ohmidog!

An estimated 10 packs of wild dogs — up to 150 in all — are roaming the streets of Fayetteville, N.C., county animal control officials say.

Dr. John Lauby, director of the Animal Services Department, said his animal control officers have shot and killed nine feral dogs in the last two weeks.

“It’s a distasteful thing,” said Lauby, a retired veterinarian. “They are a large problem.”

According to an article in the Fayetteville Observer — and we have to point out that it’s written by Andrew Barksdale — the large number of feral dogs may be a result of more dogs being abandoned by their owners. Dogs can turn become unfriendly to people after being abandoned, Lauby said.

Fayetteville City Councilman Jim Arp has asked that the county animal control office — there is no similar office in the city — help solve the problem. Arp said the feral dogs put children at risk, and some residents say the wild dogs are killing their cats.

Lauby said his department had thinned the packs of dogs over the winter, but new litters in the spring compounded the recent surge. The problem, he said, is compounded by people leaving food out for the dogs.

There are three weeks left to vote in the American Humane Association’s Hero Dogs Contest, a competition aimed at shining a light on the thousands of specially trained dogs giving comfort to people every day.

The American Humane Association and Cesar Canine Cuisine, are honoring the work dogs do in eight different categories — service dogs, guide dogs, hearing dogs, therapy dogs, as well as those in law enforcement, the military, and search and rescue.

An eighth, catch-all category will honor an “emerging hero dog.”

Browse through the nominees and you’ll find a few dogs that have been featured on our pages before — including Surf Dog Ricochet and, though he’s no longer in the competition, Miracle Dog Patrick.

Patrick is the dog who survived being tossed down a trash chute and abandoned at a high-rise apartment in Newark, N.J. While his story “is one of heroism in the face of horrific abuse and neglect,” contest officials said, the person who entered him asked that his name be removed to avoid further complications in the continuing controversy over who should have legal custody of the dog.

Looking at the dogs who’ve been entered, we also happened upon an old friend, a Baltimore boxer named Rigby, who was left with his hind legs paralyzed after a bad spinal infection.

“Many people call us the heros for not euthanizing him,” notes his owner. “We respond that Rigby is the true hero for loving life and not letting his disability in any way slow him down.”

Winners in each category will be determined by online voting — you can cast your ballot at herodogawards.org — and the grand prize winner will be selected based on those votes and the decision of a panel of judges.

Judges for the contest include Betty White, Whoopi Goldberg and Victoria Stilwell.

For every online vote, Cesar Canine Cuisine will make a donation to the AHA, with a limit of $200,000.

Voting ends July 31.

Founded in 1877, the American Humane Association is the oldest national organization dedicated to protecting both children and animals. It’s the organization that issues the “No Animals Were Harmed” stamp on film and TV productions.

Winners in each contest category receive $5,000 for the charity they have designated. The grand prize winner receives $10,000 for their specified charity. They also win a trip to Los Angeles for the Hero Dog Awards on October 1st in Hollywood. (AHA officials say a tribute to Patrick is planned as well, even though he’s no longer an official entry.)

The presentation will air on the Hallmark Channel, November 11 at 8 p.m.

Andrew David Thompson, the Michigan State University osteopathic medicine student suspended after he was charged with killing 13 dogs, expects to be reinstated to his school, his attorney said at a hearing yesterday.

Thompson, 24, has admitted killing 13 Italian greyhounds since September 2010, according to law enforcement officials, and said he did it “out of anger.” According to authorities, he said the dogs were disobedient and not housebroken.

Thompson, at yesterday’s hearing, waived his right to have a preliminary hearing within 14 days, according to the Lansing State Journal.

That hearing, now scheduled for Aug. 4, will determine if there is enough evidence for a trial. Thompson, wearing a dark green jail uniform, said he understood the charges against him. His attorney, Kimberly Savage, said Thompson has no adult or juvenile criminal record.

