ohmidog!

Seamus finally got a song.

DEVO’s Jerry Casale has released, “Don’t Roof Rack Me, Bro,” a song that mocks Mitt Romney for strapping his Irish setter, in a crate, to the roof of his car on a family vacation trip.

The  new single, subtitled “Seamus Unleashed,” was written by Casale and will be released in conjunction with a game app titled The Crate Escape: Seamus Unleashed.

The song and the game will launch August 26, which is both National Dog Day and the day before the Republican National Convention.

In releasing the single, DEVO joined forces with Dogs Against Romney, an online advocacy group with more than 70,000 members on Facebook, to help call attention to Mitt Romney’s “crate-gate” scandal.

Have a listen:

“I can’t overstate how excited we are to have DEVO’s Gerald Casale as a partner with us in making sure every voter in America knows Mitt Romney strapped his dog, Seamus, to the roof of his car for a 12-hour trip to Canada,” said Scott Crider, founder of Dogs Against Romney. “The new DEVO song Gerald created with his bandmates is awesome, and I believe it will be the soundtrack for Romney’s defeat in November.”

DEVO recorded the song as an anthem for pet lovers and as a message to others to never forget what happened to Seamus in 1983, when the Romneys drove from Boston to Ontario with the dog crated on the roof of their station wagon.

The single will be available at all digital music retailers; the game is initially being launched as an app on iTunes.

“We are delighted to have a new DEVO song as part of our game’s offering,” said Andy Berryman, chief marketing officer for Censault, LLC, the game’s developer. “It’s exciting to break new ground in the mobile/social gaming space – first as a game that is both fun to play and promotes a positive social message, and now as a new distribution medium for popular music.”

More info on the game can be found at www.facebook.com/CrateEscapeGame.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Casale, who has raised funds for Obama in Akron through a DEVO performance, said of Romney’s nearly 30-year-old mistake, ”It’s just a deal-breaker about the man … What you want in a leader is a guy with some humanity at his core … I think any animal lover that hears the story will learn so much about the character flaw of Romney.”

DEVO may include the song in its act when it tours America this fall with Blondie, he said.

While the song may or may not become the 1970′s-80′s-era band’s first hit in a long, long time, it has already gotten off to a better start than my suggestion for a Seamus song, a reworking of the Pink Floyd tune of the same name.

In the virtual world, you can, with a few well-placed clicks, pick your house, your car, your clothes, your physique, hair style and persona.

You can go out for a night on the town, in the setting of your choice, looking for love, or a fight, or any of thousands of other adventures — all of which are under your control.

Or you can spend a quiet evening at virtual home with your virtual pet — like a Panda-chow, or a tiger-husky, whose behavior, traits, appearance and even species combination are all changeable at your whim.

The video above is a preview for Sims 3 Pets, hitting the market today.

At the risk of sounding like an old man (one can’t criticize video games or apps without sounding like an old man), at the risk of being told by countless commenters that it’s only a game (yes, I realize that), I find it bothersome (and I don’t just mean that annoying narration).

In a way, I find what Sims 3 Pets does with dogs and cats nearly as troubling as that dogfighting app that led to so much controversy.

It’s a reflection of the same wrongheaded (in my view) mindset that we can do whatever we want to with dogs as long as it (A) entertains us, (B) makes money, (C) makes our lives easier, or (D) is done in the name of science.

It’s that mindset that leads to dogs as fashion accessories, dogs being abandoned when fads change, cruel laboratory experiments, greyhound racing, dogfighting, puppy mills, over breeding and, yes, cloning.

It’s thinking that dogs and all animals exist to serve our whims — however fleeting, selfish or bizarre those whims may be.

“Lighten up dude, it’s just a video game,” you might say. “It’s just a fantasy.”

And you’d have a point.

But (A) experimenting with and exploiting dogs doesn’t just happen in video games; and (B) Sims is not really the target of my tirade, for the game is just the latest rendition of a recurring theme in our society.

