ohmidog!

The New Yorker reports that a dognapping scare recently hit the city’s Upper West Side — leading to warning posters, email alerts, rumors and panic

“DOGNAPPING attempts in NYC with RAZOR and RANSOM—get dogs ON LEASHES—happening on West Side,” read the subject line of one email warning.

Although there was no mention of police confirmation, the “Talk of the Town” piece said various rumors included a two-man team at work, one of whom goes by on a bicycle, slices the leash with a razor, then pedals away with the dog — no small drive-by feat when you think about it. Later, the second man calls with a ransom demand.

Other theories were that dogs were being taken to supply research labs, or being used for dogfighting dogs to practice on. Most of the dogs, according to the rumors at least, were small purebreds.

“The thinking used to be that a dog would provide security, not require it,” the piece begins. “But this was before Paris Hilton’s Chihuahua, Tinkerbell, went missing, in 2004 … It was before Trouble, Leona Helmsley’s white Maltese, inherited, in quick succession, twelve million dollars, a series of death threats, and a six-figure bodyguard detail. It was before the former Post publisher Ken Chandler and his wife responded to the disappearance of their blond dachshund, Gus, by hiring a publicist and a private detective. And it was before the subject of the Secret Service’s future canine charge became a national fixation.”

The quick answer is no. Despite a recent boo boo — actually a boo boo repeated from 2006 — in one of her “dog-friendly” recipes, Rachel Ray, whether you find her endearing or annoying, appears to be a true dog person, dog lover and dog philanthropist.

That one of her recipes — reprinted alongside a profile of Ray in this month’s Modern Dog magazine — calls for onions, which can be toxic to dogs, was an unfortunate oversight, a result of either the conflicting information that’s out there or a reflection of Ray’s learning curve when it comes to canines.

The recipe in question, “Isaboo’s Butternut Squash Mac and Cheddar,” originally appeared in Ray’s own magazine, Every Day with Rachael Ray, which runs a “pet friendly” recipe in every issue — a meal you can make for both you and your dog to eat.

The macaroni and cheese dish, which calls for half an onion, was the first of those to appear in the magazine, back in March 2006.

Ray also has her own dog food company, Rachael Ray Nutrish, some of the profits from which go to her own rescue organization, as she’s quick to point out on her website:

“There are no fillers.  No junk.  Just lots of good, wholesome stuff. How cool is that? And you know me.  I’m all about giving back, so some of the proceeds from Rachael Ray Nutrish go to charities that take care of animals who have no one else to look out for them.  Wow.  How good do you feel now?”

But back to poisoning dogs.

After the onion episode came to light, we went back and checked all the “dog-friendly” recipes Ray has published in her magazine, starting in April 2006 — all 27 of them — and we’re pleased to report that none of them are likely to kill your dog.

True, some of them call for avocados, which are toxic to dogs, and scallions, which are toxic to dogs, and nutmeg, high levels of which can result in seizures, tremors, central nervous system problems and death.

But almost always those recipes point out — either in the ingredient list or in the directions — to use those items only in the human portions.

Read more »

Jasmine — the pit bull who went from Michael Vick’s dogfighting operation to life with a young family of four in suburban Baltimore — graces the cover of this month’s Sports Illustrated.

One of three Vick dogs turned over to the Baltimore rescue organization Recycled Love for rehabilitation, Jasmine ended up in the home of Catalina Stirling, a 35-year-old artist and Recycled Love volunteer who, upon first meeting Jasmine, crawled into the cage where the dog cowered beneath a blanket.

The Sports Illustrated article looks at what has become of the 51 dogs seized from Vick’s Virginia estate — dogs that even some animal welfare organizations were saying had been so brutalized that euthanasia, not rehabilitation, was the only solution.

Jasmine was likely born at Vick’s Bad Newz Kennels and, because of her youth, was a “bait dog,” used to provide practice matches for the fighting dogs, spending the rest of the time chained to a car axle in the nearby woods.

During evaluations of the Vick dogs, Jasmine was being considered for sanctuary with Best Friends in Utah, where the most severely traumatized dogs were sent, when Recycled Love volunteers went to see her and the other dogs being held at the Washington (DC) Animal Rescue League.

