ohmidog!

An Iowa couple whose dog was stolen when they were visiting San Antonio has gotten her back — though exactly how isn’t clear.

James Maschmann and his wife were visiting the city in February when they stopped to eat, parking their car at a Cracker Barrel and leaving their 4-year-old shih-poo inside, with the windows cracked.

When they returned, Katie Jo was missing along with Maschmann’s cellphone, according to the San Antonio Express-News

Last week, the couple posted an ad on Craigslist, offering  $1,000 for the dog’s return. San Antonio police  also issued an alert last week, releasing surveillance video of a white pick up truck seen in the parking lot and asking people to come forward with any information about Katie Jo.

Police haven’t said how Katie Jo was found, or whether anyone was charged in the theft.

But according to a Facebook page dedicated to Katie Jo’s return, the animal was recovered and returned early Monday:

“Katie Jo is home safe and sound!! Thank you to everyone for the thoughts and prayers! We are absolutely overjoyed to have her back!”

Credit a family dog in Virginia with finding the evidence that would lead to the arrest of a 20-year-old man on charges of robbery after he lured a car buyer to meet him through an ad on Craigslist.

Derek Shifflett, 20, of Verona, became a suspect in the case after a friend’s dog found the money — $12,000 — hidden under a bed.

Sgt. David Lotts, of the Augusta County Sheriff’s Office, said Shifflett posted a Honda Civic for sale on Craigslist, and made arrangements to meet an interested buyer.

The victim, from a car dealership in Hendersonville, N.C., traveled to Verona Monday afternoon and met with Shifflett, who told him the vehicle was being cleaned and filled with gas.

At one point, authorities say, Shifflett pushed the prospective buyer, a 64-year-old man, snatched an envelope containing $12,000 from his coat pocket, and ran off.

A few hours later, a Verona woman called the sheriff’s office after her dog pulled an envelope full of cash from beneath a bed in her home and began playing with it.

“The dog drug it out,” Lotts told Newsleader.com. “I guess he thought it was a new toy.”

Lotts said the woman’s son is friends with Shifflett. Shifflett turned himself in at the sheriff’s office late Monday night.

Lotts said the ad was fictitious and that Shifflett ” just took a random picture with a cell phone.”

“I figured that money was long gone,” he said.

Police say a Pennsylvania couple sold a neighbor’s lost puppy for $50 on Craigslist, rather than returning it to its owner.

Scott Duff, 41, and Roxanne Duff, 38, of Leechburg, Pa., each face three charges — not making a reasonable effort to return lost property, conspiracy and filing false reports, according to the Valley News Dispatch.

Two dogs, a golden retriever and a Rottweiler puppy, apparently wandered away from their home earlier this month and end up at the Duff’s place, down the street.

According to court papers, the golden retriever was  returned to the owner. But the Duffs told the owner that the puppy had run away.

The next day, the owner called police to say he believed the puppy was still at the Duff’s house.

When asked if they still had the puppy, the couple told police they did not, but officers were later told that the puppy was seen in the  yard.

Police said they again confronted the couple, who allegedly  admitted to selling the dog through Craigslist for $50. Roxanne Duff told police she sold the dog to a Pittsburgh woman. The pup was later returned to the owner.

A pit bull mix purchased two weeks ago through an ad on Craigslist is being treated for injuries received when his new owners dragged him behind their Jeep, police said.

Four people were charged with animal cruelty in Troutdale, Oregon, in connection with the dragging of the dog, named Rhino.

Police say they received several calls Monday night from witnesses who saw the dog tied to the back of a moving Jeep Cherokee by his leash.

Troutdale police found the dog later, bleeding from his paws, KOIN reported

The four occupants of the Jeep told police they’d forgotten the dog was tied to it when they pulled out of a McDonald’s parking lot and drove 600 feet to a gas station, where bystanders stopped the driver.

Police transported Rhino to a veterinary clinic, where it was determined he had lost most of his foot pads and nails. He was to be transferred to Multnomah County Animal Control.

Police said the dog’s owner Launa Dickinson, 20, was charged with one count of second degree animal abuse. Also charged were Allen Cook, 20, Justin Rinde, 21, both of Portland, and Nicholas Falkenhagen, 21, of Milwaukie. All were booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center.

Police said all four were believed to be living in the Jeep.

Jeffrey Nally Jr. is in prison now, serving a sentence of 9 to 45 years, which means, in West Virginia, he could get out in less than five.

And that, in itself, would be another crime.

