Kyle Smith, the St. Louis Dog Whisperer, talked about the three most common misconceptions people have about dogs:

• A wagging tail is a sign of a happy dog
• Never stare directly into a dog`s eyes
• The human needs to dominate or be the “alpha dog” of the house, not the dog.

These misunderstandings can negatively impact your relationship with your dog and may lead to problem behaviors. Remember that:

• A wagging tail can mean many things; the position or direction is the key to discerning the dog`s feelings
• It`s okay to stare; but you need to know how and why
• It is not about dominance, the key is calm, confident leadership

Contact info:
stldogwhisperer.com
314-600-6939

Saturday morning, two very authentic-looking letters arrived at David’s home; one from the President, the other from the Queen. They both held regrets and well-wishes. 

David was so excited until a relative admitted to crafting the letters as a practical joke. On a side note, Mayor Francis Slay and Alderman Joe Vacarro says they’ll stop by.  Read the letters below:

White_House[1]

Queen[1]

MoDot also advises motorists at the conclusion of the work, westbound vehicles will now be driving in the left lanes and the right lane will be closed.  The detour to avoid the construction zone altogether is to take westbound I-44 to Jefferson and then back to I-64.  

People wanting to head West out of Webster will not be able to use the Elm Avenue ramp onto Interstate 44 after rush hour. The issue is the retaining wall along the ramp. The concern is that the wall might collapse.

To make sure people are safe, they say it needs to be replaced and that’s the rough news for people who spend a lot of time in Webster Groves.  It’s going to take about a month to do it.

Crews will shut down the ramp around 9:00 a.m., just after the morning rush ends. Once its closed, it won’t be open again until the end of August.

 Drivers are being told Big Bend will be their best, closest option for a detour.

White needs to raise $10,000 for the film project to come to fruition.  You can pledge on the Kickstarter website, but there are only five days left!

(Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

Authorities say the victim was rushed to the hospital in very critical condition.  Homicide detectives have been called in to take over the case.

The shooting happened about 11:30 p.m. Sunday night on the parking lot of the White Castle at Kingshighway and Natural Bridge Road.

Police tell us a 25 year old man in the driver’s seat of a minivan was shot multiple times in the upper body.

Investigators say he drove a few blocks but then crashed into a light police at Kingshighway and Terry.  At this point, police aren’t sure if the shooter walked up to the car or was in another vehicle.

We’re told there was a female passenger in the minivan with the man who was shot. Authorities say she wasn’t hit in the shooting and sustained only minor injuries in the crash.

Kingshighway south in that area was closed for a few hours during the investigation.

There are no suspects in custody and police have no description of any possible suspects.

Investigators also don’t have a motive for the attack.

Now more reports of his activities are surfacing.  Colorado massacre suspect James Holmes applied to join a gun range in June, but the range’s operator said Sunday that he was disturbed by the “weird and bizarre” message on Holmes’ answering machine.

“It was weird,” said Glenn Rotkovich, managing partner of the Lead Valley Range in Byers, Colorado. “I didn’t know what kind of message was left by this idiot. We need to know if he’s an idiot before we let him have access to our range.”

Rotkovich told CNN that Holmes sent in an online application on June 25. Rotkovich said he called the number Holmes left on the form, only to get a message he said was largely unintelligible.

He said the voice was “guttural, freakish, maybe drunk. Just weird and bizarre — a deep, guttural, forced voice.”

Rotkovich said Holmes didn’t call him back. He left another message, and said he was again disturbed by the voice on the machine.

“It bothered me so much I told my staff, ‘If this guy shows up, he gets nothing until I meet him,’ ” Rotkovich said.

He said he tried calling Holmes a third time, again with no response, then quit. Holmes never called back, nor did he come to the range in Byers, about 40 miles east of Denver. But when news broke Friday of the bloodbath in a theater in the Denver suburb of Aurora, Rotkovich said one of his staffers remembered the name and saw that it matched reports of the suspect in the killings.

Holmes, a 24-year-old doctoral student in neuroscience, was arrested outside the Century 16 multiplex early Friday. He’s accused of opening fire in the crowded theater during a midnight screening of the new Batman movie, “The Dark Knight Rises.”

Shooting survivors recount Colorado horror

Pictures obtained of Holmes show a tall, bright-eyed, dark-haired young man, in contrast to the man a law enforcement official said had dyed his hair red and identified himself as “the Joker” after his arrest. And authorities recovered a Batman poster and mask from the apartment, a law enforcement source with direct knowledge of the investigation said Sunday.

It’s an image difficult to reconcile for those who know him as a clean-cut, quiet graduate student.

He entered the University of California, Riverside, in 2006 on a scholarship and graduated with highest honors with a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience in 2010.

“Academically, he was at the top of the top,” Chancellor Timothy P. White said.

UC Riverside police have no record of any contact with Holmes, the university said. Neither did police at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, where Holmes enrolled in 2011 as a doctoral candidate in its neuroscience program at the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, university officials said in a statement released Sunday.

Holmes’ sole brush with the law in Colorado appears to have been a 2011 summons for speeding from Aurora police.

Holmes attended Colorado with the aid of a grant from the National Institutes of Health, which allowed the university to pay him a $26,000-a-year stipend for living expenses, university spokeswoman Jacque Montgomery said.

A syllabus that lists Holmes as a student at the medical school shows that he may have taken a class in which he studied topics as diverse as substance abuse, schizophrenia, depression and other disorders. According to the document, he was to have delivered a presentation in May about microRNA biomarkers.

But there are indications that something may have been amiss in Holmes’ life in recent months. He withdrew from the program in June 2012, though “he gave no reason for his withdrawal from the graduate school,” said Jacque Montgomery, spokeswoman for the University of Colorado.

