ohmidog!

BAD RAP, the California pit bull advocacy group, invited Michael Vick to visit  eight of his former dogs this weekend when the Philadelphia Eagles are in town to play the Oakland Raiders.

Vick declined the offer.

BAD RAP (Bay Area Doglovers Responsible About Pitbulls) told the Associated Press on Wednesday that it extended the invitation through the Eagles to Vick last week.

Tim Racer, BAD RAP co-founder, said the group picked a location that would have allowed Vick to view the dogs from behind a window at a distance — thus satisfying the conditions of Vick’s parole that bar him from being near animals.

Racer said the Eagles informed him Wednesday that Vick would decline the offer.

“We understand Vick is trying to right his wrongs and is very interested in redemption, but you can’t find redemption without acknowledging your victims,” Racer said. “Making amends to the dogs themselves would have helped to create some closure for many of us, especially those people who worked so hard to keep them from being destroyed. It seems that Vick is not ready to go there.”

Oakland-based BAD RAP took in 10 of  the dogs that were part of  Vick’s dogfighting operation at Bad Newz Kennels in southeastern Virginia.

(Photo: Ernie was among the dogs seized from Michael Vick. He was adopted by Andy and Sasha Gibbs. Courtesy of BAD RAP)

 
As fancy as they are getting, dog parks really only need three basic things — some space, a fence and a source of water.

Kroll Dog Park in Bakersfield, California lacks the latter, and users of the dog park have banded together to do something about it.

The only water source at Kroll is located outside the park, and it has been repeatedly vandalized. A few dog owners took it upon themselves to put out water buckets, but they kept getting stolen.

The city of Bakersfield has said it doesn’t have the funds to install a drinking fountain inside the park, but a pet-sitting business is leading an effort among dog owners to buy one themselves, ABC affilliate KERO reported.

After hearing about the problems,  Fetch Pet Care is helping organize dog owners. A website, ThirstyKrollDogs.com, has been created and work is underway to raise $6,000 to have a water source put in the park.

(Photo: A dog drinks from the fountain at Baltimore’s new Locust Point Dog Park.)

As yet more proof that dogs eat the strangest things, a terrier required veterinary treatment after wolfing down one of his owner’s silicone falsies.

The incident — despite its vast pun potential — was straightforwardly reported on Dogster back in August, in a dispatch written by the veterinarian, Dr. Eric Barchas.

“Last night at the emergency hospital a nurse carried a five-year-old Terrier cross into the treatment room. She advised me matter-of-factly that the dog had consumed a fake breast three hours earlier.”

Barchas determined that the fake breast, while not toxic, would ultimately lodge in the dog’s intestines — the dog being only 15 pounds and the breast being a size B.

With only three hours having passed since ingestion, the vet decided to try to make the dog vomit. The clients authorized the procedure — and the vet forced the dog to vomit with an intravenous injection of a drug called apomorphine.

“The dog vomited copious dog food, a moderate amount of grass, several small twigs, an ear plug, some yarn, and a fake breast, size B,” Barchas wrote. Forty-five minutes later the dog was ready to go home. Barchas didn’t mention how much he billed the family, apparently heeding the Biblical advice:

“Beware of falsie profits.”

 
Almost two of every three pet owners prefer dogs, according to an online poll conducted jointly by the American Kennel Club and the Cat Fanciers Asociation.

Of more than 9,000 votes cast, dogs fetched 65 percent of them. The votes in the “pet preference” poll were tallied over eight weeks on the website meetthebreeds.com.

Inspired by the upcoming Meet the Breeds event, the world’s largest showcase of cats and dogs, the American Kennel Club and the Cat Fanciers’ Association  joined forces this summer to put an end to the age old debate over whether dogs or cats are more beloved.

While cats outnumber dogs by nearly 13 million among the pet-owning American public, dogs fetched 65% of the vote, with the widest margins of victory in Chicago, Seattle,  and Detroit.

Cats fared slightly better, but still beneath dogs, in Philadelphia, Houston and Baltimore. The city-by-city tallies can be found on the Meet the Breeds website.

Voters were allowed to present their arguments along with their votes. Here are some of them, according to an AKC press release.

CATS:

– Don’t hang all over you wanting attention … they don’t eat disgusting things and then try to lick your face.

– Don’t have to be walked and they don’t bark!

– Are  much easier to live with – with much less work.

Dogs on the other hand “walk around with a smile as man’s best friend and are always there for us.”

And as for a cat’s nine lives, one voter said, “Cats have to have do-over lives because they didn’t figure out how to have fun the first time around.”

Sponsored by PetPartners, Inc. a leading pet healthcare provider, Meet the Breeds will be held October 17 & 18, 2009 at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City. The event will showcase 160 AKC registered dog breeds and 41 CFA registered cat breeds in booths individually decorated to depict each breed’s country of origin, historical purpose/function, and attributes as a family pet.

More information and tickets are available at meetthebreeds.com.