ohmidog!

A stray shih-tzu in Utah got hit by an outbound train, and hit by it again on its return route, then was rescued and taken home by the engineer.

“I saw this little guy between the rail,” said Fred Krause, a Utah Railway engineer, “and of course and it was too late to do anything about it… It breaks your heart. But there’s nothing you can do.”

Krause’s train, on its way to Kennecott, struck the dog Sunday. On his return trip to Midvale, he encountered the dog again, ABC 4 News reported.

It was as if the dog were playing a game of chicken with the train, he said.

“I’m flashing the lights, blowing the horn, trying to get him out of the rails,” Krause said. “And he just ran right down the rails at us. I tried to slow down, got it from 20 miles per hour to 15 miles per hour when we hit, thought for sure we killed him.”

The engineer was required to keep the train moving, but when he got off work, Krause, who has a shih-tzu of his own, went back to the scene to look for the dog.

“I took my flashlight and walked down the rails and saw a heap of fur and thought this is it,” Krause said. “I shined a light on him and he turned around and looked at me.”

Krause took the dog to the vet, then brought him home.

“If he can get along with Milo (his other shih-tzu) we might keep him,” Krause said. “If we can find the original owners we’ll give him back. Or if not we’ll find a home.”

A dashboard camera caught only a slice of the action, but police in Fort Worth say the video shows an officer was justified in shooting a family’s pit bull mix on Easter Sunday.

The family, meanwhile — one cousin was hit by shrapnel — is outraged.

Channel 5 in Dallas reports that the incident began as a traffic stop.The officer stopped a pickup truck with unrestrained children in the back.

The driver pulled into a relative’s driveway, where the dog greeted him, then began barking and advancing toward the officer.

Just off camera the officer fires two or three shots, injuring the dog. Police say the video shows the officer clearly feared his life was in danger. The family says the officer should never have even pulled out his gun, pointing out that several children were within feet of him when he fired.

The dog, named Papi, is recuperating at a vet clinic.

Police say that, while it appears the officer was defending himself from the dog, they are continuing their investigation.

The Kentucky father whose 3-day-old son was snatched from a crib by the family’s wolf-hybrid dog last summer has written a book about the ordeal.

A spokesman for AuthorHouse, a Bloomington, Ind., company that specializes in self-publishing, confirmed to the Lexington Herald that the book will be published in late May.

Its mouthful of a title? “Could It Happen to You?:  Baby A.J.’s Story of Being Taken From His Crib by the Family Dog Dakota.”

“I think it’s going to answer a lot of questions about who we are,” said Michael Smith, who along with his wife, Chrissie, became the subject of nationwide TV coverage and news articles after their family dog snatched Alexander James “A.J.” Smith from his crib July 20.

Dakota, the female wolf hybrid that had a habit of taking objects from the house, carried the baby outside in her mouth, eventually setting him down in the woods behind the Smiths’ house north of Nicholasville.

A.J. was treated for a cracked skull, cracked ribs, a collapsed lung and a partially collapsed lung and returned home after several days.

Except for a small scar, he has recovered fully, the family says. “He’s a healthy little boy. He’s doing great.” Chrissie Smith said.

Michael Smith said the book will be a behind-the-scenes narrative of the ordeal that included his interviews with Diane Sawyer on ABC’s “Good Morning America” and Deborah Norville on “Inside Edition.”

The book, he said, will clear up any notion that he’s an unfit parent.

The Smiths were investigated for child neglect, but a Jessamine County grand jury found no criminal intent.

The family attempted to get Dakota back, but eventually consented to letting the dog live with another family.

The Smiths still have two dogs, one of them a wolf-hybrid.

WorldNetDaily was among those asking that question this week after reports that Jenna, a German shepherd whose owner admits she doesn’t like non-whites, was stabbed by one of the owner’s employees.

The attack cost Jenna an eye.

“The dog reacts to black people, Hispanics, anyone who is not white,” owner Paul Tocco, who runs a family-owned oil-delivery business in Yonkers, told New York’s Journal News.

One of Tocco’s employees, a black handyman named Andrew Owens, became annoyed at Jenna’s incessant barking, and reportedly ”egged on” the dog before charging at her and slashing her eye with a 9-inch folding knife.

