ohmidog!

An 81-year-old man is crediting his Lhasa Apso with saving his life after he fell from a ridge into a deep pool of mud and clung to a bridge rail to keep from sinking as his dog ran for help.

Derek Ramsden was on vacation in Wales and taking his dogs for a walk when he fell.

He says his 18-year-old terrier mix took no action, but his seven-year-old Lhasa Apso, Toby, ran for a quarter of a mile and, just like Lassie, barked at park officials until they followed him back to the scene.

“I managed to get hold of a railing on the bridge. It was frightening. I could not get out and you can’t hold your grip for long at my age,” he told The Telegraph. “I was scared that I was going to tumble down the bank. I don’t like to think what would have happened if not for Toby. He definitely saved my life.”

“Toby is dedicated to both of us and I think he is a hero,” said Ramsden, from Halifax, West Yorks. “He’s my very own Lassie. He saved my life and I’m very grateful.”

Ramsden’s wife, Ada, who had not gone along for the walk at Bryowen Holiday Park, said she went searching for him after an hour and found him as he was being pulled to safety by park staff.

“He was covered in mud from head to foot. If he had let go he could have slipped down further. Toby saved him,” she said.

“The dog knew what it was doing. It ran past apartments through bushes and alerted security,” said park maintenance manager Ben Thompson. “The dog was leading the way and without the dog we would not have known he was there. That dog certainly has something about it.”

(Photo: Ross Parry / The Telegraph)

An Illinois man has been sentenced to 30 months in prison for beating his Lhasa Apso.

James Robert Wesolaski, 51, of Des Plaines, entered a guilty plea on torture and cruelty charges for pinning his small dog to the ground in front of his home in early June and punching him four or five times.

He was also ordered not to own a pet or live in a residence with any animal for 20 years, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Police, called to the home by witnesses, found the dog, named Teddy, with swollen, bleeding eyes and broken capillaries, indicating he had been choked.

Wesolaski told police that he was having a bad day and beat the dog because it got outside.

Police took the dog, along with two others inside the home, to Northwest Animal Hospital in Des Plaines, where they were treated. Teddy has made a full recovery and been adopted by a new family, as have Wesolaski’s other two dogs.

Authorities also said Wesolaski’s June arrest violated his probation from an incident earlier this year in which he admitted to trying to take a Taser away from a police officer.

Judge Lauren Edidin also advised Wesolaski to get anger-management counseling and treatment for alcohol abuse.

A bicyclist who said he was intimidated by an off-leash neighborhood dog doused it with gasoline and threatened to set in on fire.

Another pit bull story? Nope. The ferocious beast at the center of this confrontation – a nine-pound ball of fluff named Benny — was a Lhasa Apso. Earlier reports that labeled the dog a Shih Tzu were incorrect, his owner, Frank Perlongo, told MySuburbanLife.com.

Daniel Maskill, 53, of Riverside, Ill., was arrested and charged with misdemeanor counts of animal cruelty and assault after the Tuesday night confrontation. 

According to Riverside police, Maskill was bicycling home through Harrington Park with a can of gas he had just purchased gas for his lawnmower when he encountered the dog.

“He was upset it was off leash,” Riverside Chief Thomas Weitzel told the Chicago Tribune. “He said he felt intimidated.”

Maskill threatened to set the dog and its owner on fire, and, although he never struck a match, Maskill did douse the 9-pound dog with gas, Weitzel said.

Weitzel said the assault charge stemmed from Maskill’s alleged threat to the owner.

The owner told police he likes to let his dog romp in the park, but town rules require dogs be on leashes. The owner was issued a citation.

(Photo: This is not the Lhaso Apso involved in the incident, but one we met in our travels — Tugg, of Seattle)

A purebred flat-coated retriever won best in show, but it was a one-eyed mutt named Dudley, and his dazzling performance in an agility contest, that won over the crowd at Crufts — the pretentious, I mean presitigious, UK dog show that concluded this past weekend.

Dudley, a six-year-old Lhasa apso-pug mix who lost his eye as a pup, and later was given up by his owners,  won an official Crufts rosette for his performance in the agility ring, beating out other rescued dogs in the competition, according to the Southern Daily Echo.

While we’ve been known to poke fun at purebred dog shows, it’s good to see them — on both sides of the pond — opening things up to mixed breeds, like Dudley. And, if  the crowd reaction to him is any sign, it’s something they should do a lot more of.

“He was definitely the crowd’s favorite and got a huge cheer as he ran round,” Dudley’s owner, Lara Alford, from Southampton, said. “Over the last few days he has had so many admirers – he’s probably been one of the most photographed dogs at Crufts this year.”

