ohmidog!

A California pit bull was sprung from death row by the couple who owns him, police say, and he’s apparently being driven across the country in an attempt to elude euthanasia.

Police say an Alameda couple concocted a scheme to free their pit bull, Max, from the Alameda Animal Shelter, which, because he’d been deemed a dangerous dog, was planning to euthanize him Wednesday.

Authorities arrested one of the suspects, Richard Cochran, 57. Cochran admitted to formulating a plan to steal the three-year-old dog from the shelter with Melissa Perry, 38, his girlfriend of 17 years, and two other people whose identities haven’t been confirmed, police said.

He denied playing any other role in stealing the dog, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Perry, meanwhile, called the Chronicle on Thursday evening, saying Max was with her and that a friend was driving them across the country. “I’m almost to Kentucky,” she said.

Perry told the newspaper that, while neither she nor Cochran had anything to do with the break-in, she had told friends she wished someone would “break him out.”

“Max doesn’t deserve to be euthanized. Considering the circumstances, I think he deserves a chance.”

Police say the dog is dangerous. “If anyone comes into contact with the dog and this woman, I really want to stress that they should take caution,” said police Sgt. Jill Ottaviano. “This is a very dangerous animal. It is very protective of this woman.”

Max had bitten two people. While being examined at an animal hospital in Oakland, he bit a veterinary technician. The dog was ordered to be quarantined at his home in an Alameda motel after that, but during the quarantine he bit a friend of the couple.

The animal shelter was ready to euthanize Max on Tuesday, after a court order was issued. The court commissioner agreed that the dog would be kept alive one more day to allow Cochran and Perry to say goodbye.

When shelter staff arrived for work Wednesday morning they discovered someone had used bolt cutters to cut through a cyclone fence and break the lock on the kennel where Max had been staying.

(Photo: Alameda Police Department)

A former Marine known for taking great pride in his suburban Chicago lawn has been charged with fatally shooting a neighbor who let his dog urinate on the man’s front yard.

University Park, Illinois, resident, Charles Clements, 69, a former Marine, is being held on a $3 million bond in connection with the fatal shooting last Sunday of 23-year-old Joshua Funches, ABC News reported.

Patricia Funches, the victim’s mother, said Clements followed her son home, pulled out his gun, and shot him.

Police say Joshua Funches’ fox terrier urinated on Clements’ lawn, leading to an exchange of words between the two men. When police arrived at the scene, they found Funches bleeding on the ground in front of a vacant house.

Funches, a father of two, suffered a single gunshot wound in the abdomen, and his death was ruled a homicide.

Clements was famous for the upkeep on his well-manicured lawn, winning several local beautification awards. He kept a sign posted on his mailbox urging letter carriers not to walk on his grass.

A 60-year-old California man was killed while trying to keep his dog from being hit by a train.

Christopher Gray, of San Pablo, was walking his dog in Pinole Wednesday morning when he saw an Amtrak train coming down the tracks, near Pinole shores Park.

Contra Costa County Coroner’s investigators believe Gray was standing on the other set of tracks trying to hold his dog back from the oncoming train when a second Amtrak train came from behind and struck him.

The impact from the second train launched Gray into the path of the oncoming train, and he was run over, a deputy coroner said. His dog was also killed, CBS5 reported.

Gray was the second person this year to be killed by an Amtrak train in nearly the same spot.

They call them “doglers,” or at least the New York Post does — dogless people who like to watch and enjoy other people’s dogs.

“There’s a hidden club of us,” said Hannah Spencer, 28, of Brooklyn, who uses her morning runs as an excuse to drop by Fort Greene Park and watch the dogs.

“I know my own levels of responsibility and I just can’t have a dog,” said Spencer. “So you can get this vicarious pleasure out of watching other people’s dogs.”

It was Spencer, the Post noted, who coined the word “dogle.”

She says dogless New Yorkers dogle, or ogle dogs, because  their hectic lifestyles and tiny apartments prevent them from actually owning one.

“We just don’t have the time or the space to provide a dog a good home right now,” said Donald Cutler, 27, who regularly checks out the Carl Schurz dog park on the upper East Side. “Watching dogs is a nice way to get outside of the hustle that is the city. Dog parks are one of the nicer places in New York.”

