ohmidog!

A grandmother in Bosnia is claiming she saved the six newborn puppies that a young woman tossed into a fast flowing river — an act that was captured on video and has outraged dog lovers internationally.

The Daily Mail is reporting that Ruza Pavlovic, a 75-year-old woman who lives in Bugojno, Bosnia, says she saw the pups struggling in the river and fished them out.

The Mail article points out that it hasn’t been confirmed that the puppies are the same ones that a woman in a red hooded sweatshirt was videotaped throwing one by one into the river.

The “saved” puppies seem to have a brownish coloring not seen on those in the video. And the “savior” is making it known that she is too poor to provide them with food. “They are healthy and happy,” they quote her as saying. “My problem is that they need at least three litres of milk a day and I live only on my small pension, but I do not have the heart to abandon them.”

Police, the Mail article reports, have tracked down the girl they believe threw the animals into the river and are set to interview her. The name of the girl, also from Bugojno, has not been published to protect her safety.

The video was posted on Facebook, and appeared on YouTube and LiveLeaks, enraging animal lovers at least as much as last year’s video of a man in Lithuania throwing a dog off a bridge.

Another animal rights group – SOS, which is based in Sarajevo – also claimed to have information confirming the location of the girl, who was reportedly filmed by her brother.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has offered a $2,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the young woman.

Meanwhile, several Facebook groups have formed, seeking to bring her to justice as well.

Spikey, the German Shepherd mix who was rescued from the rain-swollen Los Angeles River last month, is back home with his owners.

After forking over $85 in fees — part of which covered installation of a microchip — the Medina family picked up Spikey when he completed his quarantine period.

The dog  made headlines nationwide when video of his dramatic rescue from the L.A. River was aired on TV stations and the Internet.

The Medina family, which has had the dog for seven years, didn’t see any of the news coverage, but a granddaughter of his owner saw video of the rescue of the dog – nicknamed Vernon while in shelter — on the Internet.

The dog pulled from the rain-swollen Los Angeles River a week ago has been reclaimed by his owners after they recognized him in a video of the dramatic rescue on YouTube.

The dog, dubbed Vernon after he was pulled from the river by a firefighter dropped from a helicopter, is actually named Spikey. His family had searched their neighborhood in Maywood for him, but found him on the computer.

“Somebody from the family noticed that the dog was on YouTube, and that’s how we finally figured out that was the dog, ” said Ramon Medina, son of the dog’s elderly owner.

The family contacted officials at the Southeast Area Animal Control Authority on Monday to claim the dog, officials said.

“We’ve interviewed him at the animal care center, we’ve gone to his house, interviewed neighbors, verified dog license and vaccination records,” said SEAACA director of operations Captain Aaron Reyes. “Vernon went nuts when he saw him. His whole demeanor changed — like he found a long lost friend.”

Spikey will be released as early as next Tuesday, after he is cleared from his quarantine, NBC in Los Angeles reported.

Spikey’s older brother, a yellow lab named Polo, also escaped from the home last week and was found loose Saturday in the same area where Spikey was rescued. Polo is also being held in an animal control facility. Officials believe young children may have left the gates open at their grandmother’s home, allowing the dogs to escape.

“Maybe he was looking for Vernon/Spikey,” Reyes said. “We don’t know.”

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.

Los Angeles authorities have responded to critics of the massive effort to save a German shepherd trapped in the Los Angeles River.

“All life is important,” fire department captain Steve Ruda said Monday.

About 50 firefighters, a helicopter and swift water rescue teams responded to assist the German shepherd stuck in the rising Los Angeles River, whose steep concrete banks kept the dog from getting out.

The dog, nicknamed Vernon after the city where he was rescued, remained in quarantine at the Southeast Area Animal Control Authority shelter in Downey, south of Los Angeles.

While the rescuers who saved the dog on Friday have been widely hailed as heroes, they have also been vilified by a few in blogs, on social networks and story comment sections, the Associated Press reported.

“You’re not going to please everybody. There’s always 10 percent, they either don’t like animals or think we are wasting taxpayer money,”  said Ruda.

Joe St. Georges, 50, the 25-year firefighting veteran who hoisted Vernon to safety, lost a fingernail and fractured a thumb when the dog bit him during the rescue, video of which was televised nationally and shown on many Internet sites.

The dog, about 4 years old and 65 pounds, was eating everything given to him and sleeping well, said Capt. Aaron Reyes, director of operations for the  shelter. If no owner shows up, Reyes said, “we do have a mile-long list of people who want him.”

If Vernon hadn’t been rescued, Reyes said, he would have likely died. “Do you just wait at the mouth of the river and wait for the carcass? Any way you slice it, that is unacceptable. They would not have been able to live that down,” Reyes said. “They made a decision and we support that decision.”

The dog whose helicopter rescue from a rain-swollen river was captured by television cameras Friday is doing fine.

Despite getting bitten, the Los Angeles firefighter who rescued him is too.

Firefighter Joe St. Georges, 50, received at least one bite after splashing into the Los Angeles River to retrieve the frightened German shepherd. But, after his release from a hospital, he said he has no hard feelings against the dog.

“I knew the dog was scared and tired. It’s not too surprising that it was really upset with this big, loud noisy thing blowing all over it,” Fox News quoted St. Georges as saying. “And then some guy comes and jumps on its back — what a surprise the dog bit me.”

The dog, who wore no identification, has been nicknamed Vernon, after the town where he was found. He will be held for five days to allow time for an owner to claim him, after which he will be put up for adoption. Hundreds of families have already volunteered.

