ohmidog!

Some new details have emerged, and some old ones have proven incorrect, in the case of the dog that tried to eat the police car in Chattanooga.

First off, the dog is a pit bull-boxer mix, not a bulldog, as he was described in most initial reports.

The three-year-old, 80-pound dog, named Winston, managed to break through a locked fence Sunday at Mann’s Welding, approached a parked police car in which an officer was on the lookout for speeders, and chewed off its front bumper. He also bit through two tires and left teeth marks in the side panel of the vehicle.

The officer got out of the car when he noticed it was shaking, and tried to subdue the dog, first with pepper spray, then with a stun gun. When a second officer arrived Winston chewed the tires of the other patrol car. Eventually the dog was captured by animal control officers, with the help of one of his owners, WDEF reported

“Obviously at some point yesterday he was not a nice dog,” said his owner, Michael Emerling, “but previous to that he was very sweet.” Emerling said Winston has never hurt anyone, though he does occasionally show aggression toward lawn equipment.

The dog is being held at the McKamey Animal Center, where Karen Walsh, executive director, noted: “Some dogs are very aggressive. Especially when they feel they are being protective. So I think the officer to the dog’s perception was in his territory and so the dog just attacked the car.” 

Still, after this incident Emerling, his owner, says he can’t risk what could happen if Winston attacks again. He’s considering having him put down. “We can’t take the chance that the next time something sets him off it won’t be a car … we just can’t take that risk.”

 
Here’s an odd little story — and one that raises more questions than it answers –out of Chattanooga, where a dog apparently decided to eat a police car.

Police officer Clayton Holmes was sitting in his parked patrol car Sunday night — either to work on reports or to catch speeders on radar (the story seems to say both), when he suddenly felt his vehicle shaking.

He got out to investigate and found a bulldog had chewed two tires and the entire front bumper off the car.

(While cynics will wonder how the dog was able to consume so much of the police car so quickly, and speculate the officer was napping, we would never suggest such a thing.)

When another police car arrived, the dog attacked it, as well as two cars belonging to citizens who were driving by, police say.

Officers used pepper spray and a tazer on the dog, but neither seemed to faze it. Eventually McKamey Animal Center personnel responded to the scene and managed to capture the bulldog (how they did so isn’t described).

They also took into custody two other dogs that they say had managed to get through a fence of a nearby welding shop.

The owner of the dogs, Nancy Emerling, was issued a citation.

(Click  for an updated version of this story)

(Photo: Chattanooga Police Department)

A former animal control officer in Mississippi accused of shooting stray dogs and dumping their bodies in a creek has been charged, according to the Madison County District Attorney.

Last week, the Canton Police Department filed affidavits with the Canton Justice Court against Alonzo Esco for misdemeanor charges of unlawful killing of animals.

Esco was the city of Canton’s animal control officer. As a law enforcement officer, he will have to have a probable cause hearing before a judge before the case can be prosecuted, WAPT in Jackson reports.

A Madison County grand jury failed to indict Esco on felony charges and felt that the charges were misdemeanors and better handled in justice court, the district attorney said.

Esco was fired in January after home video surfaced that allegedly showed dozens of animal carcasses dumped in a creek in Canton. Since then, a group of residents has demanded that Esco be charged.

Baltimore County prosecutors have quietly dropped the dogfighting and animal cruelty charges leveled against three occupants of a townhouse in North Point, one of whom cared for and groomed dogs at a local doggie day care facility.

Police, after the January arrest, held a press conference showing off evidence they had seized and contending both a dogfighting and drug dealing operation were based in the home on Lange Street.

Now police have dropped all charges related to mistreating dogs against Nicole Marie Caruso, 26, and her two housemates. 

According to a Baltimore Sun article, State’s Attorney Adam Lippe said veterinarians disagreed with the police conclusion that pit bulls Dutch, Whezzy, Lucia, Bruno, Gotti and Kane were used for fights. The dogs — some owned by Caruso, others by her roommates — were all spayed or neutered and healthy, though some displayed aggressive tendencies.

Defense attorney, Brian G. Thompson, said police were overzealous in their investigation and unfairly dragged his client, Caruso, a respected dog groomer “through the mud in public as some kind of Michael Vick character.”

