ohmidog!

To understand this video clip you need the following background: New Orleans Saints fans are known to chant “Who Dat” in support of their football team.

Otherwise, the humans would just appear to be a bunch of fools, which of course they still kinda do even with that background knowledge.

Be that as it may, these particular fans have chosen to let a beagle lead them in the cheer — the ownership of which has become a matter of dispute.

The full chant is “Who Dat Say Dey Gonna Beat Dem Saints? Who Dat? Who Dat?”

The NFL is claiming it owns the phrase “Who Dat,” and has issued cease-and-desist orders against New Orleans vendors who sell Saints memorabilia with the wording.

New Orleans fans, the Wall Street Journal has reported, are outraged by the claim, contending the NFL never cared about the chant when the football team was losing, or after it was ousted from its home stadium in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina, finishing the season 3-13.

“The Saints actually win something and go to the Super Bowl, and the NFL sees a way they can make a penny,” complained Dan Frazier, general manager of local sports-talk radio station 690 WIST.

“Who dat,” locals say, was part of the local lingo well before it became the rallying cry at Saints games.

The Journal article says St. Augustine High School, an all-boys Catholic school in the city, started the chant in 1972 at its own football games. “Who dat talking about beating them Knights? Nobody! Nobody!”

The saying went on to become the rallying cry for the Saints, and, in the 1980s, New Orleans singer Aaron Neville made a video, singing “who dat” alongside team members.

But now, according to the NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy, “If ‘who dat’ is used in a manner to refer to Saints football, then the Saints own the rights.”

Under that reasoning, I guess the Philadelphia Eagles, and therefore the NFL, own the rights to, and any profits from, dogfighting, as well.

Either way, they’re still a bunch of bullies.

OK, so maybe it was slightly more dramatic than my rescue of Miley, the cat living under a nail-filled stairway next to a south Baltimore bar, who — unlike the dog who floated at least 75 miles on an ice floe out to sea — is, by the way, still looking for a good home.

Baltic, the dog who floated down Poland’s Vistula River and into the Baltic Sea, has a new owner — the seaman who rescued him.

Wojciech Pelczarski of the Sea Fisheries Institute in Gdynia said the decision was made after the dog rejected six people who had claimed to be his original owner, NPR reported.

He suspected the would-be owners were merely trying to be part of the media attention surrounding the dog’s rescue.

Pelczarski, whose institute co-owns the research ship “Baltica” that rescued the dog, says Baltic — as he has been nicknamed — is sociable, affectionate and was getting his first bath since his icy ordeal because his fur was still salty.

The dog’s new master is Adam Buczynski, who pulled him to safety from an ice sheet in the Baltic Sea last week.

Buczynski and other crew members spotted the dog Jan. 25 floating at least 15 miles from land, shivering and precariously perched on an ice floe. The crew lowered a pontoon to the water and Buczynski, the ship mechanic, managed to grab the dog and pull him to safety.

“He was very lucky,” Pelczarski said. “If the vessel had passed him at night, no one would have spotted him.”

Baltic was first seen two days earlier on the Vistula River, 60 miles inland, drifting on ice past the city of Grudziadz, where local firefighters tried but failed to save him.

(Photos: Top, Baltic on ice, by Ryszard Moroz/Associated Press /IMGW; bottom, Baltic with Buczynski, by Krzysztof Mystkowski /Associated Press

What do some Westminster show dogs have in common with some drug dealers’ attack dogs?

They’ve been debarked.

The surgical procedure, which critics label outdated and inhumane, has been around for decades, but continues to fall out of favor, especially among younger veterinarians and animal-rights advocates, the New York Times reported this week.

There are no reliable figures on how many dogs have had their vocal cords cut, but veterinarians and other animal experts say that dogs with no bark can  be found in private homes, on the show-dog circuit, and even on the turf of drug dealers, who are said to prefer their attack dogs silent.

David Frei, the longtime co-host of the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, acknowledged that some show dogs have  the operation. “There is no question we have some debarked dogs among our entries,” he said.

Many veterinarians refuse to do the surgery on ethical grounds, and some states have banned it, except for therapeutic reasons, including New Jersey. Similar legislation is pending in Massachusetts.

In the surgery, vets anesthetize the dog before cutting its vocal cords, either through the mouth or through an incision in the larynx. Dogs generally recover quickly, veterinarians say, and while they usually can still make sounds, their barks become muffled and raspy.

But Dr. Gary W. Ellison, of the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Florida, said the procedure can lead to complications, such as excess scar tissue building up in the throat of dogs, making it difficult to breathe.

Ellison said the procedure is no longer taught at the University of Florida’s veterinary school.

Banfield, the Pet Hospital, with more than 750 veterinary practices across the country, formally banned the surgery last summer.

“Debarking is not a medically necessary procedure,” said Jeffrey S. Klausner, the hospital’s senior vice president and chief medical officer. “We think it’s not humane to the dogs to put them through the surgery and the pain. We just do not think that it should be performed.”

The American Veterinary Medical Association recommends that the surgery only be done “after behavioral modification efforts to correct excessive vocalization have failed.”