One hundred sheriff's deputies and 400 part-time deputies were laid off. SWAT officers were ordered back to the streets. Narcotics and gang units were disbanded. Helicopters were grounded.

K-9 survived.

To absorb more than $30 million in losses, the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department had to focus almost exclusively on answering 911 calls, but police dogs and their handlers survived the cuts. It's a scenario that is playing out among the thousands of K-9 teams across the country that have survived deep budget cuts to stay on the job.

In part that's because dogs are winning the popularity contest. In a few towns where cutbacks targeted K-9 dogs, citizens rallied to raise money to keep the animals at work. They've even had help from celebrity friends such as Ozzy Osbourne, who donated a K-9 dog to the Muncie Police Department in Indiana in September.

But there are other advantages to keeping animals on the job. They protect the officers they work with, do jobs that people can't and use bites, not bullets.

-- Celebrity polar bear Knut is in the spotlight once again: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals' German wing is calling for the young bear to be castrated over concerns that a potential mating with his current roommate would amount to inbreeding. In September, Knut was introduced to a female polar bear, Gianna, from Munich's Hellebrunn Zoo. The two are expected to live in the same enclosure until a renovation on Gianna's enclosure in Munich is complete later this year. According to PETA Germany's Frank Albrecht, a mating between Knut and Gianna could have dire consequences, since the bears have a grandparent in common. Problem: Neither Knut nor Gianna has yet reached sexual maturity, making the point a moot one, at least for another year or two. Last year, a custody dispute between two German zoos that both claimed Knut was rightfully theirs was resolved when the Berlin Zoo agreed to pay 430,000 euros to keep him. (Spiegel)

-- A miniature dachshund named Spork has become an unlikely cause célèbre after he was issued a vicious dog citation last year for biting a veterinary technician in Lafayette, Colo. Spork's owners, Kelly and Tim Walker, are fighting the citation -- which could mean a lifetime in a kennel, or worse, euthanasia -- tooth and nail (no pun intended). The Walkers say Spork, who is 10 years old and neutered, panicked at the vet's office where he was to have five teeth and a cyst removed, and bit the technician not out of viciousness but out of fear. "A fearful dog or a hurt dog is your No. 1 candidate to bite," Tim Walker said. "Most bites are out of fear and anxiety, and people who work with animals understand that. You need to be able to take a hurt, sick dog into a vet and feel confident they know how to handle that." The Walkers have spent thousands of dollars defending their beloved dog; they've also taken to Facebook and Twitter to tell their side of the story. A "Save Spork" Facebook group currently has more than 20,000 members. (Westword)

ORLANDO, Fla. — The 911 calls made after a SeaWorld Orlando trainer was pulled into a pool by a killer whale last week show an increasing awareness of the seriousness of the situation with each call.

The recordings were released Thursday by Orange County Fire Rescue.

The first call was made as the 12,000-pound whale named Tilikum swam in the pool with 40-year-old trainer Dawn Brancheau in his mouth.

"We actually have a trainer in the water with one of the whales, the whale they're not supposed to be in the water with," said a female SeaWorld employee. "We don't know what is going on. We were told just to have somebody here on standby once they get the person out."

The 911 dispatcher asked if other workers were trying to get Brancheau out of the water.

"There are people working on it ... about two or three dozen people over there now," the SeaWorld worker said.

We've seen our share of rabbits with unexpected talents -- like Momo the English Angora, for instance, whose impressive soccer abilities make him the David Beckham of pocket pets. We've seen a lionhead mix named Sherbet whose talent on the agility course rivaled some border collies we've known. We've even seen Elissa, a Flemish giant, play the piano.

But we've never seen a rabbit with Simon's unusual ability to walk upright. (Maybe Elissa should learn to play "Walk Like a Man," and the two can go on the road together.)

For any remix fans out there, Simon can also be seen in another video in which footage of him walking is altered to appear as if he's moonwalking. Moonwalking rabbits: A nice alternative to caffeinated beverages as a jump-start to your morning, we think.

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-- Lindsay Barnett

Video: zacheh via YouTube

Wildlife experts say love could be in the air for a red-tailed hawk with a penchant for dive-bombing people in the town of Stonington, Conn.

The belligerent bird is probably trying to impress potential mates and protect its nest as it enters its mating season, they say -- and woe to unsuspecting pedestrians in Stonington, a shoreline town bordering Rhode Island.

