ohmidog!

Five dogs — four pups and their mother — were killed in a fire early today at a pet grooming store in the Chicago suburb of Romeoville.

Eight dogs and a few birds were rescued.

A passerby who was visiting a nearby 7-Eleven convenient store noticed smoke coming from the back of Suzette’s Dog Grooming and called 911 about midnight, according to the Associated Press.

Fire crews forced their way inside and began to search for the fire, which appeared to have started in a storage or bathroom in the one-story building, officials said. Four puppies and their mother in the room where the fire started perished, but firefighters rescued eight other dogs and some birds that were in a cage.

I was driving down Century Boulevard when I spotted them — a homeless man, judging from the Vons grocery cart he was pushing down the sidewalk, and a three-legged pit bull in a service dog vest, hobbling alongside, her leash tied to the cart.

I made a u-turn, saw him walking down Hawthorne and, after one more u-turn, pulled my rental car alongside the man and dog as they turned down 101st Street.

His name is Mike Reed, and his dog’s name is Topaz, and as we sat on the sidewalk and talked — next to his bottle of King Cobra malt liquor in a black plastic bag — Topaz, weary from a just completed walk, snoozed on the concrete, wearing a service dog vest that said “Don’t Touch Me, I’m Working.”

Reed has had Topaz for five years. He takes care of her. She takes care of him, helping him cope with life on the streets — the kind of life that can turn violent at any second, and on Aug. 31 did just that.

On that day, he and Topaz found themselves standing innocently in the middle of a confrontation between another homeless man and officers from the Inglewood Police Department.

Reed had just met the man minutes earlier — after the man entered a store and an employee noticed what appeared to be a gun in his pants. Police were called, and tracked the man down. Not knowing whether Reed was an accomplice, officers put Reed in a squad car. Topaz remained on the sidewalk, leashed to Reed’s grocery cart.

As Reed decribes it, police told the suspect to put his hands in the air. The suspect raised and lowered his hands two times. The third time he lowered them, he reached for what police thought was a gun, and a barrage of shots followed.

The gun turned out to be a plastic toy.

Four or five shots struck Topaz, one shattering her hip bone.

Read more »

More than 20 dogs and cats died Monday when fire swept through a pet store in Bloomington, Indiana.

Nine dogs and three cats survived the fire at Delilah’s pet store — most of which were rescued from the front of the building where they were on display.

Investigators were trying to determine the cause.

Karen Kidwell, the owner of the store, believes the fire started in the back of the building, WTHR-TV in Indianapolis reported.

“Probably electrical. It’s an old building,” said Kidwell. “I’m really glad none of my people were here because I would have really felt bad if they got hurt. The fire broke out just minutes before the store was set to open.

“I’ve been thinking about the animals that didn’t make it out. I had a personal dog that had been abused. It was a really sweet dog that didn’t get out of the fire and I just hate to see her go down that way.”

Kidwell isn’t sure if she’ll re-open.

A down-on-his-luck Florida man whose last act in life was to try to save three dogs stranded in a freeway emergency lane, was remembered Wednesday at a donated funeral where he was praised by Houstonians who never met him, and remembered by a daughter who hadn’t seen him in 20 years.

Robert “Bob” Emery, 54, was fatally struck by a motorcycle the night of Sept. 27 as he dashed onto the East Freeway to rescue three dogs stranded against the median.

Alaina Emery, a 25-year-old paralegal student, drove from Pennsylvania to attend her father’s service, the Houston Chronicle reported. About two dozen animal lovers also were there.

She placed a framed wedding photograph of her estranged parents atop Emery’s oak casket.

Emery. after a 13-hour day of clearing brush from Hurricane Ike, was preparing to turn in for the night when he heard about the dogs just yards from his motel. He was struck my a motorcycle as he ran across the freeway. Animal control officers called to the accident later rescued the dogs, and  they were returned to a senior-citizen couple that had been looking for them for days.

During the service at San Jacinto Funeral Home and Memorial Parks, the Rev. Bill Cole called Emery a hero, and sang a solo of the Prayer of St. Francis, the patron saint of animals. Flowers were placed atop a table covered with a blanket emblazoned with drawings of paw prints and bones.

