ohmidog!

A white husky was found tagged with black spray paint in Sioux City, South Dakota, over the weekend.

Tabitha Taylor told police she found her dog Blaze covered with graffiti Sunday morning, according to the Sioux City Journal

“I can’t believe people would actually do that to somebody’s dog,” she said. “That just baffles my mind.”

The dog was sprayed on his head and back, sometime after he got loose. Blaze, in addition to the graffiti, was limping when he returned home, Taylor said.

Police are investigating and said whoever painted the dog could face charges. They ask anyone with information to call 402-494-7555.

The incident happened a week after a city security camera captured two people spraying gang graffiti on a building on B Street. The building had been tagged at least 10 times previously.

Taylor said her family spent four hours scrubbing the paint off with mayonnaise, olive oil and fish oil. Blaze belongs to her 4-year-old son, she said.

“Our dog is the cutest dog ever. He’s nice to everybody. He’s never mean,” Taylor said.

Firefighters rescued a dog Sunday from an icy pond in Florence, Kentucky, after the one-year-old husky fell through the ice.

Brandon Kilby, of the Union fire department, is shown here pulling the dog, named Ali, to safety.

According to the Kentucky Post, six fire departments responded to the call at  a trailer park near Mount Zion Road.

Fire officials said the rescued dog was treated and returned to her owners.

(Photo: Kentucky Post, courtesy of William Fletcher)

Jordan Biggs, the Oregon State University student who found a dog on the loose in Portland, took him home, and refused to give him back to his owner, is on the verge of giving up her fight for custody of the husky mix she named Bear.

The Portland Oregonian reports that Biggs, – facing $30,000 worth of legal bills and a possible felony conviction — has agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of second-degree theft, serve 80 hours of community service, and concede that the dog is not hers.

If she meets those conditions, the charge would be expunged from her record after six months, allowing the 20-year-old to continue with her plans to become a teacher.

Biggs was visiting Portland when she found the dog and took him home to Corvallis.

More than a year later, the dog’s original owner, Sam Hanson-Fleming, spotted Biggs and the dog he knew as Chase in Southeast Portland.

County animal control officials ruled that the dog belonged to Hanson-Fleming, who said his dog had jumped a fence and run away. But Biggs still refused to relinquish custody of the dog.

In July of last year, police in Corvallis seized the dog and charged Biggs with theft. Bear, or Chase, spent 75 days in a shelter after that — until a judge in October ordered the dog returned to Hanson-Fleming.

Biggs filed a lawsuit seeking to regain custody of the dog, who she trained to serve as an asthma therapy dog, alerting her to oncoming asthma attacks. As part of her plea agreement, the lawsuit would be dropped.

Both Biggs and Hanson-Fleming find the apparent outcome of the case less than acceptable.

“There is no way she should not have to have this on her record — she’s a thief,” Hanson-Fleming said. “It’s no different than if you went to Walmart and stole a bunch of shirts. … She should be treated like any other criminal.”

The University of Connecticut is insisting a high school in Clinton that uses a husky for a mascot come up with one that doesn’t look so much like the college’s trademarked dog head.

The college, though it’s reportedly handling the matter in an “amicable” manner, says its husky is  ”intellectual property,” and that the Connecticut high school is, in effect, trespassing.

College officials apparently fear that, with other similar hand-drawn husky heads lurking out there, they might rake in less money from all the products to which the UConn husky logo is affixed.

We, though no one asked us, have to go with the underdog in this mild and not-too-controversial controversy.

We think the high school’s logo — that’s it at top left, as it appears in the middle of the school’s basketball court — is different enough.

UConn’s husky — that’s it at the bottom – looks far more well-fed, more protective, and has its tongue hanging out.

We — and that’s the editorial we, meaning I — think all hand-drawn husky heads, like all huskies, are going to look at least somewhat similar, and we’d submit that the university is maybe being a little overly possessive of what it considers its turf.

Officials at the Morgan School, a public school, say they were informed last spring that their husky too closely resembled the university’s, according to the Hartford Courant.

“We’re trying to work with them. We’re not looking to shut them down or anything like that,”  Michael Enright, UConn’s associate athletic director for communications, is quoted as saying. “We are protecting the state’s intellectual property.”

Clinton Superintendent of Schools John F. Cross said Morgan School has had a husky as its mascot for at least 25 years.

In a letter from James D. Aronowitz, associate general counsel for the Atlanta-based Collegiate Licensing Company, which represents UConn, Clinton educators were asked to stop using the logo. The letter said use of the similar dog could interfere with UConn’s ability to “effectively market and license” the use of the logo.

