ohmidog!

Was it an animal shelter, or a puppy mill, or perhaps a little of both?

Whatever the case, the Thyme and Sage Ranch in Wisconsin is no more after 300 dogs were seized and owner and founder Jennifer Petkus was charged with 11 misdemeanor animal cruelty charges. The story sounds a little similar to the one we told you about earlier this week – Pendragwn Chow Rescue in Pennsylvlania.

In the Wisconsin case, the Richland County Sheriff’s Department executed a search warrant Tuesday at the ranch, seizing the first 100 dogs, eight horses and a goat. At least six dog carcasses were discovered and a ram needed to be euthanized, according to the Wisconsin State Journal.

According to a criminal complaint, Dr. Lisa Kerwin-Lucchi, a veterinarian with the Dane County Humane Society, used a hidden camera and temperature probe to record conditions at Thyme and Sage Ranch in rural Cazenovia in March, documenting dogs without access to food and unfrozen water, dogs with severely matted fur and inadequate bedding for unheated buildings.

Petkus was charged with one count of improper shelter to animals and 10 counts of intentionally mistreating animals — all misdemeanors. In addition, she faces five counts of unlawful deposit of animals carcasses.

Court records also show that Thyme and Sage, which has a contract with Richland County to serve as a shelter for lost and found animals, had already transferred 68 dogs and 10 cats to the Dane County Humane Society between Feb. 1 and March 27.

Kerwin-Lucchi started collecting the criminal evidence as early as February to obtain a search warrant and file charges “to make sure (Petkus) can’t do this again.”

She said she’s not sure what led to the conditions at the shelter. Many of the seized dogs look to be “retired breeders from puppy mills.” That, and the fact that Petkus was adopting out large number of young puppies raised the suspicion she may also have been breeding, Kerwin-Lucchi said.

Steelers’ linebacker James Harrison’s toddler son was believed in stable condition at a Pittsburgh hospital after being bitten on the thigh by the family’s dog.

The boy’s mother, Beth Tibbott, was also treated and released for a bite she received when she tried to get the dog off the child, according to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.

Harrison, 31, the NFL defensive player of the year last season, could not be reached for comment. He was not home when the incident took place, friends said.

At the Harrisons’ home on Matterhorn Drive, a family friend said that Harrison was at the gym in the late afternoon when she, Ms. Tibbott and the child, James Harrison III, were outside in the fenced yard, where the dog was kept in a crate.

The friend said the dog, a pit bull, bit the baby on the thigh when it was released, and that Ms. Tibbott began screaming and threw herself on top of the baby.

Steelers management said in a statement Friday: “We are aware of this unfortunate situation. We express our concern for his family and hope that everyone involved makes a complete recovery.”

Channel 11 News in Pittsburgh is reporting that a pit bull owned by Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker James Harrison attacked the player’s young son on Thursday.

An unidentified neighbor said one of the star player’s three dogs got loose Thursday at Harrison’s Franklin Park home and attacked the boy, James III. His age was not immediately available.

The boy was taken to UPMC Children’s Hospital, where his condition is not known. The hospital declined comment.

“We are aware of the situation, but it a personal matter for James,” the Steelers said in a statement.

Harrison, 31, is the NFL Defensive Player of the Year — and the team member that opted to stay home on the day the Super Bowl-winning Steelers met with President Barack Obama.

Michael Vick spent his first day back home Thursday getting fitted for an electronic ankle monitor, hosting a backyard barbecue for friends and family, and preparing for his new job as a $10 an hour construction worker.

The former Atlanta Falcons quarterback, convicted of financing a dogfighting operation, served 19 months of his 23-month sentence in prison. He’ll serve two more at home, then be officially released from federal custody on July 20.

The debate raging here on ohmidog! – and in the rest of the world, too — just had a little more fuel thrown on it: A new British study says dominance-based dog training techniques such as those espoused by Cesar Millan are a waste of time and may make dogs more aggressive.

Researchers from the University of Bristol’s Department of Clinical Veterinary Sciences, after studying dogs for six months, conclude that, contrary to popular belief, dogs are not trying to assert their dominance over their canine or human “pack” and aren’t motivated by maintaining their place in the pecking order.

One of the scientists behind the study, Dr. Rachel Casey, in an interview with ABC News, said the blanket assumption that every dog is motivated by some innate desire to control people or other dogs is “frankly ridiculous.”

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Ninety-two chow chows were seized after authorities this week discovered them living crated and cramped in a small house near Lancaster, Pa.

The chows were discovered in the house, basement, garage and car of Terri Palmer-Roby, founder of Pendragwn Chow Chow Rescue, a shelter for homeless members of the ancient Chinese breed.

Two dead and decaying dogs were removed from at the home during a Tuesday afternoon raid by the state Bureau of Dog Law Enforcement, East Lampeter Township Police, and the Humane League of Lancaster County, according to the Lancaster Intelligencer-Journal.

All the dogs were caged and living in their own waste, many of them emaciated, with open wounds and matted fur, authorities said.

Before Tuesday’s raid, Palmer-Roby was a friend of the Humane League and other area shelters from which she pulled chows in hope of rehabilitating them and adopting them into permanent homes, said Megan Gallagher-Clark, vice president of development at the league.

