ohmidog!

After a dalmatian owner showed some spotty behavior in Central Park, he has been sued by the man who claims he was attacked by him — aptly enough, the owner of a pointer.

The New York Daily News reports that Jeffrey Drogin, owner of a German shorthaired pointer who has competed at Westminster, is suing the owner of the dalmatian he says he was trying to save his dog from.

Drogin said he had just pulled the dalmatian off his dog when the dalmatian’s owner, Ralph Wachtel, 74, “cold cocked and pummeled” him “without provocation or warning,” according to a Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit.

“His dog was on top of my dog, attacking my dog, and I lifted him off by the collar and was walking him away from the fight,” Drogin, a 59-year-old Manhattan engineer, told the Daily News.

Drogin said Wachtel punched him in the head, back and face, breaking one of his teeth. “I made a point of not hitting back. I didn’t want to hit a man that was 10 years older than me.”

Apparently there was some ill will between the dogs, and the dog owners, even before the March 8, 2012 incident, which the Daily News said led to assault charges against Wachtel.

Drogin said Wachtel’s dalmatians had previously gone after his dog Homer, and some of his puppies, too.

Drogin is seeking an unspecified monetary award.

The Daily News said no comment was offered by either Wachtel, or his wife — who the newspaper’s “puparazzi” confronted as she left the couple’s apartment to walk the dalmatians, Arrow and Target.

(Photo: Andrew Savulich / New York Daily News)

Ten thousand dollars worth of supplies were stolen from a California rescue organization that helps homeless and low-income people care for their pets.

Mohave Desert Animal Rescue, based in the Victorville area, said their warehouse in Apple Valley was broken into twice over the weekend.

The organization’s founder, Annie Lancaster, said the stolen supplies would have lasted for a year, and if there aren’t enough new donations, the non-profit organization may have to close.

The rescue provides food, leashes and care so the homeless, sick and recently unemployed can keep their pets. It also dispenses clothes, toiletries, sleeping bags and tents to the homeless, according to KABC in Los Angeles, which last year featured the organization in its “Pay It Forward” campaign.

“How low on the food chain do you have to go to find somebody who will steal from homeless people and their animals?” Lancaster said.  “It makes me sick.”

“One thing people don’t seem to realize about homeless people is they take incredible care of their animals,” Lancaster added. “They’ll go hungry to feed their own animals. That pet is their everything, it’s their heart, it’s their best friend, it’s their confidante.”

Using a stun gun to subdue a man whose dog was unleashed was not a violation of policy, the National Park Service says.

The park service’s Office of Professional Responsibility cleared ranger Sarah Cavallaro of potential discipline in April, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Tuesday.

Cavallaro used a stun gun on Gary Hesterberg, 51, after detaining him for walking at least one of his dogs without a leash in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in January. She said Hesterberg gave her a false name and refused repeated orders to remain at the scene.

This week, Rep. Jackie Speier released a letter she received from Frank Dean, the general superintendent of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. It said Cavallaro’s use of the stun gun was “within policy and consistent with the training she received.”

Speier, who believes using the stun gun “reeks of inappropriate use of power,” has been trying  to get the park service to discuss the findings of its investigation into the incident since April, but had been told they are confidential.

“…The way the (park service) has handled it since they’ve completed the investigation reflects a sense of arrogance,” she said.

Hesterberg was arrested on suspicion of failing to obey a lawful order, having dogs off-leash and providing false information, but San Mateo County prosecutors declined to charge him.

A lawyer representing Hesterberg filed a $500,000 claim with the park service last month.

(Photo: San Francisco Chronicle)

When her 55-pound dog, Moses, tugged too hard on his leash, Megan Wiersma went flying — down her back steps and landing face first on the deck.

“I could feel it right away,” she told the Daily Herald in suburban Chicago. “I was fearing the worst.”

Wiersma, 37, broke her left front tooth in the spill. And it was all the fault of Moses.

The next day, Sunday, she called her dentist in Barrington, Dr. Russ Fitton, who encouraged her to find the missing chunk of tooth and bring it in.

She searched the backyard, but couldn’t locate it.

