In anticipation of the Fourth of July festivities, a Los Angeles doggy daycare has taken an innovative approach to help its canine guests stay calm during the holiday’s traditional fireworks. The facility has started playing recordings of fireworks throughout the day to gradually condition the dogs to the loud sounds.

An Instagram video highlights dogs at the center engaging in various activities like treadmill exercises, napping, and negotiating obstacle courses, all amid a soundtrack of fireworks. This is part of the daycare’s desensitization initiative aimed at easing the dogs’ anxiety when the actual fireworks begin.

Situated in Culver City at the intersection of Obama and Jefferson boulevards, Dingo Doggies Campus brands itself as a “school for dogs.” The facility emphasizes training that enhances listening skills, impulse control, and respectful social interactions.

The Instagram post accompanying the video explained, “With the Fourth of July just around the corner, we’re conditioning our dogs to be used to fireworks! The fireworks soundtrack runs all day every day, and on July 4th evening, it will be played in the kennels to blend with the actual fireworks outside.”

Renée Bogaarts, who owns and serves as the lead trainer at Dingo Doggies Campus, explained her motivation. She shared her passion for dogs and noted that in urban settings, many dogs’ biological needs often go unmet, leading to problematic behaviors.

Her passion for service and love for dogs led her to start the Dingo Doggies Campus in 2014, she had told Voyage LA.

For many canines, Fourth of July fireworks serve as an incredibly terrifying trigger. This intense fear leads numerous dogs to flee their homes or yards. They face a significant risk of getting lost or being involved in road accidents.

To prepare fearful dogs for the Fourth of July, the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine advises starting training months in advance. The process involves counter-conditioning, replacing fear with relaxation and desensitization, which uses gradual and controlled exposure to triggers without causing distress.

In a shocking twist, what was initially thought to be a murder case has been clarified. A British man, discovered slumped over on a bench soaked with blood last year, was, in reality, the victim of an unfortunate accident: he had passed out drunk on a knife that was inside his own bag, officials revealed this week.

Initially, authorities wrestled with the belief that Robert Brown, aged 57, had met a violent end through stabbing, upon being found on August 1, 2025, in Northampton, England. This was based on media reports from the Northampton Chronicle and Echo.

Although three individuals were initially detained in connection with his death, they were later released. A coroner concluded on Thursday that Brown’s demise was, in fact, a “tragic accident.”

Investigators have deduced that Brown, who was known to have struggles with alcohol dependency, entered a deep sleep and inadvertently placed his weight on his bag, causing the knife to fatally penetrate his body.

The blade penetrated the bag and all three layers of Brown’s clothing, slashing his arm and leaving him to bleed out as he slept, authorities said.

Brown’s alcoholism made him vulnerable to blood loss, experts said at a court hearing.

Northamptonshire Police dropped the murder inquiry in February, saying Brown’s death was likely self-inflicted. Investigators noted that there was no apparent motive to murder Brown.

“We have reviewed the extensive amount of information gathered as part of the investigation, including all forensic submissions, and can confirm the evidence does not support the hypothesis that his death was a homicide,” police said at the time.

“There’s room for everyone to shine,” Madonna remarked to me when we found ourselves backstage at the Jean Paul Gaultier Spring/Summer 1995 fashion event, held at the Musée des Arts Forains in Paris.

We were both on the runway together. Madonna donned a flowing chiffon dress, playfully wheeling a baby carriage with a tiny white dog inside. As for me, I was clad in a revealing thong swimsuit—not the most secure ensemble, because a single good cough might have sent it flying.

Though instructed to avoid any interaction with the pop icon, my 23-year-old self disregarded the cautious warnings (some things never change) and boldly strolled into her private area to strike up a conversation.

Relaxed and composed, she engaged in conversation with the esteemed hairstylist Orlando Pita, sharing that her housekeeper, a Santeria practitioner, would cover her in honey as part of a sun-lit purification ritual. Quite the sticky situation!

As Madonna looked up and greeted me with a warm smile, it was clear she wasn’t bothered by my intrusion. Taking this as my cue, I seized the moment to seek her advice. Not long before, Sandra Bernhard, a former friend of hers, had inexplicably critiqued me in Time Magazine.

‘There is no need to tear each other down, especially other women,’ she purred. It turned out to be some of the best advice I’ve ever received. I walked away glowing.

The next night there was a party for Gaultier and I was busy flirting with a hot American model named Andre when Madonna walked into the restaurant with her then-boyfriend Carlos Leon.

Andre suddenly turned to stone. ‘Here, sit on my lap,’ he said, pulling me on top of him.

