The 11 were taken Thursday in a remote part of Nangarhar province, said Hazrat Hussain Mashreqiwal, provincial police spokesman. He did not name the abductors but said local officials and tribal elders were trying to negotiate the mine clearers' freedom.

According to the United Nations there are an estimated 10 million mines scattered throughout 150 of Afghanistan's 400 districts, a legacy of 30 years of war. Children and farmers face the most serious threats from the discarded explosive devices. On Friday three children in central Ghazni province were killed when they tried to dismantle an old bomb.

Also Saturday, a series of bombings targeted Afghanistan's intelligence and security personnel.

In a remote corner of northeastern Afghanistan a bomb killed an intelligence officer at his home, while in eastern Afghanistan a remote-controlled bomb ripped through a police vehicle killing two and injuring three other police officers, many of them seriously. A third bombing in Afghanistan's northern Faryab province wounded the district police chief.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for any of the bombings but Taliban insurgents have been targeting Afghan National Security Forces with deadly regularity. In the first four months of this year more than 400 Afghan security personnel have been killed in insurgent attacks compared with 224 in the same period last year.

For the first time in Afghanistan's 12-year war, Afghan Security Forces are taking the lead in the battle against insurgents in nearly 90 percent of the country. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns, in Afghanistan for talks on a key bilateral pact, said Afghan security forces will be in the lead in 100 percent of the country by the end of the year, ahead of the withdrawal of international combat troops in 2014.

Mohammed Zahir, spokesman for Nuristan's governor, said the province's deputy intelligence chief Faiz Mohammed was killed when a bomb planted inside his home exploded. It wasn't immediately known how the bomb was detonated.

In eastern Nagarhar province, Ahmed Zia Abdulzai, a spokesman for the provincial governor, said that a remote-controlled roadside bomb detonated as a police vehicle passed.People in the area chased three men who appeared to throw away a detonating device. Abdulzai said three men were arrested one Pakistani and two Afghan nationals.

Afghanistan accuses Pakistan of allowing safe havens for insurgents on its territory. It also charges that Pakistani militants are among the foreign insurgents aiding the Taliban in its battle against government forces. Pakistan denies the allegations.

The violence, which included blasts outside a political office in Karachi that left 10 dead, capped a bloody election season. More than 130 people have been killed in bombings and shootings over the campaign, prompting some to call this one of the deadliest votes in the country's history.

Despite the bloodshed, many see the election as a key step to solidify civilian rule in a country that has experienced three military coups. It marks the first time in Pakistan's 65-year history that a civilian government has completed its full term and handed over power in democratic voting.Previous governments have been toppled by military coups or sacked by presidents allied with the powerful army.

With the Pakistani Taliban threatening to target political parties Saturday, an estimated 600,000 security personnel fanned out across the country to protect polling sites and voters. Many Pakistanis seemed determined to cast their ballots despite the violence.

"Yes, there are fears. But what should we do?" said Ali Khan, who was waiting to vote in the northwestern city of Peshawar, where one of the blasts took place Saturday. "Either we sit in our house and let the terrorism go on, or we come out of our homes, cast our vote, and bring in a government that can solve this problem of terrorism."

In a reflection of the enthusiasm surrounding the vote, the secretary of the election commission, Ahmed Khan, told reporters in Islamabad that he expected the turnout to be "massive."

The election is being watched closely by the United States, which relies on the nuclear-armed country for help fighting Islamic militants and negotiating an end to the war in neighboring Afghanistan.

This vote is notable for more than just the historic handoff of power from one civilian government to another.

The rise of former cricket star Imran Khan has reshaped the Pakistani political scene, challenging the stranglehold of the country's two main parties and making the outcome of the vote very hard to call.

The 60-year-old Khan is facing off against the Pakistan Muslim League-N, headed by two-time former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and the Pakistan People's Party, led by President Asif Ali Zardari.

While Sharif has billed himself as the candidate of experience, Khan is trying to tap into the frustrations of millions of Pakistanis who want a change from the politicians who have dominated the nation's politics for years.

"I never voted for anyone in the past, but today my sons asked me to go to the polling station, and I am here to vote," said Mohammed Akbar in the northwestern city of Khar."Imran Khan is promising to bring a good change, and we will support him."

