ohmidog!

A rat terrier who wandered from his home and ended up on a busy Texas highway was rescued by a police officer in La Porte, who halted traffic and carried the dog to safety.

Cujo, whose owners say he suffers from a bad hip, was spotted Monday by officer Kyle Jones on Spencer Highway, limping along in a lane of moving traffic.

Jones spun his car around and blocked traffic on the busy highway, called to the dog, then walked over to him, debating whether he should pick him up.

“You know how Chihuahuas are,” Jones told KHOU. “You’re not really sure if you can trust ‘em or not. But he kind of looked at me and said, ‘Man, I’m glad you’re here.’ He let me pick him right up. Stuck him in the back seat of the patrol car.”

Jones turned Cujo over to an animal control officer who, thanks to the ID tag on the dog’s collar, was able to return him to his family.

The Zapalac family had been searching for Cujo.

“We spent the whole morning, about an hour, looking for him,” Jeremy Zapalac said. “It started pouring down rain. And he hates water.”

Zapalac described Cujo as “a Napoleon-type of dog. He’s very short, but with a very big ego.”

Dental repairs — not mine this time, but my mother’s — took me to nearby Pfafftown last week, about a 15 minute drive, during which I annoyed by mother by repeatedly prouncing the first silent “f” in the North Carolina town’s name.

The correct pronunciation is “Poff-town.” But I kept calling it “Puh-foff-town” and she kept correcting me, not realizing, at least at first, that I was doing it on pfurpose.

Dropping her off at the dentist, I returned to a spot we had passed by, which, though I had only gotten a brief glance, appeared to be an enchanted kudzu forest.

Just as I suspected, I found three canines. (There is no kudzu patch in which I cannot spot the shapes of dogs — though some, admittedly, are clearer than others.)

First, I saw a pfair of kudzu wolves, howling at the sky:

Then I saw what looked like a St. Bernard, or Newfoundland. (Pfeel pfree to disagree.)

Back at the dentist, my mother was done and waiting for me, and, as pfate would have it, I learned a return trip was going to be necessary in the afternoon.

Ace, who mad missed out on the first jaunt, came along on the second, and after again dropping off my mother, we followed some signs pointing to C.G. Hill Memorial Park.

The park is a beautiful setting, with winding trails and a duck pond.

It also contains a hollow poplar tree in which, according to the county, a farmer once hid his cow and calf to save them from being poached by Union soldiers during the Civil War.

A lightning strike led to the decay, which formed the hollow center. The tree has been used over the centuries to stash weapons and as shelter by travelers.

It has also been dubbed the “Loving Tree” – but we’re not sure, and the county’s website doesn’t say, whether that’s because it lovingly provided shelter, or because of hanky-panky that may or may not have taken place within its confines.

Looking at it, I’m not sure how it could have held a cow and calf, much less an amorous couple. Why the space is no bigger than an airplane’s restroom.

Rather than imagine the hijinks that might have occured within the tree, I  pfocused on the pfair of ducks, becoming pfascinated with the pfretty rings of color around their eyes:

While at the park we ran into Thor, a three-year-old Chihuahua-rat terrier mix.

Thor’s from Texas, his owner said, and apparently bounced around between assorted college students before one of them sent him home to her mother.

She filled me in on where people commonly let their dogs run unleashed — even though park rules require leashes — but, suspecting my mother might be pfinished with having her dental work installed, I didn’t have time to check it out.

One the way to drop her back home, I told her about the pfark, just down the road from Ronald Reagan High School. Now there was a pfresident.

“Puh-fofftown is pretty nice,” I told her.

“It’s pronounced ‘poff-town,’” she corrected me for the tenth time.

“Puh-false,” I retorted. It’s Puh-fofftown.”

She rolled her eyes, as if in pfain.

That was her signal she had pfinally had enough of that game.

I’m going to keep pronouncing it Puh-fofftown, though, with apologies to all the Puh-foffs that live there and who it is named after, because, just like dentists, I sometimes like to strike a nerve.

And because I know, despite being in the minority, I must be right — as sure there are cows in trees and dogs in kudzu.

Lou Reed and his wife Laurie Anderson are planning a concert for dogs this month in Australia — one that will be fully audible only to canine ears.

Music for Dogs,  a “high-frequency concert” for canines, will be held outside the Sydney Opera House during the Vivid Live festival. It’s being billed as “an inter-species social gathering on a scale never seen before in Australia,” the BBC reports.

The couple said they have experience making music for at least one dog- – their rat terrier, Lollabelle. “She likes things with a lot of smoothness but with beats in them,” Anderson said.

She said the inspiration for the performance came while she was backstage at an event and thought: “Wouldn’t it be great, if you were playing a concert and you look out and you see all dogs?”

The show will last for 20 minutes as she says “dogs don’t have a giant concentration span.”

Authorities are investigating a report that six dogs were stolen from a Missouri dog shelter by thieves who demanded a ransom for their safe return.

Anna Madsen, 64, who runs the Love a Dog Rescue and Sanctuary near Farmington, says she fears for her dogs, and for her own life.

Madsen says she arrived home Saturday night to find her house in disarray, with one of her old bank statements and a ransom note stuck to a wall with a knife.

The note said six of her dogs had been taken and demanded six figures in cash or the dogs would be killed.

“I guess they thought I had money,” Madsen told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Madsen said the missing dogs are Gizmo, a Chihuahua and Yorkie mix that was the sanctuary’s mascot; Moses, a Maltese and poodle mix; Lizzi, a rat terrier; Jack, a black and tan Pincher; Jenna Marie, a white Chihuahua with brown spots; and Snickers, a black Chihuahua.

Pittsburgh morning talk show host Jim Krenn called off work Wednesday to look for his missing dog, Gizmo — showing that even though his dog wasn’t in the right place, his priorities were.

“He was just gone. He just disappeared,” said Krenn, who works for WDVE radio. “I’m just beside myself. As every pet owner knows, this is a worst nightmare.”

The dog disappeared early Tuesday evening; he was found Wednesday not far from Banksville Park, according to an MSNBC report. Read more »