ohmidog!

Police in Osceola, Wisconsin, say a man tied up a teenager he suspected had stolen from him, hung him upside down and commanded his pit bull to attack him.

Police said the 58-year-old homeowner ordered his pit bull to attack the 18-year-old three times — first as part of “interrogating” him, then a second time, then a third time after tying him up, dragging him outside and tying him upside down to the porch rafters.

The 18-year-old was treated at a hospital for for multiple dog bites and released, according to the Fond du Lac Reporter.

Police said the young man’s father witnessed, and may have participated in, the “interrogation.”

A third person who saw what was going on at the residence called police.

Charges of false imprisonment, negligent handling of a dangerous weapon, aggravated battery and bail-jumping are being referred to the Fond du Lac County District Attorney’s Office against the 58-year-old  man, who is scheduled to be tried on an unrelated charge of child abuse later this year.

The boy’s father is expected to face similar charges, along with failing to aid the victim in reporting a crime.

The dog is being held at the Fond du Lac Humane Society.

Onion, the mastiff-mix who attacked and killed a 1-year-old boy in Nevada has been spared from death, at least until Friday.

District Judge Rob Bare issued a restraining order to halt temporarily the scheduled Monday euthanization of the the 6-year-old mastiff-Rhodesian ridgeback mix.

“We’re thrilled,” said Richard Rosenthal, a New York-based lawyer who heads The Lexus Project, a national group that fights to spare dogs from destruction. Lawyers for the organization filed the motion for the temporary restraining order.

Bare scheduled a hearing for Friday morning on whether Onion should die, or get to live out his life at a sanctuary outside Denver that specializes in caring for large aggressive dogs, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported

Rosenthal said he hopes to negotiate with city animal control officials before then to settle the case and spare Onion’s life.

Rosenthal said the Colorado sanctuary has offered to take Onion. “The dog can stay there as long as need be, including the rest of his life, if it turns out there is an aggression issue.”

“Killing the dog will not bring back the baby,” he added.

Fox News in Las Vegas said the injunction came just hours before the dog was scheduled to be put down Tuesday.

Jeremiah Eskew-Shahan was killed late last month when his grandparent’s dog bit him on the head.

The judge’s order allows both sides to negotiate a settlement by Friday morning. Otherwise, the issue will be heard in district court where Judge Joanna Kirshner will make a ruling.

A group of dog lovers is working to persuade officials in Henderson, Nevada, to spare the life of a mastiff-Rhodesian ridgeback mix who bit and killed a 1-year-old boy last week.

Onion, six years old, is scheduled to be euthanized next week.

“This dog will never harm another soul,” said Les Golden, a Chicago-area dog rescuer who is leading the campaign to spare Onion. “The dog deserves to be saved.”

Golden told the Las Vegas Review Journal that he hopes a flood of supporters calling and emailing Mayor Andy Hafen will persuade him to stay the execution, which could happen Monday or Tuesday after the dog’s 10-day  quarantine.

Onion’s family voluntarily gave their pet to animal control officials for euthanization. “For what he did to my son, he deserves to be punished,” father Christopher Shahan said. “I’ve already accepted the fact that he’s dead.”

Jeremiah Eskew-Shahan was attacked by the dog on April 27 after the family had finished celebrating the boy’s first birthday. He crawled over to Onion and grabbed onto the 120-pound dog to help himself stand up, as his family said he had done many times before

Jeremiah’s grandmother, Elizabeth Keller, was leaning over to pick him up when Onion suddenly attacked. Jeremiah’s father and others freed the child about 30 seconds later and he was rushed to a nearby hospital. He died the next day at University Medical Center.

Henderson animal control officers declared Onion vicious, which requires euthanization following the state-mandated quarantine.

“The dog attacked and killed a child,” animal control spokesman Keith Paul said. “It would be irresponsible of us to allow this dog to be adopted out.”

Lisa Kavanaugh, said she would welcome Onion to her 35-acre ranch near Denver called Blue Lion Rescue, where he would remain for the rest of his life.

“If it’s an accident, why not give him a chance?” Kavanaugh said. “He’s never, ever going to get a chance to hurt anybody else.”

