ohmidog!

A U.S. District Court jury in Chicago has awarded $330,000 to a family whose black Labrador, named Lady, was shot and killed during a 2009 police search of their home.

“That was my best friend,” the Chicago Sun-Times quoted Thomas Russell III as saying. “We did everything together.”

The Russell family sued the city of Chicago in January 2010, accusing police of excessive force, false arrest and inflicting intentional emotional harm. Police were searching for drugs, but found none.

During the 2009 search of the family’s apartment, Russell and his younger brother, Darren, were handcuffed and both had shotguns placed against their heads, their attorneys said.

At some point, Lady appeared and an officer shot her, the family’s lawyers said.

According to the Chicago Tribune, Thomas Russell asked police if he could  lock up Lady, who was 9 years old, but the request was denied.

When Lady came around the corner with her tail wagging, Officer Richard Antonsen shot the dog, according to the suit.

The jury awarded Thomas Russell $175,000, Darren Russell $85,000 and their parents $35,000 each. The jury also awarded the family $2,000 in punitive damages, levied against Antonsen for shooting the dog, and $1,000, against the police supervisor who made the decision to arrest Thomas Russell.

Jenny Hoyle, a city Law Department spokesperson, said, “The officers involved in this case were executing a valid search warrant when this incident occurred and were simply protecting themselves.”

“We are extremely disappointed and reviewing all of our options, Hoyle added. “In particular, we think the damages awarded to the plaintiffs were excessive.”

In that case, I’d suggest, think again.

Animal rights activists are being blamed — though without much proof — for sabotaging the Android app “Dog Wars” by infecting it with a virus that sends out a message from the user’s cell phone to all of that user’s cell phone contacts.

“I take pleasure in hurting small animals, just thought you should know that,” the message reads.

PC Magazine reports that:

Upon installation, the Trojan launches a display icon that mimics the legitimate one: instead of “BETA,” it reads “PETA.” This syncs your device to PETA’s text messaging system. Symantec directed us to instructions on PETA’s website on how to remove yourself from this alert system.

Symantec, which first reported the malware, said it did not think it came from the People of Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). “It is more likely the work of someone attempting to associate the app with PETA or to gain sympathy by the association,” Symantec wrote.

PETA, other animal welfare organizations, and even Michael Vick, had criticized the app, in which players can vie to become big-time pretend dogfighters. It was subsequently removed from Google’s Android Market. It is still available from third party app markets and warez sites.

Developer Kage Productions countered the criticism by saying  “It is JUST a video game … Just because something is illegal in real life does not mean it is illegal to make a song, movie, or video game about it.”

(Graphic from PC Magazine)

Name: Moses

Breed: Otterhound

Age: 3

Encountered: Go Dog Wash, in Winston-Salem

Backstory: Ace was in serious need of bath — has been for a couple of months now — so we popped into a self-service dog wash in Winston-Salem. That’s where we met Moses, looking every bit as full of wisdom as his namesake.

Moses weighs 150 pounds, according to his owner, Jennifer. She’d already washed Moses’ sister (though not by birth), a Samoyed, who waited patiently, barking from time to time, as her human completed the far bigger job.

Jennifer, like me, had some trouble with the token machine, which was not taking credit cards, as it usually does. She had to pack both dogs up — the wet one and the dry one — and drive to the bank and come back. I used up all $10 of tokens wetting Ace down and applying shampoo. He waited, all lathered up, while I tried my last $5 bill in the machine. It didn’t like it. So I had to go next door to a dry cleaners to break a $20. Final cost, counting the dryer: $20. Lesson learned: Get all your tokens beforehand.

Ace was cooperative, until I tried the blow dryer on him. He squirmed, but put up with that. It’s a pretty handy way to wash a dog — and with Ace’s recent mystery back and leg issues, I didn’t want to put him in the slippery bathtub at home. At the dog wash, I just walked him up the ramp, into the giant tub with a rubberized bottom, then washed, rinsed, conditioned and rinsed — all with the nozzle provided.

Moses was even more patient than Ace. He seemed a very mellow dog, sitting perfectly still until his owner was done. Then he decided he needed to shake. A wet otterhound, when he shakes, really parts the water, or I guess, technically, the water parts him. It went everywhere.

