ohmidog!

Baltic, the Polish dog rescued from an ice floe in the Baltic Sea, is back at sea — this time wearing a life jacket and riding aboard the ship that saved him.

The Associated Press reports that Baltic embarked Wednesday on a three-day mission alongside his new owner Adam Buczynski, the seaman who pulled him to safety from an ice sheet in the Baltic Sea last month.

Buczynski said the dog seemed stressed by the commotion of preparing for the trip.

Ewa Bardziej-Krzyzankowska, spokeswoman for the Sea Fisheries Institute in Gdynia, co-owner of the ship, said the crew had anti-nausea pills for Baltic in case he gets seasick on the journey, whose purpose is to collect samples of fish and sea plants for an aquarium in Gdynia.

Bardziej-Krzyzankowska said Baltic quickly learned that he was to only use one spot on an outdoor deck to go the bathroom, one which the crew hoses down regularly. Baltic resisted a bath after his rescue, she reported, leading Buczynski to take the dog into his arms and take a shower with him.

Buczynski and other crew members spotted the dog Jan. 25 floating 15 miles from land. Baltic was first seen two days earlier on the Vistula River, 60 miles inland, drifting on ice past the city of Grudziadz, where firefighters tried but failed to save him.

(Photo: Krzysztof Mystkowski/Associated Press)

Your dog may soon be tweeting.

Japan’s Index Corp., a mobile content provider, plans to launch an iPhone adaptation of the “Bowlingual” dog emotion translator that it says will translate dog barks into English and tweet them out to the world.

The original Bowlingual device, first offered in 2002 by Takara Tomy, consists of a microphone that goes around the dog’s neck and a handheld receiver with LCD screen that gives a written readout of the emotion a dog’s bark is expressing: sad, frustrated, needy, happy, on guard and “self-expressive.” 

(That last one puzzles me. I wouldn’t consider it an emotion, and it seems any bark would be self expressive. Then again, maybe something is getting lost in translation.)

The Japanese company plans to launch the new iPhone app this summer, PCWorld reports.

Index is planning to charge $4.99 for the app, said Sonoko Tatsuno, a spokeswoman for the company in Tokyo — considerably cheaper than the $229 stand-alone version. A Japanese version of the new app will come out first, followed by an English version.

In addition to translating a dog’s bark, the software can capture a picture of the dog, using the iPhone’s built-in camera. The resulting picture can then be combined with the “translation” and sent directly from the iPhone to Twitter.

The original product proved to be a hit in Japan selling around 300,000 units, It was also put on sale in the U.S. and South Korea.

Another dog befriended by U.S. troops in Afghanistan has made it to America.

Oso was rescued as a four-month-old pup from the streets of Afghanistan five months ago by Phil Bourillion, of the 5th Stryker Brigade, then went on to befriend his entire unit.

The dog arrived at Sea-Tac Airport late Tuesday morning, where she was met by Bourillion’s wife, Lena, KOMO in Seattle reported.

“She means a lot,” Spc. David LaForge, who is with Bourillon’s unit but home this week on R&R, said of the dog. “She was a big boost of morale when we had her – she was a little puppy – we raised her from nothing.”

When the unit got orders to transfer to another base, plans to bring Oso along were nixed by the Army.

That’s when Lena Bourillion began the long process of trying to get the dog out on her own.

Members of the unit paid a driver to sneak Oso through enemy lines to Kabul. Once Oso was there, Lena, with the help of family and friends, found someone who would get Oso into Pakistan. From there, Oso was placed on a flight to New York and another to Seattle.

Bourillion is due back from Afghanistan in five months.

Oso will spend three weeks in quarantine before going to the Bourillion’s home in Puyallup.

A year after the death of her fiance, Saundra Frazer was awakened by the dog he brought into her life, whose barks and nudges alerted her to a fire in her home.

Frazer, 27,  and the couple with whom she shared a home in Lake Worth, Fla., both credit Bubba, a 7-year-old golden retriever, with saving them from the fire.

Bubba’s barks awoke Frazer and Lori and Charles McCauley, who lived in the back of the house.

Frazer’s fiance was the one who brought Bubba into her life when they lived in Fort Lauderdale, the Palm Beach Post reports.

“He’s a champ,” says Charles McCauley. “He’s a hero. If we didn’t get out, it was going to overwhelm us.”

All three, and Bubba, were staying in a West Palm Beach hotel after the fire, courtesy of the local Red Cross.

(Photo: Frazer and Bubba in hotel room; by Allen Eyestone/The Palm Beach Post)