ohmidog!

Firefighters rescued a dog Sunday from an icy pond in Florence, Kentucky, after the one-year-old husky fell through the ice.

Brandon Kilby, of the Union fire department, is shown here pulling the dog, named Ali, to safety.

According to the Kentucky Post, six fire departments responded to the call at  a trailer park near Mount Zion Road.

Fire officials said the rescued dog was treated and returned to her owners.

(Photo: Kentucky Post, courtesy of William Fletcher)

A dog was rescued from the side of a cliff near Fort Funston in San Francisco last week.

Firefighters responded Wednesday to a report of a woman and dog going over the side of a cliff, NBCBayArea.com reported. The woman managed to get down to the beach, but firefighters had to work their way to the dog, place it in a harness and hoist it to safety.

The National Park Service said they have to rescue dogs and people from the cliff several times a year, and that Wednesday’s rescue was their second in a week.

It’s not the first place you might look for a missing dachshund, but 12 feet up a tree is where his owner found him Monday.

Owner Mimi Austin and her friends had spent hours searching for Cappy, a long-haired rescued dachshund who disappeared from her South Carolina home about 6 p.m.

It was after midnight when Austin, along with her neighbor, Kim Bonturi, and Bonturi’s golden retriever, heard barking while searching nearby Beaufort National Cemetery.

The barking stopped when they approached a big oak tree, surrounded by brush, which they began searching through.

But they didn’t find the dog until they decided to look in a new direction — up.

Seeing the dog on a limb, Bonturi returned home and came back with an eight-foot ladder, but it wasn’t quite tall  enough to reach the dog.

Police arrived, and eventually firefighters, with a bigger ladder.

“They got there, and this was a little dachshund. In a tree. Just sitting up there on a branch,” Beaufort/Port Royal Fire Department spokesman John Robinson told the Beaufort Gazette. “So Ross Vezin got a ladder and leaned it up the tree, and the dog started licking him in the face and came on down.”

Bonturi, who works with Chain Free Beaufort, a nonprofit dedicated to helping animals, said Cappy appeared fine.

“She was just happy to be in her mom’s arms,” she said.

Firefighters searching for an accident scene along State Road 84 in Florida were having no luck — until a German shepherd appeared out of the darkness and showed them the way.

The shepherd came out of nowhere, limping down the side of the road.

When he spotted the firefighters, he changed direction, leading them for nearly a quarter of a mile to the body of his owner.

“I think the dog definitely meant to lead them there,” Davie Batallion Chief Robert Belizaire told the Sun Sentinel. ”I think he was out there looking for some help.”

At the scene, Simon circled his owner twice. He licked him and, getting no response, jumped in the car and waited.

Authorities say Simon’s owner, Gregory Todd Travers, 41, died Saturday night when his car slammed into a bridge support and rolled over on S.R. 84.

Simon was taken to Broward County’s animal shelter, where a woman identifying herself as Travers’ wife picked him up.

Police and firefighters rescued a dog in south Florida Monday whose head was trapped in a discarded bait cooler — possibly for more than a week.

Passersby spotted the dog in western Miami-Dade County and called authorities.

Police, firefighters and animal control officers joined in the rescue, injecting the dog with Valium to sedate her, then using a reciprocating saw to enlarge the hole in the fiberglass boat cooler, TV station WTSP reported.

An animal control officer said that, based on the severity of the dog’s wounds, she might have been trapped for a week.

The dog is a 40-pound female Labrador mix, according to Firehouse.com. She appeared to have recently given birth, authorities said, and her extra body fat may have helped keep her alive. No puppies were found in the area.

The dog was taken to Miami-Dade Animal Services, where she was treated by veterinarians.  She has been named Lucky and will be put up for adoption.

“Thought Provoking?” It’s not like winning best in show at Westminster, but I’ll take the sign my book appears under at this bookstore as a compliment.

A friend sent me this photo, taken at the Barnes & Noble in Towson, which shows “DOG, INC.: The Uncanny Inside Story of Cloning Man’s Best Friend” getting some pretty decent display (at least better than the bottom shelf of the astronomy section, as was the case at an area bookstore that shall remain nameless).

I can think of no other sign I would like my book to be under — except maybe ”New York Times Bestseller.”

Alas, it’s not there yet, but it did rate the “Page 99 Test,” a website by Marshal Zeringue dedicated to the proposition that the quality of a book can be judged by turning to, and reading, its 99th page.

I lucked out in that page 99 of “DOG, INC.” contains a revelation — namely who it was that located Genelle Guzman, the last survivor found after 9/11, and held her hand until she could be freed from the mound of debris she was trapped under.

