ohmidog!

Fox News is reporting that country singer Mindy McCready’s fatal shooting of her own dog before she commited suicide Sunday was “not an act of malice at all.”

Fox quotes an unidentified friend as saying, “Mindy really loved her dog … It would have been more of a case where she just didn’t want to leave the dog alone.”

How thoughtful.

Not to speak ill of the dead, or to suggest rational behavior should be expected from those in the clutches of mental illness, but there are better ways of securing a future for your dog when you’ve decided you no longer want one for yourself.

And to describe an act like that as anything close to kind-hearted is just plain wrong.

A better description — even if the misguided thinking behind it was a hope they would end up in the same place in the hereafter  – would be selfish.

McCready, who had attempted suicide twice earlier,  had reportedly been depressed since the father of her youngest child, record producer David Wilson, died earlier this year from a suspected self-inflicted gunshot wound. That took place on the same front porch where McCready shot the dog and herself.

“Based on what we have found at the scene at this time, we do believe that she took the life of the dog that we are being told by family members belonged to Mr. Wilson before she took her own life,” said Sheriff Marty Moss of Cleburne County.

McCready’s two sons, aged ten months and six, were removed from her home by a judge on Feb. 6. After that, McCready was committed to a rehabilitation facility for mental health and alcohol abuse examinations, but released two days later.

“She didn’t really have a support network and coming home to an empty house seems to be what really did it,” the source told Fox News. “It is tragic. She was a sweet and kind girl at heart.”

Whatever other morals her tragic life holds, however kind her heart was, whatever her legacy might be, one thing stands out — given the course she chose for her beloved dog — about her messy end:

How much more tragic the story might have been had her children not been taken from her.

(Photo: Associated Press)

Meet Britain’s first Staffordshire bull terrier police dog.

Kos, rescued from an RSPCA shelter 18 months ago, is trained to detect drugs, currency and firearms.

On his first day on the job, with the Avon and Somerset Police, Kos found  a lump of heroin in a car.

The 2-1/2-half-year-old dog was being cared for at the RSPCA’s West Hatch Animal Rescue Centre near Taunton before he was taken on by police, according to SWNS.com

“What is nice for ourselves and the RSPCA is Staffordshire Terriers get such a bad name but this dog is so lovely with people and other dogs,” said his handler, Lee Webb, with whom Kos lives. “There are other dogs out there that have potential we could use and it is a shame that people do not give them a chance sometimes.”

Webb says Kos seems as pleased with the arrangement as police are: “Kos was very excitable on his first day on the job – he absolutely loves it.”

She was a “patient” and “loving” sort, whose “excess belly fat and low-hanging nipples gave testimony to her maternal nature.”

“Everyone on skid row — kids, cops, prostitutes, pimps — loved her,” Jeff Dietrich writes about Sheba, in another remembrance of the Los Angeles street dog we told you about after her death a couple of months ago.

Dietrich, a member of the Los Angeles Catholic Worker, focuses his op-ed piece — it appeared in the Los Angeles Times yesterday – on the relationship between Sheba and Georgina (pictured together above).

Sheba’s best friends were the homeless street addicts who live outside the Catholic Worker soup kitchen. And, at least in Georgina’s case, maybe, vice versa.

Georgina ended up on skid row after fleeing an abusive husband. At first she lived with her handicapped, addicted mother in the St. Agnes Hotel, but she soon became addicted to crack cocaine herself and began living on the streets.

She found Sheba 17 years ago, chained to a pole, freed her, and took over the care of the German shepherd mix for the next 10 years — except for those periods she was in prison — until finding a home and entering recovery.

Sheba — still living on the streets, among the homeless – died in June after being struck by a car.

“I can’t say that it was Georgina’s relationship with Sheba that enabled her to enter and successfully complete a recovery program,” Dietrich writes. “But I can say without doubt that the maternal presence of this loving creature was one of the few positive attachment relationships in her life for a time, and that Sheba also touched the shattered lives of many addicts and petty drug dealers on Gladys Street. It’s possible that, for Georgina, the steady, unconditional love she got from Sheba provided just enough stability to make recovery seem possible.”

