The truth was nothing was that simple or savage. Apparently the horses were being treated well, with greater care than actual working racehorses. The third horse was reportedly in good health and high spirits the day it died. It was in such spirits that it reared up as horses sometimes do. This time it fell over backward, and landed on its head. Just an accident. All you can blame is the fragile frame of the thoroughbred horse, which was created for racing.

But that didn't keep the show from being canceled – or critics from speaking out. Even before the third horse death, PETA charged that “two dead horses in a handful of episodes exemplify the dark side of using animals in television, movies, and ads.” Like all filming in the U.S., "Luck" was shot under supervision of the American Humane Association's Film & TV Unit, the people who certify that “No animal was harmed in the making” of a film or TV show. (That's a statement about animal welfare, not animal rights. If you don't think animals should be filmed for entertainment at all, you're not going to like AHA. Founded in 1877, it also promotes the welfare of children.)

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It seems Donald Jr. and his brother Eric went to Africa on a hunting trip last year, and their tour company, Hunting Legends, decided recently to brag of the men's prowess on their Web site, complete with graphic photos of the brothers and their kills. And here's a shocker – there's something about rich white men smiling with the carcasses of the African animals they've killed that a lot of people just don't like.

The photographs are intense – images of the men proudly hoisting a dead leopard, smiling and holding a sawed off elephant's tail next to the animal's body, posing with a dead bull and waterbuck and an enormous, strung-up crocodile.

PeTA unsurprisingly jumped at the opportunity to get a little free press from the episode, sending out a statement that "Like all animals, elephants, buffalo and crocodiles deserve better than to be killed and hacked apart for two young millionaires’ grisly photo opportunity." And even Donald Sr. told "Access Hollywood," "I've never liked it (hunting). I've never liked that they like it... I'm going to talk to them about it. I'm not a fan of the whole situation."

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Still, you’d like to think it’s possible. You want to believe in an animal that can fit you inside them — that you might be consumed not piece-by-piece, mouthful-by-mouthful as sharks and bears would eat you, but wholly; to be encased as your full self, womb-like. You want to believe in big animals like you did when you were a kid. You want to be powerless as you are leaning into hurricane winds or with your eyes closed or looking into the ocean.

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Derr acknowledges that the story of the dog's emergence (as distinct from its evolutionary forebear, the wolf) cannot be “neatly distilled." Different estimates place the first appearance of dog-like creatures anywhere from 12,000 to 135,000 years ago. But Derr argues that the dog itself was an “evolutionary inevitability." He suggests that dogs and humans  -- similar animals who “simply took to traveling with each other” tens of thousands of years ago, “and never stopped” -- have had a significant influence on each others’ development over the course of a long, co-evolutionary relationship.

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That pungent odor that makes fastidious visitors wrinkle their noses on rainy days? That’s the smell of unconditional love.

Some years back, I phoned my veterinarian pal Randy about a newspaper article reporting that academic psychologists had decided that dogs feel emotions. I asked if he that found newsworthy. Never one to mince words, he said “A [bleeping] dog is emotions with a nose.”

Google “dogs greeting soldiers” and watch a few online videos of deliriously happy animals greeting their masters returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Anybody who remains dry-eyed must never have experienced canine devotion.

Almost as puzzling as dog haters are people who keep pets but have no earthly idea how the animals think and feel. Cesar Milan has made a handsome living off dog owners whose cluelessness makes “The Dog Whisperer” one of the funniest things on TV.

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The certificate program is one of the few programs in the country offering education in natural science illustration. Other schools with natural illustration degrees or certificates include Rhode Island School of Design, California State University in Monterey Bay and Johns Hopkins.

Ocelot by Greta Romelfanger

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"Ugh, cut it out," I said, because everyone knows: That helps.

Only weeks ago, we moved from a 200-square-foot studio in Manhattan to a roomy cottage in Dallas, which was a little bit like waking up one morning and discovering your black-and-white movie had gone Technicolor. This place is a find. It has two stories, a huge open kitchen, and windows that look out onto leafy, sun-dappled trees where birds flutter about. As far as I could tell, this is Cat Paradise.

And while I didn't exactly expect a Martha Stewart thank you card, my mood quickly soured when he didn't appreciate it. I'd already done so much for him: toys littered the floor, unused; a scratching post had become a tacky mail holder. Now, the cat stood at the front door, firm and ever-striving, demanding access to the one place I would not allow him to go.

"You're not going outside," I said.

Mrrrrow.

"The dogs next door will eat you," I said.

Mrrrooowww.

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Christopher Rozzi has taken the idea of those secret confessionals one step further. On his Etsy site, Tiny Confessions, he sells drawings of the world's most adorable pets airing the same sort of self-doubts that led you to buy a cute little Shih Tzu in the first place. If you're the kind of person who feels like your cat is secretly judging you, then Rozzi's work is right up your alley. I posed five questions to the New York-based comedian in the hopes of alleviating my fears that deep down, my dog doesn't love me as much as he seems to. 

