ohmidog!

Suspicions are growing that Michael Vick — now that a court order no longer prohibits it — might have gotten a dog.

A photo Vick posted on Twitter shows a box of Milk Bones at the edge of the frame, indicating he  might have gotten the family a pet, as he has recently mentioned he was considering.

Then again, they could be part of his diet. Or maybe they just keep them on hand for visiting pets, though I’d doubt there’d be too many of those.

In the photo, Vick is shown studying a game film on an iPad, while his daughter appears to be doing homework. At the edge of the picture, there’s an opened box of Milk Bones.

“It’s not hard to connect the dots from there,” Chris Chase wrote in his USA Today blog

The picture was quickly deleted and replaced by a similar, biscuit-less one, Chase wrote.

Under terms of his probation, Vick was ordered not to own a dog for three years. That period expired several months ago. In July, Vick, in an interview with Piers Morgan, said he’d like to get a dog for his children.

“I can’t take that dream away from them,” he said.

While his ownership of a dog would be legal now, it’s bound to be a source of contention among those dog lovers who still harbor a great deal of resentment toward the Philadelphia Eagles quarterback who admitted to drowning, electrocuting and beating to death dogs that did not perform in the dogfighting ring.

Vick, as part of his rehabilitation, has been working with the Humane Society of the United States, speaking to young people about the importance of treating dogs humanely.

Citizen journalist and dog poop vigilante Andy Ross reports that a four-year-old girl in New Haven had to be treated at a local hospital after an encounter with dog feces in Wooster Square Park.

The Saturday incident proves what he has been saying all along.

Both on his website and on signs he puts up in the park, he warns that dog poop can be dangerous; and urges that dog owners pick it up.

We have no disagreement with that.

According to his report in the New Haven Independent, a family on a picnic returned home and noticed their daughter “had a smelly substance under her fingernails … Upon further inspection, the 4-year-old had some of the same substance in her mouth and ears…

“Yep, you guessed it. The substance was dog feces. They cleaned her up but overnight had to take her to the emergency room because she was vomiting … Upon testing the little girl, they found her stomach swarming with coliform bacteria …”

A good doggie defense lawyer might point out here that, unlikely as it is to have come from another source, there’s no proof that the poop came from a dog. As one slightly less than sensitive commenter on the Ross post says, “there are a lot worse things than dog poop (needles for instance) littering the parks and streets of New Haven – you’re lucky that it was only dog poop and not something worse.”

As another chimed in “the girl could have pricked herself with a heroin needle, suffocated on a used condom or cut herself on broken beer bottles.”

A good doggie defense lawyer might further raise the question in the jury’s mind as to why the family, on top of not noticing their daughter when she was playing in poop, didn’t detect the presence of the substance until their return home.

But that’s not the point, at least not to Andy Ross, who had the misfortune of  bearing the wrath of mom.

On his signs urging dog walkers to pick up the poop, he lists his email address and phone number. The mother, for some reason, called to yell at him.

“At first she blamed me until I pointed out that I am the one trying to stop this disgusting and total irresponsibility on behalf of dog owners,” he reported. The woman was threatening to sue the city, he said. ”She was piping mad and I do not blame her.”

“I hope that every group that has the ability to get out this horrible story to residents does,” Ross wrote. “Spring is here and children play in the park. Others just enjoy walking around the park with out having to navigate their way through dog feces. This is not just a Wooster Square Park problem; I am sure it is prevalent in other city parks too. This is both a health and quality of life issue we all need to pay attention to.”

Comments on his report are evenly divided between those who agree what happened to the four-year-old was horrendous, and those who point out it could have been worse, and ask why no one in the family noticed when the child was smearing poop on herself.

“Um, I can’t speak for everyone – but I grew up with a dog that poo’d all over the lawn, spent A LOT of time playing on said lawn, and even at 4 I knew not to touch that s#!t … Sounds like questionable parenting to me.”

“People who don’t pick up after their pets are selfish and uncivilized,” said another. “I would recommend to the upset mother that she needs to take the time to teach her child not to eat things off the ground, or at least be more attentive to what her child is doing.”

“Careless dog owners stare at their iPhones while the dog is defecating and completely miss it,” wrote another “… My real question is, why own a beautiful animal if you’re not going to give it your attention? Put down your phone and love your puppy … you’ll feel better.”

