ohmidog!

Police suspected a black mixed breed dog they were calling Lady — found last week with her eyes dangling out of her sockets in a parking lot in Bucks County, Pa. — had been struck with a baseball bat.

Since then – thanks to encountering some kinder humans — Lady has received veterinary care, a temporary home from a police dispatcher who overheard the call, and, this week, a reunion with the family whose home she escaped from.

Now, the 7-year-old dog who likely will never see again is being called by her real name again — Dusk.

“We’re happy to have her back,” Marie Waligorski told Phillyburbs.com. “We never expected to get her back this way.”

Dusk escaped from the family’s fence yard four days before she was found in a parking lot, just a few hundred feet from the family’s home in Bristol Township.

The citizen who found her called police Friday morning, and Jessica Finnell, a Bucks County emergency dispatcher listened in.

The caller said he found a dog with both eyes hanging out of the sockets. When he went on to say the dog was alive, Finnell contacted the animal control officer retrieving the dog and urged him not to let her be put down. And she offered to take the dog into her home in Warminster.

At CARES, an animal clinic in Middletown, a veterinarian put Lady’s eyes back into their sockets, but her left eyelid had to be heavily stitched to keep the damaged eye from falling out again. The vet found multiple skull fractures, but no injuries that would suggest she’d been hit by a car. Finnell was told  it’s likely someone hit Lady in the head with a bat.

After Lady received medical treatment, Finnell took her home for the weekend.

“She is phenomenal,” she said Monday night. “She is amazing. She is unbelievable. I totally fell in love with her.”

Finnell also started a ChipIn fund to cover Lady’s ongoing medical care, which has raised close to $3,000.

Finnell brought the dog back to the veterinary clinic yesterday, where she was reunited with her family. Dusk belongs to Waligorski’s son, William Schilling, who adopted her as a puppy when living in Tennessee.

“She was excited, tail-wagging. She seems happy that they were there,” said Finnell, a single mother of two. “I’m happy for her. I miss her like crazy, but I’m happy she is back in her home and can have some of her normal life back.”

(Photo: Lady/Dusk and Finnell; by Rick Kintzel / Phillyburbs.com)

When a dog who’d lived on the streets for three years got hit by a car in Roseville, Calif.,  a veterinarian treating her new injuries found evidence of some old ones.

X-rays showed the old dog, named Lady, had apparently been used for target practice and shot with a BB gun several times, said Karen Johnson, of the Johnson Ranch Veterinary Clinic.

Lady was about to be rescued from life on the streets when she was hit by a car.

Kristell Stout, who works in Roseville, had been feeding the dog for three years. When she left the job, she couldn’t bear the thought of not seeing Lady anymore and contacted an animal rescuing friend.

He was on her way to catch her when news came she’d been hit by a car, according to Fox40 in Sacramento.

A U.S. District Court jury in Chicago has awarded $330,000 to a family whose black Labrador, named Lady, was shot and killed during a 2009 police search of their home.

“That was my best friend,” the Chicago Sun-Times quoted Thomas Russell III as saying. “We did everything together.”

The Russell family sued the city of Chicago in January 2010, accusing police of excessive force, false arrest and inflicting intentional emotional harm. Police were searching for drugs, but found none.

During the 2009 search of the family’s apartment, Russell and his younger brother, Darren, were handcuffed and both had shotguns placed against their heads, their attorneys said.

At some point, Lady appeared and an officer shot her, the family’s lawyers said.

According to the Chicago Tribune, Thomas Russell asked police if he could  lock up Lady, who was 9 years old, but the request was denied.

When Lady came around the corner with her tail wagging, Officer Richard Antonsen shot the dog, according to the suit.

The jury awarded Thomas Russell $175,000, Darren Russell $85,000 and their parents $35,000 each. The jury also awarded the family $2,000 in punitive damages, levied against Antonsen for shooting the dog, and $1,000, against the police supervisor who made the decision to arrest Thomas Russell.

