ohmidog!

A Lab mix whose blindness is believed to have led to aggression toward other dogs, preventing her from being adoptable, heads to Las Vegas on tomorrow night’s episode of Dogtown for surgery that could restore her sight.

Dr. Patti Iampietro, of the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab, Utah, accompanies Lake, whose blindness was caused by cataracts, to Las Vegas for the surgery, performed by Michael Brinkman, a veterinary opthamologist.

Dogtown airs Friday at 10 p.m. on the National Geographic Channel

Brinkman was also a pioneer in devleoping glasses for dogs.

The search continued yesterday for Gollum, a small Italian Greyhound whose owner died trying to save him and her other two dogs from an icy pond in Texas.

Police say the other two dogs and their owner, Andrea Benua, drowned in the pond Monday.

Gollum is believed not to have dronwned,but he disappeared after the accident. Benua’s family and friends are trying to find him, they say, because it’s what Benua would have wanted. Benua and her husband had no children, only the dogs, WFAA in Dallas-Fort Worth reports.

Benua frequently donated to animal shelters and her friends and family asked that anyone wishing to honor her memory do the same.

A hunting dog on a walk with her owner in Minnesota led him to a 94-year-old neighbor who was unconscious and frozen to his driveway.

Brett Grinde and his German shorthair, Effie, were on a late afternoon walk Monday when the old hunting dog suddenly began pulling to the right, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

Grinde, a Pine County sheriff’s investigator, let Effie off the leash and she ran to a driveway 40 yards away, stopping at the body of Grinde’s neighbor, William Lepsch, who apparently had fallen while retrieving his mail.

Lepsch’s wife, Marjorie, who uses a wheelchair, had looked outside and seen her husband on the ground. She tried dialing 911, she said, but had repeatedly misdialed out of panic.

“Nobody’s around and I’m out there hollering ‘Somebody please help me!’ but there was no one,” she said. “In the meantime this dog ran up and began licking his face.”

Grinde called 911, then started CPR.  Lepsch initially regained consciousness and was taken to North Memorial Medical Center.

Update: A North Memorial nursing supervisor says Lepsch passed away Wednesday morning.

An independent investigation launched after a BBC documentary raised concerns about purebred breeding practices concludes the health of many animals is being put at risk by some breeders.

Britain’s Kennel Club and Dogs Trust funded the inquiry, which looked at puppy farms, inbreeding, and breeding for extreme features.

Cambridge University professor Sir Patrick Bateson, who is president of the Zoological Society of London, said the report concludes that conditions of some puppy farms was “not good” and “probably in breach of the Animal Welfare Act”.

Also, the report says, some  breeders were responsible for “too much” inbreeding, creating “all sorts of health problems,” such as the “very big head of the bulldog” that necessitated about 90% of them giving birth through Caesarian section, according to the BBC.

The Kennel Club and Dogs Trust funded the independent inquiry after concerns highlighted in the 2008 BBC documentary, “Pedigree Dogs Exposed,” which reported that breeders, in an attempt to meet Kennel Club standards and win dog shows, exaggerated the features of breeds at the expense of dogs’ health.

The BBC report, which led the Royal SPCA to pull out of Crufts, said many physical traits called for by the Kennel Club’s breed standards, such as short faces and dwarfism, led to inherent health problems.

The Kennel Club, which runs Crufts, changed many of its breed standards in January 2009 to exclude ”anything that could in any way be interpreted as encouraging features that might prevent a dog breathing, walking and seeing freely.”

Specific changes included calling for leaner, less wrinkly bulldogs; shortening the forelegs of German shepherds which, through breeding, had gotten overly long and weak; and less fluffy coats on chow chows so they wouldn’t become distressed in hot weather.

Judges at licensed dog shows were instructed to choose only the healthiest dogs as champions, and expel any dogs that showed signs of ill-health from the Crufts show.

A New York City woman has been charged after police say she was caught on video kicking and jerking her Pomeranian on an elevator in the same housing project where surveillance cameras captured a dog being beaten earlier this month.

Tiara Davis was charged with torturing and injuring an animal Monday. The incident was recorded by video cameras in the elevators of the Grant Houses Sunday morning. Police released the videos Tuesday.

The video shows Sparky, her 4-year-old Pomeranian, being beaten and jerked by its leash until unconscious.

Davis, 31, said she lost her temper when the dog relieved himself before getting outside.

“I kept telling him, ‘Sparky! Wait! Wait!’ ” Davis, a vocational counselor for ex-offenders, told the New York Daily News. “I became a little frustrated,” she added. “It was never my intention to hurt him.”

Sparky is recovering at the ASPCA hospital.

Luna, a deaf but resourceful bulldog mix who escaped from a veterinary hospital in New York and was missing for more than a week, has been returned to her owners.

A surveillance tape at Shaker Veterinary in Latham showed Luna pushed open her crate door on Jan 2. She went through several more doors and then managed to open the main door of the hospital by pulling down a handicapped handle and pushing it open.