Thompson appeared before Judge Donald Allen in 55th District Court, where he faces 10 felony counts of killing animals at his apartment in Okemos. He also faces three additional counts in East Lansing.

The charges are punishable by up to four years in prison.

Thompson is being held at the Ingham County Jail on a $500,000 bond.

A second-year student at MSU’s College of Osteopathic Medicine, Thompson was suspended June 23 because of the allegations against him. He was charged the next day.

Officials said Thompson owned the Italian greyhounds that he killed, and had purchased them from out of state.

Authorities say 10 dogs were killed at Thompson’s Okemos apartment and three more were killed at an East Lansing complex across the street from MSU’s campus.

Arizona’s Cosmo Dog Park may soon be using dog waste to shed some light.

The town of Gilbert is looking at teaming up with Arizona State University students to build a “digester” — like one we showed you last year — that will create methane gas to power, for starters, one street lamp at the park.

The project is scheduled to go before the Gilbert Town Council next month for approval.

Students from Arizona State University’s Polytechnic campus in Mesa hope to design and create the “dog waste digester,” according to the Arizona Republic.

The town is seeking a corporate sponsor for the project, estimated to cost $25,000.

Cosmo Park, which opened in 2006, draws more than 600,000 visitors annually and regularly shows up on lists of the nation’s best dog parks.

Former Gilbert Councilwoman Linda Abbott has been pushing the project after learning of the machine installed last year as a public-art project in a park in Cambridge, Mass.

(The Cambridge machine was a temporary project and is no longer in operation.)

Gilbert officials have held three meetings with ASU on the plan to design the machine, which would consist of a repository tank and digester.

It will be supervised by professor Kiril D. Hristovski, who will challenge her students to design a machine suited to Arizona’s climate, taking advantage of solar power.

“The principals of anaerobic digestion are the same,” he said. “We’re going to challenge the students to come up with innovative solutions that are unique.”

Rather than tossing poop bags into the park’s trash can’s, dog owners would collect their dogs waste in biodegradable bags, deposit it in the digester and turn a hand crank to stir the mixture so the methane rises to the top.

Milo is a boy. Chad is a dog. Together, they are an anecdote — one used to start off this New York Times story, but more importantly one that shows the tremendous, and not fully understood, therapeutic power of dogs.

As the Times recounts it, Chad, a yellow Labrador retriever, moved in with Milo and his family in Manhattan last spring. The hope was, as an autism service dog, he would protect Milo, who sometimes has tantrums or tries to run away while outside.

He did that and more, and the effects were nearly immediate.

“Within, I would say, a week, I noticed enormous changes,” Milo’s mother said of her son. “More and more changes have happened over the months as their bond has grown. He’s much calmer. He can concentrate for much longer periods of time. It’s almost like a cloud has lifted.”

Doctors noticed it as well. “He started to give me narratives in a way he never did,” one said of Milo, adding that Milo mostly talked about the dog. The changes have been so profound that doctors are considering weaning Milo from some of his medication.

While anecdotal evidence has long been piling up on how dogs benefit human health, research has been limited.

Now, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, part of the National Institutes of Health, wants to take a closer look, the Times reports.

In partnership with the Waltham Center for Pet Nutrition in England (part of the Mars candy and pet food company), the child health institute is seeking proposals for research projects that “focus on the interaction between humans and animals.”

It is looking to fund studies on how dog-human interactions affect typical development and health, and whether they have therapeutic and public-health benefits.

When Mars became aware of the institutes’ interest, a public-private partnership was established, with the company committing more than $2 million. The National Institute of Nursing is also providing money.

As for Milo and Chad, you can see more of them in this CBS photo story, and you can learn more about them at their website.

(Photo: CBS News)

(Warning: This video contains disturbing images and profanity.)

A North Carolina grand jury has returned indictments for 14 felony counts of cruelty to animals against four workers at a private research laboratory in North Carolina.

PETA, which first brought to light abuses at Professional Laboratory Research Services (PLRS), said the indictments mark the first time in U.S. history that laboratory workers have faced felony cruelty charges for their abuse of animals in a laboratory.

