Breed

Nearly 1.5 miles beneath Earth's surface in Canada, scientists have found pockets of water that have been isolated from the outside world for more than 1 billion years. The ancient water, trapped in thin fissures in granite-like rock, has been bubbling up from a zinc and copper mine for decades in Timmins, Ontario. Only recently have scientists been able to calculate the age of this water and determine that it is the oldest ever discovered - possibly as old as 2.6 billion years, when Earth was less than half its current age. And it may harbor life.

A ruthlessly self-aware political wife reconsidering her choices. A sensual socialite facing down an oppressive age with informed good humor. A group of young women so busy defying social expectations they've forgotten to have any of their own. A working mother with a gift for passionate stillness. A recently recovered drama addict determined to save the world. A bipolar CIA operative, an optimistic bureaucrat, a frightened sex slave turned canny warrior. The female leads of "House of Cards," "Parade's End," "Girls," "The Good Wife," "Enlightened," "Homeland," "Parks and Recreation" and "Game of Thrones" are very different sorts of women who share one important trait: We have never seen their like before.

Referring to the intended all-out attack by police, animal control officers and cowboys on dogs in the Ventura River bottom ("Complaints About Dog Packs on the Increase," Jan. 7), I have a constructive suggestion. As a concerned worker in two volunteer programs dedicated to solving the problem (one offering free spaying and neutering and the other supplying food for hungry dogs of the homeless and poor), I realize we are making no progress. Why? Because owners mostly and adamantly refuse to have their pets sterilized--and see no contradiction in both breeding and asking for free food for six, eight, 11 puppies.

DALLAS - It's remarkable how slow - and disjointed - architecture can sometimes appear. For nearly a decade, younger architects have pushed for a new agenda in the profession. They've been loudly (and rightly) critical of the expensive, highly mannered and sometimes self-indulgent trophy buildings turned out by some of the world's most prominent architects. And they've helped bring different and more public-minded priorities to the fore. And yet the trophy buildings keep coming.

The coverage of Barbaro and his death, with emphasis on T.J. Simers' column and the over-the-top excesses of some of the horse's fans, draws attention from the real story. There are many reasons given for the decline of horse racing, which has been my favorite sport for nearly 50 years. That familiar phrase "improving the breed" is a joke. When I first started following racing in the 1950s, horses running 20 to 30 times a year, 90 to more than 100 times in a career, were not that unusual.

Kudos for presenting the other side of the pit bull story ("In the Doghouse," March 10). As someone who had feared them based on hearsay, I changed my mind after helping a friend place one she found abandoned and cowering under a bush in her backyard. He is one of the sweetest dogs I've known, but finding a roommate for Charles Manson might have been an easier task. But we did it, and he is thriving with the love and care of his new owner. I think the most important lesson to be learned from the tragic death of the toddler in Los Angeles is that people cannot be complacent around dogs and children, regardless of the breed.

After several plays--the latest being "Standard of the Breed," at the Cast Theatre--it's clear what John Steppling's subject is: Entropy. Set a top humming, and it will run down. So will the universe in time. Stasis is the natural order of things. So why start the top spinning at all? Freudians call this the death instinct. Steppling's characters are particularly susceptible to it. They make feeble efforts to get their lives together, but they're not surprised when it doesn't work.

There's prolific, of course, and then there's prolific , and somewhere on the far side of prolific there's Louis L'Amour with more than 85 novels in print, each one of which has sold more than 1 million copies. But far more than the IBM of the cottage industry known as novel writing, the indefatigable L'Amour's literary output is exceeded only by the vastness of his curiosity and the historic and geographic range of that curiosity.

The beauty of Chinese Shar-Pei dogs runs more than skin deep, although their wrinkled coats are among their main attractions, lovers of the rare breed say. The puppies look like their coats need pressing. But people who think the dogs are as mournful or awkward as their skin might suggest are barking up the wrong tree, says Shar-Pei breeder Scott White of North Hollywood.

Dog breed profiling: A story in last Saturday's Home section about dog breed profiling by insurance companies incorrectly identified Tully Lehman as the spokesman for the Insurance Information Institute. Lehman represents the Insurance Information Network of California.

