ohmidog!

Dog adoptions have resumed at the Pennsylvania SPCA (PSPCA), located at 350 E. Erie Avenue in Philadelphia.

The Erie Avenue operation and the Rutherford Memorial Animal Hospital were temporarily closed due to a outbreak of Streptococcus zooepidemicus, commonly referred to as “strep zoo” that led to six deaths. The cat adoption program has remained open.

All facilities have reopened except for the organization’s Animal Care and Control Team (ACCT) facility located at 111 W. Hunting Park Avenue, where most of the illnesses were reported. It remains under isolation.

“After consulting with our own internal medical team and experts at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, we have instituted protocol in order to isolate the illness, closely monitor and treat all of the dogs in our care, and prevent against future occurrences,” said Susan Cosby, CEO of the PSPCA.

Baltimore’s animal lovers, angered over the death of a pit bull who was set on fire last week, are asking the city to start taking animal abuse more seriously — by creating a task force, making the animal control office part of the police department, and ensuring that animal cruelty cases are prosecuted to the fullest extent.

The group has started an online petition, and will present the signatures to the city.

The pit bull, given the name Phoenix when she was brought in to Baltimore Animal Rescue & Care Shelter (BARCS), was found on fire in West Baltimore last Wednesday by a police officer who, as other witnesses looked on, put the fire out with her sweater.

The officer, Syreeta Teel, was honored in a City Hall ceremony today, receiving an award from BARCS, presented by Mayor Sheila Dixon.

A reward for information leading to the arrest of those who doused the dog with gasoline and set her on fire now stands at $24,500. The dog lived three days after she was found, but was euthanized after her kidneys shut down while trying to fight off infection caused by burns over 90 percent of her body.

The incident has prompted a petition drive sponsored by Recycled Love, a non–profit organization dedicated to rescuing animals from abuse, injury, neglect and abandonment. Click on “read more” to view the petition in its entirety.

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This is likely an advertisement in disguise (for the Sony Ericsson C510, with Smile Shutter), seems a trifle staged, and is far from scientific. But it passes the cute test.

In the video series, a camera is attached to the necks of different pups to document the reaction of the women the dog attracts. The purpose: to determine which breed is the best chick magnet.

In case you don’t have 10 minutes to spare, here are the results: The samoyed drew the most females, but the pug — at least in the view of the two dudes in the video — drew the hottest ones.

Snoopy beat out Lassie, but just barely, in a recent poll conducted on behalf of the new AOL pet website, PawNation.com.

Both Lassie and Snoopy captured 39 percent of the votes for “favorite celebrity animal,” but Snoopy edged the beloved, but fading from memory collie by 14 votes. Garfield and Scooby Doo trailed with 12 and 11 percent, respectively.

The survey covered other important issues as well.

Asked “which celebrity pet’s passing did you mourn the most?” Oprah’s deceased dog Sophie came in at the top, followed by Mickey Rourke’s chihuahua, Loki.

In other results from the poll, the honors for ”craziest pet owner” went to Leona Helmsley, with Paris Hilton a distant second. And the celebrity picked as the one people would most trust to watch their pet was Jennifer Aniston, who captured a whopping 70 percent of the vote, beating out Mickey Rourke, Pam Anderson and Nicole Richie.

Almost half of the respondents said their pets sleep in their beds every night, and more than fourth said they did some sometimes.

(Graphic: from redkid’s ”Snoopy Says Generator”)

A Tennessee lawyer who was suing a local groomer over the death of his dog is now working to raise money for the groomer’s parentless children.

Knoxville attorney Tom Ramsey set up the fund after learning that Erik Webb, the man he was suing, had fatally stabbed his wife, then shot and killed himself.

The Webbs had three children.

Erik Webb owned Happy Tails Pet Spa in West Knoxville. He and his wife, Sarah, were separated, according to a  WATE-TV report.

Police said Webb killed his wife with a kitchen knife at her home, then drove to his pet spa and shot himself.

Ramsey started the fund the day after the killing. Ramsey had taken his beagle, Moxie, to Happy Tails last year for a bath and the dog later died. A necropsy found Moxie suffered broken ribs and a lacerated liver, as well as bruising inside the beagle’s ear and mouth and signs of heat exhaustion.

The Ramsey family filed a $750,000 lawsuit in December claiming that their dog died as a result of “intentional or highly reckless conduct.” Webb was also charged with animal cruelty.

Ramsey says he doesn’t feel responsible for what happened, but started the fund to help the Webb’s children.

“I’ve got three kids and I spent a sleepless night last night, obviously. But our goal all along with this lawsuit was only to stop the practices that were going on. Our goal wasn’t …  to hurt anybody in the family or family members.” Ramsey says.

(Photo: Erik Webb in police file photo)

Bo Obama is headed for the comic books — both in a series of his own, “Puppy Power: Bo Obama,” and in a cameo appearance in an upcoming Marvel series about super-pets.

