ohmidog!

Criminal charges were dismissed Monday against a Seattle area woman who registered her dog to vote, according to the Seattle Times.

Jane Balogh, 67, a grandmother and Army veteran had registered her Australian shepherd-terrier mix as a voter to protest lax standards for voters to prove their identity and citizenship. She used a utility bill in the dog’s name — Duncan M. MacDonald — as identification.

A King County District Court judge dropped a misdemeanor charge of making a false or misleading statement to a public servant, based on Balogh’s completion of the terms of a plea agreement reached in September 2007.

She paid $240 in court costs and completed 10 hours of community service at the Tacoma Rescue Mission.

According to the Times, Balogh made no attempt to hide the deception, telling a number of elected officials what she had done and putting a pawprint instead of a signature on an absentee-ballot envelope.

She didn’t try to vote using the dog’s registration.

Best Friends Animal Society was among the animal welfare organizations lending a hand in shutting down the West Virginia puppy mill from which 1,000 dogs were removed over the weekend.

According to an article on its web site, the Utah-based organization had been working with the Parkersburg Humane Society since May, when the agency called for assistance in the case.

Best Friends says it also advised the Wood County prosecutor’s office in the case, and recently requested assistance from the Humane Society of the United States and other agencies to help with coordination of the operations at the local emergency shelter.

The fight against puppy mills, mass breeding operations that supply pet stores and fuel internet sales throughout the United States, is a priority initiative for Best Friends, which in the past two years led several other puppy mill busts, according to the article.

Puppy mills produce an estimated four million dogs in the U.S. each year for the pet sales market; meanwhile, an estimated six million homeless dogs and cats are killed in the U.S. each year, Best Friends points out.

The Best Friends web site also has an ongoing blog about the effort, written by one of members of the rescue team.

(Photo: Puppy at Whispering Oaks Kennels, courtesy of Best Friends)

Here’s some raw video from the Humane Society of the United States of officials shutting down the Whispering Oaks Kennel near Parkersburg, West Virginia, where about 1,000 dogs were seized over the weekend.

The dogs were surrendered by the kennel owner after county officials executed a search warrant. Sharon Roberts, who owned the Internet-based business agreed to give up the dogs and refrain from operating a breeding business in exchange for not facing charges.

Her husband, Edwin R. Roberts, however, was arrested by the Wood County Sheriff’s Department Sunday on charges of assault of a police officer and obstructing a police officer, according to The Intelligencer.

It took two days to move all the dogs into a Parkersburg warehouse for temporary housing.

Some of the volunteers helping to move and care for the dogs were from Parkersburg. Others were from the Humane Society of the United States, Best Friends Animal Society, the Humane Society of Missouri, the Tampa Bay Disaster Animal Response Team and United Animal Nations.

The dogs were kept in wire mesh enclosures, most about 3 feet by 3 feet, authorities said.

Carrie Roe, the Humane Society of Parkersburg’s board president. said dogs who have lived their lives on wire mesh often have difficulty learning to deal with other surfaces.

“These dogs have had very little human attention, they fight for it. Dogs from puppy mills typically don’t do well with other dogs. These dogs have never been on a leash,” she said.

To donate or volunteer to help with the 1,000-dog rescue, call the Humane Society of Parkersburg at 304-422-5541.

Around 1,000 dogs were removed from a kennel near Parkersburg, West Virginia after authorities said they were kept in cages for breeding and were never let out and rarely, if ever, touched by a human being.

“Imagine you live your entire life inside your house — one room inside your house — and you never leave it,” Maryann Hollis, director of the Humane Society of Parkersburg, told the Parkersburg News and Sentinel for Monday’s edition. “Once a week, somebody dropped groceries at your door. That’s what life was like for these dogs — just one room, wire mesh, and you pooped where you slept.”

The animals were surrendered by Whispering Oaks Kennel Saturday after Wood County sheriff’s deputies investigating possible dog-related pollution executed a search warrant at the Internet-based dog-breeding business, according to an Associated Press article.

The humane society calls it the largest animal rescue in the state’s history.

Wood County Prosecutor Ginny Conley said the owner, Sharon Roberts, hasn’t been cited for animal neglect but has agreed to never operate a dog-breeding business again.

Roberts told The Associated Press she was the victim of a “witch hunt” by animal rights activists. She told the Charleston Daily Mail that the dogs were well cared for by herself and her five employees. Each dog was wormed and vaccinated and regularly visited by a veterinarian, she said.

Roberts, even if she had been charged with a crime, which she wasn’t, would still be innocent until proven guilty. That said, and completely unrelated to this case, of course, there is one sure-fire way to avoid being the victim of a witch hunt: Don’t be a witch.

Here’s a video that’s making the e-mail rounds.

Unfortunately, this version has some silly annotations. 

Still, there’s some great footage — and some solid arguments on why your dog should be on a leash, or maybe why he shouldn’t be.

It was wet, wild and wonderful, and we weren’t even in West Virginia.

Right here in Baltimore yesterday, Riverside Park celebrated the last day of summer by opening its kiddie pool up to the dogs that frequent the park.

It was 45 minutes of soggy chaos — with more than 30 dogs running, splashing, playing and barking as their smiling owners looked on. It was also a very elegant gesture by the swimming pool staff at a park where tensions often flare between people who go the park to let their dogs run and people who go there to swim.

At 5:30 Sunday — the last day the of the season for the city pool — Nikkie Cobbs opened the doors to the dogs and the line of people who had heard about the spontaneous dog swim. We filed in, unleashed our hounds and got out of the way.

