ohmidog!

A drunk driving arrest turned nasty in Mason, Michigan, when officers used pepper spray and Tasers to subdue a suspect, whose dog joined the skirmish and bit one of the officers on the leg.

Joel Vandouser, 43, was charged with operating while intoxicated,endangering a minor and resisting and obstructing police.

Mason Police Chief John Stressman said officers had spotted the suspect driving, apparently under the influence, with an 8-year-old child in the car. They followed him to his home, according to the Lansing State Journal, where the tussle took place.

Vandouser was taken to a local hospital afterwards. The bitten officers was also treated. News reports don’t indicate whether the dog was taken into custody, but the police chief noted that a pair of police uniform pants were ruined during the incident.

The roomate of Andrew David Thompson, the former medical student accused of killing 13 Italian greyhounds, said Thompson told her the first one “kind of strangled itself in its sleep.”

When the next two died — both, like the first, also named Kensington —  Chelsea Grimes says she became suspicious.

Grimes testified today during a preliminary hearing in East Lansing, one of two jurisdictions in which Thompson faces charges of killing a series of Italian greyhounds.

Grimes said Thompson, 24, sent her a cell phone photo of the first Kensington, but that by the time she moved in, on Labor Day of last year, the dog was gone.

Thompson, she testified, said he’d wrapped the dog in a blanket before going to sleep. “He said the dog had kind of strangled itself it its sleep.”

Grimes, a veterinary medicine student at Michigan State University, said she found the first death peculiar, the Lansing State Journal reported today. When two more Italian greyhound puppies disappeared that month under unusual circumstances, she grew more suspicious, and at one point searched his room.

In earlier testimony (see the video below), Ingham County Animal Control Deputy Jodi LeBombard testified, Thompson, said he killed the first puppy by slamming it against the wall. He said he was angry because the dog had urinated in his bedroom.

Thompson, who has been suspended by Michgan State University, was ordered to stand trial on charges he killed or tortured three Italian greyhound puppies in East Lansing. He faces up to four years in prison if convicted of those charges.

He is charged with killing ten more dogs in Mason, while living in a different apartment. A preliminary hearing in that case is set for next week.

Andrew David Thompson, the Michigan State University osteopathic medicine student suspended after he was charged with killing 13 dogs, expects to be reinstated to his school, his attorney said at a hearing yesterday.

Thompson, 24, has admitted killing 13 Italian greyhounds since September 2010, according to law enforcement officials, and said he did it “out of anger.” According to authorities, he said the dogs were disobedient and not housebroken.

Thompson, at yesterday’s hearing, waived his right to have a preliminary hearing within 14 days, according to the Lansing State Journal.

That hearing, now scheduled for Aug. 4, will determine if there is enough evidence for a trial. Thompson, wearing a dark green jail uniform, said he understood the charges against him. His attorney, Kimberly Savage, said Thompson has no adult or juvenile criminal record.

Thompson appeared before Judge Donald Allen in 55th District Court, where he faces 10 felony counts of killing animals at his apartment in Okemos. He also faces three additional counts in East Lansing.

The charges are punishable by up to four years in prison.

Thompson is being held at the Ingham County Jail on a $500,000 bond.

A second-year student at MSU’s College of Osteopathic Medicine, Thompson was suspended June 23 because of the allegations against him. He was charged the next day.

Officials said Thompson owned the Italian greyhounds that he killed, and had purchased them from out of state.

Authorities say 10 dogs were killed at Thompson’s Okemos apartment and three more were killed at an East Lansing complex across the street from MSU’s campus.

Andrew David Thompson, the Michigan State University student accused of slaying 13 Italian greyhounds, told investigators he killed them “out of anger,” according to court transcripts obtained by the Lansing State Journal.

The 24-year-old osteopathic medicine student, since suspended by the university, said he killed the dogs by throwing them to the ground or against a wall and by grabbing them by the neck and beating them.

“He (said) that he has killed every single one of these dogs except for two,” Ingham County Animal Control Deputy Jodi LeBombard testified at a June 24 hearing in 55th District Court that led to charges.

Thompson is charged with killing 13 dogs since September 2010.

Typically, he’d put a deceased dog in a garbage bag, along with its clothes, collars and other items, LeBombard testified. “He would cry all the way to the Dumpster, and throw it in the Dumpster,” she said.

Thompson faces 10 felony counts of animal killing in 55th District Court in Mason and three additional counts of animal killing in East Lansing’s 54B District Court. The charges are punishable by up to four years in prison.

He is being held at the Ingham County Jail on a $500,000 bond in the East Lansing case and a $100,000 bond in the Mason case.

Thompson faces an additional count of animal neglect because at least one of the dogs survived.

Officials didn’t say where Thompson bought the Italian greyhounds, a small and delicate breed that typically weighs 7 to 14 pounds.

According to the transcripts, Thompson was seeing a psychiatrist, who expressed concern that Thompson might be a suicide risk.

On his Facebook page, Thompson, who has 790 “friends,” says he attended Phoenix Christian High School in Arizona, then the University of Southern California, where his major was biochemistry. He lists his favorite book as The Bible and his interests as snowboarding and reading The Economist.

The investigation began on June 14, when animal control officials received an anonymous complaint that Thompson had been seen with numerous dogs that kept disappearing.

Several days later, investigators searched Thompson’s Okemos apartment and found a severely injured puppy in the closet.

Authorities also found evidence Thompson bought the dogs from outside Michigan and had them transported via airplane in carriers. Thompson previously lived in Goodyear, Ariz.

In a June 22 interview, Thompson told LeBombard he killed the dogs out of frustration or anger, often sparked when they defecated on his floor, urinated in his bed or wouldn’t come to him when he called them.

“And he got frustrated they didn’t want to stay with him,” LeBombard said, according to transcripts. “And that made him upset.”

It has been a long month for Mason, a terrier mix from Alabama.

First, he was swept away by the April 27 tornadoes when they passed through North Smithfield.

He survived, but with two broken legs, and managed to find his way back, using his two good legs to drag himself home, or to what was left of it. But by then, his family, who’d been searching for him and had all but given up, wasn’t there.

When they showed up the next week to sift through the debris, they found Mason waiting for them on the front porch. But the tornadoes had left their life in such disarray they didn’t feel they could care for him, and brought him to a shelter.

At the Birmingham-Jefferson County Animal Control Shelter, he was diagnosed with two fractures, according to WBRC.

Vets at the Vulcan Park Animal Clinic offered to lend a hand.

Last week vets performed surgery, using plates and pins to mend the legs and getting Mason started on what’s expected to be a long road to recovery.

The animal shelter was prepared to start seeking a new home for Mason, but now comes word — according to the clinic’s website — that his family, still in the process of rebuilding their lives, is ready to take him back.