(Roadside Encounters are a regular feature of Travels with Ace. To see them all, click here.)

An insurance company told a Colorado woman whose dog was hit by a car that if two trips to the vet don’t resolve the dog’s problems, the company will considered the dog “totaled.”

In insurance industry jargon, ”totaled” means the cost to repair a vehicle exceeds the cost of replacing it.

Applying the terminology to a dog or other living thing is pretty reprehensible — leading me to question whether insurance companies are really as neighborly, caring and good humored as their cloying TV ads make them out to be.

Referring to pets as property — despite what our archaic laws say — is such a clear and simple customer relations no-no that, you’d think, even a cave man would know better. In this particular case, I’m wondering if the agent in question even attended Farmers’ University.

Marcia Pinkstaff, of Parker, Colo., told ABC7 News in Denver that Sasha, her 9-year-old lab mix, was hit while walking with her in a crosswalk by a van making a left turn.

“She didn’t see us and she hit Sasha very, very hard,” Pinkstaff said. “Sasha has tears in her lungs, a tear in her diaphragm and liver damage.”

Pinkstaff said the driver’s insurance company, Farmers’ Insurance, told her they’d pay for one or two trips to the vet and then after that the dog would be considered totaled – meaning, in this case, they wouldn’t pay any more.

“I was horrified,” Pinkstaff said. “They said they were totaling out my dog. It broke my heart because she is like a child to me.”

I’m looking forward to seeing “Tabloid” — the new Errol Morris documentary about the 1978  scandal that saw a beauty queen from America go to London to track down the object of her affection (a Mormon missionary named Kirk), kidnap him, according to police, and, if you believe the court testimony, have her way with him against his will.  

That’s because, for better and worse, that woman, Joyce McKinney, changed the course of my life, too.  

Thirty years after the scandal that erupted when McKinney tried to reclaim, one way or another, the man she saw as her one true love, I would spend more than 100 hours on the phone with her as she went about an equally — or perhaps even more — dogged pursuit.  

“Tabloid,” the documentary, focuses on the scandal and all the fun the British press had with McKinney’s exploits — from her arrest on charges of abducting the young missionary named Kirk and keeping him tied up in a cottage in the countryside, to the celebrity status she enjoyed after her release from jail, to her fleeing the country before trial disguised as a member of a deaf mime troupe.  

My book focuses on dog cloning, the first commercial customer of which was that same  Joyce Bernann McKinney. In 2009, McKinney became the first person in the world –  unassociated with the fledgling business – to pay to have her dog cloned, a deceased pit bull named Booger.  

My book revisits the old scandal, too, because, to me, there seemed to be some similarities between reclaiming Kirk and cloning Booger.  

As suggested in ”DOG INC.: The Uncanny Inside Story of Cloning Man’s Best Friend,”  both were attempts to, at any cost, recapture lost love — one through feminine wiles, if not force, the other through science.  

As if her life hadn’t already oozed enough pathos and irony, McKinney’s attempt to resurrect Booger, or at least bring a genetically identical copy of  him back into the world, would lead to an embarassing resurfacing of the old scandal. While doing news media interviews, in exchange for a discount on her cloning bill, she was recognized as the women who, as the British tabloids told the story at the time, manacled and raped the young Mormon missionary.  

By 2000, McKinney had thought the scandal was finally behind her. She’d gone on to a new life by then, after years as recluse, living with her dogs and other animals, first in North Carolina, then in California. In California, she began using the name Bernann instead of Joyce and, having not lost  her soft spot for dogs, continued taking in abandoned and unwanted pit bulls.  

All were loved, but none were Booger, a dog she found on the highway in North Carolina who she says later saved her life when she was attacked by another of her dogs. After that, Booger went on to become her unofficial service dog, helping her with the day to day tasks her injuries made difficult.  

The author meets Snuppy

After Booger died, she sought to have him cloned — first through an American company that was working with Texas A & M University to clone a dog. That research was funded by John Sperling, founder of the University of Phoenix. Unable to produce a canine clone, Texas A & M dropped the project.  Scientists at Seoul National University picked up the research and cloned the world’s first dog, Snuppy, in 2005. McKinney then signed on with a South Korean company that had formed after that success.  

