ohmidog!

Channel 2 Action News took a look at how often police officers in the Atlanta metropolitan area shot dogs in the course of their duties, and counted nearly 100 cases in the past two years.

Animal rights activists in Moscow are pleading with Russia’s president to reject a plan to banish 26,000 stray dogs from the city.

The dogs would be sent to a facility far outside the city that critics say will be cramped, unhealthy and largely unmonitored.

About 50 activists lined up outside the presidential administration building Wednesday to submit signed petitions to President Dmitry Medvedev asking that the plan — while temporarily on hold — be permanently abandoned, the Associated Press reports.

“We’ve come here today to ask him to protect Moscow’s dogs,” said Yelena Nadyozhkina, an activist with Russian group Save the Animals.

Under the plan — and heavy-handed as it is, it’s still a tad more enlightened than that underway in Fayetteville, N.C. — strays would be rounded up and sent to a camp in the Yaroslavl region, about 150 miles northeast of the city.

“It’s far enough from Moscow that we won’t be able to go there, observe them or control how the animals are fed and taken care of,” said Lyudmila Fokina, a volunteer at one of Moscow’s animal shelters. “The animals will just die there. We won’t know about it, and the money will continue to finance the facility.”

Stray dogs roam the Russian capital mostly at will, including the city’s subway stations where they can sometimes be seen riding the trains.

Dog lovers, including some Russian celebrities, have been petitioning City Hall to abandon the plan since February. But activists say city officials have been slow to respond to their concerns. “After half a year, they still haven’t given us any response,” Fokina said. “We want a written answer confirming that the dogs will not be sent anywhere.”

The petition also urges the city to allocate funds for more dog shelters in Moscow.

(Photo: Masha Guskova, an animal rights activist, sits with her dog, holding a sign saying “What are we killed for?” at a protest in Moscow, Wednesday. By Sofia Javed / Associated Press)

One dog came to the aid of another last week, leading rescuers to a drainage pipe where a 15-year-old miniature schnauzer named Casper had been stuck for up to three days.

The hero? A rat terrier named Rowdy, who belongs to a neighbor.

“He caught the scent and he just started barking, barking, barking,” said Rowdy’s owner, Patty Monk, whose dog led her to the 8-inch wide storm drain pipe in which Casper was stuck.

Seeing Casper inside, Monk, who is friends with Casper’s owners, ran a block to their home and notified them. They sought help from the Sacramento Metro Fire Department.

Firefighters, not wanting to injure the dog, wrapped a teddy bear around the end of a fire hose to push him out the end of the pipe.

Casper’s owners, who had searched for days and put up posters after Casper went missing, took him to a nearby animal hospital to have him checked out.

“We have one of these storm drains right in front of our house. He may have fallen in that one and crawled all the way here, we don’t know,” said Wayne Hernandez.

“We’ve been kind of taking him for granted, he’s been around for so long,” Hernandez told News 10 in Sacramento. “But we’re going to have to try and pamper him a little more. He deserves it after this.”

Commuters in Moscow share the subway with stray dogs — and that’s just one of the ways dogs (and people) have adapted to the changing city.

Dogs were barred from Moscow’s metro in Soviet times, but now they are a common sight, curling up on empty seats, lounging in stations and — like the one in the video above — hopping on and off subway cars at their leisure.

The Wall Street Journal had an excellent story on the phenomenon about a year ago. There’s also a website about the subway dogs — www.metrodog.ru.

“The behavior of stray dogs is like theater,” says Alexei Vereshchagin, one of several zoologists studying Moscow’s strays.

Read more »

A Metro bus driver in Washington D.C. stepped out of his bus and punched McGruff the Crime Dog.

Driver Shawn Brim, 38, told police he thought his act was funny, but children who witnessed it were reportedly horrified, according to the Associated Press.

Brim got back on his bus and drove away after taking a whack at McGruff, who was actually police officer Tyrone Hardy. Hardy, dressed as the crime dog, was handing out fliers to children.

Brim was later pulled over and charged with simple assault. He will also undergo drug and alcohol testing and his future with the agency is under review, a public transportation spokesperson said.