(The duo have been dispatched to New York City by MPAA head Dan Glickman and Mayor Bloomberg, both thirsty for local pirate blood.) Once we managed to successfully tune out the droning voice of muffin-brained inquisitor Ann Curry, the moment Lucky successfully located the luggage containing the counterfeit quarry instantly thawed our icy, shriveled hearts.

• Fresh Off Malaysian Triumph, DVD-Sniffing Dogs Tackle New York [NY Times]
• [Today]

Two American sniffer dogs who found millions of pirated DVDs while on loan to Malaysian authorities will receive medals of honor when their six-month assignment ends next week, an official said Thursday.

Black Labradors Lucky and Flo will be celebrated at an awards ceremony Monday before they return home to New York, said Nor Hayati Yahaya, the Motion Picture Association's manager for Malaysia.

Lucky and Flo — on loan from the U.S.-based association — have helped uncover pirated DVDs and equipment worth $6 million since they came to Malaysia in March, Nor Hayati said. The cases led to 26 arrests.

While the story provides a fittingly happy ending for the duo, we're reluctant to think about whatever became of those 26 arrested pirates—though we feel compelled to point out that Lucky and Flo's coats have never been shinier since their handlers switched them to their mysterious new gluten-free dog food.

• Malaysian Award for DVD - Sniffing Dogs [NY Times]

Nervous stall owners scurried away or locked themselves behind steel shutters when the two Labradors, trained in Ireland to detect optical discs, led government agents and representatives of the Motion Picture Association-International through the Makati Cinema Square mall.

In the first hour alone, Edu Manzano, chairman of the Philippine government's Optical Media Board, said they seized at least 300,000 pirated discs and arrested 11 people, who face charges of copyright infringement and violation of anti-pornography laws.

"They are the Starsky and Hutch of the Motion Picture Association," said the dogs' trainer, David Mayberry, a Northern Ireland senior investigator of the Federation Against Copyright Theft.

It certainly didn't take long for the canine agents to develop international reputations as highly efficient and merciless anti-piracy machines, with the faint, distant sounds of light panting and a flash of pink tongue striking fear in the hearts of even the most hardened Philippino film pirates. But it would probably surprise many to learn that both of the dogs are bitches, making the comparison to Starsky & Hutch less apt than, say, one to Cagney & Lacey, with Lucky in the single, career-minded Sharon "Cagney" Gless role, and Flo being the Labrador equivalent of Tyne "Lacey" Daly's married, working mom.

• Sniffer Dogs Lucky & Flo Debut in Manila [ABCNews.com]

[T]hey now will be based here "for the foreseeable future," said MPAA senior operations executive Neil Gane. [...]

The black Labradors will mainly participate in more Malaysian raids, but they also could be deployed to other countries for anti-piracy operations from time to time, Gane said. He declined to identify which countries were being considered, citing security reasons.

Anyone who remembers the last, unnerving chapter in the Lucky and Flo Mysteries knows why we can't help but receive this news with a mixture of deep pride for L&F's achievements, but great dread as well, as word on the Malaysian street is that the two black Labs have a bounty on their furry heads. We can only put blind faith in the Malaysians that the appropriate doggieguard detail will be assigned to their not-so-secret weapons, and that a special, dead-of-night mission to Bangkok to intercept the Far East's leading Wild Hogs duplicator won't instead result in a poochie ambush, wiping out our heroes in a hail of automatic gunfire and pulverized dog biscuits.

• D-Sniffing Dogs to Stay in Malaysia [ABCNews.com]

Lucky and Flo, the two Labradors who helped sniff out nearly 1 million illegal discs last week within days of joining Malaysia's anti-piracy effort, have been moved to a safe house, a news report said Thursday.

The New Straits Times reported that a source had tipped off officials about a bounty offered for killing the sniffer dogs, who are on loan for a month from the Motion Picture Association of America. The amount was not disclosed.

''The dogs are a genuine threat to the pirated disc syndicates, thus the instruction to eliminate them,'' Firdaus Zakaria, the enforcement director of the Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs, was quoted as saying.

As calls fly across town from material-hungry TV producers looking to secure the rights to our panting heroes' globetrotting exploits, we'd like to remind everyone that while their still-unfolding story appears to contain the seeds for the next great canine adventure series (with possible CGI-enhanced voicing by multi-talented spouses Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr.!), there are two very real lives at stake here that might at any moment be snuffed out by the silencer-muffled gunfire of Malaysia's stealthiest doggie assassin.

• Bounty Offered to Kill 2 Sniffer Dogs [NYT]

Lucky and Flo roamed several floors of an office complex in southern Johor state and detected the discs behind locked doors, which officials broke open with crowbars, said Fahmi Kassim, the Domestic Trade Ministry's enforcement chief in Johor.

Officials arrested five Malaysians and a Vietnamese man in the operation, in which nearly $2.8 million worth of discs were seized, Fahmi said.

"We suspected there were pirated discs in the building, and sure enough, the operation proved to be very successful," Fahmi said by phone. "The dogs were a big help."

The smooth-coated detectives usher in a new golden era in Malaysia's ongoing battle against entertainment piracy, liberating them from such outdated and unreliable techniques as knocking on random doors and asking, "Are you a DVD bootlegger? No? OK, sorry to bother you," or ordering military police to rough up Kuala Lumpur street urchins until they finally broke down and admitted who provided them with hastily subtitled copies of the popular new American action movie, The Evil Motorcycle Adventures Of Elvis Flaming Skull.

• Dogs sniff out bootleg DVDs, CDs [MSNBC]