ohmidog!

Warning: This video is graphic and disturbing

A video posted on the Internet reportedly shows soldiers in Colombia using a dog for target practice.

The video, taken with a cell phone, shows four officers joking as they tie the animal to a tree, shoot it and laugh while it yelps.

Later, the dog — identified in some reports as a trained detection dog — is struck with the butt of a rifle and, once it regains consciousness, appears to be picked up and thrown.

The unnamed soldiers are reported to be from Infantry Battalion Magdalena 27.

The New York Daily News said the incident happened four months ago in the jungle near the town of Pitalito, but didn’t come to light until this past weekend when a video clip was uploaded to YouTube.

Army Colonel Fabian Estevez is quoted in the South American press as saying the dog miraculously survived the incident and had since been treated for its injuries and “was doing fine.”

The four soldiers who were filmed shooting at the dog have been identified, but face no charges, according to Colombia Reports.

“But this is a regrettable and despicable act from the point of view of the National Army,” Estevez said. “Some young soldiers in an unusual game committed an act of indiscipline which will be subject to investigation of military justice.”

Could it be that – when it comes to providing unnecessary and disturbingly human goods and services to dogs – South America is becoming as bonkers as North America?

One look inside Motel Pet (with its ceiling mirrors, romantic lighting and plush red decor,  Motel Sex would have been a better name) indicates the answer is yes.

The motel — aimed at offering dogs a cozy and romantic place to breed – was opened earlier this year by Animalle Mundo Pet, a pet superstore in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

It’s modeled after the kind of themed love motels that aren’t uncommon in Brazil — like Swing, Absinthe and Alibi — that offer lovers a place to do just that discreetly and, if desired, by the hour.

And it’s just the latest evidence that, at least in the more urban areas, Brazilians are taking doting on their dogs to new extremes.

A New York Times article about the motel points out that Brazil’s pet population has jumped to 36 million, and that in some large cities plastic surgeons are offering Botox injections for dogs. It traces the rapid growth in doggie services to the emergence of a middle-class Brazil.

At Animalle Mundo Pet, the doggie love nests — at $50 a night — are the latest addition to a spectrum of services once reserved for humans. The store sells a beef-flavored dog beer, and offers a spa with a Japanese ofuro soaking tub, as well as several lines of designer canine apparel.

After spending $500 on clothes for her Yorkshire terrier, customer Andreia Kfoury checked out the motel area and said it would be perfect for Harley’s romantic pursuits.

“I’m definitely bringing Harley back here when it’s time for him to breed,” she said. “He is very macho, and would be a hit in this place.”

Our guess is that Harley, even though he’s a Yorkie, would be just as happy to get it on in a vacant lot, but, as those who offer humanesque services to dogs are well aware, dog owners are the ones who hold the money, and fall for the marketing ploys.

For those rendezvous that don’t produce results, Animalle Mundo Pet also offers to arrange artificial insemination. They don’t offer cloning, but give them another 10 years.

According to the Times article,  per capita income has risen in Brazil to about $10,700 a year. At the same time, family size has gotten smaller, with the average number of children dropping from 2.5 in the 1990s to 1.9. Life expectancy has climbed from 67 to 73. With more time, more money and fewer children, many Brazilians have turned to dogs, and the country is now No. 1 in per capita ownership of small dogs (those 20 pounds or less).

(Photo: Lalo de Almeida for The New York Times)

Lucy, a dog saved from the streets of Bogota — but not until after her owner beat her beyond recognition — is now in the U.S. and in the process of finding a new home.

And if you think there are only a few people who would find beauty in her unaligned face, think again.

Everyone, it seems, loves Lucy.

Stray from the Heart, a New York City rescue, says it has been inundated with inquiries from people seeking to adopt Lucy, now in a foster home — so many that they’ve removed her profile from their website as they sort through applicants.

Lucy was beaten by her former owner so badly that her nose and jaw were broken, according to Stray from the Heart. Both have healed, but they never set properly, leaving her jaw and snout slightly askew.