Jenny Hoyle, a city Law Department spokesperson, said, “The officers involved in this case were executing a valid search warrant when this incident occurred and were simply protecting themselves.”

“We are extremely disappointed and reviewing all of our options, Hoyle added. “In particular, we think the damages awarded to the plaintiffs were excessive.”

In that case, I’d suggest, think again.

It occured to me, when I heaved open the heavy metal door to the storage unit that has held most of my possessions for the past eight months — unveiling disarray, peppered with mouse poop – that what was revealed wasn’t just a metaphor for my life.

It was my life — up to now — in a box.

Virtually all my worldly possessions, except my dog — and, though he’s worldly, I don’t really possess him — are in there.

Cash value? Not much. Emotional value? Depends on which box you open. Overall importance? Given the fact that I didn’t miss any of it in eight months, next to nothing.

But when I moved out of my house in Baltimore to hit the road with my dog last May, I packed it all, and hauled it all, and stacked it all and secured it all with big strong lock.

Because, for me to be truly liberated, all my stuff had to be incarcerated.

We in the free world are slaves to our stuff. We are slaves to our jobs, which allow us to get more stuff. We are slaves to our mortgages, and utility bills, and the Internet and other technology we grow to depend on. Most of all, we are slaves to health insurance.

That, maybe more than anything — especially for those 40 and above — is why we stay in jobs we hate. Sometimes we hate them so much it makes us physically sick — especially when our workload quadruples so that stockholders can get a second yacht. But that’s OK because we have health insurance.

I gave up my regular job — with a salary and health insurance — more than two years ago at the age of 55. It was scary then. It’s scary now.

Unable to afford both health insurance and housing, I’ve opted to go with an alternative health plan whose protocol will be followed in the event of serious illness. It’s known as CIACAD (Crawl Into A Corner And Die.)

For my dental plan, I’ve chosen LTARAFO (Let Them All Rot And Fall Out).

For vision — it being more important than to me than life or chewing — I’ll likely pay my own way, as opposed to going with SAGAMG (Shutup And Get A Magnifying Glass).

I need to check into all these health insurance reforms, but my guess is whatever Obama-care benefits might apply to me probably, with my luck, are scheduled to kick in the day after I die.

But this post isn’t about death. It’s about life, and how we choose to live it — and how that, for most of us, is in a really big box, divided up into smaller boxes, some with plumbing and appliances, and all, of course, filled with stuff.

All my stuff, when it wasn’t scattered from room to room, fit nicely into a one-car-garage-sized storage compartment.

I started off loading it in a very organized manner, but running out of time, sped up to the point that much of it isn’t organized at all. Some boxes are labeled; others are mysteries. There are many boxes that say books, but there are only four or five books I need right now, and going through 20 boxes to find them – all of course trapped back at the very rear of the unit — would be a real time absorber.

So how is my storage unit a metaphor for my life?

First, it’s in disarray. I’m guessing an x-ray of my brain would look a lot like the inside of my storage unit. My stuff is not organized, not immediately locatable. My stuff is in limbo. My stuff, like me, has no idea where it will be a year from now.

There are some treasures in there. A baseball with Willie Mays’ autograph; photos of my son arriving from Korea; the goofy white cap I had to wear at my first job, selling burgers; my Pulitzer Prize (it’s just a sheet of paper); yellowed newspaper stories written nearly 35-plus years ago.

There are four or five boxes of strictly sentimental value. They contain memories. But I don’t remember where they are.

The stuff I need — certain books, forks, long underwear — are all buried somewhere at the back of the unit. The stuff I have no use for right now – my bicycle, golf clubs, tennis rackets — are all right at the front.

Part of me thinks it would be nice to have a place of my own, where I could unpack my stuff and organize it and live amongst it. Part of me thinks that would again make me a slave to my stuff, and all those previously mentioned other things that tie us down.

