ohmidog!

Sugar, the New York City dog whose owners believed she was being held for ransom, has been found — tied to a bush in Prospect Park, a block from her family’s home.

Drucie Belman said she received a call Tuesday morning from a man who said Sugar was tied to a bush in the park.

The family thought it might be a hoax, but when they ran down the street to check, they found Sugar.

“We could see her bat ears from a block away and all four of us started running and just fell upon her,” Drucie Belman told ABC Eyewitness News.

Sugar had been bitten by the caller’s dog, but, after a visit to her vet, she is reportedly back home and doing fine.

After Sugar ran off during a trip to the park last week, the family received a call from a man who demanded cash for the dog. Belman believes the man called back a second time and said “Good luck finding your dog.”

She never heard from him again. It’s not known how Sugar ended up tied to a bush.

After three weeks of searching for his lost pit bull CinnaBun, TV personality and motorcycle-maker Jesse James has been reunited with the dog.

James, who is CEO of West Coast Choppers and the husband of actress Sandra Bullock, posted the news on his Twitter page yesterday and his website, along with photos of CinnaBun putting her paws up to his chest.

Here’s his tweet: “So Happy! Thnx Everyone for all the help! She looks like she hz had quite the Adventure!”

James had hired a pet detective and offered a reward of $5,000 for the dog’s return after she went missing Jan. 25. According to TMZ, James got a call from someone who had seen CinnaBun’s picture on a flier.

The woman brought CinnaBun, who’d lost 15 pounds during her time away, to James’s Long Beach bike shop.

(Photo: West Coast Choppers)

 
There’s a heated debate going on about yellow snow over at “Unleashed,” the Baltimore Sun pets blog.

It all got started when a reader — seeing no art whatsover in what happens when hot yellow dog urine splashes onto cold and pure white snow — expressed her displeasure with befouled snow, and went so far as to suggest dog owners chisel, collect and dispose of the icy yellow matter.

“I’m not a dog owner, but I can’t be the only person to be grossed out while trying to walk in Baltimore right now,” wrote Eeda Wallbank. “After the snow last week there are still many areas where the sidewalk or street is the only cleared space for folks to take their dogs out for their business. Most people are still being polite and at least picking the poo up, but the urine is just disgusting.

“The dog goes in the only cleared walk space and urinates, then it freezes. So everyone else has to walk through or attempt to go around these ‘puddles.’ Heaven forbid someone actually slip on ice or snow and fall into greater contact. I shudder everytime I see the yellow snow and thank god I don’t have kids to worry about (my cats are my babies, but they stay firmly inside) … Dog owners carry around bags for poo, what would be so wrong with attempting to remove this frozen urine? Or at least have a small shovel to clear the walk space a little?”

That led to a flood/flurry of comments. Among those that poured in were some siding with Ms. Wallbank, a few suggesting she “get a life,” and many asking if society doesn’t have bigger things to worry about than yellow snow.

Scooping poop is one thing. But I don’t think we need yellow snow laws — even if it does offend the sensibilities of  Ms. Wallbank and others. It’s a fact of life. It passes (twice, in fact). Until the snow melts, step around it, add it to the list of unavoidable wintertime inconveniences, or maybe even try and view it as modern art — a canine, working by instinct, on a vast blank canvas, provided by nature .

It’s a little like that, with one big difference. With yellow snow, everybody knows exactly what the artist was trying to express.

(Artwork: “Yellow Snow,” by John Woestendiek)

Sadie, a four-year-old Scottish terrier, was named best in show at Westminster, beating out 2,500 entrants at the 134-year-old dog show.

“She’s the total package,” said Elliot Weiss, of Eagle, Idaho, who judged the Best in Show round before a cheering, capacity crowd at Madison Square Garden. “This is the complete dog … That’s what you want a Scottie to look like.”

Sadie went into the competition as a favorite of both oddsmakers and experts, having won both the National Dog Show in suburban Philadelphia in November and the AKC/Eukanuba National Championship in California in December.

Unlike in recent years, when relatively unknown crowd favorites Uno, a beagle, and Stump, an aging Sussex spaniel, captured top honors, this year’s best in show was no surprise.

On Tuesday, the loudest cheers were for a sleek Doberman Pinscher and a French Bulldog whose mugging won the crowd over, Reuters reported.

The final round of judging was disrupted when two female protesters strode out to the winner’s circle and held up signs, including one reading “Mutts rule,” a reference to the “Dogs rule” ad campaign that has run throughout the competition. The protesters were removed by security.

