Raúl Juliá Levy was born on July 10, 1971 in the city of Leon Guanajuato, Mexico. He is the son of Margaret Levy and the Puerto Rican actor Raúl Juliá. Margaret Levy’s father was one of the most prominent figures of Mexico from a very powerful Jewish family. Abraham Levy, who according to official documents, was one of the pioneers of the company Levi-Strauss along with his cousin Levi Strauss and owner of millions of acres where they were engaged in cultivation of cotton which was the raw material for blue jeans.

Margaret Levy was helped by a close friend with raising her son for the first four years of his life. This is due to Abraham Levy’s disagreements with Margaret and her decision to have a child from the actor, Raul Julia.

All that is known so far is that Abraham Levy hated the actor Raúl Juliá. One of the reasons was that Raúl Juliá was not Jewish and also had bisexual tendencies. Abraham levy hired private investigators in puerto rico in the year 1975, advised by the then U.S. ambassador to Mexico John Joseph Jova on how to proceed to initiate preliminary investigations on who was the family of the actor and father of the grandson in Puerto Rico.

Abraham Levy traveled to Puerto Rico by the end of the year 1975 and collects all information about the actor Raúl Juliá only to find that the father of his grandson, actor Raúl Juliá, came from a middle-class family who were owners of a small restaurant called The Cave of Chicken Inn. The family consisted of 6 members: Raul Julia, his father, his mother, two sisters and a brother named Carlos Julia.

The great aunt of the actor Raúl Juliá was the first woman to have a driver’s license on the island of puerto rico.

The young Raúl Juliá Levy cultivated a very close relationship with his grandfather, Abraham Levy. Raúl Juliá Levy was persuaded by his grandfather for years not to use the surname of his father Julia and for years the young Julia-Levy did not use the surname of his father. Julia-Levy met his father for the first time,  at the age 17, on the set where he was filming the movie Romero in Cuernavaca Mexico. Since then julia-Levy began to use his father’s name going publicly by raul Julia-Levy. This meeting was arranged by an acquaintance of Julia-Levy, Bishop Ernesto Corripio Ahumada. After that date Julia-Levy visited his father in Los Angeles, California about twice a year. The Levy family in Mexico City had the knowledge that one of the sisters of actor Raúl Juliá lived with her husband, a Mexican lawyer and they lived in the colonia militar in Mexico City.  Julia-Levy spent most of his youth beside his mother until he finished his studies in economics in Mexico and returned to the United States to begin his career as an actor. Once in hollywood the young Julia-Levy tried to locate some of his father’s friends. One in particular, Edward james Olmos, was very interested in resolving the situation between the young Julia-Levy and the widow of his father who described her as a calculator and a cold woman and very negative. She refused to talk with Julia-Levy and immediately started to discredit the young actor in every possible way.

