ohmidog!

A Chihuahua mix born with deformed front legs — causing her to scoot across the floor like a baby kangaroo — is about to get a leg up, thanks to the Dearborn Animal Shelter and lots of kindly donors.

Found slip-sliding her way around the streets of the Michigan city a few weeks ago, she was named Victory.

“We thought that she needed some name that really described how she looked at life and the fact that she survived when many animals with deformities don’t,” Elaine Greene, executive director of Friends for the Dearborn Animal Shelter, told Today.com.

When no one came forward to claim the one-year-old dog at the shelter, staff began to consider equipping her with an orthopedic device that would help her get around — all of which cost $2,000 or more.

When the shelter mentioned Victory in its newsletter, the Detroit Free Press picked up on the story.

Within a week, $7,000 in donations had come in.

The money will be used to purchase a protective vest for Victory, a sled like device allowing her to move around on carpet, and a set of wheels.

While she’s out of the shelter — Greene took her home to stay temporarily — she’s still up for adoption.

“We’re all very attached to her, and she to us, so we’re looking for a very special situation,” she said.

“I would really like her to get a job working with people with disabilities,” she said. “If I could find a way to add that into her new life, that would be great.”

(Photo: Friends for the Dearborn Animal Shelter)

Here’s another silly app my dog and I can live without.

Fujitsu Ltd., a Japanese company, is launching a “pet management service” that allows dog owners to monitor on their cellphones their dogs’ every step, their stress levels, and even the surrounding temperature.

The electronics company calls the product Wandant — a combination of “wan wan” (a Japanese term for dog) and the word “pendant,” which is what the monitored dog wears around its neck to transmit the information via the Internet.

It’s about half an ounce and the size of a business card.

According to the Wall Street Journal, “the service is another step in Japan’s long-running fascination in better understanding their pets.”

Though not quite as far-fetched as “Bowlingual,” touted by toy company Takara as a dog-to-human translation device, Wandant,  claims it can provide dog owners with a series of graphs showing everything from how many steps a dog has taken to when he’s feeling itchy.

“Consumers can also manually add information such as how much food the dog ate or when it went to the bathroom to help manage its weight, while also keeping a daily diary of that day’s activities,” according to the WSJ report.

Customers can use their Android smartphones — its’ not yet available as an iPhone app — to check their dog’s up-to-the-minute profile.

The company described the motivations for making product in a press release:

“Given the demographic shifts in modern Japan, where there are fewer children and more people living longer, as well as a growing number of single-member households, pets have become increasingly important as family members and companions … The aging of pets and their care, as well as problems such as obesity, are becoming increasingly prominent issues. In response, Fujitsu developed the Wandant-based cloud service to support health monitoring in dogs.”

It went on the market Wednesday, but only in Japan.

(Photos: From Fujitsu’s website)

Here’s a simple do-it-yourself project I won’t be doing.

I’m not totally against technology. I just think something as simple and basic as walking a dog should stay simple and basic. And this device that records how far your dog has walked — at least the home-made version — seems a whole lot of work to go to for that information.

In this video, Becky Stern of Adafruit Industries — sort of a Martha Stewart for the geek set – shows how to make a GPS collar that shows how far your dog walks on a typical trip around the block. It also displays a progress bar “to make sure you and your dog achieve a set goal.”

I got dizzy just watching it. Maybe, technologically, I’ve been left behind.

After viewing this, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to catch up.

A pitbull mix missing part of a rear leg was found last month by the side of some railroad tracks in Baltimore.

Today, she’s up and around, and scheduled to appear at a press conference where her sad but inspiring story will be told.

Baltimore City Animal Control picked the emaciated dog up Feb. 13. The bottom third of her rear leg was missing, leading officers to believe she had been hit by a train.

Staff at the Baltimore Animal Rescue & Care Shelter (BARCS), examined her, and promptly dubbed her Kisses because of her sweet disposition and all the licks she gave them, despite the pain she clearly had to be in.

As bleak as her outlook was, BARCS staff — “seeing her strength and will to live” — dipped into its Franky Fund, created to help homeless animals  in need of immediate medical care, in hopes she could be saved.

