ohmidog!

“Ode to October”

If ever I’m told

I’ve only one month to live

I’ll choose October

(You can find all our Highway Haikus archived here.)

Ace’s Halloween treat? He got to hop in the back of this funereal-looking vehicle.

It’s a 1955 Cadillac owned by my neighbor, and Ace’s new best friend, Al, who likes to take it out of the garage around Halloween time and show it off a bit.

Ace, when he’s outside, always keeps one eye on Al’s door, five units down from mine. If it moves at all, he bounds off, expecting treats. Al always has one, and if he doesn’t he raids his own refrigerator. Sometimes I worry the leftovers Al’s giving Ace — chicken, fish, steak – are that night’s dinner.

Al’s a giving sort; and Ace, when it comes to food, especially Al’s food, is a taker.

At one point, Al asked if he was being a bad influence on Ace. With the last bag of dog treats he bought, Al, who is dogless, volunteered to give them all to me so Ace, who normally stays put in the front yard, wouldn’t go running off down to his house.

Smart as that would be, discipline-wise, I said no. Having noted the spring in Ace’s step everytime he sees Al, and vice versa, I decided to let the bad habit continue.

As a result, Ace will do anything Al asks — including, it turned out, hopping into the back of the refurbished, ghostly silver vehicle that, back in its prime, served as the last ride for many a human and floral arrangement.

In exchange he got — you guessed it — a treat.

UPDATE: Oscar, the dachshund who was hit by a car after being fed a gummy worm laced with LSD, has been euthanized

A dog who police say was fed LSD was hit by a car in Snellville, Georgia, Sunday night.

Police questioned a couple at their home after recieving reports that they had been running naked through the neighborhood.

The man and woman were taken to a hospital, and, on the way, told EMT’s that they had taken LSD and had given some to Oscar, a long-haired dachshund, according to a police report about the incident, reprinted on The Smoking Gun website.

Police later learned the dog had been hit by a vehicle on a nearby road.

Snellville police Capt. Harold Thomas said Nicholas Modrich and Jamie Hughes, both 25, will face drug charges and possible animal cruelty charges.

“They were tripping pretty hard,” Thomas told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Two family members were bitten by Oscar when, after getting word he’d been hit by a car, they went to recover him.

He was later picked up by Gwinnett Animal Control, then transferred to an animal hospital. The extent of his injuries wasn’t known.

A longtime Mansfield, Ohio, city worker drowned Sunday afternoon while trying to save a dog he thought needed help.

Jeff Bard, 46, leaned over his pontoon boat to place a life jacket on the Chesapeake Bay retriever and fell into the 41-degree water of Clear Fork Reservoir.

“We do believe he drowned due to the shock of the cold water,” said Gary Foster, operations supervisor at the reservoir. “It’ll hit you right away.”

As it turned out the dog, named “Maggie,” apparently wasn’t in danger.

Her owner Lance Cooke, 37, said the dog wandered off while he was duck hunting. While he didn’t witness the incident, he said Maggie was probably just swimming, as she had been all afternoon. Another hunter told him Bard had drowned trying to get her out of the water.

“It confused me — like why would someone be trying to get her out? She wasn’t drowning,” Cooke told the Mansfield News Journal.

Bard had worked for the city for 19 years.

“I’m still in shock pretty much,” Cooke said. “He was a really caring person and an all-around good guy, as you can see from today.”

Nico Dauphiné, the National Zoo researcher accused of poisoning feral cats in the D.C. neighborhood of Meridian Hill Park, was convicted of animal cruelty charges yesterday.

DCist reports that Dauphiné, who denied the allegations in court last week, was pronounced guilty of the misdemeanor charge by D.C. Superior Court Judge Truman Morrison. She will be sentenced on November 21 and faces up to 180 days in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Evidence in the case included a video of Dauphiné appearing to plant something from her purse into a feeder.

“Our Humane Law Enforcement Department works hard to bring justice to abused animals in our city, and we can say with confidence that justice was served today,” said Lisa LaFontaine, president and CEO of the Washington Humane Society, which played a large role in the investigation of the claims.

In a press release, Alley Cat Allies, a national advocacy organization dedicated to the humane treatment of cats, welcomed the verdict and called for Dauphiné to be dismissed from her job as a Smithsonian researcher studying migratory birds.

“We are satisfied with this verdict,” said Becky Robinson, president of Alley Cat Allies. “Americans care about cats and will not tolerate cruelty towards them. We are grateful to law enforcement and to the prosecutors for treating this crime with the seriousness it deserved.”

“We call on the Smithsonian to immediately dismiss Ms. Dauphiné from her position and cancel any research projects in which she was involved,” said Robinson. “Her conviction for attempting to kill cats, along with her history of condemning cats in research, leaves her work suspect of major bias. Her work should be discredited and disregarded by the scientific community.”