All the dogs got along fine, and none of the non-dog people at the pool, who were warned of what was about to transpire, appeared bothered.

All in all, it went … well, swimmingly.

Twenty top model dogs showed off the latest in canine clothing at the third annual New York Pet Fashion Show at the Metropolitan Pavilion in Manhattan over the weekend as part of Pet Fashion Week.

“They know when it’s time to work,” said Brooklyn native Lezlie Dono of her two model pugs, Mike and Louis. “It’s their first runway show, but they know what they’re doing. They’ve done Vogue and Ralph Lauren.”

Two-legged models wearing complimentary clothing escorted the pups down the runway, the New York Daily News reported.

Louis modeled a baby blue sweater designed by OoMaLoo. Other dogs modeled clothing by Wiggles and some donned accessories by Dog Artist.

One of the models was a pit bull named Wednesday, rescued from a shelter.

“This is her third year here, so she’s a veteran runway model,” owner Camilla Vitale said. “She loves it.”

“It’s so fun and such a joy to work with the dogs,” said Onique Scott, 22, a Brooklyn-born model, holding Pomeranian dog model Sugar. “We get to spend time with the dogs and become good friends.”

Jennifer Carle was signing copies of her new book “Seeing Eye Human” at the Barnes & Noble in Whitemarsh Saturday — a noble act when you consider that Carle’s not making a penny: All proceeds from the sale of the book are going to the Maryland SPCA.
That’s where Carle adopted her black lab mix, Winn (short for Winsome), in 1994.
Winn quickly proved herself to be a handful, chowing down on Carle’s couch, instilling fear in other other dogs, biting a neighbor and causing a ruckus during obedience class.

But, as the years passed, a funny thing happened, the overprotective dog, as she aged, got arthritic, and blind and deaf, and she and her family reversed roles: The overprotective dog came to need protection and, in providing it, Carle learned a little about dogs, humans and life.

Winn died a year ago this Friday.

Published by Tate Publishing, “Seeing Eye Human” was released this summer.  Carle — a longtime supporter of the Maryland SPCA – worked as a psychologist before raising two children and going to work in her husband’s medical practice in Towson, where the family also lives.

She will also be appearing at Dogfest 2008, the Humane Society of Baltimore County’s big fundraising event at Shawan Downs on Oct. 4.

In another fundraising project for the SPCA, Carle is designing an ice cream flavor — the contents yet to be determined — which will be called Paw Prints. Twenty percent of its sales, at Lee’s Ice Cream in Towson, will go the Maryland SPCA.

“Seeing Eye Human,” which sells for $10.99, is available at area Barnes & Nobles, as well as The Book Escape, Lucky Lucy’s Canine Cafe, Dogma and other local stores.

An infant abandoned by his 14-year-old mother in Argentina was found by a dog, who dragged the newborn across a rural field, adding him to her litter of six newborn pups.

A resident of a rural area outside La Plata called police late Wednesday night to say that he had heard the baby crying in a field behind his house.  He told police he went outside and found the infant lying beside the dog and its six newborn puppies, according to a CNN report.

The dog had apparently carried the baby some 50 meters from where his mother had abandoned him to where the puppies were huddled, police said.

“She took it like a puppy and preserved it,” said Daniel Salcedo, chief of police of the Province of Buenos Aires. “The doctors told us if she hadn’t done this, he would have died.” 

Dr. Egidio Melia, director of the Melchor Romero Hospital in La Plata, told CNN that police showed up at the hospital at 11:30 p.m. Wednesday with the baby who doctors say was only a few hours old.  He had superficial scratches and bruises and was bleeding from his mouth, but was in good condition, Melia said.

The next morning, the child’s mother was driven by a neighbor to the hospital and told authorities the 8 pound, 13 ounce infant is hers, Melia said. The teenager was given psychological treatment and hospitalized.

After years of dragging its paws, the city of Baltimore has apparently caught on to the benefits of dog parks: It hopes to build four within the next two years.

That’s stunning news (not to mention our first “exclusive”). Up to now, the only dog park in the city has been the Canton Dog Park, and it was built strictly with donations. Up to now, the city has required any group interested in starting a dog park not just to pay for the whole thing itself, but to jump through a series of hoops so complex that most efforts to get city approval for a dog park have fizzled out over time.

Last night, though, city officials told leaders of the Locust Point Dog Park group, which has been working and raising money for 18 months to establish a fenced-in dog area in Latrobe Park, that the project had  finally been approved — and that the city was going to build it.

Mayor Sheila Dixon would reportedly like to see 4 dog parks built in the next two years, and city officials have been meeting with dog park designers, including the ones who put together the Chelsea Waterside dog park in New York.  

Mayor Dixon is expected to hold a press conference to announce the new dog park next month.

Currently the only official dog park in Baltimore — the only public place where a dog can legally be off his or her leash — is Canton Dog Park.

The news represents a huge turnaround in the city’s thinking, and it’s also a reflection of the hard work put in by the Locust Point Dog Park organization, other dog park groups, such as Patterson Park’s, and backers who have pushed for the project to be become a reality, including City Councilman Ed Reisinger. The dog park had also gotten support from the Abell Foundation and developer Mark Sapperstein.

Barbara Wilson, head of the Locust Point Dog Park group, said construction will likely begin in the spring. She said the group still plans to hold its montly meeting Monday (6:30 p.m. at the Locust Point Recreation Center), and will continue its fundraising efforts.

While the city will pay for building the park, the organization will be responsible for its maintenance.