Since I had ZERO game, I was, of course, down for whatever this perfect hunk of man meat was serving. But as we kissed, he was glaring at Madonna and, for the life of me, I could not figure out what was happening.

It turned out they had dated and whatever that was worked. Madonna walked over and pleaded – with her eyes – for peace with dumb Andre. Then Madge waved goodbye to me and left.

I love her… just about as much as I hate her.

For now, as Madonna explodes back into the culture with her latest reinvention – promoting her new album Confessions on a Dance Floor: Part II – I know that her moods are not unlike the boom-and-bust cycles of her career.

She’s a true diva.

As kind as Madonna was to me in Paris, I can’t say she was exactly nice to me when I saw her again at the 1998 MTV Video Music Awards in Los Angeles.

In fact, she was a raging bitch.

I had become good friends with her manager Guy O’Seary (who would later run her now-defunct Maverick Records) and he assured me, ‘M loves you!’, so we walked over to her table after her kickass performance of Shanti/Ashtangi.

Madonna had what looked like lines of colored frosting on her face. She was going through a ‘eastern spirituality phase’ she’d picked up while pregnant with her daughter Lourdes.

‘Look who I found?’ Guy said.

Madonna looked up in her Bollywood cosplay and snarled, ‘What do you want?’

(I forget: Who is the Hindu god of mood disorders?)

I rolled my eyes, shook my head and walked away.

Not long after that we crossed paths again at a party with Guy. I told Madonna that I had seen Evita four times, and she asked, ‘Oh did you like it?’ I cocked my head and deadpanned, ‘No I hated it. I wanted to go back three extra times just to make sure.’

She snorted with laughter, immediately tried to compose herself and said, ‘That’s actually funny.’

Dr Jekyll?

It’s well-known that no one in Madonna’s orbit dares call her by her real name. It’s always ‘M’ or ‘Madge’ or ‘Mo’, or some other made-up moniker that indulges the fantasy that she’s normal. But she’s not. She couldn’t be. For as many times as Madonna has been culturally discarded and left for dead, she’s found her away back. It’s almost superhuman.

I saw her perform in concert for the first time on her Like a Virgin tour in 1985. She was already an icon and I was up to my elbows in gummy rubber bracelets desperately trying to look like her character Susan Thomas in Desperately Seeking Susan. I screamed the lyrics to Borderline loud enough for her to hear me. 

And I’ll never forget waiting in line in 1992 with my fellow VJ John Norris to get our hands on her book, Sex, the day it was released. The overhyped coffee table smut had some beautiful portraits, goofy shots with Vanilla Ice and was so poorly constructed it fell apart in your hands when you turned the spiral bound pages. I still have mine intact in the original packaging.

As a VJ at MTV, I watched the industry alternate between her eulogies and proclamations of her triumphal returns. She’d vanish from the scene and then hit you upside the head with some masterful reinvention, like the Bedtime Stories album, or some wild collaboration, like that 2003 VMA makeout sesh with Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, and be heralded as a genius once more, then do something absolutely humiliating.

In 2021, everyone cringed when she flashed her booty while laying across Jimmy Fallon’s desk on the Tonight Show. 

Two years later, it wasn’t funny at all when she was hospitalized, she said, with a ‘serious bacterial infection’ and placed in ‘an induced coma for 48 hours.’

It suddenly seemed like Madonna wasn’t coming back again. Her movie star good looks were veering into horror show territory, and the shock and awe antics that once were felt titillating were getting icky. The Material Girl was becoming a granny

When 67-year-old Madonna appeared three-stories high on a stage in Times Square, grinding in lingerie and pressing her naughty bits against a plexiglass barrier during a Pride event in early June, I thought I had finally had enough. But how wrong I was.

Madge has returned and is, dare I say, cool once more.

A collab with Sabrina Carpenter at April’s Coachella music festival brought the house down and made me think how Sabrina and Chappell Roan and so many others wouldn’t have license to lean into taboos if it weren’t for the woman who rolled around in a wedding dress and crucifixes at the 1984 Video Music Awards.

Madonna could even be learning some… boundaries. She confessed in a new sit-down with Interview Magazine that she has decided to keep her clothes on: ‘Now I don’t want to be naked because everyone’s naked. That’s my nature. I want to do what people are not doing, which is thinking and wearing clothes.’

Well, not so fast. On Wednesday, she went braless, freeing the nipple in a tiny blue dress for Paris Fashion Week. I guess she’s technically clothed.

So it goes, as we summit another peak on the climb up Mt. Madonna. Whether she’s making you barf by showing too much, or making you dance yourself into a frenzy, at 67 she’s still here, still crazy, and I can’t wait to love-hate everything about her latest reincarnation.

Madonna, we’ll always have Paris.