Nally was sentenced last month for torturing and killing dogs, at least 29 of which he collected by perusing Craigslist’s ”free to a good home” ads.

While the sentence isn’t harsh enough for most animal advocates, it’s a pretty significant one, relative to most others meted out in abuse cases, and given it was handed down by a judge in West Virginia.

Then again, Nally, based on court records and witness statements about his heinous acts, seemed pretty close to graduating, as many an animal abuser does, to human killing.

According to his former girlfriend, Jessica Sellers, Nally had been holding her captive in his home in New Cumberland and terrorizing her by torturing and murdering the animals in front of her.

Sellers said Nally told her the only way she was leaving his  home was “in a body bag.” On the day of his arrest, she claimed, he forced her to hold a puppy as he bored into its head with an electric drill.

His victims were obtained through Craigslist — dogs advertised as free to a good home. Nally would pick them up and return them to his place, about as far from a “good home” as you could possibly get.

Nally’s house was raided in March of 2011 after Sellers’ mother called authorities. Police found 29 dog carcasses, guns, tools covered with blood and hair, and what appeared to be a beagle’s pelt and eyes in a jar, according to an account in PetPardons.com.

Nally, 20, faced 29 counts of felony animal cruelty, one count of domestic battery, one count of kidnapping and one count of unlawful possession of a firearm.

In January, he turned down a plea deal, but in April, as his trial neared, he accepted it. He entered guilty pleas to nine of the charges of felony animal abuse and received one to five years for each count. In exchange, all the other charges, except for the firearms one, were dropped.

He will have to serve a minimum of five years before he can apply for an early release.

It’s not exactly a new problem, just one that has been given a sexier name, but indications are that “dog flipping” may be on the rise.

As with house flipping, it’s all about the profit — immoral sleazebags respond to ads placed by people looking to re-home a pet, pretend that they are going to give it a loving home, and then turn around and sell it.

“You might think you are giving your dog to a loving home, but it is going to be warehoused with up to eight to 10 other dogs in tiny apartments and sold to the highest bidder,” animal rescuer Sarah Clinton told WMC-TV.

Dog flippers usually target websites like Craigslist — both to procure dogs and to sell them.

Falling victim to it led one couple in Ohio to start a Facebook page after their dog was flipped.

Amy Cannon was trying to find homes for nine puppies. After she advertised her puppies, free to good homes, one family took two of them, including one named “Frankie.”

Not much later, she saw an ad on Craigslist that read, “My husband and I are selling our dog Frankie. We just moved and now don’t have enough yard for him to play.” Attached to the post was a picture of her dog Frankie.

Cannon confronted the person who had Frankie, who said he was selling the dog because he needed grocery money. Cannon bought Frankie back for $70.

Experts said charging a fee for your dog is one deterrent for dog flipping.

“It cuts down on their profit and maybe they will overlook that pet and look for some easy money some other way,” said Clinton.

Even more important might be building a relationship with the potential adopters, or even asking to visit their home.

“It’s beyond our realm of thinking that anybody would look at a companion animal and see it as a means to turn a quick buck,” said Clinton.

But they do. The practice isn’t illegal, just revolting.

Last year, Gene Baierschmidt, executive director of the Humane Society of Utah, denounced the practice, which he said appeared to be on the rise.

“Flipping a house for profit is one thing. Flipping an animal is inhumane,” he said. “Cats and dogs are not inanimate objects and should not be viewed as commodities. They are living creatures who feel fear and pain.”

In addition to being unethical, “flipping animals is stressful on pets, and could put them in danger because people can’t ensure that the pets will be placed in a safe environment. Shelters have protocols to ensure that animals are placed in a safe and loving home.”

I’m not a member of the Sheriff Joe Arpaio fan club — far from it — but I’m not sure if he deserves criticism for his latest crimefighting effort.

Arpaio’s department arrested a group of local “swingers” that was arranging an encounter of the icky kind with a dog. We don’t think that’s a waste of time.

The Maricopa County Sheriff announced earlier this week that his detectives, after learning of some people using Craigslist to find a dog for the purposes of bestiality, arranged a sting operation and arrested them.

According to Arpaio, an undercover detective and his dog responded to the ad and met the two men and a woman.

The sheriff’s office says the three suspects arrested were Shane Walker, 38, Sarah Dae Walker, 33, and Robert Aucker, 29. The Walkers are husband and wife, and Aucker was described as the wife’s lover. They were charged with conspiracy to commit bestiality.

