ohmidog!

Twenty-two-year-old Alex Wullaert, accused of choking his dog to death when it misbehaved, arrived for a court hearing in New Haven yesterday amid shouts of “coward” and “murderer.”

Wullaert, of Branford, Conn., was arraigned in New Haven Superior Court on animal cruelty and littering charges and released when he promised to appear in court for his next hearing, June 5.

He was arrested last Monday after a microchip found inside the body of a pit bull-boxer mix named Desmond identified him as the owner.

Authorities say Wullaert confessed to strangling Desmond at his home after the dog urinated on his leg and bit him. Wuallert said he put the dog in a plastic garbage bag and disposed of it in a lake.

Later, feeling regret about what he’d done, he went back to the lake and threw flowers into it, according to court documents.

Wullaert adopted Desmond from a shelter soon after his former girlfriend gave the dog up, WTNH reported. Some volunteers from the shelter were among the crowd calling him names when he arrived for his court appearance yesterday.

Supporters of Desmond, who want to see Wullaert get the maximum penalty, have set up a “Justice for Desmond” Facebook page.

I’ll let you decide how much of this story to believe.

A basset hound named George, while no one was home, became entangled in a telephone wire, started choking, and somehow managed to dial 999 (the UK’s version of 911).

Hearing his gasps, emergency operators sent police to the home in West Yorkshire, where he was freed.

We’ll point out this report appeared in The Sun, a troubled tabloid that not everyone considers the UK’s most reliable source of news.

And we’ll point out that when we said dialed, we meant dialed. It was one of those old dialy phones that George, in his desperation, somehow mastered.

(You can click on the link above to see some copyrighted photos of George, and the telephone. The basset in the photo above is Mac who lives in Texas and, despite his outfit, does not have super powers.)

The Sun reports that George, about two years old, knocked the phone to the floor and got entangled in the wire, managing to get it wound around his neck.

“And he panicked so much he incredibly managed to ring 999 as he pawed at the phone trying to free himself.

“The emergency operator alerted police who dashed to the empty home of driving instructor Steve Brown and his daughter Lydia, 18 on Saturday night.”

A neighbor, Paul Walker, also went into the home and “ripped the phone apart to wrench the wire from George’s throat.”

“Incredibly you could see where his paw print was on the phone to ring 999 — he literally saved his own life,” Paul is quoted as saying.

A 22-year-old man and a 13-year-old boy were arrested in Chicago after torturing five puppies and posting videos of it on YouTube, police said.

Joshua Moore, the adult, told police he did it because he was bored, and that he thought “it was not a big deal.”

The videos showed dogs — both the pups and their parents — having duct tape put on their testicles and ripped off, being suspended and spun in a harness, being forced to drink lemon juice and eat their own feces, and being thrown into air, choked and shaken.

The grown dogs were a Chihuahua and a terrier; the pups were mixes of the two, police said.

Moore and the boy were arrested Thursday and charged with animal torture and animal cruelty — all felonies. Moore was ordered held on $150,000 bail today.

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, the torture came to light when a tipster contacted People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

PETA reported the cruelty to the Fort Wayne, Ind., Animal Care and Control officials on Sunday, after learning that Moore was from Chicago but living in Fort Wayne.

On Tuesday, officers in Fort Wayne questioned Moore, who they said admitted he was in the videos. When Moore returned to Chicago Thursday, city police arrested him.

The dogs were seized Thursday from a home in the Austin neighborhood and placed in the care of Chicago’s animal care and cruelty department.

The videos were removed from YouTube before the arrest, but PETA had made copies of them by then.

(Top photo: By John J. Kim / Chicago Sun-Times
Middle photo: Screen grab from videos, courtesy of PETA
Bottom photo: Chicago Police Department)

Suspects in a Houston-area home burglary have confessed to choking to death a police dog who was pursuing them, FOX 26 in Houston reported.

Harris County deputies sent K-9 teams into a wooded area Tuesday night in  search of two of the three suspects, but one of the dogs — a five year old German shepherd mix named Bleck — never came back and was later found dead.

One of the suspects who was found in the woods confessed to fatally choking the dog, Fox26 reported. A third supect was found in a car trying to escape from authorities.

Members of the Harris County Sheriff’s Office say a necropsy will be performed on the dog.