Stirling, seeing the dog under the blanket, crawled into the cage and began massaging and whispering to her, and Jasmine seemed to respond. The dog was turned over to Recycled Love, then sent to live with Stirling, her husband, two young children, two other dogs and a cat.

For months, Jasmine sat in her cage in Stirling’s house and refused to come out. “I had to pick her up and carry her outside so she could go to the bathroom,” Stirling says. “She wouldn’t even stand up until I had walked away. There’s a little hole in the yard, and once she was done, she would go lie in the hole.”

It was almost four months before Jasmine would get out of the cage by herself. Visits from another Vick dog living in Maryland, Sweet Pea, helped draw Jasmine out of her shell — enough so that after six months Stirling could finally take both dogs for a walk in a park near her house.

Jasmine is still fearful, the article says. She almost always walks with her head and tail down. She won’t let anyone approach her from behind, and she still spends most of the day in her pen, sitting there quietly, even thought the door is open.

In the end, 47 of the 51 Vick dogs were saved. Two died while in the shelters. One was destroyed because it was too violent; and another was euthanized for medical reasons. Twenty-two dogs went to Best Friends. The other 25 have been spread around the country. Ten went to California with BAD RAP. Fourteen of the 25 have been placed in permanent homes, and the rest are in foster care.

(To  learn more about the Vick dogs, you can check out ohmidog!’s earlier incarnation, Mutts.)

The rural North Texas town of Ferris — about 20 miles south of Dallas — has approved a policy that allows authorities to shoot “wild” roaming dogs.

Ferris City Manager David Chavez said the Ellis County town approved the policy because it was becoming a dumping ground for unwanted pets. People drive out to the country to release pets they no longer want, but the starving animals breed, form packs and wind up scavenging for food, he said.

Ferris Police Chief Frank Mooney said the city would shoot only “potentially violent dogs,” and only as a last resort — after attempts to humanely capture the animal had failed.

This is a case, once again, of dogs being punished for the acts of humans; it’s the sort of thing you might expect in Baghdad, or maybe Alaska; and it’s full of faulty reasoning.

Every dog (like every human) is “potentially violent,” especially when it sees a lynch mob coming after it. My dog once roamed the streets himself, and gentle as he is, I’m sure he might have given indications otherwise if someone came after him with a rope or pole, much less a shotgun, which the new policy permits. I’m not entirely sure smalltown Texas lawmen should be acting as judge, jury and executioner.

As you might expect, the new policy has enraged animal welfare advocates.

“It’s unfathomable to me that the city of Ferris just outlandishly wants to go out and shoot these stray dogs,” Niloofar Asgharian, a board member of the nonprofit Animal Connection of Texas, said in a story in the Dallas Morning News. “It doesn’t do anything except that these dogs end up dying a slow, miserable death.”

Animal welfare advocates have suggested trapping the animals and better enforcing laws that prohibit dumping dogs.

“It seems like a cruel punishment to the animal when the blame is on people,” said Sherwin Daryani, the executive director of Operation Kindness.

There are 50 to 100 feral dogs roaming Ferris’ streets, said Misty Clark, the city’s lone animal control officer.

The town of Ferris can be reached through this contact form.

(Image: From dallasartsreview.com, ”Stray Dog,” a painting by Roger Winter, an artist and teacher from Denison, Texas, who served on the faculty of SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts)

(Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared Friday, but was taken off the ohmidog! website after it recieved so many visits that our server crashed. That, and our subsequent transition to a new and more powerful server, explains any ohmidog! outage you may have experienced in the past few days. We’re back, stronger than ever, and just in time for the holidays. We weren’t about to let the glitch steal Christmas.)

Modern Dog magazine has pulled a Rachel Ray recipe billed as dog-friendly from their website after realizing it called for onions, which can be toxic to dogs.

The recipe accompanied a fawning article about Ray, her “stratospheric” rise to fame via the Food Network, her love for dogs and her new line of dog food, “Rachael Ray Nutrish:”

“Other celebrities may opt for a namesake clothing line, but for an animal lover like Ray, this is far more gratifying … The same qualities that make Ray’s signature dishes appealing are present in her new line of dog food and snacks: they’re made of fresh, real food.”

At the bottom of the article a Ray recipe appeared for “Isaboo’s Butternut Squash Mac and Cheddar,” which calls for half an onion.

