ohmidog!

The man who fed the pack of dogs that mauled an Oglethorpe County, Georgia couple last weekend will not face criminal charges, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

Howard Thaxton, who was recently forced to move from his rural Lexington home due to medical problems, did not own the 16 feral canines — a major factor in the decision to not file charges, said Jim Fullington, special agent in charge of the GBI’s Athens office.

Thaxton, an amputee who visited his property every other day to feed the dogs, told investigators he did not believe they were responsible for the attacks. Neighbors interviewed said the  dogs hadn’t shown any previous signs of aggression.

Authorities say the dogs attacked and killed Lothar and Sherry Schweder. The dogs were euthanized Tuesday at the Madison Oglethorpe Animal Shelter.

An Annapolis man received a three-year sentence Thursday — the maximum — for the killing of his girlfriend’s puppy.

Donte W. McCreary, 20, killed the 3-month-old terrier in front of his girlfriend because she cared more for it than for him, Anne Arundel County Assistant State’s Attorney Kimberly DiPietro said. “If this is what he will do to a dog that he thinks she loves more than him, I don’t know what he would think of doing [to] a child,” she said, noting that the couple has a 15-month-old son.

McCreary pleaded guilty to a Christmas Eve 2008 assault on girlfriend Laura Sanford and to felony animal cruelty in the March 7 killing of the 4-pound dog, which he squeezed and stabbed, the Baltimore Sun reported.

The judge also sentenced McCreary to the maximum 10 years in prison for second-degree assault, suspending seven years and adding five years of supervised probation.

Dogs aren’t just permitted in Washington state’s King County Courthouse, they work there — serving to calm the nerves of  intimidated witnesses and make their testimony flow more freely.

In addition to serving as companions for traumatized victims of child abuse who are testifying in court, the dogs are used for a variety of other courthouse purposes, according to a recent article in the Dallas Morning News.

According to the Courthouse Dogs website, dogs have been helping seek justice in Seattle since 2003.

The dogs provide comfort to sexually abused children while they undergo forensic interviews and testify in court, assist drug court participants in their recovery, visit juveniles in detention facilities, greet jurors and in general lift the spirits of courthouse staff.

Ellen O’Neill-Stephens, a prosecutor in Seattle, launched Courthouse Dogs in 2003 after using a service dog – Jeeter – for her son who has cerebral palsy.

She was in Dallas this week to make a presentation on the progam to the 21st annual Crimes Against Children Conference, sponsored by the Dallas Children’s Advocacy Center and the Dallas Police Department.

“Sometimes, these children will say things to the dog that they’re too embarrassed to say to a person,” Stephens said. “We had a girl who had been severely abused and she could never talk about it. But she petted Jeeter for over 90 minutes straight and she was able to tell what happened.”

Stephens said the courthouse dogs are usually golden or Labrador retrievers who go through an intensive training regimen. Only about 30 percent of the dogs that start out actually make it, she said.

She said she believes that the highly skilled canines can often be the difference in a conviction or not guilty verdict in child abuse cases.

“These children are suffering acute emotional trauma,” she said. “These dogs can help them get through that.”

(Photo courtesy of www.courthousedogs.org)

An eight-year-old dog is being credited with saving the life of an abandoned newborn baby in Argentina, carrying him from a field and placing him safely alongside her own puppies.

The country’s media are calling him “the miracle baby,” according to the BBC.

The baby boy was born prematurely to a 14-year-old girl, who apparently panicked and abandoned him in a field in a shanty town outside the capital of Buenos Aires.

The dog, named La China picked up the baby and carried him from the field to join her litter. The dog’s owner reported hearing the child crying. The baby had some slight injuries, but no bite marks.

La China, worried about her own puppies, is reported to be petrified by her new found fame, and her owner says he is worried that she is not eating.

A Staten Island man was arrested this week for fatally beating his girlfriend’s 5-pound Chihuahua, apparently because the dog had bitten him days earlier, police said.