Dietrich notes that substance abuse can often be traced to early childhood trauma — abandonment, nutritional deprivation, battery, rape, or growing up in an unstable, unloving family:

“A dog is no substitute, certainly, for a loving, stable family or for strong human bonds. But most of the addicts on skid row haven’t known nurturing families for years, if they ever did. Sheba stepped into a void in Georgina’s life, and she made a difference.”

Dietrich, who is the author of ”Broken and Shared: Food, Dignity, and the Poor on Los Angeles’ Skid Row,” says that when a memorial service was held for Sheba in the dining garden of the soup kitchen, Georgina didn’t attend, upon the advice of her therapist, who feared a possible relapse.

“The gathering was full of fond memories of Sheba, but toward the end there was one awkward moment. Was it theologically correct, we wondered, to pray for a dog? But then someone in the crowd called out, “Let us pray for the loving gift that Sheba was to our community.

“We did. And the people of skid row said, ‘Amen.’”

A Texas man who claimed to be high on the drug K-2 attacked a dog, strangling it and then starting to eat it, police said.

Michael Terron Daniel, 22, of Waco, was taken into custody Monday and charged with cruelty to a non-livestock animal, a felony.

The dog didn’t survive.

KHOU reported that Waco police responded to a call on June 14, reporting a man was “going crazy.”

Daniel had allegedly assaulted several housemates, then chased a neighbor on his hands and knees while barking and growling like a dog, police said.

Daniel then took a medium-sized black dog onto the front porch of the home, where he beat and strangled the animal and then “began to bite into the dog, ripping pieces of flesh away,” Waco police Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton said.

Officers found Daniel sitting on the porch with blood on his hands, clothing and face, Swanton said.

Daniel told police officers he was on a bad trip from ingesting K-2, and at one point asked that they shoot him with a stun gun “to help him get off his bad trip,” Swanton said.

His housemates declined to press assault charges against him, police said.

He is being held at the McLennan County Jail on $5,000 bond.

K-2, referred to as a form of synthetic marijuana, is a mixture of herbs and spices that is usually sprayed with a compound similar to THC, the psychoactive component of marijuana, according to the DEA. Studies suggest it can cause extreme paranoia, hallucinations and violent behavior.

It’s not every day a police dog is subpoenaed to testify in court, and rarer yet, we’d guess, for a judge to actually approve such a thing, but that’s what happened in Florida last week.

A Charlotte County Sheriff’s Department K-9, named Azor, was brought into Judge Peter Bell’s courtroom when his presence was requested by a man fighting a traffic ticket.

The defendant, Rodney McGee, subpoenaed the dog as a defense witness after he was stopped in February for failure to use a turn signal.

Azor’s handler, suspecting McGee might have had drugs in the car, brought the dog along to give the car a sniff or two. No drugs were detected, and McGee was sent on his way with a traffic ticket.

McGee said he wanted the dog brought to his hearing so he could test its sniffing skills.

“I was hoping they would let me plant marijuana in the courthouse to see if he could find drugs,” McGee said. What relevance that has to his alleged failure to use his turn signal isn’t clear.

Judge Bell apparently saw it that way, too, declining McGee’s request and letting Azor depart the courtroom.

McGee lost the case. He was fined $300 for failure to use his turn signal.

That, as you can see in this news report, didn’t seem to bother him too much.

Two bicycle-riding police officers in West Palm Beach stopped to check on a dog locked in a car, an act that led them to find more than 400 grams of marijuana inside.

Police reports say two officers on bicycle detail were patrolling the parking lot of a Brandsmart when they spotted a dog Thursday inside a blue Buick — panting and without water.

While eyeing the dog though the partially cracked windows, they detected the “strong odor of marijuana” and saw a pipe containing residue.

When the car’s owner returned to his vehicle, he apologized for leaving the dog unattended and admitted he had marijuana in the car, according to the Palm Beach Post.

Officers found 478.3 grams of marijuana that the car’s owner told them was for his personal use.

Police arrested 40-year-old Raymond Hendry Zerba, of Cooper City, on charges of possession of marijuana over 20 grams, possession with intent to sell, possession of drug paraphernalia and animal cruelty.