Detective Ken Ross said Jenna, a four-year-old guard dog, was cut “over the right eye, all the way down to the socket bone.” Ross said Owens “never liked the dog. The dog did not bite him (Monday). It appears everything was done out of anger.” Owens allegedly had threatened to kill the dog in the past and claimed Jenna had bitten him last year.

Owens was arrested and charged with felony aggravated cruelty, as well as fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon, a misdemeanor.

Tocco says he never trained Jenna to behave that way. He said it wasn’t fair to call his dog racist or prejudiced. Jenna  just “doesn’t like minorities,” he said.

Your civil comments on this one, as always, are welcome. Can dogs be “racist?” Is the owner always to blame?  Might this phenomenon show up more in guard dogs, and if so why?

The Humane Society of the United States is offering a reward of up to $2,500 for information leading to the identification, arrest and conviction of the persons responsible for injuring Christy, a one-year-old pit bull who was pelted with rocks and bricks in Baltimore.

A witness says children threw rocks and other materials at the dog who was tied up in the 3700 block of Greenspring Avenue near Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School.

The pit bull was taken to the Baltimore Animal Rescue and Care Shelter where she is being treated for injuries that include wounds to her paws, head, snout and hemorrhages in both eyes.

The children responsible for the crime are believed to be about 12 or 13 years old.

Red, a pit bull seized from Michael Vick’s dogfighting operation who went on to become a sweet-tempered mascot at the Monterey County SPCA, died this week while battling cancer.

Red arrived  with scars on his face, chest, legs and torso — one of three pit bulls who came to the Monterey SPCA after federal authorities seized 47 dogs in a 2007 raid of Vick’s dog-fighting compound in Virginia.

He was adopted by SPCA pet behavior specialist Amanda Mouisset.

“He just really blossomed,” Beth Brookhouser, community outreach director for the SPCA for Monterey County, told the Monterey County Herald. “He was like a regular employee, a friend and a fellow staff member.”

Red made the daily rounds with Mouisset and helped her train other dogs by providing a calm example to the shelter’s more hyperactive residents.

Ginger and Bunny, the other Vick dogs that went to the Monterey SPCA, are both doing well, the Herald reported. One was adopted by a SPCA staff member and the other is with a foster family.

Red was diagnosed with cancer in 2008 and underwent surgery and chemotherapy, which was paid for by Vick as part of his sentencing. He took a turn for the worse last week and tests showed the cancer, thought to be in remission, had returned. He was euthanized Monday.

Red was 8 years old, which is three years more than he would have lived if those recommending all the Vick dogs be put down had their way.

“Before this case, dogs from the kind of situation were automatically euthanized,” Brookhouser said. “Red is a stunning example why animals should be treated as individuals — not lumped as a breed. He was the best ambassador for that breed any of us have ever seen.”

(Photo: Red with Katie Mouisset, daughter of SPCA pet behavior specialist Amanda Mouisset.)

A three-legged dog beat out a three-legged cat in the race for mayor of a town in which I once toiled — Divide, Colorado.

Twenty-five dogs and cats entered the race, with each vote they received bringing in a one dollar donation to the local animal shelter, KKTV in southern Colorado reports.

In the end, elections officials report, it came down to a race between Spright, a small female mixed breed, and Walter the cat.

Spright received 4,755 votes; Walter racked up 4,213. Combined with other votes cast, the election raised $14,084 for the Teller County Regional Animal Shelter.

Divide is an unincorporated town on the north slope of Pikes Peak. (I worked there for a few summers during high school at a property development.)

Spright’s two-year term will begin with an official inauguration ceremony at noon Sunday at the Teller County Regional Animal Shelter at 308 Weaverville Road in Divide. There will be a BBQ cookout for all candidates and the public.

A Pennsylvania appeals court ruled Tuesday against a Bucks County man who had sought food stamps to help feed his dog.

James Douris, 55, a disabled and unemployed veteran who lives in the Philadelphia suburb of Newtown, said he relies on his dog to pull his wheelchair and fetch items for him. Because of the dog’s work on his behalf, it should be considered a dependent member of his household, he argued.

The appeals court didn’t buy it, upholding a decision by the state welfare agency denying him additional support, the Associated Press reported.

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.