ohmidog!

A Pomeranian in a tuxedo, taking the train back home from an SPCA fundraiser in San Francisco, was stolen after his owner fell asleep.

Kerrin Lanahan was riding a BART train back to her San Bruno home Wednesday night when she dozed off — her purse on one side of her, her Pomeranian, Archie, in a travel bag on the other.

When Lanahan, 31, woke up, she found someone had snatched the bag containing Archie, who is trained to help her cope with anxiety.

“If only they had taken the purse,” she told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Lanahan says she has struggled with extreme anxiety, especially while traveling. She survived a plane crash as a child.

She said Archie was trained to be ”really calm in public in general. When we’re out, it’s all about me and him. He goes everywhere with me. When my anxiety level spikes, he knows to jump into my lap.”

Lanahan said she and Archie left the San Francisco SPCA Bark and Whine Ball fundraiser at Fort Mason late Wednesday, taking a cab to Montgomery BART station and getting on a train at about 11:15 p.m.

UPDATE: Archie is back with his owner, ABC 7 reports. After receiving an anonymous text message, Lanahan passed the address on to BART detectives, who found the dog at a home near the Balboa BART station. They were able to confirm it was Archie through his microchip. Police were questioning a person at the house and said charges were pending.

Some folks in Arlington, Mass., are searching for a missing dog — one so big children used to ride on him.

He has been gone for 60 years.

He’s believed to be a Labrador-mastiff mix, and he’s missing his tail.

If you haven’t figured it out by now, he’s a statue — missing from Robbins Farm Park since about 1950.

According to Boston.com, Roland Chaput and fellow members of the Friends of Robbins Farm Park decided earlier this year to make at least some effort to find the dog and return it to its original home.

“Maybe it is in some guy’s backyard and he forgot all about it,” Chaput says.
Since the early 1900s, the dog — he has no name — sat atop a hill at the park.

But where he came from, like where he has gone, isn’t known.

According to a history of the park, by Oakes Plimpton, the statue belonged to the land’s previous owner, the late Nathan Robbins, a member of a well-known Arlington family that gave the town several of its public buildings, including the library.

Robbins married May Robbins in 1902, and around 1912 they moved into a house on the farm. While it’s not known where the Robbinses obtained the statue, it has been speculated that he was procured for use as a make-believe guard dog.

Chaput says the statue was probably cast iron, but could have been bronze. He says it was about four feet long, and modeled after a Labrador retriever, or a mastiff, or a mix of the two breeds.

Nathan and his wife May, by some accounts, had a major falling out in the 1920s, and went 20 years without speaking to each other, though living in the same home. A 1929 Globe article reported that May was suing her husband for financial support and claimed that, though her husband grew potatoes, he would only give her rotten ones to cook for herself.

The farm was owned by the Robbinses until 1942, when the town obtained the property for use as the purpose of using the land as a park.

Around 1950, the old farmhouse was torn down, and the statue of the dog disappeared, possibly taken by a memberof the demolition crew. Or maybe not.

Not even the dog’s sculptor is known for sure. One member said it was initially thought to have been made by famed Arlington sculptor Cyrus Dallin, but recent research suggests that wasn’t the case. Now they suspect the statue was a copy of one made by 19th century Rhode Island artist Thomas Frederick Hoppin. It was called “The Sentinel.”

The group has located similar dog statues in Houston, and is considering having a copy of one of those made if they can’t find the missing one.

Chaput said they’d even consider paying something for the statue’s safe return.

“I want it to go into the playground, where the kids can have their picture taken with it,” he said.

Anyone with information about the statue is asked to call the Friends of Robbins Farm Park at 781-646-7786.

(Photo: From the book,”Robbins Farm Park, Arlington, Massachusetts: A Local History,” by Oakes Plimpton)

Authorities are crediting a three-year-old girl’s dog with keeping her alive during a freezing night lost in a forest in Poland.

“This dog is the most important part of this story, he is a hero,” said firefighter Grzegorz Szymonowski. “It is thanks to this dog that the girl survived the night.”

Rescue workers searched for the girl, named Julia, after she wandered into the forest near her village in southwestern Poland.

Her dog drew the attention of searchers, and also likely kept her from freezing to death, according to Reuters.

The girl’s grandmother, Danuta Balak, says the dog was the girl’s best friend.

