ohmidog!

Tech XX, the English bulldog that served as mascot at Louisiana Tech University, died of heat stroke after being left out in the heat Sunday.

Though initially reported missing, the four-year-old English bulldog was left outside by an employee, who has since been fired, according to the veterinarian that cared for the dog.

The employee, according to news reports, tried to cover up the dog’s death.

“Tech XX was a member of our immediate family and a daily part of our lives for the past four years,” Patrick Sexton said in a statement. “We are devastated over the circumstances of his passing, and there will be a large void in our hearts for some time to come. As with any family member, we will spend considerable time grieving his passing.”

In a statement, the university said that since becoming the mascot in 2008, Tech XX got superior care from Sexton’s team.

Tech XX’s predecessor, Tech XIX, was retired in 2007 because of health concerns after suffering heatstroke, the university said on its website.

Originally, a worker said he let the dog out to go to the bathroom and the dog went missing, said Sexton, who kept Tech XX at his home. Dozens of students and residents searched for the dog, and rewards were posted.

For four days, the employee kept Tech XX’s death, and location, a secret, according to the Shreveport Times.

“That employee unfortunately chose to handle it the wrong way and attempted to cover it up,” Sexton said. “Due to this negligence, the employee is no longer employed by Sexton Animal Health Center.”

Tech XX was owned by the school’s Student Government Association, the president of which, Will Dearmon, said, ”It’s extremely disappointing and sad news this happened to our beloved Tech XX.”

“We’ll work through that in the coming days and there will be a Tech XXI, but right now our hearts are broken,” he added.

The North Carolina Highway Patrol officer who was fired in 2007 after being videotaped kicking his drug-sniffing dog has returned to work.

Charles Jones will be a sergeant in the patrol’s special operations unit, reconstructing accidents, Highway Patrol spokesman Jeff Gordon said Monday.

His rehiring is in response to a court order issued in February. A Superior Court judge, the state personnel commission and an administrative law judge all ruled that Jones should get his job back with the Highway Patrol, according to the Raleigh News and Observer.

The video of Jones kicking his canine partner, Ricoh, was posted on YouTube, leading then-Gov. Mike Easley to get involved. Jones superiors have testified that the governor’s involvement led them to fire Jones, who they had planned to only discipline.

Jones was filmed kicking Ricoh and suspending him by a leash attached to a railing with his rear paws on the ground. The dog had refused to release a piece of fire hose he had been given as a reward for alerting officers to the presence of drugs, according to court documents.

Jones maintained that he was acting within patrol policy. He appealed the decision to dismiss him and won — a decision most recently upheld by a state appeals court.

A former Watsonville police dog has been seized by Monterey County’s SPCA after he was found emaciated, dehydrated and neglected.

Ingo was taken from the home of former Watsonville police officer Francisco Ibarra.

Sgt. Stacy Sanders of the SPCA told the Santa Cruz Sentinel that an anonymous tip led them to Ibarra’s home in Salinas.

There, they found Ingo, who weighed just 55 pounds, about 25 pounds less than he should. His ribs and hipbones were showing, and there was no food in the back yard, the SPCA said.

Ingo has gained 15 pounds since SPCA officers seized him on Feb. 17.

“He is slowly recovering and gaining weight on a specialized diet on a prescribed feeding schedule,” said Beth Brookhouser of the SPCA.

The Monterey County district attorney’s office said Ibarra has been charged with two misdemeanor counts of failing to take care of an animal. He is scheduled to appear in court on April 18. The penalty, if he’s convicted, is six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

The SPCA said that, while it hasn’t determined if the dog is adoptable, he won’t be euthanized.

Ibarra, who was fired from the force in 2010, is seeking to be reinstated by the Watsonville Police Department.

(Photo: SPCA of Monterey County)

Last month, an animal control officer in Joliet, Illinois, took a dog home from the township’s animal shelter, fearing it had been wrongly labeled aggressive and was going to euthanized.

He got fired for doing so.

Yesterday township officials, while not offering Bryan Jones his job of 14 years back, decided to let him keep the dog — a three-year-old long-haired Chihuahua.

“Wow cool. I’m just excited now,” said Jones, who has named the dog Chewy. “He’s been doing great. This will be good.”

According to the Herald-News, Jones didn’t think the dog was aggressive, even though a veterinary technician had come to that decision.

On Feb. 27, Jones said, he saw the dog with a “caution: I may bite” sign on its cage. A vet technician said the dog had snapped at a visitor. Jones said he played with the dog that week without incident. Fearing the dog would be euthanized, Jones took it home with him on March 2 without notifying anyone.

