ohmidog!

A malnourished dog who was surrendered to a New Jersey humane society by a couple who said they found him in a trash bag is back up on his feet and continuing to recover.

The couple, meanwhile, turned out to be the dog’s owners — and they’ve been charged with animal cruelty.

Samurai, or Sammy for short, is a cocker spaniel. He was turned in at the Associated Humane Society in Tinton Falls last week, with an ear infection, skin infection, open wounds and with his fur so matted together he couldn’t walk, according to NJ.com.

This week, he took his first steps at the Red Bank Veterinary Hospital, where officials said he has also started eating on his own again.

Victor Amato, the chief humane law enforcement officer for the Monmouth County SPCA, said hundreds of calls have been received by people from around the world since the dog’s story hit the news — initially as the story of a rescued dog.

Keith Morgan, 56, of Brick, told staff at the humane society that he and his wife found the dog in a garbage bag on the side of the road.

Morgan, in interviews with media, said he opened the bag and “started to cry …I couldn’t understand that anyone could be that cruel … my heart dropped.”

For a while, the dog was named after his apparent savior.

Officials, however, learned by tracing the dog’s registration that the couple had actually owned the dog for at least nine years. Sammy is estimated to be 13 or 14 years old.

Keith Morgan was charged in Tinton Falls with animal cruelty by abandonment of a sick or maimed animal and filing a false report with law enforcement. He was also charged in Brick with interfering with an investigation and animal cruelty by failure to provide sustenance and causing unnecessary suffering.

His wifre, Shauna Ewing Morgan, 43,  faces similar charges in Tinton Falls and Brick.

Each faces a maximum of six months in jail and a $1,000 fine on each count. They are scheduled to appear in court March 27 in Brick and April 9 in Tinton Falls, where a judge will decide their sentence.

The animal hospital said a fund has been set up for Sammy, and donations can be sent to the Morgan/Samurai Fund at Red Bank Veterinary Hospital, 197 Hance Avenue, Tinton Falls, N.J. 07724.

(Photo: Red Bank Veterinary Hospital)

A rescue group in Singapore couldn’t save Ol’ Boy, but they tried to make his final moments happy, fulfilling a wish that he reportedly expressed to rescuers through an animal communicator — to live, however briefly, in a real home.

The homeless street dog was found by members of the organization Save Our Street Dogs, according to the New York Daily News.

According to the video, the dog,  too far gone to be saved, passed along his desire to spend the final days of his life in a real home.

The dog was thought to have spent years living on the streets, surviving on water dripping from air conditioners and scraps of food from shopkeepers. He was covered with hundreds of ticks, and suspected of having cancer. Many of his teeth were chipped or missing.

Members of the rescue organization, after taking him to a veterinarian, where a blood transfusion didn’t seem to help, declined to have him put to sleep and  took him home.

“We stayed by his side, patting him whenever he cried in discomfort,” his  caretakers say in their video. “That was all he wanted.”

One night at 2 a.m., Ol’ Boy sat up to take several sips on water, the video says. But he died two hours later.

The group’s members scattered rose petals on Ol’ Boy’s body and, after having him cremated, scattered his ashes in a local field that overlooked a beach — also in accordance with the message the animal communicator received.

Save Our Street Dogs works to rescue Singapore’s  stray dogs. They hope that the video will bring more attention and sympathy to their  cause.

Activists say an animal shelter in Lewisburg, Tennessee, put down nine dogs even though officials knew rescue organizations were on the way to pick them up.

The activists held a protest in the town square of Lewisburg, demanding changes in how the local animal control department operates.

The protesters say Lewisburg’s city manager Tommy Engram last week ordered 13 animals to be put down at animal control, nine of which had rescue organizations on the way to claim them, NewsChannel 5 reported.

The animal shelter only holds about 20 dogs, but the protesters said it was only a matter of hours before rescuers would have been there.

“… We’ve been told multiple times that we are the crazy dog people, but we are. We are here for the dogs, and we aren’t going to let this go away,” said Ronnie Van Zandt, one of the protesters. “We want answers. We want to know why they put the dogs down; we want more transparency in their practices and procedures,”

We can think of no better way to mark this Thanksgiving than with this piece, written by Alcestis “Cooky” Oberg, a contributor to USA Today who remembers more than a few dogs waiting for scraps under the dinner table…

“Spaniels, shepherds, setters, poodles, ridgebacks, Labradors and whatnots. All these dogs were strays — lost canines who wandered into our lives and nestled into our hearts. We lived together as a multispecies family, enjoying the seasons, the feasts, the joys together. The dogs were there to soothe our sorrows, too, and to ease the passage of time in the lonely moments of the night.

In an op-ed piece, Oberg gives thanks for her animals and their rescuers.

“This Thanksgiving, I will give thanks for my animal companions in life and for the hundreds of organizations and thousands of people who take notice of such creatures throughout the nation — rescuing them, defending them and finding them homes. It is hard and sometimes unpleasant work, and nobody gets rich doing it. But the ultimate test of our humanity is how we treat animals, and these people redeem our species by saving millions of helpless creatures every year.

Oberg writes of adopting her dog Sierra.

My local SPCA’s efforts brought me my dog, Sierra, 13 years ago. My kids urged me to go there after a beloved pet dog died suddenly. I was crying as we walked past the cages — and in the last one stood Sierra. She was a large spayed female Labrador/shepherd mix, about a year old. She wagged her long magnificent tail confidently as soon as I looked at her, and her brown honest eyes spoke to me as if to say, “I’ve been waiting for you.”

And of losing her.

“My old girlfriend Sierra died in her sleep this summer at a very old age — the human equivalent of 105 — with three generations of my family and my large circle of friends mourning the loss of this true and noble soul. We buried her in the shade of the pecan tree she favored, not far from the large sand pile where the children play with toy soldiers and trucks, and beside the path to the barn we walked together twice a day to feed the horses. She will remain in death as ever she was in life — in the heart of my family.

“I’ll especially miss my sweet old beggar with her soulful smoldering eyes beside my chair this Thanksgiving. But I’ll say a prayer of thanks for having known her, for how lucky I was to have found her that cold day at the SPCA 13 years ago.

“She brought us laughter, protection, devotion — and a kind of love that was distilled to a purity that we’ve rarely found in any other aspect of our life journey.

(Photo: A Viszla named Laila — who just so happens to have her own blog — appears thankful for her owner, and vice versa, during a walk in Baltimore’s Riverside Park; by John Woestendiek)