ohmidog!

The owner of a dog rescued from a Colorado mountain after he had to abandon her has consented to give the German shepherd-Rottweiler mix to one of her rescuers.

“I don’t want to give her up — I love her — but those people risked life and limb to get her out of there, and that has got to be worth something,” Anthony Ortolani told the Denver Post.

Ortolani, 31, was climbing with a friend when a combination of factors led him to decide to leave his dog, Missy, behind.

The dog’s feet were blistered and she was unable to walk. A storm was approaching. And his climbing companion was out of water. They tried carrying the five-year-old, 112-pound dog, but after two hours, he said, they ended up leaving her between Mount Bierstadt and Mount Evans.

Once down the mountain, Ortolani called a friend who contacted the Clear Creek County Sheriff’s Office but was told the region was too dangerous and that the department didn’t rescue animals.

Missy was stranded for eight days before a volunteer group of rescuers found her and carried her down the mountain.

After that, Ortolani was charged with animal cruelty for abandoning her, and one of the rescuers expressed interest in keeping the dog.

Ortolani has agreed to plead guilty to a less serious charge, according to his lawyer, Jennifer Edwards, founder and attorney with the Animal Law Center.

Discussions leading to the plea bargain included talk of his giving up the dog, said Edwards, but are not the reason for his surrendering the animal.

(Photo: 14ers.com)

Cats ended up in animal shelters in the United States less often and were euthanized less often in 2011, according to a report by PetHealth, Inc., a company that aggregates data from animal welfare organizations.

The report, to be published annually, noted a 6% decline over 2010 in overall cat intakes, including a 5 percent decline in owner surrenders and a 9 percent decline in strays.

Euthanasia of cats declined 11 percent in 2011.

For dogs, the report notes little change in 2010′s intake and surrender numbers. Dog adoptions increased 2 percent, while euthanasia of dogs declined 3 percent over the same period.

The 2011 year-end report aggregates data from 795 animal welfare organizations. Findings were based on 1,537,961 intakes and 1,508,754 outcomes for dogs and cats that entered or left animal welfare organizations in 2011.

“We are very excited to be able to offer the first annualized PetPoint Report to our network and the interested public,” Brad Grucelski, a company vice president, said in a press release. “From this larger pool of aggregate data we can see beyond monthly fluctuations in intake and outcome types and measure the widespread impact of animal welfare efforts in the United States.

“Based on the information disclosed here, 2011 was a good year for animal welfare,” he said, “and all key indicators point to continued success in 2012.”

If you don’t think dogs are being hurt by the BP oil spill, perhaps you need a lesson in the trickle down – or, in this case, ooze down – theory of disaster economics.

And there may be no better place to learn it than St. Bernard Parish, southeast of New Orleans, a community that was struggling to survive to begin with, left underwater by Hurricane Katrina and, with more than half of its families owing their incomes to fishing, is now feeling the rippling ramifications of the oil spill.

They evacuated during the hurricane, came back and have been rebuilding ever since. Now, the oil rig explosion and subsequent contamination of the gulf means a loss of work and more sacrificing.

Right down to the family dog.

This one statistic pretty much sums it up: The St. Bernard Parish animal shelter took in 60 dogs in May 2009; this May it saw 288 come in, many of them surrendered by owners who, having at least temporarily lost their livelihoods to the oil spill, said they could no longer afford to provide care for their dogs.

That sad-eyed girl above, named Abby, arrived at the shelter a week ago, surrendered by a family that subsisted on harvesting seafood from the gulf – only a few pockets of which are still open to shrimping, crabbing, and oyster harvesting.

While some fisherman have turned to working on the cleanup, “they’re not making nowhere near what they were making before,” said Shannon Asevedo, a St. Bernard Parish animal control officer.

Another occupant of the shelter, Sasha, was owned by a BP employee who turned her over to his mother-in-law because he was being called upon to travel so much. When Sasha had ten pups last month, it was more than she could handle. Now all 11 are at the shelter, where the BP employee’s ex-wife works as a volunteer – partly so she can see her former dog. Due to financial and legal problems, she’s unable to care for Sasha as well.

“Our intakes have probably doubled if not tripled since the oil spill,” Asevedo said. “They may not all be related to it. Most people just say they can’t afford to take care of them anymore. It’s a shame. More are here because their parents can’t take care of them. At the same time, adoption rates are down, too. So where do they go?”

St. Bernard Parish Animal Services Director Beth Brewster says the shelter attempts to place all dogs in adoptive homes, ships some to rescue groups and tries to put down only those deemed aggressive.

Interestingly, the shelter sees a large number of large dogs and pit bulls. Families returning to rebuild after Katrina often bought large dogs and left them at their homes at night to protect against the theft of construction materials.

Brewster, in the job for two years now, said the parish’s previous shelter, with a capacity of 26 dogs, “was a dump.” The parish opened its new facility this January, with financial help from the Humane Society of the United States and FEMA.

The old shelter had reopened shortly after Katrina, but went nearly two years without electricity or running water. It strung together hoses to bring in water, and used extension cords to supply electricity. It, unlike the new facility, had no air conditioning, which took a toll on dogs and humans alike.

The shelter was so shoddy that the shelter bought an old school bus and would load it with adoptable dogs, parking in front of the Home Depot and trying to find them homes.

Now they have a gleaming new shelter, and a new air-conditioned mobile unit. But they also have more dogs than even their new and expanded capacity can handle, with more and more dogs being surrendered for economic reasons.

“This is not a wealthy community to begin with,” Brewster said. “Most of these people grew up on the water and more than half make their living on it.”

Recognizing the parish’s problems, the Humane Society of the United States has sent a shipment of dog food to the area, to be distributed to pet owners facing hardships associated with the gulf oil spill. The food is also being distributed in Plaquemines Parish.

“The Humane Society of the United States was saddened to hear that animals inland from the shoreline are also suffering from this disaster,” said Julia Breaux, the organization’s Louisiana director.

St. Bernard Parish, as you’ve probably guessed, is not named after the dog breed, but after the actual saint — Saint Bernard, who devoted himself to the conversion of the people of the Alps and is known as the patron saint of mountaineering.

But the determined people of the parish may have more in common with the dog breed, which is named after St. Bernard’s Pass in the Alps (which is named after the Saint). The dogs were brought to a famous hospice there in the 1600s, where they developed their reputation for mountain rescues and where, it is said, rugged and adverse conditions honed their strong instinct for survival.