ohmidog!

A Florida man will serve 40 days in jail for tying a 30-pound dumbbell to a dog’s neck and tossing him in the river.

Willie T. Bell, 41, of Palmetto, told police he was trying to make the dog stronger.

He pleaded no contest to the third-degree felony earlier this week, the Bradenton Herald reported.

Police in April spotted the two-year-old pit bull mix, named Blackie, in the Manatee River, not far from where Bell was fishing.

According to Palmetto police officer Micah Mathews’ report, the dogs snout was sticking up as it tried to tread water.

“Mr. Bell said he was trying to make the dog stronger,” Mathews wrote.
“The dog was unable to touch the ground and was not able to move the weight,” the officer wrote. “When I arrived I could see only the nose of the dog out of the water.”

On the officer’s request, Bell brought the dog to shore. Bell told the officer the dog had been swimming in place for about 15 minutes.

Mathews asked Bell the same question that’s probably running through your mind right now: Would he like to be anchored to a dumbbell and left in the water like that? Bell replied, “Hell no,” the police report states.

Bell was not the dog’s owner, animal control officials said.

The dog was returned to its original owner and animal control officials said it suffered no lasting physical damage.

How low can one go? How about this: Stealing an autistic child’s therapy Chihuahua.

Betty Peltier of Antioch, Ill., pleaded guilty to just that this week in exchange for a sentence of 100 hours of community service.

She could have been sentenced to a maximum of one year in jail and fined $2,500, according to the Lake County News-Sun.

Peltier was accused of stealing  Peanut, a 3-pound Chihuahua who ran out of his family’s house while they were unloading groceries. Peanut served as a therapy dog for the son of Monica Hidalgo. Hidalgo offered a $1,000 reward for the dog’s return.

After Peliter called Hidalgo several times inquiring about the reward, Round Lake Beach police arrested her when she attempted to return the dog.

In addition to 100 hours of community service, Peltier received one year of supervision, after the successful completion of which the theft charge will not go on her record as a conviction.

Human DNA found underneath a dogs claw helped build the animal abuse case against a San Diego man accused of beating his girlfriend’s three dogs to death.

Patrick Caleb Land, 25, was sentenced Friday to five years and four months in state prison.

“These crimes were committed with callous violence and a serious punishment is warranted,” Judge Charles Rogers said.

The maximum possible sentence was eight years, but the judge took into account Land’s guilty plea, that Land was born to a drug-using mother and that he was beaten in his youth by an adoptive mother, according to 10 News in San Diego.

According to prosecutors, Land called his girlfriend Natasha Strain last year and told her that he had come home to find Josh, her 8-year-old Golden Retriever mix, dead.

Three weeks later, he called her again to tell her that he had found her other two dogs, Jackie, a 9-year-old white shepherd mix, and Pikanik, a 50-pound mixed breed, dead in a bedroom.

No necropsy was performed in the first case, but a veterinarian determined the second two animals were beaten to death.

Prosecutors said there was evidence of attempts to suffocate the animals, and that the defendant’s DNA was found under one of the dogs’ nails.

At a preliminary hearing, a roommate of the couple testified that Land sometimes complained that Strain spent more time with her dogs than she did with him.

A 78-year-old North Carolina man described as a “legend” in the dogfighting world was sentenced today to five years in prison, the maximum a federal judge could impose.

Harry Hargrove of Duplin County was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Raleigh on dogfighting charges he pleaded guilty to earlier this year.

Prosecutors had sought a sentence longer than recommended federal guidelines of 10 months to 16 months.

A federal motion says Hargrove has been involved in dog-fighting in the South for about 40 years. He told Judge Terrence Boyle he once had more than 100 fighting dogs, but he’d cut back to 35 by the time he was arrested.

Police found jumper cables used to electrocute dogs on the property, as well as a blood-stained fighting pit and other tools usually used to condition dogs for fighting.

Hargrove was arrested last April after a lengthy investigation, during which he sold the dog at left, Hurricane Hugo, to an undercover officer.

In addition to Hargrove’s five-year sentence, the judge mandated three additional years of supervision after he is released.

A distressing animal cruelty case came to an unsatisfying conclusion yesterday here in my temporary hometown.

Upon being convicted of starving two dogs to death, Lysandra Nicole Chambers, 33,  of Winston-Salem, N.C., was sentenced to 45 days in jail — but the sentence was suspended.

The Winston-Salem Journal reported that means she’ll serve no jail time as long as she doesn’t break the law for the next 18 months.

The ruling was issued by Forsyth District Judge Roland Hayes.

Chambers was charged on June 21 last year with two counts of cruelty to animals.

According to Forsyth County animal control officer Gary Lancaster, who testified Thursday, he found one malnourished dog chained to Chambers’ back porch and another dead inside a crate.

Lancaster said Chambers told him her children were supposed to be taking care of the dogs.

Jennifer Tierney, a founding member of Fur-Ever Friends of N.C., said the surviving dog had to be euthanized.

Tierney called the punishment a slap on the wrist: “… She should have been told that she could never own animals again for the rest of her life. This is a situation that repeats itself all over the county and all over the state, and unless lawmakers get serious about animal cruelty, it’s not going to change.”

