ohmidog!

When her 55-pound dog, Moses, tugged too hard on his leash, Megan Wiersma went flying — down her back steps and landing face first on the deck.

“I could feel it right away,” she told the Daily Herald in suburban Chicago. “I was fearing the worst.”

Wiersma, 37, broke her left front tooth in the spill. And it was all the fault of Moses.

The next day, Sunday, she called her dentist in Barrington, Dr. Russ Fitton, who encouraged her to find the missing chunk of tooth and bring it in.

She searched the backyard, but couldn’t locate it.

It was later Sunday afternoon, after being let out in the backyard, that Moses came back inside and dropped something at Wiersma’s feet. It was the missing piece of tooth — about 3 millimeters by 2 millimeters in side.

Wiersma said she isn’t surprised Moses found the chunk of tooth. But she is surprised he didn’t eat it.

“He eats everything,” she said.

The dentist cemented the piece of tooth back in place, returning Wiersma’s smile to its natural state.

Moses is forgiven.

(Photo: Mark Welsh / Daily Herald)

Lucy, a dog saved from the streets of Bogota — but not until after her owner beat her beyond recognition — is now in the U.S. and in the process of finding a new home.

And if you think there are only a few people who would find beauty in her unaligned face, think again.

Everyone, it seems, loves Lucy.

Stray from the Heart, a New York City rescue, says it has been inundated with inquiries from people seeking to adopt Lucy, now in a foster home — so many that they’ve removed her profile from their website as they sort through applicants.

Lucy was beaten by her former owner so badly that her nose and jaw were broken, according to Stray from the Heart. Both have healed, but they never set properly, leaving her jaw and snout slightly askew.

Her abuser also pulled out some of her teeth, to keep her from fighting with the many male dogs she was bred with.

Somehow, she escaped and was found living on the streets, alone, emaciated and pregnant. She was picked by a good samaritan and taken to a veterinarian who discovered her uterus was twisted. The vet had to decided between saving the mother or the babies, and opted to save Lucy,  Stray from the Heart says.

It was believed to have been the three-and-a-half-year-old dog’s fifth or sixth pregnancy.

After a few months in foster care in Bogota, Lucy was brought to the U.S., and was boarded in Connecticut until foster care could be secured.

Stray from the Heart is now picking a permanent home from the many applicants who got in touch after her photos appeared on the rescue’s website and Facebook page.

(Photos:  From the Facebook page of Stray from the Heart)

My Norwegian is a little rusty, so I can’t tell you much more than that this is an advertisement for an insurance company called Tryg in Norway.

I’m not sure if its message is don’t leave your dog in the car because it could die, or don’t leave your dog in the car because your window might get broken, or, you wouldn’t need to worry about your window getting broken if you have insurance.

Whichever it is, it still manages to make that first point, thanks to some fine acting by the dog in the starring role.

That’s Matisse, a four-year-old border collie who lives in Belgium. You can learn more about him, and the making of the commercial, in the video below.

(For all our “Woof in Advertising” selections click  here.)

It has been a long month for Mason, a terrier mix from Alabama.

First, he was swept away by the April 27 tornadoes when they passed through North Smithfield.

He survived, but with two broken legs, and managed to find his way back, using his two good legs to drag himself home, or to what was left of it. But by then, his family, who’d been searching for him and had all but given up, wasn’t there.

When they showed up the next week to sift through the debris, they found Mason waiting for them on the front porch. But the tornadoes had left their life in such disarray they didn’t feel they could care for him, and brought him to a shelter.

At the Birmingham-Jefferson County Animal Control Shelter, he was diagnosed with two fractures, according to WBRC.

Vets at the Vulcan Park Animal Clinic offered to lend a hand.

Last week vets performed surgery, using plates and pins to mend the legs and getting Mason started on what’s expected to be a long road to recovery.

The animal shelter was prepared to start seeking a new home for Mason, but now comes word — according to the clinic’s website — that his family, still in the process of rebuilding their lives, is ready to take him back.

In our final days in Baltimore, Ace and I shifted from a house that was empty to one that was very full – of art, and art supplies, and things that, in the homeowner/artist’s view, could, with a little work and imagination, be turned into art someday.

Artist J. Kelly Lane, having an out-of-town house-sitting gig of her own, offered to let Ace and me stay Thursday and Friday in her South Baltimore rowhouse, which, she warned me ahead of time, had its quirks

You know you’re in trouble when you arrive to find a note titled “Weird stuff about my house…” and it’s two pages long.

You know you’re in bigger trouble when, in a house full of art works, you break one of them.

In the wee (literally) hours of the morning, I rose off the downstairs futon to make my way upstairs to the bathroom. I was stepping carefully through the darkness, but my knee hit a stand-up ash tray and knocked it over.

If that alone weren’t bad enough – it’s hard to find ash trays at all these days, let alone the stand up, three-foot high kind — Kelly had apparently applied her artistic skills to this one.

I’m guessing (and hoping) it was a thrift store find –as opposed to a family heirloom — one that, while already the perfect combination of form and function, she saw as being in needed a bit more pizzazz.

Someone, I’m guessing Kelly, had painstakingly painted both its post and the two serpents that make up its handle, which is the part that broke when it fell to the ground.