Of course, if it weren’t for man’s self-serving tinkering, we wouldn’t have dogs at all. It was man that shaped the wolf into all the diverse shapes and sizes we have now — and I’m not for doing away with any of them.

But somewhere — at least in real life, if not in video games — all the tinkering needs to stop.

We don’t need tiger-retrievers, or panda-chows — whether it’s the result of creative hair-styling and dye jobs, or inter-species experiments, or cell manipulation.

We don’t need robot dogs, or gladiator dogs, or fluorescent dogs, or dogs so inbred that they are unhealthy caricatures of themselves, or dogs created in a laboratory from the harvested cells of a deceased pet.

We don’t need to reinvent the dog, redesign the dog, ressurect the dog or even fine tune the dog. It’s fine as it is, and much of man’s meddling — whether it’s to make dogs more predictable, produce look-alike, act-alike cookie cutter versions of them, or invent new versions that are low-drool or non-allergenic — is an insult to that.

It’s even more of an arrogant pursuit when you stop and consider that the species that probably needs the most work is us. Maybe it’s our inability to control what happens among our fellow humans that makes us so prone to inflicting control over dogs, nature, or whatever else we can.

Here is something I said before, somewhere: If there is even a remote chance of controlling something, humans wanted to control it, preferably remotely.

In Sims 3 Pets, players can create and control over a hundred different kinds of cats and dogs, and can breed and share them with friends providing endless possibilities to create “new and exciting” breeds.

One can customize the pet’s coat, shape, pattern, color; the size of its ears, tail, snout, eyes, and more. You can also choose their behavior pattern, traits and control their bodily functions.

Dogs can even get jobs and make money.

And most creepy of all, pets can be shaped via virtual interspecies breeding, resulting in skunk-cats and panda-chows.

(If you think mixing species, fluorescent dogs and cloning are too far fetched to ever happen, I’d refer you to my book, DOG, INC.: the Uncanny Inside Story of Cloning Man’s Best Friend. They all already have.

It would be too much to ask, given that pesky First Amendment and all, that gamemakers refrain from virtual interspecies breeding.

But wouldn’t it be nice if we could somehow limit all forms of novelty dogs — and other bad human concepts like war — to the confines of computerized games?

Unfortunately, that seems out of our control.

After a brief hiatus due to copyright infringement concerns, “Dog Wars” — the controversial game app for Android smartphones — is back on the online marketplace, where it’s being offered under the new name of “KG Dogfighting.”

Google’s Android Market website began offering the renamed app Saturday. While originally available for free, it’s now listed at $2.99.

Opposition is mounting to the new game app “Dog Wars,” and among those speaking out is Michael Vick.

According to the NBC blog, Digital Life, the Philadelphia Eagles quarterback, who served 21 months in jail for operating a dogfighting ring, released a statement, in conjuntion with the Humane Society of the United States, against the free app, now available as a free download through Google’s Android Market.

“I’ve come to learn the hard way that dogfighting is a dead-end street.  Now, I am on the right side of this issue, and I think it’s important to send the smart message to kids, and not glorify this form of animal cruelty, even in an Android app,” Vick is quoted as saying in the statement.

Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of The HSUS, added, “Android should drop ‘Dog Wars’ from its online market and join the national movement to save dogs from this violent practice. Because “Dog Wars” actually instructs players on how to condition a dog using methods that are standard in organized dogfighting, this game may be a virtual training ground for would-be dogfighters. Its timing and message are all wrong.” 

Meanhile, a petition calling for the game’s removal from the marketplace has been launched at Change.org, the same open petition website on which 150,000 people signed a petition demanding Apple drop a “gay cure” game from its App store. 

(Android is an open source operating system created by Google. While Google does not approve every app offered there, it does maintain a website where people can complain about objectionable content in games and apps. You can find it here.)

The Massachusetts SPCA also has spoken out against the dogfighting game app.

