Forget Posh Pedigrees, These Mutts Are Diamonds In The Ruff

Now through Tuesday, the Westminster Kennel Club doggedly trots out its idea of purebred perfection. But as readers of The Post have proved for the last two years, a pup doesn’t need a pedigree to be top dog. This year’s no different, as dog lovers from as far away as Cheshire, England, wrote to tell us about the mutts — many of them rescues — who brighten their lives.  “She is definitely no pedigree,” writes Upper West Sider Joe Simon of his 5-year-old Chihuahua mix, Alice. “She is missing a few teeth and has an underbite, has lopsided ears and a tail that curls up like a piglet’s. This makes her all the more beautiful to us, and we wouldn’t have her any other way!”  Meet this year’s Best in Show, mixed-breed division:

http://tinyurl.com/m3uts5y

Abuse of Animals Won’t Stop Until We Stop Eating Meat

When Animal Liberation was published, I hoped that, 40 years on, there would be no more slaughterhouses – and therefore no more newspaper stories about atrocities like the one at an abattoir in the north of England. The arguments against our oppression of animals seemed to me so clear and irrefutable that surely a powerful movement would arise, consigning these abuses to history, as the anti-slavery movement had put an end to the African slave trade.

http://tinyurl.com/nvzq54b

Lucifer the Lion Treated With Acupuncture

Veterinarian Nicki Grint usually performs acupuncture on dogs, but she’s been using the ancient Chinese practice to treat a bigger beast at the Paignton Zoo in Devon, England.  Lucifer, a 419-pound Asiatic lion, had a tumor removed from his right hind paw before he was recently transferred from the London Zoo to Paignton. (He was born in captivity at the U.K.’s Cotswold Wildlife Park in 2002.) His wound from the procedure wasn’t healing, so his keepers at the Devon facility took an unconventional approach.

http://tinyurl.com/p7p7o5d

Video: Missing Cat Lived in Food Factory for 3 Years

Helen and Phillip Johns of Cornwall, England were saddened when their cat, Woosie, went missing in 2011. Well, this week, almost three years later, they received a call from a vet saying they had Woosie and he needed to be picked up. So where was Woosie for those three years? Living at a food factory 30 miles away.

http://tinyurl.com/m6yvqqs

Orphaned Baby Owls Get New Home, Move In With Buddy Jimmy Robinson

After hatching in an incubator at a hawk conservancy in England, two orphaned baby owls have moved in with their new dad, park keeper Jimmy Robinson for a month of hand-rearing at his home, MSNBC's Animal Tracks reports. The burrowing owlets, named Linford and Christie, are 6 weeks old and will require 24-hour care. According to the network, the species gets its names from burrowing in small spaces in the wild.

http://tinyurl.com/6pw9glt

Video: Ruby The Giraffe Born At England's Marwell Zoo

In front of an audience of roughly 60 people, baby Ruby entered the world at England's Marwell Zoo. The baby giraffe is the first to be born to Irsula, the zoo's resident giraffe. The zoo is celebrating it's 40th year, and Ruby's name was chosen to reflect the stone signifying the anniversary.

http://tinyurl.com/7auutvp

Video: Dogs Use Subway, Cat Takes Bus And Other Adventures In Animal Intelligence

Stray dogs figure out how to use Moscow’s subway system to get downtown to neighborhoods where the food is better. For years, a house cat in England takes the public bus to get around town, unbeknownst to its owner. A jungle leopard in India, needing to cross a swollen river with its cub, gets a man to ferry her and her cub across in his canoe. Dolphins at a dolphin show in Hawaii instantly figure out a mistake their trainers have made and cover for them pretty well, preventing embarrassment all around.

http://tinyurl.com/77fcsns

Cat Leads Rescuer To Her Kittens

After being thrown from a car in the city of March, England, Jolie, a young black cat, was fed and nursed back to health by a good samaritan, who then called the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), Ely Weekly News reported.

http://tinyurl.com/3h9y35h