The Phoenix New Times, in reporting the story, noted that 400 sex crimes remain unresolved in the county, and asked readers in a poll whether arresting the threesome was a “distraction or a job well done?”

By the time I cast mine, in the minority, nearly 8 of 10 voters were calling it a distraction.

Google “Christmas miracle” and “dog” and you’ll find 31 million or so stories — but none quite like that of Stevie Oedipus Wonder.

A cairn terrier mix, Stevie was found earlier this year wandering around a duck pond by the daughter of Belinda Gutierrez. She called her mother, crying, and told her about the puppy, which had no eyes.

Gutierrez, 49, said she told her daughter to bring the puppy home.

He quickly became part of the family. While Stevie seemed to have been abused, he apparently was born without eyes, a veterinarian told the family.

“He wouldn’t go up to anyone if it wasn’t my voice or my daughter’s voice,” Gutierrez said. “He didn’t like men’s voices. He would bark.” The dog became a big part of her life. Then, on Nov. 29, he disappeared from the family’s mobile home on San Antonio’s far West Side. They tried to find him, and put a missing notice on Craigslist.

A few days later — because every good Christmas story needs a scrooge, or at least an asshole — Gutierrez’ landlord told her that her dog was dead.

“We thought, ‘OK, he’s gone and he’ll have to just wait for us at the rainbow bridge,’” Gutierrez told the San Antonio Express-News.

Last week, though, Stevie Oedipus Wonder came home.

“This is my Christmas miracle,” Gutierrez said.

Here’s how it happened:

Stevie wasn’t dead after all. Instead he’d been picked up and taken to Animal Care Services.

He arrived on Dec. 11. The contact information on his tag was out of date, so the shelter couldn’t find his owners. As a result, Stevie, about a year old, had five days to get adopted or be euthanized.

That’s when Brooke Orr, an English as a second language teacher at Highlands High School and a co-sponsor of the school’s Voices for Animals Club, saw a post that ACS had put online in an attempt to find the blind dog a home.

She asked the shelter to put a “Save a Life” hold on him, thinking she’d take him in over the holidays. Then she checked Craigslist to see if he’d been listed as missing.

“I went to Craigslist and went to lost and found and I put in ‘blind dog,’ and there he was,” she said.

She contacted Gutierrez, whose daughter had posted the information, and let her know Stevie was safe.

Gutierrez picked Stevie up from the shelter Thursday, and, though blind, he recognized her right away.

“All he had to do was hear my voice,” she said. “And I stood at the entrance of the kennel building and called out, ‘Stevie, Stevie.’ And he started barking all over the place.”

Gutierrez said her family has since moved out of the mobile home, where she suspects the landlord contributed to Stevie’s escape.

They’re in an apartment now, celebrating Christmas, with Stevie.

(Photo: By Helen L. Montoya / San Antonio Express-News)

Here, verbatim, is an ad I saw yesterday on the “free” section of Craiglist:

I have a

-small bag of dry dog food

-4 cans of wet dog food

We where expecting to be given a dog and bought this the day before but then they decided to keep the dog that we wanted.

This must go to some one that REALLY needs it. I will not give it to you if you come up in a fancy car and new brand name clothing, you have the money go buy it your self.

Im giving this away for free so that it can help some one out, if you are in need of some dog food then please feel free to message me, and then we can set up a time and day.

Thank You and God Bless

A rolling stone gathers no moss. We’re not rolling stones anymore.

During our year of travel, Ace I and I gathered few things that we did not immediately consume – simply because, living out of a Jeep Liberty, the bulk of it being occupied by a big dog, there was no space for them (though we did get that cowboy hat).

Once we came to a stop – for now, at least, settling into the home I was born in 57 years ago – we have again fallen under the tyranny of stuff.

For nine months, free of stuff’s burden, we bounced around the country, going to a new town every day or two, and during that time accumulated virtually nothing except friends and stories. After that, during our month-long stops – dwelling in a trailer park in the Arizona desert, an unfurnished house in Baltimore and the basement of a mansion in North Carolina – we slowly started to get new things. Now that we plan to stay put, for six months or more, in Winston Salem – and have hauled the contents of my storage unit down south – we are inundated.

Sorting through it all is equal parts joy and hassle, and it has led me to this conclusion: The more still you stay, the more stuff you need — or think you do.

But there’s something else I’ve come to realize, sifting through my personal effects, about stuff: Inanimate as it may be, it has a life of its own, and it often goes on a journey of its own, down a path different than ours. That’s how I end up with your stuff, and you end up with my stuff.