Greer Griffith, 64, the manager of Animal Assisted Therapy for the ASPCA, is not surprised by what the Post officially labeled a trend, which is what the news media call phenomena that they haven’t previously caught on to.

“There are studies that show that animal-assisted therapy brings people out of depression, lowers blood pressure and can be tremendously helpful in dealing with loneliness at extended-care facilities,” said Griffith.

“It confirms what I already know about dogs,” she says. “They change the energy around them and make people smile.”

But maybe the best part about dogling, the Post noted,  is that it’s all the perks — and none of the poop.

Beth Ostrosky Stern, wife of Howard Stern, spokeswoman for the North Shore Animal League, and author of a new book that kind of swiped our website’s name, appeared on “Live with Regis and Kelly” yesterday morning.

The author of “Oh My Dog” brought along three dogs — her own, a bulldog named Bianca, and two others, Scooter and Ladybug, who were rescued from the recent Tennessee floods and are up for adoption.

About halfway through Ostrosky Stern’s recitation of summertime tips for dog owners, Scooter urinated on the set’s fake bushes; then a little later Scooter squatted on the artificial grass for his morning constitutional.

It made what was a pretty cut and dried segment a little livelier.

The book, described as a manual for dog owners, has no connection to ohmidog!, the website.

Most reviews of the book have been less than kind, but we won’t go so far as to suggest that what Scooter was expressing was an editorial opinion.

Jane Lynch — the only thing I like about “Glee” — has made a public service announcement for PETA.

Lynch, who plays the surly Sue Sylvester, encourages pet owners to spay and neuter their animals.

“The good folks at PETA asked me to say a few words about the importance of good posture and personal hygiene — but I don’t want to talk about that,” she says in the ad. “I want to talk about the 4 million dogs and cats who are euthanized every year because there aren’t enough homes for all of them.”

Lynch also sent a letter to Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley urging him to support the passage of a bill — similar to one passed in Houston, Denver, New York and Los Angeles — that would require dogs and cats to be spayed or neutered.

A dog attacked yesterday by a neighbor wielding a machete is scheduled to undergo surgery tomorrow.

On Tuesday evening, a man walked into his neighbor’s yard and attacked the dog in the face and head with the machete, inflicting injuries that went all the way down to the bone, authorities said.

The dog, named Okashia, lives on the 3000 block of Wylie Avenue in northwest Baltimore.

While she lost a lot of blood, the dog is expected to recover, though vets were worried she might lose an eye.

Okashia, a shepherd-pit mix, was taken to the Emergency Veterinary Center in Catonsville, where she was sedated and given intravenous fluids. She was returned to Baltimore Animal Rescue & Care Shelter (BARCS), where she was expected to be evaluated by a surgeon this morning.

As a result of Okashia’s treatment, and other recent emergency cases, BARCS’ Franky Fund — reserved for the most serious cases of sick and injured animals — is seriously depleted, according to officials at the shelter.

Contributions may be made here.

Caroline A. Griffin, head of Baltimore’s Anti-Animal Cruelty Task Force, said that in addition to injuries to her head, the dog has been found to have bruising to her lungs. Because of that, the decision was made to postpone surgery for her facial injuries until tomorrow.

According to police, Levar J. Bailey, who lives several doors down from the dog’s owner, attacked the dog in her own yard. When police arrested Bailey, 33,  he was yelling, “The dog was trying to bite my daughter,” according to charging documents.

The Baltimore Sun reported that Bailey was taken to an area hospital for a psychiatric evaluation and that, according to police, he has a history of mental illness.

The two-year-old dog is owned by Shea-Quan Moore-Williams, who went outside after hearing the dog yelping to find her bloody dog and Bailey in the yard with an 18- to 24-inch black machete.

(Contributions to BARCS are also being collected this week at Captain Larry’s, 601 E. Fort Avenue, in connection with the ongoing photo exhibit, “Hey That’s My Dog!” Checks can be made payable to BARCS or BARCS Franky Fund.)

