Koozie, an 8-year-old mix-breed pooch was rescued — and then re-rescued — from icy Lake Erie in New York. Monday.
After wandering away from her owner’s home outside Buffalo, she was spotted Monday night about 30 miles away, trapped on the ice off Westfield.
An Erie County Sheriff’s Department helicopter was summoned, but the rescue effort was put off until yesterday, when a crew member was lowered in a basket and plucked Koozie from the ice.
After being brought to shore, the dog immediately trotted back out onto the ice and had to be rescued a second time by the helicopter crew, according to the Associated Press.
She was checked out by a veterinarian and returned to her owner.
Delegate Cheryl Glenn will introduce an amendment to the state’s proposed dangerous dog law this week that would prohibit municipalities from banning or regulating dogs based on their breed.
Pushed by the Maryland Dog Federation, the proposed amendment to House Bill 1314, aimed at strengthening the state’s dangerous dog law, reads:
“Nothing contained in this article shall be construed to prevent a municipality from adopting or enforcing its own more stringent program for the control of dangerous dogs provided, however, that no such program shall ban, regulate or address dogs in a manner which is specific as to breed.”
The federation says the amendment will prohibit laws thats discriminate against particular breeds of dogs. Similar measures have been passed in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia and eight other states.
If approved the proposed amendment would void the current breed ban in Prince George’s County, where about 900 pit bulls and pit bull mixes are euthanized a year, according to the federation.
“The seizing of innocent family pets simply because of their appearance is unconscionable. Responsible dog guardians should be allowed to own whatever breed they want. Reckless owners should be prohibited from owning any dog,” the federation said.
The federation is encouraging those who support the amendment to write Delegate Cheryl Glenn (cheryl.glenn@house.state.md.us); and to attend the March 18 hearing of the Judiciary Committee (at 1 p.m. in Room 100 of the House Office Building in Annapolis).
Some new details have emerged, and some old ones have proven incorrect, in the case of the dog that tried to eat the police car in Chattanooga.
First off, the dog is a pit bull-boxer mix, not a bulldog, as he was described in most initial reports.
The three-year-old, 80-pound dog, named Winston, managed to break through a locked fence Sunday at Mann’s Welding, approached a parked police car in which an officer was on the lookout for speeders, and chewed off its front bumper. He also bit through two tires and left teeth marks in the side panel of the vehicle.
The officer got out of the car when he noticed it was shaking, and tried to subdue the dog, first with pepper spray, then with a stun gun. When a second officer arrived Winston chewed the tires of the other patrol car. Eventually the dog was captured by animal control officers, with the help of one of his owners, WDEF reported
“Obviously at some point yesterday he was not a nice dog,” said his owner, Michael Emerling, “but previous to that he was very sweet.” Emerling said Winston has never hurt anyone, though he does occasionally show aggression toward lawn equipment.
The dog is being held at the McKamey Animal Center, where Karen Walsh, executive director, noted: “Some dogs are very aggressive. Especially when they feel they are being protective. So I think the officer to the dog’s perception was in his territory and so the dog just attacked the car.”
Still, after this incident Emerling, his owner, says he can’t risk what could happen if Winston attacks again. He’s considering having him put down. “We can’t take the chance that the next time something sets him off it won’t be a car … we just can’t take that risk.”
Maybe it was a coincidence, or maybe it was one smart dog. In any event an injured dog in New Mexico walked through the automatic doors and into the emergency room at San Juan Regional Medical Center over the weekend.
Staff and patients were stunned to see the unaccompanied German shepherd mix, about 7 to 8 years old, walk through the doors with blood on his nose and paw, and a small puncture wound on a rear leg.
Animal control officer Robin Loev responded to the hospital, where he found people gathered around the dog, giving him water, according to the Daily Times in Farmington.
Loev couldn’t find the source of the blood and it didn’t appear the dog was hit by a car. The puncture wound, probably from being bitten by another dog, didn’t require treatment.
Loev took the dog to the Farmington Animal Shelter, where it was vaccinated and given water and a warm blanket.
