ohmidog!

When a guide dog was struck by a hit-and-run driver in St. Petersburg, Tampa Bay area residents responded with donations to cover the costs of her medical care.

Abbey, a two-year-old mixed breed, was off leash and playing in the yard of her legally blind owner when she apparently ran into the street and was struck by a car that sped away.

Her owner, Terry Ellrick, 59, was devastated.

“I just want them to have a merry Christmas and a happy Thanksgiving. That’s what I want because I can’t, and she can’t have her turkey either. So I hope it goes down good for them,” he told 10 News.

Ellrick could not give a description of the vehicle, and police said there were no witnesses.

Officers helped Abbey to the car of a friend of Ellrick’s, who drove her to BluePearl Veterinary Partners in North Tampa.

“Abbey is not out of the woods yet, but she is doing well and recovering from her surgery,” James Judge, a spokesman for the animal hospital told Tampa Bay Online.

Judge said to dog enough contributions had arrive by Thursday morning to cover the Wednesday surgery.

Those who still wish to donate can do so through Frankies Friends, which will use the money to help other families who can’t afford veterinary care.

Anyone with information about the hit-and-run is encouraged to call police at (727) 893-7780.

(Photo by Jim Hockett / Tampa Bay Online)

A homeless Rhodesian Ridgeback mix being walked by a  volunteer came to her aid when she was attacked on a path behind the Friends of Strays animal shelter in St. Petersburg, Florida.

The 38-pound dog, named Mabeline, scared the attacker off, allowing the 17-year-old girl to escape.

Volunteering at the shelter on a recent Saturday, the girl was chased, grabbed by the hair and pinned down before Mabeline scared the attacker away.

Michael Bacon, a registered sexual predator, was arrested, WTSP-10 in Florida reported.

Since the attack, Mabeline has been adopted. Her new owner, Mary Callahan, had no idea what the dog had done, until 10 News told her.

“I looked at my dog and I thought, ‘You are a hero,’” Callahan said.

The shelter said they are no longer allowing volunteers to walk dogs down the path where the attack happened.

Maybe it’s because he was a golden retriever, as opposed to a pit bull. Maybe it’s because he was 12-years-old and arthritic. Maybe it’s because his owner is a lawyer.

In any case, when it comes to the seventh dog shot and killed by St. Petersburg police officers this year, the public anger is not subsiding.

Boomer’s death is still echoing — and doing so well beyond Florida.

Between his vocal owner, a Facebook page called “Boomer’s Voice,” and a petition at Change.org that has drawn more than 4,000 signatures, Boomer’s death has already gotten more attention than the previous six dogs that were shot, combined, the St. Petersburg Times reports.

Roy Glass,  a prominent personal injury lawyer, says he wants the police to know how much the dog’s violent death hurt his family. He wants the agency to admit the officer was wrong, and he wants police to change how they deal with dogs.

“What I want is for police to not be so trigger-happy in blowing away an obvious family pet,” he said.

Boomer escaped from his fenced yard Oct. 1 after a worker removed some wire that kept the dog from digging his way out. That night, he approached a woman walking her dog. The woman says he growled and snapped at her when she tried to check his tags.

When the woman called police, officers Misty Swanson and Michelle Fotovat responded. According to their police report, the dog was sociable at first, but bared his teeth when Swanson reached for the dog’s tags.

“Officer Swanson was about two feet from the dog when I observed her pull out her gun and fire one shot at the clearly now vicious dog,” Fotovat wrote in the police report.

Glass says — despite the dog’s tags — police never called him. On Oct. 2, he reported his dog missing. On Oct. 3, the SPCA called to tell him what happened to Boomer.

When Glass and his wife, Lauren, started hearing from other residents whose dogs had been shot and killed by police, they started a campaign.

They began a Boomer’s Voice Facebook page, featuring a photo of the dead and bloody Boomer, which already has over 2,500 followers. A California animal activist started a petition on Change.org calling for St. Pete’s officers to be better trained to handle animals.

“When a police officer’s first line of defense in restraining an animal is to reach for a weapon, it is sending the wrong message to the community that they swore to uphold and protect,” the petition says. “The ‘uncooperative animal’ that the police officer may kill could be someone’s senior pet who could be afraid, deaf, or in pain and not able to respond to the officer’s request.”

Boomer’s shooting is under investigation by the Police Department’s internal affairs division, and police aren’t commenting until the investigation is completed.

A police spokesman did point out that, after a September 2010 shooting that killed two leashed dogs, all officers were ordered to go through two hours of training with the SPCA.

Boomer’s owner believes that’s not enough. Glass wants to see officers undergo more extensive training, and lawmakers rewrite existing laws that define pets as property.

“As the law stands, our pets are nothing but chattel,” he said. “They’re personal property, and if somebody violates them, or abuses or maims or kills (them), you’re not entitled to any compensatory damages other than value of the dog. That’s so antiquated these days.”

A St. Petersburg, Florida, police officer shot and killed two dogs Sunday night.

Chris Clark, 44, said he was walking his Rottweiler, Quincy, and his landlord’s Chesapeake Bay retriever, Missy, when he heard a police officer shouting at him — Officer Slobodan Juric, who was investigating a complaint about a suspicious person in the area.

When Clark stopped, a third dog, unleashed approached Missy and the two exchanged growls. Quincy’s leash got wrapped around him. Clark fell and the dogs started fighting.

Clark told the St. Petersburg Times that he was grabbing his dogs’ collars, trying to pull them away, when Juric yelled “mad dog” and pointed the gun at Missy.

Clark said Juric fired one shot into the dog, pointed the gun at Quincy and fired another round, then fired two more shots into Missy.

“We’ve begun an internal affairs investigation,” said St. Petersburg Police Department spokesman Mike Puetz. “There will be a statement taken from (Clark) and from everybody who was a witness in the case, to try and discern the totality of the events and the appropriateness of the (officer’s) action.”

Juric, 25, has been with the department for more than a year. He was formerly a freelance photographer for the St. Petersburg Times.

More than six months ago, a dog was hit by a car in St. Petersburg, Russia, and left to die.

But witnesses to the accident picked up the dog and brought him to a veterinary clinic. A veterinarian performed surgery, for free, but the dog’s spinal injuries were such that he lost the use of his back legs and wasn’t expected to walk again.

He was taken to an animal shelter, whose staff couldn’t bear the thought of the dog, who they named Tuzik, spending his life laying in the shelter’s dirt yard.

After a flurry of Internet searching and email exchanges, hampered by language differences, arrangements were made for Tuzik to be shipped to the U.S. and taken in by Pets With Disabilities, a non-profit group in Prince Frederick, Maryland.

The organization rescues and finds home for animals who have been injured through trauma or disabled by illness. It provides support and resources for the families of disabled pets and for shelters attempting to place special-needs animals into loving homes. Joyce Darrell and her husband, Michael Dickerson, founded the organization in 2000 after their dog Duke broke his back playing as a puppy. 

Tuzik arrived in October.

“Why a dog from Russia? We were wondering the same thing for many months,” Darrell says on the Pets With Disabilities website, “But Tuzik was on a mission to find a better life – and meet a family that would appreciate all he had to offer.” Darrell says he has “brought a sense of royal majesty to the rescue. It’s hard to explain, but when you sit with him, you have no pity for him – he really is not looking for that…

“He’s moving around the rescue with more confidence everyday. He’s begun to play with toys – and he has a huge heart to offer the right family.”

Tuzik is available for adoption. To see more of him and the organization’s other disabled dogs in need of homes, click here.

(Photo courtesy of Pets With Disabilities)