ohmidog!

A pit bull puppy, still recovering from being abused by dogfighters, ran off from her foster home in New Jersey, but she was apparently drawn back by the smell of bacon.

Or it could have been the love.

Misty, only nine months old, was found on a Brooklyn street corner earlier this month, covered in wounds and bites from being used as a bait dog.

She was placed in a city shelter, then pulled by Second Chance Rescue, which moved her into a foster home. On Friday, she escaped from the backyard of that home.

Friends and neighbors joined in on the weekend-long search. Thousands of flyers were posted, and a $2,000 reward was offered. More than $4,500 was quickly raised to help in the search, and more than 14,000 people had, by Monday, “liked” her Facebook page.

But it was bacon — not social media — that apparently led to her safe return.

“The whole thing is unbelievable,” Misty’s foster mom, Erin Early-Hamilton, told NJ.com.

When someone suggested slapping some bacon on the backyard grill to lure the dog home, Early-Hamilton — despite being a vegan — was willing to give it a try.

She was sitting in a chair, and her husband was at the grill, when Misty came wandering home around 2 p.m. Monday.

(Photo: Facebook)

The canine nose got a vote of confidence Tuesday from the U.S. Supreme Court.

The unanimous decision stemmed from a case in Florida in which defense attorneys questioned a drug-sniffing dog’s credentials and reliability, and whether his alert was just cause to search a truck police had stopped.

The court ruled that, in the case of trained and certified dogs, it is — or as Justice Elena Kagan put it: “The sniff is up to snuff.”

Kagan said a dog’s “satisfactory performance” in a certification or training program provided sufficient reason for an officer to trust its alert, even though errors “may abound” when dogs get put to the test in the field.

The justices said that training records had established the reliability of Aldo, a German shepherd, in sniffing out contraband, and that Florida’s Supreme Court erred in suppressing evidence he found in Clayton Harris’ pickup truck — namely, methamphetamine ingredients.

The ruling, Reuters reports, gives law enforcement greater authority to use dogs to uncover illegal drugs.

“The question – similar to every inquiry into probable cause – is whether all the facts surrounding a dog’s alert, viewed through the lens of common sense, would make a reasonably prudent person think that a search would reveal contraband or evidence of a crime,”  Kagan wrote for the court. “A sniff is up to snuff when it meets that test.”

The Harris case is one of two the court is considering about the validity of evidence obtained by drug-sniffing dogs. The second — which the high court has heard, but not decided —  involves a police dog named Franky, who alerted while standing on a home’s doorstep, prompting a search that led to the discovery of marijuana growing inside.

In the case decided Tuesday, defense lawyers for Harris challenged the search by Aldo, a police dog in Liberty County, Florida. The officer handling Aldo — because Harris appeared nervous and declined to approve a search of his vehicle — allowed the dog a “free air sniff.”

Based in part on Aldo’s reaction, a full search was conducted.

Harris’ lawyers challenged the search, questioning Aldo’s certification and whether he was reliable in sniffing out drugs.

Florida’s Supreme Court concluded that the state had not sufficiently established how well-trained Aldo was, and it ruled the evidence of the methamphetamine ingredients should not have been admitted.

Kagan wrote that the officer reasonably believed there was contraband inside the truck based on Aldo’s training, and that defense attorneys failed to show that Aldo was unreliable.

I think that I shall never see
a tree unscathed by doggie pee

                         – Not Joyce Kilmer

Maybe there are some out there — a tree or two that, in their lifetimes, have somehow avoided ever being annointed by dog.

But, sharing the country with 75 million dogs, as both trees and we do, that is unlikely — and even more so in paved-over urban areas, where dogs sometimes outnumber trees, the living things they seem to most like to pee on.

For centuries, there seems to have been an unwritten agreement — a pee-ful coexistence — between dogs and trees. But, at least for half a century or so, there have been worries expressed about the cumulative effect of the continual sprinkling that some trees undergo, especially those in densely populated urban areas.

Some were recently voiced by a Philadelphia woman with an interesting perspective. Carrie Maria owns Monster Minders, a Philadelphia dog-walking service, and she’s a graduate of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s Tree Tenders program.

“Urine is highly acidic,” Maria wrote on the  The Monster Minders blog. “Simply put, dogs’ urine ‘burns’ the tree’s trunk to the point that the tree becomes susceptible to diseases, pests, dehydration and nutrient loss.”

