ohmidog!

Dogfighting is experiencing a resurgence in Afghanistan, the New York Times reports.

Banned under the Taliban, who considered it un-Islamic, the “sport” has regained its earlier popularity since the Taliban’s ouster in 2001. Dogfighters line up weekly for informal tournaments on dusty lots in the country’s major cities.

In Kabul, there are two tournaments every week, both on Friday, the larger of which takes place in the morning at the bottom of a slope on the city’s outskirts and draws thousands.

Times reporter Kirk Semple describes a scene in which dozens of mastiff-like dogs, some of which required two men to restrain them, awaited their matches.

Some fights had been organized days in advance, with hundreds of dollars, sometimes thousands, riding on each, he reported.

“The event was presided over by a ringmaster, a toothless old man with a turban and a limp. He carried a wooden staff that he used to beat spectators who crowded the pitch and members of the dogfighters’ entourages who blocked the spectators’ view.”

The country’s elite frown upon the dogfighters, seeing them as uncultured and the criminal.

“In my personal view, it’s not a good thing,” said Ghulam Nabi Farahi, deputy minister of information and culture. “In today’s world, these animals should be treated well. But unfortunately, there’s a lot of fighting.”

Prince Edward was caught on video raising has stick at his dogs during a pheasant shoot, and now he’s taking some heat from animal welfare groups.

The video shows him walking up to two black Labradors with his shotgun tucked under his arm and his four-foot long stick raised in the air. He then brought down the stick – a shepherd’s crook – in the direction of one of the dogs, but it is not known if he made contact.

He is then seen chasing one of the dogs and taking another swing in its direction.

The Labradors were trying to grab hold of the same dead bird on the Sandringham estate in Norfolk, the Telegraph reports.

Buckingham Palace said that Prince Edward, 44, the Earl of Wessex, had stepped in when two gun dogs were fighting over a pheasant in an attempt to separate them.  “I don’t know if he physically struck them,” a spokeswoman said. “But both dogs are fine – no harm was done to them.”

Andrew Tyler, the director of Animal Aid, said: “We can’t be certain that Edward’s stick did make contact with the dog although he certainly appears to have acted impulsively without restraint. But we can’t expect etiquette and high manners in the context of a sport that is about killing animals for pleasure.”

KSL-TV in Salt Lake City says it has heard from a woman who thinks the dog caught by surveillance cameras shoplifting a rawhide bone in a Utah supermarket is hers — a Siberian Husky named Balto who she lost four months ago at a motel in Oregon.

The otherwise unidentified Siberian Husky entered Smith’s Food and Drug store in Murray, Utah, made his way to the pet food aisle and snatched a rawhide bone from a shelf. He was last seen leaving the store with the bone clutched firmly in his teeth, ignoring the store manager’s order to “drop it.”

The story generated big national interest, with regular showings on CNN and one of the busiest days ever at KSL.com.

The TV station says they were contacted by Chanda McKeever of Washington state, who believes her dog Balto wandered all the way from an Oregon motel to Utah’s Salt Lake Valley. So far, there has been no confirmation that she’s the owner and the dog remains at large.

The original “Balto,”  was the sled dog who led his team on the final leg of the 1925 run to Nome, Alaska to deliver diptheria antitoxin  — a trip commemorated by the annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. There’s a statue in his honor in New York’s Central Park. (His name has nothing to do with Baltimore; he was named after Norwegian explorer Samuel Balto.) After his death, he was “stuffed” and donated to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

If McKeever’s Balto is the dog that shoplifted in Utah, he has covered an equally impressive amount of ground, though he may not become quite as famous as the original. He hasn’t save humanity; he just stole a bone. But there’s a certain admiration for him — and his successful you-do-what-you-gotta-do heist — and it seems to be growing, judging from Internet comments.

We’ll keep you posted.

Darn, this would have made a good Christmas present.

Dozens of volunteers dropped their holiday plans to rescue about 80 puppy mill dogs in Missouri who probably otherwise wouldn’t have made it to the new year.

Now, the National Mill Dog Rescue Network is trying to find homes for all the dogs.

The network was contacted shortly before Christmas by a breeder in Missouri — a state known for its abundance of puppy mills — who wanted to surrender his animals, according to a report by TV station KKTV in Colorado Springs.

“When we asked if they could hold the dogs until after Christmas they let us know they would kill them,” said Helen Freeman, a member of the National Mill Dog Rescue Network.

So a group of volunteers dropped their holiday plans and left for Missouri.

When they got to Missouri Tuesday, another puppy mill owner contacted them, wanting to surrender his animals too. In the end, they returned with more than 80 dogs.

Since then, the dogs have been cleaned up, given medical attention and are enjoying their newfound freedom, Freeman said.