Khan survived a horrific fall off a forklift during a campaign event Tuesday in the eastern city of Lahore that sent him to the hospital with three broken vertebrae and a broken rib. He is not believed to have voted Saturday because he couldn't travel to his polling place.

Nobody is sure how effective he will be in translating his widespread popularity into votes, especially considering he boycotted the 2008 election and only got one seat in 2002.

Turnout will be critical, especially among the youth. Almost half of Pakistan's more than 80 million registered voters are under the age of 35, but young people have often stayed away from the polls in the past.

The election's outcome is likely riding on the tally in the province of Punjab, Pakistan's most populous, where Sharif and Khan have been dueling for the people's support with a series of large rallies and campaign events.

As Sharif cast his ballot at a Lahore polling station, supporters serenaded him with chants of "Lion! Lion!"

"We brought change before. We will bring change again," he said.

On the campaign trail, Sharif played up his extensive political experience compared to Khan's, and touted key projects he completed while in office, including a highway between the capital Islamabad and Lahore.

"It's better to try a lesser evil instead of trying a novice," said one Lahore voter, Haji Mohammad Younus. "The lesser evils at least have the experience of governing. They might be corrupt but they have lately realized that they have to deliver if they want to survive."

The mood remained jubilant despite a series of attacks that marred the vote in some districts.

The deadliest violence struck Karachi, where twin blasts blew up outside an office of the Awami National Party, one of three secular liberal parties that have been targeted by Taliban militants during the campaign, said police officer Shabir Hussain. Ten people died in the attack and 30 were wounded.

A roadside bomb in Karachi also killed one person riding in a bus of ANP supporters, and two Pakistani troops were killed when a bomb exploded near a polling station they were guarding.

In the northwestern city of Peshawar a bomb outside a polling station killed one person while two more died when a bomb went off near a police van.

In the southwestern province of Baluchistan, gunmen killed two people outside a polling station in the town of Sorab and a shootout between supporters of two candidates in the town of Chaman killed 6 people, officials said.

There is concern that the violence could benefit Islamist parties and those who take a softer line toward the militants, including Khan and Sharif, because they were able to campaign more freely.

The outgoing Pakistan People's Party is expected to fare poorly. Voters are fed up with five years of power outages, rising inflation and militant attacks. The party, which rose to power in 2008 in part by widespread sympathy after the death of party leader Benazir Bhutto, has carried out what many called a lackluster campaign.

Their effort has been hampered by threats of Taliban violence and a lack of high-profile figures to rally the party. Benazir Bhutto's son, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, is officially the party chairman and had been expected to play a high-profile role in the election.

But he's appeared at few election events, and was out of the country Saturday.

There were reports that some women in the North Waziristan tribal area were not allowed to vote. Clerics using loudspeakers at local mosques in the cities of Mir Ali and Miran Shah urged women to stay home, and none could be seen at the polls.

Women in Pakistan have had to fight extensive discrimination to assert their electoral rights. They represent only about 43 percent of the roughly 86 million registered voters. In many areas, particularly in the conservative northwest, the men decide ahead of the election that women cannot vote.

Polls were scheduled to close at 5 p.m. local time (1200 GMT and 8 a.m. EST) but the commission extended voting for an extra hour across the country and three hours in parts of Karachi.

The election winner will inherit a country struggling on a number of fronts. Pakistanis suffer from rolling blackouts that can be as long as 18 hours a day as well as rising inflation. The country is also battling Islamic militants who want to overthrow the government, while on the western border there are fears that a U.S. military departure from Afghanistan will send violence spilling over into Pakistan.

Both Khan and Sharif have favored negotiations with militants in the country's tribal areas, and Khan has even said he would pull out troops from the borderlands if elected.

That would likely put him at odds with the country's powerful military. While Pakistan has been under civilian rule for the last five years, the military still is considered the country's most powerful institution and usually makes the major decisions when it comes to militancy or foreign policy issues such as Afghanistan or India.

In what appeared to be a show of support for democracy in Pakistan, the country's most powerful military officer, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani went himself to the voting booth shown live on Pakistani television instead of mailing in his ballot.

___

Raza reported from Karachi. Associated Press writers Riaz Khan in Peshawar, Rasool Dawar in Mir Ali, Anwarullah Khan in Khar, Abdul Sattar in Quetta and Asif Shahzad in Lahore contributed to this report.