Maria’s report drew the attention of The Atlantic, which ran a lengthy piece on its blog, Atlantic Cities, complete with photos she had taken of disfigured trees in her neighborhood she says are likely victims of pee-blight.

We can’t confirm that the damaged trees she photographed (pictured here) are solely victims of dog pee — and neither could experts. But we give her credit for speaking up for the underdog, which in this particular case is trees.

“Your dog ‘marks’ the tree, then another dog walks by 10 minutes later, smells your dog’s scent and hits it again, 15 minutes later and another dog walks by, hits it again.  This goes on day in and day out …  One dog’s scent ends up on a tree and others just keep marking it, over and over until the tree is compromised.”

Where I live — not in a real big city, not downtown — the yard in front of my apartment has huge oak trees, planted probably a good half century ago, or more. Ace pees on his favorite one regularly, but it’s so well-established it doesn’t seem to mind, and show no signs of damage.

About this time of year, the oak trees start raining acorns, and every once in a while one drops and hits Ace in the head. He jumps up and looks around, unaware he has been the victim of poetic justice.

Impervious as the big oaks in my yard may be, saplings in cities — the ones growing in a few square feet of dirt, the ones that have become potty stops for dozens of dogs daily — are another story.

“Repeated hits with urine basically causes an ‘open wound’ right on the base on the tree.  Since the bombardment from pee is semi-constant in an urban environment, the trees never have a chance to heal from past damage.  These wounds open the trees up to a slew of diseases that they just can’t fight off.” Maria wrote.

Her solution: Curb your dog.

It’s an old phrase, and one that – outside of places like New York — lots of people don’t even understand. It means to pee where the street meets the curb. And while that may lead to gutters running yellow, and car tires taking on a pee-scent, thereby attracting more to dogs to take aim on them, Maria finds that preferable to the tree assault.

“It’s simple.  Redirect your dog when he/she is headed for a tree,” Maria says. ”Teach your dog to ‘curb it.’”

How big a factor is dog pee, compared to all the other hazards urban trees face — like road salt, car doors, poor soil, limited room to grow and youths with pen knives? As the Atlantic Cities blog points out, experts aren’t sure:

“Whether pee hurts trees is a question that’s attracted virtually no research attention since its earliest mention in the academic literature …”

The post mentions one presentation, way back in 1959, in which a plant pathologist named Pascal Pirone warned of the dangers. In ‘Why shade trees die along city streets,’ a presentation given at the International Shade Tree Conference, he said ‘dog canker’ could kill trees up to 6 inches in diameter.”

But the Atlantic post also quoted a staff member at the Smithsonian Institution’s horticulture department as saying the trunk damage shown in Maria’s photos could have come from a number of causes, “including mechanical damage [i.e. mowers, car doors, pedestrians], southwest injury, disease [cankers], and insects [borers].”

While the extent of the harm caused by dog urine remains untallied, most experts agree it can’t be helping trees.

“We deal with it in the sense that I imagine trees get added stress or maybe anxiety” from dogs, says John Thomas, associate director at Washington, D.C.’s Urban Forestry Administration. “I don’t know how much dog urine you need to kill a tree. But there’s definitely something there…. Somebody could definitely get a masters or Ph.D. out of studying it.”

(Photos: Top photo by John Woestendiek; tree photos by Carrie Maria / Monster Minders)

Some bomb-sniffing dogs trained to fight terrorism are being taught to find a different nemesis — Burmese pythons  in Florida’s Everglades National Park.

The dogs are members of “EcoDogs,” a three-year-old collaboration at Alabama’s Auburn University between the science departments and the school’s Canine Detection Research Institute, which trains dogs to detect explosives.

Environmentalists fear the non-native pythons are upsetting the ecological balance of South Florida. Their spread is generally attributed to irresponsible pet owners dumping their snakes and 1992′s Hurricane Andrew, which destroyed an adjacent exotic snake warehouse.

Now they’ve adapted to the Everglades, and park officials say there’s no way of eradicating them. Instead, with help from dogs, they hope to keep them from further spreading.

In a trial run, the dogs showed they can cover a search area 2.5 times faster than a person.

“People can only see that the snake is there if they can see the snake. The dogs can smell the snake even if it’s not visually apparent to us,” said Christina Romagosa, a biologist at Auburn.

Two black Labrador retrievers from EcoDogs, Ivy and Jake, were sent to the 2,358-square-mile park in 2010 and demonstrated their skills to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, according to a Reuters report that appeared in the Chicago Tribune.

