ohmidog!

Chica is a happy border collie who lives on a farm in Clay County, Indiana.

Her favorite pastime is playing fetch with her owners Martha and Buddy Knox.

That wouldn’t be news — WTHI-TV notes — were it not for this: She does it without any eyes.

They were surgically removed when she was a pup.

Shot in the face, tossed in a trash bag and tied to a fence post on the side of the road, a dog in Conroe, Texas was rescued, treated and — though he’s expected to have lasting damage — is mostly recovering.

Rescuers named him Buck — after the buckshot left in his face by a shotgun blast.

A driver spotted the bag on the side of the road Saturday on Bulldog Lane, and saw that it was moving.

Once it was was opened a bloody dog crawled out and collapsed on the ground.

When a call to animal control produced no immediate results, Tami Augustyn — known in the area for helping animals in need — was called.

Augustyn took the dog to Animal Emergency Clinic of Conroe, where it was determined he’d been shot in the face with buckshot, according to the Mongtomery County Police Reporter, which broke the story.

Dr. Ron Hendrick, a veterinarian at the clinic, said the mixed breed dog, about three years old, sustained damage to both eyes and also shows signs of  hearing loss and brain damage.

The article about Buck — and a Facebook page set up to help him — led to nearly $10,000 in donations towards Buck’s medical care.

This week, the New York Daily News picked up the story.

“Today he’s great,” Augustyn told the Daily News on Tuesday. “He’s very happy when he sees me, when he hears my voice.”

When Terfel started losing his eyesight because of cataracts, he crawled into his bed and pretty much stayed there.

Then a cat came into his home in the UK, and was soon helping him find his way around.

Pwditat showed up as a stray and was taken in by the eight-year-old dog’s owner, a North Wales resident named Judy Godfrey-Brown.

Pwditat not only coaxed him out of his basket but helped him find his way around the house and garden, using her paws to guide him in the right direction, Godfrey-Brown told the Sun.

Godfrey-Brown, a retired civil servant, became unable to care for the pair, and they were taken in by Anne Cragg, who appears in this video.

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)

We usually don’t memorialize a dog twice — but Andre was extra special.

We wrote about Andre when he was found inside a knotted plastic trash bag on the side of the road, his eyes mutilated. We wrote about him again when it was learned he died last week.

But the best person to write about him is the person who took him in, gave him a loving home for eight months and has been updating fans on his Facebook page ever since.

Above is the video she put together.

Here are her words:

“This is the story of a courageous miniature pincher who suffered both horrific abuse and unbounding love. Andre the Rescue Dog was found on January 3, 2012, by our hero, Cedric Conwright, who witnessed a black garbage bag being thrown out of a moving car into an empty lot as if discarded trash. When the bag moved, Cedric opened it to find little Andre, eyes gouged and hanging from their sockets, starved to 7 1/2 pounds, shot with BBs. Thanks to God’s divine intervention in guiding Cedric to that lot, on that day, at that moment Andre’s (or as Cedric named him “LG” for Little Guy) story did not end there but began to unfold on a journey that has touched human hearts all over the world. Rescuers later named this sweet dog Andre and I came to call him Andrea Bocelli after witnessing the first sound he made almost two months after he was rescued. His sweet little bark that lifted his front feet off the ground sounded like music to my maternal ears. And so he became Andrea Bocelli Powers!

“Andre came with a ready-made FaceBook page when I adopted him. It was originally created to help raise funds for his early medical needs and later for two surgeries, one of which was a double-adrenalectomy. It didn’t take long for me to understand that although Andre could no longer see the world, the world was seeing Andre for the first time,

“Mr. Bocelli’s birthday because his rescue day, January 3, and his greatest gift was a new life free from abuse. His last day, October 6, 2012, came far too soon when he died at home of diabetic complications. I shall always yearn to hold my Bocelli again; Bocelli, Bocelli, Bocelli.

“I am confident that If Andrea could, I know he would, say thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone one who helped both him and me in any way. No matter how big or small the gesture, I have been forever touched by your generosity of prayer, words of support, money, newspaper and TV articles, hugs, tears, etc., etc.

