12 Amazing Dogs

Believe any dog should be called ugly but we suppose some dogs are prettier than others and that means some dogs are uglier than others too. With that in mind here’s the official owner of the title of “ugliest dog” in the world.

Martha a Neapolitan Mastiff from California has won thousands of dollars of prize money  for her owner in ugly dog competitions but that doesn’t mean she has an unhappy life.

With the money her owner Shirley Zindler has been able to pay for surgery to correct her vision. Martha was almost blind when she was rescued as a puppy but now she can see perfectly. Now a fully grown 125 pound dog, her face droops across the ground when she lays on her side, but she still manages to be cute even with all of her wobbly loose skin and her slobber. Her original owner didn’t want her but Shirley loves Martha just the way she is.

There are many stories of Brave clever dogs saving lives, but Balto was a dog so heroic that there’s a statue dedicated to his honor in New York Central Park.

Balto was a Siberian Husky who lived from 1919 until 1933 and came to National prominence during a diphtheria outbreak in Alaska. During the 1920s the outbreak threatened the lives of the population of Nome, but the only antidote to it was miles Away
in Anchorage. Doctors tried to transport the antidote by plane but the engine of the plane froze in Sub-Zero conditions leaving dog sleds as the only workable solution. Balto was the bravest and strongest dog involved in the operation. On February 2nd 1925 with conditions so bad that humans couldn’t see their own hands in front of their faces, Balto
dragged his sled through the Iditarod Trail and across the top Coke River completing the trip in total darkness.

When the human contingent of the team was all asleep without Balto’s noble solo effort the shipment wouldn’t have made it to its destination and the humans on the sled would have died in the effort.

The last place a dog should be is on a battlefield, but unfortunately during times in the past when humans have gone to war, dogs have been called into battle alongside them.

A strong case could be made that no dog did as much to distinguish itself in the field of
combat than Stubby did in the First World War.  The history books know him as Sergeant Stubby and that’s more than just a nickname. He was the most decorated dog to serve in the conflict, and became the only canine not only to be nominated to receive an official rank, but to actually gain one and then go on to be promoted to the prized rank of
Sergeant.
His achievements are legendary. His sense of smell alerted his human friends to mustered gas attacks, and he was also known to locate and comfort wounded American soldiers on the battlefield, often staying at their side during their final moments, so they didn’t die alone. On one occasion he even captured a German soldier trying to break through American lines, and attacked him keeping him pinned down until American soldiers
could come and deal with the problem.

Road tripping across the United States of America is now a popular pastime for many of the nation’s citizens, and especially its young people sometimes people bring their dogs along for the ride.  Such an activity wasn’t possible until the introduction of the car though, and that meant one lucky dog got to be the first ever to enjoy a cross-country
road trip: that dog’s name was Bud and he made his epic journey in 1903.

Dr Horatio Jackson took Bud with him when he accepted a bet with his wife that his car couldn’t make it all the way across the country, and set off to prove her wrong.

We all know dogs love to poke their heads out of the window on a car ride to feel the wind in their fur but Bud didn’t have a choice in that matter because the car was open topped. To protect his delicate eyes Dr Jackson bought him a tiny pair of goggles to keep him safe, which Bud wore with pride.

It took 63 days for the doctor to complete the trip, which cost more than eight thousand dollars but attracted a lot of press attention, where not for Bud’s good looks the story may not have been considered quite so newsworthy.

Dogs can be trained to perform just about any task that their human owners require of them, and those tasks include acting.

Uggie was a dog movie star so good that many people feel that he often outperformed his human co-stars. If you’ve ever seen the popular movies The Artist or Water for Elephants you’ve seen uggie doing what he does best.
It wasn’t a bad life for a dog who was given away by his first two owners because they thought he was too wild to be trained.
Such was the level of Uggie’s performance in the artist that there was a social media campaign to change the rules of the Oscars to allow him to be nominated for an award The Oscars were unwilling to recognize him but Uggie received plenty of plaudits from elsewhere.
By the end of his career he picked up the Palm dog award from the Cannes Film Festival in 2011 and has also been honored by a special mention at the pre-lumiere awards in France during the same year

Many dogs who have been trained to save lives do so every day, but Swansea Jack never received a day of training in his whole life. The black Retriever simply happened to live next to a dangerous stretch of water in his home city of Swansea. Wales and never ignored a human cry For assistance when he heard one.

In 1931 he made his first ever rescue when a 12 year old boy fell into the river, tall diving into the river and pulling the child to safety. Over the years he would repeat the same feat over and over again reaching a total of 27 lives saved by the end of his life.

A public monument to his bravery still stands in his home City and when the year 2000 came around he was named as the dog of the century by the Newfound friends of Bristol,  an organization that trains dogs to drag people out of the water. Jack never needed the training he was just a very good boy.

