ohmidog!

A veterinarian says a dog trapped in a car on a 90-degree day in eastern Pennsylvania honked the horn until he was rescued.

Nancy Soares said the 11-year-old chocolate Labrador — named Max — was brought to the Macungie Animal Hospital last month after he had been in the car for about an hour.

She said Max’s owner, Donna Gardner, of Upper Macungie Township, had gone shopping, returned home, unloaded her packages, but forgot that Max was still in the car. The owner later heard the horn honking, checked outside, then went back in. When she heard the horn honking again, she went outside and saw Max sitting in the driver’s seat, WFMZ reported.

Soares said the owner immediately gave Max cold water to drink and wet him down with towels before rushing him to the clinic, where — though he was warm and panting heavily — he was determined to have suffered no lasting injuries.

Almost Heaven Kennel owner Derbe Eckhart will spend six months to nearly two years in prison for animal cruelty.

According to an Associated Press report, Eckhart wept as he was sentenced Tuesday in Lehigh County Court in Pennsylvania.

Eckhart was charged with cruelty after a 2008 raid of his kennel by animal welfare workers and the state Bureau of Dog Law Enforcement.

Prosecutors said animals found at the kennel suffered from severe, painful matting and a variety of skin, eye and upper respiratory ailments.

Eckart was convicted in March on two animal cruelty charges but the jury acquitted him on four other counts.

Michael Vick is back in town.

Two months after picking up his Ed Block Courage Award in Baltimore, he’s back today to talk about dogfighting with a group of juvenile offenders.

Media isn’t invited to the 5 p.m. talk, but the Philadelphia Eagles quarterback is expected to give reporters some comments afterwards.

The appearance was organized by the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services and the Humane Society of the United States, with whom Vick has joined to campaign against dogfighting.

Vick spoke last night (see angel-faced poster above) at the Lancaster Convention Center in Pennsylvania, at an event sponsored by the Children Deserve a Chance Foundation.

The event was rescheduled from last week, according to organizers, because of “the abundance of support and interest from the outside school districts and organizations.”

A Pennsylvania appeals court ruled Tuesday against a Bucks County man who had sought food stamps to help feed his dog.

James Douris, 55, a disabled and unemployed veteran who lives in the Philadelphia suburb of Newtown, said he relies on his dog to pull his wheelchair and fetch items for him. Because of the dog’s work on his behalf, it should be considered a dependent member of his household, he argued.

The appeals court didn’t buy it, upholding a decision by the state welfare agency denying him additional support, the Associated Press reported.

The Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals plan to remove all the animals from a city shelter and disinfect the building after a dog died of a rare illness last month.

The PSPCA will place the dogs and cats with animal rescue agencies around the region.

PSPCA officials say the death of a 3-year-old chocolate Lab last week from a viral infection prompted the decision to empty and clean the building.

Officials quarantined the PSPCA shelter on West Hunting Park Avenue last year after an outbreak of the same illness that killed at least six dogs. The infection was identified as Streptococcus zooepidemicus, or “strep zoo”

While the PSPCA disinfected the shelter after last year’s outbreak, PSPCA chief executive officer Sue Cosby said it’s possible the strain may have remained.

“It could be we never completely eliminated it from the building,” she said.

Cosby said all the dogs from the shelter will be placed with animal-rescue agencies across the region, and only new dogs will be admitted after the cleaning.

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, health issues have plagued the shelter for years.

Bill Smith, founder of Main Line Animal Rescue, said the of the 300 dogs and cats he had taken from the PSPCA in the last year, virtually every one had some form of illness, ranging from mild upper-respiratory infection to strep zoo.

The building itself, a former warehouse, is apparently at the root of the problem, the Inquirer reported. It lacks adequate air circulation and  a quarantine area where staff can isolate incoming dogs.

“It was not built to house animals,”  said Melissa Levy of the Philadelphia Animal Welfare Society, which rescued 2,200 animals from the shelter last year. ”When the city established it as an animal-control shelter, they paid no attention to how the building needed to be outfitted.

“It’s a hotbed for disease,” she added. “The problems are not going to go away. The PSPCA is doing what they can do, but they’re working with a sick building.”

The former owner of Almost Heaven Kennel in Pennsylvania, taking the stand in his trial on animal cruelty charges, portrayed himself as a savior of dogs in need of rescue.

Derbe “Skip” Eckhart took the stand Friday, describing his efforts to tend to the hundreds of animals at his Lehigh County kennel, the Associated Press reported.

Eckhart testified Friday that he rescued many dogs from breeders who no longer wanted them, saving animals that would otherwise have been destroyed. He disputed prosecution claims that he neglected dogs and cats in his care.

Breeders routinely called Eckhart and said that if he didn’t come for their unwanted dogs, they would simply shoot them, Eckhart testified.

“And that’s what I did,” he said. “I came for them.”

Prosecutors allege Eckhart kept hundreds of dogs in filthy conditions.

Witnesses from the Pennsylvania SPCA and the state Bureau of Dog Law Enforcement testified earlier in the trial that dogs at the kennel lived in their own urine and feces and suffered from a lack of routine veterinary care, contributing to their poor health.

Eckhart said he enjoyed a “very good working relationship” with animal welfare agencies until October, 2008, when agents from the Pennsylvania SPCA and the state dog law bureau raided the kennel, detaining Eckhart and his workers for hours while the media looked on.

Eckhart’s attorney, Jeff Conrad, has maintained his client was targeted by publicity-seeking animal-welfare officials.

