And still on the theme of washing dogs to raise funds … A Baltimore pet spa raised funds recently for military dogs:

there are more than 1,000 military dogs deployed worldwide, including around 700 in Iraq and Afghanistan. Among the supplies being sent are protective goggles that the dogs wear while sniffing out roadside bombs, cooling beds, and more traditional items such as chew toys.

[Via : Dogs have day for the military - baltimoresun.com.]

I have no experience with military dogs. Can any of our readers explain how the goggles protect a dog? Is it from dust, or glare? Because if a bomb went off, I don’t think goggles would help much.

I confess, sometimes our dogs wear nice woolly jerseys. If it’s a cold day and the dogs have been recently clipped, well, I figure the woolly jersey will keep them warm.

And seeing as how our dogs are so close to the ground they sometimes get to wear the jerseys on those wet, windy, muddy days too.

But there are some dogs who really need to wear protective gear. And by that I don’t mean to keep out the cold, or ward off the mud:

as powerful a crimestopper as he is, Cezar’s fur will not stop bullets. And though he’s one of four dogs on the Santa Clara department’s K-9 Unit, only three of the force’s canine cops come equipped with bulletproof vests. The dogs only work on felony crimes — usually to track potentially violent suspects, and occasionally to disable them — so they are almost always in harm’s way.

[Via : It's a dog's life, and the best way to protect it is with a bulletproof vest - San Jose Mercury News.]

To solve the problem of not enough bullet proof vests to go around a local chain of pet stores helped raise funds for the police dogs by offering do-it-yourself-dog-washes. One vest costs US$1,200, and at $15 per wash that’s a lot of clean dogs.

What a great cause!