ohmidog!

Officials in New Taipei City say their dog poop lottery was a resounding success – more than 4,000 people collected 14,500 bags of excrement.

For each bag they turned in, they were given a lottery ticket, earning them a chance to win gold and household appliances.

Officials in the Taiwan city credit the program with cutting in half the amount of dog droppings on city streets.

The program began in August and was initially planned to run until October, but it was so successful the city extended it a couple of more months — up until they started running out of gold, the BBC reported.

Final prizes were awarded this week, with the big winner receiving a gold ingot worth $2,200. The woman, in her 50s, was part of a team of volunteers that clean the streets regularly.

Smaller gold ingots, worth several hundred dollars, were given to four other prizewinners.

A total of 85 people won prizes, including household appliances.

City officials told the BBC they did not know how many of the winners were motivated by gold, as opposed to people who regularly pick up the poop of their own dogs or other’s.

Officials say they hope residents have gotten into the habit of picking up dog droppings, and that they will continue to do so without financial rewards.

Poisoned meatballs have been found in the yards of at least three Denver homes and have made at least two dogs seriously ill.

Two neighbors reported their dogs had become violently sick. One neighbor, after searching his yard, found meatballs scattered around it. Others, upon searching their yards, did as well.

One woman said her dog began acting strangely, then experiencing symptoms that included vomiting and diarrhea.

All the homes were near the University of Denver campus.

“It’s really sad when someone targets animals,” one of the neighbors said.

Similar incidents have been recently reported in Firestone and Gunnison, 9 News in Denver reported.

Brieann Masenior has saved many a dog, but none from this kind of peril.

A fire this week destroyed her home, all her family’s belongings, and the offices of Ruff Life Rescue in Rising Sun, Maryland. 

Masenior, who regularly saves dogs from a different kind of fate, ran into the burning house at least three times to rescue the dogs in her care.

Now, according to Facebook posts from friends, she and her family are staying in a motel, searching for some temporary housing and trying to put their lives back together.

Ruff Life Rescue is a group of volunteer animal lovers who provide sanctuary and seek to re-home abandoned and stray dogs, and who regularly pulls dogs scheduled for euthanization from animal shelters.

“We focus on the most dire need cases, where they are on there last day at the shelter and have no other means of rescue,” the Ruff Life website explains.

Ruff Life Rescue also operates a pet food bank, in association with the Ray of Hope Mission Center  in Port Deposit.

Donations can be sent to Ruff Life Rescue, P.O. Box 256, Rising Sun, MD 21911.

They can also be made via chip-in.

Dogs can’t be perpetual — despite what some people might try to tell you — but dog calendars can.

While I pledged to selfishly ignore all calendars other than my own — that being the 2012 (and half of 2013) Travels With Ace Calendar, which documents the year my dog and I recently spent rambling the country –  I’ve realized that, under the guise of writing about the works of others, I can sneak in plugs for my own calendar, and my own book.

See, I’ve already plugged them both twice and I haven’t even mentioned “Everyday Dogs: A Perpetual Calendar for Birthdays and Other Notable Dates” (Heyday Books), which showcases, through vintage photos and quotes, the special bonds between humans and their dogs.

“Everyday Dogs” is the work of two staff members at the University of California at Berkeley. Mary Scott is a graphic designer for the campus’s Doe and Moffitt libraries. Susan Snyder is public services director at university’s Bancroft Library.

The cover of the 152-page book is a  photo taken by noted 19^th century California photographer Carleton E. Watkins of a dog named Guardian in a wicker carriage. It’s just one of 75 black-and-white photos featured, all taken between roughly 1870 and the 1940s.

The photos are coupled with dog-related literary quotes from, to name just a few, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Jack London, Mark Twain, John Muir, John Steinbeck and Gertrude Stein (who’s also pictured with her poodle, Basket).

Whether you’re a fan of literature, history or dogs — or, preferably, all three — you’re going to appreciate this collection. It’s playful, wise, revealing and provocative, much like a dog. 

“All knowledge, the totality of all questions and answers, is contained in the dog,” Franz Kafka, one of those quoted in the “Everyday Dogs” calendar, once said.