Her abuser also pulled out some of her teeth, to keep her from fighting with the many male dogs she was bred with.

Somehow, she escaped and was found living on the streets, alone, emaciated and pregnant. She was picked by a good samaritan and taken to a veterinarian who discovered her uterus was twisted. The vet had to decided between saving the mother or the babies, and opted to save Lucy,  Stray from the Heart says.

It was believed to have been the three-and-a-half-year-old dog’s fifth or sixth pregnancy.

After a few months in foster care in Bogota, Lucy was brought to the U.S., and was boarded in Connecticut until foster care could be secured.

Stray from the Heart is now picking a permanent home from the many applicants who got in touch after her photos appeared on the rescue’s website and Facebook page.

(Photos:  From the Facebook page of Stray from the Heart)

As wonderful a tool as social media is for defending, locating, rehoming, advocating for and generally protecting man’s best friend, there are times when its power gets embarrasingly out of control.

The “nails in cheese” story is a case in point — one that proves yet again that, when stories go viral, not even a dose of truth can slow them down.

“New trend at dog parks, nails in pieces of cheese, if you take your dogs to dog parks, please be careful!!” Eric “Pack Ethic” Bellows, one of many overspreading the news, reports on his Facebook page.

It’s not a “new” trend, or even a trend at all — at least it wasn’t before the photo started getting “shared” all over the Internet.

It apparently was one incident, three months ago, at a dog park in South America.

True, it was a heinous act, and should be reported, but calling it a trend, blowing it out of proportion, making it sound like it’s happening next door, is irresponsible. And scarier yet, once that starts happening, it’s often irreversible — almost out of control.

In addition to planting evil seeds in twisted minds, the photo is unnecessarily alarming thousands of dog lovers, who, always willing to speak out from the heart about mistreated dogs, sometimes don’t check the facts first.

Bellow’s Sunday Facebook post on spiked cheese — the photo and a brief and vague description – had drawn nearly 2,500 comments by Monday, and been shared by nearly 3,900 people. By this morning, there were 9,000 comments and 12,000 shares.

Most of the comments, as you can imagine, address how reprehensible the act was, and what should be done with the perpetrator, once caught.

A few ask when and where it happened — information not included in Bellow’s post.

Of course Bellows, who runs a rescue organization out of his home, is not the only one inflating the story to mythical proportions.

Through through social networking sites like Tumblr and Facebook, the nails and cheese story is spreading like wildfire, according to ThatsNonsense.com.

The website reports the single incident – a dog walker found the spiked treats in in Centennial Park, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires — was reported locally and then picked up by Perfil.com.

“After research on the Internet, we were unable to find any other stories … thus making it unlikely that this is a “trend” — rather an apparently isolated incident many months ago.

ThatsNonsense.com concludes:

“Whilst it is difficult to ascertain for definite whether this has ever happened anywhere else before, we have to acknowledge we live in a big world full of sick, twisted people so the likelihood that some future events linked to the message above happening again is certainly possible, if not likely – however this appears to be nothing more than a relatively isolated incident – there is no trend or serial “cheese spiking” occurring, and circulating this message is most likely going to be a total waste of time rather than helpful.”

 
Tiger Woods’ attorneys apparently growled loudly enough to dissuade PETA  from using the troubled golfer’s image in a public service announcement for spaying and neutering.

So now the organization is considering using South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford instead as their roll in the hay model.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals planned to put up billboards bearing Woods’ face and the slogan, “Too much sex can be a bad thing … for little tigers too. Help keep cats (and dogs) out of trouble: Always spay or neuter!”

After lawyers for the golfer threatened to sue if his image was used, PETA set its sites on Sanford for a similar billboard, with  the possible tagline: “Your dog doesn’t have to go to South America to get laid,” the New York Post reports.

The ad campaign is aimed at preventing millions of abandoned cats and dogs from being euthanized at shelters each year.

PETA now  intends to poke fun at Sanford, who flew to Buenos Aires last year for a romantic assignation with someone other than his wife — when he claimed to be hiking the Appalachian Trail.