ohmidog!

The Federal Hill home of Kenneth Munzert sold at auction today for $808,500 — the bulk of which, under the terms of his will, now goes to an animal shelter in Richmond, Virginia.

It took auctioneer Tim Jennings, who stood on the house’s marble steps, less than 5 minutes to complete the sale to Mahlon Apgar of Ruxton, the Baltimore Sun reported.

Munzert, a retired engineer who died last year at age 88, left his home at 405 Warren Ave to the SPCA of Richmond, which had pledged to care for his dog in the event of Munzert’s death.

The dog, a former stray named Beauregard, ended up dying before his master, but Munzert still stipulated that the agency recieve the profits from the sale of his home.

Munzert’s will, filed in Baltimore last month, left three quarters of his $990,228 estate — an amount that didn’t include the house in Federal Hill — to animal protection groups.

 You can’t consume media these days without tripping over this story — roughly 240 Americans wind up in emergency rooms every day for sprains, fractures or other injuries from a fall caused by a dog or cat.

Researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said dogs and cats account for about 1 percent of the 8 million fall-related injuries that end up being treated in emergency rooms each year.

Yes, 1 percent. Why, then is it such a big story? I’ll tell you why. Partly because newspapers are becoming less likely to do their own work these days. They want to fill their newsholes as cheaply as they possibly can — so they rewrite, or use wire stories, which are often already rewrites. And bloggers? They’re even worse, rewriting the rewritten rewrites.

Just as a sentence gets screwed up the more times it’s repeated from one person to the next, so can news, or alleged news.

Here’s what Reuters reported: ”Researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said dogs and cats account for 88 percent of all fall-related injuries in emergency departments.”

Some simple math: 87,000 falls a year is not 88 percent of 8 million.

What the CDC did report was that 88 percent of reported pet-caused falls were caused by dogs, but that’s entirely different from saying 88 percent of all falls were caused by pets.

If 88 percent of all falls leading to hospitalization were caused by pets, that would be a big story. One percent? That’s barely a story at all. Yet it’s everywhere.

Words, math, dogs –they’re all easy to trip over. But before we start portraying pets as a health hazard — and at this point I would ask how many of those falls were caused by dumb humans, as opposed to dumb animals — we might want to take steps to get the facts right and put them in perspective.

(Photo courtesy of ihasahotdog.com)

Who needs children when a puppy can provide a similar emotional experience?

New Scientist magazine recently asked that question in an article about a Japanese study that showed relating to dogs causes a surge of the same hormones triggered by nurturing an infant, romantic love and close friendship.

Oxytocin, also known as the “cuddle chemical” and the “love drug,” has been found to relieve stress, combat depression, breed trust in humans and generally make life more worth living. When two humans bond, their oxytocin levels increase.

Miho Nagasawa and Takefumi Kikusui, biologists at Azuba University in Japan, suspected social contact between two different species might boost oxytocin levels, as well.

“Miho and I are big dog lovers and feel something changed in our bodies when gazed [upon] by our dogs,” Kikusui says.

They recruited 55 dog owners and their pets for a videotaped laboratory play session. Owners provided a urine sample to measure oxytocin levels. They were then divided into two groups — one that played with their dog for half an hour, one that sat in the same room but were told to completely avoid their dogs’ gazes.

Then everybody’s urine was tested again. Participants that spent a long time making eye contact were determined to have experienced increases in their oxytocin levels of more than 20%. Those who avoided their pooches’ gaze saw their oxytocin levels drop slightly.

Among those playing with their dogs, the longer they made eye contact, the higher the increase was in their levels of the hormone.

A flood of the cuddle chemical could explain why playing with dogs can lift moods and even improve symptoms of anxiety and depression, Kikusui says. Possibly, the scientists say, oxytocin even played a part in the domestication of dogs from wolves, about 15,000 years ago.

“Maybe during the evolutionary process, humans and dogs came to share the same social cues”, such as eye contact and hand gestures, Kikusui says. “This is why dogs can adapt to human society.”