Cross said the university isn’t being nasty about it, and isn’t insisting the high school change its logo right away, only that it eventually do away with it.

“It really is a practical matter that we are trying to work out with our big brother at Storrs. It’s not adversarial,” Cross said.

Cross said the logo has been removed from the school’s website. The school district will also use a different husky on the gymnasium floor when it opens a new high school.

The old husky head at the new school football field, just recently completed, will be a more difficult matter, he said. Changing it, he estimated, would cost $20,000.

Cross said students are at work developing a new husky dog logo that will be sufficiently different from UConn’s, and we wish them the best on the project.

But what if they both just dropped the whole thing, and that $20,000, and all the money UConn spends on lawyers to ensure its husky drawing isn’t too closely replicated by anyone, was given instead to, say, a husky rescue group, or some other cause that benefits huskies, by which we mean the animals?

Of course, that — paying back the breed whose image they have seized and profited from — will never happen in the real world.

But “intellectual property” aside,  it was their head first.

Last Thursday, John Dolan picked up his ringing cell phone and was told to come get his dog, who was standing outside Good Samaritan Medical Center in Islip, N.Y.

A hospital employee had come across the dog, checked the tags, found Dolan’s number and called it.

What the hospital employee didn’t know was that Dolan was, at the time, a patient in the hospital — and that his dog, Zander, had somehow tracked him there from home, even though home was two miles from the hospital.

Zander is a 70-pound, 7-year-old samoyed-husky mix, with a history of escaping from their home. Dolan and his wife had rescued him from a shelter five years ago. This time though, he appeared to have escaped for a reason.

In the days since Dolan entered the hospital, the dog had been acting sad, Dolan said his wife told him.

“He was moping around for the days I was already at the hospital, sitting in my seat and rolled up and depressed. My wife said he had water in his eyes and looked like he was really sad,” Dolan, 46, told ABCNews.com today.

After Dolan got the call that Zander was outside the hospital, he called his wife, Priscilla, who hadn’t realized Zander was missing.

She drove to the hospital to pick up Zander, who had never been to the hospital before.

Dolan’s back home, too, now, and he reports Zander is not leaving his side.

For years, a husky mix named Annie quietly watched the world go by, lying beneath a tree in front of an apartment complex in the Mid-Wilshire neighborhood of Los Angeles.

A neighborhood fixture, she seemed perfectly content to observe and greet as dog walkers, strollers and anyone else went by — and the neighborhood found her a reassuring presence as well.

When Annie died over the weekend — of anaphylactic shock, caused by a bee sting — neighbors started coming together in a vigil not unlike the one she kept.

It started with a few notes tacked to the tree and grew into a full blown memorial, complete with candles, flowers and sympathy cards.

Since her death Saturday, some visitors to Annie’s shady spot at corner of 4th Street and Cochran Avenue have stood there and cried, said her owner, Jack Zurla, who rescued Annie 12 years ago after finding her foraging for food near the corner of Washington Boulevard and La Brea Avenue.

“I’ll remember Annie as a dog that was more human than dog,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “She had the capacity to understand people. She was a dog of compassion for everybody. She gave people comfort.”

“Annie was a staple in a lot of lives around here,” he added. “Annie was always ready to give someone some love.”

Other residents echoed those thoughts.

“She never ran off, never barked at anyone,” said actor Brian Savage, who lives nearby. “She was just a pillar of the neighborhood.”

“Annie was really a touchstone for all of us,” said Michael Moravek, also an actor. “It was nice to have her here. We might not know each other but we all knew Annie.”

“She was our neighborhood guardian. Even now, Annie is bringing us together,” he noted as he placed a snapshot he had taken of her on the shrine Tuesday.

Also leaving a hand-printed note was six-year-old Roman DiGiulio. With his mother at his side, he placed the note, written on a large red heart, on the tree. It read: “Have a good life in heaven, sweet doggie.”

(Photo: Jack Zurla stands in front of an impromptu memorial to his dog Annie; by Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

Lucy, a husky mix from Greenville, S.C., has been named the worst behaved dog in America by Camp Bow Wow, the pet care franchise — and as winner of that dishonor she’ll receive some much-needed training.

Camp Bow Wow reviewed hundreds of entries in its national “Bad to the Bone” contest before deciding on Lucy, an obedience school dropout who chews so much her nickname is “The Destroyer.”

Owned by Eve Memmer, Lucy will receive a full year of services from Camp Bow Wow and formal dog training from a Camp Bow Wow Behavior Buddies certified trainer, according to a press release.