“She was with this dog all the time. She didn’t go anywhere without it. When she was with me, when I was looking after her, she constantly said, ‘Granny, the dog needs to come in the house. And she told me to cut bread and she fed it all the time.”

Julia is being treated for a mild case of frostbite.

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.

Veterinary Pet Insurance (VPI) has announced this year’s Hambone Award winner — a dachshund-terrier mix who chased a skunk under a deck, followed it into a hole, and then disappeared underground.

She wasn’t found and dug out until the next day.

It has been about a year since Peanut’s underground adventure, and she has recovered fully.

VPI said thousands cast online votes in a close race that saw Peanut beat out a cat trapped in a car engine to win the title of VPI’s Most Unusual Pet Insurance Claim of the Year.

The fourth recipient of the annual award, Peanut was found buried in the dirt beneath the deck at the Sicklerville, N.J., home of her owners,  Keith and Christy Wolfram. The day before, she’d gotten in a scuffle with a skunk, chasing it under the deck and into a hole. Apparently the underground tunnel collapsed once she got inside it.

Her owners called the Winslow Fire Department. After hours of poking holes in the deck and searching for the dog, the firefighters were ready to call it quits, but Christy didn’t given up hope.

“When the firefighters saw Christy continue to dig, one of them decided to take a last look,” said Keith. “I remember him shouting, ‘I see her paw!’ and my heart just sank. By the time they got her out she was barely moving. I couldn’t believe she was alive.”

The firefighters administered oxygen to Peanut and she was taken to a veterinarian. She was treated for hypothermia and, after about a week and a half, had made a full recovery.

As the 2012 VPI Hambone Award winner, Peanut will receive a bronze trophy in the shape of a ham, as well as a  bag filled with toys, treats and an emergency pet kit.

Second place went to Pebbles, a  domestic shorthair cat who got stuck in a car engine and was discovered after a 15-mile drive. Pebbles was treated for lacerations and a broken jaw. Third Place went to Bayley, a  Labrador retriever in Maryland who shattered a a 55-gallon aquarium while playing in the house, resulting in a two-inch gash.

The 12 nominees were chosen from more than 1 million claims VPI receives annually.

For more details on the Hambone Award  visit VPIHamboneAward.com.

The founder of the dog rescue organization that moved its headquarters into Michael Vick’s old house was charged Monday with animal cruelty, the Daily Press in Hampton Roads reported.

Surry County deputies served a search warrant at Dogs Deserve Better’s Good Newz Rehab Center for Chained and Penned Dogs.

According to court records, they were looking for Tasers and mace allegedly used on the rescued dogs.

Authorities said the search and investigation were prompted by allegations from former staff and volunteers working at the center on Moonlight Drive — the same house where Philadelphia Eagles quarterback lived when he bankrolled a dog-fighting operation.

Dogs Deserve Better founder Tamira Thayne was charged with one count of misdemeanor animal cruelty and one count of inadequate care of animals, also a misdemeanor, according to Surry County Chief Animal Control Officer Tracy Terry.

She’s scheduled to appear Sept. 25 in Surry General District Court.

According to the search warrant, deputies were searching for all paperwork connected to dogs that have been housed on the property since the facility opened in June 2011, including veterinary records and receipts.

The search warrant alleged that “animals are being maced and tased on regular basis” and dogs are being cratedfor long periods, up to 19 hours a day. According to the warrant, injured and sick dogs are not getting proper veterinary care.

Terry declined to discuss what, if anything, was found in the search.

Authorities removed one dog from the kennel, but Terry refused to say why.

Terry said she began investigating July 20 after receiving mailed complaints, including pictures, from current and former employees and volunteers.

(Photo: Adrin Snider / Daily Press)

A former bomb-sniffing dog in Iraq has been reunited with his one-time handler.

The reunion took place at Lackland Air Force base in Texas last week, and the eight-year-old dog is now home with Logan Black.

Black, 34, launched a campaign on Facebook to persuade the Air Force to retire Diego and let him adopt him, KCTV in Kansas City reports. The retired soldier says Diego saved his life, several times, in Iraq.

“This feels fantastic,” Black said. “I’ve been waiting for those for a really long time.”

Black trained Diego and they served on nearly 40 missions in Iraq in 2006, searching for hidden weapons and homemade bombs.