It was later Sunday afternoon, after being let out in the backyard, that Moses came back inside and dropped something at Wiersma’s feet. It was the missing piece of tooth — about 3 millimeters by 2 millimeters in side.

Wiersma said she isn’t surprised Moses found the chunk of tooth. But she is surprised he didn’t eat it.

“He eats everything,” she said.

The dentist cemented the piece of tooth back in place, returning Wiersma’s smile to its natural state.

Moses is forgiven.

(Photo: Mark Welsh / Daily Herald)

A lot of the conclusions of a new dog walking study conducted in the Czech Republic fall into the category of “what else is new:”

Leashed dogs are likely to act more aggressively. Dogs, researchers ascertained, like to sniff other dogs, especially those of the opposite sex.

But here’s one fascinating finding that I think is worth much more research: Dogs being walked by men are four times more likely to threaten and bite other dogs.

That’s pretty stunning, and merits further investigation — into dog, into man, but even moreso into dogs’ abilities to read our emotions, better even, perhaps, than we can read our own.

The study, to be published in the journal Applied Animal Behavior Science, found that the sex of the owner had the biggest effect on whether or not a dog will threaten or bite another dog.

“We propose that the occurrence of threat and biting in dogs on a walk may have some connection with aggressive tendencies and/or impulsivity in people,” Petr Rezac and his team at Mendel University wrote.

They add: “Dogs are able to perceive subtle messages of threat emitted by another dog. Simultaneously, dogs are unusually skilled at reading human social and communicative behavior.”

Rezac is an associate professor in the Department of Animal Morphology, Physiology and Genetics. He and his colleagues studied close to 2,000 dog-dog interactions on owner-led walks held in the city of Brno, according to Discovery News.

What they observed the most, as you might expect, was sniffing and peeing. And most of the researchers’ conclusions are already known by anyone with a dog:

Males sniff females more often, males and females prefer play with each other than with members of their own sex, adult males mark the most, puppies play together more than twice as often as adults, dogs prefer to play with similarly sized individuals and dogs tend to be more aggressive when restrained by a leash.

(Scientists, meanwhile, according to my own observations, are prone to sniffing, scratching their heads and marking their turf. They don’t have time to play, and tend to be aggressive when their funding is threatened. They should almost always be leashed.)

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, in the process of trying to figure dogs out, man learned a thing or two about his own self?

I think much helpful-to-humans information is there, inside dogs, but it mostly goes untapped — because we speak different languages, because we don’t often look for it, and for reasons of focus. Scientists, like detectives building a case against a suspect, sometimes develop tunnel vision, to the extent that bigger, broader potential revelations, and sometimes ethics and boundaries, go ignored.

The Czech study, for example, leads me to wonder whether, in addition to studying the dogs, scientists might want to pay closer attention to those dog walkers, and all the baggage and pent-up hostilities they may be carrying around — whether they have those emotions on a leash, or too tight a leash, or no leash at all.

I don’t think it’s a Czech thing. And, in my experience, it’s not a gender thing. Generally, I’ve found that the most tightly wound pet owners — male or female — have the most unpredictable dogs.

Dogs, in large part, mirror their owners.

But their powers go far beyond mere reflection. Let’s go back to those pent-up hostilities. Sometimes they are undectable to psychiatrists. Sometimes they are undectable to the person they are pent-up in. Yet dogs have the power to sense them, and sometimes to calm them.

I’m not saying dogs know more than scientists — or am I? — only that dogs sense and know things we don’t. If only we could figure out a non-intrusive and polite way to ask the dogs to share with us all the things they have the power to sense — things that, even with all our scientific instruments, we humans can’t.

Maybe then — leashed or unleashed, male or female, dog or human — we could all just get along.

(Photo: By John Woestendiek)

(PS: The dogs pictured above were playing, not fighting)

Just when you thought the pet gear market couldn’t get any more precious, Martha Stewart and Crate & Barrell have launched new lines of upscale doggie products to further spoil our pooches.

Crate & Barrel is offering “a colorful pet gear line, which includes toys, beds, collars, leashes and more — all under $70,” according to PeoplePets.