Dudley had his right eye removed as a puppy because of an infection. At 14 months, his owners surrendered him at an animal adoption shelter.

Alford, shortly after adopting him, noticed his speed and maneuverability and began training him in agility. As they run the courses, she always stays on his left side, so he can see her.

At Crufts, the training paid off.  “It was one of the fastest rounds Dudley’s ever done,” she said.

More than 21,000 dogs vied for honors at Crufts, which opened Thursday. In the best-in-show competition, Jet, a flat-coated retriever, beat out a Petit Basset Griffon Vendeen, a German shepherd, a boxer, a wire fox terrier, a standard poodle and a bichon frise.

Name: Tugg

Breed: Lhasa Apso

Age: 16 months

Encountered: At Volunteer Park in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.

Backstory: “Joyful, dignified, mischievous and aloof.” That’s how the American Kennel Club describes the personality of the Lhasa Apso. The personality of Tugg — while he looks pretty dignified at left – may be completely different, for all I know.

I only spent a couple of minutes with him — most of that taking photographs, which he didn’t seem to mind at all — before his human, Amanda, took off.

The breed originated hundreds of years ago in the remote Himalayan Mountains, and served mainly to guard the homes of Tibetan nobility and Buddhist monasteries. Those were near the sacred city of Lhasa.

That explains the Lhasa, but what about the Apso? According to 5stardog.com, there are two theories.

One is that it comes from rapso, the Tibetan word for goat. Supposedly, the breed’s coat resembled that of the goats kept by Tibetan herders. Another is that because of the breed’s role guarding sacred places, ancient Tibetans referred to it as apso seng kye, which translates into “bark lion sentinel dog.”

I don’t know which, if either, is right.

The message I got from Tugg — whose face, to me, even without the setting sun dappling it, reflected both wisdom and inscrutability – was that he’d prefer the mystery to remain.

An Easton woman was reunited with her dog today, but not her car, after losing both to carjackers earlier this week.

Amy Gaffney, 46, says she rolled down her window to ask for directions from two young men in west Baltimore when one of them reached in and grabbed her Lhasa Apso-poodle mix, Jojo.

When she jumped out of her car to try and get her dog back, someone else jumped in and drove the car away. In only about a minute, both her dog and car had disappeared from sight.

Gaffney filed a police report and got a ride back to Easton, according to the Baltimore Sun.

At about 2 a.m. the next night, Melissa Garland found a dog wandering the street in west Baltimore. She coaxed the dog out from under a car and took him home. The next morning dropped the dog off at the Maryland SPCA.

Gaffney, meanwhile, had called the SPCA that morning to file a missing dog report. SPCA staff alerted her that her dog had been found, and she arrived to pick it up this morning.

“His tail was wagging like crazy and he was kissing me,” Gaffney says. “I was crying and so happy.”

After the story appeared in the Sun, several readers questioned what the Easton woman might have been up to in that section of the city — and some even went to the trouble of looking up her criminal record, which includes some drug charges.

As the Sun’s blog, “Unleashed” points out today, Gaffney admits to some run-ins with the law, but it’s still a heartwarming story.

Maybe something less than thorough — newspaper management these days prohibits reporters from that luxury –  but still slightly heartwarming.

Lucky, a 10-year-old Lhasa Apso, arrived at the Helen Woodward Animal Center in San Diego County as a textbook example of neglect.

Left alone in a back yard in Lancaster County, north of Los Angeles, his fur had grown so matted and full of burrs and stickers that he had difficulty walking, and even going to the bathroom. He was also found to have a heart murmur and a thyroid condition, both of which are now under control.

The center captured Lucky’s makeover on video, and reports that he is now available for adoption.

Helen Woodward Animal Center is a private, non-profit organization in San Diego County that, for over 30 years, has been committed to the philosophy of people helping animals and animals helping people.

Located on 12 acres in Rancho Santa Fe, it was founded by Helen Whittier Woodward, who formed it in 1972 to provide services that benefit the community through educational and therapeutic programs for people, and humane care and adoption for animals.

Here’s a look at the best in show competition at the National Dog Show, presented by Purina, and held over the holidays in Reading, Pa.

There were 1,505 dogs — 150 breeds — entered, and best in show went to Holly, an English pointer.

My votes for best supporting characters go to the Lhasa Apso who stopped in mid-strut to bring a little reality to the event, and to the johnny-on-the-spot staff member who, though the cameras didn’t catch the clean-up, was introduced by the announcer as “Peter Green, sanitary engineer.”