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Dog Fancy magazine has named Provincetown, Massachusetts, America’s most dog-friendly city.

This year’s 2010 DogTown USA contest, sponsored by WAHL Clipper Corp., named the 40 dog-friendliest cities across the U.S. in honor of the magazine’s 40th anniversary.

The criteria used to select the winning city include dog-friendly open spaces and dog parks, events celebrating dogs and their owners, ample veterinary care, abundant pet supply and other services, and municipal laws that support and protect all pets.

“All dog owners know of a few local shops or restaurants that allow dogs, but it is remarkable to have an entire town where virtually every establishment opens its doors to dogs – even the bank,” says Ernie Slone, Dog Fancy editor.

“Where else can you take your dog along for a whale-watching or sunset cruise, walk miles of off-leash scenic beaches year-round and enjoy one of the nation’s finest dog parks? Provincetown nearly swept our major awards this year, with its Pilgrim Bark Park finishing at No. 2 in our national ratings of dog parks.”

Rounding out the top 10 cities, according to a press release, are:

•Carmel, Calif.
•Madison, Wis.
•Benicia, Calif.
•Fort Bragg, Calif.
•Lincoln City, Ore.
•San Diego, Calif.
•Virginia Beach, Va.
•Sioux Falls, S.D.
•Salem, Ore.

The complete list of all 40 cities is available in the September issue of Dog Fancy, on newsstands July 27, 2010.

A veterinarian says a dog trapped in a car on a 90-degree day in eastern Pennsylvania honked the horn until he was rescued.

Nancy Soares said the 11-year-old chocolate Labrador — named Max — was brought to the Macungie Animal Hospital last month after he had been in the car for about an hour.

She said Max’s owner, Donna Gardner, of Upper Macungie Township, had gone shopping, returned home, unloaded her packages, but forgot that Max was still in the car. The owner later heard the horn honking, checked outside, then went back in. When she heard the horn honking again, she went outside and saw Max sitting in the driver’s seat, WFMZ reported.

Soares said the owner immediately gave Max cold water to drink and wet him down with towels before rushing him to the clinic, where — though he was warm and panting heavily — he was determined to have suffered no lasting injuries.

Two men were arrested in Toledo after they allegedly took turns shooting a German shepherd while he howled in his cage.

The dog, named Sarge, was hit by six shots, but survived. He’s now being held by the Lucas County dog warden.

One of the men, Lawrence Mick, 57,  the dog’s owner, is in the Lucas County jail, where he was being held on $25,000 bond. He’s charged with a third degree felony for using the weapon, and if convicted, he could be sentenced to one to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. The other charges he faces in connection with the incident, including cruelty to animals, are all misdemeanors.

Mick has a drug conviction and is prohibited from using a firearm, the Toledo Blade reported.

Mick and another man, Adam Collins, are accused of taking turns shooting the captive dog with a 25-caliber pistol Friday in Mick’s backyard of the Federal address with a 25-caliber pistol.

A West Highland terrier who attacked a buzzing chainsaw has recovered from her injuries and is now in the running for the Hambone Award, presented annually by Veterinary Pet Insurance.

Darci, a 2-year-old terrier, had a history of lunging at the vacuum cleaner and lawnmower, according to her owner, Barbara Abell, of Belleville, Ill. “She never actually touched them, but she would lunge at them,” Abell says.

Last month, though, Abell’s husband was using a chainsaw to cut up a fallen branch in the family’s backyard when Darci lunged and bit the running saw. Abell rushed Darci to an emergency clinic, where she received four stitches and was sent home.

“By the next day, she was back to her feisty self,” said Abell, who advised pet owners not to assume their pets will keep their distance from dangerous equipment — even if they always have.

Darci’s onwers filed a claim with VPI, their insurer. Of more than 8,000 claims received in June by VPI, Darci’s was judged the most unusual of the bunch. As a result, Darci’s in the running for the  2010 VPI Hambone Award.

Each month, VPI employees nominate the most interesting claim submitted. In August, the public will vote on line for the winner of the Hambone Award, named after a dog  that got stuck in a refrigerator and ate an entire Thanksgiving ham while waiting for someone to find him.

