ohmidog!

If shooting him 32 times wasn’t enough, police say the killer of a 10-year-old American bulldog also surrounded him with poison-filled hot dogs before leaving him tied at a country club fence to die.

Kane, a 10-year-old American bulldog was found alive in Bucks County, Pa., as we reported yesterday, but had to be euthanized.

On Tuesday, Kane’s owner, Paul Bevan-Xenelis, the former superintendent of the Doylestown Country Club’s golf course, was arraigned on animal-cruelty charges. He’d adopted the dog about five months earlier as a pet for his family.

Doylestown Township Police Chief Stephen White told the Philadelphia Inquirer that he found the case “mind-boggling … I don’t know how that kind of cruelty gets into somebody, but this is not a mistake. When you shoot a dog 30-plus times and then leave the dog to suffer, it’s just nuts.”

Bevan-Xenelis, 39, told police that the dog had become aggressive and had bitten a coworker. He said he had shot the dog only once and thought he had killed it.

His defense attorney, David Knight, said of Bevan-Xenelis, “He’s a little upset … This is all new to him. He’s never had a problem with the law.”

Bevan-Xenelis was fired last week from the country club. He had worked there 10 years and is married with two children, 9 and 6. The police chief said said it appeared that Bevan-Xenelis had been keeping the dog at work with him because he did not want it around his family.

Police were called to the club at 9 a.m. July 24 and found Kane lying beneath a fence behind a maintenance building.

Anne Irwin, executive director of the Bucks County SPCA, said that because of the extent of the dog’s injuries, there was no choice but to euthanize him.

Police confirmed that Kane had bitten a country club employee two days earlier.

Kane had been evaluated as gentle and child-friendly when he was adopted from All4Paws Rescue Inc. of Chester Springs, said director Kristen Schlichtig.

Bevan-Xenelis had been carefully screened before the adoption was approved, she added.  Neighbors vouched for him and reference and background checks were conducted, Schlichtig said.

“This has been a nightmare,” she said. “We did nothing wrong, but I have to live with the fact that I handed this guy the leash. I’m not even sleeping.”

(Photo by Larry King / Philadelphia Inquirer)

A golf course superintendent in Bucks County, Pa., has been charged with shooting his American bulldog 32 times behind a building at the Doylestown Country Club.

Paul Bevan-Xenelis, 39, of Quakertown, could spend up to five years in jail and pay as much as $10,000 in fines if convicted of charges of cruelty to animals and owning an unlicensed dog, Phillyburbs.com reported.

“To shoot a dog that many times and leave it, to me, that’s just shocking,” said Stephen White, Doylestown Township police chief. “It’s unspeakable cruelty.”

Doylestown Country Club president Joseph Paul said in a statement last week that club leaders were “extremely disturbed” by Bevan-Xenelis’ alleged actions, and that he has been fired.

The dog, named Kane, was found tied to a fence near the maintenance shed at the country club on July 24. The dog, about 10 years old, was alive, but “in distress” when police arrived.

Police said Bevan-Xenelis tied the dog to the fence the night of July 23 after it bit a co-worker. The next day, he returned to the country club and shot the dog with a pellet gun, police said.

The dog was taken to the Bucks County SPCA, where he was euthanized, according to Anne Irwin, the agency’s director.

Bevan-Xenelis allegedly told police he shot the dog only once with a .22-caliber pellet gun, but the SPCA removed eight, .22-caliber pellets from Kane’s body.

Police said an SPCA examination of Kane’s remains showed the dog had been shot no fewer than 32 times.

Bevan-Xenelis had Kane for six months and told police he adopted the dog from a rescue in the Philadelphia area. He said he kept the dog at work because he didn’t feel safe keeping him at home.

 
A truly ugly act took place this morning in a truly beautiful place: A dog was dragged two miles to his death at the Colorado National Monument near Grand Junction.

The dog – a German shepherd, or shepherd-blue heeler mix — was found with a silver and blue rope around its neck by the chief of maintenance at the monument about 4:30 a.m., according to a park press release.

“This was an incredible act of cruelty done to a defenseless animal,” Joan Anzelmo, superintendent of the monument told The Denver Post. “It is a sickening, sickening type of crime. We are leaving no stone unturned.”

In terms of despicability, we’d have to rank it up there with the dog thrown off a bridge in Lithuania — and it’s a reminder, too, that we in America, despite all the do-gooding when it comes to dogs, have a long way to go as well when it comes to protecting animals from the depraved individuals among us.

Anzelmo said tracks left in the snow clearly show the dog initially walked behind the car, then ran and then was dragged when it couldn’t keep up with the vehicle. Once dead, it was untied from the vehicle and dumped.

She said the dog was pulled up one of the steepest hills at the monument, through two inches of snow and multiple switchbacks, and either ran or was dragged as the car climbed 1,000 feet in elevation.

The animal was neutered and showed no signs of previous abuse, she said. A veterinary pathologist from Colorado State University will perform a necropsy on the dog.

Anzelmo said rewards will be offered to apprehend the persons responsible, and that some tips have already come in over a tip line established as part of the investigation:  970-712-2798. Callers may remain anonymous.

“The employees of Colorado National Monument are sickened by this heinous act and are determined to find the person who committed this cruel crime,” the park press release said.

(For subsequent posts and all of our coverage of Buddy, click here.)

(Photos: National Park Service)

You don’t know the face, but you may know the leg: A khaki-clad hunk of it often shows up — generally from the knee down — in photographs of Bo Obama.

The leg belongs to Dale Haney, who, when the First Family is too busy to walk the dog, assumes the duty.

As a keeper of the White House grounds for nearly 40 years, Haney has managed to cultivate  relationships with the presidential pups — all the way back to Richard Nixon’s Irish setter, King Timahoe.

“They heard about me and they called me to come over here for an interview and I came and here I still am,” he told the Associated Press  during a tour of the gardens on a rainy morning when first lady Michelle Obama — Bo’s primary walker — was out of town.

“I have him a little bit more” when she’s traveling, said Haney.

Before Bo came along, Haney had walked and played with President George W. Bush’s Scottish terriers, Barney and Miss Beazley. But he says he was most fond of Spot, an English springer spaniel whose mother, Millie, belonged to Bush’s father, President George H.W. Bush.

“I do have a soft spot for Spot,” he said in an online chat in 2003. “I was there when she was born and now she’s back.” Millie gave birth to Spot at the White House in 1989; the younger Bush and his wife, Laura, put Spot to sleep in 2004 after she’d had several strokes.

Haney began at the White House as a gardener, then was supervisor of grounds maintenance and lead horticulturist before becoming superintendent of all the grounds last fall.

Besides helping out with Bo, Haney tends to the nearly 19 acres of lawns, trees and gardens around the White House.