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)

When a police dispatcher in Michigan got a call from the frantic owner of a choking dog, she offered a quick lesson in the Heimlich maneuver, and it worked.

A 10-pound dachshund had chewed on a present and swallowed either a piece of the gift or its wrapping, blocking her airway, according to the The Oakland Press.

The woman called 911 at 9:46 a.m on Christmas morning:

“I am so sorry to call you but I’ve got a dog that’s choking on a piece of Christmas present she opened,” the woman said between sobs. “She’s choking to death.”

Royal Oak police dispatcher Stacey Sheldon told the caller to open the dog’s mouth to see if the obstruction was visible.

When it wasn’t, she told the woman to perform the Heimlich maneuver in the manner generally recommended for small children.

Have a listen:

dispatcher 12.25.11 by Bruce MacLeod

The dispatcher told the woman to hold the dog in her arms, find the place where the dog’s ribs meet, and push in and up with force. The caller relayed the directions to a man.

Near the end of the recording, the caller can be heard saying, “She just coughed it up. I’m so happy.”

“I’m happy too,” Sheldon said. “Take her to the vet to make sure she didn’t hurt anything in her throat. Merry Christmas.”

“The dispatcher did a great job of walking her through the correct procedure of where to apply pressure to dislodge the object,” Police Chief Corrigan O’Donohue said. “I just learned about it from a thank-you note from the family. I listened to the call and the dispatcher did such a great job. She was compassionate but firm and patient.”

(Photo: Oakland Press)

A Phoenix area police department is trying out a new heat-warning system designed to keep police dogs from overheating when left alone in vehicles.

The Peoria Police Department had the system installed in Officer Aaron Brewer’s patrol car about a month ago to keep the department’s lone police dog, Havoc, safe in high desert temperatures.

If a dog is in the vehicle when a handler removes the keys from the ignition, the system will keep the engine running. If the vehicle’s air-conditioning fails while the handler is away and the temperature rises above 90 degrees, a siren will go off.

Once the alarms sounds, the handler has about 3 minutes to get to the vehicle and disarm it before a message is sent to police dispatch, according to the Arizona Republic.  (The system’s alarm is high pitched, to distinguish it from a regular police siren.) If the handler can’t be located, the dispatcher will send officers to the vehicle’s last known location.

Peoria has never had a police dog die from overexposure, but a Chandler K-9 died in August 2007 after his handler forgot to let the dog out of the back of his patrol vehicle, and other jurisdictions have reported deaths as well.

Tellef believes Peoria was the first police department in the country to install this system, which cost about $800.