I’d agree that both the owner that failed to pick up their dog’s  poop, and the parents of the child who failed to notice their daughter toying with it, share the blame. And I especially like the idea of blaming the iPhone as well.

Many people  tend to get so absorbed in whatever it is they are doing on their phones that they fail to notice both the subtle things and the blatant ones going on around them, whether it’s what a dog might be dropping or what a child might be picking up.

Even though hand-held communication devices may not be to blame for this particular incident, they — or is it our dependence on them? — do seem to take us out of the moment we’re in.

So pick up the poop. Monitor your dog. Watch your children. Enjoy the company of both. And leave the stupid phone at home.

Let a day in the park be a day in the park.

A North Jersey physician has been accused of stabbing her 13-year-old  daughter with a screwdriver at least 100 times because she failed to properly wash her dog’s clothes, police and health officials said.

Dr. Sylvia S. Lee of Emerson, an allergist, faces felony charges of aggravated assault and endangering the welfare of a child.

Her license to practice medicine has been suspended by the state Board of Medical Examiners, according to The Record.

State officials said Dr. Lee, 58, admitted jabbing the child multiple times with a flathead screwdriver after the girl failed to wash “doggie clothes” and a “doggie towel” in the correct order.

The alleged attack occurred in Dr. Lee’s home in Emerson on July 3. Emerson police said they received a call from the Lee’s adopted daughter after she fled to a former caretaker’s house near her home, Lt. George Buono said.

“The girl was visibly upset and had some bruising and redness on her face, scrapes and small puncture wounds on different parts of her body,” Buono said.

Though the blows from the screwdriver broke the skin and caused some bleeding, the wounds weren’t deep and the child did not require hospitalization, officials said.

Dr. Lee practiced medicine at the Center for Asthma and Allergy, in offices in Wayne and in Old Bridge. Robert Conroy, an attorney who represents the practice, said Lee resigned at least a week ago.

The state Department of Children and Families was called in after the alleged assault and that the girl has been placed with another family. Dr. Lee was released on $200,000 bail.

The 4-year-old  step-daughter of Jesse Browning from The History Channel’s series “Ax Men” has died from injuries her family said she received when she was attacked by their Rottweiler.

Clatsop County Sheriff Tom Bergin says Ashlynn Anderson was found by her mother, badly injured on their lawn of their home just outside Astoria, Ore.,  on Sunday.

Jesse Browning called 911.  Paramedics tried to save the girl’s life and she was transported by helicopter to Oregon Health and Science University hospital in Portland. She was pronounced dead on arrival.

Though Clatsop County Sheriff Tom Bergin said only one of the two family dogs mauled the girl, but both were taken from the home at the request of the family. The couple also has another child, age 1, living in the home.

Deputies transported the dogs to the Clatsop County animal shelter where they are quarantined.

According to TV station KATU,  the family contacted the Clatsop County Sheriff’s Office about four months ago to report a third dog who bit a adult family member. That dog was reportedly destroyed.

 
A persistent dachschund saved a Washington family from a potentially damaging fire in their mobile home Sunday.

A 3-year-old dachshund named JoJo — who the family took home after finding him as a stray — is being credited for trying to shove 11-year-old Kalen Huntley out of her bed and alerting her parents to an electrical fire smoldering behind an outlet on her bedroom wall.

“Our dog saved our house,” Diane Urquhart, who lives in a mobile home park in Kennewick with her husband, Colt, and four of their five children, told the Tri-City Herald.

The couple and three of the kids were home early Sunday when JoJo, who normally sleeps in their daughter Kalen’s room, began repeatedly coming out the room and approaching the adults.

“He came out to see us four times, then kept going back into our daughter’s room,” Mrs. Urquhart said. On top of that, his ears weren’t in their happy position, she said.

“These ears we did not recognize,” she said. “And his face, if a dog can look worried, he looked worried.”

When she went into her daughter’s room, she smelled burning rubber and saw the dog nudging her sleeping daughter with his nose.

They called 911, and got everybody out of the house, taking their two cats and JoJo.

Urquhart said the wall at the head of her daughter’s bed was hot. Firefighters told the family the outlet, which had a lamp and alarm clock plugged into it, was minutes away from catching fire. When the family removed the outlet the next day, one side of it was scorched.