Five years after they sent separate ways, Black said he still missed the dog. He began a search for Diego and learned that he was working at Lackland AFB, helping train other bomb-sniffing dogs.

“No doubt Diego would have found a home somewhere, but a home with me is different than with a totally new stranger,” Black said.

(Photo: KCTV)

Tech XX, the English bulldog that served as mascot at Louisiana Tech University, died of heat stroke after being left out in the heat Sunday.

Though initially reported missing, the four-year-old English bulldog was left outside by an employee, who has since been fired, according to the veterinarian that cared for the dog.

The employee, according to news reports, tried to cover up the dog’s death.

“Tech XX was a member of our immediate family and a daily part of our lives for the past four years,” Patrick Sexton said in a statement. “We are devastated over the circumstances of his passing, and there will be a large void in our hearts for some time to come. As with any family member, we will spend considerable time grieving his passing.”

In a statement, the university said that since becoming the mascot in 2008, Tech XX got superior care from Sexton’s team.

Tech XX’s predecessor, Tech XIX, was retired in 2007 because of health concerns after suffering heatstroke, the university said on its website.

Originally, a worker said he let the dog out to go to the bathroom and the dog went missing, said Sexton, who kept Tech XX at his home. Dozens of students and residents searched for the dog, and rewards were posted.

For four days, the employee kept Tech XX’s death, and location, a secret, according to the Shreveport Times.

“That employee unfortunately chose to handle it the wrong way and attempted to cover it up,” Sexton said. “Due to this negligence, the employee is no longer employed by Sexton Animal Health Center.”

Tech XX was owned by the school’s Student Government Association, the president of which, Will Dearmon, said, ”It’s extremely disappointing and sad news this happened to our beloved Tech XX.”

“We’ll work through that in the coming days and there will be a Tech XXI, but right now our hearts are broken,” he added.

If you think only dogs look out for their fellow pack members, check out this story.

Elicia Calhoun, an agility trainer, competitor and speaker, rolled her car while traveling through the Arizona desert last week.

All six dogs aboard were thrown from the vehicle.

What happened next — and you can read the full details at Petweekly.com – is equal parts sad and inspiring.

In the immediate aftermath, other motorists stopped and helped a bruised and battered Calhoun find three of the dogs, all alive – BreeSea and Iceman, both border collies, and Destiny, an Australian shepherd.

Three more were missing, including her 13-week-old Kelpi puppy named Tsunami, who had been secured in a crate in the front seat; another Australian shepherd named Nika; and Tobie, another border collie.

When the paramedics insisted Calhoun get in the ambulance, she refused until bystanders, including a border patrol agent, promised to keep looking for her dogs.

While Calhoun was being treated for cuts bruises and a punctured lung, word of the accident hit the Internet, and, within a matter of hours, 3,000 people had joined in a newly created Facebook group, many of them offering to help.

Calhoun, against the advice of doctors, signed herself out of the hospital to continue searching for her dogs, and learned as she was leaving that Tsunami’s body had been found.

According to the Petweekly.com story, by Deborah Davidson Harpur, volunteers were showing up to help in the search by then, and others were offering their assistance from afar, including animal communicators, pilots, ranchers who lived in the surrounding area, and HAM and CB radio operators. Someone even volunteered a military heat-seeking device.

By then, the number of members of the Facebook group had grown to 6,000.

Sadly, Nika’s body was found in the median of the freeway. With the three surviving dogs found initially, and the two later found dead, that left only one unaccounted for — Tobie

Elicia slept outside that night, in case Tobie came to look for her, and other volunteers slept in their cars or camped alongside the road before resuming the search for the remaining dog the next day.

That morning, Tobie was spotted by a volunteer. Elicia rushed to the location, spotted the dog running down the highway in front of a truck and eventually got Tobie to come to her.

Iceman, Destiny, and Breesea have some minor injuries, but they, and Tobie, who had been hit by a car, are expected to fully recover in the coming months.

Calhoun, on Facebook, offered thanks to all those that helped:

“Words cannot express my gratitude. I have just been home a few nights and am finally starting to absorb the impact of what has transpired. Walking into my house that first night was indescribable. My life is changed in so many ways now. I realize how blessed I was in surviving this crash.”

(Photos: Petweekly.com)