In 1996, the widow of his father, the Russian Meryl poloway, received a call from ‘a woman’ who third partied Julia-Levy claiming that Raúl Juliá-Levy was not who he claimed to be. According to testimony from powerful people close to the young Julia-Levy, ‘the woman’ took revenge against Julia-Levy because she was claiming that her son was Julia-Levy’s. In 1997, ‘the woman’ was able to convince Meryl Poloway to destroy all credibility of the young actor. By the end of 1997 Meryl Poloway along with ‘the woman’ contacted a reporter, Sully Roman, who worked for Channel 52 telemundo a very popular channel in Spanish in the Los Angeles area. At the same time, the mysterious woman had filed a series of absurd complaints with the court against the young actor Julia-Levy accusing him of abuse. On the other hand the reporter Sully Roman  without investigating the allegations of the mysterious woman, released to the viewers a series of lies and slander not stopped for a whole month while the young Julia-Levy defended himself from accusations of both Poloway and of the mysterious woman. As the days passed people gave opinions without knowing the real facts of this case. Meryl Poloway continued to flood more and more negative comments by talking to Hollywood producers to damage the image of the young Julia-Levy, according to official documents of the court of Norwalk California 1998. ‘The woman’ had lied on the alleged charges against Julia-Levy. Official records show that ‘the woman’ refused to provide a DNA sample to prove that the child she said was really that of Julia-Levy. She flatly refused to provide samples, claiming that she did not believe in DNA testing. On the other hand, Polaway alleged that Julia-Levy was in fact another person named Salvador Fuentes Alba, creating an increasingly profound confusion for the millions of fans of Raúl Juliá. In January 1999, the reporter for the popular Channel 52 Telemundo, Sully Roman, was fired for having lied in all its segments and for failing to investigate the sources of the information. The board of Channel 52 Telemundo determined that Roman had lied and violated the professional ethics of journalism. Since then she was never hired by another news agency. The case against Julia-Levy in Norwalk Superior Court was dismissed. the widow of Raúl Juliá, Meryl Poloway, remained fixed on the idea that Julia-Levy was actually another person, named Salvador Fuentes Alba. Poloway contracted the services of a private investigator agency, in San Francisco California, to investigate Julia-Levy. However, the investigation was really on Salvador Fuentes Alba because Poloway was convinced that Julia-Levy was really Salvador Fuentes Alba. Then that agency from San Francisco hired the Mayor, as a private investigator, of a small village called San Miguel de Allende Guanajuato, Mexico with a population of 3,000 people. The mayor of this small town San Miguel De Allende Guanajuato did not have any kind of credentials or experience as a private investigator. For years Meryl Poloway tried to discredit the reputation of Julia-Levy in one way or another.

In 2005, Poloway contacted (through her sister Susan poloway) a mediocre paparazzi who also happened to work as a freelance writer, Morgan Spencer. Poloway arranged for Spencer to interview Julia-Levy via telephone He deliberately and maliciously altered the interview via phone with Julia-Levy. Spencer then sold the interview to the New York Times. According to the investigations Poloway contracted the paparazzi to write an article about julia-levy. Poloways intentions were so that Spencer manipulate the phone interview by twisting the truth and inserting lies. Spencer neglected to do any research that would have allowed him to know Poloways intentions which focused on damaging julia-levy’s life at all costs. At the end of 2005, Poloway had contacted the Deputy City Attorney, Janna Sidley, from Los Angeles to ask her to investigate the whereabouts and identity of julia-Levy. Such investigations did not produce any results in  Poloway’s favor. Poloway then used her attorney who specialized in intellectual property, Tamar Feder, to try to reach a solution with Julia-Levy. In 2006,  ”SAG” Screen Actors Guild Legal Department informed julia-levy that poloway no longer denied that he was in fact Raul Julia’s son. In the beginning of 2007, the State Department from Mexico City sent los angeles deputy city attorney Janna Sidley a series of documents via fax stating that Raul Julia-Levy and Salvador Fuentes Alba are two different people and that one has nothing to do with another.

In July 2007, the prosecutor of the Phil Spector trial, Alan Jackson, also tried to discredit and damage the reputation of Raul Julia-Levy by saying that he had an extensive record of run ins with the law, when in reality that record belongs to Salvador Fuentes Alba. Even the lead detectives on that case informed Allan Jackson that they had no idea who Raul Julia-Levy was (in relation to that case). Then Alan Jackson forged forward and despite what the lead detectives said exposed all those falsehoods to the Court TV Media. On july 18, 2007 los Angeles Superior Court Judge Larry Fidler ordered that Julia-Levy’s file be sealed until they were able to determine who’s file it was, Julia-Levy or Salvador Fuentes. According to the investigations, several major news agencies reported that they had the file including an editor from the Los Angeles Times who immediately phoned Julia-Levy’s attorney to report that Allan Jackson covertly and unlawfully gave out that information regarding Julia-Levy’s file despite of Judge Fidler’s orders for that file to remain sealed. It is clear that even a small time DA like Allan Jackson has only one thing on his mind: win a case, write a book and go on to a private practice regardless of what the truth is.