Shares of Pain Therapeutics fell 46 percent before the bell. Shares of Durect Corp, which provided the technology used in Remoxy, fell about 38 percent.

In a regulatory filing Pfizer -- which has marketing rights to the drug -- said that the FDA required additional clinical studies to be conducted for Remoxy, to address concerns raised in its June 2011 rejection letter.

Pfizer said its response to the FDA's latest rejection letter in June 2011 would not be submitted to the regulator before mid-2015.

Durect said Pfizer needs to conduct two studies, a study to show Remoxy is bioequivalent to its original formulation and an abuse potential study with the modified version of the drug.

Pfizer said it appeared there was a "regulatory pathway forward" for the drug, which it discussed with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in a meeting on March 28.

However, Pfizer executive Alan Litwack said in a letter to Pain Therapeutics Chief Executive Remi Barbier that "no final decision has been made at this time" on whether to take Remoxy to commercial development.

The abuse-resistant painkiller has been rejected twice by the FDA due to concerns about its chemical make-up and production process.

The company's shares were down slightly before the bells.

Shares of Pain Therapeutics and Durect Corp rose more than 40 percent last week after Pfizer said it was in talks with the FDA to find a way forward for Remoxy.

Durect's technology was used to design Remoxy as a gel capsule so that it couldn't be abused by crushing it for snorting or dissolving it for injecting.

Pain Therapeutics and King Pharmaceuticals Inc first filed a marketing approval application for Remoxy in 2008. The FDA rejected it, and requested additional non-clinical data.

King, which was later acquired by Pfizer, resubmitted the application in December 2010. The FDA rejected the application in June 2011, saying that certain lots of Remoxy showed inconsistent release performance during testing.

(Reporting By Vrinda Manocha in Bangalore; Editing by Joyjeet Das)

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's newly launched anti-euro party will clear a key hurdle this weekend to taking part in September's national election but has yet to rally enough support to win seats in parliament.

"Alternative for Germany" (AfD), which wants the country to quit the euro and reintroduce the deutsche mark, said it would found its 16th and final regional association on Sunday - a requirement to be able to contest national votes.

Around 11,407 people from across the political spectrum have joined the party since it was launched just two months ago by a group of academics, journalists and businessmen.

Yet AfD has failed to generate broader support, languishing in opinion polls at 2 to 3 percent, below the 5 percent threshold needed to enter the Bundestag lower house.

"They have a chance of getting into the Bundestag, they have potential, with around 24 percent of voters saying they could imagine voting for them," said Klaus-Peter Schoeppner of Emnid pollsters, adding that a quarter of those at most would actually vote for AfD as things stand.

"A lot depends on whether they can get away from being a single issue party and whether a charismatic personality emerges."

Single issue parties have rarely gained much traction in Germany, Europe's largest economy and paymaster.

Opinion polls regularly show a majority of Germans still back the euro, but AfD is trying to tap into concerns about the mounting costs of bailouts for heavily indebted countries in the southern euro zone.

AfD spokeswoman Dagmar Metzger said the party, funded by supporters' donations, was becoming more professional and would soon establish a leadership team in Berlin.

THREAT TO MERKEL?

Analysts say even if AfD fails to enter the Bundestag, a strong result could influence German euro zone policy by making Berlin even less willing to back future bailouts.

While it is drawing supporters from across the political spectrum, AfD looks set to siphon most support from Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right "black-yellow" coalition.

Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble last month attacked AfD's core goal for Germany to leave the euro as "economically insane" but warned that support for the anti-euro party could cost his coalition crucial votes.

Oskar Niedermayer, political scientist Berlin Free University, said AfD could steal enough votes from junior coalition partners the Free Democrats (FDP) to prevent them getting above the 5 percent hurdle.

"If black-yellow does really badly, then two percent of the vote for AfD could spell the end for the current government," Niedermayer said. A regional member of parliament for the FDP last week revealed he had switched to AfD.

But the complex nature of German politics means support for AfD could also paradoxically help Merkel's coalition stay in power, said Peter Matuschek at Forsa pollsters.

If such small parties take a large share of the vote without individually reaching the threshold to enter parliament, their votes are then redistributed among the remaining parties. Merkel's coalition could need just 45 percent of the overall vote under such a scenario to win a majority, he said.

