ohmidog!

A rat terrier who wandered from his home and ended up on a busy Texas highway was rescued by a police officer in La Porte, who halted traffic and carried the dog to safety.

Cujo, whose owners say he suffers from a bad hip, was spotted Monday by officer Kyle Jones on Spencer Highway, limping along in a lane of moving traffic.

Jones spun his car around and blocked traffic on the busy highway, called to the dog, then walked over to him, debating whether he should pick him up.

“You know how Chihuahuas are,” Jones told KHOU. “You’re not really sure if you can trust ‘em or not. But he kind of looked at me and said, ‘Man, I’m glad you’re here.’ He let me pick him right up. Stuck him in the back seat of the patrol car.”

Jones turned Cujo over to an animal control officer who, thanks to the ID tag on the dog’s collar, was able to return him to his family.

The Zapalac family had been searching for Cujo.

“We spent the whole morning, about an hour, looking for him,” Jeremy Zapalac said. “It started pouring down rain. And he hates water.”

Zapalac described Cujo as “a Napoleon-type of dog. He’s very short, but with a very big ego.”

A near-death experience turned into a free ride for an owl that was struck by an SUV on the Florida Turnpike and became lodged behind the vehicle’s grill.

Sonji Coney Williams was headed south on the turnpike when she struck what she thought was a bird.

“I felt so bad but it was very dark and we didn’t pull over,” she said. Instead she drove another 100 miles, to Plantation, Fla.

Not until the next day, when she was parking her car, did she discover what she struck was a great horned owl, and that it was alive, well and winking from behind the grill of her car.

“There was a family that pulled in front of my parking space and flagged me down and said don’t move, don’t move, you have something in the grill of your truck. I said, ‘Yes, what is it?’ And they said, ‘It’s an owl.’ And I said, ‘An owl?’” said Williams.

She called Florida Fish and Wildlife and an officer opened the hood and freed the bird from the vehicle.

The owl’s journey was nearly as long as the maybe-record-setting, 110-mile one taken last year by a dog in California, later named Chevy, in the engine compartment of a pick up truck.

Officers say the owl appeared not to have suffered any injuries. It was moved to the South Florida Wildlife Center in Ft. Lauderdale, which said the owl — after some good meals and more testing — would eventually be returned to its natural habitat in Central Florida.

Lilica lives in a junkyard in São Carlos, Brazil, along with another dog, a cat, some chickens, a mule, and a human caretaker named Neile Vania Antonio, who found her abandoned as a pup and took her in.

Every night, Lilica walks two miles to the home of  Professor Lucia Helena de Souza, who takes care of 13 stray dogs and 30 cats.

Lucia prepares a large meal, and Lilica eats some of it. Then she carries the rest two miles back home to share with her fellow junkyard dwellers.

It’s a routine that has been going on every day for three years, according to this report.

When she first started feeding Lilica, Lucia said, ”I realized that she ate and then stared at what was in the bag.” When a neighbor suggested that Lilica might want to take the rest home, Lucia tied up the bag and Lilica carried it home.

“From that day on we do it,” said Lucia.

Lucia meets Lilica every night at 9:30 pm. Lilica eats some of the meal and then carries the rest back down the highway and delivers it to her family.

Lilica’s caretaker, Neile, said the dog’s spirit of sharing is more than she sees in some people.

“People don’t do that. Some people hide and do not want to share what they have with others. She did not. Lilica is an exceptional animal.”

Eicher

An Amish man who shot a mother dog and her eight puppies told police in New York that he thought killing dogs was acceptable under his culture, as long as it was done out of sight and with discretion – or as he put it, “Shoot, shovel and shut up.”

“In the Amish it’s acceptable to put dogs down. I thought as long as you did it out back it was okay,” Jonathon Eicher reportedly told officers who arrested him and the breeder of the dogs in Wayne County.

The nine dead dogs were discovered in a ditch by a highway crew on January 17.

Also charged with animal cruely was Merlin Schmucker, 26, who owned and bred the Australian red heelers, but was unable to sell the dogs because, he said, they’d become too big.

Schmucker

Schmucker asked Eicher, his employee, to put the dogs down, said Wayne County District Attorney Rick Healy.

