ohmidog!

 
The Walt Disney movie, “101 Dalmatians,” led to a pretty well-documented surge in their popularity, followed by a surge in members of the  breed being dropped off at shelters and rescues.

When it comes to the musical version of “101 Dalmatians,” though, some abandoned dalmatians actually got rescued — sprung to take part in the play’s final production number.

The cast of the musical “101 Dalmatians,”  includes 15 dalmatians, most of whom were procured at shelters by Florida animal trainer Joel Slaven oversees, according to the Los Angeles Time’s Unleashed blog.

The musical, which begins its national tour this month in Minneapolis, ends with a three-minute finale — a song written by Dennis DeYoung, a founding member of the band Styx — in which only dogs are on the stage. It’s the only time actual dogs appear in the play, in which humans play the roles of dogs.

Slaven said dalmatians were overbred to meet public demand for the breed after the Disney movie. As a result, the breed, health and behavior problems among them grew more prevalent. “People got the dogs, couldn’t afford vet bills, found the dogs untrainable, or didn’t get along with kids,” he said.

Slaven said he chose high spirited dogs, less likely to be adopted dogs for the performance. “These are the outgoing, playful, confident dogs — the dogs that aren’t going to be happy laying on someone’s couch each day,” he said. “They’re the ones chewing and barking because they want to be doing something.” 

Slaven hopes to find permanent owners for the dogs at the end of the tour, slated to run through at least June 2010. If  any don’t end up with homes, he says he’ll bring them back to his ranch.

Last week we showed you Boomer, the Landseer Newfoundland whose owner hopes to have him proclaimed the world’s tallest dog by the Guinness Book of World Records.

Now, the owner of a Great Dane in Arizona has come forward and plans to give Boomer a run for his money.

Realtor Dave Nasser’s 4-year-old dog, George, stands 42 inches tall and weighs 245 pounds, the Associated Press reports.

Nasser and some friends plan to launch a public relations drive they hope will lead to tallest dog honors, talk shows and maybe even a movie deal.

A Guinness World Records spokesman says since the death last August of Gibson, a 42.2-inch-tall Great Dane, there is no confirmed world’s tallest dog.

After reading of a North Dakota woman’s effort to get her Newf proclaimed World’s Tallest Dog, Nasser and friends decided to launch their own effort as well.

Nasser is working through an application, which requires vital stats recorded by a vet, verification of the dog’s statistics by other witnesses, a video and a press conference.  He and his friends are also planning a Facebook fan page for George.

Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger — instead of commiting crime — is taking a bite out of it, with his donation of two K-9 unit dogs to Detroit,  the city where he won the first Super Bowl.

Roethlisberger, in Detroit yesterday to play the Lions, is paying for both dogs. They replace a pair of retiring dogs that left the Detroit Police Department at the end of the year.

Detroit Police Chief Warren Evans told the Detroit Free Press he was grateful for the donation.

“We are deeply appreciative to the Ben Roethlisberger Foundation for this grant,” Evans said. “In these difficult budgetary times, we must rely more and more on outside sources of funding to support our officers’ efforts. This grant will provide our officers additional resources to protect the citizens of Detroit.”

The quarterback created the the foundation to distribute grants to police and fire departments in Pittsburgh and cities of each regular season road opponent for the Steelers.

“It’s incredible to see the strong bond that is formed between the dogs and their partners both on the job and at home,” Roethlisberger said in a statement.

Since we brought you the dog who can read yesterday, we thought we’d continue today with the dog who can do math.

Reading, arithmetic … what does that leave? Oh yeah, writing. What’s that? You don’t think a dog can write?

Think again:

Willow’s owner claims her dog can read — only three phrases, but still.

What do you think? Is the dog actually reading the words? Or is something else at play?

Of 85 dogs in South Carolina that belong to the three breeds banned from Marine housing, only two proved to be potentially dangerous when tested by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

As a result, the other 83 were granted exemptions from the Marine’s worldwide breed ban and will be allowed to continue to reside at Marine bases until 2012.

The Marines this year banned pit bulls, Rottweilers and canine-wolf mixes because their “dominant traits of aggression present an unreasonable risk to the health and safety of personnel.”  But owners who can show through assessments that their dogs aren’t dangerous may get waivers and keep them on bases through 2012.

Of the 85 dogs assessed by the ASPCA, two will have to leave base housing, according to the Orangeburg Times and Democrat. Two others showed aggressive tendencies but one will work with a trainer and another will be neutered.

The breed ban came after a 3-year-old boy was fatally attacked by a pit bull at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.