He was right, I think, with the possible exception of today’s date.

For that you need a calendar. Or two.

The world’s oldest living dog — according to Guinness World Records, anyway — has died at the age of 26 years and 9 months.

Pusuke, a mixed breed, died at his home in Sakura, Tochigi Prefecture, the Japan Times reported.

His owner, Yumiko Shinohara, said Pusuke suddenly refused to eat Monday morning, and appeared to be having difficulty breathing.

She said the dog died about five minutes after she returned home from running errands.

“I think (Pusuke) waited for me to come home,” the 42-year-old housewife said.

Pusuke received the Guinness certification as the world’s oldest living dog last December.

(Photo: Japan Times)

A warrant has been issued for a man who placed needles in hot dogs and left them in his yard, leading to the death of a neighbor’s dog.

Jinx, a black Lab, was euthanized after surgery showed needles — more than 20 of which she had vomited up — had perforated her stomach.

“I miss her the most when I drop food on the floor and look down and realize she isn’t there to clean up after me,” 16-year-old Ryleigh Wann, of Monroe, Michigan, said of her dog.

Ryleigh’s father, Andy Wann of Monroe, went to police after a veterinarian, finding more than 20 needles still in the dog’s stomach and intestines, euthanized Jinx.

Accused in the 8-year-old dog’s death is 64-year-old Gary Pinchoff, who lives two doors down from Wann. Pinchoff told the Toledo Blade Tuesday that he put the needles inside pieces of hot dog to chase away wildlife that had been destroying his garden, and he never intended to harm anyone’s pet.

The Monroe News reported that a warrant was issued for Pinchoff’s arrest yesterday.

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The Humane Society of the United States has released the results of a three-month investigation into Purebred Breeders LLC, thought to be the nation’s largest online seller of puppies.

The investigation was featured on NBC’s Today show (above) this morning.

HSUS says Purebred Breeders gets at least some of the dogs it brokers from inhumane commercial breeding facilities — puppy mills where investigators found dogs stacked in cramped wire cages, with no exercise, veterinary care, socialization, or human companionship.

HSUS attorneys, in partnership with Florida firm Leopold~Kuvin, have also filed suit in Florida state court on behalf of HSUS members and other consumers who received sick or dying dogs from Purebred Breeders.

The HSUS investigation found that Purebred Breeders owns nearly 800 websites designed to mislead consumers into believing that they are dealing with local breeders when they shop online for a puppy.

Former employees told HSUS investigators that the company sells approximately 20,000 puppies every year, using hard-sell, deceptive tactics encouraged by company executives.

Despite the company’s guarantee of a “triple health check,” puppies purchased through Purebred Breeders have arrived ill, and died after arriving at new homes.

Often, though the company portrays itself as local, the dogs are flown long distances directly from the breeding facility to the consumer.

“Purebred Breeders reaps massive profits by purchasing puppies from puppy mills around the country and selling them at a huge mark-up to dog lovers who would never knowingly buy a puppy mill dog,” said Jonathan Lovvorn, senior vice president for animal protection litigation and investigations at The HSUS. “Internet puppy sellers like Purebred Breeders deceive consumers about the origins of the puppies they sell, and as a result unsuspecting families suffer great expense caring for sick dogs, or the terrible anguish of losing a beloved family pet.”

“Our goal in this lawsuit is to expose the deceptive practices of Purebred Breeders and achieve justice for the consumers and animals that the company mistreats,” said Ted Leopold, the lead attorney in the case.

HSUS says a federal law has been proposed that would help crack down on companies like Purebred Breeders.

Congress is considering the Puppy Uniform Protection and Safety (PUPS) Act (S. 707 and H.R. 835), introduced by Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and David Vitter, R-La., in the Senate, and Reps. Jim Gerlach, R-Pa., Sam Farr, D-Calif., Bill Young, R-Fla., and Lois Capps, D-Calif., in the House.

The PUPS Act would close a loophole in the federal Animal Welfare Act regulations that allow puppy mills selling directly to consumers over the Internet to escape basic oversight and inspection. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is also considering taking action to regulate large-scale commercial dog breeders that sell directly to consumers online.

