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Andrew Clyde keeps a doberman pinscher named Kit at his place of business in Bogart, Georgia, to provide security.

Russ Murray keeps a black Labrador named Ellie at his side to help him deal with the post-traumatic stress disorder he has dealt with since serving in Afghanistan.

Over the weekend Russ and Ellie went into Clyde’s shop and were asked to leave — because the service dog was upsetting the security dog.

Murray was physically injured when his Humvee was blown up by an explosive device in Afghanistan. After his tour of duty, his PTSD reached the point he was afraid to go outside alone.

Since getting Ellie, a year ago, that has changed. With her at his side, Murray is able to go anywhere — except Clyde’s Armory.

According to Murray, the gun shop owner told him Ellie was disturbing his security dog, and would have to leave. Murray refused and was escorted out of the building.

Clyde told FOX 5, that the Americans With Disabilities Act allows a business owner to ask a person with a service dog to leave if the dog is being disruptive or alters the way business is conducted.

Clyde said that he’s also a disabled veteran, but that Kit needs to be allowed to do her job without distraction.

Murray’s attorney says a business owner is required to accommodate people with service dogs — even if it means bringing merchandise outside the store.

“I was just extremely hurt,” Murray said. “I have this animal to help me when I’m out and it really disturbing that a business would do that when she’s there to help me go into public.”

Despite wearing a service vest clearly marked with the words “service dog,” a German shepherd named Princess was kicked out of Georgia convenience store.

Princess, who is a service dog for Wyatt Fox, a young boy with autism and other medical problems, was booted from the QuikTrip off Interstate 75 in McDonough.

According to his mother, Cory Fox, she was getting coffee when the manager approached and said, “We have food in here and you can’t be in here.”

Ms. Fox said she explained Princess was a service dog, and pointed out the dog’s vest, but the manager kept yelling at her until she was out the door.

“I’m very open to educating people as long as they approach me the right way. I will tell you what the dog does freely. I will tell you about service dogs, but he just continued to berate us and tell us we weren’t welcome,” she told 11Alive.

A QuickTrip corporate spokesman issued the following statement, with an iffy apology:

“If QT made a mistake, we apologize. We recognize all service dogs in our stores. Our training manuals reflect this. If we must, we may go back and retrain the employee so he understands our procedure.”

Pirelli came into the world last year — bred to be a service dog, but born without one of his rear paws, apparently the result of the umbilical cord wrapping around it and cutting off circulation.

Despite that, he’d go on to serve — visiting schools to get across the message that appearances are meaningless and obstacles can be overcome

“I think the fact that he has a disability of his own is going to be incredible in teaching people that it’s irrelevant, that life is not about what your body can do. It’s about who you are on the inside not the outside, Jennifer Arnold, the founder of Canine Assistants in Alpharetta, Georgia, said at the time.

“I want Pirelli to go into schools and say when you judge whether or not you want someone to be your friend, don’t look at their bodies,” she told WWLP – 22 News. “That’s not where you need to look.”

Pirelli — named after a tire because “he needs a retread” — was outfitted with a temporary prosthetic and went on to spread some hope and inspiration.

Now, months later, it’s his turn to receive some: Through donations from those touched by his story, he’s getting a prosthetic foot — similar to the futuristic running blades worn by South African Olympian and double amputee Oscar Pistorius, NBC’s Today Show reported.

After earlier prosthetic devices proved less than perfect, the staff at Canine Assistants launched a fundraising campaign online, asking for donations to outfit Pirelli with a state-of-the-art carbon fiber paw.

While he is waiting for the surgery, Pirelli has been fitted with a plastic version of the carbon foot. The implantation of his permanent prosthesis will be done at North Carolina State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine.

The prosthesis — being built by Hangar Clinic, the company whose work in prosthetics helped inspire the recent film “Dolphin Tale” — will be implanted into his leg bone.

(Photo: Facebook)

Monika Wesolowski wanted to adopt the pit bull mix she became a foster mom to this summer, after he was found in northwest Georgia with his throat cut.

But, given his ability — once he recovered — to jump over her chain link fence, there was no way she could keep him unless a fence was to magically appear.

Now it looks like a fence is going to magically appear.

