ohmidog!

A pit bull tied to a cement block was found in the Gulf off of Florida and officials are trying to find out who is responsible.

The Tampa Bay SPCA says it was contacted by a local fishing guide last week, who found the pit bull in the water, off of Treasure Island.

The animal had been weighed down by the cement block.

Pinellas deputies retrieved the animal’s body, according to WTSP.

SPCA Tampa Bay is offering a $500 reward leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible.

Anyone with information, can contact the SPCA in Tampa Bay at 727-586-3591, ext. 135.

Four months ago, Bobby was dragging himself through the streets of Nicaragua.

The big white and tan dog would use his front legs to get from one place to another — not that he had any place to go.

Now, due to an inspiring chain of events, he’s getting treatment in Florida, before moving to a forever home in Oklahoma.

“A perfect storm of generosity helped by social media” is how the Florida Times-Union describes it.

First, Bobby was taken to Casas Lupita, a shelter that is part of a project called Building New Hope. There, his backside was fitted with a cart that restored his freedom of movement.

They contacted World Vets, a nonprofit group that brings veterinarians to impoverished areas, which posted information about Bobby on its Facebook page.

Patti Snyder, a veterinarian at North Florida Neurology in Orange Park, Florida, saw the story and pictures, and World Vets was contacted with an offer.

“If someone can get him to Jacksonville, we’ll treat him.”

Jill Murray, a veterinary technician in Stillwater, Oklahoma, saw the post too, and offered to give the 70-pound dog, estimated to be about 5 years old, a forever home.

Money was raised to send Bobby from Nicaragua to Jacksonville, and other offers of help were made and accepted, including one from a volunteer with The London Sanctuary, a Jacksonville-based large breed dog rescue group, which offered to provide Bobby with transporation once his plane landed.

Diane Meyboom, a caretaker from Casas Lupita, accompanied Bobby on the flight and went along Tuesday for tests conducted at North Florida Neurology.

“We’re so happy,” said Meyboom. “We don’t even know if surgery is possible, but even if it’s not, we just know he’s going to get the best treatment.”

Vets are awaiting the results, and say they will do what they can to try and restore feeling and movement to Bobby’s rear legs before sending him to his new home in Oklahoma.

(Photo: Diane Meyboom sits inside an enclosure with Bobby at North Florida Neurology in Orange Park; by Kelly Jordan / The Times-Union)

We can’t get too excited about the “dog headed pig monster.”

Reports out of Namibia, on the southwest coast of Africa, say residents have been terrorized by a “bizarre pig-dog hybrid” with a doglike head and the body of pig.

That’s not him to the left — just the closest we could come.

For, unfortunately, there’s no photographic evidence — not even of the fuzzy, grainy, Chupacabra, Bigfoot sort — of the dog headed pig monster.

But legitimate news organizations, like MSNBC, and the Huffington Post, are reporting that the dog-pig hybrid (and no, dogs and pigs can’t successfully mate) have been spotted, chasing and attacking dogs, goats and other domestic animals.

One Namibian official, regional councilor Andreas Mundjindi, was quoted in Informante newspaper as saying, “This is an alien animal that the people have not seen before.” It seems to appear out of nowhere, he added. “We don’t have a forest here, only bushes. So, this must be black magic at play.”

Some villagers suspect the animal belongs to a reputed witch doctor in the area.

The piece on MSNBC — from the website Life’s Little Mysteries — says it’s not the first time unusual animals have been spotted in rural parts of Namibia. In July 2009 concerns arose over unknown creatures reportedly sucking the blood out of livestock, including nearly two dozen goats.

Nobody ever saw them though, and those who tried to track their footprints said they mysteriously stopped, as if the animal had vanished, or been beamed up, or spontaneously combusted.

Is it black magic, or just yellow journalism?

Only the dog headed pig monster knows.

Toby, an autistic girl’s dog that was reported stolen last week, was found dead Sunday night.

The body of the dog – trained to help Kelly Noland’s daughter, Alle, 9, stay safe — was dumped in the family’s yard in Moncks Corner, S.C.

“They killed our dog and dropped it off in our yard,” Kelly Noland told the Charleston Post and Courier. “He had been hit in the face with a bat. He was still warm.”

Toby, a 3-year-old black and white American bull terrier, was taken from the family’s front yard last Tuesday.

Neighborhood children waiting for the morning school bus said they saw a blond woman in a black Dodge stop, snatch the dog and drive off, according to a Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office report.

“It’s just been a nightmare. Devastating, heartbreaking,” Noland said. “We want to know why someone would target our animal and target our family and be so heartless.”

The family got Toby as a puppy. He wasn’t professionally trained to be a service dog for Alle — the family says it can’t afford one of those — but he watched after her and made sure she stayed safe, the family said.

Noland thanked those who helped look for the dog, and those who have helped since his death, including a local crematory that offered its services for free.

Noland said the family has no plans to get another dog in the near future. “It’s just too much heartache,” she said.

(Top photo: Kelly Noland holds Toby’s collar as she sits with daughter, Alle; by Grace Beahm / Charleston Post and Courier)

When their dog Scamp was hit by a car, a Washington state family checked his seemingly lifeless body, then put him under a wheelbarrow, planning to bury him the next morning.

Paul McKinlay, 61, had been speaking with his son in his front yard in Yelm when Scamp, an 8-month-old Yorkie-shih tzu mix (not Shiatsu, as ABC News reported) slipped underneath the fence and ran into the street.