The dog was eventually found, with a licked-clean hambone and a mild case of hypothermia. Like all dogs nominated, he recovered fully.

“All a Twitter”

My word for the day:

When you Tweet the same thing twice

You “tweeiterate”

 (Highway Haiku is a regular feature of “Dog’s Country,” the continuing tale of one man and one dog spending six months criss-crossing America. “Dog’s Country” can be found exclusively on ohmidog!

There’s one thing you can’t avoid in Santa Fe, and that’s dogs.

They are everywhere — tall dogs, short dogs, big dogs, small dogs, black, white, brown, red, yellow and brindle dogs.

There are smelly hippy, just-passin’-thru dogs (and I’m not saying from where the odor is emanating – human, or canine, or perhaps the sweatstained, refrigerator-sized backpack).

There are gigantic purebred poodles, as regal-looking as their owners.

And there are a whole lot of Labs, shepherds, terriers, hounds and who-knows-whats in between.

Santa Fe calls itself “the city different,” for numerous reasons, but perhaps nowhere is its diversity more noticeable than in its dogs.

Some I’ve seen, like Shadow (below), who all but blends in with the dirt paths of the dog park, look like they might even have a little coyote in the mix.

You see dogs on street corners. You see them in Santa Fe Plaza, the town’s main gathering place. You see them in outdoor restaurants, poking their heads out of passing cars and, by the dozens, at Frank S. Ortiz Dog Park — an expansive swath of high desert, dotted with cholla and juniper (provided by nature), and dog bowls, plastic chairs and poop bags (provided by its users).

Despite its lack of frills, Frank S. Ortiz Dog Park — it’s named after a one-time mayor –  has arroyos and hills, miles of paths, and commanding views of the town. (By virtue of its size alone, it appears destined to make our top 10 dog park list.) Yes, dogs are one thing you can’t avoid in Santa Fe.

Dogs and art.

Art, too, is everywhere — street corner stands,murals, ritzy galleries, rustic studios. The only thing there may be more of than dogs in Santa Fe is artists, many of whom draw their inspiration from the scenic beauty around them.

So, actually there are three things you can’t avoid in Santa Fe — dogs, art and nature’s beauty. It — along with a climate sent from heaven — make it a highly liveable, and visitable, city. Beauty can be found in nearly every direction you look, from the Jemez Mountains to the west to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, rising high to the southeast.

Speaking of rising high, there are actually four things you can’t avoid in Santa Fe — dogs, art, nature’s beauty and high prices. There’s no escaping high prices. Sooner or later, they will get you — or perhaps even stress you out.

If so, you can always visit a spa, because actually there are five things you can’t avoid in Santa Fe — dogs, art, nature’s beauty, high prices and spas. In town, on the edges of town, up in the mountains, there is an abundance of places to get wrapped, scrubbed, rubbed, boiled and oiled. I’m not sure who goes to all the spas, probably the same people that buy all the art and eat the high priced restaurant meals — namely tourists.

Which — in addition to dogs, art, nature’s beauty, high prices, and spas – are another thing you can’t avoid in Santa Fe.

So that makes six things you can’t avoid in Santa Fe, if you count the tourists, who stay in hotels that, like all other structures in town, are made of adobe, which is the seventh thing you can’t avoid in Santa Fe — adobe. I’ve yet to see a house exterior of wood, brick or — heaven forbid — vinyl siding.

On top of those seven things, there are plenty of other things that can be found in abundance in Santa Fe– sunsets, rainbows, good food, opera, legends, history, crafts, and, my personal favorite, clouds.

Here’s my theory on the clouds, and why cooling afternoon showers are fairly common here. Clouds come in from the mountains, usually –  like tourists — in a group. The clouds look down and like what they see — harmony, art, spirituality, pleasing terrain, disposable income, seekers, healers and art appreciators. And, being an art form themselves, the clouds decide to stay around a while — so that they may both appreciate and be appreciated.

In my five days here, I’ve noticed that, unlike clouds in most places, neither the big fluffy ones or the wispy flat ones — to use the scientific terms — seem to be moving, and, if they are, it’s imperceptibly slow. Instead, they seem to be lingering, hanging out, enjoying the view. Meantime, new clouds come in, and they decide to linger, too. And so on and so on, until there are so many clouds, elbowing each other for space in the formerly big blue sky, that they become entangled, much like the traffic downtown.