Caruso, who was active in animal rescue, still faces drug and theft charges as do her housemates.

Bill Link, owner of SoBo Dog Day Care in Locust Point, where Caruso worked for six months, said this week that he would wait until all the charges are adjudicated before deciding whether to bring Caruso back to work.

Caruso, meanwhile, said on her Facebook page: “To everyone that has supported me, THANK YOU!! my most exciting news to report is … the cops had to admit they were wrong about dog fighting. … They put me through the ringer and now who is going to announce on the news that they lied ??????”

Caruso’s dogs are now at a shelter, but her attorney said they won’t be destroyed and she might get them all back.

A police dog handler in the UK has been found guilty of animal cruelty for leaving two German shepherds to die in the back of his car on one of the hottest days of last year.

Mark Johnson, of the Nottinghamshire police, was given a six-month conditional discharge and ordered to pay a fine. The judge called it “an extremely difficult case” which reflected poorly on the force’s attitude to officers with mental health problems.

Prosecutors said the animals – Jay-Jay and Jet – died in “excruciating pain” after Johnson ­forgot he had not taken them out of his vehicle on June 30. The dogs died – possibly within 20 minutes of being left in the car– from heatstroke, The Guardian reported

Johnson, 39, said he was severely depressed and was suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder when he left the dogs in the car. He said his illness had caused him to forget that the animals were still in the car as he sat down to do paperwork at Nottinghamshire police’s headquarters.

District judge Tim Devas described the dogs’ deaths as “sad and regrettable”, but criticized the police department for failing to help an officer struggling with depression.

“I feel a police officer has been let down … (T)his is a dreadful error of judgment brought about by an illness way before it happened and PC Johnson should have been given more help … I cannot believe that in the 21st century, depression and men crying is so abhorrent to an institution that nothing can be done about it,” he said.

An assistant chief constable of the Nottinghamshire police said dog handlers must now take their animals directly to kennels on arrival at work and that a system was being piloted alerting handlers to temperature changes inside vehicles.

A German man on the run from police was arrested after his Jack Russell terrier gave away his hiding place, authorities said on Monday.

When police called at the 52-year-old man’s home near Cologne in western Germany on Friday, an acquaintance answered, holding the suspect’s dog.

“The man claimed not to know where the wanted man was. When he put the dog down, it proceeded with a wagging tail to a small cupboard… and stood expectantly in front of it,” police said.

Officers opened the door of the small cupboard and found the man they were seeking ”hunched up inside,” according to AFP.

A police spokesman was not able to say what the man was wanted for, but that it was “not a capital crime.” He declined to give the man’s name,or that of his tell-tale dog.

A Valentine’s Day sting operation by Montgomery County Police led to the arrest of a man they say stole two dogs from a Silver Spring woman, then demanded she pay a ransom.

Police arrested Najie S. Walker, 21, at a Friendly’s Restaurant, where he was found hiding in a bathroom, Gazette.net reported.

Gloria Chicas, of the 12000 block of Bronzegate Place in Silver Spring, said two of her four dogs — Scooby, a 2-year-old golden retriever, and Scrappy, a 13-month-old French poodle — disappeared from her back yard Sunday morning.

After that she received a series of phone calls from a man demanding hundreds of dollars to return the dogs.

Chicas agreed to pay, but she said noone showed up at the designated meeting spot. Later, he called later to say that he wanted more money for the dogs. That’s when Chicas called the police. When officers responded to the call, they found a dead dog that had been hit by a car near her house. The dog matched the description of Scooby, and Chicas was brought out to identify the body, officers said.

After sconfirming the dead dog was Scooby, police arranged the sting, aimed at getting Scrappy back and catching the dognapper. Several phone conversations took place between  Officer M. Rodriguez, an undercover officer posing as Chicas’ nephew and the caller, who was told Chicas would meet him and swap the remaining dog for $300.

When Rodriguez’s partner pulled up in a marked police car, Walker fled to the Friendly’s restaurant and was found sitting in the stall of the men’s bathroom, Rodriguez said. In the nearby McDonald’s parking lot, police said they found his accomplice in a car with Scrappy.