The hawk has attacked at least five people recently, including a woman who was cut on the head this week. It has also snatched a boy's hat, snagged headphones from a man on a lawn mower and even attacked a car.

Stonington animal control officer Rae-Jean Davis and the director of a nearby nature center say there are no plans to kill the angry avian, but its nest may be moved to a less populated area.

-- Associated Press

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Video: A March 3 news report on the hawk. Credit: WTNH via YouTube

BOSTON — The Massachusetts House has voted overwhelmingly to ban the surgical "debarking" or silencing of dogs or cats.

By a 150-1 vote, the House on Wednesday approved the bill which prohibits the devocalization of dogs and cats unless a licensed veterinarian certifies that the procedure is medically necessary to relieve an illness, disease or injury.

Animal rights groups pushed for the bill, saying the practice amounts to animal cruelty and poses only risks to the pets.

Some dog owners opt for the procedure as a last-ditch effort to try to quiet chronically barking dogs.

The bill now heads to the Senate.

-- Associated Press

Animal news on the go: Follow Unleashed on Facebook and Twitter.

Photo: Stephen Osman / Los Angeles Times

YARMOUTH, Maine — Nike subsidiary Cole Haan has agreed to eliminate exotic skins like lizard, snake and alligator from its product lines.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said Thursday that Cole Haan is the first maker of high-end accessories and shoes to ban exotic skins. Cole Haan, which is based in New York and Yarmouth, Maine, defines exotic as including alligator, crocodile, lizard, snake and ostrich.

Nike spokesman Nate Tobecksen says products using those materials will be eliminated across the entire Nike line after the summer retail season.

PETA has successfully lobbied Nike and Cole Haan in the past. Cole Haan announced in 2008 that it would stop using fur in its product lines.

-- Associated Press

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Photo: A shopper checks out the display window at a Cole Haan store in Los Angeles in 2009. Credit: Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times

SYDNEY — A species of frog thought to have been extinct for 30 years has been found in rural Australian farmland, officials said Thursday.

The rediscovery of the yellow-spotted bell frog is a reminder of the need to protect natural habitats so "future generations can enjoy the noise and color of our native animals," said Frank Sartor, minister for environment and climate change.

A fisheries conservation officer stumbled across one of the frogs in October 2008 while researching an endangered fish species in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales state.

The officer, Luke Pearce, told The Associated Press he had been walking along a stream trying to catch a southern pygmy perch when he spotted the frog next to the water.

Pearce returned in the same season in 2009 with experts who confirmed it was a colony of around 100 yellow-spotted bell frogs.

We're crazy about this musical Scottish fold cat, whose talent on the theremin is undeniable. (The theremin, for the uninitiated, is an electronic instrument controlled without physical contact by the musician playing it. It was created by Russian inventor Léon Theremin, whose fascinating life story is detailed in the documentary "Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey.")

If there were an all-cat Beach Boys cover band, we think we know who they'd call to play the theremin part on "Good Vibrations." (Although this cat, and these cats, would also be in the running.)

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-- Lindsay Barnett

Video: blancbonn via YouTube

One of the oldest Asian elephants on record has died.

Mary, a 63-year-old elephant, died this week at the Central Florida Zoo & Botanical Gardens in Orlando, zoo officials said.

Shonna Green, spokeswoman for the zoo, said Mary died late Tuesday of an age-related illness.

“She was 63 -- which is rather old for an elephant -- but no one dies of old age, so there has to be some kind of complication,” Green said.

A necropsy will be conducted to determine the exact cause of death.

Mary was born in 1946 at the Nehru Zoological Park in India. She came to the U.S. in 1952 as part of a circus. After she was retired from the circus, she was sent to the Dallas Zoo before coming to the Central Florida Zoo in 1983, where she was the matriarch of the group of elephants, despite being smaller than the others. 

Neil Patrick Harris is the narrator of a PBS documentary exploring the bond between service dogs and those they help.

Harris recorded the narration this week for "Through a Dog's Eyes," which is set to air next month.

The film details how dogs learn to serve people with disabilities and how animals and humans are paired. An Iraqi veteran who became a quadriplegic after a car accident and a 6-year-old with cerebral palsy are among those featured in the film.

The "How I Met Your Mother" star says he was impressed by the strong emotional connection between the service animals and those who rely on them. He owns two dogs.

