ohmidog!

Ace loves the glare of the spotlight. The glare of the sunlight? That’s another matter.

For the five hours we spent Saturday at Bookmarks, Winston-Salem’s literary festival, Ace probably spent about three of them in the shade of a covered table, even though it wasn’t all that hot.

Once he discovered the shady spot in the neighboring booth, Ace decided he was a stalwart fan, if not of “genuine jazz,” at least of WSNC — 90.5 on your FM dial.

He was supposed to be staying with me in the booth of the Winston-Salem Journal, which was kind enough to give me some space to sell and sign my book, “DOG, INC.: The Uncanny Inside Story of Cloning Man’s Best Friend.”

But after hitting it off with Marguerite Oestreicher, who works for the station, he decided laying at her feet in the shade was better than hawking books in the sun — and she seemed to have no problem with that.

For much of our time there, all that was visible of him was his tail, or a paw, sticking out from under the table’s drape.

When he did venture out, he did his job — drawing a crowd — most of whom, as usual, wanted to know what breeds are in him and how he got so big.

We sold a handful of books, donating 25 percent of proceeds to the Journal’s Newspapers in Education Fund.

Thanks again to the Journal, and to WSNC.

(John and Ace will be appearing and signing books Tuesday, Sept. 20 at Pomegranate Books at 4418 Park Ave. in Wilmington, N.C. The event starts at 7 p.m.)

Intentions were good — but not much else — when Chowan County, N.C.,  opened up an old gymnasium to serve as a pet-friendly shelter during Hurricane Irene.

The gym happened to be bat  infested, and arriving dogs weren’t check for rabies shots beforehand.

Now, the owners of at least some of the 15 dogs who stayed there are being told they must put their pet in long-term quarantine or have them euthanized, WVEC reported.

And their owners have to get rabies shots.

“Everybody started finding out this place was filled with bats and black mold,” claims Billy Harvell, who dropped three dogs at the gym in Edenton before the storm. He hasn’t seen them in a week and he recently found out it could be much longer before he sees them again.

“It’s not our fault that the county fumbled the ball and stuck everybody in there. The county knew for two years that bats lived in that building,” Harvell said.

County officials say the quarantine and shots are necessaryensure public safety.  The county Board of Commissioners fired its county manager last week, in part for his performance during Hurricane Irene. Officials said Paul Parker left town, though he was not authorized to do so.

After a two-year-old boy was bitten in the face by a pit bull, the police chief of Waterville, Maine, says he thinks the borough should consider banning certain large breeds of dogs.

“I would almost like to see, and I know this is very controversial, to see the city take a stand where they try to prohibit specific breeds,” Chief Joe Massey said.

Massey told WABI that statistics show most attacks happen in victim’s homes and that “the top three biters according to their study are pit bulls, german shepherds and Rottweilers.”

Either Massey didn’t say — or WABI failed to report — whose study he was basing his statements on, as is often the case when breed bans start to blossom.

“In this particular case, where a two-year-old was bitten, a significant portion of his cheek is gone,” Massey said. “I mean gone! It’s appalling.”

The boy had surgery and is now recovering at home. The dog, who earlier bit a 6-year-old boy,  has been euthanized.

Paula Mitchell, executive director of the Waterville Humane Society, said she didn’t agree with idea of a ban. But the humane society does refuse to place pit bulls in homes where there are children under 12.

“People should do their research before they buy dogs,” the police chief said. “They should research them and particularly if they’re going to get a dog that’s already grown.”

The chief’s statistics, we can only guess, come from a CDC report on fatal dog bites between 1979 and 1998, which showed “pit bull types” as the breed responsible for most fatalities.

We won’t go into all of that study’s flaws — not the least of which is that pit bull isn’t a breed but a catch-all category that includes numerous breeds and mixes thereof.

As the CDC itself says about the study: ”It does not identify specific breeds that are most likely to bite or kill, and thus is not appropriate for policy-making decisions related to the topic.”

Most politicians don’t read the small print, though. They’re too busy spreading fear.

