ohmidog!

A Jack Russell terrier is worth $1.11 less, but feeling much better, after 111 pennies he gulped down were removed from his stomach.

The 13-year-old dog, named Jack, underwent a two-hour operation at BluePearl Veterinary Partners.

The coins were fished out five at a time, said Jack’s owner, Tim Kelleher, who reported that Jack was back to normal after the operation:

“He’s driving me crazy again,” he said.

Kelleher who lives in Manhattan and works on Wall Street, said Jack climbed onto a desk to reach a bag that had a bagel in it, and knocked the change over the floor. He said Jack must have swallowed the pennies while licking the bagel crumbs off the floor.

When Jack became ill and started vomiting last Friday, Kelleher took him to the vet, where an X-ray showed the pennies clustered in his belly.

Surgery was advised because the zinc in the coins posed a lethal threat to the dog’s kidneys and liver.

“If Jack would not have had the pennies removed the consequences would have been fatal,” said Dr. Amy Zalcman, who helped treat the dog.

The New York Daily News reports that the dog’s owner let the vet keep the change.

After a dalmatian owner showed some spotty behavior in Central Park, he has been sued by the man who claims he was attacked by him — aptly enough, the owner of a pointer.

The New York Daily News reports that Jeffrey Drogin, owner of a German shorthaired pointer who has competed at Westminster, is suing the owner of the dalmatian he says he was trying to save his dog from.

Drogin said he had just pulled the dalmatian off his dog when the dalmatian’s owner, Ralph Wachtel, 74, “cold cocked and pummeled” him “without provocation or warning,” according to a Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit.

“His dog was on top of my dog, attacking my dog, and I lifted him off by the collar and was walking him away from the fight,” Drogin, a 59-year-old Manhattan engineer, told the Daily News.

Drogin said Wachtel punched him in the head, back and face, breaking one of his teeth. “I made a point of not hitting back. I didn’t want to hit a man that was 10 years older than me.”

Apparently there was some ill will between the dogs, and the dog owners, even before the March 8, 2012 incident, which the Daily News said led to assault charges against Wachtel.

Drogin said Wachtel’s dalmatians had previously gone after his dog Homer, and some of his puppies, too.

Drogin is seeking an unspecified monetary award.

The Daily News said no comment was offered by either Wachtel, or his wife — who the newspaper’s “puparazzi” confronted as she left the couple’s apartment to walk the dalmatians, Arrow and Target.

(Photo: Andrew Savulich / New York Daily News)

Eicher

An Amish man who shot a mother dog and her eight puppies told police in New York that he thought killing dogs was acceptable under his culture, as long as it was done out of sight and with discretion – or as he put it, “Shoot, shovel and shut up.”

“In the Amish it’s acceptable to put dogs down. I thought as long as you did it out back it was okay,” Jonathon Eicher reportedly told officers who arrested him and the breeder of the dogs in Wayne County.

The nine dead dogs were discovered in a ditch by a highway crew on January 17.

Also charged with animal cruely was Merlin Schmucker, 26, who owned and bred the Australian red heelers, but was unable to sell the dogs because, he said, they’d become too big.

Schmucker

Schmucker asked Eicher, his employee, to put the dogs down, said Wayne County District Attorney Rick Healy.

“This is simply a case of animal cruelty,” he said. “They can’t treat the animals the way they want to treat the animals; they must treat the animals humanely.”

Both Schmucker and Eicher were charged with nine counts of cruelty to animals , WHAM reported.

Schmucker told police he had “raised the dogs and couldn’t put them down myself so I asked Jonathan to do it.”

Eicher admitted killing the dogs with a .22-caliber rifle, police said.

The death of his owner during Hurricane Sandy has sent Lucas, a collie-shepherd mix, back to the same shelter he was adopted from about five years ago.

He’s grayer around the muzzle now than he was then — when a couple dropped him at the Staten Island animal care and control facility, saying they’d just had a baby and no longer had room for him.

This time, his route there was even sadder.

According to Examiner.com, Lucas remained by his dead owner’s side until they were both discovered in the aftermath of the superstorm.

A Facebook page for Lucas says he seems stressed and confused, and doesn’t like being caged. “When Lucas is out of the cage and outside his personality shines through. We think that a home with older children is best because he appears to have been in a home as a single dog with no other animals and is used to quiet.”

Rachael Ray is donating $500,000 to the ASPCA to help pets who were displaced, hurt or lost during Superstorm Sandy.

On top of that, Ray’s pet food company, Nutrish, is sending four tons of wet and dry dog food to help feed the animals affected by Sandy. It’s the largest donation ever by the company.

Ray announced the donations Friday, and again on her television program today. 

The $500,000 will be used by the ASPCA to lease a building that can be used as a central shelter for Sandy animals,  provide mobile veterinary services, hand out supplies and continue searching for lost pets.

Since Sandy, the ASPCA had rescued more than 250 animals and treated or provided supplies to nearly 6,000 in New York City and Long Island.

Ray teamed up with the ASPCA earlier thisyear for its $100,000 shelter challenge, a photo contest whose winners are to be announced this week.

Ray is also donating $100,000 to City Harvest and the Food Bank for New York City.

“When you make your living in food, you have to give back in the same way,” she said.

Ripped apart by Sandy, some New Yorkers and their pets have been lucky enough to reunite after the storm.