“Some of these situations that come up make you wonder just how intelligent these animals are,” Loev said.
Alaskan musher Lance Mackey has won the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race and set an Iditarod record for most consecutive wins.
Mackey, 39, of Fairbanks, completed the 1,049-mile Iditarod race in just under nine days. He was cheered across the finish line in Nome by family and friends, including his father, Dick Mackey, the 1978 Iditarod champion, CNN reported.
“You’ve done something that will never be repeated, son,” the senior Mackey said, hugging his son at the finish line.
Mackey could be heard on the broadcast microphones speaking to his dog team just before reaching the finish line on Nome’s Front Street, “Nice, nice. This is so cool. We’re almost there, guys. You did such a good job.”
Arriving in Nome at 2:59 p.m. local time, Mackey’s official time was 8 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes and 9 seconds.
Mackey, a throat cancer survivor who says he began racing “at birth,” was inducted into the Alaska Sports Hall of Fame in February “for capturing multiple titles in two of the world’s longest sled dog races.”
More than 54 teams remained on the Iditarod trail headed toward Nome, including rookie Jamaican musher Newton Marshall, who was in 48th place. Marshall trained with Mackey this season in preparation for his first Iditarod run.
Fourteen of the original 71 teams that entered this year’s race have scratched en route.
Here’s an odd little story — and one that raises more questions than it answers –out of Chattanooga, where a dog apparently decided to eat a police car.
Police officer Clayton Holmes was sitting in his parked patrol car Sunday night — either to work on reports or to catch speeders on radar (the story seems to say both), when he suddenly felt his vehicle shaking.
He got out to investigate and found a bulldog had chewed two tires and the entire front bumper off the car.
(While cynics will wonder how the dog was able to consume so much of the police car so quickly, and speculate the officer was napping, we would never suggest such a thing.)
When another police car arrived, the dog attacked it, as well as two cars belonging to citizens who were driving by, police say.
Officers used pepper spray and a tazer on the dog, but neither seemed to faze it. Eventually McKamey Animal Center personnel responded to the scene and managed to capture the bulldog (how they did so isn’t described).
They also took into custody two other dogs that they say had managed to get through a fence of a nearby welding shop.
The owner of the dogs, Nancy Emerling, was issued a citation.
Nearly 35 years after it banned dogs from downtown, Santa Cruz is considering allowing them to return.
The coastal California city, plagued by strays that were being picked up at a clip of 200 a month in the 1970s, banned dogs in its central business district in 1976, at the urging of merchants.
More than three decades, merchants are again urging change — but this time it’s to allow dogs back into the business district, according to the San Jose Mercury News.
Today, the Downtown Association, which represents business owners, will discuss recommending the council overturn the ordinance while strengthening leash laws and other safeguards.
An association poll shows a majority of merchants believe they are missing out on business from tourists and locals who would bring their dogs downtown for a stroll or dining at outside tables, much as they do in well-known dog-friendly towns like Carmel and Los Gatos.
In Santa Cruz, dogs are also banned from some local beaches and the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf.
“Forty years later, the council has the right to reconsider something,” said Mayor Mike Rotkin, who has served a total of 26 years on the council since 1979. “It’s a very different council and times are different.”
Former Councilwoman Carole De Palma, who voted for the 1976 ban, said the city should reconsider reversing the law because dog owners tend to be more responsible these days. De Palma, who owns a 7-year-old dachshund-Chihuahua mix named Pearl, said increasing safeguards could reduce problems that led to the ban.
The Humane Society of the United States has announced the Valor Dog of the Year” – Kenai, a Bernese mountain dog mix from Erie, Colo.,who awakened her owner to alert him to a carbon monoxide leak in the vacation home where he, six other adults, two children, and three dogs were sleeping.
The awards celebrate the human-animal bond by honoring dogs who have exhibited an extraordinary sense of courage or resolve by heroically helping a person in need.
“Dogs are our friends, but they can also be our saviors,” said HSUS president and CEO Wayne Pacelle, “and the list of 100 nominees provides plenty of support for that proposition.”
