Dog, Cat Honored for Saving Masters

NEW YORK - When Debbie Parkhurst choked on a piece of apple at her Maryland home, her dog jumped in, landing hard on her chest and forcing the morsel to pop out of her throat. When the Keesling family of Indiana was about to be overcome by carbon monoxide, their cat clawed at wife Cathy's hair until she woke up and called for help.

For their nick-of-time acts, Toby, a 2 1/2-year-old golden retriever, and Winnie, a gray-eyed American shorthair, were named Dog and Cat of the Year by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

In addition, five humans were honored Thursday for their actions toward animals in the past year, including a Bronx firefighter who saved a dog and cat from a burning building.

Neither Parkhurst nor Keesling could explain their pets' timely heroics, though Parkhurst suggested her pooch's Heimlich maneuver might have been guided by divine intervention.

I dunno - it seems possible to me that the dog might save the chocking person by jumping on her without divine intervention. After all, we never hear about all the choking people whose dogs, say, licked their faces or begged to be taken for walkies rather than actually saving the choking person....

Cute transformer kid! LOVE!

Sigh. I have work today and I'm remarkably unmotivated to do so.

The dry spell, it is OVAH!

It's OK. I meant the costume!

heh. Well, you know, my brother is pretty much up for any gig that gets him to make stuff AND get paid. The whore. The clever, sneaky, moneymaker. I envy his entrepr...shit, I forgot how to spell that. -ism. Plus, fact is, if it is for his kids? Yeah, he knocks it out of the park. For a purported unsentimental badass, he is pretty much a softy.

I think Matt has a story he wants to tell.

Not in detail. But I made a new friend, and now have a place to crash next time I pass through Cincinnati.

Clovis. IJS.

Are we sure he'd put me back together?

Of course he would! You'd just have an extra chip that is linked to the mind control satellite. You know, the usual.

No chance he'd keep anything small? Like a toe? Just for fun or possibly cloning?

ChiKat, I think you're right -- we're not going to get two of Column A in one episode. And Sally Field is too busy torturing other TV children to show up and fill this season's manic slot.

I think I just hallucinated an episode of The Unit. I think the Stadol made me see things. There's no way the plot could support the girl that Hector was attracted to being that unpalatable. She was just plain unpleasant! What did he like about her? And then there's the plot with the singer who was...I don't know who she was. She certainly wasn't interesting, no matter how "ripped from the gossip blogs" she was supposed to be.

It had to be the drugs.