Here are photos of a few reunions, courtesy of PeoplePets.

Above is OTIS, a pit bull rescued by the Humane Society of the United States from a second floor apartment in Staten Island and reunited with his family at a local shelter.

PRECIOUS (above) and the three cats he lives with had to be left behind when LeeAnn Rivera and her seven children fled their Queens apartment. ASCPA responders rescued them from the completely flooded building and brought them to the Queens College evacuation shelter where the family is now living.

MAGGIE belongs to the Schramm family in Breezy Point, who lost everything in the storm — including her. The Finnish Spitz-shepherd mix was found wandering by photographer Ann Lewis, who took her in and created a Facebook page in an attempt to find her owners.  It worked, and Maggie and family were reunited.

You can see more reunion photos at PeoplePets.

Last night’s debate was a great opportunity to get the poop on the presidential candidates.

Here’s another: Metro Paws LLC is offering biodegradable dog poop bags emblazoned with the candidate of your choice — Romney or Obama, whoever you like the least.

They’re calling the marketing drive ”Smear Campaign.”

Here’s how they described their thinking in an email to ohmidog!:

“Whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, we can all agree that politics these days are a big stinkin’ mess. Smear Campaign poop bags give you the chance to let out a little political frustration every time you pick up after your pup.”

Political Dog Poop Bags can be ordered here, and sell for $14.99 for a package of four rolls, or 80 bags.

Metro Paws LLC is a New York-based family business that described itself as being “dog owners first and entrepreneurs second.”

Smear Campaign, the company says, is the only political degradable poop bag on the market. Metro Paws teamed up with RS Kmiec Design to make the bags. “Our message is fun, whimsical, and yet calls for all Americans to vote,” the website says.

They’re available in some stores, including New York’s Who’s Your Doggy?, a pet store in Fort Greene that is keeping track of which bags sell the most.

“Whoever sells the most will lose the Presidential election,” predicted the store’s manager, Julia Rosenfeld.

As of Monday afternoon, Patch.com in Fort Greene reported, Romney’s red poop bags were outselling their blue Democratic counterparts 24-8, according to a tally written on a dry erase board behind the store’s register.

Elevator surveillance cameras have once again caught an apparent dog abuser in the act.

Brian Freeman, 28, who police say is the man seen repeatedly kicking a pit bull mix in this Aug. 26 video, was arrested on charges of torturing and injuring an animal.

The New York Daily News reports charges were filed against Freeman Monday when he appeared in court on a marijuana possession charge.

The video was taken by a surveillance camera in an elevator at the Wagner Houses on E. 120th Street in Harlem.

Freeman was not the first to be charged with cruelty to animals after being identified on an elevator surveillance video.

Two years ago, Chris Grant was arrested and charged with animal cruelty after being recorded kicking a pomeranian-Chihuahua mix on an elevator at the Grant Houses.

Later the same month Tiara Davis, another resident of the Grant Houses was captured on video abusing her Pomeranian.

And last year, New York City police released a video of Irving Sanchez abusing his pit bull mix dog in an elevator at the Wagner Houses. Sanchez was charged with aggravated animal cruelty.

The city and PETA had offered a combined $7,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the latest incident.

Freeman, according to the Daily News, was recognized by detectives and identified. His arrest record includes charges for assault, robbery and marijuana possession.

Police said they don’t know the whereabouts of the victimized dog or Freeman’s relationship to it.

This video — and we warn that you might not want to watch it — shows New York City police shooting a pit bull that was seemingly trying to protect her owner, who was in the midst of a seizure.

It was an act that enraged many onlookers when it happened — on Aug. 13 –  and many more in the week since the video was posted on the Internet.

Most early reports about the incident were sketchy, and the facts — even 10 days later — still don’t seem to have fully come out. Other than these:

Lech Stankiewicz apparently suffered a seizure and ended up halfway on the sidewalk, halfway on the street. His dog Star stood by him.

As can be seen at the beginning of the video, a female bystander, apparently wanting to offer some assistance to the man, gets too close and is chased off by the dog. The dog then turns around and runs toward a police officer — one of at least two on the scene by then, both of whom had their guns drawn.

The first officer shoots the dog, and it appears the second one fires as well, leaving Star whimpering and writhing on the street.

The nine long minutes that follow are almost equally disturbing. No one goes to the aid of the dog, no one goes to the aid of the man, and police, whose numbers have swelled by then, seem concerned only with crowd control as both man and dog lay in the street.

Some websites were quick to report that Star had been “murdered” by police — like this outraged account on Gather.com – but she’s still alive.

Star was taken to Animal Care and Control (ACC) of NYC, but that organization saw fit, at least initially, to release no information.

The Lexus Project, which provides legal defense for dogs it thinks are being treated unfairly and is looking into the case, released a statement, but it didn’t say much either:

“We know that so many of you are concerned, worried and outraged about Star. This is an update and although I know you want more but please respect this is all we are permitted to say at this time. Star is very much alive and receiving medical care and holding her own. We will update as soon as we are permitted to. Thank you for your support and understanding.”

The video appeared on the Gothamist website and subsequently has been shown on many others.

Not to jump to too large a conclusion, but watching the video — and the inaction of authorities, other than shooting Star — suggests to me that police may need more  training for dealing with dogs, not to mention dealing with epileptic seizures.