Timi came back from the war in with some serious “readjustment issues,” including nightmares characterized by violent kicking — but none were serious enough to prevent him from being returned for another tour of duty in Iraq.

Or at least that’s what his veterinarian said.

Dogs, like human soldiers, can carry the burden of war back home, but the damage isn’t likely to keep them from being sent right back to action. Just like thousands of soldiers, dogs — primarily highly trained German shepherds and Belgian Malinois — are being forced to deploy for two and three tours, according to a Washington Post article.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, the Defense Department has increased the number of military dogs — mostly bomb sniffers — from 1,320 to 2,025, and many have served multiple tours.

The Post article doesn’t delve into whether its right or wrong to be returning traumatized canines to duty, but considering the Pentagon has invested $15,000 to train each one, it’s likely the military strives to get its money’s worth.

In a way, they’re too valuable to be discharged. Dogs have saved countless lives by finding bombs, ammunition and hidden weapons, said Master Sgt. Robert Tremmel, manager of the working dogs program at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, where the dogs from different branches of the military are initially trained.

The U.S. War Dogs Association is trying to persuade the Pentagon to create a medal for dogs. Another group is pushing for a military working dog memorial in the Washington area. And the Humane Society, which criticized the Pentagon during the Vietnam War, when many dogs were left behind or euthanized, has credited the military with working to find retirement homes for them.

Nick Cannon gave his wife Mariah Carey the gift of dog for their one year aniversary, Us Weekly reports.

Although the anniversary isn’t until May, Cannon already procured and gifted the pup — an eight-week-old  female Jack Russell terrier named Cha-Cha. The couple was secretly married last spring in the Bahamas.

Cannon laughed off rumors that he and Carey are expecting a baby.

Breed specific legislation against pit bulls took another much deserved hit last week when a Dade County court ruled that Miami’s pit bull ban is too vague to be used as grounds for euthanizing animals.

The county ban applied to all dogs that “substantially conform” to American Kennel Club standards for  American Staffordshire Terriers or Staffordshire Bull Terriers, or United Kennel Club standards for American Pit Bull Terriers.

To determine if a dog conformed to the standards, the animal control department used a chart that lists 15 body parts, such as head, neck, lips, chest, eyes, tail and hind legs. Officers check off which characteristics of a dog conform to a pit bull. If three or more characteristics are checked, the dog is declared a pit bull.

The court ruling came in a case challenging the finding by Miami-Dade County Animal Control that a family pet named Apollo was a “pit bull” that must be removed from the county or euthanized.

Rima Bardawil, the attorney for Apollo, pointed out that the ordinance makes no mention of any chart or checklist, and that it is not clear what standards animal control is using in making its determinations or how valid they are.

Dahlia Canes, executive director of Miami Coalition Against Breed Specific Legislation, testified that animal control is “constantly” misidentifying the breeds of dogs. She told the court about one dog that was declared by an animal control officer to be a pit bull mix and ordered euthanized.  Canes arranged to have the dog re-evaluated and he was determined to be a mastiff mix. The dog was then adopted to a family in Miami-Dade County.  

In the case of Apollo, the animal control officer photographed the dog from several feet away, then used the photo to pick three body parts he said he thought conformed to pit bull standards.

It makes one wonder — how many of the dogs described by police, and characterized in headlines, as pit bulls really are of the breeds that fall under that catch-all term?

A woman who refused to leave her burning apartment without her dachsund remained in critical condition in a Houston hospital yesterday.

Relatives say Claudia Harris was cooking Saturday when the fire started inside her unit at the Hearthwood Apartments near Reliant Stadium. The landlord tried to get her out, but she wouldn’t leave without first finding her dachsund, Minnie, TV station KHOU in Houston reported.

“I’m not surprised that she would do something like that because I know how she feels about this dog and she will risk her own life for this dog,” said Charisse Harris, the victim’s daughter. “She treats the dog like a person. It’s like her other daughter.”

By the time firefighters arrived, Harris was unconscious and they had to carry her out. Minnie, the dog, managed to escape on her own and she wasn’t injured.

