ohmidog!

A moonlighting New Orleans cop who brought his police K-9 to a private security job broke no law, his lawyer argued Friday– and commited no malfeasance any more serious than failing to shine his shoes.

The dog, named Phantom, fell down an elevator shaft and to his death while he and Sgt. Randy Lewis were working a private security detail at a closed hospital building.

Lewis was not charged with animal cruelty, but with malfeasance.

Judge Ben Willard, after hearing closing arguments in the case Friday, delayed any verdict for another week. Lewis faces five years in prison and a $5,000 fine if found guilty, Nola.com reported

Lewis, a former supervisor in the department’s K-9 unit, took Phantom to the shuttered Charity Hospital in May 2009, where he had been hired to clear vagrants from the property. The dog fell from the 17th floor through a partially open elevator door.

Lewis took Phantom to the job without police department approval, and had signed forms saying no police equipment or animals would be used in the private job.

The dog’s body was not found until the next day, when the private company that hired him had the elevator drained. Lewis then had the dog cremated, before a necropsy could be performed.

Lewis, in his initial reports about the incident, said he was training the dog, and didn’t mention he was getting paid privately for his services.

His attorney, Eric Hessler, argued that Lewis had been working a private job and training his police dog at the same time.

Hessler likened the court proceedings to an officer being prosecuted for failing to shine his shoes.

An 81-year-old man is crediting his Lhasa Apso with saving his life after he fell from a ridge into a deep pool of mud and clung to a bridge rail to keep from sinking as his dog ran for help.

Derek Ramsden was on vacation in Wales and taking his dogs for a walk when he fell.

He says his 18-year-old terrier mix took no action, but his seven-year-old Lhasa Apso, Toby, ran for a quarter of a mile and, just like Lassie, barked at park officials until they followed him back to the scene.

“I managed to get hold of a railing on the bridge. It was frightening. I could not get out and you can’t hold your grip for long at my age,” he told The Telegraph. “I was scared that I was going to tumble down the bank. I don’t like to think what would have happened if not for Toby. He definitely saved my life.”

“Toby is dedicated to both of us and I think he is a hero,” said Ramsden, from Halifax, West Yorks. “He’s my very own Lassie. He saved my life and I’m very grateful.”

Ramsden’s wife, Ada, who had not gone along for the walk at Bryowen Holiday Park, said she went searching for him after an hour and found him as he was being pulled to safety by park staff.

“He was covered in mud from head to foot. If he had let go he could have slipped down further. Toby saved him,” she said.

“The dog knew what it was doing. It ran past apartments through bushes and alerted security,” said park maintenance manager Ben Thompson. “The dog was leading the way and without the dog we would not have known he was there. That dog certainly has something about it.”

(Photo: Ross Parry / The Telegraph)

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)

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A lot of us think our dogs were gifts from above, but here’s one that truly was.

A seven-year-old boy in Salinas, California, got a new puppy after it escaped from the clutches of a hawk and fell out of the sky into his backyard.

KSBW reported that the two-month-old puppy was dropped an estimated 30 feet before it was discovered by a seven-year-old named Taylor.

The dog has been adopted by Taylor’s family and named T.J. Heavenly.

The family believes that T.J. Heavenly somehow worked himself free of the hawk’s talons.

“If you look at him right now, he’s so wiggly,” Elaine Bouchard told the TV station. “And his nose; he’s such a little bulldozer, I can see him wiggling right out of the talons.”

The dog was taken to a veterinarian to get treated for wounds and dehydration before the family took him home for keeps.

“When God drops a puppy from the sky, you keep it,” Bouchard said.

Leo fell into a Dumpster and couldn’t get out.

An aging Australian cattle dog mix, Leo apparently climbed a ramp attached to a large Dumpster and, when no one was looking, either jumped or fell in.

Barbara Grabell and her husband George Anderson searched high and low for Leo after he disappeared from their ranch in Alfalfa, Oregon.

“I thought he – sometimes, they just go off to die privately. I was walking the property, looking under trees, the sagebrush,” Grabell told KTVZ.

Grabell said she walked over to the nearby trash transfer station and looked in the 9-foot-tall Dumpster, which has a ramp that allows residents to more easily dump their garbage. It was about two-thirds full of garbage by then, but she didn’t see Leo. She shouted his name, but he’s hard of hearing.

Four days after Leo disappeared, the Dumpster was picked up for the trip to the Knott Landfill in Bend.

There, Paul Decker, a driver for Bend Garbage and Recycling, was watching its contents pour out when he saw, amid the trash, a dog — dazed and confused but alive, apparently having survived on a diet of garbage.

The dog was taken to the Humane Society of Central Oregon, which Grabell had called earlier to report Leo missing. They notified her he’d been found. She picked up Leo, took him to a vet to be checked out, and then back home.

“He’s home and he’s resting comfortably,” she said Saturday night. “I’m so thankful and relieved, you have no idea.”