Todd Steury, an Auburn conservation biologist and co-founder of the project, said training a new dog to detect a scent takes six to 10 weeks. Training for each additional scent, he said, takes “about 10 minutes. You can do it by accident if you’re not careful.”

In controlled experiments, the EcoDogs success rate in finding pythons at the park was 75-92 percent, Romagosa said. The dogs helped researchers trap 19 pythons, including a pregnant snake with 19 eggs, according to an EcoDog report.

(Photo: Reuters)

In what’s billed as the first-ever TV commercial for dogs, Nestle will be testing an ad for Beneful dog food that contains squeaks, pings and high-frequency noises the company hopes will capture the attention of dogs.

Apparently, the company thinks owners who see their dogs react and wag their tails when the ad airs will jump to the conclusion that their dogs want some Beneful.

That’s a pretty long jump, but — as our “Woof in Advertising” series shows — appealing to dog lovers has proven a good way to sell products. Appealing to dogs, much like candy makers do to kids, is maybe just the logical next step.

Nestle says it asked its experts in pet behavior to help them understand what noises get dogs’ tails wagging, and incorporated three of those sounds in the ad.

“Dogs’ hearing is twice as sharp as humans. They can pick up frequencies which are beyond our range and they are better at differentiating sounds,” Dr. Georg Sanders, a nutrition expert and consumer consultant at Nestlé Purina PetCare in Germany, explained in a company press release.

The advertisement uses a squeak, similar to the sound dog toys make; a high pitched ping, also audible to both dogs and people, and a high frequency tone, similar to a dog whistle, that humans can barely hear.

“We wanted to create a TV commercial that our four-legged friends can enjoy and listen to, but also allow the owner and dog to experience it together,” said Anna Rabanus, Brand Manager of Beneful for Nestlé Purina PetCare Germany.

The commercial was first broadcast on German TV channels, national internet sites and the Beneful website during the summer months.

The 23-second TV spot will be shown in Austria this week.

The ad isn’t the first campaign in which Nestle takes aim at dogs’ sensory powers. Last year, the scent of Beneful dog food was incorporated into posters and advertising boards in German cities, in hopes of attracting dogs out for walks with their owners.

The philosophy behind the campaigns seems to be that if dogs show interest in Beneful, owners will oblige and buy them some — much like a parent might do for a child who, based on advertising, wants a particular kind of cereal.

There’s one major difference, though. Dogs, I’m pretty sure, won’t whine and nag their owners about it constantly until they cave in.

A bloodhound from North Carolina who went on to find fame in the New York City Police Department died this weekend at age 10.

Scooby, whose all-knowing nose played a key role in tracking down a cop killer during an interstate manhunt, passed away in his sleep about 9 a.m. Saturday, police said. He’d been suffering from an undisclosed illness, according to the New York Daily News.

The bloodhound was most noted for assisting in the 2007 apprehension of two suspects who had fled the city after gunning down two officers who had pulled them over in Brooklyn for driving a stolen BMW.

Officer Russel Timoshenko, 23, was shot in the face and died a few days later. Officer Herman Yan, his partner and now a detective, was wounded but survived.

The two suspects, Dexter Bostic and Robert Ellis, managed to escape the city and make it as far as the Poconos in eastern Pennsylvania, where they hid out in the woods.

Scooby, joined by six other police dogs and about 300 police officers from several states, launched a manhunt in the woods, based on reports of the two suspects having been seen in a nearby rest area.

Scooby took part in the search that night, and is credited with — when the search resumed the next morning — tracking down Ellis, who was found resting against a tree. Bostic was later apprehended as well.

Bostic was convicted in December 2008 of murder and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Ellis was convicted only of weapons possession, according to the New York Post, and was sentenced to 15 years.

Skilled as dogs are at finding dead bodies, police in Germany think they’ve found an animal even more adept at the task.

Police in Walsrode, Germany, say they have trained a vulture named Sherlock to lead them to cadavers.

By placing a GPS device on his leg, they can track him and respond — I’d hope before he’s eaten too much of the evidence.

“If it works, it could save time because the birds can cover much more area than sniffer dogs or humans,” officer Rainer Herrmann told the Daily Mail.

The turkey vulture, a natural scavenger, feeds almost exclusively on carrion, finding its meals through keen vision and a sense of smell that allows it to detect the gasses produced during the decay of dead animals from as high as 3,000 feet in the air.