(Photo courtesy of KHOU-TV)

Unlike a lot of American cities, and the U.S. Army, the country of Italy is wising up when it comes to labeling dogs as “dangerous.”

A new law goes into effect in Italy next month that does away with the country’s list of “dangerous” breeds and insteads holds owners responsible for their pets’ behavior — whatever breed it is.

Under the old law, owners of pit bulls, Rottweilers, mastiffs, bull dogs and 13 other breeds, were required to keep them muzzled in public places, and failure to respect the law could result in the animal being put down.

The new law works on the theory that any dog could be potentially high-risk and holds the owners or caretakers responsible for controlling a pet’s behavior.

“This is a historic day because we have established for the first time the responsibility of the owner or the person who is momentarily in charge of the animal,” Health Undersecretary Francesca Martini said earlier this month.

“The measures adopted in the previous laws had no scientific foundation. Dangerous breeds do not exist. With this law we have overcome the black list, which was just a fig leaf (over the larger problem), and we have increased the level of guarantees for citizens,” she said.

The new law requires vets to be responsible for compiling a register of individual dogs who they believe may be potentially high risk. Owners of those dogs will be required to keep them muzzled in public.

The law also requires dog owners to keep their pets on a leash at all times in urban areas, pick up their dog’s mess, and to carry a muzzle with them in case of need.

It also forbids training dogs to be aggressive using sticks and protective body gear, doping, surgery that is not for health purposes and dangerous cross-breeding.

The New York Daily News reports that jailed dog-fighter Michael Vick is looking for a book deal.

According to the newspaper, the former Atlanta Falcons star has a literary agent, Scott Waxman, founder of the Waxman Literary Agency, who is shopping a proposal for a Vick memoir.

Waxman didn’t return the newspaper’s calls, but the article raises the possibility that Vick could use the book as an opportunity to “demonstrate sufficient remorse” for his actions, which NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has said would be required before allowing Vick to return to professional football would even be considered.

Too, if it were to sell well, a book could help Vick, who is now in bankruptcy proceedings, crawl out of the financial hole his conviction left him in .

The Daily News article says that, since his victims were dogs, it is ”unlikely” that Vick’s book would be subject to the “Son of Sam Law” — though I don’t see why not. The law, designed to keep criminals from profiting from their crimes through book deals, authorizes the state to seize profits and use it to compensate the criminal’s victims. Seizing any profits from a Vick book, and passing them along to animal welfare organizations, strikes me as a perfect exercise of the law.

Luke Robinson set out on a walk with his dogs in March of last year — a 2,000-plus-mile walk, from Austin to Boston.

He’s still going.

Robinson and his two Great Pyrenees dogs — who have made it as far as Ohio — are trekking across the country to to call attention to, and raise funds to combat, canine cancer, which claimed one of his dogs in 2006.

After that, Robinson, who was working a 90-hour week at his high tech and life science business firm, did some re-evaluating, during which he came upon the idea of the walk.

Accompanying him are Murphy, who is about 7 years old, and Hudson, who’s 2.

They set out Austin in March, headed for Boston, which is Robinson’s home. In July, the passed through Arkansas; in August they made it through Memphis. They’re stopping to volunteer at shelters and humane societies along the way, which Robinson says gives him a chance to interact with animal lovers, experts, caregivers and those doing research into canine cancer.

“Definitely it has made the experience richer and fuller after hearing all of the stories,” he told the Willliamson Herald in Tennessee. “People want to know what is causing canine cancer and we have found that canine cancer is a crisis. Not only is cancer significant in dogs, but it is also hitting them at a younger age. It is so prevalent that some dogs are having their life spans downgraded.”

Malcolm was only 6 when he was diagnosed, Robinson said, and 8 when he was put to sleep. On the trip, Robinson wears one of his Malcolm’s claws and some of his ashes around his neck.

They average eight to 10 miles per day, he said. “When we are walking, we are working,” Robinson said. “When I get on the road with them and they get a rhythm, we work well together…the first 15 minutes, they are just pulling me.”

Robinson’s website, keeps track of his travels, and contains information about the walk and products you can buy to support it.