ohmidog!

Michael Vick, after serving 18 months for operating a dogfighting ring, was conditionally reinstated to the NFL today.

Vick can immediately take part in preseason practices, workouts and meetings and can play in the final two preseason games — if he can find a team that will sign him.

A number of teams have already said they would not.

Once the season begins, Vick may participate in all team activities except games, but NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said he would consider Vick for full reinstatement by Week 6 of the season, at the latest, according to ESPN.

Goodell suspended Vick indefinitely in August 2007 after the former Atlanta Falcons quarterback admitted bankrolling a dogfighting operation on his property in Virginia. At the time, Goodell said Vick must show remorse before he would consider reinstating him.

“I accept that you are sincere when you say that you want to, and will, turn your life around, and that you intend to be a positive role model for others,” Goodell said in his letter to Vick. “I am prepared to offer you that opportunity. Whether you succeed is entirely in your hands.”

“Needless to say, your margin for error is extremely limited,” the letter said. “I urge you to take full advantage of the resources available to support you and to dedicate yourself to rebuilding your life and your career. If you do this, the NFL will support you.”

“I do recognize that some will never forgive him for what he did,” Goodell said.

Vick, once the highest-paid player in the league, said he was grateful for a second chance.

Vick pleaded guilty after his three co-defendants had already done so. They told of how Vick participated in the killing of dogs that didn’t perform well in test fights by shooting, hanging, drowning or slamming them to the ground.

Vick’s appearances at federal court in Richmond, Va., prompted large groups of protesters to gather outside. Many were with PETA and held signs depicting photographs of pit bulls ravaged in dogfights. Some supporters showed up as well, some wearing his No. 7 jersey.

A Brazilian company called Petsmiling — and you’ll understand the smiling part in a second — has created a new toy for dogs: a sex doll.

Complete with a functioning female sex organ, the Doggie Lover Doll, was introduced at a pet expo in South America and will be hitting the market soon.

 “I had the idea to make this doll when my Maltese started to grab everybody’s legs. I did some research and couldn’t find anything like it, anywhere in the world. I decided to make it!” said Marco Giroto, owner of the PetSmiling company.

Actually a doggie sex doll was announced in 2007 as a product that was soon to, um, arrive on the marketplace, but a visit to the Scruffy website reveals little information.

The website for the new Doggie Lover Doll is under construction.

To read the company’s full press release — and I understand if you don’t want to — feel free to continue.

Read more »

One family’s experience with “canine disarming” — a controversial last resort for dogs who haven’t been able to lick the biting habit — was the subject of a first person account in Saturday’s Los Angeles Times.

Dog owner Diane R. Krieger wrote about her dog, Cotton, a six-year-old American Eskimo dog who even ”Dog Whisperer” Cesar Millan couldn’t help,

“I had tried everything. Puppy classes and basic-training at the neighborhood PetSmart. A library of self-help books and videos. Even a pricey dog-aggression expert whose Israeli accent made me want to stand at attention. He ordered counter-conditioning and desensitization drills, supplemented by a low-protein diet and a doggie herbal remedy akin to St. John’s Wort…

“I tried clicker training, high-pitched electronic tones, pepper spray, throwing soda cans filled with rocks. I considered an electric shock collar but worried that in the hands of an amateur … it might do more harm than good.

“Finally, I appealed to the fabled Dog Whisperer.”

Krieger writes that Cotton became calm and submissive — until Millan left.

Running out of options, she considered surrendering the dog, and even euthanasia.

Then she saw an Animal Planet program featuring Dr. David Nielsen, a veterinary dentist based in Manhattan Beach, talking about a miracle fix: “canine disarming.”

Instead of extracting the four canine teeth, Nielsen cuts away 4 millimeters of tooth, then blunts the extra set of pointy incisors. Nielsen says he has “disarmed” some 300 animals in the last dozen years, not all of them dogs.

Kireger notes that Nielsen may be something of a maverick. The American Veterinary Medical Association says that disarming dogs, once fairly common, fell out of favor several years ago as behavioral modification techniques improved. The association is opposed to either tooth removal or disarming.

The American Veterinary Dental College agrees that disarming is controversial, but in a position statement adopted in 2005 it endorsed the procedure in “selected cases.”

Cotton’s reconfigured choppers cost Krieger $1,600, and led to no lasting physical side effects.

Nielsen told Krieger canine disarming does have psychological effects, though. “You can see it in their eyes almost the moment they wake up from the anesthesia. It’s like they’re wondering, ‘who took away my knives?’”

Cotton still bites, Krieger wrote, but inflicts little damage.

About 200 children in east London were given pedometers to automatically count how many steps they walked and ran each day as part of a research study.

But when the researchers at Mile End Centre for Sports and Exercise Medicine reviewed the results, they couldn’t figure out why some of the fat kids could be so fat, based on the amount of exercise the pedometers showed they were getting.

Turns out the little scamps were attaching the devices to their dogs’ collars.

The pilot study in Whitechapel required 11 and 12-year-olds to clip a pedometer to their waists, with researchers at the centre collecting the readings by satellite, according to a BBC report.

“But after a week we found there were some kids who were extremely active but still obese,” said Professor Nicola Maffulli.

It was “not unheard of” for participants in previous studies to manipulate the readings of pedometers, he added. Once adjusted to take into account the help from pets, the study indicated that boys in the borough walk or run 12,620 steps a day, below the recommended level of 15,000 steps. Girls were found to take 10,150 steps, falling short of the recommended 12,000 steps.

It indicated that more than a third of 11 and 12-year-olds in the borough of Tower Hamlets are overweight or obese – 11% higher than the national average.

The borough’s dogs, on the other hand, are looking quite fit.

Police in Dearborn, Mich., found about 150 dead dogs packed in freezers in the basement of a Michigan house  where more than 110 live dogs, mostly Chihuahuas, were rescued last week.

Police Chief Ronald Haddad said an investigation is continuing into the case of a 56-year-old man found living in the suburban Detroit home, which was littered with feces and trash, according to the Associated Press.

“The house was in complete disarray, very cluttered and, with 100-plus dogs running around in there, very filthy,” he said. He said the case could be forwarded to prosecutors for possible animal-cruelty charges.

The man living in the house was taken to a local hospital for observation. He had no health insurance and a mental impairment, and had lived for years alone in the home after his parents retired to Florida.

Forty-two  dogs were rescued Wednesday. Crews returned Thursday and found more than 60 dogs, and about 10 more were rescued Friday, when police also found the dead dogs in freezers.

The rescued dogs were taken to the Dearborn Animal Shelter.