ohmidog!

All the talk about the yet to be selected, procured or named White House Dog has gotten me to thinking: Isn’t it time to start giving some consideration to the White Doghouse?

Turns out, Stephanie Rubin is way ahead of me. Rubin, a Los Angeles landscape designer, is owner of Sustainable Pet Design and inventor of the Greenrrroof Animal Home. And with a little help from her friends she’s already built and arranged delivery of “Summa Canum, The Obama Dog Home.”

Summa Canum (Latin for “Top Dog”) has been created “to provide an appropriately sustainable and stylish home for the new leader of the free canine world.”

At the same time, the project’s aimed at introducing eco-friendly practices and materials to the American people.

On the Sustainable Design website, Rubin says public interest in the Obama dog — not yet selected, though the First Family is reportedly leaning toward a Portugese water dog — inspired her to create a dog home as a gift for the Obama family.

“As we began construction on Summa Canum, one vendor after another expressed a desire to contribute. Summa Canum is now a gift from many. Materials donated include historic wood, greenroof plants, eco-friendly paint, bio-fuel, expert advice, as well as arrangement of transportation with a rock-n-roll legend.”

Summa Canum ins’t an exact replica of the White House. But it is modeled on Greek Revivial architecture that was popular during our nation’s early years.

It is made of wood from cedar trees that President Andrew Jackson planted along the driveway of his estate, The Hermitage. After a tornado felled these trees in 1998, EarthSource Forest Products reclaimed the wood for lumber and has donated the last of it to Summa Canum.

Like her other creations, Summa Canum will have a green roof, consisting of vegetation supplied by Emory Knoll Farms, a Maryland nursery. The dog home will arrive at The White House unplanted in order to provide the Obama kids with the opportunity to get their hands dirty in their own little garden.

Third Planet Energy has arranged for delivery of Summa Canum by Neil Young, a longtime champion of environmental causes, who will haul it with his biofuel-powered 1959 Lincoln. Amoeba Music provided financial support to offset the cost of the trip.

The otherwise dog-friendly state of Washington is working to remove two embarassingly unfriendly laws from its books, both of which require wandering dogs to be shot.

The state Senate unanimously approved a bill Monday that could repeal both, the Associated Press reported.

“I thought it was a joke. I didn’t realize that this was in statute,” said Sen. Dale Brandland, R-Bellingham, sponsor of the measure to repeal the old laws. “It’s very outdated … they need to go.”

One of the laws in question gives dog owners 48 hours to kill their dog if it is found killing another animal. The other law requires sheriffs to kill any dog running at large without a metal dog tag, between the months of August and February.

The measure now moves to the House for consideration. The laws have been on the books since the early 1900s when the health and welfare of livestock was of greater concern to state residents.

A candlelight vigil will be held in Raleigh Wednesday night for the 145 pits bulls — including dozens of puppies like this one — that were euthanized after being seized by authorities from a big-time breeder of fighting dogs in North Carolina.

The vigil starts at 7 p.m. at Bicentennial Mall, 16 W. Jones St., in Raleigh, near the North Carolina General Assembly. Here’s a map.

Organizers of the vigil hope it will lead to changes in the law to guarantee that dogs seized from dogfighting operations have the opportunity to be individually evaluated, rather than being automatically deemed “dangerous” and destroyed.

The recent mass euthanasia of 145 dogs — including puppies born between the time they were seized from breeder Ed Faron and the conclusion of his court case – prompted the candlelight vigil, said Laura Gonzo, one of the organizers. The dogs were seized from Faron’s Wildside Kennels.

Wilkes County authorities said their laws required them to euthanize the dogs. Unlike those seized in the higher profile Michael Vick case, no efforts were made by the government, lawyers or major rescue organizations to save these, at least not until it was too late.

Concerned citizens and representatives of animal rescue groups from across the state are planning to attend the vigil.

“We are so thankful that law enforcement and the courts took the crime of dogfighting serious and that it led to a guilty plea by the dog fighter,” Gonzo said. “But people across North Carolina, as well other parts of the country, expressed outrage because none of the dogs or 75 puppies from the dog fighter’s breeding operation were given any opportunity to be evaluated individually and the dogs were all destroyed. We North Carolina humanitarians are calling on the legislature to act to prevent future tragedies.” Gonzo said.

(Photo courtesy of Laura Gonzo)

Another newspaper columnist has issued a call for banning pit bulls — this one in Dallas, on the heels of a dog attack that might cost one of its two victims an eye. 

Dallas Morning News columnist Jacquielynn Floyd — who’d previously opposed breed specific legislation –says banning pit bulls “may be the best of a host of imperfect solutions.”

“I hate the idea of blaming animals for human stupidity. And I’m not sure breed banning works – there’s a considerable case to be made that it doesn’t … But we cannot stand around debating theoretical outcomes while people are being attacked on the streets.”

That, to me, sounds a lot like the kind of logic that led us to war in Iraq: Let’s go after them before they come get us. Maybe they’re not the source of most dog bites, but they make a good target.

Then only later — after the considerable expense of corralling, muzzling and regulating them –do we realize that maybe pit bulls aren’t weapons of mass destruction after all.

Floyd admits that, once pit bulls are criminalized, some other breed will replace them.

