ohmidog!

Police suspected a black mixed breed dog they were calling Lady — found last week with her eyes dangling out of her sockets in a parking lot in Bucks County, Pa. — had been struck with a baseball bat.

Since then – thanks to encountering some kinder humans — Lady has received veterinary care, a temporary home from a police dispatcher who overheard the call, and, this week, a reunion with the family whose home she escaped from.

Now, the 7-year-old dog who likely will never see again is being called by her real name again — Dusk.

“We’re happy to have her back,” Marie Waligorski told Phillyburbs.com. “We never expected to get her back this way.”

Dusk escaped from the family’s fence yard four days before she was found in a parking lot, just a few hundred feet from the family’s home in Bristol Township.

The citizen who found her called police Friday morning, and Jessica Finnell, a Bucks County emergency dispatcher listened in.

The caller said he found a dog with both eyes hanging out of the sockets. When he went on to say the dog was alive, Finnell contacted the animal control officer retrieving the dog and urged him not to let her be put down. And she offered to take the dog into her home in Warminster.

At CARES, an animal clinic in Middletown, a veterinarian put Lady’s eyes back into their sockets, but her left eyelid had to be heavily stitched to keep the damaged eye from falling out again. The vet found multiple skull fractures, but no injuries that would suggest she’d been hit by a car. Finnell was told  it’s likely someone hit Lady in the head with a bat.

After Lady received medical treatment, Finnell took her home for the weekend.

“She is phenomenal,” she said Monday night. “She is amazing. She is unbelievable. I totally fell in love with her.”

Finnell also started a ChipIn fund to cover Lady’s ongoing medical care, which has raised close to $3,000.

Finnell brought the dog back to the veterinary clinic yesterday, where she was reunited with her family. Dusk belongs to Waligorski’s son, William Schilling, who adopted her as a puppy when living in Tennessee.

“She was excited, tail-wagging. She seems happy that they were there,” said Finnell, a single mother of two. “I’m happy for her. I miss her like crazy, but I’m happy she is back in her home and can have some of her normal life back.”

(Photo: Lady/Dusk and Finnell; by Rick Kintzel / Phillyburbs.com)

As often as we report incidents that reflect law enforcement’s lack of compassion when it comes to dogs, it’s good to pass along a story like this one — about a cop in St. Louis who showed some heart.

More inspiring yet, Officer Cheryl Goede saw fit not just to seek help for the two German shepherds she found living in a car, but for their homeless human, too.

Last week, Officer Goede was investigating a call about a  “suspicious vehicle” in St. Louis.

She approached the car and questioned the man inside, who had two German shepherds with him.

He didn’t immediately volunteer the information, but, as reported on Examiner.com, the man, identified as A.J. Hawk, eventually admitted he’d lost his job, then his home, and was living in his car with his dogs.

Hawk, while he went to school to become an architectural drafting artist, is now working odd jobs to pay for gas and food, and he and his dogs have been living in his car about a month.

Officer Goede is a dog-lover herself, and particularly a German shepherd lover. She puts out a Facebook page, called the German Shepherd Dog Community.

Goede didn’t haul Hawk in, or tell him to get out of town. Instead, she told him she admired him for not dumping his dogs at a shelter.

“I could never do that,” he responded. “They are my family.” 

When her shift ended, she logged on to Facebook to share Hawk’s situation with her readers. And she decided to donate to him some recent winnings from a contest her own German shepherd, Kato, was in.

She also set up a Chip-In account so others could donate to Hawk and his dogs, Caesar and Houdini.

Anyone interested in making a donation can do so by either using the Chip-In, or mailing it to: PO Box 140003, St. Louis, MO 63114.

(Photos: Top, Houdini and Caesar; bottom, Cheryl Goede and Kato; From the Facebook page of the German Shepherd Dog Community)

Brieann Masenior has saved many a dog, but none from this kind of peril.

A fire this week destroyed her home, all her family’s belongings, and the offices of Ruff Life Rescue in Rising Sun, Maryland. 

Masenior, who regularly saves dogs from a different kind of fate, ran into the burning house at least three times to rescue the dogs in her care.

Now, according to Facebook posts from friends, she and her family are staying in a motel, searching for some temporary housing and trying to put their lives back together.

Ruff Life Rescue is a group of volunteer animal lovers who provide sanctuary and seek to re-home abandoned and stray dogs, and who regularly pulls dogs scheduled for euthanization from animal shelters.

“We focus on the most dire need cases, where they are on there last day at the shelter and have no other means of rescue,” the Ruff Life website explains.

Ruff Life Rescue also operates a pet food bank, in association with the Ray of Hope Mission Center  in Port Deposit.

Donations can be sent to Ruff Life Rescue, P.O. Box 256, Rising Sun, MD 21911.

They can also be made via chip-in.

Neighbors in South Philadelphia found a bruised, battered and hungry dog, took him in, and have raised enough money for him to have surgery tomorrow.

Apparently, the 6-month-old shepherd mix, who they’ve named Sailor — given he was a bit of a shipwreck when they found him at 15th and Federal Streets in South Philadelphia — had been abandoned, and hit by a car. Three of his legs were injured and he was barely able to walk, CBS in Philadelphia reported.

When his rescuers brought him home, Sailor was so emaciated some weren’t sure he would make it, but he has gained 10 pounds since then, and he’s scheduled for surgery this week, at a cost of about $5,000.

“A lot of vets told me to put him down right away,” said Clair Sauer. “The surgeons were ready to operate on him yesterday, but I had to tell them ‘I don’t have the money.’” Sailor’s foster family set up a Sailor website to help raise the money. In little more than 24 hours, they reached their goal.

According to the website, the surgery will be performed at CARES in Langhorne, Pa., by Dr. Brentz. Sailor will have his rear femur cut and “put back into place with lots of metal…”

“Recovery will be long and will take patience, but we will be there for him! He will need lots more x-rays to monitor how his bones are healing. And, when he is ready, physical therapy. These will incur more costs, but we will stay optimistic!”

Once Sailor recovers from his surgery, he will be put up for adoption.