The Smithsonian National Postal Museum is looking for an Owney look-a-like.

And they promise not to stuff him, or clone him.

In conjunction with the Washington Humane Society, the Postal Museum has launched a contest seeking a modern day living version of the dog that once rode mail trains across the country, and whose likeness recently came out on a new postage stamp.

That’s the good news. The bad news? Only three days remain to enter it.

Owney, a stray who wandered into a post office and was taken in by postal clerks, captured headlines and served as a good luck charm in the 19th Century.

His image was released on a postage stamp this summer.

But, before he became a celebrity rider of the rails, he was just an everyday mutt — maybe a little like your’s.

If your dog looks like Owney — believed to have been a terrier mix — you could not only win an iPad, but his or her picture could end up hanging in the museum.

“If your dog lends a helping paw, charms people everywhere, or resembles Owney, you could win an iPad2 pre-loaded with Owney’s e-book and an Owney prize pack,” the museum says.

Second and third place winners get Owney postage stamps, an Owney toy, and a signed book about the famous dog. The three winning dogs will have their photos displayed near Owney’s exhibit, which includes Owney himself, in mounted form.

You can find more images of Owney here.

Enter the Owney contest by going to the Postal Museum’s Facebook page and uploading a photo of your dog.

(Photos: Courtesy of the Smithsonian National Postal Museum)

The sixth annual Surf Dog Surf-A-Thon in San Diego was supposed to be held Sunday — but human waste got in the way.

The event, scheduled at Dog Beach in Del Mar, was postponed because of a county-wide blackout that led to a sewage spill, dumping 3.2 million gallons of sewage into Los Penasquitos Lagoon.

Not a single dog complained, made a scene, put up nasty signs or wrote their city council representative about it. Reports that one older dog was heard muttering “damn humans” could not be confirmed

The Surf-A-Thon is held annually to raise funds for the Helen Woodward Animal Center in Rancho Santa Fe.

Billed as the largest such event in the U.S., the Surf-A-Thon was to feature such well-known surf dogs as Ricochet (pictured above), Nany, Dozer and Buddy, along with the ever-popular Beach Bum Bikini Babe Canine Costume Contest, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The Surf Dog Surf-A-Thon will now be held on Sunday, Sept. 25, 2011 from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.

“We are really disappointed to have to postpone the Surf-A-Thon,” said Nedra Abramson, the event organizer. “The safety of both the pets and the people participating in this event is our biggest concern and there is no way the beach will be safe by Sunday.”

Once it is held, the event will feature a ceremony to induct its first inductee into the Surf dog Hall of Fame – Buddy, a 13-year-old Jack Russell Terrier from Ventura.

For more information about the Surf Dog Surf-A-Thon, visit www.surfdog.kintera.org or call 858-756-4117 ext. 312.

Between a YouTube video gone viral, the Oprah Winfrey Show, the National Geographic Channel and Animal Planet, the playful antics of Cassie the cat and Moses the crow have been viewed my millions.

Now, the special friendship between members of two species that are normally mortal enemies is the subject of a childrens book, coming out next month.

“Cat and Crow: An Amazing Friendship” tells story of the four-year relationship between a stray kitten and the crow who befriended her in the yard of Ann and Wally Collito in Attleboro, Mass.

Conveying a hopeful message of love and peace, the book was written by Lisa Fleming and pubished by Collage Books, Inc. It is aimed at ages 3 and up.

Fleming, a former newspaper columnist and freelance writer, first saw Cassie and Moses on YouTube. She contacted the Collitos. They encouraged her to tell the story, and gave her access to their collection of photos and videos.

The book is illustrated by Anna Marie Domink-Harris, and includes contributions from naturalist Bernd Heinrich and Nancy Peterson, cat programs manager for the Humane Society of the United States.

It is scheduled for release on Oct. 16 — National Feral Cat Day.

To learn more about “Cat and Crow,” visit the book’s Facebook page

Most official accounts will tell you that search and rescue dogs at the World Trade Center found only cadavers after 9-11 — that no dog tracked down a survivor.