“Although illegal in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, dog fighting remains a pervasive problem in America and is investigated inby the MSPCA’s Law Enforcement department. Dog Wars is a sickening tool that can be used to recruit potential dogfighters about how to train future victims, perpetuate breed specific stereotypes, and undermine the many years of hard work that animal protection agencies, including the MSPCA-Angell, have contributed to ensure strong penalties against dog fighters and spectators,” said Carter Luke, MSPCA-Angell president

“In the past, dog fighting instruction remained underground; however this ‘game’ brings this knowledge to the mainstream public through a tool attractive to young game players. Similar to the Dog Wars application, real life trainers work to ensure a mean temperament in kind animals from puppyhood, subjecting the young animals to ongoing cruelty and neglect, including living without shelter, enduring bouts of starvation, and sustaining beatings. To improve stamina and muscle mass, trainers also impose exhausting treadmill exercises on their dogs and force them to wear heavy chains around their necks. Identical to Dog Wars, the dogs are fed steroids and stimulants to increase their aggression. Dogs who refuse to fight, or consistently lose, may be shot, hanged, drowned, or electrocuted by their trainers. To further promote viciousness, trainers bait their dogs with intentionally wounded dogs, puppies, cats, and other small animals. 

“The training ground that Dog Wars provides has the potential to increase occurrences of animal cruelty as well as violence against humans. In a study performed by the MSPCA and Northeastern University we definitively discovered the correlation between those who abuse both animals and humans. Our research proved that those who abuse animals have the same psychological detachment as those who abuse humans and may harm animals after purposefully injuring people.”

 
Alright, Minnesota Twins. You don’t allow dogs in your new baseball park — named after the Target Corp. So who was that in the box seats behind home plate at your home opener?

Oh, it was Bullseye? The dog Target uses to advertise its chain of discount stores? The one with two red circles painted around her left eye?

That makes it all ok.

NOT!

If dogs are banned, dogs are banned — and it shouldn’t matter how much money her corporate owners have, or even if the stadium is named after the corporation she represents.

If you’re going to allow Target corporate honchos to bring a dog in, you need to allow everyone else as well — and not just those who can afford to buy a $275 box seat behind home plate for their dog. Those in the right field bleachers should be allowed, too.

Bullseye “was there after the [military jet] flyover [and] through the bottom of the first inning,” Chris Iles, a Twins spokesman, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Iles took the opportunity to caution fans against bringing their pets to a game.

“Any type of service animal is allowed, but no other animals,” he said. “That said, given the commitment Target has made to the organization, we made a one-time decision to allow Bullseye, a highly trained and constantly supervised dog, to sit in a seat for a half-inning.”

Baloney.

Lena Michaud, a spokeswoman for Minneapolis-based Target, said Tuesday that Bullseye was in one of Target’s corporate seats merely as “a fun element to commemorate the day. … That was the vein in which it was intended.”

More baloney. (I’d spell it correctly — bologna — but that is not the vein in which it is intended.)

The Twins/Target front offices can spin the situation until the cows come home, but the message has already been received: Rules don’t apply to the very rich, especially those who help pay for your stadium.

On top of rising ticket and concession prices, baseball continues to give blue collar fans, us average mutts, the brush off – becoming ever closer to becoming a game played by the rich for the rich.

How do you think a fan who can no longer to afford to go to a game might have felt sitting at home and seeing a dog in the $275 box seats behind home plate? Sorry, the Twins seem to be saying, we welcome rich people, and their dogs, but you, Joe Sixpack, are just not in our league … And don’t even think of bringing your non-painted dog, that doesn’t have a corporate logo stamped on his eye,  in here.

(Actually, Bullseye’s bullseye is applied by a trainer and makeup artist –  Rose Ordile of Animals of a Different Color — using nontoxic red paint.)

Michaud said there was no commercial shot or marketing strategy surrounding Bullseye’s attendance. The dog sat in a custom-made Twins jersey with her name on the back as well as the number 10 to commemorate the Target Field opening in 2010.

The six-year-old miniature bull terrier’s presence at Monday night’s game was captured via television frame grab off ESPN.

