People Pets

The Water Bowl: Japanese Pets Get 'Coming of Age' Parties! Plus, Jared Loughner Was a Shelter Volunteer

01/12/2011 at 10:30 AM EST

These stories are worth a click:

It's already customary for Japanese youth to celebrate with a Coming of Age Day when they turn 20 years old. Now, a similar rite has emerge – for pets, who get their party when they cross the one-year mark. –Reuters

Jared Loughner, the suspect in the recent shootings in Arizona, once volunteered at an animal shelter. He was essentially fired after he took dogs into an area that was being disinfected for parvovirus. –NPR

It turns out dogs have a nose for all kinds of poop, not just each others'. Researchers trained two shelter dogs to sniff out the scat of wildlife such as mountain lions and foxes, and the subjects were able to detect twice the amount of poop with their noses that the researchers could with their eyes. –NBC Bay Area

A Minnesota woman who was one-month pregnant when she was hit by a cow during a tornado gave birth to a healthy baby girl, named Skylar, in honor of the tornado. –KSAX.com

A couple from Staten Island, N.Y. has been charged with using their dog as a weapon. Police say the man and woman unleashed their 60-lb. pit bull on unsuspecting women, who ended up in the hospital after the attacks. –NYPOST.com