ohmidog!

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.

Pirelli came into the world last year — bred to be a service dog, but born without one of his rear paws, apparently the result of the umbilical cord wrapping around it and cutting off circulation.

Despite that, he’d go on to serve — visiting schools to get across the message that appearances are meaningless and obstacles can be overcome

“I think the fact that he has a disability of his own is going to be incredible in teaching people that it’s irrelevant, that life is not about what your body can do. It’s about who you are on the inside not the outside, Jennifer Arnold, the founder of Canine Assistants in Alpharetta, Georgia, said at the time.

“I want Pirelli to go into schools and say when you judge whether or not you want someone to be your friend, don’t look at their bodies,” she told WWLP – 22 News. “That’s not where you need to look.”

Pirelli — named after a tire because “he needs a retread” — was outfitted with a temporary prosthetic and went on to spread some hope and inspiration.

Now, months later, it’s his turn to receive some: Through donations from those touched by his story, he’s getting a prosthetic foot — similar to the futuristic running blades worn by South African Olympian and double amputee Oscar Pistorius, NBC’s Today Show reported.

After earlier prosthetic devices proved less than perfect, the staff at Canine Assistants launched a fundraising campaign online, asking for donations to outfit Pirelli with a state-of-the-art carbon fiber paw.

While he is waiting for the surgery, Pirelli has been fitted with a plastic version of the carbon foot. The implantation of his permanent prosthesis will be done at North Carolina State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine.

The prosthesis — being built by Hangar Clinic, the company whose work in prosthetics helped inspire the recent film “Dolphin Tale” — will be implanted into his leg bone.

(Photo: Facebook)

Fiona Apple is postponing the South American leg of her worldwide tour to care for her dying pit bull, Janet.

The dog and Apple have been together for 14 years — since the singer was 21 and the dog was four months old.

Apple says the dog she adopted had been used for dogfighting and was found with a rope around her neck and bites across her face and ears.

The singer made the cancellation announcement in a handwritten letter posted on her website.

The dog has been ill for the past two years, with Addison’s Disease and a tumor in her chest.

Apple describes Nancy as “the most consistent relationship in her life … She is my best friend, and my mother, and my daughter, my benefactor, and she’s the one who taught me what love is.”

“I just can’t leave her now, please understand,” she adds in the letter. “If I go away again, I’m afraid she’ll die and I won’t have the honor of singing her to sleep, of escorting her out.”

She concluded the note with these words: “I’m staying home, and I am listening to her snore and wheeze, and reveling in the swampiest, most awful breath that ever emanated from an angel. And I am asking for your blessing.”

When Red’s hind legs went bad, Mike Mallory started using his.

Mallory — who suffered a traumatic brain injury after a car crash in 2001 and lives mostly on disability benefits he receives in Billings, Montana — learned last year his 5-year-old red heeler needed the anterior cruciate ligament in his left hind leg replaced.

Mallory was unable to afford the $3,000 surgery, but told a local veterinary hospital “I’ll figure something out.”

Dr. Ken Brown at the Animal Clinic of Billings agreed to give Red the operation he needed, and worry about the bill later.

Now, between Mallory’s fund-raising on the streets, and some friends who have helped him get donations over the Internet, enough money has been raised to pay the bill for fixing Red’s left hind leg.

Yesterday, though, Red was back at the vet to get the same procedure — on his right hind leg.

On Tuesday, Mallory hit the goal for Red’s first surgery — thanks in  large part to a Facebook page  and donations from people as far away as Germany, the Billings Gazette reported.

The surgery was performed in January, and the vet warned Mallory at the time that Red’s other hind leg would, sooner or later,  need the same procedure.

Red reported to the vet’s office yesterday for that, and once again the clinic said it would do the surgery and worry about the payments later.

For most  of the year Mallory has been carting Red around Billings in the  wagon. “Walking for Red” is the name of a campaign he created to cover the  surgery costs and raise awareness of pet emergencies.

Meanwhile, a Connecticut woman who learned of Mallory’s efforts has been helping him raise money via Facebook and other websites. “That man would walk across the world for his dog, and I really believe that,” Patty Daponte said.

As Mallory, who admits to having been a bit of a rambler and a loner, explains it, his dog, and the community’s response to his dog’s dilemma, have renewed his sagging faith and showed him there’s good in the world.

He says he was planning to move back home to Virginia and become a hermit living in the mountains, until Red came into his life.

“I’m a better man because of him,” said Mallory. “He’s the most loyal friend  I have. He’s made me more caring, more loving and more respectful.”

He was surprised, too, by the support he has received since his dog encountered hard times: “There’s a lot of love in this world,” he said. “I’ve seen that, and I want  to see more of it and spread more of it.”

Once Red recovers from his second surgery, Mallory plans to embark on a “walkabout” in which he and Red travel on foot to a yet-to-be-determined city out of the state to continue spreading awareness and raise money for people in similar situations, according to the Gazette.

When a reporter interviewed him earlier this week, Mallory was pulling Red in the bright yellow wagon while picking up trash from the streets.

He sees it as a way to repay the kindness people have shown him over the last few months.

“It’s just one of my ways of paying it forward,” he said.  ”I can’t pay it  back financially, so I do it this way.”

(Photo: James Woodcock / Billings Gazette)

A Massachusetts pit bull is being credited with pulling her owner off the railroad tracks, saving her from an oncoming freight train.

And that, lest you find it hard to believe, is according to both the driver of the train and the woman’s son, a Boston police officer.

The woman survived, uninjured, but the dog — named Lilly — was severely hurt and lost a front leg.