McKinney first contacted me while I was a reporter at the Baltimore Sun, after I ran an item about dog cloning on the newspaper’s pet blog that mentioned a then-anonymous woman who was paying $150,000 to have her dog cloned.  

So began a conversation that would continue, off and on, for a year, and lead me to quit my job, travel to Korea, and write a book about dog cloning.  

While we hit it off initially — both being dog lovers, both being from North Carolina — McKinney, as the months went on, would grow angry with me often. The first time was when I told her that, rather than writing a book with her about Booger, I wanted to write a book that looked at dog cloning overall — how the new business got started, how it was being marketed, and the animal welfare concerns it raised.  

That would be the first of our many “break-ups.” But always, she would eventually call me back, updating me and seeking assistance with this or that.  

On her trip to meet the newborn clones, during which she appeared globally in TV interviews, someone made the connection, raising the possibility, later confirmed, that the woman cloning her dog and the “Mormon manacler” were one in the same. She blamed me for that, though I had nothing to do with it.  

She had feared there was a possibility that might happen. I was pretty sure it would. (Although I had written a newspaper story by then, it didn’t mention the 1970s scandal; at the time she had only vaguely referred to it and I had only reached 99 percent certainty that she was the same woman — a fact that she would confirm, and go into great detail about, later.)  

After another period of silence, she reconnected with me again, this time asking me to go with her to pick up the clones. She wanted me to pretend I was handicapped so that I could claim one of the clones was my service dog, and she — if she found three more conspirators — could avoid having them fly home in the jet’s cargo hold.  

For ethical reasons, I declined. But she still stayed in touch during her trip to pick up and return the dogs, an effort that didn’t go smoothly, as you can read in this excerpt from “DOG, INC.”   

Joyce with a Booger clone

Back home with her clones, her troubles continued. At one point, all five clones, and her other dogs, were seized and impounded by animal control, though she managed to reclaim them.  

After an argument, she moved out of the house she shared with a friend, bounced with the clones from motel to motel, and eventually moved back in. 

 That was about the time she was contacted by Morris. 

I’m sure Morris, as was the case with me, found that dealing with her, to put it mildly, had some ups and downs. She, while appearing with one of the clones at an early screening of the movie, denounced its accuracy, even as Morris stood next to her.  

I won’t see it until this weekend, but I’d guess, from what I’ve seen of previews and knowing the work of Morris, it fairly portrays all sides. And given his trademark style of turning on the camera and letting the subject talk into it, I’m sure McKinney gets ample chance to share her version. 

I’ve only spoken with her once since my book came out, when she called, enraged, having seen a reference to it in a newspaper. She hadn’t read it by then, but denounced it, too, adding that I had no right to tell her story — either that of the scandal or that of the cloning. 

McKinney told me repeatedly she didn’t want to see the two stories overlap — for she saw one as “tabloid filth” and the other — cloning her dog — as pure and heartwarming. Her hope is to start a center where pit bulls can be trained to be service dogs. She wants to call it Booger’s Place. 

Some of those who see the movie, or for that matter read my book, may see her as manipulative and devious. Some may see her, in connection with the scandal, as a woman who holds little respect for the boundaries society imposes. Some may see her, in connection with cloning, as a person who was willing to jump over those nature imposes, as well. Some may see her, overall, as a person who will stop at nothing to get what she wants.

I’ll say this much: She is without a doubt the most determined person I’ve ever known.

(John will be discussing and signing copies of “DOG, INC.”  from 6 to 8 p.m. at Barnhills, 811 Burke St., in Winston-Salem.)

(John will be speaking after the 3:30 and 6 p.m. showings of “Tabloid” at the Aperture Cinema, 311 W. Fourth St., in Winston-Salem, this Sunday, Aug. 21.)

(For more information on “DOG, INC.: The Uncanny Inside Story of Cloning Man’s Best Friend, click here.)