Poloway’s two sons, Raul Sigmund Julia and Emilio Benjamin Julia, are not even biological descendants to the late actor Raul Julia. It still remains that Poloway has a problem with the fact that her son, Raul Sigmund Julia, shares a name common to that of Raul Julia-Levy. However since both want to go by Raul Julia Jr., it creates a conflict with SAG. According to SAG, it is not possible to have two people registered under the same exact name. As a result of Poloway’s actions, she has damaged her own son’s career and many of the producers in Hollywood do not want to know anything about Poloway. It appears that Poloway, a wannabe actress, had only one agenda which was to third party the hell out of Julia-Levy and pervert anything she could about him so that she could pave the way for her son Raul Sigmund Julia. In the end she only damaged his career and complicated his life, her life and many others.

In our final investigations, there is one conclusion according to the State Department of both Mexico and the US: there is no more mystery because they now have all the legal documents for Salvador Fuentes Alba and Raul Julia-Levy. There is no doubt that they are 2 individuals.

Salvador Fuentes Alba Acta de Nacimiento

Salvador Fuentes Pasaporte

Salvador Fuentes Alba CURP

RAUL JULIA LEVY

Raul Julia Levy Birth Certificate

Raul Julia Levy Passport

Raul Julia Levy Cartilla de Vacunacion

FBI WARNING: This is Copyrighted Material

ALL LEGAL DOCUMENTS AND MATERIALS PROVIDED BY GOVERNMENT AGENCIES FOR THIS REPORT AND THE UNOFFICIAL BIOGRAPHY ARE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY OF ANABEL HERNANDEZ, INVESTIGATOR REPORTER IN MEXICO CITY. IT CANNOT REPRODUCED OR REPRINTED IN ANYWAY WITHOUT THE AUTHOR’S CONSENT AS OF TODAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2008.

The article about Obama - also named “Game Changer of the Year” - was written by Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.

Meanwhile, Obama’s appearance on CBS‘ 60 Minutes on Sunday night gave the venerable news show its highest overnight ratings in nearly a decade, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Steve Kroft spent almost the entire hour interviewing the president-elect and Michelle Obama, drawing 24.5 million viewers, according to the preliminary Nielsen estimate.

That is more viewers than for any other episode of a prime-time show seen this season and is the biggest audience for 60 Minutes since January 1999.

    Speaking after an Italo-German summit in Trieste, Berlusconi said it was one of Italy’s top foreign policy priorities to try to return the Untied States and Russia to the “spirit” of a 2002 summit at Pratica di Mare near Rome where a landmark accord between Russia and NATO was signed.

    Berlusconi reiterated his concern over U.S.-Russian tension on tit-for-tat missile deployment, according to Italian News Agency ANSA.

    ”For anyone who lived for decades with the nightmare of two opposing nuclear arsenals, returning to the past is … to be avoided,” he said.

    Italy is making diplomatic efforts to get Obama and Medvedev together, Berlusconi said. It also took advantage of the fact that they are “young, represent the new generation of politics (and are)distant” from the Cold War, he said.

    Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said last week that a strategy of missile proliferation was “no good for Europe, Russia or the United States” and Italy could help ease tensions.

    After Moscow’s decision to deploy missiles near the Polish border in response to the planned U.S. missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, Frattini said “Italy is really one of the few countries that can play a facilitating role. And I hope President-elect Obama can meet Russian President Dmitry Medvedev really soon to discuss these issues.”

    Frattini denied suggestions that Italy was “veering East” after Berlusconi said the day before Russia had been “provoked” into deploying the missiles.

    The European Union also expressed strong concern over Russia’s decision.

    Medvedev last week hinted the Russian missiles would not be deployed if the United States decided not to go ahead with its missile shield.

Sasha and Malia on their way to school in Chicago last week. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

After trips to two D.C. private schools, Malia and Sasha Obama are getting a special personal tour of the White House this afternoon, accompanied by grandma Marian Robinson and their mother.

