My friends who grew up with dogs tell me how when they were teenagers and trusted no one in the world, they could tell their dog all their secrets. It was the one friend who would not gossip or betray, could be solemn or silly or silent as needed, could provide in the middle of the night the soft, unbegrudging comfort and peace that adolescence conspires to disrupt. An age that is all about growth and risk needs some anchors and weights, a model of steadfastness when all else is in flux. Sometimes I think Twist’s abiding devotion keeps my girls on a benevolent leash, one that hangs quietly at their side as they trot along but occasionally yanks them back to safety and solid ground.

We’ve weighed so many decisions so carefully in raising our daughters–what school to send them to and what church to attend, whether to let them drop soccer or piano at the risk of teaching them irresponsibility, when to give them cell phones and with what precautions. But when it comes to what really shapes their character and binds our family, I never would have thought we would owe so much to its smallest member.

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Watch it all (please note it begins with a crisis which is upsetting but I promise it is encouraging–really; KSH).

The Rev. Cathi Bencken managed to crack a joke Monday after an apparent lightning strike zapped an iron cross and crumbled the steeple of Trinity Episcopal Church.

“I don’t think it was (because) of anything I said,” she said of the sermon she delivered Sunday.

Neighbors in a nearby downtown apartment told Bencken and other church leaders that lightning hit the church about 3:30 a.m.

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From satirical site Lark News:

After spending $2,000 to upgrade his church’s sign, and fighting the board for the money, pastor Chad Thomas was chagrined to see the word “church” spelled incorrectly.

“My secretary was gone that day and I’m not much of a speller ”” it’s my fault,” he says. “I signed off on the final copy.”

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–An actual Kansas City Star headline courtesy of the WSJ’s Best of the Web

Gina was a playful 2-year-old German shepherd when she went to Iraq as a highly trained bomb-sniffing dog with the military, conducting door-to-door searches and witnessing all sorts of noisy explosions.

She returned home to Colorado cowering and fearful. When her handlers tried to take her into a building, she would stiffen her legs and resist. Once inside, she would tuck her tail beneath her body and slink along the floor. She would hide under furniture or in a corner to avoid people.

A military veterinarian diagnosed with her post-traumatic stress disorder ”” a condition that some experts say can afflict dogs just like it does humans.

“She showed all the symptoms and she had all the signs,” said Master Sgt. Eric Haynes, the kennel master at Peterson Air Force Base. “She was terrified of everybody and it was obviously a condition that led her down that road.”

Read it all and check out the video as well.

“This is the holy grail of artificial intelligence,” said project director Kate Tillman, explaining that the robot instantly performs millions of computations to ensure feelings of unresolved anger and simmering resentment remain deeply buried within its complex circuitry. “We felt we were on the right track when we brought up a personal shortcoming and it paced around the lab muttering, but when it started breaking eye contact and changing the subject, we knew we had accomplished something revolutionary.”

Heh. Read it all.

That theater, and improv in particular, can make a company or employee more competitive is not a particularly new idea. But what may be surprising is such training has not lost favor during the recession.

Ward has taught corporate and professional classes for 10 years. The recession has not been easy, but he points out: “I’m a for-profit arts organization that has kept the doors open through three of the worst years I’ve seen in my lifetime.”

Indeed, there appears to be enough demand to go around. Transactors Improv Co., also in Carrboro, has long offered what Greg Hohn calls applied improv classes. Hohn, Transactors’ executive and artistic director, also teaches the class at UNC’sKenan-Flagler Business School for MBA students.

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At a press conference Tuesday, God Almighty, our Lord and Heavenly Father, gave his strongest indication yet that he might soon step down from his post as the supreme ruler of all things.

Don’t miss the rest.

St. Peter’s Anglican Church has long been known as an open and inclusive place.

So open, it seems, they won’t turn anyone away. Not even a dog.

That’s how a blessed canine ended up receiving communion from interim priest Rev. Marguerite Rea during a morning service the last Sunday in June.

According to those in attendance at the historical church at 188 Carlton St. in downtown Toronto, it was a spontaneous gesture, one intended to make both the dog and its owner ”“ a first timer at the church ”” feel welcomed. But at least one parishioner saw the act as an affront to the rules and regulations of the Anglican Church. He filed a complaint with the reverend and with the Anglican Diocese of Toronto about the incident ”“ and has since left the church.

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“Normally, I don’t go for political jokes ”” too many of them are getting elected.”

—Bob Hope

Three years ago Ben Huh visited a blog devoted to silly cat pictures ”” and saw vast potential.

Mr. Huh, a 32-year-old entrepreneur, first became aware of I Can Has Cheezburger, which pairs photos of cats with quirky captions, after it linked to his own pet blog. His site immediately crumbled under the resulting wave of visitors.

Sensing an Internet phenomenon, Mr. Huh solicited financing from investors and forked over $10,000 of his own savings to buy the Web site from the two Hawaiian bloggers who started it.

“It was a white-knuckle decision,” he said. “I knew that the first site was funny, but could we duplicate that success?”

Mr. Huh has since found that the appetite for oddball Internet humor is insatiable.

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What comes to mind when I say moral blind spots? Abortion if you’re a conservative? Gay rights if you’re a liberal? But how can anything be “blind” if half the country is talking about it?

Mahatma Gandhi”” viewed by many (including Martin Luther King Jr.) as one of the greatest moral leaders of the 20th century ”” opined that the moral fiber of a society is best gauged by how we treat our animals. So as a Baptist preacher who is interested in the morality of my country, I decided to check us out. What I found has alarmed me. Worse still is the fact that so few of us are talking about it. Eureka. A moral blind spot.