It is not immediately clear if Holmes, who also worked in a paid position in the university’s neuroscience research program, was still employed there after withdrawing from the program.

He received a large volume of deliveries over the past four months to both his home and work addresses, which police believe begins to explain how he got his hands on some of the materials used in the rampage and the subsequent discovery of his booby-trapped apartment, Aurora Police Chief Paul Oates told reporters Saturday. Holmes purchased four weapons and more than 6,000 rounds of ammunition in recent months, Oates said.

Police: Evidence of ‘calculation,’ ‘deliberation’ in Colorado shooting

Police haven’t disclosed any motive for the attack or explained Holmes’ appearance at the time of his arrest, citing an ongoing investigation.

Holmes was dressed in black, wearing a ballistic helmet, a tactical ballistic vest, protective leggings, a throat and groin protector, and a gas mask during the attack, police said, and witnesses say they did not see his face because of the mask.

Unlike most people his age, Holmes does not appear to have a social media footprint — no accounts with Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr, though authorities are investigating whether he posted a profile on the sex website Adult Friend Finder.

The profile contains a picture of a man with fiery red hair, a law enforcement source said. Police believe it may be a picture of Holmes, said the source, who was not authorized to speak to the media. The profile said it was created by a 24-year-old man from Aurora and has since been taken down.

Adult Friend Finder said Sunday that it “values the privacy of its members” and would not confirm the identity of any users. The site will respond to police inquiries “as may be required by law,” company spokesman Lindsay Trivento said in a written statement.

It’s a profile that contrasts with news that Holmes worked as a counselor at a summer camp for needy children in 2008.

Camp Max Straus caters to needy children ages 7-14, and is run by Jewish Big Brothers Big Sisters of Los Angeles, which confirmed his employment but would not offer further details or comment.

The man who grew up in the upscale northwest San Diego neighborhood of Rancho Peñasquitos was renting an apartment in Aurora, according to police and realty records. Tom Mai, a neighbor of the Holmes family in San Diego, described Holmes as “clean-cut, quiet, responsible.”

At the time of his arrest, Holmes was living in a small, three-story brick building on Paris Street in Aurora, in Apartment 10, within walking distance to the university.

“Neighbors report he lived alone and he kept to himself,” Oates said.

Jackie Mitchell, who lives close to Holmes, had a beer with him on Tuesday.

Mitchell was stunned at news of Holmes’ alleged involvement in the attack.

“You would never guess he was a violent guy,” Mitchell said, describing Holmes as “nerdish” and “a book-smart type guy.”

Massacre suspect’s neighbor: ‘I’m counting my lucky stars’

Holmes told police during his arrest he had booby-trapped the third-floor apartment, prompting investigators to evacuate the building and four others nearby and Friday and Saturday trying to disarm and get rid of a variety of explosive devices left behind.

Kaitlyn Fonzi, a 20-year-old grad student and neighbor, said she heard techno music blasting from his apartment around the time of the shooting and had nearly opened Holmes’ unlocked apartment door to complain — unaware that the unit was wired to explode.

A timer had turned the music on so that it would blare in his apartment after he left for the Aurora multiplex, according to a law enforcement source, who also spoke on condition of anonymity.

Song of the Day Means Tickets Today!

Enter to win two tickets to Pirates!
at The Muny, July 30th – August 5th

Swashbuckling pirates! A curse! Caribbean comedy!

The Muny premiere of Pirates! (or, Gilbert & Sullivan Plunder’d) is a new version of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance. The spirit and songs of the original have been revamped within a rousing and riotous Caribbean setting that supplies greater adventure, bigger laughs and non-stop entertainment. The Muny will be presenting the fourth U.S. production of this exciting show!

To purchase tickets visit: muny.org

Hurry! All entries are due from 7 a.m. – 9 a.m. on Monday, July 23rd.
Winners will be randomly drawn from all entries received and notified by phone or email.
No purchase necessary.  Must be 18 years or older.

ENTER BELOW!

(CNN) — A Ford pickup truck crammed with nearly two dozen people crashed in southeastern Texas Sunday evening, killing at least 13 people and injuring 10 others.

™ & © 2012 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved

Authorities say when officers arrived, they found a group of teens sitting in a car firing shots at a group of teens inside another vehicle.

No one was hit. One teen ran away and remains on the loose. Police did arrest some of the other teens.

Police say several cars were broken into inside a parking garage on Washington Avenue between 20th and 21st streets.  Police say the garage is for the Alder Lofts.   Police got the first call around 4:45 a.m. Monday.

When officers arrived they found five cars broken into. Among the cars hit– a Corvette, a Mini-Cooper and an Infiniti sports car.

Police spent part of the morning meeting with the car owners as they tried to figure out what was taken.

There was a screw driver and a brick at the scene which could have been used in the break-ins.

So far there are no suspects and nobody was hurt.

There are some questions about what happened because the garage where the break-ins took place is a secured building.

Car owners are frustrated— police are trying to figure out who is behind the break-ins.

STLMoms.com wants to share your family’s Circle of Life photos for a chance for you to win your way into Disney’s The Lion King! Just upload a multi-generational photo of your family and one grand prize winner will receive 4 tickets to attend Disney’s THE LION KING when it makes its triumphant return to the Fabulous Fox Theatre August 15 through September 2. Plus, you’ll get to attend the show with Margie Ellisor!

Click Here To Enter

Website: Jackie Joyner-Kersee Foundation

It happened in Dix, Illinois about 90 miles east of St. Louis.  Investigators say the family from Granite City was visiting relatives in Dix when the children were playing in their grandfather’s RV.

That’s where they found the loaded gun.  The 7-year-old girl accidentally fired it, killing her brother.

At this time, there are no charges expected in the case.