“I know it sounds odd, but my girl loved butternut squash!” Ray writes in introducing the recipe. “One of the most comforting traits of our puppy Isaboo is that she’s crazy-nuts for butternut squash, too. Using frozen squash makes this sweet, creamy pasta possible year-round. Always check with your vet about which foods are appropriate for you to share with your pet.”

But apparently neither Ray nor the editors at Modern Dog checked the ingredients of the recipe, which has since been taken off line. You can see the current version of the article here, the cached (original) version here.

This mistake, and remake of the web page — without the recipe — was pointed out by Devouring Seattle, a food blog published by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

A Texas lawmaker has asked the state attorney general to issue an opinion on whether local officials have the authority to pass laws banning or regulating specific breeds of dogs.

In a letter to Attorney General Greg Abbott, Republican state Rep. Tony Goolsby requested an opinion to clarify a state law that cities and counties have interpreted as preventing them from targeting breeds.

He wrote that confusion caused by “varying interpretations” of the law has stopped local governments wanting to pursue such measures, according to the Houston Chronicle.

Read more »

In a year’s time, Chiara Sforza went from bank vice president to dogwalker — not that we at ohmidog! see that, in terms of honorable professions, as any sort of a plunge — and she wrote about her unexpected change in career paths in Sunday’s New York Times.

Sforza had been with Deutsche Bank for eight years. She was laid off in the summer of 2007 when the work her department did was outsourced to Manilla.

After collecting unemployment, and being rejected as “over-qualified” by many employers, she ended up six months ago in the employ of Fetch Pet Care of New Jersey Gold Coast in Fort Lee.

“Pet-sitting and dog-walking give me an opportunity to do something different,” she wrote in a first person feature the Times calls “Preoccupations.” I’m tired of going to work every day in jobs where I have to worry if my position is going to be outsourced, and the new job is actually working out well…

“I don’t make anywhere near my corporate salary, but this job is perfect for now. I have a little flexibility because I have savings. Being happy while making some money is more important to me right now than making a lot of money and being miserable. At this stage in my life I’m willing to make the sacrifice …  I get so much gratification from walking dogs. They’re so appreciative of the simplest things you do for them.”

It’s getting nasty out there. But it’s nice to know that at least in some cases, when one door closes, another one does indeed open — and it’s nicer yet when there’s a dog behind it.

There’s a media firestorm rising out of vice-president-elect Joe Biden’s purchase of a German shepherd pup from a Pennsylvania breeder, but, as with many media firestorms, this one may be more smoke than fire.

At its center is this question: Did Joe Biden by his dog from a puppy mill?

Puppy mill is a subjective term. Some use it to describe large scale breeding operations where the welfare of dogs runs a distant second to making a profit. Some use it to describe any commercial breeding operation.

Linda Brown owner of the kennel in Chester County, Pa., insists that violations found after Biden purchased his dog — during a regularly scheduled inspection — mostly pertained to record-keeping, and she says they were the first she ever received.

That hasn’t stopped either over-zealous animal rights activists, or overworked journalists, from slapping the “puppy mill” label on Brown’s operation.

“Joe Biden hooks up with bad dog breeder,” read the headline in yesterday’s Baltimore Examiner — or at least in its online version. The story beneath the headline doesn’t substantiate that at all. Read more »

Five dogs — four pups and their mother — were killed in a fire early today at a pet grooming store in the Chicago suburb of Romeoville.

Eight dogs and a few birds were rescued.

A passerby who was visiting a nearby 7-Eleven convenient store noticed smoke coming from the back of Suzette’s Dog Grooming and called 911 about midnight, according to the Associated Press.

Fire crews forced their way inside and began to search for the fire, which appeared to have started in a storage or bathroom in the one-story building, officials said. Four puppies and their mother in the room where the fire started perished, but firefighters rescued eight other dogs and some birds that were in a cage.

Say what you will about our soon to depart from office president, the man has got pretty good reaction time, and was far cooler under pressure than I would have expected — considering the shoes hurled at his head today in Baghdad by an Iraqi journalist appear to miss their mark by only inches.

He was calm, if not overly articulate in the immediate aftermath, and even came up with a witty remark a little later. “I’m OK,” he said. “All I can report is it is a size 10.”

“This is your farewell kiss, you dog!” the shoe hurler shouted in Arabic as he threw his shoes, according to the Associated Press.