Eckhart said he took in about 30 dogs from another breeder only a few weeks before the raid. He acknowledged that some of those dogs still needed to be bathed and groomed at the time of the raid, but insisted that he was getting to them.

Testimony began yesterday in the trial for Derbe “Skip” Eckhart, accused of animal cruelty and dog law violations at the kennel he operated in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania.

The first witness, a state dog warden, described conditions at the Almost Heaven Kennel — shut down by authorities last year — as “foul,” according to the Allentown Morning Call.

“I couldn’t breathe. I wish I could give you what I smell in my mind right now. I’ll never forget it. Ever,” Kristin Donmoyer testified, recounting what she saw during an October 2008 raid at the kennel in Upper Milford Township

She said drains inside the kennel were filled with feces and stagnant liquid that could attract pests and promote disease. “This was foul,” Donmoyer testified. “You couldn’t walk past it without gagging.” She said she saw accumulations of feces, soiled and saturated animal bedding, “gunk” covered fencing, rusty pipes, exposed fiberglass and ripped up flooring.

The state Department of Agriculture found the violations to be so egregious, she said, that it revoked Eckhart’s breeding and boarding licenses.

Defense attorney Jeffrey Conrad, in his opening statement Monday, had warned the jury that they would see some excrement in the trial:

”Are you gonna see turds? You betcha,” he said.

”That fella right there is Derbe ‘Skip’ Eckhart,” Conrad said during his opening. ”This fella right here loves dogs, loves critters … The problem with this guy is that Skip can’t say no to any mutt. That guy right there is just dumb enough to take your ugly dog.”

The defense attorney said Eckhart is the innocent victim of officials seeking media attention: ”Those folks at the Department of Agriculture and the SPCA love money and they love headlines,” he said. ”What we have here is a man that loves animals and a government that loves headlines.”

A Pennsylvania community is mourning the loss of Ricky, an 11-year-old German shepherd with an outstanding temperament and an even more impressive resume.

Among his accomplishments, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported:

Helping protect two presidents; assisting at ground zero after 9/11; apprehending numerous criminals; checking hundreds of potential bomb sites, four of which contained live material; locating two missing children, one of whom was autistic; and interacting with thousands of elementary-school students.

Ricky, who belonged to West Caln Township Police Chief Curt A. Martinez , began his career when he was less than a year old at the Coatesville Area School District, where Martinez worked at the time as a school district security officer.

In May 2002, a budget crisis led the district to put Ricky on the auction block, a decision that provoked public outrage and led to Ricky’s appearance in People magazine. The ensuing publicity helped raise the  $4,000 needed for Martinez to buy Ricky.

When Martinez went to work in the West Caln police deparment in Chester County, he took Ricky went with him. Martinez has led the West Caln force for three years.

Martinez said Ricky began barking incessantly last week. After visits to the veterinarian and the animal hospital, Martinez learned the dog had a softball-size tumor in his spleen.

“He was clearly in pain,” Martinez said today. “We had to put him down.

“Everyone in the township is taking it pretty hard,” Martinez added. “It’s a loss to the community, too; he was a great police dog.”

A memorial service will be planned, but Martinez has not worked out the details.

 
They left the choppers at home (too cold), but members of Rescue Ink arrived in Pennsylvania Friday to help search for the killer of a Chester County family’s two dogs — and promote their TV show at the same time.

The tattooed stars of National Geographic’s TV show “Rescue Ink Unleashed” greeted fans at the Chester County SPCA, and later Friday night at a town hall meeting.

Then they set out to search for the killer of Emma and Luna, two dogs found slain in October.

The dogs were reported missing from a Pocopson Township farm on Oct. 25 and were found later that day several miles away in Pennsbury Township by a resident walking in the woods near railroad tracks along the Brandywine Creek, Britton said. The dogs were shot between the eyes and lined up tail to tail.

Rescue Ink had this message for the perpetrator: “Come find us before we find you.”

Joe Panz, one of the members, said the group plans to spend several days canvassing Chester County neighborhoods. “We’re street guys; we know how to get information from people,” he said.

Members of the New York-based group chatted with visitors at the SPCA Friday, many of them members of the animal-rescue community, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

Anyone with information about Emma and Luna is asked to call the Chester County SPCA at 610-692-6113, Ext. 213. A $50,000 reward has been posted.

(Photo: Courtesy of National Geographic Channel)

The reward for information leading to the arrest of whoever shot and killed two dogs in Pennsylvania  has reached $50,000, the Chester County SPCA said yesterday — and the gang at Rescue Ink has joined in the investigation.

The reward fund was established last October after the two family pets were found near the railroad tracks along Brandywine Creek in Pennsbury Township. Both had been shot between the eyes at close range.

Emma, a one-and-a-half-year-old German shorthaired pointer, and Luna, a two-year-old mix of the same breed, had been placed tail to tail, said Rich Britton, spokesman for the Chester County SPCA. The two dogs were reported missing from a Pocopson Township farm Oct. 25.

Today, the search for the killer will get an additional boost from Rescue Ink, a group of tattooed animal rescuers who appear on National Geographic Channel’s Rescue Ink Unleashed, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Rescue Ink, which targets animals in danger, will participate in a news conference today at 2 p.m. and meet with the public from 3 to 4:30 p.m. at the Chester County SPCA, 1212 Phoenixville Pike, West Chester. A town-hall meeting will be held at 7 p.m.  at the Chadds Ford Historical Society, 1736 Creek Rd.