The Biden family’s dog, Commander, has been moved out of the White House after a series of biting incidents.
It is still being decided what will happen to the two-year-old German Shepherd, a spokeswoman for First Lady Jill Biden said.
Just last week, Commander bit a Secret Service agent who required medical treatment at the scene.
It was the 11th time the dog has bitten a guard at the White House complex or the family home in Delaware.
“The President and First Lady care deeply about the safety of those who work at the White House and those who protect them every day,” the spokeswoman, Elizabeth Alexander, said in a statement on Wednesday.
“They remain grateful for the patience and support of the US Secret Service and all involved, as they continue to work through solutions. Commander is not presently on the White House campus while next steps are evaluated.
“She did not say where the dog was currently living or if it would eventually return to the White House.
The statement was released shortly after CNN reported that Commander had been involved in more than the 11 biting incidents publicly acknowledged by the Secret Service.
It said the real number was higher, with one bite requiring hospital treatment and others needing medical attention from on-site staff.The White House press secretary has previously blamed the attacks on the stress of living at the residence.
“As you all know, the White House complex can be unique and very stressful,” Karine Jean-Pierre said in July.
“It is unique and it is stressful for all of us. So you can imagine what it’s like for a family pet or family pets, more broadly,” she added.
That same month, White House officials said they were attempting new training techniques on Commander following the biting incidents.
The Kaduna State Residents Veterinary Doctors Association has called on state residents to take precautions over a suspected case of rabies.
Khalifa Aliyu, chairman of the association, made the call in a statement on Wednesday in Kaduna.
Mr Aliyu said the call became necessary following a suspected case of human rabies in a teenage boy currently hospitalised at the Barau Dikko Teaching Hospital, Kaduna.
“The patient has shown traits of rabies infection; he was seen biting humans, objects, papers, wood, and tongue thrusting along the street. Investigation revealed that the patient had contact with a rodenticide and later ate his food without washing his hands,” stated the association’s chair.
The chairman said all necessary measures were put in place to contain the further spread of the virus, adding that the patient’s condition is stable.
“We hereby call on the general public to be wary of stray dogs around that axis and report any dog bite to the nearest government clinic or Ministry of Agriculture,” added Mr Aliyu.
A Cameroonian man, Simon Ngonja, died a few days after he was attacked by his dog in Yaoundé, Cameroon.
According to reports by TSBnews, the deceased, who was a senior staff at the Prime Minister’s office, was attacked by the German Shepherd dog when he returned from a trip on Sunday, June 11, 2023.
It was gathered that the dog pounced on him after opening the gate of his house. He fought fiercely with the dog but couldn’t save himself.
In a bid to save him, a soldier shot and killed the dog.He was rushed to the hospital with severe injuries and heavy bleeding.
Despite the best efforts to save him, he died on Thursday morning, June 15, 2023.
A Facebook user, Bella Powers, who also spoke about the news with his photos, said, “Killed by his dog in Yaoundé… Simon NGONJA, died this morning after being fatally attacked by his own ‘German Shepherd’ breed dog.
“Returning from a trip last Sunday night, he was attacked by his dog after opening the gate of his house. He fought fiercely with the animal to the point where it was a soldier who decided to kill the dog with a rifle bullet. Taken to the hospital with a lot of bleeding, the wounds were finally fatal to him.
“He was an executive in the services of the Prime Minister in Yaoundé.May his soul rest in peace and our condolence to his family.”
A study of dog DNA has shown that our “best friend” in the animal world may also be our oldest one.
The analysis reveals that dog domestication can be traced back 11,000 years, to the end of the last Ice Age.
This confirms that dogs were domesticated before any other known species.
Our canine companions were widespread across the northern hemisphere at this time, and had already split into five different types.
Despite the expansion of European dogs during the colonial era, traces of these ancient indigenous breeds survive today in the Americas, Asia, Africa and Oceania.
The research fills in some of the gaps in the natural history of our close animal companions.
Dr Pontus Skoglund, co-author of the study and group leader of the Ancient Genomics laboratory at London’s Crick Institute, told BBC News: “Dogs are really unique in being this quite strange thing if you think about it, when all people were still hunter gatherers, they domesticate what is really a wild carnivore – wolves are pretty frightening in many parts of the world.
“The question of why did people do that? How did that come about? That’s what we’re ultimately interested in.”
To some extent, dog genetic patterns mirror human ones, because people took their animal companions with them when they moved. But there were also important differences.
image captionThe Rhodesian Ridgeback retains ancestry from an ancient African dog lineage
For example, early European dogs were initially diverse, appearing to originate from two very distinct populations, one related to Near Eastern dogs and another to Siberian dogs.
But at some point, perhaps after the onset of the Bronze Age, a single dog lineage spread widely and replaced all other dog populations on the continent. This pattern has no counterpart in the genetic patterns of people from Europe.
Anders Bergström, lead author and post-doctoral researcher at the Crick, said: “If we look back more than four or five thousand years ago, we can see that Europe was a very diverse place when it came to dogs. Although the European dogs we see today come in such an extraordinary array of shapes and forms, genetically they derive from only a very narrow subset of the diversity that used to exist.”
An international team analysed the whole genomes (the full complement of DNA in the nuclei of biological cells) of 27 ancient dog remains associated with a variety of archaeological cultures. They compared these to each other and to modern dogs.
The results reveal that breeds like the Rhodesian Ridgeback in southern Africa and the Chihuahua and Xoloitzcuintli in Mexico retain genetic traces of ancient indigenous dogs from the region.
image captionThe New Guinea singing dog is one representative of a lineage found in dogs across Asia and Oceania
The ancestry of dogs in East Asia is complex. Chinese breeds seem to derive some of their ancestry from animals like the Australian dingo and New Guinea singing dog, with the rest coming from Europe and dogs from the Russian steppe.
The New Guinea singing dog is so named because of its melodious howl, characterised by a sharp increase in pitch at the start.
Greger Larson, a co-author from the University of Oxford, said: “Dogs are our oldest and closest animal partner. Using DNA from ancient dogs is showing us just how far back our shared history goes and will ultimately help us understand when and where this deep relationship began.”
Dogs are thought to have evolved from wolves that ventured into human camps, perhaps sniffing around for food. As they were tamed, they could then have served humans as hunting companions or guards.
The results suggest all dogs derive from a single extinct wolf population – or perhaps a few very closely related ones. If there were multiple domestication events around the world, these other lineages did not contribute much DNA to later dogs.
Dr Skoglund said it was unclear when or where the initial domestication occurred. “Dog history has been so dynamic that you can’t really count on it still being there to readily read in their DNA. We really don’t know – that’s the fascinating thing about it.”
Many animals, such as cats, probably became our pets when humans settled down to farm a little over 6,000 years ago. Cats were probably useful for controlling pests such as mice, that were attracted by the waste generated by dense settlements. This places their domestication in cradles of agriculture such as the Near East.
“For dogs, it could almost have been anywhere: cold Siberia, the warm Near East, South-East Asia. All of these are possibilities in my mind,” Pontus Skoglund
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