PLRS was the subject of a PETA undercover investigation last fall.

Those indicted were Mary Ramsey, who had been employed as a PLRS supervisor, and Jessica Detty, who were each charged with five counts, and Christine Clement and Tracy Small, who were each indicted on two counts.

The accused, PETA says, are among those caught on the video above, kicking, throwing, and dragging dogs; hoisting rabbits by their ears and puppies by their throats; slamming cats into cages; and screaming obscenities at animals.

One of those named is the worker seen trying to rip out a cat’s claws by pulling the animal from the fence onto which he or she clung, PETA said.

The state charges follow extensive citations by federal officials for violations of animal welfare laws. The lab was closed last year, and more than 200 dogs and 50 cats were surrendered.

For nine months, a PETA investigator worked undercover inside the facility, located in Gates County, in rural northeastern North Carolina.

PLRS tested insecticides and other chemicals used in companion-animal products for Bayer, Eli Lilly, Novartis, Schering-Plough (now Merck), Sergeant’s, Wellmark, and Merial.

The PETA investigation found that toxicity tests were just part of what the animals endured. Laboratory workers cursed at animals, used pressure hoses to spray water (as well as bleach and other harsh chemicals) on them; and dragged dogs through the facility.

Dogs at PLRS spent years in cages, either to be used repeatedly in tests or to be kept infested with worms for some future study, PETA says.

To cut costs, PETA says, PLRS killed nearly 100 cats, rabbits, and dogs. The company had decided that some of these animals’ six daily cups of food were too expensive.

PETA says the case is only the second criminal prosecution in the U.S. of laboratory workers for animal cruelty. The first also stemmed from a PETA investigation — that of the infamous Silver Spring Monkeys in 1981.

A dog that went missing seven years ago in northwest Arkansas is headed back to her owner.

Andrew Navarette let his Shih Tzu, Mimi, out in the backyard of his Rogers home in 1994. She disappeared, and his efforts to find her, even though she had a microchip, were unsuccessful, according to the Associated Press

Mimi ended up in a new home — that of Kim Rafter, who also lives in Rogers, after someone offered her the tiny dog. Rafter, not knowing Mimi belonged to someone else, or knowing that Mimi’s name was Mimi, named the Shih Tzu Gizmo.

Years passed, and then Gizmo escaped from owner No. 2.

She turned up over the weekend at an animal shelter in Rogers where officials found the chip and called Navarette, who, though he had moved to California, had kept the same cell phone number.

Assistant shelter manager Matt Colston said Navarette was excited to hear that Mimi had been found and immediately offered to pay for her to be shipped to his home in California.

Rafter said it will be difficult to say goodbye to Gizmo.

(Photo: Bud Norman, Rogers Animal Shelter manager, holds Mimi; by David Frank Dempsey / NWA Online)

Scourge-wise, it may not be up there with drunk driving, but drunk puppy buying is percieved as a serious enough problem to lead at least two Manhattan pet stores to ban the sales of canines to the inebriated.

“I feel like they always come in drunk,” Fernanda Moritz, the manager of Le Petite Puppy, explained to the website DNA Info.

The shop, surrounded by bars, has implemented a policy prohibiting people who appear to have been drinking heavily from buying animals. or even holding them.

Moritz said many of her would-be customers stop in after happy hour around 6 p.m.

“They come from there and say ‘let’s stop by to see the puppies,’” said Moritz.

Another pet store in the neighborhood, Citipups, has instituted a similar ban.

Moritz recalled selling a Chihuahua once to a woman she thought might have been drunk. The dog was returned the next day, near death. Since then, she said, they’ve been on the lookout for intoxicated customers.

Leandro Jacoby, the 28-year-old manager of nearby Citipups, say he has come up with a way to determine whether a puppy buyer is serious, or acting on drunken impulse.

“We have to tell them to come back the next day and most of the time they never come back,” Jacoby said.