The Valor Dog of the Year was chosen by a panel of celebrities including: film and television actor Kristin Bell, from the TV show “Heroes;” Sally Pressman, whose character on Lifetime’s “Army Wives” adopted a stray dog who saved a soldier’s life in Iraq; and Jay Kopelman, a retired Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel who brought a puppy back from Iraq and wrote “From Bagdad With Love” recalling the experience.
First runner up and winner of the “People’s Hero” award, chosen by online voting, went to Calamity Jane, a golden retriever mix from Aledo, Texas who scared away intruders by barking and growling outside a home where a family and their guests had been held at gunpoint for nearly an hour.
Benson, a golden retriever from Binghamton, N.Y. was named Second Runner Up for barking and alerting his owners to a fire across the street, giving them time to run to their neighbor’s and awaken the family before the house was consumed by flames.
The winners will receive prizes from Bella Tocca Tags, Custom Glass Etching, and The HSUS’ online store, Humane Domain.
Out of 22,000 dogs from 187 breeds, a Hungarian Vizsla named Yogi was chosen as Best in Show at Crufts.
The seven-year-old beat off competition from six other dogs in the finale of the four-day show.
Yogi is the first Hungarian Vizsla to win Best in Show, the BBC reported.
Handler John Thirlwell said his “wonderful dog” from Carlisle, Cumbria, will likely retire after the win.
Earlier in the show, during judging of the Gundog category, which Yogi won, a streaker interrupted the proceedings.
The dog show was broadcast on More4 this year after the BBC – which had shown Crufts since 1966 – announced it was dropping its coverage in 2008.
That decision followed a BBC documentary which claimed Crufts allowed damaging breeding practices that caused disease and deformities. Welfare concerns also prompted the RSPCA to withdraw its support in 2008.
Residents who have snuck dogs into a no-dogs-allowed Brooklyn housing co-op are being told to get rid of their dogs, or face monthly $100 fines and the loss of their parking spaces.
The co-op board notified residents of Trump Village of the new enforcement policy in a notice last month.
“I think it’s totally ridiculous,” Marylyn Langsdorf, 66, who lives with her 6-pound Yorkshire terrier, Chelsea, told the New York Daily News. “I think the whole point is to just get money from us.”
Langsdorf and other residents with dogs have already been fined, but they’ve yet to have their parking spaces revoked.
About 1,700 residents live in the three-building complex, and a dozen already have contacted a Manhattan attorney who specializes in pet-related tenant rights.
“It’s a way to extract money from these folks and scare the hell out of them to give up dogs they’ve had for years,” said attorney Maddy Tarnofsky.
Warren Hirsch, a spokesman for the Trump Village co-op board, said “a small number of residents have surreptitiously smuggled in dogs in defiance of the rules and regulations binding them. They have thumbed their noses at their fellow cooperators and dared the co-op to do something about it.”
(Photo: Langsdorf, left, with Chelsea, and another dog-owning resident; New York Daily News)
Some new details have emerged, and some old ones have proven incorrect, in the case of the dog that tried to eat the police car in Chattanooga.
Maybe it was a coincidence, or maybe it was one smart dog. In any event an injured dog in New Mexico walked through the automatic doors and into the emergency room at San Juan Regional Medical Center over the weekend.
Alaskan musher Lance Mackey has won the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race and set an Iditarod record for most consecutive wins.
Nearly 35 years after it banned dogs from downtown, Santa Cruz is considering allowing them to return.
The Humane Society of the United States has announced the Valor Dog of the Year” – Kenai, a Bernese mountain dog mix from Erie, Colo.,who awakened her owner to alert him to a carbon monoxide leak in the vacation home where he, six other adults, two children, and three dogs were sleeping.
Out of 22,000 dogs from 187 breeds, a Hungarian Vizsla named Yogi was chosen as Best in Show at Crufts.
Residents who have snuck dogs into a no-dogs-allowed Brooklyn housing co-op are being told to get rid of their dogs, or face monthly $100 fines and the loss of their parking spaces.