ohmidog!

An FBI dog named Ape, on only his second assignment with the agency, was shot and killed by a gunman holed up inside an abandoned bar in upstate New York.

A German shepherd, Ape was shot in the chest when he walked through a door with cameras attached to his body. Officers returned fire, killing Kurt R. Myers, who was suspected of killing four people.

They performed CPR on Ape, then rushed him in an armored vehicle to a nearby veterinarian. 

“We were trying to do everything we could to try to save its life,” said Dr. Emily M. Green, one of the veterinarians at Herkimer Veterinary Associates.

Ape was 2 years and 4 months old, and had been on active duty for the FBI for a little over two weeks, according to the New York Times.

“Ape was doing what he was trained to do and made the ultimate sacrifice for his team,” the agency said in a statement released by Special Agent Ann Todd. “His actions were heroic and prevented his teammates from being seriously wounded or killed.”

Ape will be buried at the agency’s headquarters in Quantico, Va., and his name will be added to a memorial wall dedicated to dogs killed while on duty.

Ape was the second FBI tactical dog killed in the line of duty. In  2009,  a 2 ½-year-old Belgian Malinois named Freddy was killed while accompanying agents attempting to make an arrest.

The FBI and police declined to discuss the specifics of how Ape was used in the raid. While a police robot equipped with a camera was ready, it might not have been able to navigate the gunman’s debris-strewn hiding place, the Times reported.

Agents sent Ape, equipped with a camera, into the building first. The cameras allow a handler to see what the dog is seeing from as far as 1,000 yards away. The gunman had been holed up for hours in the empty building in Herkimer, N.Y.

The FBI said that Ape had just started working on active duty on Feb. 25.

“He will be missed by his FBI family,” the agency said.

(Photo:by Ann Todd / FBI)

A pit bull mix who was kicked and slapped by her owner on an apartment house elevator — that’s the surveillance video above — has been adopted by a young New York couple.

Richard Palacios, a 33-year-old SoHo waiter, and his fiance, Natalya Prokenpenko, 24, adopted the dog Friday, according to the New York Post.

“We didn’t know her story … When we saw the video, my fiancée started crying,” Prokopenko said.

The dog, who appears pretty happy with the new developments, is now known as Hazel.

Prokenpenko said as soon as they entered their Queens home with Hazel she “started kissing me, kissing my fiancé.”

Hazel’s beating on the elevator at East Harlem’s Wagner Houses, was recorded by police department surveillance cameras last August, and led to the arrest of  Brian Freeman, 28. Hazel was taken from him and placed in a shelter then.

She had a cracked rib and bruises, but vets said she didn’t seem to have been subjected to prior abuse.

Freeman, who worked in a security job at a homeless shelter and was in college, entered a guilty plea last week to a reduced charge of misdemeanor trespassing. A  judge indicated he would sentence Freeman to term of 25 days community service at his sentencing on Feb. 5.

 (Photo: Brigitte Stelzer / New York Post)

It was five years ago when strange things started happening at the Battersea Dogs & Cats Home.

Somehow, the same group of dogs were escaping from their pens at the shelter at night and proceeding to raid the food area, where they ate, played and partied all night long.

The shelter at first suspected staff wasn’t propertly closing the gates. Then they thought maybe it was a practical joke.

Finally, to find the answer, they installed three cameras. The first couple of nights, nothing happened, but then the cameras caught a greyhound mix named Red in the act — first freeing himself, then freeing his friends from their cages.

In Great Britain and Ireland, they call the mixed breed “lurchers,” and they’re known for their stealth and cunning.

Red certainly fit that bill — and better yet, shortly after shelter staff brought an end to the late night parties, Red got adopted.

It took two years, but the Coalition to Ban Ohio Dog Auctions  says it has acquired and submitted enough signatures to bring an end to the annual flesh markets known as dog auctions.

The sales — similar to what you might see at an auction of livestock, or trafficked humans — are revolting affairs that seem out of kilter with the times. 

“It’s a major distribution channel for puppy-mill breeding, and it’s a form of commerce that has not been good for the dogs or Ohio voters or taxpayers,” says Mary O’Connor-Shaver, leader of the coalition.

The group submitted 150,000 signatures last week to the secretary of state’s office. If at least 115,570 are proven legitimate, the General Assembly has four months to either pass a ban or pass a modified version approved by the coalition, the Columbus Dispatch reported.

About six dog auctions a year are held in Ohio, with an average of 350 dogs bought and sold at each by breeders from Ohio and nearby states.

The proposal would ban the auction of dogs in Ohio and the sale or trade of dogs acquired through an auction.

Violations would be misdemeanors, punishable by fines of as much as $250 and jail sentences of as long as 30 days. 

O’Connor-Shaver said she expects to know by Jan.6 whether enough signatures have been certified.

According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the auctions are now held only in Holmes County and involve about 2,500 dogs and puppies a year, with most of the dogs sold destined for pet stores or lives as breeders.

Activists say many of the animals sold are sick, injured, and genetically-flawed. Cameras and cell phones are not permitted at the auctions. The video above was taken five years ago during an undercover investigation by the Humane Society of the United States.

(Photo: Coalition to Ban Ohio Dog Auctions)

There will always be a sourpuss or two who points out “it’s only a dog” and complains it’s a waste of taxpayer money, but I like this trend of rescue workers saving dogs — and capturing their own heroics on video.

It’s happened at least twice on Wednesday, so I can officially call it a trend.

In Fargo, North Dakota, a dog named Jake, clinging for dear life to a chunk of ice, was pulled from the partially frozen Red River by a fire department rescuer wearing a cam.

And in Lincoln County, N.C., the unidentified dog above was carried to safety after being stuck on a dam in the fast-moving South Fork River — all captured by a fire department member filming from the riverbank.