“This is simply a case of animal cruelty,” he said. “They can’t treat the animals the way they want to treat the animals; they must treat the animals humanely.”

Both Schmucker and Eicher were charged with nine counts of cruelty to animals , WHAM reported.

Schmucker told police he had “raised the dogs and couldn’t put them down myself so I asked Jonathan to do it.”

Eicher admitted killing the dogs with a .22-caliber rifle, police said.

The German shepherd thrown from an overpass onto Interstate 40 earlier this month is being adopted by the state trooper who was the first to come to his aid.

The dog has been named Rookie.

Oklahoma Highway Patrol Trooper Jennifer Fisher plans to bring him home to her family, News9 reports.

The search for the person who threw the dog onto the highway in Oklahoma City — it was witnessed by a truck driver — continues, and the reward for information leading to an arrest has grown to $7,500.

Rookie had a fracture to his rear left leg and internal bleeding, and was treated and operated on at Oklahoma State University Veterinary College Teaching Hospital.

Anyone with information about the crime is asked to call the Oklahoma County Sheriff’s office at (405)-869-2501.

Mu Shu was just four pounds and four weeks old when she fell off a livestock truck in Kansas and was picked up off the highway and taken home by the owner of Hunter, a yellow Lab.

That was in April, and Hunter would go on to become best friends with the piglet who, before bouncing off the truck, was likely destined for a growing farm and a future as ham.

Stacie Tonn picked the unconscious pig up off U.S. Highway 50, and with help from her veterinarian husband, Shane, their four daughters and Hunter, nursed Mu Shu back to health.

Hunter licked and nudged the injured piglet, and helped her get around when she regained consciousness. Left blinded — only temporarily — by the accident, the piglet would sniff Hunter out and follow him around, curling up with him for naps, according to Kansas.com.

Seven months later, Mu Shu is now 300 pounds, and living at Walton Rural Life Center, a charter school, where she helps teach children about livestock and agriculture.

But she still gets together with Hunter, who visits her once or twice a month.

“She still knows the sound of my truck. When I pull up to her pen, she will pop out with excitement. She knows she’s going to get snacks,” Stacie Tonn said.

Walton Rural Life Center serves 167 students, from kindergarten to fourth grade, and students are responsible for feeding Mu Shu and the other animals and maintaining their pens.

“Pigs are our biggest project,” said kindergarten teacher Rhonda Roux. “If she stays healthy, we are thinking of breeding her and having a litter of piglets.”

As for Hunter, he doesn’t seem intimidated in the least by Mu Shu’s girth, or how she so quickly passed him in size since the days he was licking her motionless body.

“She had a lot of bruising and was pretty unresponsive … Neither one of us thought she would live past 48 hours,” Shane Tonn told Kansas.com in an earlier story

You can see a video of Hunter playing with Mu Shu, when she was still a piglet, here.

(Top photo, taken in April, by Mike Hutmacher / Kansas.com)

A state representative in Tennessee has removed a video from her YouTube channel that showed her holding her dog outside the window of a moving car and laughing as it went “air swimming.”

State Rep. Julia Hurley took the video down two days after posting it, but insisted — sounding a little like Mitt Romney talking about Seamus — that Pepper, a Chinese crested, enjoys being held out into the wind, outside of a fast moving car.

Hurley, who’s seeking a second term, said she removed the video because she “didn’t want to deal with” criticism she calls politically motivated. “I think it’s a liberal ploy to take the attention off the bills and the legislation I’ve passed and the positive things I’ve done, to make me look like a bad person,” the Lenoir City Republican said.

The Knoxville News Sentinel reported that Hurley’s short video titled “Pepper Air Swims” was pulled two days after being posted on YouTube.

The newspaper wrote about the video after being contacted by the Rev. Peggy Blanchard, who criticized the video in an email. “I find Ms. Hurley’s behavior to be extremely unkind and irresponsible. While Ms. Hurley and her friend are laughing and having fun, the dog is clearly terrified.”

“This sort of behavior exhibited by a person who has a position of leadership sets a very poor example of behavior for both adults and children,” Blanchard wrote.