But the owner and handler of Trakr — a German shepherd retired from the Halifax, Nova Scotia, police department — says his dog did.

Specifically, says former Halifax police officer James Symington, it was Trakr who first alerted to the spot of rubble under which Genelle Guzman-McMillan would later be found.

Trakr died a hero — at least in the eyes of many — in 2009.

But part of him would live on.

Before his death, Trakr — by virtue of an essay Symington wrote on his dog’s achievements — won a contest called the Golden Clone Giveaway.

An American company — the only one offering dog cloning to the general public — pronounced Trakr the most “cloneworthy” dog in America and had his cells shipped to Seoul, South Korea, where five clones of Trakr were produced, arriving in the U.S. about three months after Trakr’s death.

Symington is now training the clones — known collectively as Team Trakr — to be search and rescue dogs.

Trakr’s tale is among those told in my book, DOG, INC.: The Uncanny Inside Story of Cloning Man’s Best Friend.

And, yes, it’s non-fiction.

I first ran into a clone of Trakr (that’s one of them to the left) when I visited the South Korean lab that, having contracted with the American company, was cloning Trakr, as well as five other dogs for customers who had taken part in an online dog cloning auction.

The lab was operated by Hwang Woo Suk, who — after heading the team that produced the world’s first canine clone, Snuppy — was fired from Seoul National University for falsifying results of his experiments on creating cloned human embryos.

While the American company, Bio-Arts, had told me Hwang’s lab would be off limits to me during my visit, I was, to my surprise, welcomed, given a tour, and allowed to observe a cloning.

About four months later, I met all five Trakr clones when they were presented to Symington at a Los Angeles press conference.

While some I interviewed for the book cast doubt on Symington’s 9-11 claims — including a New York firefighter who said no dogs were involved in Guzman-McMillan’s rescue — Symington, the friend who accompanied him from Halifax to New York and two volunteer firefighters insist Trakr alerted to the spot Guzman-McMillan was later found buried under.

Symington, who was out on sick leave and went to New York without the authorization of his department, was fired shortly after he returned. Officials said his participation in the rescue effort ran counter to his claim of being unable to work.

Symington never checked in with those coordinating the canine search and rescue effort at the World Trade Center, but, like many others, went straight to work after arriving.

Trakr’s work at 9-11, his career as a police dog in Halifax and the strong emotional connection between handler and dog prompted Symington to bank the dog’s cells years before he entered the contest — back when Bio-Arts was known as Genetic Savings & Clone.

The company, originally based in Texas, where experiments aimed at cloning the first dog were going on at Texas A&M University, was connected to John Sperling, the founder of the University of Phoenix, and the man who was financing the research.

After A&M dropped the project, Seoul National University in South Korea cloned the world’s first dog. Genetic Savings & Clone resurfaced as Bio-Arts, and its CEO, Lou Hawthorne, worked out a deal with Hwang, who’d since opened his own institute, to clone dogs for the company, starting with Hawthorne’s mother’s dog, Missy.

After Missy was successfully cloned, Bio-Arts held the online auction and cloning contest, choosing Symington as the winner.

Symington was to receive a single clone of the dog, but, as Hawthorne explained at the time, “We decided collectively that the world would be a better place with more Trakrs.”

Symington is training all five clones to do search and rescue and work, continuing the legacy of Trakr, who died at age 16.

The five Trakr clones were born over a four month span, the first on Dec. 8, 2009. Later, Symington received what was said to be a sixth clone of Trakr — this one, somehow, a female.

While some canine clones accidentally come out with a gender opposite their donor, or even of mixed gender, it’s not clear — to me at least — whether creating a female version of Trakr was intentional, an accident,  simply the result of mating a Trakr clone with a female German shepherd, or the result of some even newer technology developed in South Korea.

After cloning Trakr, and all five winning bidder’s dogs, the American company withdrew from the dog cloning business in 2010, leaving  just one South Korean company, RNL Bio, that still clones dogs as a business. Hwang, however, who created the Trakr clones, continues to clone dogs at his research institute.