ohmidog!

Given the conflicting and changing accounts of a dog’s owner and his girlfriend, what killed Raider was a mystery — until police received a note left at the dog’s grave.

The couple had brought the mixed breed dog to an emergency veterinary clinic, where they initially explained Raider had fallen from their second floor balcony. But upon learning the dog was dead, the boyfriend said his girlfriend had thrown the dog off the balcony.

Police in Fishers, Indiana, meanwhile, investigating a complaint they’d received about a dispute at the residence, said they got similar conflicting reports when interviewing the boyfriend.

Detectives talked to neighbors, friends, and the veterinarian that tried to save the dog, but it was a note found later at the dog’s grave that led them to arrest the girlfriend, 28-year-old Sarah E. Rust, on animal cruelty charges last Friday. She was taken to the Hamilton County Jail.

In an interesting twist, police said they received the letter from the dog owner’s ex-girlfriend, and part owner of the dog, who found it at Raider’s grave.

Investigators say the letter was written by Rust:

“Dear Raider, First and foremost forgive me, but also forgive me and your daddy for fighting. We brought your life into our quarrel. You did not deserve to be any part of our combat. I ended your life, for which I am truly sorry my son.”

An Oregon woman has been charged with first-degree animal cruelty for allegedly throwing her boyfriend’s dog into traffic on Interstate 205 Thursday night in Vancouver, Washington.

The dog, a Catahoula named Peanut Butter, was struck by a car and killed.

According to KATU, Shellie L. Hubbard, 45, appeared in Clark County Superior Court Friday, where a judge set bail at $20,000. Hubbard is also accused of second-degree assault and possession of methamphetamine.

Washington state troopers said Hubbard got into an argument with her boyfriend, Darwin Vonschirmer, while he was driving south on Interstate 205.  Hubbard struck him with a broken coffee mug, slicing his hand, police said. When he pulled over to the shoulder, Hubbard let the dog out of the car and threw the animal onto the highway, police said.

Peanut Butter was struck by a car while attempting to walk back to the shoulder of the freeway.

Vonschirmer told KATU he was in the process of breaking up with Hubbard when she reacted violently. He said he had taken the dog in about a year ago, after finding it on the side of the freeway.

Yet another report of jealousy-induced dog abuse has come to light — this one in Austin, where a woman is alleged to have repeatedly slammed her boyfriend’s 12-year-old shih tzu to the ground.

About a week ago, we told you about Patrick Caleb Land, who was sentenced in San Diego to five years in prison for beating his girlfriend’s three dogs to death because, he said, he was jealous of them.

Just three days after that, police in Austin responded to a report of a couple arguing and arrested Maria Martinez on a charge of cruelty to animals.

She’s accused of taking her boyfriend’s dog, Chase, a shih tzu mix, from his truck and throwing him into a Dumpster, KXAN reported.

She then climbed into the Dumpster, according to the boyfriend, lifted the dog above her head and threw him to the ground.

The dog’s owner also told police that Martinez poured bleach into Chase’s dog’s food in an attempt to poison the dog.

According to police, Martinez admitted that she and her boyfriend had argued all day and told officers she was mad and jealous of the dog.

Chase was being treated for his injuries.

He didn’t bring her flowers, but when Ace met up again this week with his old friend Fanny, he did tolerate her — and to a far greater extent than ever before.

The behavior he once found so annoying that he would go upstairs to avoid her — where Fanny feared to tread — Ace seems to now find mostly endearing.

Fanny was a rescue dog, fostered by my ex-girlfriend, adopted by a family, then returned for being overly rambunctious, at which point the ex-girlfriend became her forever mom. If you ever want to pry them apart, I suggest dynamite and bulldozers, but I’m pretty sure not even that would work.

Highly spirited, we’ll call her — the dog, I mean –  and Ace, back then, would only put up with her in small doses. He’d be excited when she visited, and they’d romp for 15 minutes or so, at which point he would want a rest. Fanny is not familiar with that notion.

