ohmidog!

Sometimes, and especially this week, keeping up with dog news can leave one a little depressed — just about always because of the misguided things people do to them.

Whiile we try to  maintain a balance, sometimes the feel-good stories seem to get overwelmed by the feel-bad stories.

At times like that, or sometimes just for the heck of it, we try to lighten things up.

And what could be funnier than a dog eating popcorn?

To this baby, at least, absolutely nothing.

(Source: Facebook)

When nine-week-old Harper Brousseau stopped breathing during the night, a mutt named Duke woke up her parents.

Jenna Brousseau says Duke jumped up on her bed Sunday night, and woke up her and her husband with his shaking.

That was out of character for Duke, so the couple went to check on their daughter at their home in Connecticut to make sure everything was alright.

In the nursery, they found their daughter wasn’t breathing and called 911.

Paramedics were able to revive the baby, who’s now doing fine.

Here’s a dog named Starship who’s guaranteed to send your heart into the stratosphere.

She has an ailment that requires her to eat in a high chair, like a baby.

Shelter officials at Greenville County Animal Care in South Carolina say the four-month-old dog, a collie mix, was starved for the first few weeks of her life and developed digestive issues. Specifically, the disorder is called Megaesophagus, meaning her esophagus is dilated.

She has to eat while sitting upright, which helps her food travel down into her stomach.

Once done dining, she has to stay in the high chair for another 30 minutes, according to this report by WSPA.

It took no time at all for her to adapt to the eating routine: “She just crawled right in and turned around,” said a shelter worker.

A South Carolina company, Archway Renovations, built the chair — called a Bailey chair — for Starship, and has offered to make an adjustable one for her as she grows larger.

Starship is looking for a new home, and shelter staff are hoping someone comes forward who’s willing to continue the feeding routine. She needs to eat 4-5 times daily and must be watched while eating and drinking.

“It’s just like someone who is handicapped, they figure a way to live their life happily,” said the shelter worker.

More information is available at Greenville Animal Care.

No animals, or babies, were harmed in the making of these videos.

The top one shows a one-year-old Siberian husky-Australian shepherd mix named Haiku going through his first car wash.

The second one shows an unidentified baby also experiencing a car wash for the first time.

I recommend starting them up at the same time.

Notice the similarities in reactions — namely, the bug-eyed look they both get, a seeming mix of horror, uncertainty and curiosity.

All of which proves nothing major — only that, for dogs and humans, a new environment is scary the first time you roll through it, especially one with noisy blasts of water, flailing sponge strips, whipping brushes and mounds of cascading suds that seem intent on burying you.

By the time we — dog or human — take our second trip through the car wash, though, it’s usually a different story. It’s not as scary. The baby, in fact, appears to be getting used to it by the end of the video, relaxing enough to enjoy a sip of his beverage.

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.

If being 15 years old and seven months pregnant weren’t trouble enough, Codi Robertson woke up on the family sofa earlier this month shaking uncontrollably.

Codi, before she blacked out, called for her mother, but her mother didn’t hear her.

Her dog Mickey did.

The 8-year-old Alaskan Eskimo dog woke up Codi’s mother, Debbie Denning, who found her daughter in the middle of what doctors would later say was a pregnancy-related seizure.

“She was not responsive, limp, sweaty,” Denning, of Idaho Falls, told Local News 8.

Denning called 911, and Roberston was rushed to Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center, where her baby boy was delivered two months premature via C-section.

Doctors told the pair that both Codi and the baby could have died had Denning not reached her daughter when she did.

Codi said the baby, named Wyatt — 10 days old today — will be in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit until November.

As for Mickey: “She’s one amazing dog,” she said.

You hear a lot these days about young couples foregoing parenthood and opting for a dog instead. You hear a lot, too, about young couples who take in a dog as practice for when a real baby comes along.

There’s  nothing wrong, in my view, with either.

What often gets ignored though — amid the kind of scoffing the dogless sometimes do at dog peoples’ commitment to their animals – is the fact that dogs, while not the equivalent of a child, do indeed prepare young couples for parenthood.

And that’s just the beginning.

After that, they go on to help those children grow up with a healthy respect for living things, teaching them about love and loyalty. And, after the kids depart, dogs help fill the void –  though usually not the same dog — of an empty nest.

They, like some brands of dog food, in fact, are there for all the cycles of our human lives — including the the onset of parenthood.

Rebecca Dube does beautiful job of describing how her dog helped prepare her for parenthood in this week’s Toronto’s Globe and Mail – in a piece whose writing was prompted, sadly, by death of the family’s beagle, Lily:

“My dog was my baby; and now that I have an actual baby, I see that my dog prepared me for motherhood far better than any of those What to Expect books.”

Rebecca and her husband adopted Lily from a rescue group, altering their lives in  numerous ways — from cleaning up shed hair to shifting their schedules, to dictating where to vacation and where to live — and once Lily got sick, affecting the budget as well.