“Most of the time it happens around holidays — St. Patrick’s Day or Gay Pride,” he added.

Even though turning down drunken customers might seem bad for business, Moritz and Jacoby both say they’d prefer to lose the sale.

“We make sure they can take care of the dog. We make sure they go to a good home,” Jacoby said.

There are those — including many readers of this website — who’d question whether shops should be selling puppies at all, due to the puppy mill connections often involved. West Hollywood and South Lake Tahoe in California have both banned the sale of dogs and cats in stores, as has Albuquerque, N.M.

Between 2 million and 4 million dogs are born in U.S. puppy mills every year, according to the Humane Society of the United States, many of which end up in pet stores and being sold through the Internet and newspaper classified ads.

MSNBC had an in-depth story last year about cities banning the sales of dogs and cats in pet stores — in which one of the same New York shops is mentioned.

(Video: New York Daily News)

You don’t need me to tell you that it has gotten more expensive than ever to be the owner, guardian, caretaker, parent — pick your term — of a dog.

Over your dog’s lifespan, you can expect to dish out anywhere from $9,400 to $14,000, according to the latest estimates from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA).

As we’ve noted before, spending on pets seems to just keeps growing, even when the rest of the economy has a droopy, hang dog look. Despite the recession, spending on pets has gone up 6 percent annually since 2008, to $48 billion last year, according to the American Pet Products Association.

And a new survey conducted by the Consumer Reports National Research Center says that even during the “darkest days” of the recession in 2009 and 2010, when self-denial became common, only 16 percent of respondents reported spending less on their pets.

Of course, what those kind of statistics don’t take into account are all the dogs that — during those darkest days (which, as far as I can see, we’re still in) — have been surrendered and abandoned by families who have fallen into foreclosure or otherwise been forced to move into cheaper rental housing where pets aren’t allowed.

Even if the pet industry is gliding through the recession, many pet owners — and pets — are not.

Since 2008, pet food, veterinary care, and other services have risen at an annual rate of about 4 percent on average, considerably faster than the rate of overall inflation, according to the latest issue of Consumer Reports.

The magazine interviewed manufacturers, nutritionists and veterinarians, and jumped into the crowded pet product marketplace to sniff out the best bargains — and it reports that it’s possible to save hundreds of dollars a year on pet care without shortchanging your pet.

The package of stories is well worth checking out — and they’re all illustrated with photos taken of shelter pets (still the best bargain, it notes) at the North Shore Animal League. Here’s a partial summary:

PET FOOD

A significant part of the national pet-food bill these days — Amerians spend about $20 billion a year on it — goes for so-called premium and super-premium varieties.

But “premium” is a virtually meaningless term, with no real legal definition.

Any food you see on supermarket and pet-store shelves that’s labeled “complete & balanced,” “total nutrition,” or “100 percent nutritious” should meet the minimum standards for nutrition set by the Association of American Feed Control Officials. That indicates that it’s adequate for the vast majority of healthy pets.

PET INSURANCE

Pet insurance generally costs more than it pays out, the magazine said. Only in uncommon cases, when a pet requires very expensive care, does the coverage pay for itself.

CR compared the three biggest brands — ASPCA Pet Health Insurance, 24PetWatch QuickCare, and VPI, and a fourth, Trupanion, that is a relative newcomer.

In the case of Roxy, a basically healthy 10-year-old beagle in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. whose lifetime medical expenses were examined, CR reported that none of the nine different policies it compared would have paid out more than the projected premiums.

Instead, the magazine suggests starting your own emergency fund, or “kitty,” to help with unforeseen vet bills.

MEDICINE

CR says you’ll probably be better off having your dog’s prescription filled at a chain drugstore, supermarket pharmacy, or big-box retailer than through your veterinarian.

Walgreens, for example, allows customers to enroll their pets as family members in its Prescription Savings Club. Giant/Eagle, Kroger, and Target also have discount programs that are open to pets. At 35 of its pharmacies in Georgia, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Tennessee, Target is trying out a program called PetRx to fill prescriptions for veterinary medicines.