A California man was treated and released after being shot in the back by his dog.

The unidentified 53-year-old man was hunting in Merced County when he set the safety on his loaded shotgun and put it on the ground while he grabbed his decoy ducks, according to the Fresno Bee.

Merced County sheriff’s officials say the hunter’s black Lab stepped on the loaded shotgun, causing the safety to release and the gun to fire.

The Houston Astros let the dogs out yesterday — with more than 300 taking to the field, then the stands, for the first annual Bring Your Dog to the Game Day.

Half of the $20 ticket price went to benefit the Houston Humane Society.

Michael Vick received a rousing ovation from Philadelphia Eagles fans last night when he took the field for the first time.

Only a handful of protesters gathered at the stadium before Thursday night’s exhibition game against Jacksonville, including three women who held a sign outside Lincoln Financial Field that said, “Murderers are not role models.”

Inside the stadium, though, Eagles fans, some clad in Vick jerseys, defended the quarterback, saying he had been punished for his crime and deserved a second chance.

Prior to the game, as fans tailgated outside the stadium, dog lovers were holding a competing tailgate party on the other side of town.

It was part of the Pennsylvania SPCA’s “2nd Chance Dogs” campaign to increase awareness of dogfighting and encourage adoption of rescued pit bulls. The initiative was launched after the Eagles signed Vick, upon completion of his 18 month term in federal prison for running a dogfighting ring.

“As a lot of people have pointed out, the animals never got a second chance,” the SPCA chief executive Sue Cosby said. “We need to speak for them.”

One of the Bauer family’s two Blue Lacy game dogs returned after it went missing in the wake of Hurricane Ike.

But, after nearly ten months, they’d all but given up on seeing the second one again.

Earlier this month, after another resident of the neighborhood spotted the second dog, she was reunited with the family, 14 pounds lighter, covered in ticks and fleas, but in otherwise good shape, the Houston Chronicle reported.

“We were telling the kids all the time that if there’s any dog out there that is going to make it on its own, it’s Daizy,” recalls Joe Bauer, of Clear Lake, whose family owns the two Blue Lacy game dogs.

In September, the two dogs, Daizy and Hank, escaped from a kennel after Hurricane Ike. Hank returned, but despite repeated efforts to track down Daizy, she couldn’t be found. Nine months later, though, she was spotted by another resident, who was able to follow the dog in her car to an overgrown easement area she’d apparently been staying in, near some electrical towers about a mile from the kennel.

LaRocca alerted the Bauers, who were able to track Daizy down.

The Bauers went to the area, whistled Daizy’s favorite tune, and the dog came running. The pet was in good shape according to the veterinarian who examined her Friday.

The Blue Lacy, a hunting dog that was named state Dog Breed of Texas by the 79th Legislature, was developed by three brothers from Kentucky who reportecly began interbreeding gryehounds, scent hounds and coyotes.

If you need something to keep the kids busy on Christmas Eve, or perhaps even simple-minded grown-ups like myself, here’s a website that can provide, if not hours of entertainment, at least enough time to run out for some last minute gifts, or egg nog.

It’s the Mutt Maker, from Animal Planet, which allows you to combine attributes of 20 dog breeds — head, body, tail, legs — and fashion your own mutt. It then shows you a cartoon image of it, and gives it a name.

Example: Take the pug head, put it on a Rottweiler body, add poodle legs and a shih-tzu tail, and you’ve got a “Purotttzuoodle.” In a nice touch, every time you put on a new head, you hear the bark of that breed.

After that, you have the options of entering it in “best in show,” getting a “certificate of legacy” for your creation, or adorning it with accessories, including bonnet, cowboy boots, cape, glasses, pipe and more.

It’s not exactly the same as a puppy under the tree, but it’s free, interactive, won’t soil the carpet, and is relatively quiet — and for the child who’s not quite ready for a living, breathing, responsibility-laden puppy of his own, it’s a good way to learn a little more about dogs.