“‘It was a colleague of mine who got the idea from watching a nature programme,”  Herrmann said. ”

Sherlock can even find remains in woodland or in thick undergrowth. Unlike sniffer dogs, who need regular breaks, Sherlock doesn’t seem to get tired and can cover a far larger area.

Sherlock is being trained at Walsrode, the largest bird park in the world with 650 different species.

Trainers hope to assemble a squadron of crimefighting vultures, but — given that the vultures aren’t native to the area, would have to be raised from chicks to be tame, and require lots of training — it will be a while before they are called to duty.

A police dog from Buffalo tracked down a shoplifting suspect in Canada — even though the alleged culprit was submerged in a swamp.

Thor, a two-year-old German shepherd, and his handler Lt. Sam Losi, were in Niagara-on-the- Lake to participate in training drills with the Niagara Regional Police canine unit.

Sgt. Jeff Hopkins, head of the Niagara canine unit, was conducting training when he received a call to assist in a search for a shoplifting suspect. With no other dogs at his immediate disposal, he invited Thor and his handler on the call.

They were told a man had been seen shoplifting from SportChek at Niagara Square, ran from security officers and had disappeared in a swampy area behind the mall.

Thor tracked the suspect’s scent from the mall to the swamp and jumped into the water. He came to a stop on what appeared to be a mound of debris in the water.

“We looked closer and saw what looked like a pant leg and a nose sticking out of the water,” Hopkins told the Niagara Falls Review. “He was totally submerged under water.”

A 45-year-old Niagara man was pulled from the swamp and is now being treated at a local hospital. No charges have yet been filed.

A sheriff’s deputy in Texas whose scent tracing dog has identified suspects in crimes has been named in two lawsuits arguing that scent evidence is often scant evidence.

The Victoria Advocate reported Sunday that the work of Fort Bend County sheriff’s Deputy Keith Pikett led to 62 days in jail for Calvin Lee Miller before he was cleared in the robbery of one elderly woman and sexual assault of another.

A swab of Miller and the scent from the assault victim’s sheets were sent to Pikett, whose three bloodhounds indicated Miller’s scent was on the sheets.

The other lawsuit involves a former Victoria County sheriff’s captain who became a murder suspect based on scent evidence, the Associated Press reported.

No laws or regulations govern scent lineups, and critics say they are often imprecise, but they’re admissible in courts across the nation.

“This is junk science. This isn’t even science. This is just junk,” said Jeff Blackburn, chief counsel for the Innocence Project of Texas. The group works to free wrongfully convicted inmates and started to investigate Pikett recently.

While dogs have a keen sense of smell — sometimes 10,000 times more sensitive than humans — and while every human exudes a different scent, critics of scent line-ups say are easily influenced by human involvement such as the use of a leash , the presence of many scents on evidence or in lineups and the fact that humans must speak for dogs in court.

Pikett’s scent work led to a search warrant for the house of former Victoria County sheriff’s Capt. Michael Buchanek during the 2006 investigation of the murder of Child Protective Services worker Sally Blackwell in Victoria.

The deputy’s dogs walked from a spot where Blackwell’s body was found to her home about five miles away, then to Buchanek’s home nearby. Through a scent lineup, authorities obtained a search warrant. Another man eventually pleaded guilty in the case.

The lineup was “the most primitive evidential police procedure I have ever witnessed,” said Bob Coote, who worked with police dogs in the United Kingdom. “If it was not for the fact that this is a serious matter, I could have been watching a comedy.”

For five straight days, Greg Wong returned to the lonely stretch of highway on Wyoming’s prairie where his wife was killed, searching not for closure but for Sammie and Maddie, the two small dogs traveling with her.

Hours after state police on May 30 called his home in Laramie, notifying him that his wife, Susan, had been killed  on Highway 487, Wong made the first two-hour trip, arriving at 2 a.m., just as a tow truck pulled the SUV his wife had been driving from a deep ravine.

Police told Wong that his wife apparently lost control of the vehicle. It rolled over three times and landed in the ravine. Police told him no dogs were found inside the vehicle, or in the area.

Wong told the Casper Star-Tribune that as soon as he got the news, it was as if he heard his wife’s voice in his head, saying “find the dogs.”

“I guess a lot of it didn’t soak in,” he said. “…You get to that point where you almost turn into a zombie. You are afraid to start thinking about it too much because emotionally you can’t handle it. I kept focusing on ‘you have to find those dogs.’ In a way, I was thinking my last connection to my wife was those dogs.”

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