Several online pet medicine dispensaries offer significantly lower prices as well.

Despite all that, about two-thirds of the pet owners CR surveyed said they buy their pet medicines from the vet who prescribes them.

CHOOSING A VET

The CR survey found that while most people love their vets, they don’t love the prices he or she charges.

“Because veterinary care is an infrequent, sometimes emergency expenditure, it’s difficult for consumers to gauge what constitutes a fair price for any of the hundreds of services their pet might require. The best time to comparison shop is when your pet needs a routine checkup, not when you’re stressed out by a sick or injured animal,” the article says.

CR suggests calling two or three nearby vets to ask what their physical-exam fee is. Nationally, it can range from roughly $35 to $46, according to a 2008 survey of 826 U.S. vets by the American Animal Hospital Association.

FLEA AND TICK TREATMENTS

There are more choices than ever here, some of them even affordable. With the patent expiring on fipronil, one of the active ingredients in Frontline Plus, a leading brand, the market has opened up to competitors.

CR found two that were new to the market, Sentry FiproGuard Plus at Petco and PetArmor Plus at Walmart, offered sizeable savings. A three month supply of PetArmor Plus cost $28, compared with $50 for FiproGuard Plus and $62 for Frontline Plus at Petco.

“We found other brands for as little as $9, but be careful. Some inexpensive products might not be as effective and might require you to spray or treat more often … The more insecticide you find yourself using, the greater the health and safety risks to you and your pet.”

(Photos: Top photo by John Woestendiek / ohmidog!; other photos by Michael Smith, courtesy of Consumer Reports)

Andrew David Thompson, the Michigan State University student accused of slaying 13 Italian greyhounds, told investigators he killed them “out of anger,” according to court transcripts obtained by the Lansing State Journal.

The 24-year-old osteopathic medicine student, since suspended by the university, said he killed the dogs by throwing them to the ground or against a wall and by grabbing them by the neck and beating them.

“He (said) that he has killed every single one of these dogs except for two,” Ingham County Animal Control Deputy Jodi LeBombard testified at a June 24 hearing in 55th District Court that led to charges.

Thompson is charged with killing 13 dogs since September 2010.

Typically, he’d put a deceased dog in a garbage bag, along with its clothes, collars and other items, LeBombard testified. “He would cry all the way to the Dumpster, and throw it in the Dumpster,” she said.

Thompson faces 10 felony counts of animal killing in 55th District Court in Mason and three additional counts of animal killing in East Lansing’s 54B District Court. The charges are punishable by up to four years in prison.

He is being held at the Ingham County Jail on a $500,000 bond in the East Lansing case and a $100,000 bond in the Mason case.

Thompson faces an additional count of animal neglect because at least one of the dogs survived.

Officials didn’t say where Thompson bought the Italian greyhounds, a small and delicate breed that typically weighs 7 to 14 pounds.

According to the transcripts, Thompson was seeing a psychiatrist, who expressed concern that Thompson might be a suicide risk.

On his Facebook page, Thompson, who has 790 “friends,” says he attended Phoenix Christian High School in Arizona, then the University of Southern California, where his major was biochemistry. He lists his favorite book as The Bible and his interests as snowboarding and reading The Economist.

The investigation began on June 14, when animal control officials received an anonymous complaint that Thompson had been seen with numerous dogs that kept disappearing.

Several days later, investigators searched Thompson’s Okemos apartment and found a severely injured puppy in the closet.

Authorities also found evidence Thompson bought the dogs from outside Michigan and had them transported via airplane in carriers. Thompson previously lived in Goodyear, Ariz.

In a June 22 interview, Thompson told LeBombard he killed the dogs out of frustration or anger, often sparked when they defecated on his floor, urinated in his bed or wouldn’t come to him when he called them.

“And he got frustrated they didn’t want to stay with him,” LeBombard said, according to transcripts. “And that made him upset.”