“Deeply grieving the loss of my companion, I am.

Sandy Powers
Andrea’s Seeing-Eye-Human
October 11, 2012″

A brave little dog died last week — nine months after he was left for dead on the side of the road in a plastic trash bag.

His name was Andre, and he was a miniature Pinscher, found in a knotted black trash bag on the side of a street in Tolleson, Arizona.

A man taking a walk noticed the trash bag was moving, and went to open it up.

Doing so would expose a particularly heinous case of what some humans do to animals, but it would also come to show how very many more humans step forward to help them.

Andre would go on to brighten the lives and bring out the best of all those he came in contact with, though, for him, the darkness continued — even once he was out of the bag. In addition to the other abuse he’d been subjected to, his eyes had apparently been gouged out.

Despite that — despite the cruelty with which one or more humans treated him — he’d continue to show love for the rest of the species, and keep capturing hearts for nearly 10 more months.

It all started with Jan. 3, when Cedric Conwright saw a car pull to the side of the road, and watched as a bag was tossed out the window before it drove away. Conwright approached the knotted trash bag and saw that it was moving. He nudged it with his foot and heard a whimper.

When he opened it, he found a small dog in bad shape. He picked him up and took him home. Two days later he took the dog to Maricopa County Animal Care and Control in hopes of getting it medical help.

Euthanasia was discussed, but instead vets opted to perform surgery, removing what was left of his eyes. From there he was taken in by Susy Hopkins, a member of the Feathers Foundation, a Paradise Valley non-profit group associated with the Circle L Animal Sanctuary. The foundation raises money for injured and neglected animals.

Her first stop was another animal hospital, where the first thing vets recommended was euthanasia. Hopkins said no, and asked the vet’s office to do what they could.

In addition to infections where his eyes used to be, Andre was anemic and had diabetes, and under his skin were what appeared to be BB’s from a pellet gun.

Over the next few days, Andre started appearing more lively, and his rescuers went to work trying to raise money for the medical care he had gotten and would need. Within days, $13,000 had poured in. A fundraiser at a downtown Scottsdale pizza restaurant brought in another $3,500.

There was something about Andre that brought out the best in people, Hopkins noted.

“People just wanted to see Andre, to hold him, to hug him,” she said. “And no matter how many people wanted to pet him, Andre never resisted. He was so calm, so gentle. It made me wonder even more why someone would treat him so badly.”

On Feb. 11, a permanent home was found for Andre. Sandy Powers had seen his story on TV. “It was love at first sight,” Powers said. “I had never adopted a rescue dog before, but I knew I wanted to care for this one.”

Andre walked carefully at his new home, several states away, and, though he couldn’t see, did his best to stay at the side of his new mom.

“When I talk or sing a little, he stays right with me on my heels,” said Powers.

He continued to get treatment for his diabetes. Amid other complications, there were some weeks Powers seemed to be making daily visits to the vet.

In recent weeks, his condition took a turn for the worse, and Powers did her best to keep Andre’s many fans informed on his Facebook page.

This week, she announced he had died Saturday. Andre has been cremated and his ashes brought home.

The dog who many were surprised didn’t die eight months ago now has — but not before getting a chance to give and get some love, add a few more chapters to his brave legacy and remind us yet again what being human is all about.

Bruschi, a Boston terrier, has the biggest eyes of any dog in the world.

So says Guinness World Records, which measured them.

Bruschi’s eyes measure 28 millimeters — more than one inch in diameter. Each.

The four-year-old dog’s owner, Victoria Reed, adopted him from a shelter in 2009, according to People.com.

She said she sought out the official distinction after all the comments she’d get on her dog’s bulging eyes – from friends, family and even her own vet.

We won’t diminish Bruschi’s achievement by getting all bogged down in how some breeders attempt to produce caricatures of dog breeds, including pups with bigger eyes — that being considered the foremost factor in how much dogs appeal to us humans.

We won’t question whether, by shining a spotlight on Bruschi,  Guinness is encouraging breeders to create even more freakish dogs.

And we’ll just barely mention that one of Bruschi’s eyeballs popped out of its socket last year, and that he has only peripheral vision in both eyes.

