A weekly roundup of news in parentville, including the good, the bad, and the utterly trivial.

First, a confession: My usually exhaustive Internet researchathon has been sharply curtailed due to fear that I will inadvertently come across something that reveals the ending of Harry Potter.

So I've limited my surfing to stories about our surrogate children, figuring that would be safe. (It was.) First stop: cuteoverload.com. It features lots of keeyootee-pie furballs and posts written in an oddly endearing dialect, like the author is channeling a kitten, or perhaps is a kitten:

Yep, I'm pretty moishe gonna keel you in your sleep.
IIIIIIIIIIIIIII've pretty moishe had eet. Have you tasted that dry food you feed moi? Abominable!

Looking for further proof that many people think their pets are not just adequate but superior subs for human children? Check out this website devoted exclusively to pet strollers. Featuring strollers (and there are many of them to choose from) bought by high-wattage celebrity pet lovers like Tori Spelling, "My Name Is Earl" and others! If your furball is too small for the stroller, there's always the Baby Bjorn (see pic, left).

Just like babies, some animals resist potty training. What to do? One poop-besieged town in Africa thought it had the perfect solution when it passed a law mandating that any donkey who walked its streets must wear a diaper. But as one owner points out, just like babies, donkeys are not always cooperative when they need to be changed:

The problem is that the donkey can give you a fatal kick. I was once kicked by a donkey and it broke my leg.

Perhaps that was also the problem faced by a California couple who was keeping an (apparently diaperless) miniature horse in their kitchen and dining room until they were busted for child endangerment. Most 10-year-olds I know would love to to sleep in a tent in the bedroom like the "endangered" kid in question, but could probably do without all the doo-doo and flies.

Pets, like kids, tend to put things in their mouth that don't belong there. Like $750 in cash. Fortunately, the family was able to retrieve $647 of it from ... well, if Pepper the money hungry dog had been wearing a diaper, it would have been in there.

The thing about kids -- they grow up and move out. Pets don't do either. That's both good and bad. But should its care & feeding become too much for you, you now have the option of sending your pooch to the Soladi Care Home for Pets, Japan's first nursing home for dogs. For $800/month, you get round-the-clock monitoring by vets and a team of puppies to help the furry old farts feel younger.

This hardworking pooch certainly deserves to live in pampered splendor when she retires. The dog, named Hello, sells betel nuts, or pinang, in her owner's store in Taiwan:

She knows how to open the fridge, pick up the pinang, and put it on the counter, then collect the money from the customers. Many people just come to be served by her.

Hello also goes shopping by herself. She carries a plastic bag, containing money and a shopping list, in her mouth. If there is a queue she waits in line and, when it is her turn to be served, puts her front legs on the counter and drops the bag in front of the shopkeeper.

Smart dog. Smarter than this German woman, who alerted the cops when she spotted what she thought was a masked criminal through the window of a parked van. Police surrounded the van and rushed it, only to find a large toy beaver strapped into the front passenger seat.

Signing off now. See you in line at Barnes & Nobles!