Walker was charged with theft under $1,000 and is being held on a $1,500 bond. The State’s Attorney’s Office is working with the Animal Services Division to further charge Walker and the woman for extortion.

(Photo: Montgomery County Police)

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.

If conclusion-jumping was a Winter Olympics event, both the police and the press would be deserving medals for their handling this week of an incident in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, that saw a  dead woman’s Rottweiler locked up as her suspected killer.

The facts of the case are these: Carolyn Baker, 63, was found dead at her back steps, wearing only a thin polyester nightgown and boots, with bite marks on her arms and shoulder.

Here are just a few of the headlines (online versions) that followed over the next two days: 

Cleveland Heights Woman Dies Afer Being Attacked by Rottweiler

Ohio Woman Dies of Suspected Dog Attack

Woman Found Mauled to Death by Pet Rottweiler

POLICE: Woman Mauled to Death by Dog

Of course, headlines are never the whole story; and sometimes the whole story isn’t the whole story, as was the case with these.

Instead, as it turns out, the police and, in turn, news media, may have jumped the gun — perhaps a little too eager to place  blame on a dog because of his breed, which is, of course, nothing new.

While pit bulls have taken their place as Public Enemy No. 1, Rottweilers have long been victim to the same kind of negative stereotyping. Zeus, maybe, is just the latest.

Subsequent reports, like this one in the Cleveland Plain Dealer eventually gave the family’s suspicions given some ink — namely that 9-year-old Zeus, rather than being the stone cold killer police and the news media were portraying him as, may have merely been trying to rescue his owner after she collapsed in the yard.

The Cuyahoga County coroner’s office has yet to rule on the cause of Baker’s death, but her family believes she had another stroke or heart attack when she went into her yard to bring her dog inside late Saturday, and that Zeus tried to pull her to safety after she collapsed.

It wasn’t until 3 a.m. Sunday that a next-door neighbor called the family to tell them Zeus was in the Baker’s front yard barking. The dog had gone through a hole in the back fence. After letting the dog in, Baker’s husband found his wife at the bottom of the back steps.

Cleveland Heights police said Baker had severe arm and shoulder injuries and bite marks. While police intitially suspected Baker was “mauled” by her own dog, Baker’s family insists the bite marks aren’t from an attack, but from Zeus’ attempts to rescue his master.

“[Zeus] only locked onto her shoulder trying to bring her in,” said Baker’s son, Rinaldo. “My mom weighed about 200 pounds. The dog just grabbed her and tried to help her out. She had no clothes on or he could have grabbed that. There were no marks on her face, nowhere else.”

“That was her dog,” Rinaldo Baker said. “If we were to go upstairs that dog would run past us and go upstairs to be with us. But if my mom were to go upstairs, knowing how she can barely walk, Zeus would sit and wait for her to go up first and then he would go up. That’s a good dog.”

Zeus is being held at Pepperidge Kennels in Bedford pending the results of the autopsy. The Baker family wants him back.

“If Zeus wasn’t out there we wouldn’t have known till later on that something was wrong because he was the one who alerted somebody,” Carter said. “If he had ways of getting somebody to notice earlier, things may have been different than what they are now, but he did the best he could as a dog.”

(Click picture for the video.)

The head of the Maryland Transit Authority’s police force went above and beyond the call of duty over the weekend when — in the midst of plenty of other snow-related challenges — he took the time to rescue a lost dog.

Colonel John Gavrilis, lured the dog over to his vehicle after spotting him along Moravia Road near I-895 in Baltimore.

The dog, it turned out, had run off during a walk with his owner in Patterson Park on Saturday.

“The dog was just in the middle of the street, so I got a ham sandwich out that I had packed with me and I lured him into my car,” said Gavrilis.

Shortly after that, Gavrilis spotted a WJZ news crew on Boston Street — and got the dog some airtime.

Jason Grady, meanwhile, the owner of the dog, named Toby, had put a  photo and notice of the missing dog on Craigslist.

Once the three-year-old hound turned up on the news, emails and phone calls started pouring in — to WJZ and at Grady’s home in Bolton Hill.

Grady had this message for Gavrilis, upon the return of his dog:

“Thank you Colonel … sorry about your sandwich …”