Halloween may be months away, but it’s never too early to start dressing up your dogs. Take this handsome pair, for instance, dressed like a Dragonborn and a dragon from fantasy video game Skyrim. A hand crocheted labor of love, the outfit includes a helmet, sword, shield, and bracers. Also, that’s a dachshund dressed as a dragon. What more could you possibly want? See more pictures of this pair, and their costumes, after the break.

I do like dogs, and I do like Star Wars but I still don’t know what popular German car manufacturer Volkswagen is going for in this new ad. It’s no doubt related to last year’s young Darth Vader ad, but how? Also, is it just me or is a teaser for a Super Bowl ad just a little strange? Whatever. It’s got cute dogs.

Fishing in a kayak half a mile off the coast of Sarasota, Florida a man was greeted with a surprising guest swimming up to his boat, Barney the dog. The fisherman quickly reeled in his fishing line once he saw the dog — something I’m not sure if I would be quick enough to realize to do — and pulled Barney into his kayak. He dried the dog off and headed for shore, and during this time, Barney was perched on the back of kayak, a very small space, too afraid to move, clearly traumatized in some way. Obviously, small dogs don’t regularly end up half a mile out to sea, and it was apparent by that and the way the little guy was acting that he was involved in something unfortunate. It turned out Barney was involved in a deadly DUI crash; he was out for a jog with his owner, and a drunk driver struck and killed her not too long before the dog fled to sea. Fortunately, the story doesn’t end badly for poor Barney.

As observers of various screens, the concept of tiny colored dots coming together to form a solid image is nothing new. However, the best way to illustrate that point is to follow in the footsteps of Joel Brochu who created a portrait of a beagle taking a bath using 221,184 nonpareils sprinkles. According to him, when the four foot-wide image is viewed from 16 feet away, it looks exactly like a large photograph. And yes, each sprinkle was placed by hand with the whole image taking him about eight months to complete.

See more images, after the break.

Oscar, the above adorable doggie, sometimes pees in an odd fashion — you know, if one considers doing a handstand and walking around while leaving a trail of urine in his wake odd. Which you should, mainly because he is doing a handstand while walking around and peeing.

Revolutionizing the way people without a yard or people with a yard but don’t want to step in poop walk their dogs, the AshPoopie pooper-scooper not only scoops pooper, but uses a combination of what appears to be rotating paddles or blades and a replaceable cartridge, and with their powers combined, turns the dog poop into a sterile, odorless ash. Created by Oded Shoseyov of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in order to reduce the amount of poop-filled plastic bags generated when people walk their dogs, the AshPoopie will be unveiled by Paulee CleanTec in February of next year at the GlobalPet Expo in Orlando, Florida.

I’ll be the hero and be the guy to ask exactly what range of poop sizes does the AshPoopie handle, because dogs come in all sizes and no sidewalk or backyard should be left unclean, but we’ll just have to wait until February to find out. Until then, you can check out Shoseyov’s patent, and we can dream of world where a Jack Black and Ben Stiller movie is edging ever closer to nonfiction. If that isn’t your thing, or you already finished dreaming, you can check out a concept video of the AshPoopie below.

We all have our kryptonite. For me, it’s spiders, or having to do actual work. For this dog, it appears to be a full page spread of Julia Roberts’ face. He seems like a pretty cool dog that doesn’t afraid of anything, but Julia Roberts can break that resolve. At first he just looks a little unnerved, but the second time around he must have felt the abyss gazing back into him. Maybe he recently watched Eat, Pray, Love. Shame on anyone who didn’t see that joke coming all the way from the title.

We were just too excited about the Psychonauts update yesterday evening to leave you with an uplifting end of the day video, so we thought we’d help everyone start their day with the above video of Tank, the English Mastiff who didn’t know how to dispose of incriminating evidence, but when his owner returns home, immediately realizes that maybe he should’ve tried to dispose of said evidence a tad harder, with said realization manifesting pretty clearly on the Mastiff’s face. Dogs seem to be pretty good at knowing when they’ve done wrong.

(via reddit)

Government officials in Jiangmen, China are banning residents from having dogs as pets. Set to take place at the end of August, the ban will require all current dog owners to take their pets to a drop-off center where they will either be adopted by people who live in rural areas or euthanized. The goal of the ban is to reduce the number of dogs in areas of Jiangmen that are most densely populated.

According to the city government’s official notice on “Strengthening the Management of Dogs,” any dog owner that wants to keep their pet rather than surrender it to people unknown or sudden death will be allowed to apply for a license. However, it seems as though only people who plan to use their dogs for security for a warehouse or other business will be granted licenses.

A newly discovered canine skull dating back 33,000 years may be some of the earliest evidence for dog domestication ever found. The skull was unearthed in a cave in the Siberian Altai mountains by an international team of Russian-led archaeologists.

The skull shows a mixture of traits seen in dogs and wolves. The snout is similar in size to early domesticated dogs in Greenland from around 1,000 years ago, but its large teeth are closer to those found in 31,000-year-old European wolves. The study, which was published in the journal PLoS One, suggests that the newly found skull may be from a dog in the extremely early stages of domestication.