“Mrs. Obama greatly appreciated this invitation to provide an opportunity for the girls to feel at home and be comfortable in this transition process,” Katie McCormick Lelyveld, Michelle Obama’s spokeswoman, told our colleague Richard Leiby in an e-mail. Laura Bush was in Kentucky this morning for an event at the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site and was expected back this afternoon.

Yesterday Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, visited Georgetown Day School and today toured Sidwell Friends — the two private institutions that seem to be at the top of the future first lady’s list. She visited the both campuses last week.

It certainly is the question being asked at area animal shelters.

Puppymania has ignited fierce competition among local pet rescue organizations clamoring to be the go-to adoption center for the next first family. The two most prominent shelters in town, the Washington Humane Society and the Washington Animal Rescue League, have both begun quiet lobbying blitzes to woo the Obamas.

The Washington Humane Society thinks Dave, a toy poodle mix, could be a contender for the Obama puppy search. Dave is considered hypoallergenic.

“The League would be deeply honored to be the source of the nation’s next first canine,” WARL executive director Gary Weitzman wrote in a letter to President-elect Obama the morning after the election. “We would love to help you add a new member to your family.”

WARL actually began its letter-writing campaign to Obama back in July - more than a month before he had formally accepted his party’s presidential nomination. “It is our fervent hope that you and your family will soon be moving to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” Weitzman wrote in the July 17 letter.

He even asked Obama to come in person to the shelter. “We hope that you, too, can find the time to visit the League with your family and choose the perfect dog,” he wrote. “All of our resources stand at your service, and we would be deeply honored if you could find a way to agree to this request.”

The Washington Humane Society hasn’t contacted the Obamas, but the organization recently posted a notice on its blog announcing: “WHS Offers Puppy Kindergarten Classes to First Family Adopters.”

The humane society’s president and CEO, Lisa LaFontaine, wrote that even if the Obamas don’t choose their pet from one of the WHS’s two shelters in the District, the organization would still like to do the puppy training. At the White House, of course.

“Perhaps WHS can best be considered as a resource in helping the family, and particularly the girls, with training and socializing their new companion,” she wrote.

What about finding a shelter dog that won’t exacerbate 10-year-old Malia’s allergies?

No problem, says Tara de Nicolas, spokeswoman for the Washington Humane Society. “We currently have a few dogs that might fit the bill, such as poodles and a 4-month-old Wheaton Terrier,” she says. (We like Dave, a one-year-old 7 lb. black poodle mix who is described as “gentle with kids.”)

As President-elect Obama has articulated, his family needs a hypoallergenic dog because Malia, his oldest daughter, is allergic. He said while their preference is to rescue a puppy from a shelter, “a lot of shelter dogs are mutts like me.” (Meaning, probably not hypoallergenic.)

Spokesman Jim Monsma at the Washington Animal Rescue League says “you can’t put in an order for hypoallergenic” but such shelter dogs do exist. “As of last week we had a number of dogs who we believe were hypoallergenic,” he told us.

The Sleuth’s non hypoallergenic pup Zola.

The Obamas have said they aren’t getting their new dog for at least two more months, until they’re settled in the White House. And something tells us, there’ll be plenty of hypoallergenic puppies to choose from come late winter in Washington.

Full Disclosure: The Sleuth adopted her puppy, Zola (who - sorry, Malia - is not hypoallergenic), from the Washington Animal Rescue League last year. As you can see in this photo, she was pretty irresistible.

Sen. John McCain and President-elect Barack Obama meet Monday in Chicago, Illinois.

Sure, the photo op was a tad uncomfortable: The men looked like wary heads-of-state waiting for their translators.

As the cameras captured every uncomfortable moment, the two men tried some football chit-chat, but it looked forced — because it was.

Behind closed doors, the discussion was more real.