So she’d stay in his face, and follow him wherever he went, even into his crate, and bark at him when he wouldn’t play, and Ace would eventually head for the second floor.

This time around — the ex is putting me up for a few days in her sunflower surrounded home in Dundalk — he just keeps playing, and he has even added a bark to his repertoire, something he never did before. He’d make growly lion-like noises, but never would he bark.

Now he barks right back at her, sometimes instigates the play, and doesn’t seem to quickly tire of it — at least not yet. He hasn’t been seeking refuge on the second floor, but then again the second floor isn’t air conditioned.

I’m not sure if he’s just happy to see her again, or if he realizes he’s a house guest and therefore shouldn’t be selfish or surly. He is being both more playfully assertive and more tolerant, and I can only conclude that absence — as it visibly does with dogs, sometimes less visibly so with humans — did indeed make his heart grow fonder.

Funny thing, relationships.

A Wisconsin man has received a stern lecture and a sentence of six years in prison for cooking his ex-girlfriend’s dog.

A jury found Terry Kleiman of Green Bay guilty of burglary and mistreatment of animals after he broke into his former girlfriend’s apartment and put her 5-month-old Pekingese-poodle mix into an oven set at 350 degrees to get back at her following their break-up.

When the girlfriend, Alex Rouse, arrived home from the Oval Office Gentleman’s Club, where both she and Kleiman worked, she found the dog dead inside the oven, according to the Associated Press.

Kleiman was also ordered to pay Rouse $1,500 in restitution.

“I was almost nauseous when I thought about what you did,” the judge said in pronouncing the sentence. “I can’t imagine what that dog went through.”

A Staten Island man was arrested this week for fatally beating his girlfriend’s 5-pound Chihuahua, apparently because the dog had bitten him days earlier, police said.

Or, as the New York Post  put it, “Brute Bashed 5-Lb. Dog to Death: Cops.”

Frank Coppola, 28, allegedly beat the 3-year-old dog, named Bella, on Feb. 28 at the Staten Island apartment he shared with his girlfriend.

Police said it took six months to arrest him because his girlfriend, Melissa DePietro, was reluctant to testify against Coppola. Prosecutors convinced her to testify before a grand jury, which, along with graphic medical evidence, proved enough for an indictment.

A necropsy performed on Bella showed the dog had suffered severe trauma to its chest, internal bleeding, several broken ribs, a ruptured jugular vein and bruised lungs, investigators said. According to the Post, the dog had bitten Coppola days before the fatal beating.

When asked by a veterinarian what had happened, Coppola claimed the dog had run into a wall and collapsed.

Coppola was charged with animal cruelty, and faces up to four years in prison. He was released on $2,500 bail.

“This a very serious crime. It’s not every day that an animal-cruelty charge goes before a grand jury, but obviously we thought this case was serious enough to take that step,” said Bill Smith, a spokesman for District Attorney’s office.

A California man who gave his girlfriend a 3-month-old yellow Lab for Christmas has been taken into custody.

Officials say the dog was stolen – three days before Christmas — from a Stanton pet store.

The theft of the Marley look-alike from Pet City was caught on the store’s surveillance cameras, according to the Orange County Register.

The boyfriend – Ryan Rickman, 23, of Orange – returned to the store with the dog to pay for it Tuesday, but instead was booked into county jail on suspicion of burglary and grand theft, officials said. Later, the puppy was turned over to Rickman’s girlfriend, who ended up paying for her own Christmas gift.

Sheriff’s investigators have identified a second man involved in the theft but have not been able to contact him, said an Orange County Sheriff’s Department spokesman.

Security video shows two men walking into the store and spending several minutes talking to clerks. After one of the clerks leaves for a lunch break, one of the men distracts the remaining clerk while the other man lifts the puppy from a cage and runs out the door.