(Editing by Gareth Jones and Andrew Heavens)

Fire crews took advantage of improved conditions as the high winds and hot, dry air of recent days were replaced by the normal Pacific air, significantly reducing fire activity.

The 44-square-mile blaze at the western end of the Santa Monica Mountains was 60 percent surrounded.

Full containment was expected Monday, according to Ventura County fire officials.

The progress led authorities to lift all remaining evacuation orders.

"We've really transitioned from a fire attack to a mop-up patrol," Nick Schuler, battalion chief for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, told the Ventura County Star.

One firefighter was injured in the Newbury Park area while battling the blaze and was taken to a hospital, the newspaper said.

The National Weather Service said an approaching low pressure system would bring a 20 percent chance of showers Sunday afternoon, with the likelihood increasing into the night and on Monday.

Nearly 2,000 firefighters using engines, bulldozers and aircraft worked to corral the blaze.

Firefighting efforts were focused on the fire's east side, rugged canyons that are a mix of public and private lands.

The change in the weather was also expected to bring gusty winds to some parts of Southern California, but well away from the fire area.

Despite its size and speed of growth, the fire that broke out Thursday and quickly moved through neighborhoods of Camarillo Springs and Thousand Oaks has caused damage to just 15 homes, though it has threatened thousands.

The fire also swept through Point Mugu State Park, a hiking and camping area that sprawls between those communities and the ocean. Park district Superintendent Craig Sap said two old, unused ranch-style homes in the backcountry burned. Restrooms and campgrounds also were damaged. Sap estimated repairs would cost $225,000.

Grateful residents hung signs thanking firefighters for saving their homes.

The blaze is one of more than 680 wildfires in the state so far this year about 200 more than average.

East of Los Angeles in Riverside County, a new fire that broke out Saturday afternoon burned 650 acres of wilderness south of Banning. It was 75 percent contained Sunday. Banning has been flanked by a nearly 5-square-mile fire to the north which destroyed one home shortly after it broke out Wednesday. That fire was fully contained late Saturday.

In Northern California, a fire that has blackened 11 square miles of wilderness in Tehama County was a threat to a pair of commercial properties near the community of Butte Meadows, according to Cal Fire.

Thunderstorms were expected to bring erratic winds but little rain to the area about 200 miles north of San Francisco.

Nearly 1,300 firefighters were on the lines and the blaze, which started Wednesday, was 40 percent contained.

[More from BGR: ]

Gaming companies have traditionally used E3 to showcase the future of gaming, with Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo typically holding large events. Nintendo recently announced that it has no plans to announce new hardware at the event, however, and it will therefore not hold a major press conference. The companys main focus will instead be to have people experience its software as it attempts to generate buzz for futuretitles.

[More from BGR: ]

Microsofts E3 press event is scheduled to take place on June 10th at 1:00 p.m. EDT.

This article was

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a largely symbolic move, Republican leaders in Congress told President Barack Obama on Thursday that they will not participate in picking members of a controversial healthcare panel intended to restrain cost growth in the Medicare health insurance program for the elderly and disabled.

House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell informed the president in a May 9 letter that they will not recommend appointments to the 15-member Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB, and want the panel repealed instead.

"We believe Congress should repeal IPAB, just as we believe we ought to repeal the entire healthcare law. In its place, we should work in a bipartisan manner to develop the long-term structural changes that are needed to strengthen and protect Medicare," the letter said. There was no immediate response from the White House.

The move reflects a ratcheting-up of Republican opposition to Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which is only months away from bringing sweeping reforms to the $2.8 trillion U.S. healthcare system including healthcare coverage for millions of people who lack it.

House Republicans, who have already voted to repeal or defund the law three-dozen times, intend to vote next week on another symbolic repeal measure that is expected to pass the House but go nowhere in the Democratically controlled Senate.

IPAB was established under the healthcare reform law to recommend Medicare savings should the $590 billion healthcare program for the elderly and disabled exceed set growth targets.

The law allows Boehner, McConnell, and their congressional Democratic counterparts to recommend three IPAB members each. But vehement opposition from Republicans and other reform foes, combined with popular dislike for "Obamacare," has long posed a political barrier to its empanelment.