"Through a Dog's Eyes" debuts April 21 on PBS stations.

-- Associated Press

Animal news on the go: Follow Unleashed on Facebook and Twitter.

Photo: Neil Patrick Harris records audio for "Through a Dog's Eyes" on March 2 in Burbank, Calif. Credit: Rene Macura / Associated Press

A Philippine wildlife officer is suspected of stealing more than 1,500 pounds (700 kilograms) of smuggled elephant tusks seized last year, an embarrassing setback for the country's anti-poaching efforts, an official said Wednesday.

The ivory worth $65,000 was part of a 8,800-pound (4,000-kilogram) shipment of tusks that was impounded at Manila airport in July and turned over for disposal to the Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau, said Theresa Mundita Lim, the agency's director. Trade in ivory is banned under U.N. rules.

She said the theft of nearly a fifth of the stored tusks was discovered while inventory was being taken on a warehouse Friday. Seals on some of the boxes were broken and some of the original tusks were replaced by replicas made of PVC pipes covered with plaster, she said.

Wildlife authorities filed administrative charges against a park supervisor, who may also face a criminal case depending on the probe by the National Bureau of Investigation, Lim said. The suspect, who was not identified, has not returned to work since Friday, she said.

In wake of the tragedy at SeaWorld in Orlando, our colleague Steve Lopez wondered if he had been a bad father by taking his daughter to the marine animal park in San Diego. "Did I really want her to think that wild animals exist for our amusement," Lopez pondered in his column Wednesday morning, "or that it's OK to ride a killer whale as if it were a pony?"

So Lopez asked a few experts, namely, his marine biologist cousin, San Diego SeaWorld spokesman Dave Koontz and Ric O'Barry, a dolphin expert who is also one of the first animal trainers to work with killer whales in a show.

Although Koontz told Lopez that visitors to marine animal parks receive "a greater appreciation for these animals and the ocean environments they live in," O'Barry, who can be seen in the Oscar-nominated documentary "The Cove" disagrees, calling it a "bad education."

"There's no connection between conservation and stupid dolphin tricks," O'Barry told Lopez.

A volunteer with an eastern Kentucky animal rescue organization says 15 plastic grocery bags containing the bodies and body parts of dead animals have been found in a car wash.

Diana McGuire with the Menifee County Humane Society says the bags contained six cats that had been shot to death, two possums, a hog's head, a chicken and some unidentified animal bones.

The Lexington Herald-Leader reports a customer at the car wash discovered the bags Saturday while washing his car at the 460 Car Wash. He looked up and saw bags in the rafters.

McGuire said there were bags with dead animals in all three bays of the car wash.

The Menifee County Sheriff's Office is investigating.

-- Associated Press

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A killer whale that dragged a trainer to her death eluded SeaWorld workers' frenzied efforts to corral him with plastic nets while he swam from pool to pool, according to witness statements released Monday.

After the massive orca was trapped last week, he refused to unclench his teeth and let go of Dawn Brancheau, according to the investigative reports released by the Orange County, Fla., Sheriff's Office. His jaws were eventually pried open.

The orca "would not let us have her," another trainer, Jodie Ann Tintle, told investigators.

Investigators have said the 40-year-old trainer died from multiple traumatic injuries and drowning.

In the new investigative reports, Brancheau's co-workers describe the swiftness of the attack and the furious response that came after alarms sounded around the pool. Employees who were at other pools, behind computers or emptying coolers of fish rushed to the scene.

A decade after a canine distemper outbreak killed nearly its entire population, the endangered Catalina Island fox is making a comeback. About 1,200 of the 1,300 foxes on Santa Catalina Island, off the coast of Southern California, died as a result of the outbreak. Now, thanks to a program to save the species and several years' worth of fortuitous weather patterns, their numbers have rebounded. Our colleague Louis Sahagun has the details in a story Tuesday; here's an excerpt:

Standing beside a sign posted along a main road urging people to watch for foxes, Carlos de la Rosa, the Catalina Island Conservancy's chief conservation and education officer, said, "Soon we'll have more than 1,300 foxes. But reaching that number is not, in and of itself, as great an achievement as bringing them back from the brink of extinction to a population that is stable and able to sustain itself."

