ohmidog!

A woman who didn’t want to tell a TV news team “how she felt” about her daughter being shot threw a rock at them, shook a baseball bat at them, and then sent her dogs after reporter Abbey Niezgoda of ABC 6 News in Rhode Island.

The crew was on assignment in Providence, seeking to interview the mother of a teenage girl who was shot at a graduation party over the weekend.

Instead of politely declining to speak on-camera, Melissa Lawrence hurled a rock at ABC6 photographer Marc Jackson, then went inside for a baseball bat. Seconds later, she told her dogs to attack.

As Lawrence shouted commands, the dogs chased Niezgoda into a backyard a few houses away.

Niezgoda was a treated for a bite on her forearm.

Melissa Lawrence was charged with two counts of felony assault with a dangerous weapon.

Lawrence’s daughter, who was shot in the lower back, has since been released from the hospital.

A Chicago man charged with beating and stabbing a neighbor’s dog to death told police he did it because the dog tore his $3.78 shirt.

Damien Wilkerson, 34,  was being held in lieu of $80,000 bail and faces felony animal cruelty charges, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Witnesses told police they saw Wilkerson beating the dog near his home Saturday while holding a knife. Police found the dog’s body in a trash can in nearby alley.

“Yeah I killed that … dog,” Wilkerson told police, according to court documents. “I don’t give a (expletive),” Wilkerson said to police. “The dog tore my shirt. This … cost $3.78.”

Wilkerson said he went after the dog after it bit and tore his shirt through a fence, according to court documents. He said he hopped the fence and began beating the dog with a milk crate, then “choked the dog out” when the animal went for his neck, according to officers.

Authorities say Wilkerson is a member of the Insane Vice Lords gang.

According to court documents, he told police, “I ain’t gonna let no dogs or no (expletive) punk me.”

What police describe as a fight between three dogs left one woman bitten and one dog shot at Staten Island’s newly opened Schmul Park over the weekend.

Police officers say they fired shots after one of the dogs “attacked” her owner, but members of the owner’s family say she was bitten while attempting to break up a fight, and that the dog who was shot –  her pit bull, named Baby Girl — wasn’t even involved in it.

Witnesses said they heard three to five shots, and WABC reported that police officers shot at all three dogs to prevent the situation from escalating.

But they hit only one, Baby Girl, according to Gothamist,

A brother of the dog’s owner said in a Facebook post  that the dog was shot after the incident was already under control, and that  Baby Girl wasn’t involved in the incident:

“The bullet entrance and exit wounds show the dog was running away, NOT [TOWARD] the cop like that coward officer claims. The fight was already under control, yet hero cop of the day felt it necessary to pull out her gun and shoot. THIS DOG WASNT EVEN THE ONE THAT WAS FIGHTING.”

The owner’s brother also claims police left Baby Girl unattended in the back of a truck after she was shot, and told the family they couldn’t find her.

Police say three dogs were involved in the incident, and that at least two of them were fighting. When Baby Girl’s owner tried to break up the fight she was bitten on the hand.

“Responding officers tried to help her, and in the attempt to get the dog off her, shots were fired,” a police spokesman said.

The owner was treated for hand injuries at Richmond University Medical Center.

S.N.A.R.R Animal Rescue Northeast, the group that rescued Baby Girl before she was adopted, supported the brother’s account, saying Baby Girl was running away from the two other fighting dogs when she was shot in the stomach.

A post by the rescue group’s  founder, Robin Menard, indicates all three dogs belonged to the same family.

“Baby Girl was NOT involved (it was two other family dogs) and was running AWAY from the fight when cops fired 3 rounds. Baby Girl was shot in the stomach. She is now fighting for her life and her adopters are paying for a 6000 surgery. They are doing whatever they can. Baby Girl has never had an issue with people or other dogs. She is best friends with a bunny rabbit… Yes. A bunny!

Donations to Baby Girl’s care can be made through the rescue group and its Paypal account (email snarr_1@yahoo.com.)

The office of Florida Gov. Rick Scott has shed more light on what happened to Reagan, the dog the governor’s family rescued during his campaign.

Reagan, after his much publicized adoption, disappeared from public view when Scott took office.

The governor said last week that the dog — whose name had been chosen by his fans on Facebook — was returned to the grooming shop where his family got him, due to behavior problems.

The governor told the Tampa Bay Times that the dog never hurt anyone, but it turns out Reagan both barked and bit.

A spokeswoman for the governor said this week that Reagan was returned to the grooming shop after biting a governor’s mansion employee who moved his water bowl.

“The governor and first lady love dogs, and they had to make a hard decision when it was clear that Reagan was very anxious around lots of different people,” Scott spokeswoman Melissa Sellers said.

The dog bite occurred while the governor was in Orlando on Jan. 7, 2011 — three days after he took office.

Mansion grounds employee Jennifer Kinsey was arranging flowers when Reagan bit her on the right hand, according to an incident report released by Scott’s office. The injury required no medical treatment.

Scott introduced the yellow Lab to Facebook readers on Sept. 7, 2010, shortly after he won the Republican nomination. Facebook friends chose the name Reagan from a list of three choices suggested by the campaign and they praised Scott for adopting a dog.

Sellers said Scott flew Reagan back to Naples on his private jet to return him to All Pets Grooming and Boarding. The shop’s owner has told one television station that Reagan’s name has been changed to Pluto and that he now lives on a horse ranch in Collier County.

“The family decided that the best decision for the dog and all those who visit  would be to have the grooming business find Reagan a more appropriate home with less people and activity,” Sellers said. “It was a hard choice that sometimes pet owners have to make.”

The Scotts have since adopted Tallee, another yellow Lab.