Or, as the New York Post  put it, “Brute Bashed 5-Lb. Dog to Death: Cops.”

Frank Coppola, 28, allegedly beat the 3-year-old dog, named Bella, on Feb. 28 at the Staten Island apartment he shared with his girlfriend.

Police said it took six months to arrest him because his girlfriend, Melissa DePietro, was reluctant to testify against Coppola. Prosecutors convinced her to testify before a grand jury, which, along with graphic medical evidence, proved enough for an indictment.

A necropsy performed on Bella showed the dog had suffered severe trauma to its chest, internal bleeding, several broken ribs, a ruptured jugular vein and bruised lungs, investigators said. According to the Post, the dog had bitten Coppola days before the fatal beating.

When asked by a veterinarian what had happened, Coppola claimed the dog had run into a wall and collapsed.

Coppola was charged with animal cruelty, and faces up to four years in prison. He was released on $2,500 bail.

“This a very serious crime. It’s not every day that an animal-cruelty charge goes before a grand jury, but obviously we thought this case was serious enough to take that step,” said Bill Smith, a spokesman for District Attorney’s office.

Not too many dogs are full-time outdoor dwellers these days, but for those who are, and even those who aren’t, here’s a product that makes good sense, especially on days as miserably steamy as yesterday.

The WaterDog hooks up to your spigot and turns on when it senses your dog approaching, spewing out some fresh water to quench his thirst.

It then turns off when your dog leaves the area.

The device helps keep your dog from drinking from a stagnant pool, keeps you from constantly having to fill the water bowl and ensures he always has water.

Its inventor came up with the idea on his daily walks with Romeo, his Great Dane. Anxious over wheter the dog was getting dehydrated, the inventor would stop and turn on spigots in front of houses under construction.

That led to Romeo walking up to any spigot he saw and waiting there for his owner to turn it on — a minor inconvenience.

“As I thought more about how much Romeo loved to drink from the spigot, I decided to build one at the house, so that he could have it all the time. This was partly out of love to Romeo but also out of laziness from me, since having a device like this would free me from the chore of keeping water available,” the inventor, a mechanical engineer, says on his website.

An Easton woman was reunited with her dog today, but not her car, after losing both to carjackers earlier this week.

Amy Gaffney, 46, says she rolled down her window to ask for directions from two young men in west Baltimore when one of them reached in and grabbed her Lhasa Apso-poodle mix, Jojo.

When she jumped out of her car to try and get her dog back, someone else jumped in and drove the car away. In only about a minute, both her dog and car had disappeared from sight.

Gaffney filed a police report and got a ride back to Easton, according to the Baltimore Sun.

At about 2 a.m. the next night, Melissa Garland found a dog wandering the street in west Baltimore. She coaxed the dog out from under a car and took him home. The next morning dropped the dog off at the Maryland SPCA.

Gaffney, meanwhile, had called the SPCA that morning to file a missing dog report. SPCA staff alerted her that her dog had been found, and she arrived to pick it up this morning.

“His tail was wagging like crazy and he was kissing me,” Gaffney says. “I was crying and so happy.”

After the story appeared in the Sun, several readers questioned what the Easton woman might have been up to in that section of the city — and some even went to the trouble of looking up her criminal record, which includes some drug charges.

As the Sun’s blog, “Unleashed” points out today, Gaffney admits to some run-ins with the law, but it’s still a heartwarming story.

Maybe something less than thorough — newspaper management these days prohibits reporters from that luxury –  but still slightly heartwarming.

What do you get when you bring together 225 pit bulls, 204 volunteers, the woman to your left in the flowing white dress and six recent prison parolees on a ranch in the canyons of southern California?

A reality show, of course.

Tia Maria Torres, 49, started Villalobos Rescue Center – the largest pit bull rescue in the United States – 14 years ago. Three years ago, she began taking in ex-cons, including her prison pen pal Aren Marcus Jackson, a tattoo artist who would become her second husband.