(Clue: It wasn’t the volunteer firefighters who took credit for rescuing her on CNN)

If you’re wondering what this has to do with cloning dogs, you can click the link to Marshal’s blog or, better yet, buy the book and allow your thoughts — and perhaps more — to be provoked.

One dog came to the aid of another last week, leading rescuers to a drainage pipe where a 15-year-old miniature schnauzer named Casper had been stuck for up to three days.

The hero? A rat terrier named Rowdy, who belongs to a neighbor.

“He caught the scent and he just started barking, barking, barking,” said Rowdy’s owner, Patty Monk, whose dog led her to the 8-inch wide storm drain pipe in which Casper was stuck.

Seeing Casper inside, Monk, who is friends with Casper’s owners, ran a block to their home and notified them. They sought help from the Sacramento Metro Fire Department.

Firefighters, not wanting to injure the dog, wrapped a teddy bear around the end of a fire hose to push him out the end of the pipe.

Casper’s owners, who had searched for days and put up posters after Casper went missing, took him to a nearby animal hospital to have him checked out.

“We have one of these storm drains right in front of our house. He may have fallen in that one and crawled all the way here, we don’t know,” said Wayne Hernandez.

“We’ve been kind of taking him for granted, he’s been around for so long,” Hernandez told News 10 in Sacramento. “But we’re going to have to try and pamper him a little more. He deserves it after this.”

 
A persistent dachschund saved a Washington family from a potentially damaging fire in their mobile home Sunday.

A 3-year-old dachshund named JoJo — who the family took home after finding him as a stray — is being credited for trying to shove 11-year-old Kalen Huntley out of her bed and alerting her parents to an electrical fire smoldering behind an outlet on her bedroom wall.

“Our dog saved our house,” Diane Urquhart, who lives in a mobile home park in Kennewick with her husband, Colt, and four of their five children, told the Tri-City Herald.

The couple and three of the kids were home early Sunday when JoJo, who normally sleeps in their daughter Kalen’s room, began repeatedly coming out the room and approaching the adults.

“He came out to see us four times, then kept going back into our daughter’s room,” Mrs. Urquhart said. On top of that, his ears weren’t in their happy position, she said.

“These ears we did not recognize,” she said. “And his face, if a dog can look worried, he looked worried.”

When she went into her daughter’s room, she smelled burning rubber and saw the dog nudging her sleeping daughter with his nose.

They called 911, and got everybody out of the house, taking their two cats and JoJo.

Urquhart said the wall at the head of her daughter’s bed was hot. Firefighters told the family the outlet, which had a lamp and alarm clock plugged into it, was minutes away from catching fire. When the family removed the outlet the next day, one side of it was scorched.

(Click here for all of the Wiener Awards.)

(Photo: Courtesy of Tri-City Herald)

Prince Georges County firefighters rescued a Labrador retriever mix who fell 25 feet into the bottom a storm drain.

The drain’s cover, authorities said, had been displaced, apparently by a snowplow.

Firefighters and medics responded to a call Tuesday from a resident in Laurel who heard a dog crying at the bottom of a storm drain, according to the Washington Post.

Rescuers pumped fresh air into the drain, rigged up a pulley system and lowered a rescuer on a rope, who was able to put a harness on the dog so it could be hoisted out.

The operation took about 10 minutes, said Mark Brady, a spokesman for the Prince George’s County Fire Department.

The 40-pound, long-haired black dog was wet and cold but had no apparent injuries, Brady said.

The dog had a collar but no tags. Anyone with information about its owner is asked to call the animal control facility at 301-780-7200.

Yesterday’s Washington Post had a great series of photos depicting the rescue of a yellow Lab who wandered into an icy pond in Potomac.

A neighbor spotted the dog — named Tully — out his kitchen window and called 911. Rescuers arrived within minutes, cut through a fence and plunged in after him as the dog’s family watched.

The four-year old dog was worn out by then and unable to hoist himself out, according to his owner, Bruce Stewart, whose 14-year-old son encouraged the dog from shore: “Hold on there, buddy! You’re a good boy!”

Rashad Surratt, a firefighter, entered the pond and Tully paddled toward him. The rescuer wrapped his arms and a harness around the dog, who seemed happy to get a hand. “He just gave up,” Surratt said Saturday. “He was really, really tired.”

Other firefighters were able to help pull Tully across the ice and get him to the shore. Tully was wrapped in coats and blankets, loaded onto a toboggan and pulled home by firefighters and residents. To see all the photos, visit the Post’s photo gallery.

Stewart, an executive at text-messaging company kgb, said Tully apparently walked right through his electronic fence, which had been disabled by the snow.

(Photo: Lea Thompson / Washington Post)