“This is B-Roll video that was shot at the scene of a rescue of a dog off of a low head dam in Lincoln County,” reads the description of the rescue.  ”Rescue crews successfully rescued this dog off of the dam and he was taken to a local vet for evaluation and treatment of a head injury and possible hypothermia.”

The video, like the one in Fargo, was posted on YouTube, for the public to see and the media to grab.

What with cutbacks to staff at newspapers and televisions stations, and an increasing reliance on reader/viewer-submitted news, this works out well all the way around. Citizens get served and protected and entertained. Firefighters, police and rescue personnel get some good publicity. The news media gets somebody else to do its work for free.

Come to think of it, it serves us bloggers pretty well, too.

So keep saving those dogs, and putting out those fires, and don’t forget to send us some B-Roll.

A day-long trial about dog poop ended with a Fairfax County jury finding a woman not guilty of failing to clean up after Baxter, a dog she regularly cares for.

Two neighbors had accused Kimberly Zakrzewski of violating the Virginia county’s “pooper scooper” law by allowing the Westie-bichon frise mix to relieve himself on the grounds of their condominium.

It took a jury less than 20 minutes Tuesday to reach the verdict, the
Washington Post reported.

Virginia and Christine Cornell had apparently gone to great lengths to document their claims, photographing piles of Baxter’s alleged waste and shadowing Zakrzewski and Baxter to take pictures.

Zakrzewski and the Cornell sisters have long been feuding, according to testimony from all three.

The Cornell sisters testified that Zakrzewski, who walks and babysits Baxter, failed to pick up after the dog on three days last March and April. They said they once heard her boasting to a neighbor that she left the poop unscooped to annoy them.

Zakrzewski testified that she carried plastic bags and always cleaned up after Baxter.

Also testifying was Baxter’s owner, Michelle Berman.

She was shown a photo of a pile of dog waste that had been introduced as evidence.

“Is that consistent with the stool Baxter creates?” Zakrzewski’s attorney asked. Berman answered, “I’ve never seen something that big come out of my little dog.”

Berman said she had gone so far to bring a bag of Baxter’s poop to the courthouse in case it was needed as evidence, but left it in the car.

(Photo: Sarah L. Voisin / Washington Post)

These are becoming — sadly — almost a video staple.

New York City police have released another surveillance video of a dog being abused in a public housing elevator.

This time, it’s a 46-year-old man who swinging a pit bull puppy against an elevator wall, then kicking the animal and slapping him in the face with his leash.

The man was identified as Irving Sanchez, and he was charged with aggravated animal cruelty on Monday, police said.

The incident took place at the Wagner public-housing complex in East Harlem on Sunday night.

The dog, named Max, was not seriously injured, police said, and is now in the custody of the ASPCA.

The charge against Sanchez carries a penalty of up to two years in prison.

Last year, at least three other cases of dogs being abused on elevators were captured on video in the Grant Houses in Harlem.

Maybe any monkey can’t be a photographer, but any dog can.

At least when its collar is equipped with a camera that’s programmed to snap photos at regular intervals.

The photos from just such experiment are the subject of a new exhibition in New York called “Dogtography: A Dog’s Eye View of New York.”

The idea was dreamed up by McCann Erickson, a public relations agency that was trying to gain some attention for a pro bono client – Mighty Mutts, an animal shelter and adoption service.

The company outfitted dogs with “collar-cams,” small digital cameras that can be mounted on canine collars.

The resulting photos show the world from a dog’s point of view — a lot of “feet and fire hydrants,” Sean Bryan, a group creative director at McCann Erickson told the New York Times blog “Media Decoder.”

The exhibit opens today, with a reception from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., at the Hendershot Gallery at 195 Chrystie Street in Manhattan. Proceeds from the sale of the photos will go to Mighty Mutts. The exhibition is being sponsored by Mighty Mutts along with Biscuits and Bath, a chain of dog-grooming facilities in New York.

Each photo has a title, and the dogs who wore the collar cams get photo credits.

Dogs are invited to the event.

An Ohio firefighter who was fired for executing his two dogs walked out of an appeal hearing yesterday in which he was seeking to get his job back.

As a result, the Civil Service Commission dismissed David Santuomo’s appeal of his firing, the Columbus Dispatch reports.

Santuomo, 43, was waiting for the hearing to begin, but left after a television news crew set up a camera in the commission’s hearing room.

“He came here with the intention of going forward but changed his mind,” said Barbara McGrath, the commission’s executive director. The commission had agreed to postpone the original hearing in the fall and informed Santuomo that his appeal would be dismissed if he didn’t attend today’s hearing.

Santuomo was fired in July after being convicted of two counts of animal cruelty and one count of possession of a criminal tool. Prosecutors say Santuomo tied his two mixed-breed dogs to a pipe in his basement and shot them so he wouldn’t have to put them in a kennel while he went on a vacation cruise with his girlfriend. He dumped the bodies in a trash bin behind his fire station

He was sentenced to 90 days in jail and fined $4,500.

A New York City woman has been charged after police say she was caught on video kicking and jerking her Pomeranian on an elevator in the same housing project where surveillance cameras captured a dog being beaten earlier this month.

Tiara Davis was charged with torturing and injuring an animal Monday. The incident was recorded by video cameras in the elevators of the Grant Houses Sunday morning. Police released the videos Tuesday.

The video shows Sparky, her 4-year-old Pomeranian, being beaten and jerked by its leash until unconscious.

Davis, 31, said she lost her temper when the dog relieved himself before getting outside.

“I kept telling him, ‘Sparky! Wait! Wait!’ ” Davis, a vocational counselor for ex-offenders, told the New York Daily News. “I became a little frustrated,” she added. “It was never my intention to hurt him.”

Sparky is recovering at the ASPCA hospital.