ohmidog!

For years, a husky mix named Annie quietly watched the world go by, lying beneath a tree in front of an apartment complex in the Mid-Wilshire neighborhood of Los Angeles.

A neighborhood fixture, she seemed perfectly content to observe and greet as dog walkers, strollers and anyone else went by — and the neighborhood found her a reassuring presence as well.

When Annie died over the weekend — of anaphylactic shock, caused by a bee sting — neighbors started coming together in a vigil not unlike the one she kept.

It started with a few notes tacked to the tree and grew into a full blown memorial, complete with candles, flowers and sympathy cards.

Since her death Saturday, some visitors to Annie’s shady spot at corner of 4th Street and Cochran Avenue have stood there and cried, said her owner, Jack Zurla, who rescued Annie 12 years ago after finding her foraging for food near the corner of Washington Boulevard and La Brea Avenue.

“I’ll remember Annie as a dog that was more human than dog,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “She had the capacity to understand people. She was a dog of compassion for everybody. She gave people comfort.”

“Annie was a staple in a lot of lives around here,” he added. “Annie was always ready to give someone some love.”

Other residents echoed those thoughts.

“She never ran off, never barked at anyone,” said actor Brian Savage, who lives nearby. “She was just a pillar of the neighborhood.”

“Annie was really a touchstone for all of us,” said Michael Moravek, also an actor. “It was nice to have her here. We might not know each other but we all knew Annie.”

“She was our neighborhood guardian. Even now, Annie is bringing us together,” he noted as he placed a snapshot he had taken of her on the shrine Tuesday.

Also leaving a hand-printed note was six-year-old Roman DiGiulio. With his mother at his side, he placed the note, written on a large red heart, on the tree. It read: “Have a good life in heaven, sweet doggie.”

(Photo: Jack Zurla stands in front of an impromptu memorial to his dog Annie; by Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

When Yogi Carroll of Kensington, Maryland, started having doubts about whether her dog walker was walking her dog, she set up her own amateur sting operation, using a video camera, a baby monitor and some tape.

Carroll says that, under her agreement with the dog walking company, the walker was to take Wilson, her two-year-old terrier, outside every day and make sure he did his business. She was paying $10 a day for the service.

Carroll says she set up the camera, hid a baby monitor in the room, and  attached a piece of tape to the door of Wilson’s crate to determine if the dog walker opened it.

Then she apparently hid outside, watching as the dog walker arrived and left just a couple of minutes later.

As the dog walker left, Carroll confronted her, Mike Wallace-style, with camera rolling.

On the video, you can hear Carroll asking the dog walker for her key back. “I’m Yogi. I live here. I’m here to grab the key because I’m actually going to discontinue the dog walking service from now on.”

The dog walker asks, “Why is that?”

Carroll responds, “I’m guessing if I walk in there, you wrote ‘peed only,’ you didn’t walk Wilson. That going to be true?”

The dog walker replies, “Yes.”

Carroll then walked into her home and found Wilson in his crate, the tape across the door unbudged.

Carroll says she made the recording to confirm her suspicions and warn others who may be concerned about their pets.

“So many people use dog walking services in this area,” said Carroll. “My friends are dog walkers, so not all dog walkers are bad. I know this is a hard industry to be a part of, but people need to be aware of what’s going in and out of their house.”

Carroll, showing she’s as classy as she is sly, didn’t reveal the name of the company when she talked to Fox News, but she said the owner of the company took swift action.

Apparently the $40 reward offered for the safe return of a lost Dalmatian-pit bull mix named Papa Bear wasn’t enough for three Akron men.

They called the family, repeatedly, and demanded $500, according to News Channel 5.

Papa Bear got out of his family’s back yard last week. The family posted fliers, with their phone number. Friday night, they started receiving phone calls from a man who demanded $500 and, according to some reports, threatened to kill the dog if the money wasn’t paid.

After repeated calls, over the course of four hours, the family called Akron police.

A team of undercover officers arranged to meet the dognappers at Emerling Park with the cash. When three men approached, officers arrested one man and eventually tracked down the other two.

Papa Bear was found safe and unharmed at the address of one of them.

“He was smiling. He was looking around,” said Shannon Alexander, the dog’s owner. “He jumped into the driver’s side door of the van and got into my daughter’s car seat and rode home in the car seat of the van.

Two of the men were charged with theft, phone harassment and receiving stolen property, police said.

I’m not a member of the Sheriff Joe Arpaio fan club — far from it — but I’m not sure if he deserves criticism for his latest crimefighting effort.

Arpaio’s department arrested a group of local “swingers” that was arranging an encounter of the icky kind with a dog. We don’t think that’s a waste of time.

The Maricopa County Sheriff announced earlier this week that his detectives, after learning of some people using Craigslist to find a dog for the purposes of bestiality, arranged a sting operation and arrested them.

According to Arpaio, an undercover detective and his dog responded to the ad and met the two men and a woman.

The sheriff’s office says the three suspects arrested were Shane Walker, 38, Sarah Dae Walker, 33, and Robert Aucker, 29. The Walkers are husband and wife, and Aucker was described as the wife’s lover. They were charged with conspiracy to commit bestiality.

The Phoenix New Times, in reporting the story, noted that 400 sex crimes remain unresolved in the county, and asked readers in a poll whether arresting the threesome was a “distraction or a job well done?”

By the time I cast mine, in the minority, nearly 8 of 10 voters were calling it a distraction.