“I had just scripted the first issue when the news came out about the Obamas getting a dog,” Marvel writer Chris Eliopoulos told MSNBC. “It seemed so appropriate that we jumped on the bandwagon.”

The Marvel series, “Lockjaw and the Pet Avengers,” stars Lockjaw, a massive, super-powered bulldog with the ability to teleport anywhere in the universe who enlists a team of other super-animals to round up the “Infinity Gems,” alien artifacts that threaten to destroy the world. One of the gems is on Bo’s collar, a gift from a foreign head of state.

Bo will be appearing in issue #4, scheduled for publication Aug. 12.

Meanwhile, Bluewater Productions, maker of biographical comic books, will be releasing the first in its “Puppy Power” series in September.

Written by Paul J. Salamoff and drawn by Emmy Award winning Disney and Warner Brothers artist Keith Tucker, the series will gives children an insider’s look at the White House.

Its release will roughly coincide with  that of two more in Bluewater’s biographical “Political Power” series — one abut  Barack Obama and one about Joe Biden.

One hadn’t eaten in a month. The other had a skin infection so severe one of her ears was swollen more than twice its size with blood.

Both ended up at the Animal Medical and Surgical Center in North Scottsdale after being found abandoned — two more dogs in the continuing parade of pets being left behind by families foreclosed upon, evicted or simply thoughtless.

The two dogs were brought in within days of each other, Channel 15 News in Phoenix reported.

Veterinarian Sheila Martin said one of the dogs had not eaten in about a month and was infested with thousands of ticks. The dog’s owners left her behind when they moved out of their El Mirage home a month ago.

El Mirage Police are looking into filing charges against the dog’s owner.

Earlier this week, a second dog was brought into the Animal Medical and Surgical Center. She too had been abandoned by her owner. Martin said it will take about three months for her to recover from a skin disease that caused most of her hair to fall out.

The Lost Our Home Pet Foundation, a group that rescues pets left behind due to foreclosures or other financial hardships, is paying for the dogs’ care.

In the past three weeks, the group has seen three pets so badly neglected the animals have needed hospital care, said Jodi Polanski, president of the foundation,

“You keep thinking you see a bad case and then you have another one come right after that.”

The owners of a Las Vegas-based company that supplied wheat gluten tainted with melamine to pet food makers have agreed to plead guilty in connection with the widespread scandal that may have killed thousands of dogs and cats in 2007.

Stephen S. Miller, and his wife Sally Miller, co-owners of ChemNutra Inc., reached a plea agreement with prosecutors and will plead guilty at a hearing June 16, according to the Associated Press.

The information was contained in a court filing, and attorneys did not immediately respond to the AP’s calls seeking comment Tuesday. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office said the office couldn’t discuss any plea agreement until it had been approved by a judge.

The Millers and ChemNutra, along with two Chinese companies, were indicted in February 2008 on charges alleging they imported wheat gluten tainted with the chemical melamine, which was then sold to pet food makers. Thousands of cats and dogs reportedly sickened or died after eating the tainted food.

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The Pennsylvania SPCA (PSPCA) received test results from the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine today confirming the cause of the recent canine shelter deaths as Streptococcus equi, commonly referred to as “strep zoo.”

The bacterial infection is easily treatable with penicillin.

Shelter officials had feared they might be be dealing an outbreak of  the more serious canine influenza, and imposed a quarantine after six dogs died from an unidentified respiratory illness earlier this week.

“We reached out to experts at Penn and we are in the process of implementing treatment protocol at both shelters,” said Director of Shelter Medicine and Chief Investigative Veterinarian Dr. Rachel Lee. The PSPCA reached out to animal shelters that have experienced similar “strep zoo” cases and is consulting with the Penn’s Infection Prevention Practitioner to eliminate the bacteria in the environment.

The first cancer drug made specifically for canines has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Palladia, manufactured by Pfizer Animal Health Inc., has been approved to treat a type of cancer that accounts for about one in five cases of canine skin tumors.

Canine cutaneous mast cell tumors, although they can appear insignificant and can sometimes be easily removed with surgery, sometimes lead to life-threatening disease, according to an FDA press release.

Cancer drugs are already used on dogs, under controlled circumstances, but until now they have all been medicines developed for human use.

“This cancer drug approval for dogs is an important step forward for veterinary medicine,” Bernadette Dunham, director of FDA’s center for veterinary medicine, said in a statement Wednesday.

“Prior to this approval, veterinarians had to rely on human oncology drugs, without knowledge of how safe or effective they would be for dogs,” Dunham said. “Today’s approval offers dog owners, in consultation with their veterinarian, an option for treatment of their dog’s cancer.”

Palladia is a tyrosine kinase inhibitor that works by killing tumor cells and cutting off blood supply to the tumor. Common side effects include diarrhea, decrease or loss of appetite, lameness, weight loss and blood in the stool.