ohmidog!

When a great horned owl sunk its talons into his daughter’s shih-tzu-poodle mix, one of Patrick Evans dogs, a boxer, went to the smaller dog’s aid.

Evans stepped outside after hearing a commotion in his back yard last month. When he called the dogs, his daughter’s 7-pound shi-poo, Ramadi, came running towards the door dragging something on her back.

“Suddenly I realized an owl had its talons sunk into Ramadi and Sadie (his boxer) was trying to get it off of her,” Evans said. “When they got to the door we were able to separate Sadie from the owl and my wife pinned the owl to the ground with her foot as I ran to get some gloves.”

“The craziest thing was that the owl turned its head all the way around, you know the way they can do, and looked right at us,”  Evans told the Chicago Sun-Times. “It really freaked us out.”

Evans’ daughter, Amy, just home from Iraq, was visiting for the holidays, with her husband, children and two dogs, one of whom, Ramadi, was in the back yard with her parents’ Rottweiler, Eli, and their 70-pound boxer, Sadie.

Evans freed Ramadi from the bird’s two-inch long talons and called the Pingree Grove Police Department.

Sgt. Rich Blair, one of two officers who responded, said that as they talked to the family, “the owl stood outside the sliding glass door looking at the smaller dog as if he wasn’t leaving without it.”

Blair was able to open the door and drop a fishing net over the bird, which had a swollen left eye. The owl was by a local animal control company to Willowbrook Wildlife Rehabilitation and Education Center in Glen Ellyn.

Pingree Grove police said the owl attack was the third in three days, presumably the same one.

On Dec. 21, an owl attacked a small dog, leading its owner to drive her car onto the front lawn in an attempt to scare the bird away. In the early morning hours of Dec. 22, Kyle Sweet had to wrestle an owl off his 22-pound Havanese, Bailey.

Officials at Willowbrook Wildlife Rehabilitation and Education Center, where the owl had to be euthanized, said it appeared to have been struck by an automobile, causing head injuries that impaired its sight and might have led it to seek easy prey.

(Photos: Top photo, of Amy and Ramadi, by Patrick Evans; Sadie and Eli photo and owl photo by Michael Smart / Sun-Times)

Another hunter has been shot by his own hunting dog.

Billy E. Brown, 78, was on a hunting trip near Wesley Chapel, Florida, when his dog triggered a loaded rifle. He was shot in the thigh and remains hospitalized, in critical condition, after surgery.

Authorities said Brown and a fellow hunter were driving down a rough road in a pickup truck, with Brown’s dog, Eli, sitting between them. Eli got excited and bumped a Browning .308-caliber rifle, which discharged.

Brown is general manager and executive vice president of the Withlacoochee River Electric Cooperative.

Just over a week ago, a duck hunter in Utah was shot when his dog triggered a 12-gauge shotgun resting in his boat.