The dog was brought into Murray County Animal Control in July with a slash across his neck so deep his trachea was visible. A Facebook post about the dog,  named Braveheart by animal control staffers, led the Animal Rescue League of Northwest Georgia to pick him up, take him to a veterinary clinic for surgery and search for a foster home.

Wesolowski, who volunteers with the Animal Rescue League, agreed to care for him during his recovery — even though she knew that, when the time came to give him up, it would be difficult.

When Braveheart was to be put up for adoption last month, she told the Rome News-Tribune, “I just had a meltdown. I was like, ‘I can’t do this.’”

She wanted to keep the dog, but, with two dogs of her own and a backyard fence Braveheart could easily jump, she felt he’d be better off elsewhere.

When she described the dilemma on Braveheart’s Facebook page, suggestions poured in, and when she followed one of them, establishing an online fund drive, money poured in, too – enough to build a new fence.

Wesolowski has raised $1,500 to help build a privacy fence around the back yard of her home, and Walker Landscape and Fence, LLC, has offered to build it and charge her only for materials. A Lowe’s store in Rome agreed to give Wesolowski the materials for the fence at cost.

By the end of the first day, more than $400 had been donated to Braveheart’s fence fund on GoFundMe.com.

“I cried for three days straight, probably because it just blows my mind,” Wesolowski. “I know people give money all the time to charities but a dog just hits people right in the heart.”

Dogs Deserve Better,the Virginia rescue now heaquartered in Michael Vick’s former house, donated $200. About 60 other donors gave money to the fund. Wesolowski said she wants to have a plaque with a list of donors put on the fence.

Braveheart has a scar on his neck, but whoever is responsible for it hasn’t been arrested. The Animal Rescue League has offered a $2,500 for information that leads to an arrest and conviction.

“I just can’t see how anybody could hurt a creature like this,” Wesolowski said. “He’s such a nice dog.”

(Photos: Braveheart’s Facebook page)

Cool Hand Luke, a chocolate Lab, was shot and killed by police officers responding to a burglar alarm in Georgia.

His owner wants an apology.

“I don’t want anything else out of this,” said Robby King of Smyrna. “This is life changing for me. Luke was such a big part of my life and I didn’t realize what all I did with him until now.”

The 6-year-old chocolate lab was shot by a Cobb County police officer Sunday, according to the Marietta Daily Journal.

A spokesman for the Cobb County Police Department told the newspaper that, while he could not discuss the incident, the two officers involved “followed proper protocol.”

King, 45, says he accidentally triggered the burlgar alarm at his home Sunday afternoon, and couldn’t remember the password required to turn it off.

Two Cobb County police officers, identified as  J.P. Gibson and G. M. Roach, responded.

Roach, in his report, said that when he opened the back door of the home and announced he was a police officer a “large brown dog” came running toward him, “barking aggressively.”

According to his report — and we’ll admit to not understanding this part – he didn’t close the door because it would have put him in “immediate risk of danger from the unknown that was inside the residence.”

He continues: “While quickly retreating out of the patio, the large brown dog continued to charge toward me in an aggressive manner while continuously barking at me as he advanced on me. The large dog closed the distance between me and him in less than three seconds. I fired one round at the large dog and it continued charging me in an aggressive manner as if the dog’s main focus was attacking and harming me. I fired one more round at the large dog and it immediately collapsed falling to its left side in the grass.”

Did he mention it was a large dog?

Gibson’s report described things more briefly: ”A dog began to bark and came at Officer Roach. Officer Roach shot the dog.”

King says he never heard the officers announce their presence.

“… I heard Luke bark and I said, ‘Luke come,’ as I was headed through the house … I heard a pop, pop and as I was headed out the door, I said, ‘Oh God, please don’t shoot my dog,’ and Luke was laying there, gasping for air.”

King said Luke always barked when someone was at the door.

“… If the officer had just stopped, Luke would have gone up to him and just sniffed him and probably would have gone and gotten a ball to fetch. I know the (officer) didn’t know that, but my point is that he didn’t have to shoot my dog. He could have shot up in the air, maced him, kicked him, whatever he wanted to do. He wouldn’t have bit him.”

Police also said they were told by a neighbor that Luke had bitten her.

The neighbor, though, who is also King’s sister, told the Daily Journal that police apparently misunderstood her. She said she told them she’d recent been bitten by another dog, a Chihuahua.

“The reason I said that was because I was trying to point out to them that this little dog bit me and Luke never even bit nobody,” she said.