McKinlay heard a yelp and a thud and arrived at the street to find the dog motionless and the female driver crying.

“We checked to see if we felt any breathing out of his nose, and we couldn’t feel any heartbeat,” said Reta McKinlay.

Her husband wrapped the dog — who they’d brought home for their granchildren this summer — in a blanket. They placed his body under an overturned wheelbarrow so no animals could get to him, with plans to bury Scamp in the morning.

Then, they broke the news to the 6-year-old twins — granchildren who live with them.

“[Paul] was going to bury him the next morning so we went into the house and just told the kids the dog had gotten hit by a car and that he had gone to heaven like in that movie, ‘All Dogs Go to Heaven.’ My grandson was crying. He asked if [Scamp] evaporated like in the movie and I said, ‘Yes, that’s what happened.’”

But when Paul McKinlay went outside the next morning and lifted up the wheelbarrow, Scamp was sitting up.

Four days and $3,000 in vet bills later Scamp, who’d suffered a concussion, broken teeth and a possible jaw fracture, was brought home by the McKinlays — much to the suprise of their twin granchildren, who, just in case Scamp didn’t make it, hadn’t initially been told that the dog was still alive.

Mrs. McKinlay said her husband had been “distraught” that he left Scamp out in the cold, but vets told the couple that the cold temperatures could have kept the dog alive, by keeping his brain from swelling.

“Sometimes God’s just not ready to take something away,” she said.

Tis the season for putting ornaments on trees, hanging stockings from the mantle, and, if you’re a dog, placing your nose directly into the crotch of any and all visitors who drop by the house for a bit of Christmas cheer.

Ah yes, the crotch sniff, next to the leg hump about the most embarassing behavior — for us, anyway — that our dog can engage in.

If you’ve ever wondered why your dog, while showing little or no interest in your crotch, is so fascinated by the laps of visitors, help is on the way.

That sketch on the left shows where dogs sniff their owners — mostly, as you can see by the lines and darkened areas,  the arms and face.

The one below shows where dogs sniff strangers, and there seems a much greater focus on the groin.

This comes courtesy of our friend Julie Hecht, who produces the blog Dog Spies. She’s nosing through existing research, and has posted the first of a two-part series on the phenomenon.

Hecht works with Alexandra Horowitz at the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College, which regularly tries to figure out why dogs do the things they do — the scientific reasons, as opposed those we tend to arrive at anthropomorphically.

She  cites a study done in 1991, by Filiatre, et al, that had this title:

“Behavioural variability of olfactory exploration of the pet dog in relation to human adults.”

(Riotous bunch, those scientists.)

For their sniffing simulation, researchers had human volunteers lay motionless on the floor with their eyes closed for five minutes.

The researchers first observed pet dogs sniffing their owners. Then they watched as dogs sniffed an unknown person. They kept count of the areas sniffed, and made charts. (I’m guessing they didn’t use those red arrows, though.)

Dogs spent more time sniffing strangers than their owners, and, with strangers,  more time poking about the crotch zone. 

The simple explanation: Your dog already has a good sense of how you and most regular visitors smell. With a new person though, they tend to want to get better aquainted. They do that primarily with their noses.

As for why they sniff where they sniff, I don’t know — and I’m hoping part two of Julie’s post will clear the air and explain the allure of the crotch; whether it’s a matter of going for the most pungent spot, or the most personal and guarded one, or if maybe it, scent wise, it’s simply the most revealing.

Dog only knows.

When Parley Nichols, 81, went missing from his home in Hartville, Ohio, his family wasn’t surprised to learn that the dog who never left his side was missing, too.

Six-year-old Lady, a golden retriever he bought as a puppy, was his constant companion.

Nichols, who suffered from dementia, had been missing for more than a week when a neighbor called his family to report that a dog had been heard barking in a field outside of town. After searching the area twice, the family found Nichols dead, and Lady at his side.

“Lady was standing by his side protecting him,”  Parley’s son Terry Nichols told PEOPLEpets.com. “We are sure that she never left my dad for seven days, staying alive by drinking water from the creek.”

Terry Nichols said the family had to pull Lady away from her master and place her in the back of their pickup truck. “I don’t know how dogs perceive things but she knew she had to stay with dad no matter what,” he said. “And she did.”

A preliminary autopsy conducted by the Stark County coroner found that Parley Nichols died of heart failure, and could have been dead for the full week.

Lady has moved in with other members of Nichols’ family.

“Lady seems fine now… she is a friendly, happy dog,” Nichols said. “I don’t know if she misses my dad, but she is responding well to the rest of us. She did the right thing for dad, and we will always be comforted by that.”

(Photos: WKYC-TV)

A German shepherd named Cash spent six weeks near her dead master’s body after the man apparently killed himself in a remote area, Colorado authorities said. 

The 3-year-old female dog was found Sunday in the 200,000-acre Pawnee National Grassland, not far from the body of Jake Baysinger, 25, who it is believed shot himself, The Greeley Tribune reported Tuesday.

He had been reported missing on June 28, but Weld County Sheriff deputies had been unable to find the man or his pickup, according to a UPI version of the story.

A rancher found the man’s body after first seeing the dog, which apparently survived by eating mice and rabbits, the newspaper said. The dog was taken to the Humane Society of Weld County, where she was later picked up by Baysinger’s wife.