A close aide to McCain told me that the senator really didn’t know what to expect when he went into the session, but he knew he was ready to tell Obama where he could help him. He related that, after a couple of days of unwinding at his Sedona, Arizona, retreat, the senator was “back to plotting” what he can do in the Senate with his best-pal, Sen. Lindsay Graham, a Republican from South

As for Obama, he had a clear agenda. We’ve heard a lot lately about Obama’s interest in Abe Lincoln’s “team of rivals” in his Cabinet. He’s not about to go that far with the man he beat for the presidency, but he also knows that McCain will be a very useful ally.

One clear, and pressing, issue: the closing of Guantanamo. McCain is one of a small number of Republicans who agree with Obama that it ought to be closed. Obama can (and might) do this by executive order, but it’s not as if that’s the end of it. Questions remain about how to handle the detainees, and who would be better in handling that thorny issue than John McCain?

If Obama needs political cover — and credibility — on Gitmo, McCain is his man.

Likewise, McCain can also be incredibly useful to the new president on issues of climate change, defense procurement, earmarks and corporate welfare. He’s not a fellow who can possibly care anymore about angering members of the Republican Party. He’s already been there and done that. It’s now time for McCain to burnish the legacy, and his place in the Senate could do just that.

It’s no coincidence, by the way, that Obama sat down with McCain so quickly after the election. He knows he will need him.

The same goes for Sen. Joe Lieberman, the renegade independent (once a Democrat) who endorsed McCain — and said some nasty things about Obama at the GOP convention.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and other angry Democrats were ready to toss him overboard, taking away his chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee. Then came a phone call from Obama to Reid, cautioning him not to do anything that would drive Lieberman into the arms of the Republican caucus.

The result: Lieberman remains chairman, and loses some other, more minor, posts. Without Obama, he probably would have been dethroned entirely.

Then, of course, there’s the overture Obama made to Sen. Hillary Clinton about becoming secretary of state. Needless to say, there’s not a warm and fuzzy history there.

But Obama understands this is not just about him — it’s about uniting a party, putting a best face on America to the world and, maybe most of all, bringing the Clintons into his tent. It’s an idea that comes from a leader dealing from strength, not weakness.

In fact, if Obama had chosen Clinton as his running mate, that would have been a choice made out of weakness.

But just weeks before the start of the historic Barack Obama administration, the last thing the boss-elect wanted was a public hanging of Connecticut’s sort-of Democrat Sen. Joe Lieberman for his outspoken support of the Republican ticket of John McCain and Sarah Palin the last several months.

There was some support for revenge (Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid) among those (Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid) who wanted to slice away Lieberman’s committee chairmanship of Homeland Security and membership on the important Armed Services Committee with McCain and Hillary Clinton.

It was the Democratic Party, you may remember, that started this fight by supporting an insurgent primary challenger of Lieberman in 2006 over the senator’s support of the Iraq war in general and the Bush administration’s troop surge in particular.

The insurgent won the primary but was blown away in the general, where Lieberman ran as an independent and drew on his longtime statewide name recognition as a former attorney general and senator who suits the state’s moderate-to-conservative Democratic mind-set. And the Republicans tacitly supported Joe by putting up a nobody and not supporting him.

So jolly Joe returned to the Senate and the Democratic caucus, where his vote was the leverage that gave the party the 51 votes necessary to control that body.

It’s one thing to support the war. It’s another, however, to support Republicans, which Lieberman did big time, even speaking in prime time at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.

With a newly-enlarged Democratic majority now, Joe’s lone vote is less important. It came time to take him to the woodshed during this week’s brief congressional session before another vacation. But how would that look as a pre-inaugural first step for a new administration pledged to change the way Washington doesn’t work?

So Lieberman keeps his Homeland chairmanship, his Armed Services membership and loses a minor subcommittee chairmanship, which is like detention for a week. And life goes on.

Lieberman told reporters he appreciated colleagues’ respect for his “independence of mind.”

“That’s who I am,” said the 2000 Democratic party vice presidential nominee.