“We’re so excited to have won the ‘Bad to the Bone’ contest,” said Eve Memmer. “Lucy is a close part of our family – we love her dearly. But she’ll chew on anything in sight, she dashes out of doors and lunges at other dogs when she’s on a leash. Lucy is in need of some serious dog training …”

The 60-pound, 11-month old husky mix once used her teeth to bend the bars of her crate and escape. She has tried a training class before, but it produced few results.

“We’re eager to see Lucy’s transformation from naughty pup to star pupil,” said Heidi Ganahl, CEO and founder of Camp Bow Wow. “All dogs need a little direction when it comes to training and behavior and we anticipate that Lucy’s lovable nature will outshine any mischievous conduct.”

Camp Bow Wow’s efforts to reform misbehaving dogs won’t end with Lucy. Fifty of the “Bad Dog” finalists have been entered into the next phase of the contest known as the “Face Off,” whose winners, determined by Facebook voting, will receive a gift certificate for Camp Bow Wow or Home Buddies services.

No animals, or babies, were harmed in the making of these videos.

The top one shows a one-year-old Siberian husky-Australian shepherd mix named Haiku going through his first car wash.

The second one shows an unidentified baby also experiencing a car wash for the first time.

I recommend starting them up at the same time.

Notice the similarities in reactions — namely, the bug-eyed look they both get, a seeming mix of horror, uncertainty and curiosity.

All of which proves nothing major — only that, for dogs and humans, a new environment is scary the first time you roll through it, especially one with noisy blasts of water, flailing sponge strips, whipping brushes and mounds of cascading suds that seem intent on burying you.

By the time we — dog or human — take our second trip through the car wash, though, it’s usually a different story. It’s not as scary. The baby, in fact, appears to be getting used to it by the end of the video, relaxing enough to enjoy a sip of his beverage.

A New Jersey woman apparently attempted do-it-yourself surgery on her husky mix, and heavily sedated two of her other pets with narcotics, for reasons police and the Cumberland County SPCA are still trying to figure out.

Stephanie Ballassi, of Bridgeton, had not been charged by Monday night, but she could face multiple charges of animal cruelty as the investigation continues, said Bev Greco, executive director of the Cumberland County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

“This is not something we’ve ever dealt with before,” Greco told The Daily Journal.

On Sunday, Bridgeton police were called to Ballassi’s home  and found a bloody scene. The pets were immediately removed and taken to veterinary hospitals.

The husky mix was treated from a palm-sized head wound apparently caused when its owner attempted to surgically remove a lump on his head.

The other animals found in the house were lethargic, and investigators suspect they had been given human anti-depressants and anti-seizure medication.

A long-hair Persian-mix cat was also heavily drugged and had patches of her fur shaved off.

The husky mix, estimated to be about four years old, still hadn’t totally revived from whatever drugs he had been given, officials said.

SPCA investigators have visited Ballassi’s house before. In  2008, they were called to check on the welfare of five dogs and four cats she had at the time. No charges resulted.

In November 2011, Ballassi surrendered a basset hound, a German shepherd, three cats and a bird to the shelter. Ballassi said she was moving, but she continued to reside at the same address.

Both dogs went on to be adopted, the SPCA said.

(Cumberland County SPCA Executive Director Bev Grecco checks on a male husky that was taken from a Bridgeton home Monday; photo by Cody Glenn/ The Daily Journal)

A mushing mortician in his second Iditarod brought one of his dogs back to life after the 9-year-old husky collapsed on his way down a steep section of the Dalzell Gorge.

“Boom! Laid right down. It was like a guy my age having a heart attack,” Scott Janssen told the Anchorage Daily News.

“I know what death looks like, and he was gone. Nobody home,” said Janssen who owns a funeral home in Anchorage and bills himself as the “Mushing Mortician.”

Janssen said he rushed to the dog, named Marshall, and administered mouth-to-snout CPR, compressing the husky’s chest and breathing into his nose.

After about five minutes, Janssen said he talked to the dog: “I’m like c’mon dude, please come back.”

“And he did.”

Marshall collapsed late Monday night as the 51-year-old musher navigated a tricky section of trail that follows Rainy Pass as mushers exit the Alaska Range. Marshall, believed to be one of the oldest dogs in the Iditarod this year, has finished about five or six races, and this was to be his last.

Janssen carried Marshall in his sled until the Rohn checkpoint, where veterinarians examined him and administered an IV.

“He was fine this morning,” Janssen said. “He’s still at the checkpoint and they’re flying him back home today.”

Fatalities have been common during the Iditarod’s 40-year history, but no dogs have died in the past two years.