ohmidog!

A contractor fell into a silo of dog food Monday in Sanford, N.C., and it took rescue crews several hours to get him out.

The man, whose name was not released, accidentally stepped on a lid and fell 40 feet through a chute at an H.J. Baker & Brothers plant.

After falling, his leg got caught in an auger-like device, which complicated the rescue, WRAL in Raleigh reported.

Fire Chief Wayne Barber said the man was hospitalized in Raleigh, and treated for dehydration, but is expected to be fine.

He spent several hours up to his waist in dog food in the silo, which was about a third of the way full.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating.

(Photo: WRAL)

Stray dogs. Stray humans. Lori Weise encountered them both when she started work 16 years ago at a furniture factory on the edge of L.A.’s Skid Row, where homeless dogs and humans were both often treated with something less than respect.

So she created Downtown Dog Rescue — right there in the back of the factory — in the hopes that, through trapping strays, and persuading the homeless to get their dogs spay or neutered, she and her co-workers could make a dent in the homeless dog problem, if not the homeless human one.

She posted fliers promising free pizza for those who brought their dogs in. In addition to paying for thousands of surgeries, the rescue organization has placed or fostered thousands of dogs. And because homeless people can’t a dog license without an address, Weise used the factory’s address to get those dog’s registered. The address of the company, Modernica, was used to license 300 dogs.

The Associated Press, in a story by reporter Sue Manning, took a look this week at Downtown Dog Rescue — both where it has been and where it is going.

The shelter is still located in the back of Modernica, but with homeless people having left downtown Weise now brings shelter services to Compton, where for the last two years it has helped fund a monthly spay and neuter clinic, run by the Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care & Control.

In 2011, the clinic sterilized close to 800 dogs, according to Weise, and the euthanasia rate for pit bulls at the county shelter dropped 30 percent.

DDR also holds weekly obedience classes at the Los Angeles Coliseum, teaching owners basic commands, agility, and other urban survival skills. The class draws between 30 and 50 dogs a week.

Downtown Dog Rescue has grown from a couple of kennels to 22. The furniture company has grown, too. Owners and brothers Frank and Jay Novak don’t consider themselves activists for either dogs or the homeless, but they say the work Weise has done helps define the company.

“She never talks down to people,” Novak said. “She is so genuine. I think people are impressed by her sincerity and people know none of the money (close to $200,000 in donations a year) goes to administrative costs.”

Eight months ago, Modernica began moving its production plant to Vernon, and they’ve promised Weise a half-acre where she can build a new shelter there. For now, the dogs remain in the downtown factory, where the company’s prop department will stay.

“She is fearless. She will go into neighborhoods nobody in their right mind would go into. She just goes with her conviction and knowledge she is going to help somebody,” said Carole Pearson, founder and president of Los Angeles-based Dawg Squad.

Most of the men Weise befriended 15 years ago are in prisons or hospitals or have died, the Associated Press story notes. But many of them left the streets — voluntarily or not — with the knowledge their dogs would be taken care of.

“I promised a lot of the men as long as their dogs are alive, they will have a good place to live and I’ll love them,” Weise said.

Another book has come out that makes the case for eating our dogs.

On the heels of “Time to Eat the Dog,” by New Zealand professors Brenda and Robert Vale, who admit their title is mostly a shock tactic and who don’t actually propose consuming our pets, comes Jonathan Safran Foer with “Eating Animals,” who says eating our dogs would be no more barbaric than our consumption of pigs, cattle, chickens, etc.

For Foer, interviewed on NPR’s All Things Considered yesterday, the idea of consuming dogs makes even more sense, on some levels, than eating animals raised to be food.

“For the ecologically-minded,” he writes, “it’s time to admit that dog is realistic food for realistic environmentalists.” That last part sounds almost like an advertising slogan, doesn’t it?

Foer’s book was also excerpted in the Wall Street Journal last week, so it’s probably OK if we cut off and chew on a little piece of it here:

Read more »

Cesar Millan goes “undercover” for tonight’s episode of “The Dog Whisperer,” helping Last Chance for Animals rescue 11 dogs from a big-time breeder, then working to rehabilitate them.

In the episode (9 p.m. on the National Geographic Channel), Millan, who says he has had no previous contact with puppy mills, joins a team of Last Chance for Animals operatives as they negotiate the release of the dogs, then work together to get them over the trauma of growing up caged.

One of the dogs ends up getting adopted by Sharon Osbourne, who was stopped by Last Chance for Animals when she was on her way into a pet store to buy a dog. Instead, she was talked into taking one of the rescued dogs.

Millan, while he has seen the hyper and nervous behavior dogs from puppy mills often exhibit, had never been inside a factory-style breeding operation — the kind said to churn out more than a million purebred and “designer” dogs a year.

“It takes a lot of concentration not to judge (puppy mill owners) when you know they’re doing something wrong. But in order for me to help and influence them, I have to see what they’re doing,” he says. “I saw a dog that was blind. I saw many dogs in one kennel. I felt a lot of frustration; I felt a lot of confusion … definitely aggression .. a lot of anxiety.”

On the program, Millan’s work with dogs previously rescued by Last Chance for Animals is also featured.

Last Chance for Animals is a national, nonprofit organization that works to eliminate animal exploitation through education, investigations and legislation.