The overwhelming majority of Democrats in the caucus wanted to keep Joe on, Reid said, looking like he was not a member of that overwhelming majority but got the word from Chicago. “It’s all over with,” he said.

A little rump-session drama that may give an inkling of the Obama-Emanuel style to come. (For an entertaining video of a roast of Emanuel and his kick-em-between the legs political style, click here and see what Obama had to say about him way back in 2005.)

Elsa Poutler with her Fern Collie cross Photo: Philip Hollis

Copper, a Beagle/Jack Russell cross, with Shannon Weekly Photo: Philip Hollis

Gregory Short with Sally, a Yorkidoodle

Fifty-six dogs wait to go into the ring at Earls Court in an atmosphere rich with doggy shampoo. Short ones, tall ones, miniature fuzzballs with arching tails, soppy eyes and lean, mean, hunting machines; the only common feature in this canine melting pot is beautifully groomed Dennis Healey eyebrows.

Scruffts is the antidote to dog shows: a wet-nosed waggy-tailed celebration of mutt power. While Crufts draws the cream of the 209 breeds registered by the Kennel Club, its almost-namesake is open only to cross-breeds and mongrels. They are judged on good looks, good health and good manners, just as a pedigree dog would be, but without the rigid breed specifications.

It is these that have got the Kennel Club into hot water, after a BBC exposé of the health horrors caused by breeding – and inbreeding – dogs for showing. The club is reviewing its standards in time for Crufts next year, but it hasn’t stopped the RSPCA and Pedigree, show sponsor for 44 years, boycotting the biggest date in the canine calendar.

Scruffts is small fry by comparison: four classes shoe-horned into an hour and 20 minutes at the annual Discover Dogs event. Instead of an expert, celebrity dog nut Summer Strallen, the ex-Hollyoaks actress starring as Maria in Andrew Lloyd- Webber’s The Sound of Music, is doing the judging. Fourteen hundred dogs entered the regional heats this year (for £1 each).

There are many mixes on show. There is a goldendoodle, pictured above, and Daisy a labrador/terrier cross who won the golden oldie category.

Gregory Short and Sally, pictured in panel above far right, are finalists in the child’s best friend class and prettiest bitch, an amazing feat since neither dog, a one-year-old Yorkiedoodle, nor owner (aged nine) had done anything like this before their local Scruffts in Co Durham. Gregory explains Sally’s pre-show beauty routine. “She’ll have a bath and get her teeth done. I had a Doctor Who toothbrush but I’ve got one now that fits onto the end of my finger.”

Small boy and small bundle of fluff with black button eyes march into the ring like pros. “Gregory didn’t strike me as a confident child but he loves it,” says his mother Wendy.

There are oodles of poodle crosses like Sally at Scruffts, some with rough coats, others sporting 1980s bubble perms. Labradoodles were first on the scene. Intelligent and even hypoallergenic, they have become super-fashionable and can fetch over £1,000 (surely the perfect puppy for the Obama girls?). “In the late 1990s we used to get calls from people wanting wolf hybrids,” says Liz Colley of the Crossbreed and Mongrel Club, founded in 1994. “Now it’s Goldendoodles, Jackadoodles and Cockadoodles.”

Holly Ralph, 12, is a member of the Young Kennel Club and is showing her skateboarding labradoodle, a roguish dusty-black creature with highlights in her beard. “Scruffts is the most serious thing we’ve done,” says Holly. Roxy’s vet bills are lower than for the family’s two pedigree dogs, which is true generally of mongrels and crossbreds. “It’s called hybrid vigour in the world of genetics,” says Life pet adviser Dr Roger Mugford, the owner of a vigorous rangoon terrier. “Statistically mongrels are marginally healthier.”

They’re also brighter than many of their overbred cousins, or so scientists at Aberdeen University concluded earlier this year after testing both for spatial awareness and problem-solving abilities.

