ohmidog!

Everybody who has seen Titanic, the movie, knows that it centers on a tragic love story.

Not everybody knows that, when the ship went down 100 years ago Saturday, it threatened to cut short at least 12 more, of the inter-species variety.

As Amy Worden reports in the Philadelphia Inquirer, that’s how many dogs boarded the Titanic for its fateful voyage in 1912. Three of them survived the tragedy.

One of them was Lily, a Pomeranian whose owner, Margaret Hays, 24 at the time, grabbed her from the cabin and wrapped her in a blanket before boarding a lifeboat.

Other, less lucky dogs were an Airedale named Kitty, who belonged to financier John Jacob Astor, and a fox terrier named Dog, owned by William Dulles, a Philadelphia attorney.

The dogs of Titanic are featured in an exhibit, RMS Titanic: 100 Years, that opened this week at the Widener Art Gallery at Widener University in Chester.

“Not a whole lot is known about the dogs,” said exhibit curator J. Joseph Edgette, a Titanic scholar and professor emeritus of education and folklore at Widener. “All belonged to first class passengers. When the rich and famous traveled they took their dogs with them.”

Since dogs were considered cargo there was no official list of those on board.

But Edgette, based on his research into the personal papers of passengers, created his own “pet manifest” listing the dogs, their names, breeds and owners.

All of the objects in the exhibit, which runs through May 12,  come from Edgette’s collection, including the photograph (above) of a group of Titanic dogs on the deck.

Edgette says one popular Titanic dog story turns out not to be true.

Capt. Edward Smith’s dog, Ben, did not go down the with ship. Ben spent the night before on the ship, but was taken to Smith’s home before it sailed from Southampton.

A California man was arrested Thursday on charges of killing a neighbor’s Chihuahua — with one swing of a golf club.

Barbara Hitchman said she found her dog, Lily, lying on the ground while driving through her neighborhood in Riverside. A neighbor told Hitchman that she saw another neighbor, 58-year-old Larry Jaurequi, strike the dog.

“She said he lined up as if he was doing a golf shot, and he just whopped her, and she said she went so far in the air, she did three summersaults and hit the pavement,” Hitchman told KABC in Riverside.

Hitchman went across the street to confront the man.

“I said, ‘You’re insane, you’re a psycho, you need locking away,’ and he said, ‘Try it, you better get out of here too.’”

Hitchman said Jaurequi also told her that her dog should not have been on the loose. Lily had escaped sometime earlier that day.

Jaurequi was arrested that night.

“I don’t believe this dog was a threat to this man in any way, he just for unknown reasons attacked the dog with a golf club,” said Riverside County Sheriff’s Department Cpl. Courtney Donowho.

Lily died at a veterinary clinic Friday morning.

Here’s a story with a happy ending and then some.

The residents of a group home for developmentally disabled adults in Belleville, Ill., were distraught when their adopted dog Gigi disappeared over the Christmas holiday.

Gigi had been rescued from the flooded Mississippi River in southeastern Missouri this summer and adopted from a humane society by residents of the group home.

The arrangement was working out well for all, according to Trudy Baxter, director of programs and services for the Epilepsy Foundation of Greater Southern Illinois.

“We are one of just a couple of agencies that actually have a pet for the individuals with disabilities who live in our homes,” she said. “Gigi has been a wonderful pet. The residents have participated in petting her, bathing her and walking her. She has been a big part of the successful program.”

But according to the Belleville News Democrat, Gigi slipped outside and disappeared over Christmas. Despite a search of the neighborhood, and a $50 reward, no one could find her.

Hearing about what happened, a couple in Florissant, Mo., offered to donate their dog, Lily, a beagle mix who suffers from seizures, to the group home.

But then Gigi was found and returned safely, the News Democrat reported yesterday.

The couple plans to follow through with the donation, anyway, and give Lily to another group home operated by the Epilepsy Foundation of Greater Southern Illinois.

Once again, an animal welfare organization in the UK is seeking a home for a blind dog and her guide dog — this time, a pair of pugs.

That’s Elly, the blind one, on the right. Franky, the black one, serves as her eyes, and the RSPCA in Newport is insisting that both be adopted into the same home, according to the BBC.

If Franky leaves her side, Elly sniffs him out, then nuzzles up to follow him wherever he goes.

“He looks out for her and provides support while guiding her on walks or to food or water,” said the Newport RSPCA’s manager, Elaine Buchan.

The story is reminiscent of one we reported three months ago, also in the UK, about two Great Danes in need of a new home — Lily, the blind one, and Maddison, the sighted one who helped her get around.

Similarly, Elly and Franky have been deemed inseparable.

“There’s absolutely no option of homing them separately as it would break their hearts and also be wholly impractical,” she said. “They’re great little dogs and I’m already jealous of the lucky owner who will get to care for such a loving pair.”

(Photo: BBC)

There’s cycling with your dog, and then there’s cycling with your dog.

Above is Abby, who commutes to work via bicycle with her human. She calmly lays, sits or stands there on a nice padded surface as her human does all the work. Lazy dog? Or smart dog?

In any case, she seems, in this video anyway, a low energy dog.

Cycling with a high energy dog? That’s another story, or at least another video.