Let’s start with the animals we profess to love: our pets. Many of us cherish our dogs, cats or other critters and consider them part of the family. We spare no expense when caring for them. Others of us just skirt by, particularly once the novelty of owning a pet wears off. Owner complacency becomes indifference; indifference becomes neglect. One of the saddest outcomes is a dog that is chained and left in the backyard. A tethered dog lives in utter misery without physical or mental stimulation. Owner neglect on a much larger scale results in 3 million to 4 million dogs and cats being euthanized each year. That’s about 10,000 per day. Much of this results from pet owners simply failing to spay or neuter their animals. With free and discounted spay/neuter opportunities galore, that’s inexcusable.

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Mark Malsick jokes that his summer vacation plans are shot.

That’s because the severe weather liaison for the S.C. Climate Office doesn’t like how the hurricane season is shaping up.

And neither does anyone else.

El Nino has evaporated. That’s a warming trend in Pacific tropical waters which created high- altitude winds shearing hurricanes in this hemisphere the past few years. Meanwhile, the tropical Atlantic is warmer than it was in 2005, the record-breaking year with a record 27 named storms including the devastating hurricane Katrina. And hot seas make for mean storms.

Ugh–read it all from the front page of yesterday’s local paper.

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As hurricane season looms, forecasters, scientists and residents along the Gulf Coast worry that a major storm could make the oil spill worse.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says a hurricane, or a succession of them, may bring oil up from the depths of the Gulf of Mexico and then push it ashore. Forecasters say a season with multiple storms could send oil farther inland and spread it as far as Cape Hatteras, N.C.

“To think a storm surge could resuscitate a huge sum of oil (from the deep) and deposit it on land is truly catastrophic,” says Joe Jaworski, mayor of Galveston, Texas, a city hit by Hurricane Ike in 2008.

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This is one of those minor Internet classics which you may not have seen; if not it really is a lot of fun–KSH.

The discovery Saturday of a gray whale swimming in the Mediterranean Sea off Israel has been labeled by Robert Brownell, a prominent cetacean researcher, “the most amazing sighting in the history of whales.”

Alisa Schulman-Janiger, who runs a gray whale census and behavior project in Southern California for the American Cetacean Society, said the sighting was “the equivalent “of finding a dinosaur in your backyard–it was that unbelievable.”

To be sure, scientists are perplexed as to how the gray whale might have traveled from the Pacific to the North Atlantic–the most likely entry point to the Mediterranean–where the species is believed to have been extinct for about 300 years.

Among questions being asked is whether–if other gray whales also have gained or will in the coming years gain access to the Atlantic–this could mark the beginning of a re-population effort by a species not encountered in the region since the late 17th or early 18th centuries.

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While no one really knows if all dogs go to heaven, Calvary Episcopal Church is giving area pooches and their owners improved odds with a new monthly worship service.

The first Perfect Paws Pet Ministry takes place on Sunday, May 16, from 5 to 5:30 p.m., in the church’s Parish Hall.

After that, the church plans to hold the pet service on the third Sunday of every month, complete with communion for the humans who wish to partake and special blessings bestowed on pets and people alike. Dogs will get treats as part of the service.

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Listen to it all (about three minutes).

Watch it all.

“Shelter dogs aren’t broken. They’ve simply experienced more life. If they were human, we would call them wise. They would be the ones with tales to tell and stories to write. The ones dealt a bad hand and responded with courage. Do not pity a shelter dog. Adopt one.”

Elizabeth and I caught this one by accident on a TIVOed show–what a fantastic ad–KSH.

The massive disruption caused by the volcano cloud has come at a bad time for pet shippers. Many have seen their shipment numbers drop by 50% to 60% in the past year, as companies stop paying to relocate employees’ families abroad, said Sally Smith, the owner of Johnsonburg, NJ-based Airborne Animals LLC. In 2008, 75% of pet owners polled in the U.S. said they frequently travel with their animals, according to BringYourPet.com, a directory service for pet-friendly hotels.

Pet shippers have lost precious time and money during the disruption, often having to re-file lengthy health certificates that sometimes must be completed within hours of a pet’s takeoff. Many have stranded animals in their midst, biding time until it’s safe to fly….

In Frankfurt, Mr. [Paul] Robinson was reunited with [his dog] Pen on Saturday afternoon. He found his friend “quite thin””like a hyena during a summer drought in the African Savannah kind of thin.” That night, he put Pen in the front seat of the Fiat and cruised back to Ljubljana in the slow lane of the autobahn.

Both are taking the journey in stride. “We all have adventures doing things for the people we love, the animals we love,” Mr. Robinson said. “You just take the risk and go.”

Read it all from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal.

This is a follow up on the NPR story posted yesterday–watch it all.

This is a guaranteed day brightener–watch it all (Hat tip: Selimah).

For a strange two weeks, a newspaper photographer in Miami was taking some pretty unique pictures. But they weren’t coming from her day job; they were from her backyard.

At work, Emily Michot and her husband, Walt, are photojournalists for the Miami Herald. At home, they’re parents with two sons: Michael’s 8, and Ryan is 10. And their Miami Shores house can get a bit rowdy.

But a few weeks ago, when Walt Michot was picking up the boys from karate class, Emily Michot was home alone, and the house was uncommonly quiet.

“That’s when I noticed that there was this — this odd noise,” she says. “I can’t even describe it. It was alive. I knew it was alive.”

Caught this one on the morning run–simply wonderful. Read or listen to it all and make sure to check out the pictures.

From here:

Harv’s Metro Car Wash owner Aaron Zeff was handed a tax bill that was originally four cents but was shocked to see that the bill increased by more than 5,000 times to $202.35, according to CBS News. The tax bill dated back from 2006 and the four cents grew by that much in four years….The Sacramento Bee reports that IRS spokesperson Jesse Walker is not commenting on the case, citing privacy laws.