After the dog, who had been at the hospital for a couple of days, was reported missing, her owners, Ralph Rataul and his wife, Shelley, put up an $800 reward, which included their money, a contribution from Shaker Veterinary Hospital and donations from friends.

A story on her escape appeared in the Albany Times Union, and concerned citizens in the area are believed to have left food out for the dog after hearing about her — Dee Dee’s Tavern, for one, which put out some prime rib. Over the weekend, 200 volunteers searched  for Luna, and family members and friends spent hours driving around  on lunch hours and after work looking for her, the newspaper said.

On Monday, a couple found Luna in their backyard in Loudonville — more than a week after her disappearance — a couple of miles from the veterinary hospital.

Recognizing her from a story in Sunday’s Times Union, the couple tried to lure Luna inside, but she resisted. They called the veterinary hospital and the hospital staff called Rataul, who came and picked her up.

“I’m overjoyed,” Rataul said Monday. “This is unreal. She’s home, she’s safe.”

The couple, who adopted the dog three years ago, had feared the worst, due to the dog’s handicap.

“She’s not an outdoors dog, not a hunting dog, but some instinctual stuff must have kicked in”  said Ken Wolfe, assistant director of the hospital. “Whatever she was doing, she was doing it right.” Luna lost 12 pounds but  was in good shape, the vet said.

The couple who found Luna in their backyard, meanwhile, turned down the reward money, asking that it go to charity. Rataul said half of the reward will be donated to the ASPCA and the other half to the Mohawk Hudson Humane Society.

(Photo: Luna and owner Ralph Rataul. By Skip Dickstein/Albany Times Union)

PETA is pulling a fur-free ad campaign that used the likeness of first lady Michelle Obama without her permission.

PETA said it used photos of Michelle Obama in an anti-fur campaign because the first lady does not wear fur. But they never received authorization to use her image.

Michael McGraw, a PETA spokesman, told the Associated Press they pulled the ad, which also featured Oprah Winfrey, Carrie Underwood and Tyra Banks,  “to show good faith.”

At the same time, PETA is urging the White House to take a stand against another unauthorized use of the First Family’s name — the debut last week of the Ringling Bros. circus’ newest performing elephant, “Baby Barack.”  In a letter Tuesday to the president, PETA President Ingrid Newkirk urged the White House to demand a name change for Baby Barack.

Baby Barack made his debut last week in Tampa.

The White House has said it does not condone the use of the first family’s name or images for commercial purposes. Last week, the Weatherproof outerwear company agreed to pull an ad campaign built around a photo of Obama at the Great Wall of China in which he appeared to be wearing a jacket made by the company.

(Photo: PETA)

The Michigan man charged with animal cruelty after authorities found hundreds of Chihuahuas in his home, live and dead, pleaded guilty in a plea agreement yesterday.

Kenneth Lang Jr. of Dearborn, will serve five years’ probation under supervision of a Wayne County mental health court.

Lang, 56, admitted in the plea that the animals in his home were subjected to abusive conditions because he was overwhelmed by their sheer numbers, according to the Detroit Free Press.

Under the terms of the plea agreement, Lang will not be permitted to own any animals. He’s also required to make $3,000 restitution to the Animal Legal Defense Fund for the examination of the dead dogs, and restitution to the city of Dearborn.

Lang’s lawyer, James Schmier, said Lang has an IQ of about 70 and suffers from several psychiatric conditions. “He’s a very human guy with a very human story, and with very human frailties,” the lawyer said.

Lang was found living in squalid conditions with more than 100 live Chihuahuas and more than 100 dead ones found frozen in freezers. The prosecutors said of the 105 that were rescued, all but 13 have been successfully adopted. Those are living in a no-kill shelter.

An off-duty Chicago police officer shot and killed a neighbor’s German shepherd Monday, claiming the dog was preparing to attack her.

The officer said she was walking her dog, described as pug, when the neighbor’s dog escaped from the backyard, attacked her dog and then threatened her.

When police arrived after the shooting, they issued a ticket to the owner of the dead dog for not having a license.

“Like killing my dog wasn’t enough?”  the neighbor, Laura Bravo, said.

The shooting happened as Bravo’s three children were heading to school. They let their dog, Malachi, out into the backyard, heard gunfire, and then saw the dog bleeding on the sidewalk.

After the Chicago Sun-Times inquired whether the officer had a license for her dog, the department checked and discovered she didn’t, a police spokesman said. The unidentified officer, a female who has been with the department about three years, was then issued one as well.

The tickets carry a fine of up to $500.

It’s no secret that animals seem to sense earthquakes before they hit, but here’s some video proof.

A 6.5 magnitude earthquake that caused millions of dollars of property damage in Humboldt County, California, Saturday was sensed by a Labrador named Sophie well before humans started reacting, according to this video, from surveillance cameras in the offices of the Times-Standard in Eureka.

Sophie bolts from the room several seconds before the room starts visibly shaking and workers can be seen fleeing.

Yet more proof that dogs have more sense than humans — or at least humans who work for newspapers.