ohmidog!

Linda Johnson, formerly of Calvert County, Maryland was shackled, handcuffed, arrested and faces trial this month all because her dog peed on the neighbor’s grass.

The neighbors are a Maryland State Police sergeant and his wife.

The story of how Johnson’s two miniature poodles, Ollie and Hershey, landed her in a world of trouble is in today’s Washington Post, which called it “a classic tale of suburban strife, pitting dog walker against homeowner, neighbor against neighbor…”

Johnson, 47 goes to trial this month on trespassing charges filed in May. A single trespassing charge carries a maximum penalty of 90 days in jail and a $500 fine.

The neighbors, James and Jennifer Barth, accuse Johnson of repeatedly walking Ollie and Hershey into their yard and allowing them to pee and poop despite their requests that she walk the dogs on the other side of the street.

The tension between the families escalated several months ago, when Johnson called animal control to report that the Barth’s German Shepherd attacked her poodles and son.

“From this point forward, she began to constantly walk the dogs in our yard,” Jennifer Barth wrote in an application for a protective order against Johnson.

“This is just something she does,” Johnson, who has since moved to New Hampshire, told the Post.  “It became an issue for my dogs even touching a blade of grass on the same street we live on,” Johnson said.

The article says the dispute has polarized neighbors in the St. Leonard subdivision known as Old Glory.

The situation was best summed up by Stephen Dickstein, director of the Animal Services Division of the Montgomery County Police Department, who noted such disputes over pets often have to do more ”more with some ongoing dispute with neighbors than it does . . . with the animal in the middle of it.”

The way the city of Houston treats its domestic animals is a “national embarassment” — and that’s according to the city’s own newspaper, the Houston Chronicle.

As the city’s director of animal control departs, the newspaper, in an editorial, urged that the city “seize the moment” and hire a replacement to tackle the problems associated with the “tens of thousands of abandoned or mistreated animals that Houston produces in wildly increasing numbers.”

Not that the departing director, Kent Anderson, didn’t give it a shot.

Anderson tried to transform Houston’s Bureau of Animal Regulation and Care (BARC) into a no-kill shelter, only to be ”frustrated by the low budget and relentlessly irresponsible behavior that have made Houstonians’ treatment of domestic animals a national embarrassment,” the editorial stated.

About 80 percent of the shelter’s animals were euthanized when he started the job in 2006; about 80 percent still are, the newspaper said. In other ways, the shelter has improved from the mess it reportedly was when Anderson inherited it.

“…The shelter was filthy and inhumane; volunteers routinely had to step over sacks of just-killed animals to feed and water those still alive,” the newspaper editorial said. “When animal control trucks rolled up to the facility, some of the animals would already be dead from being left unattended in the heat.”

Anderson, citing personal reasons, is leaving the job to return to Dallas.

    This week is National Assistance Dog Week, a time to honor the more than 20,000 dogs that assist people with disabilities.
    Their work ranges from guide dogs to hearing dogs, from assisting those with mobility problems to alerting for sudden onset diseases like seizures or diabetes.
   With a service dog helper, people who were unable to leave their home can travel, go shopping, attend classes, or pursue employment. At home, service dogs perform tasks that range from opening doors, picking up dropped objects, helping a person with mobility issues, retrieving keys or even taking clothes out of the dryer.

   Three-time service dog recipient Marcie Davis of New Mexico — the person behind creating Assistance Dog Week — states that, with her dog, “All of a sudden the impossible seems possible. Virtually every area in your personal and professional life can be expanded and explored … Whatever you dreamed of accomplishing can be realized with the assistance of a service dog.”

  That’s Marcie in the photo above, with her service dog Morgan, who routinely helps her get items off the kitchen counter at home in New Mexico. With her dog, Davis says, she was able to pursue her career as president of Davis Innovations, a consulting firm specializing in health and human services.

  Davis is also co-author of “Working Like Dogs: The Service Dog Guidebook,” written with Melissa Bunnell.

  Here’s the full press release on Assistance Dog Week.

(Photo courtesy of PN Magazine)