BARCS contacted Essex Middle River Veterinary Center, which agreed to take a look at the dog.

BARCS staff assumed Kisses would have the rest of her leg amputated, but Dr.  Joseph Zulty and his staff instead recommended closing the wound and raising funds to get her a prosthetic device.

The surgery was a success and Kisses has been fitted for a prosthetic. A member of the veterinary center staff took her home to provide foster care during her recovery, and BARCS reports that the hospital staff member plans to keep her.

BARCS & Essex Middle River Veterinary Center are holding a press conference this afternoon to tell the story of Kisses.

More information about the Franky Fund can be found at the BARCS website.

(Photo courtesy of BARCS)

On the day after her abuser was sentenced to three years in prison, a tan pit bull named Michelle has been put up for adoption by the Baltimore Humane Society.

Michelle is the first of what’s known as the “Pit 6” to be cleared for adoption. She was among a group of dogs seized from Larry Alston when he was arrested at a home in the Woodlawn area on charges of animal cruelty and mutilation.

Baltimore County police said there was evidence the dogs had been used for fighting.

Humane Society officials don’t know if Michelle was used in dog fights, but she was apparently used to produced litters of fighters while Alston was living in South Carolina.

She has scars on her nose and above her left eye, and marks on both of her front legs suspected to have been left by the metal grips of a device used to hold her still for forced breeding.

Alston, 37, was charged with 22 counts of violating various animal cruelty laws, including charges of mutilating the animals.

On Monday, he was sentenced in Baltimore County Circuit Court to three years in prison for animal cruelty.

Michelle and Alston’s other surviving dogs spent nearly two years in the Baltimore County animal shelter, as Alston’s criminal case dragged on. They were released late last year to animal advocates, and eventually taken in by the shelter to be rehabilitated.

The Humane Society is still working to rehabilitate and socialize the other dogs, Shelley, Meme, Tippy, Meris and Bridgett.

Michelle is 4 1/2 years old, and shelter officials want to see her go to a home without other dogs, and without young children.

A humane society press release describes her this way:

“Michelle is a petite Staffordshire with a beautiful smile when she greets you at the front of her kennel. The “Pit 6,” five females and one male, were found by the police locked in undersized cages. They are believed to have been used as bait dogs. Bait dogs are typically less tough than others and used as practice targets for dogs training to fight. The “Pit 6” were all emaciated with multiple burn and bite scars. They also showed signs of overbreeding – in other words they were repeatedly raped. In dogfighting rings it is not unusual for bait dogs to endure severe pain. Frequently they are wounded, drowned, electrocuted, slammed to the ground, shot, or left to die a slow and painful death from their open wounds.”

The humane society added, “It’s always cause for celebration when an abused dog gets a second chance at a good life, but in the case of the Pit 6 it’s a landmark. That’s because animals held as evidence in severe animal abuse and dog fighting cases are typically euthanized once the case is complete.”

In the case of the Pit 6, animal rescue advocates and Baltimore Humane Society were able to convince the Baltimore County Attorney, State’s Attorney, and Baltimore County Animal Control that the dogs deserved a second chance.

“Michelle demonstrates that even dogs who come from such violent, abusive backgrounds can become loving family pets. Baltimore Humane Society hopes she and the remaining Pit 6 will be used as an example for dog fighting and other animal abuse cases across the nation.”

For more information about Michelle and other dogs at the Baltimore Humane Society, visit www.bmorehumane.org or call 410-833-8848.

(Photo by Mary Swift, Mary Swift Photography)

Forget that better mousetrap. Many of our planet’s best minds are now wrapping themselves around the issue of dog poop.

And here’s one of the latest devices destined for the market: The AshPooPie, a name that somehow (at least to me) sounds even funnier when a person with a British accent is saying it.

The AshPooPie was invented by Hebrew University of Jerusalem scientist Oded Shoseyov as a more environmentally friendly alternative to sending poop in plastic bags to landfills.

The AshPooPie is an easy to carry “wand” that allows you, with the push of a few buttons, to capture a pile of poop, then, through chemically induced incineration, turn it into a small pile of sterile and odorless ash .

Like fairy dust, almost.