The governor’s communications directors initially refused to respond when asked about the disappearance of Reagan. Scott, when asked directly, said he returned the dog to previous owners because it barked a lot and frightened mansion staffers.

Sellers said Scott had been out of town and did not recall the biting incident when he talked to reporters.

When a man claimed her American bulldog Duke escaped her fenced yard and bit him, Carissa Curry was confused — and with good reason.

She’d left the dog inside her Toledo home when she went to work that day. She’d secured the gate of the fence around her yard. And Duke, even if he did manage to somehow get out of her house, had never left the yard before.

Curry returned home from work to find Duke was gone.

A note was left on her door by the Lucas County dog warden. When she called the phone number on it, she was informed that she was being charged with failure to confine her dog.

Toledo Police had been to her home earlier that day, back in August, after a man said he had been bitten by Duke while strolling down the sidewalk. The man said Duke pushed open the gate, attacked him then returned to the yard.

Duke was seized by the Lucas County dog warden, labeled a potentially dangerous dog, and quarantined for ten days.

In the days that followed, Curry, a health care worker and single mother of a 2-year-old boy, would grow only more confused, and worried.

She faced a misdemeanor charge that could carry a penalty of 30 days in jail.

She worried about losing her job, and her home, and having to pay hefty insurance fees as the owner of a “dangerous dog.”

And — even though she had left the door to her home unlocked — she still had no idea how her dog got out of it, or the yard.

She heard from neighbors who had seen the man walking through the neighborhood. One said she never saw Duke leave the yard — but did see the man enter it.

It was looking more and more like Duke, as opposed to miraculously escaping both house and yard, had actually just been defending his home, as Curry suspected from the start.

This week, at a pre-trial hearing, the ”failure to confine” charge against Curry ws dropped.

She still faces a charge of “failure to vaccinate.” While she claims she has the paperwork, she was unable to present it within the two days the dog warden gave her. That charge was upheld in court.

And Duke still faces a determination on whether he’s a “dangerous dog,” which could lead to restrictions that include being muzzled, having signs posted to that effect in his yard, and having to kept in a pen with a roof, according to DogHeirs.com.

The Lexus Project is handling the case against Duke and representing him in court. You can learn more about Duke, and help support his cause by visiting these links:

• Donate to the Support Duke fund
• Sign the petition
• Follow Duke’s story on Facebook

You can read Curry’s explanation of what’s transpired so far in the comments below.

(Photos: DogHeirs.com)

An Indiana man left his son in the hospital while he went to exact revenge on the dog that bit the boy, police say.

Determined to kill the dog, the man, from Michigan City, stabbed the animal and attempted to strangle it, but was interrupted by police, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

The dog’s injuries were so severe it had to be euthanized, said a spokesman for the Porter County Sheriff’s Department.

The 29-year-old man, who wasn’t identified, will be charged with felony cruelty to an animal. Police did not release information on the injured boy or the extent of his injuries.

Police said the suspect’s son and daughter were spending the weekend with his mother and stepfather. On Friday night, the couple’s shepherd-chow mix was eating a bone when the boy lay down on the floor next to it. The dog bit him in the face, according to the police report.

The suspect told police he became enraged when he arrived at the hospital and saw his son’s injuries.

He left and went to his ex-wife’s home, grabbed a knife from the kitchen, took the dog into the backyard and stabbed it in the side, he told officers. He had his arm around the animal’s throat and was choking it when officers, who’d been told what he was doing, arrived at the home and stopped him.

A Texas man who claimed to be high on the drug K-2 attacked a dog, strangling it and then starting to eat it, police said.

Michael Terron Daniel, 22, of Waco, was taken into custody Monday and charged with cruelty to a non-livestock animal, a felony.

The dog didn’t survive.

KHOU reported that Waco police responded to a call on June 14, reporting a man was “going crazy.”

Daniel had allegedly assaulted several housemates, then chased a neighbor on his hands and knees while barking and growling like a dog, police said.

Daniel then took a medium-sized black dog onto the front porch of the home, where he beat and strangled the animal and then “began to bite into the dog, ripping pieces of flesh away,” Waco police Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton said.

Officers found Daniel sitting on the porch with blood on his hands, clothing and face, Swanton said.

Daniel told police officers he was on a bad trip from ingesting K-2, and at one point asked that they shoot him with a stun gun “to help him get off his bad trip,” Swanton said.

His housemates declined to press assault charges against him, police said.

He is being held at the McLennan County Jail on $5,000 bond.

K-2, referred to as a form of synthetic marijuana, is a mixture of herbs and spices that is usually sprayed with a compound similar to THC, the psychoactive component of marijuana, according to the DEA. Studies suggest it can cause extreme paranoia, hallucinations and violent behavior.

Add this grisly fish story to the annals of wrongly-accused pit bulls.

When the parents of an 18-month-old girl heard her cries and saw the tip of her finger had been severed, they immediately blamed the family pit bull.

They were wrong.

According to the Cook County Sheriff’s Office, the parents were at home in Maine Township, Ill., one night last week when they heard their daughter’s screams, saw her bleeding finger and realized it was missing its tip.

They called 911 and an ambulance took the girl to Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, where a doctor realized that, based on the looks of the wound, it wasn’t a dog bite after all, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Frank Bilecki, a sheriff’s office spokesman, said authorities called to inform the girl’s father, who was still at home, about that.

At that point — and we can only assume he didn’t do this with the pit bull, or the story would have mentioned it – the father plunged his hand into the fish bowl, grabbing one of family’s two piranhas.

“He grabbed a knife and cut it open and found her fingertip right there,” Bilecki said.

The piece of her finger was taken to the hospital. Doctors were trying to re-attach it.

Bilecki said he did not know if the tank was covered or how the child got access to it, but he said the mother and father are not facing any citations after the incident.

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.

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.