ohmidog!

Authorities are crediting a three-year-old girl’s dog with keeping her alive during a freezing night lost in a forest in Poland.

“This dog is the most important part of this story, he is a hero,” said firefighter Grzegorz Szymonowski. “It is thanks to this dog that the girl survived the night.”

Rescue workers searched for the girl, named Julia, after she wandered into the forest near her village in southwestern Poland.

Her dog drew the attention of searchers, and also likely kept her from freezing to death, according to Reuters.

The girl’s grandmother, Danuta Balak, says the dog was the girl’s best friend.

“She was with this dog all the time. She didn’t go anywhere without it. When she was with me, when I was looking after her, she constantly said, ‘Granny, the dog needs to come in the house. And she told me to cut bread and she fed it all the time.”

Julia is being treated for a mild case of frostbite.

No, that’s not the ice cream man rolling down the streets of Lisichansk, a city of 100,000 in Ukraine.

It’s a crematorium on wheels, purchased by the city to more handily dispose of stray dogs — sometimes while they are still alive — as part of the country’s efforts to clean up its streets before next year’s Euro 2012 soccer championship.

(About two and a half minutes into the video above you can see city officials showing off their mobile crematorium.)

The vehicle is staffed by three employees — a driver, an oven operator and another who shoots strays with a syringe gun, paralyzing them.

The crematorium is capable of burning 40 kilos worth of dogs and cats at a time.

Lisichansk is not alone in trying to clear the streets of strays before the soccer championship,  being co-hosted by Ukraine and Poland.

The cities of  Kiev, Lviv, Kharkiv and Donetsk — all of which are hosting matches — have stray removal programs underway. In Kharkiv and Kiev, plans have been made to open shelters for strays found in the vicinity of Euro 2012 stadiums, but some other cities opt for extermination instead.

Sometimes, Lisichansk lends its mobile crematorium to neighboring  jurisdictions. How thoughtful.

Despite protests, from inside and outside the country, the stray removal program continues, and the mobile crematorium — which features temperatures of 900 degrees — keeps rolling.

A petition appealing to Ukrainian authorities to stop cremating live animals can be found on the website Care2.

According to the petition, Ukraine — rather than focusing on spaying and neutering and finding homes for strays — has long opted for less humane practices.

Stray dogs and cats were previously killed using an illegal poison called ditiline that paralyzed their respiratory muscles are paralyzed.

Officials consider the crematorium ” more modern” and “environmentally safe,” the petition says.

One year after he was rescued from an ice floe, Baltic remains on the high seas — just not in them.

The crew of a Polish ship, named Baltica, pulled the dog from the icy waters of the Baltic Sea after observing him struggling. The dog was first seen on an ice floe in the Vistula River. Some estimated at the time that he traveled 70 miles atop the floe on the river, then another 20 miles out to sea.

Several people came forward wanting to adopt Baltic after his story gained headlines around Europe, but his rescuer Adam Buczynski decided to keep him.

Despite his bad experience, the dog is now there regularly at sea, serving as the research ship’s pet and mascot. He shows signs of anxiety when the sea is rough but sails around happily with the crew when it is calm, Buczynski said.

A New York woman claims two Queens police officers roughed her up during a dispute over whether she failed to pick up her dog’s waste.

Anna Stanczyk, 49, insisted her terrier, Psotka (“prankster” in Polish), had only urinated, and says that the police officers punched her after handcuffing her and pushing her into their patrol car.

The police department’s Internal Affairs division has opened an investigation into her claims, the New York Daily News reports.

Stanczyk’s lawyer said the incident took place Nov. 26.

Stanczyk was confronted in Rockaway Beach by two officers from the 100th Precinct who accused her of not picking up a pile of feces left by her dog. The officers — Shaun Grossweiler, a 4-year veteran, and Richard DeMartino, a 10-year veteran — charged her with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. Police, in court papers, said Stanczyk caused a ruckus by yelling at them.

Photos taken by her son — printed in yesterday’s Daily News — show Stanczyk, a housewife who emigrated from Poland, with a blackened left eye and a large bruise on her breast. She said she also suffered hand and knee injuries and needs physical therapy.

A dog that was carried nearly 100 miles on an ice floe was pulled out of the Baltic Sea by sailors.

“My crew saw… a shape moving on the water and we immediately decided to get closer to check if it was a dog or maybe a seal relaxing on the ice,” Jan Joachim, senior officer aboard the Baltica, told Reuters.

The dog was struggling not to fall into the water when the sailors found him.

“He didn’t even squeal. There was just fear in his big eyes,” said Adam Buczynski, engineer of the Polish ship. Buczynski managed to scoop the dog off the floe onto an inflatable dinghy and wrapped him in a blanket.

The dog was first seen on an ice floe in the Vistula River. It’s estimated he traveled 70 miles atop the floe on the river, then another 20 miles out to sea when the Baltica crew found him.

The crew is trying to locate the dog’s owner.

A woman in Poland is suspected of fattening up her dogs, then slaughtering them and selling their lard as a health supplement, according to an AFP report.

Polish police were questioning a woman at a farm near Czestochowa, in southern Poland, whose 28 dogs include St. Bernards and several puppies, found living in cages on the farm.

Police also founds bottle of lard, which they are testing to see if it came from dogs.

An animal welfare group tipped off the police after buying some lard at the farm.

Some of the dogs “were overfed to the point of no longer being able to walk,” according to a spokesperson for the organization For Animals.

The For Animals group’s undercover inspector, Renata Mizera, said the farmer had stressed the health benefits of the lard and told her that she herself added a spoonful to her daughter’s evening meal.

The police are checking whether the lard – which was found in bottles in a refrigerator at the woman’s farm – comes from dogs.

The 37-year-old farmer could face up to two years in jail for animal cruelty and distributing an unsafe substance, Poland’s TVN24 reported.

The dogs were seized and are being cared for by a vet while For Animals seeks to find new homes for them.