It’s not often that I share the personal frustrations of being a dog-blogger — especially one who tries to stand out from the crowd by keeping a lid on the pablum and fluff, and presenting from time to time some stories of depth about important dog-related issues.

Yesterday was a case in point.

I posted three items — about the daily average for ohmidog!

One was a mention of an upcoming motorcycle ride, sponsored by a motorcycle club and Baltimore’s Anti-Animal Abuse Task Force, to raise money for abused and abandoned dogs.

One was a story about a day of global protest against eating dogs in South Korea.

One was an update on a story I wrote a few years back after meeting in Los Angeles a homeless man and his three legged pit bull (her fourth leg was lost as a result of a police shooting). Both have fallen ill and need help.

I was especially proud of the latter two, as they both contained some original reporting, and original photographs, and displayed a little first hand knowledge I had gathered, mostly during the year and a half I was working on my book.

Checking my Google Analytics, as I do from time to time, I saw this morning that the dog-eating post (of global significance) drew 116 views; the post on Michael and Topaz (of national significance) got 46 views; and the post on the fundraising motorcyle ride (of local significance) got 16 views.

What drew most readers to ohmidog! yesterday — 676 of them — was a post, nearly 50 days old, about Jennifer Aniston getting her dog Norman’s name tatooed on her foot.

Thereby showing you the significance of celebrities. It blows my mind.

How people try to remember and memorialize their dogs is a legitimate story — and a large part of the book I wrote — and the fact that more people are going the tattoo route, as the New York Post reported this week, is worthy of note.

But let’s face it, it was Jennifer Aniston that brought me those readers — and while I appreciate her, and those readers who dropped by, it bugs me that her foot tattoo so overshadowed two stories of deeper importance and deeper humanity. But, despite all that’s in the bowl, they chose only that.

My little corner of the universe, or the Internet, serves it seems as a microcosm of what’s happened to the news media, which, to survive, has caved in to the pressure to give readers easily consumable, barely newsworthy bits of what they want, rather than fully fleshed out stories on topics of greater importance to the species, be it human or dog.

Looking at my Analytics — and I think it’s OK to share this proprietary information, given that I am the proprietor — a total of 435 pages and posts were viewed yesterday, 1,941 views in all.

The vast majority, though, were focused on Jennifer Aniston’s foot.

For those consumed with numbers, and getting them to increase, and paying the bills, the thinking would reasonably follow: We need more Jennifer Aniston, more tattoos, more feet, or more of whoever or whatever else is, at this given moment, “trending.”

Here’s one of the things that has happened. News organizations, and bloggers, see what’s “trending” and base their coverage on that, thereby making it “trend” even more, while items of higher significance — worth some digging up — fall unseen by the wayside.

Add to that the fact that those who write strictly for the Internet, often, are no longer writing for humans. Instead of writing for quality, instead of writing, even, for readers, they’re writing for robots — those search engine Peruse-a-trons that scan our words, mathematically determine their import and influence how many readers come our way.

Add to that the fact that average online writer now spends more time touting what he has written via social networks and elsewhere than actually writing what he has written. Time once spent on research and the craft of writing is now mostly absorbed by shouting about and hyping what one has written, even if that “writing” was little more than a cut and paste job.

We’ll even admit to doing some of that — what is now called “aggregating,” what was once called plagiarism. We’ll admit to touting stories we’re proud of on Facebook and Twitter. We’ll even admit to, once in a while, posting a story because we think it will draw a crowd.

Were ohmidog! a true money-making venture — which in some ways would make more sense than being poor and principled — we might follow the route that so many have, bringing you a steady diet of the cute, the happy, the adorable and the celebrity-related.

But, Jennifer Aniston aside, we plan to continue to vary our fare — presenting the cute, from time to time; the uplifting, as often as we can find it; but also the cruel and depraved acts of humans that lead to animal suffering.

If, in the three years we’ve existed (did I mention we’ve just turned 3?) and in the 3,000 posts we’ve posted, ohmidog! has shown anything, it is this: the depths to which humans can sink and the heights to which they can rise when it comes to dogs.

We’re going to keep doing that.

And you can tattoo that on your foot.