Check out Lily, the official mascot for MtnRanks.com, a purveyor of outdoor gear in Park City, Utah:

An animal shelter has received hundreds of offers of help after seeking a new home for an inseparable pair of Great Danes — one blind, the other her guide dog.

The manager of Dogs Trust Shrewsbury said more than 200 people had responded since the shelter, near the Welsh town of Newport, publicized the pair’s need for a new home.

“It’s been phenomenal,” Louise Campbell said.

Campbell said that Lily, 6, came to rely on Maddison, 7, after a medical condition called entropion caused her eyelashes to grow into her eyeballs, leaving them so severely damaged that they had to be removed

Believed to be passed on genetically, the disorder is not uncommon among large breeds and and those with droopy eyelids, like shar-peis.

The pair reminds me of two Great Danes we visited in Charlotte, Skyler and Pierce — one half blind, one deaf, but together, a well functioning team.

Lily and Maddison, similarly, never stray far from each other.

“Everything they do involves close contact, they check in with each other all the time,” Campbell said. “They have developed such a strong bond, they always know what the other is doing, so we wouldn’t split them up, that would be quite unfair to both dogs.”

The Daily Mail (where you can find more great photos of the pair) reported that their original owner surrendered the dogs to the shelter “because she could no longer cope.”

A post in the article’s comment section, however, alleges that the owner “has gone to live in Cyprus with her boyfriend who owns a £750,000 house with 2 acres ground.” The comment is signed by members of a rescue organization.

(Photo: Dogs Trust of Shrewsbury)

Name: Lily

Age: 3 years

Breed: Goldendoodle

Encountered: At a street concert in downtown Winston-Salem, N.C.

Backstory: We ran into about five other dogs when we went to Saturday night’s “Summer on Trade” concert, including Lily, who, unlike some of our other Roadside Encounters, was actually on the road.

Several blocks are closed off for the summer weekend concerts, and Lily seemed happy to be there, drawing lots of admirers. Her humans have another dog at home, a 12-year-old Newfoundland, but she doesn’t get out as much as she used to.

(Roadside Encounters are a regular feature of Travels with Ace. To see them all, click here.)

You hear a lot these days about young couples foregoing parenthood and opting for a dog instead. You hear a lot, too, about young couples who take in a dog as practice for when a real baby comes along.

There’s  nothing wrong, in my view, with either.

What often gets ignored though — amid the kind of scoffing the dogless sometimes do at dog peoples’ commitment to their animals – is the fact that dogs, while not the equivalent of a child, do indeed prepare young couples for parenthood.

And that’s just the beginning.

After that, they go on to help those children grow up with a healthy respect for living things, teaching them about love and loyalty. And, after the kids depart, dogs help fill the void –  though usually not the same dog — of an empty nest.

They, like some brands of dog food, in fact, are there for all the cycles of our human lives — including the the onset of parenthood.

Rebecca Dube does beautiful job of describing how her dog helped prepare her for parenthood in this week’s Toronto’s Globe and Mail – in a piece whose writing was prompted, sadly, by death of the family’s beagle, Lily:

“My dog was my baby; and now that I have an actual baby, I see that my dog prepared me for motherhood far better than any of those What to Expect books.”

Rebecca and her husband adopted Lily from a rescue group, altering their lives in  numerous ways — from cleaning up shed hair to shifting their schedules, to dictating where to vacation and where to live — and once Lily got sick, affecting the budget as well.

Lily lived much longer with cancer than the three months her vet originally predicted, long enough to meet the newest addition to the family.

Rebecca writes that, once she became ill, they never questioned the time and money they were investing in her: “She was our baby … And then along came a real baby.

“Our son, Elijah, arrived 10 days early, and we brought him home on a Saturday night. All through my pregnancy, I’d hoped for the moment we finally got, when we introduced Elijah to Lily, and stroked his tiny baby hand against her soft fur. In my greedy heart I wanted them to have years together, for him to laugh at her wagging tail, for her to wait patiently for scraps beneath his high chair. But that tiny bit of grace would have to be enough. Lily died early Monday morning…

“My dog was my baby. She taught me that a slobbery, stinky creature could pee on my shoes, poop everywhere, complicate my life in a million aggravating ways – and at the same time inspire so much love that my heart felt like it would burst with happiness. She taught me and my husband how to go from two to three. She taught us how to be a family…

Rebecca writes that, when Elijah gets old enough to understand, she’ll show him the photos of him and Lily, “and tell him that for a few days he had the best dog a boy could ever want.”

(Photo: Elijah and Lily, Toronto Globe and Mail)

We told you at the beginning of this week about Ella, a young pup found wandering in Dundalk who was scooped up by a good samaritan.

We’re happy to report at the end of the week that Ella has a new home, in Baltimore’s Riverside neighborhood.

An employee of K-9 Kraving found the dog not far from her home. After knocking on doors in the area, and finding no one who claimed the dog, she took her home, with plans to drop her by a shelter.

When a friend offered to care for the five-month-old pup until a home was found, Ella, as she’d been dubbed by then, was brought to South Baltimore, stopping by my house on the way for a quick photo session.

After her photo and story appeared on ohmidog!, and was picked up by other blogs and spread on Facebook, a Riverside resident — deeming Ella too cute to pass up — contacted Ella’s foster mom.

He met Ella earlier this week, and planned to pick her up today to bring her to her new home, where she will be known as Lily.

Now, if only Miley could be that lucky.