Terriers are the winningest group in WKC history, having won nearly half the events throughout the club’s history. Sadie also made last year’s Best in Show round. The WKC was her 112th Best in Show and the eighth Westminster Kennel Club victory for a Scottie.

This year’s competition saw 2,500 entrants representing 173 breeds and varieties. Other breeds vying for the big prize on Tuesday were a toy Poodle, a Puli, a Whippet and a Brittany.

Handler Gabriel Rangel said Sadie was “a very happy dog. She always enjoys herself. Nobody ever tells her ‘no.’

Hard times for Mike Harding led to dogs around the world resting comfortably.

Harding got laid off from his Wall Street firm in 1987, and it was that setback that led him to start his own company — Kuranda Dog Beds in Glen Burnie, The Capital in Annapolis reported yesterday.

Quickly becoming an industry standard, and a fixture at kennels and shelters, the chew resistant, elevated cots are sold out of small office near BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport — about 30,000 of them a year.

Harding says he never expected the dog bed to make a profit. Instead, he had higher hopes for another product — a roller that absorbs water from tennis courts and ball fields, called the Super Sopper. It never took off.

But Kurunda beds have since 1993 when Harding’s friend and investor, Paul Connolly, took the bed to a local kennel to gauge interest. The interest was there but the bed — the prototype was round — took up to much space.

That sent Harding back to the drawing board, where he came up with a new rectangular model.

“We immediately started making sales to boarding kennels, breeders, and hunters,” Harding said.

Since then, the bed has continued to evolve, and draw praise from kennels and shelters who need durable beds that stand up to high pressure washing.

All of the beds come out of the Glen Burnie building, where employees assemble the kits that are shipped to customers from Texas to Hong Kong.

In 2005, Connolly came up with the company’s “Donate a Bed” program, which allows anyone to use Kurunda’s website to buy a bed at wholesale and then donate it to a shelter. Forty of the donated beds recently went to Iraq for the dogs used by the military to sniff out explosives.

Six days a week, Kate Quigley leaves her Kansas City neighborhood and ventures into those whose residents are less fortunate, meaning, often, that their dogs are, too.

In a 25-year-old pickup truck, she scouts out animal abuse and neglect — and situations verging on that — and offers food, hay, doghouses, toys, spaying and neutering and more.

Often referred to as “the dog lady” or “Miss Kate,”Quigley knocks on doors, talks to owners and drops off supplies — up until recently as a representative of  Spay & Neuter Kansas City and No More Homeless Pets KC, where, last year alone she brought in 438 cats and 562 dogs to be spayed and neutered, gave away 95 doghouses and 14,700 pounds of dog food and talked to 3,030 households.

Now she’s started her own non-profit called Chain of Hope, according to the Kansas City Star. The newspaper reports that several volunteers have switched affiliations from other groups to join Quigley, a recently divorced mother of three,  in her cause.

Chain of Hope’s mission, she says, is to break the chain of ignorance for pet owners who neglect their outside dogs, to break the chain of unwanted litters, and to persuade dog owners who leave their animals tied up to unchain them, or at least use less harmful cable tie-outs.

“I don’t get it when people tell me that a dog is for protection, but the dog is tied up on a chain at their back gate. How will a chained dog protect them?” 

(Photo by DAVID EULITT / Kansas City Star; to see the entire gallery, click here.)

A Pennsylvania community is mourning the loss of Ricky, an 11-year-old German shepherd with an outstanding temperament and an even more impressive resume.

Among his accomplishments, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported:

Helping protect two presidents; assisting at ground zero after 9/11; apprehending numerous criminals; checking hundreds of potential bomb sites, four of which contained live material; locating two missing children, one of whom was autistic; and interacting with thousands of elementary-school students.

Ricky, who belonged to West Caln Township Police Chief Curt A. Martinez , began his career when he was less than a year old at the Coatesville Area School District, where Martinez worked at the time as a school district security officer.

In May 2002, a budget crisis led the district to put Ricky on the auction block, a decision that provoked public outrage and led to Ricky’s appearance in People magazine. The ensuing publicity helped raise the  $4,000 needed for Martinez to buy Ricky.

When Martinez went to work in the West Caln police deparment in Chester County, he took Ricky went with him. Martinez has led the West Caln force for three years.

Martinez said Ricky began barking incessantly last week. After visits to the veterinarian and the animal hospital, Martinez learned the dog had a softball-size tumor in his spleen.

“He was clearly in pain,” Martinez said today. “We had to put him down.

“Everyone in the township is taking it pretty hard,” Martinez added. “It’s a loss to the community, too; he was a great police dog.”

A memorial service will be planned, but Martinez has not worked out the details.