After nine months apart, a Great Dane named Emmitt Thunderpaws recently welcomed his human back home from military deployment.

Bob Barker has made a new public service annoucement for PETA, aimed at calling attention to the suffering of animals used for product testing.

Many animals are poisoned, blinded, and killed every year in product tests for cosmetics, personal-care products, and household cleaning products — even though non-animal tests are available.

On top of that, the results of animal tests are often unreliable or not applicable to humans, PETA says.

Barker urges consumers to research before they buy, and suggests visiting PETA’s website to order the organization’s free cruelty-free shopper’s guide.

“The price is never right on products tested on animals,” Barker says.

With America’s debt so high we had to build a new ceiling, PETA is suggesting a way the government could save a quick $16 billion a year — by stopping publicly funded animal experiments.

In addition to showing where the money’s going, this PETA graphic also suggests some better uses for the funds — radical ideas like feeding the hungry, hiring more teachers and helping veterans hold on to their homes.

Whether you’re a PETA-lover or a PETA-hater, it makes you think.

It has been nearly three years since ohmidog! brought you the story of homeless (at the time) Michael Reed and his three-legged pit bull, Topaz.

I ran across them during a visit to Los Angeles, where I first saw Michael pushing a shopping cart down a sidewalk in Inglewood, with Topaz in tow.

Suspecting they had a story, I followed them to a vacant lot next to a gas station, where, sitting on the sidewalk with a bottle of King Cobra malt liquour — Topaz, as always, at his side — he graciously consented to share it.

The story, that is. 

A couple of months earlier, on August 31st, 2008, Topaz had gotten caught in the middle of a barrage of gunfire. Police were shooting at another homeless man named Eddie Franco, who they thought had a gun. Franco was killed. His gun turned out to be a plastic toy.

Topaz, shot 4 times, was taken away by animal control — leaving Michael without the dog he’d grown to depend on, or, for that matter, any idea whether she was still alive.

Through a stroke of fortune, he managed to get Topaz back.

Months before the incident, Ingrid Hurel-Diourbel, founder of Streetsmarts Rescue, had seen Michael and his dog on the street, collecting recyclables, and stopped to talk to him.  She placed one of her organization’s rescue tags on Topaz, who had no identification, and Reed gave her his stepmother’s phone number.

When the Carson Shelter’s animal control unit — where Topaz was taken after the shooting — saw the tag, they called Hurel-Diourbel, who got the message to Reed, and helped raised the funds needed for surgery.

Topaz would lose one of her hind legs, but she and Michael would be reunited, resuming their life on the streets for several months. Then, with more help from friends, Michael and Topaz moved into a trailer park, almost two years ago. Things were looking up.

Now comes word from Los Angeles that both Michael and Topaz have fallen victim to some serious medical problems.

Streetsmarts Rescue in Hawthorne reports that Michael is terminally ill with cirrhosis of the liver and Hepatitis C. Topaz has a cancerous lump on her neck — a round cell tumor that will require surgery.

Hurel-Diourbel is trying to raise funds again — about $1,000 for the operation Topaz needs. She’s also trying to find a home for Topaz, for when the day comes that Michael can no longer care for her.

Hurel-Diourbel says she recently spent the day with Michael, who she says has no family to speak of, at the Veteran’s Hospital in Long Beach.

“Michael, homeless at one point, now was being treated with much respect and dignity. It was wonderful to witness,” she said. She added that, during his hospital stay, he told anyone who would listen about his dog.

He has since returned to his trailer in Torrance, which he moved into only with the assurance that Topaz could live there, too. Michael, who acknowledges he has some mental problems, had been looking for work, but without success.

Because it’s not known how much longer Michael will be able to live on his own, Hurel-Diourbel is trying to line up a new home for Topaz, who is 6-years old.

As an outsider, here’s my hope, based on our short visit, and the connection I saw between man and dog: That whoever adopts Topaz — if that occurs before his death — might be willing to let Michael share time, lots of time, with her during his final days.

To learn how to contribute to Topaz’s surgery, visit the ChipIn page that Hurel-Diourbel established.

(You can find a subsequent update on Michael and Topaz here.)

(Photos by John Woestendiek)