Vernon “appears to be well-maintained and cared for,” said Sgt. Charles Miller of the Southeast Area Animal Control Authority in Downey, Calif.

At least 50 firefighters responded to reports that the dog was in the river on Friday afternoon. For an hour, they throwing life vests and float rings from the river’s steep, concrete banks. Later, a helicopter was used to lower St. Georges into the river, where he wrestled with the dog and, despite getting bitten, held on as the helicopter hoisted the two to safety.

At a late afternoon news conference, helicopter pilot Scott Bowman said St. Georges took a muzzle with him but he wasn’t able to get it on, “so he decided to go for the capture.”

Shylo, a 5-year-old husky, spent more than an hour bobbing in the icy waters of the Rock River in Illinois before firefighters tossed him a rope.

Shylo grabbed the rope in his mouth and held on, getting tugged partly to shore before a firefighter slid across the ice to pull him the rest of the way out.

Even then, back on land and in the arms of his rescuers, he kept the rope gripped in his mouth, not releasing it until after he was back home with his owner, the Rockford Register Star reported.

This week the dog’s owner Peggy Yarber, brought Shylo to the Harlem-Roscoe Fire Department to thank the firefighters who hauled him out of the river.

“This dog is my whole life,” Yarber said. “I can’t thank you enough. I really can’t. If it weren’t for you, he wouldn’t be here.”

Yarber was visiting a friend when Shylo wandered off. He was found about a mile away, having fallen through the ice in the river. A nearby homeowner called authorities.

A Winnebago County animal control officer, tossed Shylo the rope that he latched onto to amid the ice chunks to help keep his head above water. As he neared shore, firefighter Christi Wilson crawled across the ice to grab him and slide him to shore.

On Tuesday, Yarber took her dog with her to thank the firefighters. Wilson greeted the dog with a bag of treats.

“Just him being here is enough thanks for me,” she said.

(Photo: Scott Morgan/Rockford Register Star)

 
This happened way back in August, but since the dramatic photos are now making the email rounds — without attribution, photo credit or any citation of the original source —  we thought we’d show you what happened when gale force winds blew a Maltese-Shih-tzu named Bi Bi off of Brighton Pier in Victoria, Australia.

The unleashed dog splashed into the choppy waters as owner Sue Drummond looked on.  “I thought he was going to sink and then maybe I wouldn’t be able to find him,” she told the Herald Sun. “I didn’t really want to hop in the water either because I wasn’t quite sure if I could make it to shore with a struggling dog.”

Raden Soemawinata — on the pier for a family ceremony to scatter his grandmother’s ashes into the bay, showed no such hesitation. He stripped down to shirt and underwear and dived in after the dog: 

“It was pretty cold and windy, but it wasn’ such a hard decision to jump in, it wasn’t such a great feat,” Soemawinata, 20, said. “I’m a part-time model, so getting into my jocks isn’t so different to what I do for work.”The photos were taken by Chris Scott, and originally appeared in the Herald Sun in Australia.

Again, it’s old news, but given we missed it the first time around, and the photos have bobbed up to the surface again, we thought both the photographer, the rescuer, and Bi Bi deserved to be more than anonymous.

A Louisville man with a lengthy arrest record has been charged with second-degree cruelty to animals for allegedly throwing a pit bull off the Clark Memorial Bridge into the Ohio River.

Damon D. Bledsoe, 39, of 210 E. Ormsby Ave., was arrested Tuesday morning and arraigned Wednesday.

Four witnesses contacted Louisville’s Metro Animal Services to report that Bledsoe allegedly spoke of throwing the dog off the bridge, and allegedly threatened to do the same to a witnesses’ cats.

The dog survived the 80-foot fall to the river and was adopted by a waitress at a nearby Joe’s Crab Shack who witnessed the rescue.

Court records show Bledsoe has been arrested on 99 separate charges since 2002, ranging from domestic violence to disorderly conduct to theft to public intoxication, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal.

Kelsey Westbrook, the waitress who adopted the pit bull and named her Sunny, said the dog has recovered from her minor injuries and is “as happy as she can be.”

“She’s a 60-pound lapdog. … She’s got a little bit of separation anxiety, which I think is expected given what she’s been through. I think she trusts me now and knows I’m not going to leave her or put her in danger.”

Earlier this summer, Westbrook faced the loss of her apartment because she had adopted the pit bull, but she said the building got a new landlord who has let her and Sunny remain.

If you were thinking unthinkably cruel animal torture was strictly an urban phenomenon, take a look — if you have the stomach for it — at this item from the Northeast Booster.

The Booster — an Internet conglomeration of recycled news from Baltimore area newspapers – reports that three men were arrested and charged with animal cruelty Thursday after they allegedly tortured a cat in a microwave, then put it in a freezer, then tossed it into a river.

Kevin Abel, 19, Scott McDowell, 18, and Richard Rioux, 25, were all arrested last week in connection with the cat’s death, which occurred July 31 in the Edgemere area, according to Bill Toohey, a Baltimore County police spokesman.

Abel, who lives in White Marsh, was house sitting for a friend when he apparently invited the other two men over.

Toohey said the cat was spun on the floor, beaten, placed on ceiling fan, put in the microwave, and closed in the freezer before being placed in a bag with rocks and tossed into Back River, off Lynch Point.

The next day, the owner of the cat — whose identity wasn’t  revealed – was informed by McDowell that the animal was dead. All three men were intoxicated at the time of the incident, Toohey said.

Abel, Rioux, of White Marsh, and McDowell, of  Sparrows Point, were all charged with animal cruelty.  A hearing for all three is scheduled for 1 p.m. on Oct. 29 in District Court in Essex.