"These reduced payments will force providers to stop seeing Medicare patients, the same way an increased number of doctors have stopped taking Medicaid patients. This will lead to access problems, waiting lists and denied care for seniors," Boehner and McConnell said in their letter.

The letter, which responded to a March 29 White House request for names, has little real impact.

IPAB's cost-cutting role has already been postponed by historically low Medicare cost growth that is expected to remain well below those targets during the next several years, thus delaying any need for action.

Opponents regularly mischaracterized IPAB as a "death panel" that would make end-of-life decisions for Medicare beneficiaries, a myth believed by 40 percent of the American public, according to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey.

(Reporting by David Morgan and Thomas Ferraro editing by Fred Barbash and Jackie Frank)

"Our uncertainty on future water levels which is considerable is a direct reflection of our uncertainty on future climates," Drew Gronewold, a hydrologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Mich., said in a news briefing today (April 23).

In January, average water levels in Lake Michigan andfell to 576.02 feet (175.57 meters), the lowest levels since 1964. Gronewold says these drops were largely due to warmer and dryer conditions the previous year, which produced less snowpack in the region.

Scientists monitor changes in the so-calledwater budget to make short- and long-term forecasts of water levels. This budget takes into account the water that comes into the Great Lakes basin through precipitation, ice cover and runoff, and the water that leaves through evaporation.

"The interplay between relative increases in precipitation and relative increases in evaporation are what will drive water levels," Gronewold said.

But, these calculations can be tricky because they incorporate so many different variables, including the , he added. Changes in solar energy, for example, which would increase or decrease evaporation, can affect how much rainfall eventually runs off into the lakes, or gets sent back into the atmosphere.

And whereas NOAA closely monitors the interplay between precipitation and evaporation for all the Great Lakes, Gronewold said it is difficult to know how these changes will play out over the next several decades.

In the meantime, the spring season may bring some short-term relief to the area. It is not unusual for springtime runoff, coupled with , to contribute 5 inches (12.7 centimeters) to the lakes, Gronewold explained.

"This is a time of year when water levels typically rise naturally," Gronewold said.

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Some of the world's biggest fortunes were made and lost when the fall of the Soviet Union threw together a motley gang of brash young tycoons, hard-bitten oilmen and KGB veterans to scrabble for riches amidst the rubble of the Soviet oil industry.

"The iron curtain did not go down, Russians like to say, it went up," says Georgetown professor Thane Gustafson in "Wheel of Fortune: The Battle for Oil and Power in Russia", a drama of chance and personality which ultimately determined the fate of Russia's oil.

On that stage Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a Communist youth leader trained as a scientist, created Russia's first modern corporation, then lost his fortune and his freedom to a resurgent Russian state led by Vladimir Putin and his allies.

Gustafson, a Georgetown professor who also heads Russian and Caspian energy research at industry consultancy IHS Cera, spoke with Reuters about the personalities and circumstances which shaped the fate of Russia's modern petrostate.

Q: How could chance play such a big part in the fate of such enormous wealth?

A: It has a lot to do with these things because things were so disrupted and strong personalities emerged. But even during the Putin years, because so much depends on the people in charge of various factions and interest groups, personality remains very fundamental.

Q: What did Putin have to work with when he became president upon Boris Yeltsin's resignation in 1999? How has he managed with the hand he was dealt?

A: He was, politically speaking, almost naked. Usually when a politician reaches that high an office he has been in business for decades, has an assemblage of allies, a favor bank he can draw on, a sense of who his friends and enemies are.

Putin didn't have any of those things. He had to form a team in very short order. He turned to people he had known and worked with, mainly from St Petersburg and largely from two groups of people - the former security people of St. Petersburg and the emerging business elite in St. Petersburg.

At an early stage he laid out a vision of state action for the rebuilding of Russian power and greatness in the world and first of all was the re-centralization of power and authority.

As far as the energy sector is concerned, clearly energy would be at the center of that thinking, simply because of the role that energy has always played as a source of revenue and a source of power.

Q: You knew Khodorkovsky as the CEO of the Yukos oil company (Russia's biggest oil company), before he was jailed for tax fraud. What do you remember most about him?

A: Although he was highly educated, he had a degree in chemical engineering from a leading institute in Moscow, at the same time he was completely untutored in conventional business skills and was completely new to the outside world. A brilliant man, no doubt, but he was reinventing the wheel as he went along, and there were some things he got brilliantly wrong. One thing was that he thought that he would get much more help from the West in his political battles at home than he got, than he could possibly get.