Here’s an unusual perspective on saving a dog from an icy river, brought to you by the Fargo Fire Department.

Jake, an 11-year-old Lab, went into the not yet frozen-solid Red River in North Dakota after straying from his home yesterday, and couldn’t get out.

He clung to a piece of ice until rescuers arrived.

Fargo Firefighter Mike Seaberg went out on the ice to save him, while wearing a camera.

Today, Jake’s back home and doing fine.

Searchers found his boot, and the body of the dog that tried to save him, but they were still searching yesterday for the six-year-old boy who fell into an icy river while playing in Quebec.

The boys were playing on the ice when Maxime Dion fell in the Riviere Noire around 5 p.m. Monday, near his family home in Upton, CTV reported.

The other boys — and according to some news accounts, the dog — tried unsuccessfully to rescue him.

The dog’s body was recovered Wednesday.

Since then, there has been no sign of Maxime, other than his boot. Police were using an amphibious vehicle to break through the ice on the river and continue the search.

According to an article in the Winnipeg Free Press, the two other boys — Maxime’s brother and a friend — tried to pull him off the ice he was clinging to and help him out of the water.

“The dog as well tried to help, tried to grab on to the boy,” said police Sgt. Daniel Thibodeau. “But he fell into the water as well … at a certain point the boy went underneath the ice and the dog a short time later.”

Rocky, a K-9 with the Niagara County Sheriff’s Department in New York, died Sunday night after falling from a five-story building while pursuing a burglary suspect.

The 2 1/2-year-old German shepherd attempted to leap over a 3-foot retaining wall and fell 60 feet into the parking lot.

Rocky, a tracking and narcotics dog, graduated at the top of his class in the spring of 2009 and often assisted other police agencies, the Buffalo News reported.

Recently, he uncovered key evidence in a murder investigation at the Walmart store in Orleans County, and this past summer, he helped track a murder suspect in Albion. When he wasn’t chasing bad guys, Rocky visited children at the Niagara County Fair and through the DARE program.

Niagara Falls Police Superintendent John R. Chella said police got a call from residents who thought they heard someone inside the vacant building. His department requested two K-9s from the sheriff’s office to help in the search.

Following the search, Marcus A. Johnson, 24, of Fillmore Avenue, Buffalo, was arrested by the Niagara Falls Police Department. Police said he was trying to steal copper wiring from a vacant building.

Rocky worked with his handler,  Deputy Craig Beiter, whose previous K-9, Zeus, was also injured in a fall. Zeus was tracking burglary suspects at Lockport’s Old City Hall in 2007 when he fell 30 feet down an old shaft leading to the original Erie Canal Locks. He worked three more years, retiring in 2010.

Rocky was buried by Beiter at a private location, the sheriff’s department said, but a memorial service is being planned.

The police chief of Kingston, N.H., jumped into an icy lake to save a boy’s dog — a Chihuahua-dachschund mix named Chloe.

Three-and-a-half-year-old Jason Bragg was standing on the edge of the lake watching as Chloe fell through the ice, then struggled unsuccessfully to pull herself out of the water, according to the Union-Leader in Manchester.

That’s when Police Chief Donald Briggs Jr. arrived, jumped in the water and began smashing the inch-thick ice to work his way 30 feet from shore to the yelping dog.

“It was obvious that the dog needed to be rescued,” he later told the newspaper. “The dog kept slipping and going into the water even deeper and my fear was that it was going to drown.”

Briggs brought Chloe back to the beach, where she was wrapped in a blanket and rushed to Plaistow-Kingston Animal Medical Center. Chloe was treated for hypothermia and reunited with the family Tuesday afternoon.

Chloe had escaped from the deck of her home and wandered onto the ice. Jason and his mother were able to find her, but when they called her back, she fell through the ice. The boy’s mother, who called 911, said it was fortunate the chief arrived quickly.

“I appreciate it so much. He basically saved her life,” she said. “The vet said that if she had been in there any longer, she wouldn’t have been so lucky.”

(Photo by DAVID LANE / Union-Leader)

A 200-pound mastiff fell into a 25-foot-deep sinkhole in the backyard of a California home, prompting a rescue effort that used ropes and pulleys to hoist him out — dirty but uninjured.

It took rescuers more than three hours to get the dog — named Cedrick — out of the hole, apparently the home’s old septic tank, which had been exposed by heavy rains, KION reported.

Nick Rollins’ call to 911 resulted in more than a dozen fire fighters and members of the San Luis Obispo County Technical Rescue Team responding to his home in Nipomo.

They spend hours rigging a pulley system, then lowered Morro Bay Fire Department paramedic Todd Gailey into the hole.

He spent about 30 minutes strapping the dog into multiple harnesses. Moments after Gailey was hoisted out of the hole, Cedrick, 6 years old, was pulled up, hosed off and, after being checked by a veterinarian, pronounced to be in good shape.