1. What's your profession, and how old are you? Where are you located? (The basics.)

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Even with Andy Samberg as this year's official Chief Shark Officer  , Discovery's output has begun to feel a little stale. If you're sick of boring old facts about these teethy fish as presented by those "MythBusters" guys, then why not make your own Shark Week? We've compiled three of the more bizarre shark films out there (sorry, "Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus," maybe next year) for you to sink your teeth into. They might not be a true to life as "Jaws," but they'll keep you out of the water all the same.

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Now, however, the bullfight brigade has fought back. This week Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero announced that the ministry of culture will take charge of the "development and protection" of bullfighting, wresting it from the interior ministry and preemptively blocking further attempts at making it disappear. As a matador representative of the Bullfighters Union told the U.K. Guardian Sunday, the move protects "a symbol of Spanish cultural heritage that shapes the national identity."

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But that's just bacteria. Sure, it's scary, but it's also kind of abstract, and a little difficult to get excited about. What if we told you the same exact thing is happening now in mice?

World, meet mutant mouse.

Researchers at Rice University have completed a study of house mice in Germany and Spain, which, in recent years, have shown remarkable resilience to a pesticide called warfarin, commonly used to kill the rodents. What they found, through a comparison of genetic compositions, was evidence that populations of these European mice have been mating with members of a closely related species from Algeria.

According to the International Business Times: 

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A group of scientists from the University of Minnesota have released a new study analyzing the specifics of more than 500 lion attacks in Tanzania dating back to 1988. In particular, the researchers were looking to uncover patterns between lion attacks and the moon; the resulting study amounts to an "extensive analysis of predatory behavior across the lunar cycle on the largest dataset of lion attacks ever assembled." And simple number crunching revealed something quite extraordinary: You're more likely to be eaten by a lion immediately after a full moon.

Per the Public Library of Science:

[This study] found that African lions are as sensitive to moonlight when hunting humans as when hunting herbivores and that lions are most dangerous to humans when the moon is faint or below the horizon. At night, people are most active between dusk and 10 p.m., thus most lion attacks occur in the first weeks following the full moon (when the moon rises at least an hour after sunset). 

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2. Cover of the day: They Might Be Giants goes "Tubthumping" for The Onion's A.V. Undercover series. "I get knocked down, and I get up again…"

They Might Be Giants covers Chumbawamba

3. Performance slide of the day: Grantland has declared Natalie Portman to be the actor who most "cuba'd" their Oscar cred in 2011. Thanks, "No Strings Attached."

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And let's not forget the females -- like Lola, a second-generation dog prodigy, who came home to her owner one day "in a state of great depression," and tapped out a confession on the alphabet cards she used to communicate: "My honor is gone!" "Fraulein Kindermann understood that she must have enjoyed a short affair with a farmyard dog," Bondeson writes, "who had basely seduced and then left her. She tried to console poor Lola, saying that her broken heart would recover with time, but the pathetic dog responded 'Only when I die!'"

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If this video doesn't warm your heart, you might be dead inside: A tabby suffering from extreme nerve damage after being hit by a car is learning how to walk again with the help of hydrotherapy.

2. Internet's infamous lip-sync star performs with Katy Perry

Keenan Cahill became a viral sensation when he put up a lip-dub to "Teenage Dream" on YouTube. Now he's friends with 50 Cent and Perry herself, who invited Keenan onstage in Philly to join her in their hit song.

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In his new book, "Rat Island: Predators in Paradise and the World's Greatest Wildlife Rescue," wildlife writer William Stolzenburg reveals that these feral little beasts, most of which have been introduced to the islands by man, are destroying native bird populations one pilfered egg at a time. The stakes are higher than they may appear. Many of these rodent transplants threaten to drive several species to extinction and quicken our planet's already rapid rate of biotic impoverishment. Stolzenburg offers a fascinating, if occasionally grisly, peek into the emerging science of preservation through eradication, as conservationists scattered across the five oceans have begun independent campaigns to save their islands' endangered species from one of our greatest biological weapons: the rat.

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Pattison is telling me all sorts of stories about her group, her life and the crazy things she's seen running Hunt of a Lifetime for the past 11 years. We're at the Oak Tree Gun Club, a lovely shooting facility about a half hour drive north of Los Angeles, and her stories are being punctuated by the pop, pop, pop of handgun fire from the nearby pistol range. She's come here to Southern California for a celebrity sporting clays competition -- two of the group's longtime supporters are Ted Nugent and NASCAR champ Jeff Gordon -- in the hopes of finding some big-name stars to help her cause.

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2. Speaking of which: Robin Williams named his daughter Zelda because he liked the video game.

3. Gwyneth Paltrow just can't stop being "Glee"-ful: The GOOP founder showed up at the live show on Thursday night in New Jersey to sing "Forget You." Again? Again.

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