ohmidog!

Baltimore police  have charged two teenagers with dousing a pit bull with gasoline and setting it on fire, but a press conference on the arrests was canceled yesterday.

Police said the arrests were made over the weekend.

The suspects were charged as juveniles, and their identities have not been made public. One TV report, however, identified them as 17-year-old twin brothers.

A WBAL-TV report identified the boys’ mother as Denise Griffin. Mrs. Griffin said her sons were taken in for questioning on Friday night.

“I know they didn’t do it. I keep hearing different things around the neighborhood about the dog ran up to there. The dog — nobody said the dog was right there. So, I feel as though I know my boys didn’t do it. It’s a reward out and then wasn’t nobody picked up around there until they said something about a reward,” Griffin said.

The case had raised the ire of animal welfare advocates across the country, and between public donations and those from humane organizations, thousands of dollars poured into a reward fund for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those who killed the dog, who was named Phoenix after she arrived at the Baltimore animal shelter.

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Baltimore Police say two juveniles have been charged with setting Phoenix, the pit bull,  on fire.

The dog died three days later.

Police spokesman Donny Moses said Monday that Commissioner Frederick Bealefeld would announce the arrests at an 11:30 a.m. news conference.

Moses says police weren’t releasing the names of the two people charged because of their age. Police have not said what charges the youths face, Fox News reported.

Baltimore police officer Syreeta Teel rescued the burning dog May 27, putting the fire out with her sweater. She was taken to BARCS and later died while receiving medical care in Pennsylvania. The case led to an outcry by animal welfare activists and spurred a petition asking the city to take stronger steps to combat animal abuse.

Martin Mersereau, director of the cruelty casework division of the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals, told Fox New he hopes the juveniles receive maximum penalties for the incident if convicted.

“We’re thrilled to hear [of the arrests],” he said. ”People who abuse animals rarely do it once and almost never stop there.”

Mersereau said abuse of animals is common among serial killers and that FBI officials frequently use such crimes to gauge the potential threat of suspected and known criminals.

“The biggest mistake here is that people call this a ‘boys being boys’ thing,” Mersereau said. “I do hope they’re charged with felonies for malicious torture.”

Penalties for felony animal abuse in Maryland include up to $5,000 in fines and three years imprisonment, he said.

For five straight days, Greg Wong returned to the lonely stretch of highway on Wyoming’s prairie where his wife was killed, searching not for closure but for Sammie and Maddie, the two small dogs traveling with her.

Hours after state police on May 30 called his home in Laramie, notifying him that his wife, Susan, had been killed  on Highway 487, Wong made the first two-hour trip, arriving at 2 a.m., just as a tow truck pulled the SUV his wife had been driving from a deep ravine.

Police told Wong that his wife apparently lost control of the vehicle. It rolled over three times and landed in the ravine. Police told him no dogs were found inside the vehicle, or in the area.

Wong told the Casper Star-Tribune that as soon as he got the news, it was as if he heard his wife’s voice in his head, saying “find the dogs.”

“I guess a lot of it didn’t soak in,” he said. “…You get to that point where you almost turn into a zombie. You are afraid to start thinking about it too much because emotionally you can’t handle it. I kept focusing on ‘you have to find those dogs.’ In a way, I was thinking my last connection to my wife was those dogs.”

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A little dog named Spaz barked big enough to wake his partially deaf owner, alerting her that her mobile home in Groveland, Florida, was on fire.

Lillian Miller, 58, who had turned off her hearing aid, heard Spaz barking about 3 a.m.

She took the Chihuahua mix outside, thinking he needed to go to the bathroom, and, on her way back in, she noticed flames coming from her living room window, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

“He must have heard the fire alarm, but she couldn’t hear it because she didn’t have her hearing aids in,” said Miller’s mother, Eudora Miller.

“As far as I’m concerned, he saved her life,” Miller said.