(Click here for all of the Wiener Awards.)

(Photo: Courtesy of Tri-City Herald)

A father walking his dogs was shot to death in front of his 13-year-old daughter Tuesday night, after exchanging words with a man who got mad when one of the two dogs sniffed his legs, police said.

The father, Thomas Cunningham, 38, of Hayward, California, worked as a head janitor for the Dublin Unified School District. He and his daughter had gone to a store to get ice cream and were returning home with their two dogs, the San Jose Mercury-News reported.

Police said Cunningham’s German shepherd approached a man and sniffed his leg. An argument ensued and the man pulled out a handgun, shooting Cunningham as his daughter watched.

The two were returning from a two-block trip with the dogs — the year-old German shepherd and an unspecified smaller breed.

Police are seeking the suspect, and any additional witnesses.

Anwar Sadat’s daughter has filed a complaint against the makers of “I Love You Man,” a 2009 Dreamworks film, for naming a dog after the former president of Egypt, her lawyer said Saturday.

“This is a disaster, a serious affront,” said Samir Sabri, the lawyer for Rokaya Sadat, daughter of the former president and peace Nobel prize winner.

Muslims believe dogs are impure and unclean, and calling someone a dog is taken as a serious insult in the Middle East.

Egypt’s prosecutor will look into the complaint, but it is unclear what sort of action Egyptian courts could take against the Hollywood movie company, the Associated Press reported.

In the movie, actor Jason Segel’s character has a dog — it appears to be a puggle — named Anwar Sadat. When asked if it’s because he likes the former president’s policies, the character replies it is due to the dog’s resemblance to the Egyptian leader. The name of the dog also appears in the credits as Anwar Sadat, playing himself, the dog.

When the film opened in Egypt last month, the scene with the dog was excised by the distributor, but it came to light anyway when the scene was publicized by an Egyptian website.

“This has caused serious psychological and moral damages to the plaintiff, as President Sadat is a prominent figure in the Arab history in general and in Egyptian history in particular,” the lawyer’s brief said. “Everyone agrees that he is a unique leader who was politically savvy, and has worked hard to serve his country.”

Commentators in Egypt have called the movie, which grossed more than $71 million in the U.S., another in a long series of slights against Arabs and Muslims in Hollywood, which kind of makes one wonder why it would end up in theaters there in the first place.

Sabri said he has also filed a libel lawsuit against the Egypt’s minister of information, demanding that copies of the movie be removed from the market, because it has “gravely tarnished the name and history of the leader … and symbol of the nation.”

Sadat ruled Egypt between 1970 and 1981, when he was assassinated by Islamic militants who rejected the peace deal he signed with Israel two years before.

A Pittsburgh woman who spent 13 years searching for her father learned yesterday that he was the Hurricane Ike relief worker who was killed when he tried to rescue three dogs from a Houston freeway.

Alaina Emery, 25,  learned about the death of her father Robert Emery, who she hadn’t seen since she was a child, in an email exchange from a stranger, the Houston Chronicle reported.

She’s the first relative of Emery to be located since he died Sept. 27 when he ran onto the East Freeway to rescue three dogs stranded in an emergency lane.

The Harris County Medical Examiner’s Office had been unable to find relatives, and Emery was to be buried as a pauper if no one claimed his body.

The daughter was located by Kellye Nagata, a woman who says she searches for people as a hobby.

“Girl, he died a hero with tons of people loving him,” Nagata said in one email to Alaina Emery, whom she tracked down on the Internet.

Bob Emery’s death rallied animal lovers in Houston and elsewhere, who vowed to ensure he receive a proper burial, and that his attempt to save the dogs would not be forgotten. There have been offers to donate a casket as well as a burial plot, flowers and ministerial services, and the animal welfare organization, No Paws Left Behind, is collecting money for a funeral or memorial to Emery.

Alaina Emery said she had unsuccessfully searched phone books, the Internet and even appealed to a television show as recently as last week for help finding her father.

“I am very saddened that I could not find him in life, but somehow he found me in death,” Emery told the Houston Chronicle by phone.

The newspaper reported that Emery had battled a drug problem that destroyed two marriages as well as his career as a construction worker.

He had two other children, and authorities were still trying to determine if he was still married at the time of his death.