Among those offering hungs to Alaina Emery were the dogs’ owners, who weren’t sure if she would be angry with them, but wanted to thank her.

“It is OK. It is OK,” Emery said quietly as she hugged them. “Take care of those dogs; take care of those dogs.”

When a British kennel operator found a visiting border collie dead, she panicked, buried his carcass in a nearby field and called his owner to say the dog had run away.

Jessica Valpied, 24, owner of 24-7 Petcare in Guernsey, apparently feared the death of a client’s dog would ruin her business and reputation: She won the National Pet sitter of the Year Award at Crufts in 2006.

Valpied was fined £400 by magistrates — an outrageously light punishment according to the dog’s owner, Michael Van den Bossche, who left the dog at the kennel when he went on a vacation in France.

Valpied reported the ‘missing’ pet to the Guernsey Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and even orchestrated a high-profile publicity campaign to find him. She swore her employees to secrecy, and told them to pretend to search for the dog by walking around the area, calling the animal’s name, and whistling for it, according to an article in The Telegraph.

Van den Bossche, 45, who specializes in obesity surgery, also put up posters, made appeals on the radio, and placed an advertisement in a local newspaper.

But Valpied’s deception was uncovered when two junior members of her staff told their parents, who contacted police. The dog was apparently killed at the kennel by two other dogs who entered his pen.

Valpied said she claimed the dog, named Arte, had run away because she did not want her staff to get into trouble or for the killer dogs to be put down.

“It was a cruel and evil thing to do,” said Van den Bossche. “”This sort of thing should never happen again. We have been told lies and stories have been concocted. To lie to that extent is just awful.”

Valpied was awarded the Crufts honour in 2006 by beating 2,600 entrants who provide sitting, feeding, grooming and walking services for dogs and other pets.

Her website reads, in part: “The welfare of animals is always paramount in my life and goes far beyond the boundaries of business.”

No Paws Left Behind, an animal welfare group in Houston, has launched a drive to raise money to bury or build a memorial to Bob Emery, the Florida hurricane relief worker who was killed trying to rescue three dogs from a Houston freeway.

Meanwhile, the Houston Chronicle reported that the owners of the three dogs Emery was trying to rescue say they are grateful for his efforts.

“You just don’t meet people with hearts like that,” said the dogs’ owner, who the Chronicle identified only as Jackie.

Robert “Bob” Emery, 54, was killed the night of Sept. 27 when he was struck by a motorcycle as he tried to reach the three dogs, huddled on the East Freeway median. The dogs were later rescued by animal control officers.

Emery’s death has rallied animal lovers, who have vowed that Emery — who lived alone in a trailer in Florida until he was recently evicted – won’t be buried as a pauper, even if his family is never located, the Chronicle reported.

Emery had traveled to Texas as part of a crew of about a dozen men from Florida wanted to help in the hurricane relief efforts and make some money.

Jackie said she and her husband are senior citizens and lifelong animal lovers who took in two of the dogs after finding them abandoned as puppies in a Houston park. The third dog was also a young stray they had adopted.

The three dogs had escaped from their yard about two days before the accident.

By Wednesday, she had picked them from the city kennel. Two of the dogs, Honey and Nicky, were fine, but Sweetie, a reddish retriever mix had a badly mangled paw and is hardly able to walk.

The Houston nonprofit group, No Paws Left Behind, has been taking up a collection to hold a funeral or otherwise memorialize Emery. For information on how to contribute, click here.

A sad story just got a little sadder.

Bob Emery, the Hurricane Ike relief worker who died while trying to rescue three dogs trapped on an interstate highway, appears to be headed for a pauper’s funeral.

The 54-year-old repairman lived alone on Big Pine Key, Fla. He had a trailer with a view of the sea and was apparently estranged from family, the Houston Chronicle reported.

“We are trying to locate family to notify them of this person’s death,” said Beverly Begay, chief investigator with the Harris County Medical Examiner’s Office. If no family is found, and no one claims the body, it would be given a pauper’s burial, Begay said.