A not guilty plea was entered Friday on behalf of Kisha Curtis, the Newark woman accused of animal cruelty charges stemming from the discovery of a dog who’d been tossed down a trash chute and left to die in a garbage bin.

The 1-year-old pit bull, whose rescuers named him Patrick, continues to recover at an area animal hospital.

Public defender Regina Lynch entered the plea in Superior Court in Newark on behalf of Curtis, 27, the Newark Star-Ledger reported. She appeared at the hearing via a video hookup from the Essex County Jail.

Curtis faces two counts of tormenting and torturing a living creature by failing to provide sustenance and two counts of abandonment, said Assistant Essex County Prosecutor Cheryl Cucinello.

After the hearing, Kisha’s mother, Tammie Curtis, said her daughter didn’t discard the dog, but only left him tethered at the high-rise Garden Spires apartments in Newark — while she went on a trip to Albany. She implied that the dog was stolen.

“Anybody would take that dog,” the mother said. “If she tied the dog, she didn’t leave the dog to die.”

A security guard at the 520-unit complex told the Star-Ledger that the dog had been seen tied to a railing with a leather leash, and had been the subject of resident complaints for more than a month.

“It would whimper, and it would yelp when you would come up to it,” Ortman said.

A custodian found Patrick on March 16, inside a trash bag at the bottom of a 22-story garbage chute.

Judge Amilkar Velez-Lopez kept Curtis’ bail at $10,000 bond or $1,000 cash and forbid her to have contact with pets. If convicted, she faces 18 months in prison, a $3,000 fine and community service.

Patrick has been recovering at Garden State Veterinary Specialists in Tinton Falls, where he has gained two pounds since being found.

The New York City Council yesterday voted to make tethering a dog or other animal for more than three hours a crime, punishable by fines and, for repeat offenders, a possible jail sentence.

First-time violators would receive a written warning or a fine of up to $250, if the animal is injured. A repeat offender could face a $500 fine and up to three months in prison, the Wall Street Journal reported.

“Tethering an animal for an extended period of time is cruel and unusual,” Council Speaker Christine Quinn said. “This bill will not only prevent this type of unnecessary cruelty, but also increase public safety for pedestrians throughout the City.”

The council voted 47-1 in favor of the bill, which prohibits leaving an animal tied up for more than three consecutive hours in any continuous 12-hour period.

The council also approved an increase in the cost of  annual license for dogs that aren’t spayed or neutered, raising the fee to $34 from $11.50.

Revenue generated from the incnrease will be used to subsidize animal population control programs.

Louis then

Louis now

An Alabama state board denied parole this week to a man convicted of spraying a dog with lighter fluid, setting him on fire and beating him with a shovel.

The star witness at the hearing? The victim himself — Louis Vuitton, an 8-year-old pit bull who, now in the care of a local couple that adopted him, still bears burn scars over much of his body. The dog was led into the hearing room, consenting to being petted along the way.

The board voted 3-0 to deny early release to 23-year-old Juan Daniels of Montgomery, who was sentenced in 2009 to nine years and six months in prison, according to the Associated Press. The sentence was a record in Alabama in an animal cruelty case.

It’s believed to have been the first appearance by a dog at an Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles hearing. “I don’t recall every having one here before,” said Cynthia Dillard, the board’s executive director.

Daniels’ family and supporters aruged that he had been sentenced far more harshly than criminals who harm human beings.

After the September 2007 attack on the dog, the Montgomery Humane Society got as many as 50 calls a day about the case, some from other countries.

The dog was named “Louis Vuitton,” in honor of another abused dog, named “Gucci,” whose torture case in Mobile in 1994 led to passage of “Gucci’s law,” which made animal cruelty a felony in Alabama.

More than 60 law enforcement officers, animal rights advocates and other supporters of Louis crowded into the hearing, where Montgomery County District Attrney Ellen Brooks asked parole board members to make Daniels serve his entire sentence.

She said he tortured the dog, which belonged to his mother, because he was angry at her for not letting him use the car.

Daniels will be eligible for another parole hearing in July 2012.

Steven Clay Romero, the man who dragged a dog named Buddy to his death at the Colorado National Monument, received the maximum sentence of three years, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced Friday.

Romero, 38, of Grand Junction, will spend three years in federal prison, followed by 12 months of supervised parole for aggravated animal cruelty in the dog’s death Dec. 30, 2009, the Montrose Press reported.

He also was fined $500 and ordered to pay $343 in restitution to Buddy’s owners.

The dog, reported stolen from the back of a pickup truck in Delta, Colorado, was found with a rope tied around his neck at the monument. Surveillance photos and marks in the snow indicated Buddy had been dragged behind a pickup truck while still alive.

Romero’s sister, Melissa Lockhart, 32, is charged as an accessory after the fact to aggravated animal cruelty for allegedly attempting to cover up Buddy’s death. Conviction could bring up to three years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

A theft complaint filed against her for stealing the dog was dismissed June 10, court records show.

The torture and killing of Buddy triggered a Facebook site, Demand Justice For Buddy, which as of Friday had 267,713 members.