As a result of all that brushing up against each other, and moving into each others’ space, meteorological things begin to take place, and — not to get too technical – rain and wind result.

Sometimes, after that, you get rainbows. Sometimes, you don’t. That’s life, in Santa Fe.

(To read all of “Dog’s Country,” the continuing story of one man and one dog spending six months criss-crossing America, click here.)

It didn’t take an act of Congress, or even a call to the Pentagon: Riley the Weimaraner – swept up by the animal control unit at Fort Knox, then adopted out to a new home — has been returned to her original Kentucky family.

According to the Facebook page started by the family to wage a campaign for Riley’s return, the dog is back home and doing fine.

Not a whole lot of details are offered on what transpired, but apparently one Fort Knox official finally listened to the family’s pleas and assisted in getting the dog back from her newly adopted home and returned to her old one.

“Riley is back home with her family … happy, and very much loved!!!!!! Thank you Command Sgt. Major Voeller, and thank you to the family!”

Kim Church, of Radcliff, believes the family’s 2-year-old Weimaraner was stolen from her yard — her ID tags were left behind — and later showed up either on or near Fort Knox.

Fort Knox’s stray animal facility, not generally open to the public, sold the dog to a new owner 11 days after she was picked up by military police, according to the Press-Enterprise, in Hardin County, Kentucky.

Church called city and county pounds and put an ad on Craigslist in search of her missing dog. When a caller notified her that she saw a dog that looked like Riley at an adoption fair at the military post, Church attempted to get information from the facility, but was told both whether her dog had been picked up, and who had adopted it, were confidential.

Church filed a report with Radcliff police, claiming her dog was stolen, and pleaded her case on Facebook. Apparently, her campaign worked. Welcome home, Riley.

Name: Maxwell

Age: 10 months

Breed: Retriever/German shepherd/Rottweiler?

Encountered: Frank S. Ortiz Dog Park in Santa Fe

Background: Max (right) was the only survivor of a litter that contracted Parvovirus. After four days at the vets’ office, he was pronounced healthy and adopted by a Santa Fe resident who takes him to the dog park daily. He looked so much like my dog Ace (left) did at that age — same coloring, same curly tail, same floppy ears — I had to take his picture.

It has been more than a month since our extended road trip took us through Louisiana’s St. Bernard Parish, where we reported on how cash-strapped fishing families were finding it hard to continue caring for their pets since the oil spill ruined their industry.

Now, we’re happy to report, more help has arrived, which could help stem the tide of people surrendering their dogs because they can no longer afford them.

Twenty tons of Kibbles ‘n Bits (for large dogs) – donated by Del Monte Foods and transported by Best Friends — was dropped off earlier this month.

Large dogs, you’ll recall, are numerous in the parish southeast of New Orleans because many residents used them to guard their properties while rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina.

“The people who are coming in have big dogs,” says Beth Brewster, director of the St. Bernard Parish Animal Shelter. “They can’t afford to feed them.”

Brewster told Best Friends that many families picking up free dog food bring photos of their dogs with them, and share their dog’s story. “They have tears in their eyes. They’re very, very thankful,” she says. “It’s one less thing they have to worry about.”

The Louisiana SPCA has collaborated with Brewster and Best Friends, as a part of Best Friends’ First Home Forever Home campaign, and is setting up distribution sites, in St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Orleans and Jefferson parishes.

To get the food, residents fill out an application, present a commercial fishing license or proof that they work as charter boat operators or in another field affected by the spill.

“These families have not only lost their livelihoods, but also their way of life practically overnight. They shouldn’t have to face losing members of their families, too. It’s just too much to expect anybody to bear,” said Ellen Gilmore, campaign specialist for Best Friends’ First Home Forever Home.

“Reptilian Reps”

On warm adobe

A lizard’s doing push-ups

I’m not so inclined

(Highway Haiku is a regular feature of “Dog’s Country,” the continuing tale of one man and one dog spending six months criss-crossing America. “Dog’s Country” can be found exclusively on ohmidog! To read all of “Dog’s Country,” from the beginning, click here.)