To a considerable extent the ability of Khodorkovsky to take over Yukos was the result of the weakness of the Soviet-era oilman who was previously in charge. So that too was a factor of personality.

Q: What was the role of chance and personality in the transformation of (state oil company) Rosneft into a national champion with BP as a shareholder, from a repository for third rate oil assets which could not find a buyer?

A: In 1998 there was a (financial) crisis, the Asian flu. In the wake of that nobody was buying oil companies, least of all worthless oil companies.

Then along came from Sakhalin this completely unknown man, like the stranger riding out of the West in the Western movies, except this man rode out of the east. "Oil man from Sakhalin takes over worthless oil company," that would have been the headline of the time.

But (former Rosneft CEO) Sergei Bogdanchikov was lucky and artful enough to make his case to Putin and to the Kremlin that they needed a national oil company, and to make himself the instrument of Putin's recentralization of the oil industry.

(Reporting by Melissa Akin)

But experts say that is exactly what a dog owner should do: nothing.

"The human-animal bond is no joke. Most pet owners are very attached to their pets," said Dr. Lynn Miller, a veterinarian who runs the animal clinic at Travis Air Force Base, north of San Francisco. "But you're not going to save your dog by risking your own life. It does your dog no favors in the end if he comes back and you're dead. Then what is he going to do?"

Five people have died in attempted dog rescues in Northern California since November, said Coast Guard Petty Officer 2nd Class Pamela Boehland, based in Alameda, Calif. A couple of months ago, Boehland teamed up with the National Park Service and the East Bay SPCA on a campaign to keep people on dry land if their dogs get caught up in the surf.

The average dog is a better swimmer than the average human. Dogs such as Labrador retrievers, German shepherds and pit bull terriers are built like boats, the vet said. Their heads are above water, they have a low center of gravity, they have four legs for propulsion, their lungs have a higher capacity than a human's, their fur keeps them warm in cold water and many have waterproof undercoats and some dog breeds have webbed feet.

Using their namesake swim stroke, dogs can find their way back to shore using currents and their fight-or flight-instinct, Miller said.

Dogs are single-minded, focusing on finding safety, while humans panic or become distracted, Miller said. Owners who try to make a rescue also may go into shock from the cold water, try to fight the current and get tumbled around, or tire easily, she said.

People also don't think about what will happen if they do follow a dog and manage to reach it alive, Miller said.

"A Coast Guard dude in a boat's got a better chance of snatching him up than you do of swimming out and grabbing him and hauling him back. Fifty pounds of wet dog is absolutely no fun to drag anywhere, much less back to shore," Miller said. "You sure can't put him on your back."

Currents might cause a dog to come out of the water some distance from the spot where it went into the sea, so a microchip and collar with identification can speed up a reunion, said Allison Lindquist, president of the East Bay Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

The recent California deaths occurred during sunnier weather, when seas were churned up by storms from Alaska. But such storms, with their sneaker or rogue waves, are possible any time of the year, especially when seasons change, Lindquist said.

In Southern California, where pleasant weather year-round draws visitors to the shore, many patrolled beaches do not allow dogs. That includes Los Angeles County, home to famous beaches in Malibu and Venice, said Dan Murphy, an ocean lifeguard specialist.

Some breeds, Miller said, shouldn't be on a beach without a life vest. Those include pugs, bulldogs and others that "can barely breathe when they are walking;" dachshunds and corgis with legs too short to swim; and Chihuahuas and other toy dogs, Boehland said.

It is rare that a dog will be swept away by a rip current, but lifeguards' message to pet owners is the same as Boehland's, Murphy said.

"They should let a lifeguard know and if we have personnel available, we will attempt a rescue. Upon reaching the dogs, they are usually more than happy to climb aboard our rescue board or Baywatch rescue boat," he said.

"If you're not a trained rescue person, you might be doing more harm than good," added Petty Officer 3rd Class Ross Ruddell, based in Boston.

Boehland said that sometimes, even trained officers can make that mistake, citing the example of a Coast Guard officer who died four or five years ago while trying to rescue her dog.

"Everyone is susceptible. The Pacific Ocean is cold and can be cruel," she said.