People.com says “the energetic and playful pooch loves to play dress-up and is otherwise in perfectly good health.”

“Some people do make fun of him for his looks,” she told Guinness. “But I feel like he would go up to them and say, ‘Haha, look where I am now, I’ve got a record for my looks!’”

Jeffrey Nally Jr. is in prison now, serving a sentence of 9 to 45 years, which means, in West Virginia, he could get out in less than five.

And that, in itself, would be another crime.

Nally was sentenced last month for torturing and killing dogs, at least 29 of which he collected by perusing Craigslist’s ”free to a good home” ads.

While the sentence isn’t harsh enough for most animal advocates, it’s a pretty significant one, relative to most others meted out in abuse cases, and given it was handed down by a judge in West Virginia.

Then again, Nally, based on court records and witness statements about his heinous acts, seemed pretty close to graduating, as many an animal abuser does, to human killing.

According to his former girlfriend, Jessica Sellers, Nally had been holding her captive in his home in New Cumberland and terrorizing her by torturing and murdering the animals in front of her.

Sellers said Nally told her the only way she was leaving his  home was “in a body bag.” On the day of his arrest, she claimed, he forced her to hold a puppy as he bored into its head with an electric drill.

His victims were obtained through Craigslist — dogs advertised as free to a good home. Nally would pick them up and return them to his place, about as far from a “good home” as you could possibly get.

Nally’s house was raided in March of 2011 after Sellers’ mother called authorities. Police found 29 dog carcasses, guns, tools covered with blood and hair, and what appeared to be a beagle’s pelt and eyes in a jar, according to an account in PetPardons.com.

Nally, 20, faced 29 counts of felony animal cruelty, one count of domestic battery, one count of kidnapping and one count of unlawful possession of a firearm.

In January, he turned down a plea deal, but in April, as his trial neared, he accepted it. He entered guilty pleas to nine of the charges of felony animal abuse and received one to five years for each count. In exchange, all the other charges, except for the firearms one, were dropped.

He will have to serve a minimum of five years before he can apply for an early release.

Found inside a trash bag that was hurled out of a car — with BB’s under his skin and his eyeballs apparently gouged out – a miniature pinscher even some veterinarians thought would be better off dead has surprised everyone.

And touched them, too, it seems — enough to spark $17,000 in donations.

A story about Andre — a tiny dog who now bears the name of a giant — appeared in the Arizona Republic Sunday, and started out this way:

To get through the beginning, you need to know how it ends.

Happily.

The beginning was Jan. 3, when Cedric Conwright, while on his afternoon walk in Tolleson, saw a car pull to the side of the road, and something thrown from its window just before it drove away.

Conwright approached the black trash bag that had been tossed in a field. It was knotted at the top, and it was moving. When he nudged it with his foot, he heard a whimper.

Inside, he found a small dog in bad shape. He picked him up and took him home, and was surprised to see it could stand and drink.

Two days later, Conwright took the dog to Maricopa County Animal Care and Control in hopes of getting it medical help. They gave some thought to euthanizing the dog, estimated to be about four years old, but instead performed surgery, removing what was left of his eyes.

After two weeks, animal control started seeking a rescue group willling to take him in as a foster.

Among those responding was the Feathers Foundation, a Paradise Valley non-profit group associated with the Circle L Animal Sanctuary. The foundation raises money for the care of injured and neglected animals.

When Susy Hopkins, a Feathers Foundation member picked him up, he was thin as a rail and had green fluid leaking from his eyes sockets and down his face.

She stopped at McDowell Mountain Animal Hospital in Scottsdale, where a vet gave Andre — the name she’d given him — an examination. The vet recommended euthanasia.

Hopkins said no, and asked the vet’s office to do what they could. In addition to infected eyes, Andre was anemic and had diabetes, and under his skin were what appeared to be BB’s from a pellet gun.

Over the next few days, Andre started appearing more lively, and his rescuers went to work trying to raise money for the medical care he had gotten and would need.

Deborah Wilson, a Scottsdale gynecologist who runs the Circle L Sanctuary, set up a page for Andre on FirstGiving.com, a website where non-profits can seek donations for their causes.