It reports: “While we love the patterned cotton bones and catnip-filled mice, our pets are drooling over the dishwasher-safe porcelain bowls ($6.95-$14.95) adorned with conversation bubbles that say “Woof,” “Ruff” and “Meow.” Porcelain treat jars ($14.95-$19.95) are another charming accent for your kitchen. Dog jars feature a black-and-white fire hydrant motif and a bone-shaped handle, while the cat ones have fish and mice graphics and a fish-shaped handle.”

The new line is available in stores and on the Crate & Barrel website.

Martha, meanwhile — shown above during the taping of a commercial — has teamed up with PetSmart to premiere her Martha Stewart Pets line, which includes bowls, feeders, tote bags, toys, collars, leashes, beds and grooming accessories, all “designed with dogs and their owners in mind.”

John Travolta’s two family dogs were killed after being struck by an airport service vehicle at Maine’s Bangor International Airport.

Both dogs were being walked on leashes while Travolta’s jet was parked on an airport tarmac for refueling.

In a statement released to the Bangor Daily News, city officials said, “An airport service pickup truck was approaching the airplane to service the airplane and did not see the dogs. Unfortunately, the dogs were struck and killed. The airport is investigating the accident. Out of respect for the family’s privacy the city will make no further comment.”

The death of the two dogs comes a little more than a year after Travolta and his wife, actress Kelly Preston, lost their son, Jett, who died after suffering from a seizure while vacationing with them in the Bahamas.

Travolta is a licensed pilot and owns a home in Islesboro, a small coastal town in Maine. It was unclear who was on the plane or if Travolta was in the cockpit, CBS News reported.

Every once in a while an invention comes along that seems quite brilliant, makes life easier for a while then — with more frequent use — turns out to be more trouble than its worth.

Such, I think, is the case with the retractable leash.

After one brush with death — fortunately not my own — and lots of time spent disentangling other pets and my own, I put my retractable leash away more than a year ago, and haven’t used it since.

I had bought it at the recommendation of a friend, but after several uses, the disadvantages (entanglements, rope burns and the flying hockey puck effect) seemed to outweigh the advantages (giving the dog a wee bit more freedom, having my arm nearly jerked off less often.)

Evidence is mounting that retractable leashes — technically illegal in Baltimore, as they extend more than the mandated 8 foot leash maximum — may not be as good an idea as they originally appeared.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has announced one recall of retractable leashes. Last September, 223,000 “Slydog” brand retractable leashes were found to have metal clips that broke and flew off — like the one that struck and became lodged in the eye of Dereka Williams, a Dallas-area girl whose family has filed a lawsuit against Worldwise, Inc., the maker of the SlyDog retractable leash.

“She was like, ‘Mom, I can’t see! I can’t see!’” her mother Joy Williams told ABCNews.com. 

Slydog has since fixed the problem and changed to plastic clips.

But according to the March 5, 2009 issue of Consumer Reports, retractable leashes — often banned from many dog events — have been causing ongoing injuries for years.

Read more »

The man who spearheaded a change in the leash law in Ogunquit, Maine, allowing dogs to be off-leash if they are under voice conrol, has gotten two more tickets — for letting his dogs off their leashes.

Voters approved a change in the town’s leash law, allowing dogs to be off their leash in certain public areas. But John Mixon, who circulated the petitions that led to the referendum, says not only has the town not implemented the new law, they are targeting him because of it.

Mixon has run with his dogs in Ogunquit for thirty years — without ever receiving a citation. He says he decided to change the law so he would no longer be breaking it. The new law passed by more than one hundred votes. But three days later he was ticketed for having a dog off leash. He has since been issued two more.

He wrote ohmidog! after receiving the second one: “I have been running with my dogs here for 25 years without ever being bothered. Then when you try to legally change the law this is what you get– TICKETS.”

Since then, TV station WCSH reports, he’s received a third. (Click the small play button at the bottom of the video to make it work.)

Mixon says the people have spoken and the town needs to listen.

“This isn’t just about a dog and a leash, this is about democracy. When we vote on an issue it should be implemented. The board of selectmen, the town manager, the police department and the animal control officer don’t seem to get that.”

The town says they have been working on procedures and protocols to allow dog owners to have their dogs off leash, but that it has taken time to create the authorization.