He was being held at the Palm Beach County Jail in lieu of $3,000 bond. News accounts don’t mention what happened to the dog.

A dachshund mix who police thought might have been fed LSD by his owners turned out not to have drugs in his system.

The dog was hit by car, and later had to be euthanized.

Necropsy results show Oscar had a broken back, but his body showed no traces of drugs, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Police in Snellville, Ga., arrested the dog’s owners after complaints that they were running naked through their neighborhood on Oct. 29. Officers said the couple told them they had taken LSD and also given some to their dog, who was missing.

Nicholas Modrich and Jamie Hughes, both 25, are awaiting trial on drug charges.

(Photo: Channel 2 Action News)

A Pennsylvania man accused of slipping drugs to a competing Siberian Husky in hopes of helping his girlfriend’s dog win a dog show was found not guilty of all charges Wednesday.

Prosecutors had said 68-year-old Ralph Ullum gave Protonix and a second human drug, possibly Benadryl, to Pixie, a prize-winning husky, during an American Kennel Club-sanctioned dog show in Wheaton, a suburb of Chicago, in December.

Ullum faced misdemeanor charges in DuPage County that included animal cruelty and attempted criminal damage to property.

DuPage County Judge Ronald Sutter found Ullum innocent of the charges Wednesday, saying prosecutors hadn’t proved their case against him, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

Pixie wasn’t harmed by the drugs.

Jessica Plourde, Pixie’s owner, testified Monday she found pill fragments in and around Pixie’s cage during the show, and that an undigested pill was discovered after a veterinarian induced the white-and-brown female show dog to vomit.

Two witnesses testified they saw Ullum walk up to Pixie’s cage while Plourde was absent and slip something inside.

Defense attorney Ed Maloney contended the allegations against his client were unfounded, and a result of a long-running rivalry between dog trainers.

Neither Pixie nor the dog trained by Ullum’s girlfriend won the best in show award.

UPDATE: Oscar, the dachshund who was hit by a car after being fed a gummy worm laced with LSD, has been euthanized

A dog who police say was fed LSD was hit by a car in Snellville, Georgia, Sunday night.

Police questioned a couple at their home after recieving reports that they had been running naked through the neighborhood.

The man and woman were taken to a hospital, and, on the way, told EMT’s that they had taken LSD and had given some to Oscar, a long-haired dachshund, according to a police report about the incident, reprinted on The Smoking Gun website.

Police later learned the dog had been hit by a vehicle on a nearby road.

Snellville police Capt. Harold Thomas said Nicholas Modrich and Jamie Hughes, both 25, will face drug charges and possible animal cruelty charges.

“They were tripping pretty hard,” Thomas told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Two family members were bitten by Oscar when, after getting word he’d been hit by a car, they went to recover him.

He was later picked up by Gwinnett Animal Control, then transferred to an animal hospital. The extent of his injuries wasn’t known.

A New York family has filed a lawsuit saying a police officer searching their home slapped their 7-pound dog with enough force to send him flying out a third story window.

Chuwie, described as a mix of miniature pinscher and Pomeranian, survived the fall, but the family says he hasn’t been the same since police burst into their Bronx apartment a year ago, guns drawn, for what turned out to be a failed drug raid.

“How could a police officer do that to a tiny dog?”’ the New York Post quoted Iris Ramos as saying. Her son-in-law, Ronald Estevez, 27, owns Chuwie.

The family says Chuwie, though he barked at police, never tried to attack an officer.

“Children were crying. Guns were being pointed in their faces,’’ said family lawyer Jeffrey Emdin, who filed the suit in Bronx Civil Court. It names the city and NYPD as defendants and seeks $300 for vet bills and unspecified other damages.

Emdin said Iris Ramos’ brother, daughter, son-in-law and niece were arrested for drug possession, but that their cases were later dismissed.

The lawsuit says Chuwie jumped on a bed and began barking when the police came in. When one officer slapped him with the back of his hand, the dog flew four feet, through the bars in the open window and plummeted three stories, landing on a patch of grass.

(Photo: Matthew McDermott / New York Post)