from not-so-secret-admirers. But did you know that it’s not just our human significant others who get lavished in love on 14th February?
According to research published by American Express this week, a whopping £27 million is going to be spent on British pets this Valentines’ Day. Okay, so that pales in comparison to the £776 million that’s spent on our human loved-ones, and it roughly works out at only £5 per pooch. But it’s the thought that counts and dogs can’t eat chocolate after all.
“Okay, now let’s do a serious one”
Love can blossom between even the hardiest of police officers. Hearts across the interwebs melted when a series of outtake photos surfaced of a law enforcement official and his canine partner attempting to be serious police officers. Levi Knach and Kenobi (we’re going to go ahead and assume his first name is Obi-Wan) were simply trying to pose for a team snapshot but it turns out Kenobi can’t conceal his love for officer Knach. In true form, Reddit responded gleefully.
Apparently, when he’s not larking around in the photographer’s studio, Kenobi is a very well-trained police dog who can identify different smells varying from venison to ginseng, as Yahoo reported. That’s a dog who knows what he likes, attaboy.
Dogs know a nice person when they see one
It wouldn’t be an edition of The Scoop without a quick splash of science added to the mix! A study made the news this week revealing that dogs prefer ’nice’ people. The study was undertaken at Kyoto University in Japan with the goal of better understanding the way that animals make social decisions. For example, are dogs more likely to spend time with people who signs of kindness?
Watch the video above to see the test in action.
The test was undertaken with three actors, one who struggled to open a container, then asked for help from a second actor who refused and the third actor offered help. In each case, the dog in the test chose to accept a treat from the helpful actor, refusing the treat offered by the second actor. Turns out dogs judge whether we’ve been a good human!