Boston police officer David Lanteigne said he rescued Lilly from a shelter to serve as a companion for his mother, who suffers from alcoholism.

“We saved her life and she saved my mom’s life,” he told WCVB in Boston.

Lanteigne’s mother, Christine Spain, apparently fell unconscious onto train tracks in Shirley last Wednesday.

When help arrived, Lilly was covered in blood but still standing guard over her owner.

Lilly was taken to an emergency animal hospital in Acton, and later to Angell Animal Medical Center in Boston.

“Lilly was either pushing or pulling my mother off the tracks,” said Lanteigne. “There wasn’t enough time and … just prior to the train making impact Lilly had intentionally gotten between the train and my mother, and had taken the hit.”

“I’m supposed to be the strong one. I’m supposed to be here for her, but she’s been so great, so tough through all this,” Lanteigne said of his dog. “It almost seems like she’s the one comforting me and being there for me and making me feel better.”

(Photo: Courtesy of Angell Animal Medical Center)

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.

Palm Beach County animal control officers seized a 10-year-old dog from a home in Belle Glade after her leg was reportedly cut off by her owner with a handsaw.

Luc Jean Baptiste, 48, was charged with felony animal cruelty after a witness said he duct-taped the dog’s mouth shut, hog-tied her, and sawed through her right front leg, the Palm Beach Post reports.

The witness told animal control officers that Baptiste removed the leg because the dog had injured it.

The dog also has a severe infection in her uterus, a sign that she has been used for frequent breeding, officials said.

Six other dogs and four puppies were also removed from the home, where sheriff’s deputies originally went to investigate a shooting.

Officials hope to repair the maimed dog’s leg and eventually put her up for adoption.

Animal control officials have named the pit bull mix Karma.

“I think that what goes around comes around,” said Animal Control Director Dianne Sauve. “I think whoever did this to this dog is going to be carrying a karmic debt for a long, long time.”

(Photos: Palm Beach County Animal Control)

A pitbull mix missing part of a rear leg was found last month by the side of some railroad tracks in Baltimore.

Today, she’s up and around, and scheduled to appear at a press conference where her sad but inspiring story will be told.

Baltimore City Animal Control picked the emaciated dog up Feb. 13. The bottom third of her rear leg was missing, leading officers to believe she had been hit by a train.

Staff at the Baltimore Animal Rescue & Care Shelter (BARCS), examined her, and promptly dubbed her Kisses because of her sweet disposition and all the licks she gave them, despite the pain she clearly had to be in.

As bleak as her outlook was, BARCS staff — “seeing her strength and will to live” — dipped into its Franky Fund, created to help homeless animals  in need of immediate medical care, in hopes she could be saved.

BARCS contacted Essex Middle River Veterinary Center, which agreed to take a look at the dog.

BARCS staff assumed Kisses would have the rest of her leg amputated, but Dr.  Joseph Zulty and his staff instead recommended closing the wound and raising funds to get her a prosthetic device.

The surgery was a success and Kisses has been fitted for a prosthetic. A member of the veterinary center staff took her home to provide foster care during her recovery, and BARCS reports that the hospital staff member plans to keep her.

BARCS & Essex Middle River Veterinary Center are holding a press conference this afternoon to tell the story of Kisses.

More information about the Franky Fund can be found at the BARCS website.

(Photo courtesy of BARCS)

An Arizona woman faces animal cruelty charges after allowing her injured dog to limp around on a bloody stump for nearly a year, police say.

The dog, who had been hit by a car, chewed off part of her own right front leg.

Police contacted Michelle Busse, 22, of Peoria, after someone complained that she had not gotten medical treatment for her dog, Carmela, according to the Phoenix New Times. She faces a felony charge of animal cruelty.

Busse told police that she consulted with a veterinarian after the accident, and was offered a payment plan, but decided against having the dog treated.

Busse turned the dog over to Peoria’s animal control unit. The dog was given veterinary care and later transferred to the Humane Society of Arizona, where a veterinarian amputated the remaining portion of her leg.

A boxer mix  is recovering after apparently being thrown from a Toledo freeway overpass.

No one actually saw what happened, the Toledo Blade reports, but X-rays of the dog showed extensive leg injuries that looked more consistent with a fall than getting hit by a car.

“It’s too bad she can’t just tell us what happened,” said Melissa Hagemann, office and personnel manager at Maumee Bay Veterinary Hospital in Oregon, Ohio, where the dog, who’s being called Gretel, is being treated.

Gretel was spotted on Interstate 280 by Julie Cox, an unemployed Oregon resident, as she took her son to school. She assumed the dog had been hit by a car and died.

On her way home, though, she saw two other women standing with the dog and stopped.

“They said that she had actually been in the middle of the road hobbling around on three legs and they stopped to get her to the side of the road,”  Cox said. “They helped me get her into my car and I took her to my vet.”

Dr. Kevin Soncrant, who named the dog Gretel, estimated she was between 4 and 6 years old. Soncrant and area KeyBanks were taking donations for the leg surgery that was scheduled to be performed Friday at West Suburban Animal Hospital.

The Toledo Area Humane Society is looking into the incident, but John Dinon, executive director, said that it might be difficult to confirm what happened, given there are no known witnesses.

The overpass has six- to eight-foot high chain-link fence on both sides.

Once Gretel recovers, she will be put up for adoption:

“We’ve already gotten calls from a lot of people interested in adopting her after she’s fully recovered,” Hagemann said. “She has a really good temperament and is going to make someone a great pet.”

(Photo: Toledo Blade)