“Bonehead” owners, to use her term, will move on to Rottweilers, shepherds, Dobermans or some other breed they can encourage to be violent and aggressive. What then? “We’ll have to cross that bridge when we get there,” she says.

Rather than just shifting the problem to another breed, wouldn’t it make more sense to address it now, at its root, and go after the boneheads instead of the dogs?

It’s a sad but familiar story – a well-meaning soul starts taking in unwanted animals only to find him or herself overwhelmed by the responsibility.

Such seems to be the case in Adair County, Ky., where hundreds of animals were were found sick, diseased and dying Friday at the Clean Slate animal shelter.

Hundreds of dogs, cats and farm animals were removed from the shelter and the owner, David Howery, was charged with 295 counts of animal cruelty.

“It’s can be difficult to see because his heart might be in the right place, but obviously it becomes overwhelming when too many pets are involved and you have to make sure each pet is cared for properly,” said Michelle Ray with the Kentucky Humane Society.

Howery said he set up his shelter to give rescued animals a temporary home and never thought the animals would have to be rescued from him.

Many of the approximate 300 animals removed were suffering from malnourishment, mange and respiratory problems, officials said.

When sheriff’s deputies raided the shelter, they said they found dead animals, feces and urine contaminating the rooms and disease running rampant.

Security-camera footage that appears to show a man kicking and jumping on a puppy’s crate has landed on YouTube, prompting an investigation by the Massachusetts SPCA and threats of a boycott of the liquor store in which the incident apparently occured.

The Boston Globe reports the stomping of a beagle appears to have taken place in Blanchard’s Liquors, a popular store in Allston.

The one-minute clip was posted to YouTube Thursday last week. The incident, according to a recording stamp on the security camera footage, took place Feb. 6.

The video shows a man stride past the register of a liquor store, kick a crate containing a small dog, then jump on the crate, partially crushing it, before walking away. A person in a baseball cap then goes to check on the puppy, before a younger man walks into the frame, grabs a leash from the counter, and takes the dog away.

“It’s a horrible thing,” said Christine Moore, a 25-year-old former Allston resident and Blanchard’s customer who called for a boycott on Craigslist and her Facebook page.

A YouTube member named “ericword” posted the original clip. Reached by the Globe through YouTube e-mail, ericword identified himself in a phone interview as a 20-year-old Blanchard’s worker.

Giving his name only as Eric, he said he was suspended from his job for posting the clip. A Blanchard’s manager declined to comment to the newspaper.

The MSPCA’s law enforcement division, which has police power to bring felony charges, is investigating the matter, said Brian Adams, a spokesman.

“To the best of our knowledge, the dog in the video is OK,,” said Adams, encouraging those with information about the case to call the MSPCA at 800-628-5808.

A Korean biotech company has announced the birth of another cloned dog — a Pekingese.

It was the first successful cloning of a toy breed.

RNL Bio, a Seoul-based company dedicated to the development of stem cell therapeutics, announced late last week that it successfully produced a clone of a nine-year-old dog named Jasmine for a client in the United States.

“He wanted to continue his love to the clone even if the original Jasmine is healthy,” the company said in a press release.

The tissue from the original Jasmine (above left) was harvested at an animal hospital in Rockville, Maryland and the cells were processed and sent to the firm’s cloning facility in Seoul in November, 2008. The pregnancy was confirmed in mid-December, and a surrogate mother dog gave birth to the puppy on Feb. 1.

After the cloned puppy was weaned from the surrogate’s milk and was confirmed to be in good health, RNL announced the cloning.

“With our proprietary dog cloning technology, any breed can be cloned and there has been no failure in our cloning history,” Dr. Jeong Chan Ra, RNL’s CEO said. “We foresee that cloning demand for both pets and work dogs will increase in the near future.”

The original Jasmine will meet the clone in early April when she is delivered to the U.S. The company claims the first commercial dog cloning in 2008 — five pit bulls cloned from tissue of a California woman’s deceased dog.

RNL produces the clones in conjunction with Seoul National University, which cloned the first dog in the world, Snuppy, in 2005.

The university sold patent rights stemming from Snuppy’s cloning to RNL. A U.S. company, Bio Arts International, is also cloning dogs commercially in conjunction with Hwang Woo-Suk, a former SNU scientist who oversaw Snuppy’s cloning but was later fired for fraudulently reporting research results regarding his work in human embryo stem cells.

Bio Arts claims its patent, stemming from the cloning of Dolly the sheep, gives it the sole right to clone mammals. While Bio Arts says RNL is infringing on its patent, RNL says Bio Arts — through Hwang’s work — is infringing on the Seoul National University patent.

Both companies are continuing to clone dogs for customers, though the dispute is unresolved.

Michael Vick will be allowed to serve the last two months of his sentence under home confinement because there is no room at a halfway house for him, a government official told the Associated Press.

The former NFL quarterback is serving a 23-month sentence at the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kan., after pleading guilty to bankrolling a dogfighting operation at his home in Virginia’s Surry County. He also admitted to participating in the killing of several underperforming dogs.

Vick’s lawyers have said they expected him to be moved any day into a halfway house in Newport News, Va. But because of a lack of space, he will be released to his home in nearby Hampton on or after May 21, said the official, who requested anonymity.

Under the arrangement, Vick would be on electronic monitoring and would be allowed to leave home only for activities approved by his probation officer.

Vick had been scheduled to be released from prison in July.