Locally raised pork is rare in Southern California, but in a hilly grapefruit grove north of San Diego, fenced to exclude mountain lions, 14 tasty piglets luxuriate, fattening for sale at the Santa Monica farmers market. They're the dream or folly of Oliver Woolley, who raises heritage pigs. Oliver, 30, was born in Kentucky. He grew up in Colorado and moved with his family in 2003 to a 25-acre farm in Valley Center that grows flowers and organic grapefruit. He studied business at the University of San Diego and worked briefly as a trader for Morgan Stanley but "hated it," he said.

Larry Hill is the dean of a small network of dog trainers who are out to save the bully breeds - pit bulls, mastiffs and Rottweilers - of South Los Angeles. His specialty is tough dogs in tough neighborhoods. In his professional work and monthly free classes, he takes lunging, yelping masses of dog flesh and molds them into gentle companions. Hill's mantra is there is nothing wrong with the dogs. It's the owners who have the problem, as I discovered one Saturday morning at St. Andrews Recreation Center in Gramercy Park.

SAN DIEGO - Two organizations known for their work in saving imperiled species agreed Tuesday to build a breeding center that will bring some of the world's most exotic and endangered birds and hoofed mammals to a 1,000-acre site near the Mississippi River. The new facility will include open-air enclosures for animals of more than two dozen species, including whooping cranes, okapis, bongos (a type of antelope), storks, flamingos, Masai giraffes, oryx and other creatures, under the agreement signed by San Diego Zoo Global and the New Orleans-based Audubon Nature Institute.

Two mammals are drawn to a stretch of Northern California's coast at this time of year: northern elephant seals and humans eager to see them. Hundreds of the huge marine mammals cover the sands at Ano Nuevo State Park between Santa Cruz and Half Moon Bay to fight, mate and give birth. And Seal Adventure Weekend on Jan. 26 and 27 offers a rare opportunity to spend  half a day observing and photographing the extraordinary lust fest on the beach. "You'll see males without their own harems--we call them bachelors--lurking outside the harems, and the alpha bulls roaring at them," Joyce Pennell, president of the Coastside State Parks Assn., says of the event held during the height of the January breeding season.

Arnold des Contes D'Hoffmann, who joined the Department of Defense in 2008, has never been to Afghanistan or Iraq. But numerous of his progeny have deployed to the war zones and are credited with saving American lives. Arnold has a unique job description in the American military: He's a stud. With 149 offspring - and six more expected soon - the Belgian Malinois is one of the more productive males in the breeding program at the military working dog program at Lackland Air Force Base, a sprawling military installation in San Antonio.

PUYALLUP, Wash. - Katie Coats used to work in a crime lab in Seattle. These days, she reports to a quieter research facility about 40 miles south, in the shadow of Mt. Rainier. Here, Coats wields a surgical blade on her subjects, slicing away small chunks of cells and delicately dropping them in vials to preserve for genetic analysis. Coats isn't trying to chase down rapists or serial killers. She's using the tissue - which, on a recent day, came from a Canaan fir - to make better Christmas trees.

The tailless Manx cat ends with the unsettling abruptness of a sawed-off shotgun, but makes up for this anatomical shortage in an abundance of love and loyalty. And the absence of a tail has made the Manx the stuff of legend. Its tail got caught in the doors of Noah's Ark. It's part cat, part rabbit. It escaped minus its tail from a Spanish shipwreck and threw a litter on this little island in the Irish Sea. Viking invaders cut off the tails to adorn their helmets. . . .

Strong support for California's ambitious program to limit greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming was reconfirmed in a recent USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll, showing once more the state's celebrated environmental consciousness. So perhaps it's time at least to ring a warning bell about a puzzling situation in Los Angeles' cultural environment, rather than its natural one. At area art museums, the job of chief curator appears to be edging toward the endangered species list.

The future of a proposed multiuse development in the Santa Clarita Valley could rest partly on its relationship with some short-legged, bug-eyed amphibians. Toads, to be precise. Construction of Sterling Gateway, a 75-acre business park, won't be able to get underway until the developers fulfill at least one environmental requirement: Dedicate land where Western spadefoot toads can breed. Sterling's proposed business park in Valencia's Hasley Canyon just north of California 126 will complement the nearby construction of some 250 single-family homes the company also is planning.