Here is what I am wondering — after the eight months Ace and I lived in a boat, trailer, tent, my car, cheap motel rooms, and the homes of friends and strangers as we traversed the U.S.:

Is what’s stuffed in that big metal box my life? Or, is my life over there, down that road winding into the horizon?

Do we treasure our past and present to the point that we shortchange our future? Is it possible, for those eking out an existence — as opposed to rolling in money — to have both security and adventure? Is it possible to properly nourish relationships with friends and family — in more than a superficial Facebook kind of way — without living right where they live?

In a way, it should be less complicated for me, having no “partner,” except for my big fuzzy one; having not just an empty nest, but no nest at all.

I should be able to figure this out.

If you’re wondering who that woman is in the back of the storage unit, that’s my beer sign lady — a cardboard cut-out, who, like much of my furniture, I rescued from a Dumpster. I picked her up last winter, but, in the months that followed, found her a bit one-dimensional and not at all good at conversation.

When I moved my stuff into storage, I assigned her the task of watching over it all.

She did a lousy job.

Somehow, all my (mostly) neatly stacked boxes started leaning, and teetering, and falling. She did nothing, and apparently wasn’t much help in scaring visiting mice away.

I think, when I finally do locate myself, I will get rid of her.

The bigger decision, though, is where I belong — warmly ensconced in a home of my own, or among the realm of vagabonds, like those RV nomads who kept their wanderlust in check until retirement kicked in and have been happily rolling along ever since?

When the road calls again, and I’m sure it will, will I answer?

“Putting My Trust in You”

Sexy voice … street smart

Kind, patient … You complete me,

GPS lady

(Highway Haiku is a collection of poetry, composed on the road, that appears semi-regularly in ”Travels with Ace. To see all of them, click here.)

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and family have put down Lady, the golden retriever they took in 10 years ago, when O’Malley was mayor of Baltimore.

Lady, who had been on medication for the past three years for a bad hip, was recently diagnosed with cancer, at 13.

The governor took the dog to a vet last month, after she became unable to climb the stairs to the bedroom, where she commonly slept on the floor on the governor’s side of the bed.

He shared the diagnosis with his wife, District Court Judge Katie O’Malley, who was at a conference in Russia.

They discussed waiting until the first lady’s return five days later but decided against that.  Lady was put down the following day, May 14.

“It would have been unfair to Lady,” Katie O’Malley told the Baltimore Sun. “Martin had to go all by himself and hold her in his arms while she went to sleep. It was very, very sad for the kids.”

Lady, whose image graced state highway maps and the governor’s Christmas cards, was taken in by the O’Malley family ten years ago when her owner, a friend of a friend, had to giver her up due to health problems.

But the governor’s mansion is still home to Rex, a cocker spaniel; Winston, a Yorkshire terrier-poodle mix; and two cats.

When Parley Nichols, 81, went missing from his home in Hartville, Ohio, his family wasn’t surprised to learn that the dog who never left his side was missing, too.

Six-year-old Lady, a golden retriever he bought as a puppy, was his constant companion.

Nichols, who suffered from dementia, had been missing for more than a week when a neighbor called his family to report that a dog had been heard barking in a field outside of town. After searching the area twice, the family found Nichols dead, and Lady at his side.

“Lady was standing by his side protecting him,”  Parley’s son Terry Nichols told PEOPLEpets.com. “We are sure that she never left my dad for seven days, staying alive by drinking water from the creek.”

Terry Nichols said the family had to pull Lady away from her master and place her in the back of their pickup truck. “I don’t know how dogs perceive things but she knew she had to stay with dad no matter what,” he said. “And she did.”

A preliminary autopsy conducted by the Stark County coroner found that Parley Nichols died of heart failure, and could have been dead for the full week.

Lady has moved in with other members of Nichols’ family.

“Lady seems fine now… she is a friendly, happy dog,” Nichols said. “I don’t know if she misses my dad, but she is responding well to the rest of us. She did the right thing for dad, and we will always be comforted by that.”