The pets at the Parris Island Marine Recruit Depot, the Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort and the Beaufort Naval Hospital were assessed by experts from the ASPCA during three days of tests this week.

The tests seemed to confirm what most of us already know — breed-specific rules and legislation are sheer folly.

“We believe breed bans cannot be effective because of this. We found some really great animals and families,” ASPCA animal behavior expert Emily Weiss said. “We don’t think it’s a breed issue. We think it’s an individual behavior issue and what we saw at the base verifies that.”

Capt. Brian Block, a Marine Corps spokesman, noting what happened at Camp Lejeune, said “having one dog who would do that is not an acceptable risk from our point of view.”

Pet owners at other Marine bases can have their dogs assessed by veterinarians.

“The next best thing to having the world at your feet is to have a dog at your heels,” Vogue — the magazine — observed in 1930.

Since 1909, dogs have played a role in the magazine’s portrayal of all things glamorous — as companions to style icons and royalty, as inspiration for fiction, as art (both paintings and photographs), and even appearing on the cover from time to time.

Now their contribution to the magazine has been captured in a book, “Dogs in Vogue: A Century of Canine Chic.”

Author Judith Watt came up with the idea as she was sifting through 100-year’s worth of Vogue (the British edition) while doing research for a  special millennial issue in 1999.

“I came across something quite unexpected among the fashion photographs in the magazine’s archive: thousands of canines,” Watt writes in an article in the UK Independent.

In the past century, dogs have served Vogue as “companions, accessories, barely-legible scribbles, caricatures, stars of the grandest photographic portraits and of whimsical fashion illustrations. They are the subject of essays and sometimes treated as celebrities. Taken together, the best of the photographs and features provide a fascinating record of society’s changing preferences for breeds and the evolving role of dogs in women’s lives.”

“Anyone labouring under the delusion that dogs are just man’s best friend and women prefer cats will think again.”

 
DogFest, the Baltimore Humane Society’s biggest fundraising event of the year, kicks off  Saturday morning at Shawan Downs in Hunt Valley.

The day-long event starts with a 5K-9 Fun Run at 7:40 a.m. At 10 a.m., the gates open and the activities begin — and there are a ton of them.

DogFest will feature agility runs, dog contests, pet education,  a sandy beach and pools for the dogs to play in and a puppy pumpkin patch, where dogs can pick their own pumpkins.

In addition to numerous dog rescue groups on hand, DogFest will also feature Equine Rescue groups that will be exhibiting horses for adoption and offering horseback riding for kids and adults.

Admission is $10, with children in strollers admitted free.

Here’s a partial schedule:

Read more »

How tall is Boomer?

Tall enough to drink from the kitchen faucet, while all four feet are on the ground.

Tall enough to look peer through a car window, and look down on the driver.

Boomer measures 3 feet tall at the shoulders and is 7 feet long from nose to tail.

His owner, Caryn Weber, of North Dakota, is seeking to have the 3-year-old Landseer Newfoundland listed in the Guinness World Records.

The previous record-holder for world’s tallest dog was a four-foot-tall harlequin Great Dane named Gibson, who died in August.

 
Thanks to your votes, ohmidog! has climbed into the top ten “misfit” blogs in Maryland.

In just a day’s time — after I learned about the “Mobbie” awards, and informed you, dear readers, about them — we rose from No. 23 to No. 9.

That, of course, made me want to be No. 1 — that and the fact that I used to write a similar blog for the Baltimore Sun, which is sponsoring the competition. I thought winning could serve as one of those  “how do you like me now?” moments.

Suddenly, beating out the Baltimore Sewing Examiner wasn’t enough, and I set my sites (sights?) on the current top vote-getter, You Don’t Say,  written by another Sun alum, John E. McIntyre, aka the grammar Nazi.

The fact that the winner gets 50,000 “impressions”  was not a big incentive for me since I’m not even sure what those are. I wanted to win for reasons of ego alone.

Anyway, I was all geared up to lobby for a Mobbie — to urge you to vote and vote again for ohmidog! here before the contest ends tomorrow — until this morning when I saw and posted the video below on Baxter, the therapy dog.

If you, too, need some perspective, scroll on down to the next entry (or, if you’re not on our main page, click on the ohmidog! logo above to get to the main page and then scroll on down) and watch Baxter in action.

Then, once you’ve witnessed the true meaning of selflessness, and the tears have dried up  … Vote for me! Vote for me! Vote for me!

(Photo: My dog Ace takes pen in mouth — but just ever so briefly so I could take a picture. Then it was taken away and placed where he couldn’t reach it. By John Woestendiek, potential Mobbie award winner, if enough people go here and vote.)