On March 5, township Animal Control Director Sarah Gimbel sent Jones a text asking if he had the Chihuahua. He admitted he did. On March 9, Gimbel called Jones and told him to bring the dog back. When told he would be fired if he refused to return the dog, he still declined to do so.

The township will send Jones a letter with his final pay, minus the dog’s adoption fees.

(Photo: Matthew Grotto /Sun-Times Media)

The North Carolina Court of Appeals ruled today that Charles Jones, shown above kicking his State Highway Patrol dog in September 2007, and fired shortly thereafter, should be reinstated.

And with back pay.

Jones was fired after another trooper turned over two 15-second video clips of him suspending his K-9 partner, Ricoh, from a railing and repeatedly kicking him to force him to release a chew toy.

In 2008, the State Personnel Commission found Jones’ punishment too harsh and ordered that he be reinstated.

Tuesday’s ruling is the latest in a series, all of which agreed the Highway Patrol did not have cause to terminate Jones’ employment. (Ricoh didn’t get a vote.) You can find the full text of the ruling here.

Patrol leaders said they initially planned to discipline Jones but decided to fire him when then-Gov. Mike Easley’s office intervened.

In its ruling, the court noted testimony from Jones’ former supervisor, Lt. Col. Cecil Lockley, who said, “They want him gone … the decision regarding Sgt. Jones’ career was predetermined, not by the patrol’s disciplinary process but by an outside entity.”

Lockley called Jones’ method of disciplining Ricoh “ugly,” but said it did not fall outside the realm of patrol-accepted training techniques.

The appeals court agreed with a lower court ruling that ”the training method used by Jones on Ricoh in this matter, while appearing excessive and extreme to the general public, is not unreasonably outside of or substantially different from several of the training techniques that are tested, trained and approved for use by the Patrol.”

It concluded, “Jones acted consistently with his training, and used compliance techniques on Ricoh similar to those used by all Patrol members who were canine handlers.”

We’d hope that the highway patrol has redefined the boundaries of its realm of training techniques –  as it stated it would after the case came to public attention.

A rebuilding of the K-9 unit was promised, and an end to the kind of rough training tactics — swinging, suspending and kicking of patrol dogs — that the video depicts. New training procedures, they said, would specifically prohibit punching, kicking, beating and choking of dogs.

The hunting dog that a baggage handler refused to load aboard a plane in Reno because of her concerns about his health is back with his owner in Texas and doing fine, animal control officers say.

The dog’s owner, who has not been publicly identified, will not face charges, said animal control officers in Corpus Christi. Officers there checked on the dog, a pointer named Tex, and talked to his owner last week, according to the Corpus Christi Caller.

The owner told them he thought the baggage handler had over-reacted.

Lynn Jones refused to put the dog on an airplane bound for Texas on Nov. 12 because he appeared emaciated, had cuts and sores on his body and paws and seemed listless.

Her supervisor at Reno-Tahoe International Airport fired her, but her employer, Saint Louis-based Airport Terminal Services, rehired her last week after reviewing the incident.

The dog was seized and turned over to Washoe County animal control and treated by a Reno veterinarian. Four days later, Tex was shipped back to Texas, according to the Reno Gazette Journal

The Reno veterinarian who treated Tex said his wounds and weary state could have been explained by a hard day of hunting.

“I was told he was (bird) hunting near Gerlach for a week, and what I saw was consistent with a dog that has been worked very hard,” Dr. Diana Lucreer said. “These dogs get almost psychotic when they are out there working; they will run and run through anything. His paws were cut up, and he had cuts on his body.”

The dog was checked by another veterinarian upon his return to Corpus Christi.

When Lynn Jones, a baggage handler at Reno-Tahoe International Airport, pointed out the condition of a bloody and emaciated dog scheduled to be shipped to Texas, her boss told her to forget about it.

When she persisted, insisting the pointer needed help and would likely die in flight, she was fired.

Yesterday, her employer, Airport Terminal Services Inc., based in St. Louis, said she would be reinstated, with back pay.

Sally Leible, president of the firm, said Jones actions were courageous and the reaction of some management employees was regrettable. She told the Reno Gazette Journal the incident will be used as “teachable moment” for employees.

On Nov. 15, Jones raised enough of a stink about the suffering dog to get airport police to call Washoe County Regional Animal Services, which took custody of the pointer and provided it with veterinary care. The dog apparently was later shipped to its Texas owner, a hunter who keeps it in a kennel and has it shipped to the places he hunts.

The listless and sore-covered dog was lying in a pet carrier in the cargo area of the airport when Jones first saw it.

“The dog was so weak and torn up. It didn’t look like it could survive the flight,” she told the Gazette Journal.