Six League staff members removed the dogs from the home in shifts Tuesday. Some will be sent to shelters in Berks, York, Bucks and Montgomery counties.

Two new variations on the FURminator are hitting the market, and after sampling them both, I can report that neither is as revolutionary a product as the original. Then again, it’s hard to improve on perfection.

The new models are a double-edged version of the deshedding tool that FURminator says works twice as fast as the original, and an ejectable version that, with the push of a button, moves dog or cat hair out of the blade.

The push button ejector does work — though it sometimes takes repeated pushes — and it frees you from having to manually clear the blade after every five to ten strokes. On the other hand, that wasn’t much trouble to begin with. It only took one quick swipe of the hand, which you need to do anyway if you’re bagging your sheddings.

Having a small yard and a big dog, that’s often what I do; otherwise, as much fur as the FURminator removes, you’ll soon be ankle deep in it. (Better yet is to take dog and FURminator to the park and let the fur fly; the birds like to use it for nests.)

As for the double-bladed FURminator, I found it more trouble than it’s worth — namely because fur can’t be removed from its blades with a simple swipe of the hand. Instead you’ve got to navigate a finger between the two blades. Even if it is removing twice the shedding, the blade clearing slows the process down more than it speeds it up. And it also means you have twice the number of blade covers to misplace, as I seem to do every time I use it.

That said, FURminator remains king in my book, in terms of grooming your dog and cutting down on the in-house shedding. The only down side? Expect to pay $50 or more, depending on the size you need.

Two cousins charged with tossing a Chihuahua out the window of a moving car now say that it was all a big misunderstanding

And they want their dog back.

Jimmy Correa and Jenny Torres were released on their own recognizance after being arraigned Wednesday on animal cruelty charges. Police said that Correa threw Princess, the Chihuahua, out the car window as Torres was driving. They then returned to see if the dog was still there. That’s when residents got their license plate number and called police.

Correa, however, said the dog merely jumped out when he opened the car door, according to NBC 10. (Click the link for a video report.)

Police said Torres signed the dog over to be adopted when she was arrested on Monday, but Correa says she misunderstood what she was signing and wants the dog back. The dog, Correa said, belongs to Torres’ 3-year-old daughter.

“She’s been crying ever since. We want the dog back, but they’re not going to give it back,“ he said.

The dog is currently at the Forever Paws Animal Shelter in Fall River.

A puppy dumped on the side of a road in Alvin, Texas, is now enjoying life with the elephants at a Houston Zoo.

It was Christmas Eve when Alicia Kemery’s neighbor saw someone in a truck dump the pup, a terrier mix only about two months old. The neighbor called Kemery, a keeper at the Houston Zoo, who provided the dog with shelter at her home. Two weeks later — already having five dogs of her own — Kemery sent a zoo-wide e-mail asking if anyone wanted to adopt the black-and-white pup.

Daryl Hoffman, large mammals curator, replied, saying he’d been thinking about adding a dog to the elephant barn — an increasingly popular practice at zoos. Max was an instant hit as soon as he walked into the McNair Asian Elephant Habitat.

Only a few of the elephants were a bit apprehensive when the dog first joined the keepers. “It was this new small thing around, and they didn’t really know what a dog was,” said Dan Calarco, part-time elephant keeper.

But since then Max has settled into a routine with the elephants, the Houston Chronicle reports. After breakfast, he sniffs around the compound until it’s time for the keepers to clean the elephant yard. That signals playtime for Max who loves to fetch, roll and chase the ball that keepers toss for him while they work.

Penny, an 8-year-old sheltie, was one of 202 small dogs that Prairie Bark Kennels, a large commerical breeder of dogs in Colorado, needed to unload in connection with the company’s plan to relocate.

All breeding stock – Yorkies, papillons, dachshunds, pugs and Chihuahuas among them — Penny and the other dogs were crated, loaded on a truck and driven 788 miles from the Denver breeding operation to be put on the auction block in Missouri, where they were mostly likely to be bought by other commercial breeders.

But the little dogs weren’t the only ones headed for Missouri.

A group of animal welfare organizations, hearing of the Denver breeder’s plans and hoping to spare the dogs from continued lives in puppy mills, had contacted the company, offering to take the dogs and find them homes. The breeder declined the offer, so the animal welfare groups started a fund drive, raised $16,000, and sent a representative to Missouri to purchase as many of the dogs as their finances permitted.

As a result, 66 of the dogs, Penny included, ended up making the trip back to Denver — all tolled, a 1,500-mile journey to end up just 8 miles from where they’d started out a few days earlier.

USA Today’s Sharon Peters told the fascinating story in her “Pet Talk” column yesterday.

It started in early May, when Prairie Bark Kennels decided to sell many of its 250 dogs in advance of relocating, according to the seller statement filed with the auction company.

When Last Chance for Animals and Rocky Mountain Animal Defense heard the dogs would be sent to auction, they offered to pick them up. “The dogs are perpetually pregnant or nursing; they live their lives in cages,” Last Chance’s Julie Sarff says. “We wanted something better for them.” When the offer was turned down, Peters writes, the animal welfare groups flew into action.

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