The three dogs Emery was trying to reach when he was struck by a motorcycle and killed were rescued by Houston animal-control officers and returned to their families.

Emery’s, meanwhile, has yet to be found.

“He lived in Big Pine alone, and didn’t have a wife or girlfriend that I know of,” said Sandy Downs, whose husband knew Emery for about five years. “I’m having trouble tracking down the rumor he had two older daughters.”

After a long day repairing damage from Hurricane Ike in Galveston, Robert “Bob” Emery and his work crew returned to their Houston motel ready to turn in.

But when Emery, 54, heard that three dogs were stranded in the emergency lane of the East Freeway, just in front of the motel, he dashed to the scene. Seconds later he was struck by a motorcycle and killed.

“Man, we can’t leave them dogs to die,” Emery’s co-workers recalled him saying late Saturday night.

Emery, according to the Houston Chronicle, was one of thousands of workers who descended on the Houston area after Ike.

“We came here on a good mission, but Bob died on an even better mission,” said Nick Downs, 42, among those Emery came from Florida with to help after the storm.

The 50-year-old motorcycle rider from Pasadena was taken to Ben Taub General Hospital with a possible broken arm, Houston police said.

The three dogs, found wearing collars and tags, were rescued by police and turned over to the city’s Bureau of Animal Regulation and Care.

“He’d bend over backwards and jump through a hoop for anyone,” said Billy Siegel, 24, a friend of Emery’s who said he shouted at him as the motorcycle approached. “He was trying to do a good deed, not anything drunk or stupid. He risked his life, and, of course, it cost him his life.”

Meera Nandlal, a spokeswoman for Houston’s SPCA, said thoughts and prayers go out to Emery’s friends and family. “Obviously, the guy had a huge heart, and went out there to help these animals, who couldn’t help themselves.”

    News reports claiming that two of Paris Hilton’s dogs had been killed by wild coyotes outside her home are not true, representatives for the celebrity heiress said late last week.
    The erroneous online reports said two of Hilton’s rumored 17 dogs had been left outside at night and attacked by coyotes. Turns out the reports wer phony.
    “They were at Paris’s house Wednesday in her recording studio, and all the dogs were playing and looked as healthy and happy as can be,” a representative for Hilton is quoted as telling People Magazine.

“Paris even had a doggie mansion built for them and it is very secured.”

When the initial  reports surfaced the news media showed it’s usual compassion for Hilton.

“Please, don’t let it be Tinkerbell! Please, NO!” wrote Los Angeles Times celebrity gossip blogger Elizabeth Snead.

Read more »

Linda Deris took her dog Daisy May to the PetSmart in Abingdon earlier this month to buy her a leash.

And something terrible happened.

Daisy May, a beagle-collie mix, approached another customer’s dog — described in an ABC2 report as a bulldog – and before anybody could stop it, the bulldog bit Daisy May on her back.

“He just chomped down on her back and started throwing her around like she was a rag doll,” Deris told the TV station.

Five people tried to stop the attack, but not soon enough. Daisy May died on the way to the veterinarians office. Deris said the bulldog’s owner was given a citation and allowed to take the dog home.

Jennifer Simmons, a spokeswoman for PetSmart, said in a statement, “This was an extremely unfortunate incident and came as a complete surprise to us and the pet parents of both dogs. To our knowledge … the dog did not show any signs of aggressive behavior during interactions with other people and pets.”

Commenters on the TV station’s website include one self-proclaimed witness who said the two dogs met and wagged their tails. “Then the two owners ceased to watch their dogs. Store associates observed the bulldog staring at the beagle, tail wagging, as if he was looking at a toy, which was when he grabbed the beagle around the scruff area, as if he had a toy.”

“While this was a tragic accident, and something I hope I never see again, the fact of the matter is that when you combine two unfamiliar dogs, and a lack of supervision, you’ve got a recipe for disaster,” the witness added.

Deris told the television station she’s been having nightmares about the attack and is on medication. She adopted a new dog last week. “She was an angel, she was my world,” she said of her dog. ”She just was the sweetest disposition you’d ever want.”