The device is will be distributed by an Israeli company, Paulee Clean Tech.

“The amount of ash is between 10-20 per cent of the ‘original portion’ and it can blow in the wind like cigarette ash,” said Oded Halperin, a spokesperson for Paulee Clean Tech.

Finally, we get to dogs being used to advertise something for dogs.

I love this one from Fiproguard, especially the dog’s fashion sense (I, too, dislike the V-neck sweater) and the dog’s expression at the very end.

I’m not sure I want any Fiproguard, but — unwieldy as it is — I’d definitely like to have that that dog mind-reading device.

All of our “Woof in Advertising” selections can be found archived here.

In our eighth month of bouncing about this expansive and expensive country, Ace and I seemed headed for our most frugal stretch yet – thanks mainly to lucking out and finding some free housing upon our return to Baltimore.

For the first time, in our continuing effort to see America while spending less than what we were while sedentary and housed – about $1,500 for rent, food and utilities – we were looking at a three digit number instead of four.

Now, thanks to my stupidity, and with an assist from Verizon, we’ve blown it, and somebody has some explaining to do.

Before we left on our journey, I canceled my home Internet service (through Verizon) and signed up for wireless mobile broadband (through a different part of Verizon), allowing us to get online no matter where we were for $59 a month – the package they suggested for a heavy user.

It worked pretty great. There were only two or three locations in our 22,000 miles of travels, where service was non-existent or spotty.

I was so pleased, I even eventually sent Verizon the payment they were seeking from me for home Internet service for the month following the date I moved out of my house. It was basically a choice between paying the money I didn’t really owe, being regularly harassed by the credit agency to which they turned the matter over, or spending far too much time on the phone, holding and then some, to try and straighten it out.

All was going smoothly with my wireless mobile broadband — or so I thought until last week, when Verizon informed me that for the past two months I’d gone over monthly limit, and that I owed them more than $400. Read more »

Your dog may soon be tweeting.

Japan’s Index Corp., a mobile content provider, plans to launch an iPhone adaptation of the “Bowlingual” dog emotion translator that it says will translate dog barks into English and tweet them out to the world.

The original Bowlingual device, first offered in 2002 by Takara Tomy, consists of a microphone that goes around the dog’s neck and a handheld receiver with LCD screen that gives a written readout of the emotion a dog’s bark is expressing: sad, frustrated, needy, happy, on guard and “self-expressive.” 

(That last one puzzles me. I wouldn’t consider it an emotion, and it seems any bark would be self expressive. Then again, maybe something is getting lost in translation.)

The Japanese company plans to launch the new iPhone app this summer, PCWorld reports.

Index is planning to charge $4.99 for the app, said Sonoko Tatsuno, a spokeswoman for the company in Tokyo — considerably cheaper than the $229 stand-alone version. A Japanese version of the new app will come out first, followed by an English version.

In addition to translating a dog’s bark, the software can capture a picture of the dog, using the iPhone’s built-in camera. The resulting picture can then be combined with the “translation” and sent directly from the iPhone to Twitter.

The original product proved to be a hit in Japan selling around 300,000 units, It was also put on sale in the U.S. and South Korea.

We’re going to withhold comment — since we’ve no experience with it — on how new, effective and convenient a product this is.

Don’t let that stop you, though.

Here, for your consideration, is the dog chastity belt, or PABS, which stands for Pet Anti Breeding System, invented by Dexter Blanch of Shreveport, Lousisana, who, as you can tell by his shirt, is president of Highly Favored Creations, LLC.

Blanch’s motto, when it comes to protecting the virtue of bitches in heat is: “Stop it, block it, lock it.”

Blanch touted his product at this year’s Westminster Dog Show where, according to him, it was a big hit with breeders.

The strap-on, machine washable device allows dogs to carry on with their bodily functions, but prevents any unwanted and accidental breeding. According to the website, Pabsforpets.com, the belts are a good alternative for owners that cannot fix their pets for health reasons, and for breeders who don’t want their prized bitches accosted/wooed by non-purebreds.

The standard model starts at $65 for small dogs and costs $85 for large ones, and the sanitary pads are extra.