Dogs are fiercely loyal if they’re separated from their owners by accident. They’ll walk for miles in hope of finding them again. But it’s doubtful that any dog was ever as devoted as
Bobby the Wonder Dog, the Scottish collie, traveled with his owners as they visited family in Wolcott Indiana in 1923, but ran off after getting into a fight with other dogs and couldn’t be found. His heartbroken family was eventually left with no choice but to return home to Silverton, Oregon without him.

Six months later in February 1924, Bobby reappeared at home. He’d lost most of his
weight, his paws were injured and he was coated in filth. It was immediately obvious that he’d walked the entire two and a half thousand miles of the journey, which would have included crossing the continental divide during the most extreme temperatures of winter.

The story shot him to fame, which led to Bobby playing himself in the movie The Call of the West in 1924. To this day nobody truly understands how he achieved the Monumental feat.

If you have a dog it probably has a favorite toy or a favorite blanket and maybe even both. Dogs, like humans, have powerful memories, but we wonder how many humans  would envy the memory of Chaser the Border Collie, who can allegedly understand more than one thousand different words, and even some sentences.
Chaser’s owner is a retired dog psychologist who dedicates five hours each day to teaching Chaser new things, and so far she’s shown no signs of forgetting anything she’s
learned. On request she can go and retrieve any one of more than 800 stuffed toys which She Knows by name 116 different toy balls, and 26 plastic dog frisbees along with other items.

If a movie studio ever wanted to make a mission impossible movie starring a dog
instead of Tom Cruise, the first canine they should send for is Lockheed.
Lockheed is a police dog from Moldova. All police dogs receive training to ensure that
they’re capable of grander things than the average household dog, but Lockheed is incredible even by police standards.

A video that went viral on the internet in 2019 shows Lockheed walking blindfolded
across two tightropes several feet apart while carrying a heavy chain in his mouth. Although he has a few wobbles he makes it all the way across the challenging obstacle, turns around at the other end, and walks all the way back the other way with the blindfold still in place. It’s not immediately clear how this unusual skill would be beneficial when it comes to his police duties, but it should put him first in the queue when anybody needs a stunt dog.  Maybe Lockheed is another canine with a movie career in his future

If a dog has trust and confidence in its owner, it will be happy to follow them anywhere even thousands of feet into the air.
Nathan Batiste is a free-faller and skydiver who has made hundreds of successful jumps during his life, but in 2014 he decided to try something new: he brought his dachshund Riley with him for the jump.

Nathan carefully watched Riley’s reaction to being in the place before deciding whether to let him jump, but as Riley appeared totally unfazed by being 13 000 feet above the ground, he strapped on the dog’s goggles and took the plunge.
According to Nathan, Riley enjoyed the experience very much. Nathan has another dog named Kiki who he feels would never be able to cope with such a fur-raising activity, but

Riley has always been calm and relaxed and showed no sign of being distressed by his long fall when he reached the ground. We don’t believe that most dogs would cope with falling out of a plane without panicking, so that means Riley has earned
his place on our list of amazing dogs.

Newfoundland dogs are built for swimming. They have a tail strong enough to work as a rudder water resistant fur and webbed feet.  Never have those qualities been demonstrated so perfectly than the time Tang, a ship’s dog, dived into the water to save 92 lives in December 1919.

Tang was aboard the Ethi when it struck a rock close to appropriately enough Newfoundland in Canada during a storm. The ship was sinking on freezing waters
and although there was a top rope the shore was too far away for anyone to reach it. A seaman jumped in to try to drag the Rope to the shore for help, but perished in the attempt. No human could cope with the conditions, but Tang could.

The courageous dog grabbed the Rope between his teeth, dived into the water and swam to shore so Rescuers waiting on the shoreline could pull the sinking vessel to safety.
Tang had saved everybody on board, his ship and was awarded a special bravery medal from Lloyds of London. He wore it around his neck proudly for the rest of his days

The most famous dog of all time is probably Rin Tin Tin, the German Shepherd who was rescued from a battlefield in World War One and went on to be a major movie star. In the process he made the German Shepherd the most popular family pet of the 1920s, and his films made so much money that he’s credited with changing the fortunes of the Warner
Brothers film company for the better.

The dog’s best known roles were in war films although he also appeared in westerns and family movies. His son and grandson went on to become film stars in their own right continuing his legacy, and even to this day his 12 times great-grandson travels across the United States of America making personal appearances to promote the relationship
between humans and dogs. Rin Tin Tin is a dog that changed the perception of his
entire breed and has been recognized with his own star on the famous Hollywood Walk of Fame.
By the time the honor arrived in 1960, the original dog was long since dead but the existence of the star means that his memory will be kept forever.