• The Scruffts 2009 heats begin in February and the final will be at Discover Dogs on Nov 15 (0870 606 6750; www.thekennelclub.org.uk ).

DOGGY DIRECTORY

• Crossbreed and mongrel puppies are much harder to find than pedigrees, particularly in southern England, because of campaigns to encourage responsible dog ownership. Many of the Scruffts finalists were rescue dogs. Try Dogs Trust, which has 17 re-homing centres nationwide (020 7837 0006; www.dogstrust.org.uk ).
• Dogpages.org.uk has links to more than 1000 rescue centres.
• Fashionable dogs are abandoned too; contact Labradoodle Rescue (01933 443007; www.labradoodlerescue.com ). To find a puppy, try the UK Labradoodle Association (0208123 8156; www.labradoodle.org.uk ) or the Labradoodle Club of Great Britain (www.labradoodleclub.co.uk ).
• The Crossbreed & Mongrel Club website has excellent advice on how to choose the right dog. It also runs its own competition, Scamps, with the grand final on Sept 20, 2009 (01522 751576; www.crossbreedandmongrel-club.org.uk).

CANINE GLOSSARY… A WHATADOODLE?

GOLDENDOODLE: golden retrieverand poodle

COCKAPOO: cocker spaniel and poodle

YORKIEDOODLE: (or Porkie): Yorkshire terrier and poodle

JACKADOODLE: Jack Russell and poodle

SPOODLE: springer spaniel and poodle

DOODLE: dachshund and poodle

CHI-POO: chihuahua and poodle

PEEKAPOO: pekinese and poodle

PEEK-A-POM: pekinese and Pomeranian

DORGI: dachshund and corgi

CHORKIE: chihuahua and Yorkshire terrier

PUGGLE: pug and beagle

DOLLIES: dalmation and border collie

WEIRDIE: West Highland terrier and bearded collie

SPANADOR: spaniel and labrador

SPRINGBATT: bassett and springer spaniel

This is the second Sims Pets to appear on the Nintendo DS and this time you live in an apartment that belongs to your uncle who is away, but because he’s got a nice landlord he lets you keep pets, which range from dogs and cats to birds.

Through mini-games you bond with your pet and learn the skills you’ll need to put to good use in your animal spa – which just happens to be located underneath the apartment.

At the spa, you have to treat pet ailments.

First you have to diagnose which one of three ailments the animal has, then use the stylus and buttons to treat the problem.

You’ll do things like spray dirt off with a water gun, or brush them.

If you manage to sort the problem out, you’ll receive a good payment from the owner which you can then use to upgrade your spa.

Interacting with your pets was quite cool: playing fetch with the dog really reminded me of Nintendogs, as the puppy had the same bouncy, playful movement.

Graphically it looks better than the last Sims Pets game, but the game just gets repetitive quickly.

Your Sim can’t go anywhere other than the apartment or spa, either, so it’s a fairly limited game play area.

Also, the camera doesn’t follow your Sim automatically so you have to pan the camera using the D-pad. It just gets a little fiddly.

Cutesy animal factor aside, the game play is just too boring to really be worth your while. If you really want a DS game that has pets in it, hunt down Nintendogs, it’s much more satisfying.

The seven dogs and one cat, who are all more than 30 percent overweight and weigh a combined total of 191 kg (421 lb), were picked by veterinary charity PDSA who are running the slimming contest.

The animals, who need to lose a total of 74 kg to reach their ideal weight, will be put on specially tailored diet and exercise programs.

The pet who achieves the biggest percentage weight loss and best follows their new regime will be crowned champion, winning their owner a pet-friendly holiday.

PDSA statistics show around 30 percent of Britain’s dogs are overweight or obese, amounting to around 1.95 million fat dogs.

“Alongside their daily portions of pet food, owners often show their affection by giving unhealthy human treats such as cheese, buttered toast and biscuits. They don’t realize they are actually killing their pets with kindness,” said Sean Wensley, a veterinary surgeon at PDSA.