Any consumer who purchased a sick puppy from an online seller is encouraged to fill out the complaint form at humanesociety.org/puppycomplaint.

Over the years we’ve shared with you bad pug news, and sad pug news, harsh pug realities, and cute pug head tilts; we’ve covered baseball loving pugs and traveling pugs and baby-carriage pushing pugs; pugs with big friends and pugs at the center of custody battles.

So of course we can make room for a nice, short, simple and happy pug story.

Pugsly, living at the Pennsylvania SPCA, was the featured “Pet of the Week” in Monday’s Philadelphia Daily News. He’s not exactly a puppy. At 12 years old, he’s blind and deaf — not the sort you’d think people would rush out and claim.

But the same day his photo appeared in the newspaper, Pugsly was adopted.

It was love at first sight, Donna Franchetti told the Daily News, which every Monday features a pet from either the PSPCA or the Philadelphia Animal Welfare Society

“My husband called me after he saw the picture in the Daily News and said, ‘You have to call now,’ ” said Franchetti, a veterinarian who works mainly with horses and lives in West Chester.

Pugsly headed to his new home Monday, where he joins a family of six other older pugs that the pair has adopted over the years.

Franchetti expects Pugsly will fit in well with their other dogs — one of whom, Wednesday, is also named after a character from The Addams Family.

“They’re great little dogs,” Franchetti said. “They make me laugh every day.”

(Photo: Philadelphia Daily News)

When Lynn Jones, a baggage handler at Reno-Tahoe International Airport, pointed out the condition of a bloody and emaciated dog scheduled to be shipped to Texas, her boss told her to forget about it.

When she persisted, insisting the pointer needed help and would likely die in flight, she was fired.

Yesterday, her employer, Airport Terminal Services Inc., based in St. Louis, said she would be reinstated, with back pay.

Sally Leible, president of the firm, said Jones actions were courageous and the reaction of some management employees was regrettable. She told the Reno Gazette Journal the incident will be used as “teachable moment” for employees.

On Nov. 15, Jones raised enough of a stink about the suffering dog to get airport police to call Washoe County Regional Animal Services, which took custody of the pointer and provided it with veterinary care. The dog apparently was later shipped to its Texas owner, a hunter who keeps it in a kennel and has it shipped to the places he hunts.

The listless and sore-covered dog was lying in a pet carrier in the cargo area of the airport when Jones first saw it.

“The dog was so weak and torn up. It didn’t look like it could survive the flight,” she told the Gazette Journal.

Jones said her supervisor told her to load the dog on the plane because the animal’s paperwork was in order and its condition wasn’t her concern.

“I was crying,” she said. “I kept saying that dog could not be put on a plane.” She said she was fired on the spot by the supervisor, who yelled “‘That’s it, you’re done, you are out of here, go home.”

Jones is a former blackjack dealer, has three dogs of her own, and once  owned a dog grooming service. Even before getting her job back, she said she didn’t regret having taken a stand.

“I loved my job at the airport,” she said. ” … But I just couldn’t turn my back on that dog … My supervisor said it wasn’t my concern, but animal abuse is everyone’s concern who sees it.”

(Photo: Lynn Jones with her three dogs, Junior, Manny and Jewel, from left; by Marilyn Newton / Reno Gazette Journal)

You wouldn’t expect any sort of a happy ending to a story that involves a litter of kittens being sealed into an empty bag of Meow Mix, dumped on a country road in Iowa and run over by oncoming traffic.

But two kittens survived, thanks to a dog, according to this report that aired on NBC2.

A dog named Reagan found the bag, dragged it home and then whined until his owner opened it.

“It was gruesome, quite gruesome,” said Linda Blakely of Iowa’s Raccoon Valley Animal Sanctuary, where the cats, three months later, now reside. Their names are Tipper and Skipper.

Two or three other cats didn’t survive, but apparently Reagan the retriever was more interested in the lives that lingered than the blood and guts.

“The instinct of the dog was to nurture and not kill …With all the blood some dogs would have responded to the scent,” said Blakely. “Reagan the dog is a hero.”

The kittens were so weak they had to be fed with a bottle every two hours at first, but now, as you can see in the video, they’re looking quite healthy.