ohmidog!

There will always be a sourpuss or two who points out “it’s only a dog” and complains it’s a waste of taxpayer money, but I like this trend of rescue workers saving dogs — and capturing their own heroics on video.

It’s happened at least twice on Wednesday, so I can officially call it a trend.

In Fargo, North Dakota, a dog named Jake, clinging for dear life to a chunk of ice, was pulled from the partially frozen Red River by a fire department rescuer wearing a cam.

And in Lincoln County, N.C., the unidentified dog above was carried to safety after being stuck on a dam in the fast-moving South Fork River — all captured by a fire department member filming from the riverbank.

“This is B-Roll video that was shot at the scene of a rescue of a dog off of a low head dam in Lincoln County,” reads the description of the rescue.  ”Rescue crews successfully rescued this dog off of the dam and he was taken to a local vet for evaluation and treatment of a head injury and possible hypothermia.”

The video, like the one in Fargo, was posted on YouTube, for the public to see and the media to grab.

What with cutbacks to staff at newspapers and televisions stations, and an increasing reliance on reader/viewer-submitted news, this works out well all the way around. Citizens get served and protected and entertained. Firefighters, police and rescue personnel get some good publicity. The news media gets somebody else to do its work for free.

Come to think of it, it serves us bloggers pretty well, too.

So keep saving those dogs, and putting out those fires, and don’t forget to send us some B-Roll.

It looks like something straight out of Lassie — a dog leads Alaska State Troopers down a series of winding back roads to a fire in his owner’s property.

It was all captured on a dashcam video that shows the German shepherd — Buddy — running to meet the trooper’s vehicle, then racing to the house on Caswell Lakes on April 4.

Troopers say Buddy and his owner, 23-year-old Ben Heinrichs, were in the family workshop when a heater ignited chemicals. According to the Associated Press, Heinrichs told Buddy: “We need to get help.”

The dog eventually found a trooper responding to a call about the fire and led him to it. Heinrichs suffered minor burns on his face, and his workshop was destroyed.

Buddy is receiving an award from the State Troopers today — an engraved silver-plated dog bowl in Anchorage.