Now it’s 4 a.m., and I can’t go back to sleep. In addition to the guilt I feel for breaking it in the first place, I’m feeling guiltier yet for what’s popping into my mind:

Glue it back together. There’s a glue gun right there on her shelf. She’ll never know.

Blame it on Ace. With a dog as big as him, in a house filled with so much art, an accident is bound to happen. Right?

Staying at Kelly’s house was like spending a night at the museum. Her paintings cover the walls. Walk in the front door and you’re in what looks like a studio. Enter then next room and you’re in what looks like a studio. Keep going back and you enter what appears to be a studio.

She’s applied her flair to the dwelling, too – like the stair rail and stairway risers painted in leopard skin motif. In addition to painting canvases, Kelly paints house interiors, and she’s into a host of other crafts, like hand-made Valentine’s cards and decorating items like the stand-up ashtray whose handle is now broken.

Bad dog!

No. Making the dog the scapegoat isn’t a good option. On top of not being fair, what a person’s dog does is, in the final analysis, the person’s responsibility.

True, I have in the past blamed him for gaseous eruptions that did not originate from him, but that’s different – dogs are more easily forgiven than humans for that.

Then too, blaming him for the mishap would tarnish his image as the perfect dog. In reality, he’s not perfect – and I wouldn’t want him to be – but he comes a lot closer to it than I do. And when it comes right down to it, I – wrong as it might be – probably care more about his image than mine, except when it comes to farts.

Like a lot of dog people, I worry more about my dog – his health, his reputation, his “proper” behavior – than I do about my own self in those regards.

From previous visits, I knew there would be some risks at Kelly’s house – that a wagging tail, or Ace going into rambunctious “let’s play!” mode, could result in serious damage. As it turns out, it was I, in my pre-coffee, bathroom-seeking clumsiness — as Ace soundly slept — that sent things a kilter. And a standalone ash tray, no less – a true antique that harkens back to the days when smoking wasn’t a misdemeanor, and ash trays were respectable enough to be an entire piece of furniture.

I’d gone more than a month in our previous location – also somebody else’s house — without breaking anything. But then, it being an empty house, there was really nothing to break.

Now I must break the news, and somehow make things right.

Then, and only then, will I be able to go back to sleep.

(Postscript: Kelly was very forgiving, and didn’t seem mad at me. To find out more about her art, contact her at easelqueen@yahoo.com)

Lovebug needs some love.

The 13-week old pup was struck by a car on a Missouri Interstate highway.

She suffered in the tall grass for a day, before working up the energy to lift her head. A firefighter and his wife,  passing by, saw her and  stopped, wrapping her in his firefighter’s jacket and taking her to a local veterinarian.

There she was found to have two fractured legs and a broken pelvis — injuries that will require the installation of pins and plates, and cost about $2,000.

“She has charmed everyone with her zest for life and determined attitude. We are a non-profit organization and any help you can give would be greatly appreciated,” writes Cheri Zaiger, of American Black and Tan Coonhound Rescue. “I just know if other people could see her face and hear her story some donations would come in to help her out of this devastating situation,” Zaiger added. The website has a box that can be clicked on to make donations.

American Black and Tan Coonhound Rescue helps all types of coonhounds – Black and Tans, Redbones, Blue Ticks, Red Ticks, Tennessee Tree Walkers. It rescues most of them from kill shelters, keeps them in foster care and seeks to find permanent homes for them.

A team of 40 vets and nurses, working around the clock for over two months, helped reassemble a three-year-old dog named Ruby after she was hit by a car.

After  a series of operations at a cost of £11,500, Ruby, who remained cheerful and upbeat throughout the ordeal, is recovering, according to the Daily Mail.

Ruby suffered fractures to her two front legs, sternum and toe, a dislocated knee, ruptured ligaments and internal bleeding when she was struck by the car on January 26.

Because she did not have any head injuries, the vets said if she could live through the next 24 hours she had a good chance.

“Her legs will take about five months to heal totally but in herself she is happy, sweet-natured and an inspiration to the rest of us,” said her owner, Vanessa Gillespie. ”The vet said he had never seen a dog so broken still so happy. Most dogs would not have survived but Ruby is a toughie.’

Ruby was run over in the village of Cambourne in Cambridgeshire.

She spent five weeks at Queen’s Veterinary School Hospital in Cambridge, and had two major operations — first a nine-hour procedure in which her broken legs were repaired using four metal plates and screws, then a seven-hour operation to replace the ruptured knee ligaments, carry out skin grafts and amputate the broken toe. The fractured breastbone and internal bleeding were left to heal naturally.

Gillespie said most of the bill was covered by insurance. “If she had not been insured we would have had to put her down,” she said.

A one-year-old dog survived being thrown off the roof a six-story housing project in Brooklyn.

Though all her legs were broken and had to be repaired with plates and screws, she was expected to survive.

Fabian Henderson, 19, was charged with throwing the female dog off the roof of a building in the Red Hook Houses.

Several people called 911 to report a dog had gone off the roof and police found the black and white terrier mix on the ground six floors below, the New York Post reported.

The dog also suffered internal bruising and damage to her lungs. Investigators have nicknamed her Oreo for her black-and-white markings.

Henderson, who claimed the dog jumped off the roof, was charged with of animal cruelty and reckless endangerment.