I’m amazed at how much of “my stuff” wasn’t originally my stuff, at how perhaps even the majority of my belongings – furniture in particular – was handed down, recycled, procured through Craigslist, yard sales, thrift stores, or rescued from Dumpsters into which, in my view, it had been disposed of prematurely.

Our stuff, like people, like dogs, comes and goes from our lives. It moves on to the homes of friends, relatives, or complete strangers, via Goodwill, eBay or Craigslist (a good place to get stuff, just not dogs). It ends up, or so I like to think, where it’s most needed.

I told you last week about my mother’s desk, which became a home furnishing about the same time I did. It was in this house when I was born. I grew up with it in New York and, later, Texas. After my parents’ divorce, my mother kept it until she moved into a retirement community, and I hauled it up to Baltimore. Now, it has circled back to the first home it was ever in.

In my new place, the bed and coffee table I’m using are my cousin’s; the book I’m reading belongs to a Baltimore friend; the dining table I eat on was purchased, via Craigslist, from a local couple who started life together with it, but couldn’t take the fact that it only had three, not four, matching chairs. My clothes are in a dresser that I think once belonged to my father’s parents.

But most of my furniture — not counting that which came from Ikea or WalMart — came from my mother.

She revisited it all last week, coming over for dinner. My sofa, loveseat actually (though rarely used for that purpose, if you don’t count Ace), is one of two matching ones she had. When she moved into a retirement community, she only had room for one. The other went with me to Baltimore, but now sits in my new place, less than a mile away from its mate. In my place, too, are, among her former possessions,  some marble egg-shaped bookends, a wingback chair and an old rocking chair she made a point of trying out one more time.

There’s also a large amount of stuff from my ex-girlfriend/still goodfriend, including five of her artworks, now prominently displayed. During my travels she kept some of my stuff.  In my recent move, I got some of it back, left some with her, and took a few things she was looking to get rid of, including two bedside tables, some decorative pillows and this tray-like accessory that really pops, which I further like because the blue part reminds me of Ace’s tail.

I reclaimed my blender, for instance, but she kept my grill, my fire pit and, though I could never understand why she wanted it,  a sad looking little platform I once built out of three pieces of plywood to make my computer monitor sit higher.

A few weeks ago, it became, with some slight modifications, a hutch for a group of new born bunnies found in her neighborhood.

Our stuff passes from parent to child, from brother to sister, from neighbor to neighbor, from friend to friend, and sometimes even makes it way from home office to animal kingdom.

About three months ago, I gave my friend Arnie in Baltimore my old, then in storage, bookcases. Just last week I sent him the hardware needed to put them together, found in the very last box I unpacked. The couple that moved into the Baltimore rowhouse I rented now has my entertainment center — solely because it was too darned heavy to move.

I guess we all go through life simultaneously shedding and gathering. I turn to Goodwill for both. It has lots of my stuff, and I have lots of their’s, because sometimes we part with stuff that, shortly thereafter, we find ourselves needing again. While staying for a month in an unfurnished rowhouse in Baltimore, I bought this lamp. If I sell it again, it will have to be for five dollars, because the price drawn on its silver base with black marker, I’ve found, is impossible to remove.

During my mother’s visit last week — and we’ll give you the full “reveal” of my new place next week – she also recognized a footstool that once belonged to her. It’s the only item that did not really fit in with my new color scheme — color schemes, though the phrase sounds nefarious,  being another thing, like accessories that pop, I learned the importance of during my unfortunate addiction to HGTV.

My mother had re-covered the footstool decades ago with a shiny striped fabric of mauve and blue, so it would match a chair she had re-covered in the same material.

She agreed that, given my color scheme, I should re-cover it again.

“What’s underneath this cover?” I asked. She had no idea.

Removing a few tacks, I pulled it off to reveal the original cushion cover — a handmade needlepoint by her aunt “Tan,” whose grave we had visited and put flowers on the day before Easter.

At the time, not remembering her that well, I attempted to learn more about Tan, whose real name was Kathleen Hall. There’s a school named after her in Winston-Salem, but I could find little information about her on the Internet, as she died in 1983. Leaving a potted delphinium on her grave, I regretted that — even supplied some memories by my brother and my mother — I could reconnect with her only superficially.

It was a little eerie  — her handiwork turning up in my house a week after I visited her grave. But it added a little more heritage to my new place, a link (real, not the Internet kind) to another family member, not to mention, though I’m no expert on it, what appears to be some damn good needlepoint.

And, in an added touch of serendipity, it matches my color scheme.