ohmidog!

Police in Florida say they have solved the mystery of how six severed dog heads ended up in a Largo restaurant’s trash bin last week — but they’re not sharing many details with the public.

Attempting to ease concern among dog lovers, police said this week that the heads were used for legal veterinary training purposes by a licensed medical company. But, citing the continuing nature of the investigation, they declined to disclose the name of the company and other details.

That’s a courtesy that wasn’t extended to Tucson’s Southwest Grill, the restaurant in whose Dumpster the dogs were found on March 30, and which has had to suffer through the bad publicity since.

“I don’t want to tip our hand on anything,” Largo police Lt. Mike Loux told the St. Petersburg Times. “Our goal is to ensure that if there’s a violation of law, we enforce it.”

The canines’ heads were legally obtained and were from animals that had previously been euthanized, according to police, who say they are still researching the rules that govern the disposal of biological waste.

Be that as it may, the public deserves to know, and now, both the name of the company and what it was up to — “pending” investigation or not.

Otherwise, the information released by police, whatever fears it might put to rest, only raises more questions, including why the company’s name isn’t being revealed.

“I think it put people at ease that there’s not some crazy person running around doing bad things to animals,” Rick Chaboudy, executive director of the Suncoast Animal League, But he added, “How legitimate is someone if they pull up to somebody’s Dumpster and put in body parts? There’s still something wrong with this picture.”

That X-Man was rescued from a trash can as a puppy didn’t make him all that unusual. It happens way too often.

That X-Man was rescued from a trash can by a girl who — as an infant — was herself rescued from the garbage makes his story, and her’s, a bit more out of the ordinary.

X-Man died last month after a long and happy life he owed, in large part, to Amy Louise Annelle, who in 1983, at only 4 or 5 hours old, was stuffed in a cereal box and dumped in a large trash bin on Nova Road in Daytona Beach.

When Amy was rescued from a garbage truck’s trash compactor by trash collectors, Pat Patten-Carlen followed the news accounts. She was looking for a baby girl to adopt after her daughter died. When “Amy Nova” — the name hospital nurses had given the baby found in the garbage — turned four months old, Patten-Carlen adopted her.

Thirteen years later, Amy came home from school and told Patten-Carlen she’d discovered a puppy in a trash can.

“She said, “It’s in a garbage can like me,’ ” Patten-Carlen told the Daytona Beach News Journal.  

After Amy found X-Man, she took him to a shelter. But when no one would adopt him, she and Patten-Carlen came to the rescue again. They got their close friend Carson Allison to bring him home. X-Man lived with Allison until the dog’s death last month.

“We had a special connection,” Amy said. “Up until two weeks ago when he was put down because he was too sick and in pain, I kept close to X-Man.”

A small memorial service for X-Man was held Saturday in DeLand.

Amy, whose birth mother was never found, is now a CVS store manager, married and the mother of a 4-year-old girl, Autumn. She’s expecting another baby, a boy, in four or five weeks.

The owner and operator of a kennel at the Pensacola Greyhound Track neglected 22 dogs to the point that she had to have them euthanized, investigators in Florida say.

The State Department of Business and Professional Regulation initiated an investigation into Billie Ard, the owner of W.R. Etheredge Kennel at the track, after a tipster from a Florida greyhound rescue group reported animals had been neglected and euthanized.

Investigators said they found evidence that Ard’s greyhounds had been underfed, and kept in unsanitary conditions, TV station WEAR in Florida reported.

“Upon entering the kennel it was apparent from the overwhelming urine smell… that the bedding materials in the crates had not been cleaned in quite some time. The smell was so strong and overwhelming that it burned the eyes,” investigators reported. They noted that the dogs also appeared to be underfed.

In August of 2009, a local veterinarian euthanized 22 of the dogs.

“This severe case of animal neglect calls into question the ability of track management to monitor the health and welfare of dogs at their facility,” said Carey Theil of Grey2k USA, a national greyhound protection group.

Ard lost her license as a result of investigation, but does not face any criminal charges.

All of the dogs that were in Ard’s care at the time of the investigation have since been placed with other kennels or adopted out.