Onion had been with the family since he was a puppy and helped Keller through her battle with lung cancer. The dog had never shown aggression toward anyone, family members said.

“I would love him to be in a sanctuary the rest of his life, but what sort of punishment would that be for killing a human being?” the father said.

Maryland Court of Appeals judges must be inherently stupid.

Well, maybe some of them aren’t, but for the sake of ease, and without regard to fact, let’s just lump them all together and proclaim them stupid.

That’s what they did, with pit bulls.

A troubling 4-3 decision by the state’s highest court last week deemed pit bulls and pit bull mixes inherently dangerous — a ruling that, on top of being ill-informed, could lead to trouble for pit bull owners everywhere.

One judge who went against the majority, Clayton Greene Jr., noted that how harmless a pit bull might be is no longer relevant when it comes to determining liability — a troublesome precedent, in his view.

“Now, it appears, the issue of whether a dog is harmless, or the owner or landlord has any reason to know that the dog is dangerous, is irrelevant to the standard of strict liability,”  Judge  Greene wrote.

The majority decision singles out pit bulls and declares them all dangerous. It implies that owners of them, and the landlords who rent to those owners, should ignorantly assume, as the judges did, that they are lethal and unpredictable beasts. And it makes suing their owners much easier.

Under previous case law, a victim intending to file a lawsuit after a dog attack had to prove that a dog’s owner, or landlord, knew it had a history of being dangerous. Now, under this new precedent, they can merely show that the owner knew their dog was all or part pit bull. That would be sufficient basis for a claim.

In other words, it’s no longer necessary to prove that a particular pit bull is dangerous, only that it’s a pit bull, or part of it is.

The ruling last Thursday came in the case of a 2007 attack on a child in Towson. According to the Baltimore Sun, 10-year-old Dominic Solesky was attacked by a neighbor’s pit bill and his family sued the dog owner’s landlord, Dorothy M. Tracey.

The Circuit Court judge threw out the claim, ruling there was no evidence that Tracey had been negligent. The Court of Special Appeals overturned the judge’s decision, and the Court of Appeals affirmed that ruling Thursday. The case will now head back to trial.

At a time when many jurisdictions are becoming more enlightened about pit bulls, the Maryland Court of Appeals decision assures that, in at least one area, they will be treated differently from all other dogs.

Those speaking out against the ruling included Pauline Houliaras, president of B-More Dog, which formed in 2007 to fight anti-pit bull legislation in Baltimore County. Read more »

D.C. animal control officers are seeking the two dogs captured on this surveillance video, chasing a group of youngsters to the top of a car and, later, biting a man who came to their aide.

The incident took place Friday on the 1200 block of Queen Street in Northeast D.C.

“It was scary and amazing,” one of the youths told Fox News.

Andre Hawthorne, a 54-year-old usher at Nationals Park, suffered bites when he used a pocket knife to try and keep the dogs away from the youths.

“When one of the dogs came, I let him have my left arm,” Hawthorne explained. “… And while I stuck him with the knife, then the second dog comes.”

Hawthorne’s stepson came to help him, swinging a baseball bat at the dogs.

“If it wasn’t for him, I might be worse then I am today,” Hawthorne said.

“I’m just glad to be alive,” he added. “But I’m sad that the owner allowed this to happen.”

The dogs and their owner were not home when a D.C. animal control officer visited Monday evening.

The D.C. Department of Health says it has ordered the dogs be impounded and will have animal control officers patrolling the neighborhood until the dogs are taken off the street.

After his dog was killed by his next door neighbor’s German shepherd mix, a Florida man walked onto the neighbor’s property and shot and killed the shepherd, police said.

Eugene Alfonso, 58, of Myakka City was arrested and charged with armed trespass, shooting into an occupied dwelling and cruelty to an animal, according to a Manatee County Sheriff’s Office report.

According to the Bradenton Herald, Alfonso fired a shot at the shepherd mix while it was attacking his small dog, but missed.

When the shepherd mix went home, police say Alfonso walked to the house of his 70-year-old neighbor and shot her dog as it stood near the porch.

Charges are expected to be pursued against her as well for the original attack, authorities said.