Dognapping Cases Are Up By Almost 70 Percent -

Dognapping Cases Are Up By Almost 70 Percent - 


Dogs are being stolen out of cars, yards, off sidewalks and even out of shelters at an alarming rate, according to the American Kennel Club.

“It only takes a minute for a theft to occur,” American Kennel Club spokeswoman Lisa Peterson told CBS 2′s Dave Carlin on Friday.

Making any pet owner think twice is surveillance video from last week that showed “Marley” the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel being menaced by a stranger, who picked up the frightened dog and walked off with him, leaving 7-year-old Mia Bendrat heartbroken the day before Christmas.

“You knew that was somebody’s dog and it was Christmas Eve. I mean really?” Bendrat said.

Marley was sold to a woman in Greenwich Village, who thought the situation was fishy.

Marley was checked for a microchip and Mia and her best friend were reunited.

But happy endings are rare as dognapping cases rise nationwide by almost 70 percent, according to the American Kennel Club.

“Last year for example we tracked more than 432 pet thefts and that’s just scratching the surface,” Peterson said. “For the first time ever we’ve seen a trend now where shelters are being broken into and purebred and mixed breed dogs are being stolen.”

Dognappings from stores, shelters and backyards and off sidewalks are preventable.

Experts say to safeguard your pet as you would a child.

“Don’t leave it unattended,” Peterson said.

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Comet ISON Could Outshine Moon, Create Stunning Tail Visible In Night Sky In 2013 -

Comet ISON Could Outshine Moon, Create Stunning Tail Visible In Night Sky In 2013 - 



A comet blazing toward Earth could outshine the full moon when it passes by at the end of next year - if it survives its close encounter with the sun.

The recently discovered object, known as comet ISON, is due to fly within 1.2 million miles (1.9 million km) from the center of the sun on November 28, 2013 said astronomer Donald Yeomans, head of NASA's Near Earth Object Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

As the comet approaches, heat from the sun will vaporize ices in its body, creating what could be a spectacular tail that is visible in Earth's night sky without telescopes or even binoculars from about October 2013 through January 2014.

If the comet survives, that is.

Comet ISON could break apart as it nears the sun, or it could fail to produce a tail of ice particles visible from Earth.

Celestial visitors like Comet ISON hail from the Oort Cloud, a cluster of frozen rocks and ices that circle the sun about 50,000 times farther away than Earth's orbit. Every so often, one will be gravitationally bumped out from the cloud and begin a long solo orbit around the sun.

On September 21, two amateur astronomers from Russia spotted what appeared to be a comet in images taken by a 16-inch (0.4-meter) telescope that is part of the worldwide International Scientific Optical Network, or ISON, from which the object draws its name.

"The object was slow and had a unique movement. But we could not be certain that it was a comet because the scale of our images are quite small and the object was very compact," astronomer Artyom Novichonok, one of the discoverers, wrote in a comets email list hosted by Yahoo.

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/30/comet-ison-moon_n_2377883.html