The population had crashed to about 100 in 1999, when the conservancy and the Institute for Wildlife Studies launched a $2-million recovery program that includes vaccinations, aerial monitoring and education programs.

A captive breeding program here ended in 2004, the same year the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the cat-sized subspecies as endangered. About 950 Catalina Island foxes call the island home, up from 784 at this time last year, according to a recent islandwide trapping effort by conservancy wildlife biologists Julie King and Calvin Duncan.

The foxes are trapped once a year and inspected for illnesses, including an unusual, potentially fatal ear cancer that recently began showing up in older foxes.

Sea lions are returning to San Francisco's Pier 39 after an abrupt disappearance that left tourists disappointed and experts baffled.

The number is fluctuating. But the population appears to be making a slow return after mysteriously ballooning to about 1,700 during Thanksgiving week, then dwindling to a handful in the following days.

Jim Oswald of the Marine Mammal Center says a couple dozen sea lions were lounging Tuesday on the floating docks.

Marine experts say the animals come and go regularly, leaving in the fall to breed and give birth to their young in the Channel Islands.

Oswald says the large numbers seen in November, and their sudden departure, were unusual but not worrisome. He says they were probably looking for food.

-- Associated Press

Animal news on the go: Follow Unleashed on Facebook and Twitter.

Photo: Sea Lions sunbathe on a dock at Pier 39 last week. Credit: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

At New York's Bronx Zoo a few months back, the resident squirrel monkeys received the strangest treat they'd ever seen: Jell-O.

The blue goo was stuffed with blueberries -- a highly desirable treat for the monkeys -- which stimulated their foraging instincts, according to the zoo. That means that, for squirrel monkeys, eating Jell-O isn't just snacking -- it's considered an enrichment activity.

Squirrel monkeys spend much of their time leaping from tree to tree in the South and Central American tropical forests that are their native habitat. They're well adapted for such a style of movement: Their legs are proportioned in such a way as to give them extra force when jumping.

In Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and Slovenia, squirrel monkeys are called something very different (and a little bit creepy). In those countries, the name for these little guys references the skull-like markings on their faces and translates to "death's head monkey."

-- Lindsay Barnett

Don't miss a single adorable animal: Follow Unleashed on Facebook and Twitter.

ORLANDO, Fla. — Rocky, a 700-pound grizzly considered one of the gentlest animals among Hollywood's performing beasts, bites down on the neck of a veteran trainer. Illusionist Roy Horn is severely mauled by a show tiger during a Las Vegas performance. An elephant at an Indonesian tourist resort tramples its longtime handler to death.

And now the latest -- a 40-year-old trainer at SeaWorld Orlando is drowned by a massive 12,000-pound killer whale named Tilikum, an incident that raises anew the question of whether some beasts, especially the biggest ones, have any business being tamed to entertain.

Descriptions of Tilikum, the 22-foot orca that has now killed two trainers, inevitably come around to his intimidating size.

At nearly six tons, the bull bought for breeding is a giant among killer whales, the largest in captivity.

"Humans trying to incarcerate orcas or elephants or any type of large-brain or large-society species, it's proven it doesn't work," said Mark Berman, associate director at the environmental group Earth Island Institute in Berkeley. "They're just too big."

If you loved January's one-two punch of strange animal-themed holidays, Squirrel Appreciation Day and National Penguin Awareness Day, as much as we did, you're sure to enjoy National Pig Day! It's celebrated this year, as it has been every year since 1972, on March 1.

Mary Lynne Rave, a North Carolina woman who started National Pig Day with her sister Ellen Stanley of Texas, once explained that the idea behind the holiday was "to accord to the pig its rightful, though generally unrecognized, place as one of man's most intellectual and domesticated animals." 

Despite the sisters' apparently noble ambitions, some folks have been known to celebrate the day by eating pork products -- although that's not a manner of celebration we'd recommend. The pre-Pig Day party held last Friday by the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is more our style: The group invited the public to help make a giant fruit salad for the three adoptable pigs at its shelter. Later, a group of kids got to watch the pigs chow down on their healthful snack.

Unfortunately for us, we don't have any porcine friends for whom to make a fruit salad, so we'll just have to settle for celebrating the day with some virtual terrific, radiant, humble pigs. A double-feature of "Charlotte's Web" and "Babe" ought to fill that bill nicely, we think.

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-- Lindsay Barnett

Video: framerkat via YouTube