Lily lived much longer with cancer than the three months her vet originally predicted, long enough to meet the newest addition to the family.

Rebecca writes that, once she became ill, they never questioned the time and money they were investing in her: “She was our baby … And then along came a real baby.

“Our son, Elijah, arrived 10 days early, and we brought him home on a Saturday night. All through my pregnancy, I’d hoped for the moment we finally got, when we introduced Elijah to Lily, and stroked his tiny baby hand against her soft fur. In my greedy heart I wanted them to have years together, for him to laugh at her wagging tail, for her to wait patiently for scraps beneath his high chair. But that tiny bit of grace would have to be enough. Lily died early Monday morning…

“My dog was my baby. She taught me that a slobbery, stinky creature could pee on my shoes, poop everywhere, complicate my life in a million aggravating ways – and at the same time inspire so much love that my heart felt like it would burst with happiness. She taught me and my husband how to go from two to three. She taught us how to be a family…

Rebecca writes that, when Elijah gets old enough to understand, she’ll show him the photos of him and Lily, “and tell him that for a few days he had the best dog a boy could ever want.”

(Photo: Elijah and Lily, Toronto Globe and Mail)

The Kentucky father whose 3-day-old son was snatched from a crib by the family’s wolf-hybrid dog last summer has written a book about the ordeal.

A spokesman for AuthorHouse, a Bloomington, Ind., company that specializes in self-publishing, confirmed to the Lexington Herald that the book will be published in late May.

Its mouthful of a title? “Could It Happen to You?:  Baby A.J.’s Story of Being Taken From His Crib by the Family Dog Dakota.”

“I think it’s going to answer a lot of questions about who we are,” said Michael Smith, who along with his wife, Chrissie, became the subject of nationwide TV coverage and news articles after their family dog snatched Alexander James “A.J.” Smith from his crib July 20.

Dakota, the female wolf hybrid that had a habit of taking objects from the house, carried the baby outside in her mouth, eventually setting him down in the woods behind the Smiths’ house north of Nicholasville.

A.J. was treated for a cracked skull, cracked ribs, a collapsed lung and a partially collapsed lung and returned home after several days.

Except for a small scar, he has recovered fully, the family says. “He’s a healthy little boy. He’s doing great.” Chrissie Smith said.

Michael Smith said the book will be a behind-the-scenes narrative of the ordeal that included his interviews with Diane Sawyer on ABC’s “Good Morning America” and Deborah Norville on “Inside Edition.”

The book, he said, will clear up any notion that he’s an unfit parent.

The Smiths were investigated for child neglect, but a Jessamine County grand jury found no criminal intent.

The family attempted to get Dakota back, but eventually consented to letting the dog live with another family.

The Smiths still have two dogs, one of them a wolf-hybrid.

That X-Man was rescued from a trash can as a puppy didn’t make him all that unusual. It happens way too often.

That X-Man was rescued from a trash can by a girl who — as an infant — was herself rescued from the garbage makes his story, and her’s, a bit more out of the ordinary.

X-Man died last month after a long and happy life he owed, in large part, to Amy Louise Annelle, who in 1983, at only 4 or 5 hours old, was stuffed in a cereal box and dumped in a large trash bin on Nova Road in Daytona Beach.

When Amy was rescued from a garbage truck’s trash compactor by trash collectors, Pat Patten-Carlen followed the news accounts. She was looking for a baby girl to adopt after her daughter died. When “Amy Nova” — the name hospital nurses had given the baby found in the garbage — turned four months old, Patten-Carlen adopted her.

Thirteen years later, Amy came home from school and told Patten-Carlen she’d discovered a puppy in a trash can.

“She said, “It’s in a garbage can like me,’ ” Patten-Carlen told the Daytona Beach News Journal.  

After Amy found X-Man, she took him to a shelter. But when no one would adopt him, she and Patten-Carlen came to the rescue again. They got their close friend Carson Allison to bring him home. X-Man lived with Allison until the dog’s death last month.

“We had a special connection,” Amy said. “Up until two weeks ago when he was put down because he was too sick and in pain, I kept close to X-Man.”

A small memorial service for X-Man was held Saturday in DeLand.

Amy, whose birth mother was never found, is now a CVS store manager, married and the mother of a 4-year-old girl, Autumn. She’s expecting another baby, a boy, in four or five weeks.

An eight-year-old dog is being credited with saving the life of an abandoned newborn baby in Argentina, carrying him from a field and placing him safely alongside her own puppies.

The country’s media are calling him “the miracle baby,” according to the BBC.

The baby boy was born prematurely to a 14-year-old girl, who apparently panicked and abandoned him in a field in a shanty town outside the capital of Buenos Aires.

The dog, named La China picked up the baby and carried him from the field to join her litter. The dog’s owner reported hearing the child crying. The baby had some slight injuries, but no bite marks.

La China, worried about her own puppies, is reported to be petrified by her new found fame, and her owner says he is worried that she is not eating.