(Photos: WKYC-TV)

Friends, family and fellow dog walkers in Salem, Oregon, raised funds to have a new bench installed at a dog park in memory of Darrel Valentine.

Valentine, 74, who used to walk his dogs, Lady, Velvet and Nicky, in the park every morning, was attacked in another park while walking his dogs, and died in September of last year.

The bench was completed and unveiled Friday at Minto-Brown Island Park’s dog park, according to the Statesman Journal in Oregon. A plaque on the bench reads: “In memory of Darrel Valentine. Beloved dog park friend.”

“He was kind of an icon down here,” dog walker Deede James said. “He was down here about two hours every morning.”

Friends and family raised more than $1,000 for the bench. They gathered for its unveiling Friday afternoon, along with Carole Miller, Valentine’s sister, who brought Valentine’s two labs to the park as well. Two of the dogs, Lady and Velvet now live with her. A third, Nicky, was adopted after his death.

Valentine was walking his dogs early Sept. 12 near Santana Park in southeast Salem when he was attacked. A suspect was riding by on a bike and demanded cash from Valentine, who said he didn’t have any. The man attacked and beat Valentine, who died days later. No arrest has been made in the case.

Valentine, who served in the U.S. Marine Corps, devoted most of his time to his dogs after retirement.

“I think it is wonderful that everyone came together to do this,” said Mark Valentine, Darrel’s son. “It’s really nice.”

Celebrities and their pets are the subject of a new photo book by David Woo, a Texas photographer who says Steve Miller and his three dogs proved the most difficult image to capture.

Woo, a photographer for the Dallas Morning News, includes 91 celebritities — most of them with Texas connections — in the book, ”Top Dogs and Their Pets.”

Other subjects include Owen Wilson, Joe Cocker, Robert Wagner, Cesar Millan, Lisa Loeb, James Baker, Dr. Phil and Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the pilot propelled to fame by his emergency landing in the Hudson River, according to the Houston Chronicle.  All the photos are black and white, shot against a white background.

Woo said he spent four days at the home of his friend Miller, whose dogs — Lady, Daisy and Maisey — wouldn’t sit still.

Proceeds from Top Dogs and Their Pets go to the Cesar and Ilusion Millan Foundation.

(For more dog book news and reviews, visit our Good Dog Reads page.)

Petfinder.com has announced its annual ranking of the 10 most popular names for adoptable pets in 2009.

For the third year in a row, “Buddy” and “Max” came in at first and second for dogs, with “Lucy” and “Smokey” topping the list of cat names.

While many of the most common names have remained consistent year-to-year, there was one new name turning up on the list for both cats and dogs – “Bella.”

The top 10 dog names were: 1. Buddy; 2. Max; 3. Daisy; 4. Lucy; 5. Charlie; 6.  Bella; 7. Molly; 8. Jack; 9. Sadie; 10. Lady.

The top 10 cat names: 1. Lucy; 2. Smokey; 3. Midnight; 4. Bella; 5. Molly; 6. Daisy; 7. Oreo; 8. Shadow; 9. Charlie; 10. Angel.

Petfinder.com is also sharing its favorite quirky and unusual names of the year, selected from more than 170 submissions received via Facebook and Twitter.  Here are their favorites:

Shyanne Thailand Moo Goo Guy Pan, Mr. Tomfoolery Scardeycat Eliot, Rusty Buckets, KeelHaul, Too Fancy for You, Angry Donut, Maple Syrup, Hoseclamp, Prince Xavier Binxley, Hoku-ho’okele-wa’a.

“While funny names are always a big hit, we are also seeing a trend of pet parents giving their furry friends middle names, such as ‘Sunshine Ray,’ ‘Roxanna Bobanna Little’ and ‘Madison Wisconsin,’ suggesting that these animals are more like family members than family pets,” said Betsy Saul, the co-founder of Petfinder.com.

Petfinder.com is an online, searchable database of animals that need permanent homes, compiled from 12,900 animal shelters and adoption organizations across the USA, Canada and Mexico.