While she’s posted several pleas over the years, she says she’s never seen the kind of outpouring of support there was for Andre — about $13,000.

Rescuers also set up a fundraiser at a downtown Scottsdale pizza restaurant; more than 250 people showed up and about $3,500 was raised. Feathers Foundation has announced that any excess funds will go to other animals in need.

There’s something about Andre that brings out the best in people, said Hopkins.

“People just wanted to see Andre, to hold him, to hug him,” she said. “And no matter how many people wanted to pet him, Andre never resisted. He was so calm, so gentle. It made me wonder even more why someone would treat him so badly.”

On Feb. 11, a home was found for Andre. Sandy Powers saw his story on TV. “It was love at first sight,” Powers said. “I had never adopted a rescue dog before, but I knew I wanted to care for this one.”

Andre has joined Powers’ other dog, K-Bela, a 90-pound Rottweiler mix she inherited from her brother-in-law.

Being without sight, he treads carefully, and follows voices, and once he finds a human, he’ll lean against them. “When I talk or sing a little, he stays right with me on my heels,” said Powers.

While he’s back on antibiotics for his eye infection, and getting continued treatment for diabetes, Powers hopes he will be well enough for a picnic arranged for his fans. (More information about that can be found on his Facebook page.)

As the Republic reported, the small dog’s impact has been huge.

Andre is still tiny, weighing about 9 pounds. An underdog, to be sure. But one person gave him a chance, and then another, and then another. Word got around, and soon hundreds of people were donating thousands of dollars. And instead of being a dog that cost $5,000 to save, he became a dog that raised $12,000 extra for injured and abused animals down the line.

“It’s amazing how a tiny little spirit can touch so many hearts,” Powers said.

 (Photo: Pat Shannahan / the Arizona Republic)

Most of us dog owners already know that our dog is as at least as smart, when it comes to both verbal and non-verbal cues, as a six-month old human infant.

Now, another study has confirmed that — this one from Hungary.

It’s one of those stories that keeps resurfacing and pretending to be breaking news – like Mitt Romney transporting his dog by putting him (in a crate) on the roof of his car.

Because humans don’t remember as well as dogs, and because we’re conditioned to thinking something labeled “news” is going to be new, we accept it as that. But that’s probably another study.

In this one, the Hungarian researchers, according to findings published  in the Cell Press journal Current Biology, concluded that dogs pick up on the words we say and on our intent to communicate with them — and that their receptivity to human communication is similar to that of very young children.

“Increasing evidence supports the notion that humans and dogs share some social skills, with dogs’ social-cognitive functioning resembling that of a 6-month to 2-year-old child in many respects,” said József Topál, Ph.D., of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

“The utilization of ostensive cues is one of these features: dogs, as well as human infants, are sensitive to cues that signal communicative intent,” he said. Those include verbal addressing and eye contact, he explained.

Folks, except for some of those big words, did we not already know that? Just as surely as we know it’s stupid to put your Irish setter, or any other dog, atop your car and take him on a trip?

Topál’s team presented dogs with video recordings of a person turning toward one of two identical plastic pots while an “eye tracker” captured information on the dogs’ reactions. It was the first study to use eye-tracking techniques to study dogs’ social skills

One of the videos showed a person who first looked straight at the dog, addressing it in a high-pitched voice with “Hi dog!” A second showed the person uttering a low-pitched “Hi dog” while avoiding eye contact.

Researchers discovered dogs were more likely to follow along and look at the pot when the person first expressed an intention to communicate: “Our findings reveal that dogs are receptive to human communication in a manner that was previously attributed only to human infants,” Topál said.

Topal is convinced that the receptivity is something that has evolved in the species in the time since its domestication: “Dogs have evolved to sharing their lives with humans. And they gained new skills that support their social interaction with humans.”

We’d agree with that theory, but we still think some of these studies are stating the obvious — and that it’s time to move forward and research whether dogs are not just smarter than babies, but maybe smarter than the average presidential candidate.

Let’s track their eyes and see what happens.

(Top photo: Punjapit)