“It’s pretty exciting to watch the transformation from caged dog to, ‘hey, I get to play, I get to be free.’

The National Mill Dog Rescue Network says its more than 200 volunteers have saved more than 1,300 dogs over the last year and a half.

(Photo from National Mill Dog Rescue Network)

A dog in Murray, Utah walked into a supermarket on Christmas day, snagged a rawhide bone from the dog food aisle and calmly walked out — bone in mouth — despite the store’s manager order to “Drop it.”

The suspect, caught on a surveillance camera, appears to be a Siberian Husky.

The surveillance tape shows the dog arriving, sniffing a young girl near the cash registers, then wandering to Aisle 16, where the pet food is kept.

Store manager Roger Adamson confronted the dog as he headed for the exit with a $2.79 rawhide bone that he had not paid for.

“I said, ‘drop it!’” Adamson recalled. The dog didn’t obey. “I decided I wanted to keep all my fingers, so I didn’t try to take it from him.”

The dog is apparently still at large.

Before Ashlee Simpson had her baby, Bronx Mowgli, she and husband Pete Wentz turned to Dog Whisperer Cesar Millan — not for child-rearing (or naming) advice but for help with their two bulldogs.

The pop star and her rocker husband were concerned about how their sometimes obsessive, sometimes aggresive bulldog, Hemingway, might react to a baby in the house. When they got him a second bulldog, Rigby, as a companion — in hopes of calming him down — it only made Hemingway’s aggression escalate.

So, in the months before Bronx Mowgli was born, Simpson and Wentz brought their worries, and their bulldogs, to Millan — well, actually he went to them. The experience is recounted on tomorrow night’s episode of “The Dog Whisperer” on the National Geographic Channel.

Millan works with the couple to help Hemingway overcome his aggression toward other dogs, his habit of attacking his own shadow, or any other shadow, and his tendency to assault the couple’s silver exercise ball. By episode’s end, those matters seemed well on their way to being resolved.

We can only assume the dogs are getting along fine with Bronx Mowgli (born Nov. 20) and not teasing him too much about his name — the first half of which comes from the borough, the second half of which comes from the Rudyard Kipling character, who, by the way, was raised by a pack of wolves.

Michele Willliams is said to give a stunning performance in this movie of a girl and her dog — one that’s otherwise getting mixed reviews.

Depressing and, to those seeking escape, maybe a little too accurate a reflection of our times, “Wendy and Lucy” is about a woman whose life is derailed en route to a summer job. Her car breaks down, her dog is taken to the pound, and her financial situation turns dire.

Made for less than $500,000, and filmed in 18 days in August 2007 in and around Portland, Oregon, “Wendy and Lucy” premiered in May at the Cannes film festival where Lucy, director Kelly Reichardt’s own pet, won the unofficial “Palm Dog prize” for her role.

Reichardt wrote the screenplay with Jon Raymond, who she also worked with on her 2006 film “Old Joy.”

Reichardt, in a Reuters interview, said she wanted to make a film about people who fall through the cracks, and delve into a couple of myths.

For one, the idea you can ”go West and improve your situation.”

For another, the idea that, whatever your situation, you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps — “that if you have spunk and ideas and initiative, that’s all you need to improve your lot in life, and if you aren’t able to pull yourself out of poverty it’s clearly because you are lazy.”

Perhaps its says something about my maturity level, but, when it comes to the three new dog movies on the horizon, I’m most excited about “Hotel for Dogs” — a family-friendly flick about two orphans who set up a refuge for dogs in an abandoned hotel.

The DreamWorks/Nickelodeon release opens Jan. 16.

Adapted from author Lois Duncan’s 1971 children’s book of the same name, the movie stars Don Cheadle, Emma Roberts and Lisa Kudrow.

There’s just something about those movies where kids conspire to beat the odds, overcome the bully, and/or outwit the grownups that gets me every time. Throw in a rag-tag collection of dogs and you’ve got a movie I may even leave the house for.

A Canadian writer plans to avoid seeing the movie Marley & Me, just as he avoided reading the book. His reasons?

“Spot. Josette. Lulu. Nipper. Paddy. Orly. Brownie. Bijou. Byng. Avery. Tiger. Barkley. Wiggins. Sidney. Those are some of the real-life dogs who’ve departed on my watch.”

Craig MacInnes, in an opinion piece for the Ottawa Citizen, says he, for one, has seen enough dogs die during his life. Why go to the movies to see it again?

“Figuratively speaking, dogs rarely make it to the end-credits of our human lifetimes, preceding us to the hereafter in what is surely Nature’s cruelest, most screwed-up plan. Innocent, loyal and trusting, they are rewarded for their blind devotion with a lousy 10 to 15 years, while we get to dither and careen through seven or eight full decades, a journey collectively freighted by the nagging ache of all our losses.”

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