Dr. Phil’s not one of my favorites — nor are most of the others who appeared on his show yesterday — but at least the program brought the scourge of dogfighting to the afternoon TV talk show forefront.

In addition to Rescue Ink and Paris Hilton, the show featured Rob Rogers, former leader of a dogfighting ring who said “animal fighting has nothing to do with violence whatsoever” — even though he admitted to killing a “couple hundred” dogs.

He was such a moron that even Paris Hilton, by comparison, appeared scholarly when she came on the show to promote dog adoptions and said of dogfighters, “I kind of want to punch them in the face.”

Dr. Phil said on his blog that the show was intended to “shine a harsh spotlight on the animal abuse that still plagues our country.

“We’re not only going after people who think it’s perfectly acceptable to leave their pets cramped in cages with little or no water and blatant neglect, we’re going after those professional ‘dogfighters’ who diligently train their pit bulls to fight other pit bulls to the death and every other form of abuse.”

Boston’s six-year-old ban on pit bulls has proven to be “all bark and no bite,” according to a review by the Boston Herald.

While the city has issued tickets in more than 518 cases since the law went into effect in 2004 — all to owners who failed to register or muzzle their pit bulls, as the law requires – the vast majority of them (four of every five)  have refused to pay their $100  fines.

Instead, many of them have opted to turn their dogs over to the city, meaning that, in addition to not collecting the fine money, the city’s burdened with the expense of caring for dogs whose owners have deemed the expendable.

“It’s a disposable commodity, and they don’t care. They’re not good dog owners,” said Sgt. Charles Rudack, director of Boston Animal Control, which has no authority to force scofflaws to pay the $140,000 in unpaid fines.

Rudack said about 1,000 violators have chosen to turn over their pit bulls to Animal Control rather than pay the fine.

Pit bulls under the care of Animal Control are put up for adoption. Those that aren’t adopted or taken in by other rescues are euthanized.

City Councilor Rob Consalvo, who co-sponsored the pit bull ordinance — it requires pit bulls to be registered, muzzled in public and for their owners to display “beware of dog sign” at their homes — defended the law.

“We never said this ordinance was going to be a magic wand that would make the problem go away. What we did say is that this would be a new tool that animal control and police could use to get a better handle on what I see is a problem with pit bulls.”

State data shows pit bull and pit bull breed attacks in Boston increased between 2006 and 2008, from 25 to 46. But that trend reversed last year, when the city recorded just 30 attacks from pit bull and pit bull breeds.

Still, people like Donna Fitzgerald, whose Shiba Inu “Rocky” was attacked by an unleashed pit bull in South Boston in 2004, say banning the breed seems to be the only solution.

“I’m a dog lover and I don’t mean to sound cruel about a certain breed, but there’s just no place for them in our society,” said Fitzgerald, who now lives in Florida.

(Photo by John Woestendiek)

With all the trouble dog poop seems to cause society (see Poop I and Poop II), it’s good to know that free enterprise is on the case.

From across the pond comes the Dicky Bag, an airtight, zip-able neoprene pouch designed to tote your nasty sack of dog poop to the nearest garbage receptacle in a clean and odor- free manner.

The Dicky Bag was created by a husband and wife team that left the rat race in London and moved to Cornwall to find a better life.

Barry Davies was an advertising account director, his wife a theatrical agent and operator of a dance and theater school. One of the first things they did after leaving the city was get a dog, leading them to quickly learn that ” along with all the good things a dog can bring to a family they also bring a lot of crap (and I mean that literally),” they say on their website.

“As responsible owners we always pick up our dog’s poo but are often then left with the problem of what to do with it then. There’s never a bin when you need one.”

The Davies, decided to create a hands-free, odor-free poop tote. Living in Newquay, a surfing hot spot, and home to many wetsuit shops, they took their idea to a neoprene factory — neoprene being lightweight, semi rigid and capable of forming an airtight seal.

After some refinements to the prototype, they’ve introduced the Dicky Bag, which has an airtight storage area for full bags, a dispensing area for clean bags and room to store a spare roll of clean bags.

They call their product “the No. 1 answer to dog’s No. 2′s.”