Top Stories from Tonic: Puppy Love, Beach Birth, Blue Lagoon and More!

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Photo courtesy of Pohan via Flickr.
Tonic has your "good news" highlights! Dig in for the best of this week's feel-good treats.

Calling all animal lovers! Here's your chance to read up on sexy species and their naughty-time. David Bois highlights the wild ones in "Birds and Bees Do It. (And Fiddler Crabs. And Fruit Bats.)"

From sea floors to mountain tops (Everest, to be exact), officials from around the world are going to extreme lengths to spotlight climate change. Check out Katherine Gustafson's "The Highs and Lows of Climate Activism."

Go behind the scenes of an amazing charter school in Caroline Walker's "Success from Newark to Rwanda." If only every school were this cool ...

More great stories, including how to pamper your puppy and top Halloween costumes, after the jump.

One thing we'll never skimp on, recession be damned? "Puppy Love." Chaniga Vorasarun has a list of indulgences for pampering your pooch.

What Halloween costumes took the cake? Judy Mottl has the rundown: "MJ, Lady Gaga and Vampires are Halloween Costume Faves."

Beach birth underway?? Relax, it's not what you think. In fact, it's way cooler. Could a new ocean be growing as we speak? Find out in David Bois' "Geologists Determine African Rift to Be Ocean in the Making."

The last laugh or the ultimate surprise? Sounds like both in Kathy Erich Dowd's "So a Guy Walks Into His Own Funeral ... "

Women are going back to the land, and Katherine Gustafson fills us in on ladies of the land in "USDA Gives Female Farmers a Hand."

Take a mental spa day to a real life Blue Lagoon in "Relax in the Warm Waters of Green Power" by David Jenison.

Finally, embrace your inner blood-sucker with a first hand account deep in Transylvania. Globetrekker David Jenison has "Dracula's Hidden Secrets: Behind the Castle Wall."