Hurley countered, “My dog obviously enjoys it. She’s very happy.” Still, she said, the backlash could lead her to stop posting social media updates.

“People say they want a legislator they can relate to, they want an open-door policy and know everything that’s going on,” she said. “But you try to give them that, and they use it against you to try to make you look like a bad person.”

Pepper was the subject of previous media attention when the lawmaker was thrown out of the Roane County courthouse for bringing her dog along in March. She argued that the 11-pound dog is classified as a service animal, though she brought the pet along as a companion.

Upon her election to the House in 2010, Hurley drew national attention for crediting her success to the time she spent working at Hooters restaurants, in a two-page article for the chain’s magazine.

She was the subject of another embarassing video, as well, when a state trooper pulled her over in 2011 for speeding, and a dashboard camera recorded the hard time she gave the officer about the ticket she received. Here’s that video:

(Photo: Erik Schelzig / Associated Press)

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.

A dog dragged by a pick-up truck down a northern California freeway is expected to survive, but has lost a leg.

Angie Porter and her 13-year-old son spotted the truck, and the dog behind it on a rope, while driving down Interstate 780 on April 19.

They followed it for nearly a mile, trying to catch up and honking the horn.

As the vehicle neared Glen Cove, the truck driver took the exit, and the rope around the dog’s neck broke. The dog flipped several times and then slammed into the off-ramp’s concrete wall

The driver didn’t stop.

Porter, a Pinole resident, stopped her car and ran to the dog, placing her coat over him.

A few minutes later,  Amy Dart, with the Humane Society of the North Bay, arrived and took the dog to All Creatures Veterinary Hospital, according to the Vallejo Times-Herald.

Animal control officials say they have few leads about the driver of the truck; Porter was so focused on the dog she did not take down the truck’s license plate number.

Freeway, who’s believed to be a purebred German shepherd, had his badly fractured right rear leg removed and was expected to be released to the humane society this week.

Peter Wilson, the humane society’s executive director, said the organization will pay the vet bill and put Freeway up for adoption after he recuperates.

“When I learned how sweet the dog is, even in excruciating pain, I felt this dog deserves a chance and shouldn’t suffer and lose its life because of the irresponsible individual who didn’t stick around afterward,” Wilson said.

The humane society has started a fundraiser for Freeway through its Maya Fund, created to help animals with medical issues.

At Benicia Middle School, where Porter works as a campus supervisor and her son, River, is enrolled, students and staff members are trying to raise money for Freeway by setting up donation cans around campus.

Anyone with information about the incident  is asked to call Vallejo Animal Control at 707-645-7906.

Alan Askwith didn’t mean to shoot his wife. He meant, his own lawyer says, to shoot his dog.

But apparently hitting the right target can be difficult when one is driving, allegedly under the influence, down an interstate highway with three kids in the backseat.

Yesterday, Askwith, 29, of Richfield, Utah, was being held at the Utah County jail in lieu of $10,000 bail on charges that included felony discharge of a firearm, possession of a firearm by a restricted person, driving while under the influence of drugs or alcohol and cruelty to animals, according to the Salt Lake City Tribune

Highway Patrol Corporal Todd Johnson said the shooting took place somewhere on southbound Interstate 15 in southern Utah County last Friday.

“For some unknown reason, the driver decided to shoot the dog and also hit the female passenger in the lower leg,” Johnson said.

Askwith’s defense attorney, Clayton Simms of Salt Lake City, said Wednesday that Askwith shot the animal when it began snarling. Askwith then pulled over and dumped the dog on I-15, and tossed his handgun out of his SUV.

The dog – a 115-pound pit bull, named “Arby” — was later picked up by relatives, taken for treatment and, according to Simms, is expected to recover.

Simms said Askwith told him he was concerned the pit bull posed a risk to his wife, and to three children sitting in the back of his vehicle.

Askwith drove his wife to Central Valley Hospital in Nephi — see, everybody has their redeeming qualities –  where she was treated for what authorities described as a non-life threatening wound.

Another trooper, at the hospital for another matter, arrested Askwith after learning what happened and took him into custody after a brief foot chase.