King, who adopted Luke when the dog was six months old, buried him near the garden in his backyard late Sunday night.

“I haven’t been able to stop crying. This was the hardest thing I ever had to do,” he said.

(Photo by Todd Hull / Marietta Daily Journal)

Rebecca Carey had been finding homes for animals in need, volunteering at animal shelters and taking in rescues from the time she was a young teen, and all the way up to the weekend before last.

That’s when one or more of the five dogs in her care attacked and killed the 23-year-old woman at her home in Decatur, police say.

Despite that, and the euthanization of all the dogs, her family has set up a fund in her name to support rescue efforts at Loving Hands Animal Hospital, where Carey worked.

“Since the second grade when she read the book ‘Throw Away Pets,’ she vowed to be a voice for all animals,” her parents, Greg and Ellen Carey, said in a statement. “Upon placing her first abandoned animal in a permanent loving home in 2003, she volunteered countless hours with rescue networks and animal shelters. There she did what she loved the most: rescuing animals from untenable situations to find them safe, loving homes.”

LuAnn Farrell, the co-founder of the non-profit Angels Among Us Pet Rescue,” said Carey was known for taking in hard to place animals.

“She was one of the good ones because she did take in the ones nobody else would help,” Farrell told 11 Alive in Atlanta.

Farrell said the young woman’s death “kind of makes us all slip back just a little bit and say this is something that can actually happen,” but that she hopes it doesn’t dissuade people from helping animals in need.

“You know that’s the one thing she wouldn’t want people to do, shy away from rescue. It’s already hard enough. We’re already having thousands of them being put to sleep every day. There’s only so many of us that can do it,” said Farrell.

Carey had one of the rescue organization’s animals, a boxer mix, living with her at the time of her death, as well as two Presa Canarios and two pit bulls, one of which, Napolean, she had adopted six years ago when he was eight weeks old.

She was dogsitting one of Presa Canarios, and it was that dog’s owner, Jackie Cira, who discovered Rebecca’s body after she failed to show up for work at Alpharetta’s Loving Hands Animal Clinic.

Police originally investigated her death as a homicide, but last Thursday they announced she was killed by multiple dog bites.

The dogs were all euthanized Wednesday, with the consent of Carey’s parents, a police spokesperson said.

Cira, in remarks to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, questioned whether it was necessary to put all the dogs down, and why animal control officials made no apparent effort to determine which dog or dogs inflicted the bites leading to Carey’s death. Cira’s dog, Danai, was also euthanized.

Tim Medlin, interim director of DeKalb Animal Control, said public safety was the priority: “I won’t put another person at risk,” he said.

Donations in Carey’s name can be made to www.angelsrescue.org, by putting Carey’s name in the remarks section. They can also be mailed to Loving Hands Animal Hospital, 13374 Hwy 9, Alpharetta, GA, 30004.

Only once has Ace plunged into the surf with reckless abandon.

That was his first time. At a beach in Delaware, upon his first sighting of the Atlantic, he bolted out into the water, only to get hit face first with a giant wave that flipped him over. Ever since then, he has exercised caution, and only with encouragement from multiple people has it been possible to beckon him out any deeper than his knees.

Yesterday, though, as we continue to drag out our departure from Figure 8 Island in North Carolina, he ended up playing in the surf – and without seeming preoccupied about how big and scary the next wave might be. That was thanks to two dogs, a blue tennis ball and a girl named Georgia.

We’d stopped at the Winston house — the same family that provided a personalized watering station for Ace, complete with signage, over the weekend — to visit again with Mac, a golden retriever, and Jet, a black Lab.

Ace had seemed only mildly interested in the dogs on our earlier visit, partly because he was worn out, partly because that’s the way he is. While he immediately warms up to people, it takes him a while with dogs. (I’m the opposite). He’s nice enough upon meeting another dog, but it usually takes him 15 minutes or so of sniffing and acting aloof and reserved — especially with other big dogs — before he’ll even consider playing.

But getting together with Mac and Jet, and realizing there was no shade he could lay low in, he participated in some canine frolicking, all instigated by 8-year-old Georgia.

She’s a take charge sort, but not in a bossy way.

Georgia told me she plans to become an animal doctor. (That was her term, and a much more manageable one than “veterinarian.”) And she did seem to have a way with dogs — not just her own, Jet, but her aunt’s dog, Mac, and even Ace.