According to an Associated Press report, the rescue has tried some novel fund-raising approaches in the past, including opening a brothel — a legal, Nevada one –  but it burned down. Now Torres, it seems, is turning to an even shadier source for funding — the reality show.

Animal Planet’s “Pit Bulls and Parolees” will debut next month.

Producer Michael “MikeyD” Dinco was a student in a pit bull class Torres taught years ago. Intrigued by the combination of pit bulls and parolees, he decided to pitch the reality show idea to the network. 

Torres said the show will help cover the $20,000 in monthly bills, including a ton of dog food a week, as well as its $25,000 vet tab. The rescue is located on 17 acres of rugged terrain in Canyon Country.

The television show will focus on the interaction of the dogs and men. “The dogs bring out the best in these guys,” Torres said. 

Torres grew up a in an a upper-middle class family, but fell into the gang life. That led to six years in the Army, followed by work as a youth counselor in Los Angeles. After 13 years in social services, she started training animals for the film industry before opening the shelter.

A new bill in the U.S. House that would allow pet owners to deduct up to $3,500 for “qualified pet-care expenses,” including vet bills, is drawing little attention and lots of laughs.

Given it’s considered a bit of an underdog, we’re all for it.

Called the HAPPY (Humanity and Pets Partnered Through the Years) Act, the bill is designed to make it more affordable for people to provide the care their pets need, and less likely that pet owners pinched by the recession will abandon their pets.

Congressman Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, R-Mich., introduced House Resolution 3501, on July 31. It seeks to amend the Internal Revenue Code to allow a deduction for pet care expenses, and would allow an individual to deduct a maximum of $3,500 for “qualified pet care expenses” for any “qualified pet.”

The congressman, who is not a pet owner, says he sponsored the bill to help families care for their pets during tough economic times.

“Families have raised concerns about how the recession has impacted them and their pets, which should come as no surprise since more than sixty percent of United States households own a pet,” Congressman McCotter wrote in an email to Paw Nation.

“Unfortunately, according to the Humane Society, the current recession has led to a noticeable increase in the number of animals at shelters and a decrease in the number of animals being adopted. We must help prevent children and families from losing their beloved pets or seeing animals destroyed due to an economic recession.”

Under the proposal, one could not deduct the cost of buying or adopting a pet.

McCotter has been taking some heat from bloggers and colleagues for the proposal, but the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council supports the bill, and so do we.

If you see it as something more than a joke, or perhaps even feel strongly about it, you can sign a petition here.

You won’t find Michael Vick’s Philadelphia Eagles jersey at Dick’s Sporting Goods — at least not yet.

A spokesman for Dick’s Sporting Goods said  the chain will not stock Michael Vick’s Eagles jersey until they “evaluate the reaction of Eagles fans,” according to a report in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The jerseys, which sell for $79.99 and up were placed on the website of the NFLShop, the league’s merchandizing arm, the same day Vick’s signing was announced.

Dick’s, while showing some backbone, hasn’t stocked them yet, but will likely cave in if they see demand is strong, the spokesman indicated.

“Right now we don’t know how much of a demand there is for [the jersey],” Dick’s chief marketing officer, Jeff Hennion, said in a prepared statement. “If there is a demand for it, we’ll sell it.”

Mitchell Modell, owner and CEO of Modell’s Sporting Goods, said he had reservations about selling Vick jerseys — but apparently he didn’t have much trouble overcoming them once he saw a “pretty high demand” for No. 7′s replica sports apparel – especially at his Philadelphia-area stores.

“We weren’t planning on selling it until the customers started coming into the stores demanding it,” Modell said. “As long as the customers are coming in, we’ll sell it. We’re in the business to serve our customers.”

Vick, the former star quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons, signed with the Eagles last week, three months after completing his 18-month federal prison sentence for dogfighting. The signing has triggered debate and led to a call for boycotts.

The day after Vick’s arrest on dogfighting charges in July 2007, the NFLShop.com removed Vick’s Falcons jerseys and other collectibles from its website. Reebok, the manufacturer of Vick-emblazoned apparel, suspended sales soon after.