Jones said her supervisor told her to load the dog on the plane because the animal’s paperwork was in order and its condition wasn’t her concern.

“I was crying,” she said. “I kept saying that dog could not be put on a plane.” She said she was fired on the spot by the supervisor, who yelled “‘That’s it, you’re done, you are out of here, go home.”

Jones is a former blackjack dealer, has three dogs of her own, and once  owned a dog grooming service. Even before getting her job back, she said she didn’t regret having taken a stand.

“I loved my job at the airport,” she said. ” … But I just couldn’t turn my back on that dog … My supervisor said it wasn’t my concern, but animal abuse is everyone’s concern who sees it.”

(Photo: Lynn Jones with her three dogs, Junior, Manny and Jewel, from left; by Marilyn Newton / Reno Gazette Journal)

Intentions were good — but not much else — when Chowan County, N.C.,  opened up an old gymnasium to serve as a pet-friendly shelter during Hurricane Irene.

The gym happened to be bat  infested, and arriving dogs weren’t check for rabies shots beforehand.

Now, the owners of at least some of the 15 dogs who stayed there are being told they must put their pet in long-term quarantine or have them euthanized, WVEC reported.

And their owners have to get rabies shots.

“Everybody started finding out this place was filled with bats and black mold,” claims Billy Harvell, who dropped three dogs at the gym in Edenton before the storm. He hasn’t seen them in a week and he recently found out it could be much longer before he sees them again.

“It’s not our fault that the county fumbled the ball and stuck everybody in there. The county knew for two years that bats lived in that building,” Harvell said.

County officials say the quarantine and shots are necessaryensure public safety.  The county Board of Commissioners fired its county manager last week, in part for his performance during Hurricane Irene. Officials said Paul Parker left town, though he was not authorized to do so.

Amid a continuing investigation into allegations of animal cruelty, what was once the entire animal control staff of Chesterfield County, S.C., has been fired.

Sheriff Sam Parker said the firings took place Monday “in an effort to begin a new start at the shelter.”

The animal shelter has been under investigation by the Sheriff’s Office, South Carolina Law Enforcement Division and the state’s Attorney General’s office since allegations came out in March that dogs were being shot as a form of euthanasia, according to WBTV.

The state Attorney General’s Office has not released its findings on the investigation, and says it is still underway.

While it has been alleged that nearly two dozen dogs at the shelter were shot and dumped in a landfill, Sheriff Parker said he believes the initial number was exaggerated, and that his office is investigating the deaths of six. Allegations also surfaced that dog fights were being staged at the shelter, but the sheriff said those allegations appear false.

WBTV filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Sheriff’s Office to learn the names of the four fired animal control staff members – Brian Burch, Eric Donahue, Lee Carnea and James Calvin Culledge.

The shelter was shut down and its employees placed on administrative leave after the investigation began. Deborah Farhi, a volunteer who works with the shelter, says a tip led her to discover dead shelter dogs in the landfill. She said she dug up two dogs that had been shot in the head.

While deputies were temporarily assigned to operate the shelter, the sheriff prohibited them from driving animal control vehicles because of hundreds of threats towards the animal control officers.

A golf course superintendent in Bucks County, Pa., has been charged with shooting his American bulldog 32 times behind a building at the Doylestown Country Club.

Paul Bevan-Xenelis, 39, of Quakertown, could spend up to five years in jail and pay as much as $10,000 in fines if convicted of charges of cruelty to animals and owning an unlicensed dog, Phillyburbs.com reported.

“To shoot a dog that many times and leave it, to me, that’s just shocking,” said Stephen White, Doylestown Township police chief. “It’s unspeakable cruelty.”

Doylestown Country Club president Joseph Paul said in a statement last week that club leaders were “extremely disturbed” by Bevan-Xenelis’ alleged actions, and that he has been fired.

The dog, named Kane, was found tied to a fence near the maintenance shed at the country club on July 24. The dog, about 10 years old, was alive, but “in distress” when police arrived.

Police said Bevan-Xenelis tied the dog to the fence the night of July 23 after it bit a co-worker. The next day, he returned to the country club and shot the dog with a pellet gun, police said.

The dog was taken to the Bucks County SPCA, where he was euthanized, according to Anne Irwin, the agency’s director.

Bevan-Xenelis allegedly told police he shot the dog only once with a .22-caliber pellet gun, but the SPCA removed eight, .22-caliber pellets from Kane’s body.

Police said an SPCA examination of Kane’s remains showed the dog had been shot no fewer than 32 times.

Bevan-Xenelis had Kane for six months and told police he adopted the dog from a rescue in the Philadelphia area. He said he kept the dog at work because he didn’t feel safe keeping him at home.