On the beach, she seemed a master choreographer, leading them in their antics, and she offered to throw the tennis ball I’d brought along, assuming Jet and Mac would chase it even though Ace wasn’t likely to.

At one point, I stood in the ocean with my camera and asked her to throw the ball over my head, so I could take pictures of Jet and Mac charging through the waves to get it. Surprisingly, a couple of times, Ace showed up in the frame,  apparently not wanting to be left out of the fun.

Later, with the help of some peanut butter crackers, Georgia demonstrated Jet’s obedience skills, and soon had Mac and Ace under her spell as well.

One gets the sense, even at 8, and even if her plans to become an animal doctor change, Georgia is going to accomplish what she sets out to in life. When she heard I was writing a book, she asked to be in it. When told the book was based on my travels with Ace a year ago, she said she’d settle for being on ohmidog!

Told that would require permission from her parents, she left, returning a few minutes later with a note from her mother.

“I hereby allow ohmidog! to place any and all photos of my sweet Georgia “Peach” Winston,” it said. “Jet Winston, too!”

When I jokingly asked her if she wrote the note herself, Georgia said no, adding that she hasn’t mastered cursive yet.

I assured her that would be easy. It’s just like printing, only with waves.

A Labrador mix, trapped on a busy section of Interstate 85 near Atlanta, was rescued by two state troopers who were in the right place at the right time — and with the camera on.

The dog was trapped Thursday in the inside lanes of I-85 northbound, near Spaghetti Junction, according to 11Alive in Atlanta.

Georgia State Patrol Troopers First Class Jason Kent and Dallas Vanscoten were in their cruiser, with their dashboard camera on when they came upon the dog.

The troopers turned on their lights and siren, and straddled the northbound lanes sideways to stop traffic. When they got out of the vehicle, leaving the doors open, they expected the dog to run from them.

“Usually when we pull up on animals like that, that’s gotten caught in the interstate, they’re usually pretty wild and don’t want to have anything to do with humans, and that’s what I was expecting … the dog just to run off,” Kent said.

Instead, they watched as the dog ran to the vehicle and jumped inside, taking a seat in the front passenger side seat.

Kent said it was like, “Okay, I’m ready to go, now. Thanks for saving me.”

Uninjured, she was taken to Gwinnett County’s animal shelter in Lawrenceville.

The officers didn’t have a clue how the dog ended up on the stretch of interstate, which has concrete barriers on both sides.

Her owners have five days to claim her, after which the Gwinnett County animal shelter will put her up for adoption.

The former president of CNN Headline News in Atlanta was caught on a security camera when he placed a bag of dog poop into the mailbox of his neighbors.

Bob Furnad, who also served as CNN’s political director, was fined $180 for his act, which he told police in Covington was the result of an ongoing feud.

Video from the security camera shows Furnad walking his dog, and stopping to place the bag inside the mailbox in front of a neighbor’s home.

Benjamin Dameron and Ralph Miller said they couldn’t understand why Furnad, who also was once an instructor at the University of Georgia, did it.

The incident was reported by CBS in Atlanta.

“We were working, getting ready for a wedding and we were out on the driveway,” explained Dameron. “We thought, well, we’re this close, we’ll check the mail box to see if the mail’s come.”

“Something had, a package,” said Miller.

“It doesn’t happen very often,” said Capt. Kem Malcom with the Covington Police Department. “In this situation the victims actually had video. ”

“Mr. Furnad stated that he did place a bag containing dog feces in the victim’s mail box,” Malcom said. When asked why, Furnad told the officer it was the result of “an ongoing feud.”

The neighbors agreed to settle the issue at a local court in Covington.

Diamond Pet Foods is voluntarily recalling a third type of dry dog food due to salmonella concerns.

All three products were made at a Gaston, S.C., plant —  the same one that made mold-contaminated food that killed dozens of dogs nationwide in 2005.

Production at the plant was halted April 8.

In a statement Monday, the Missouri-based company said the latest recall involves its Diamond Puppy Formula dry dog food. No canine illnesses have been reported.

The product was distributed to customers in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.

The company announced in April that it was recalling batches of its Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover’s Soul Adult Light Formula and Diamond Naturals Lamb Meal & Rice.