ohmidog!

A Michigan mom says she’d only turned her back for a few seconds when she noticed here 14-month-old son had disappeared.

She rushed to the other side of her house to see her son Stanley in the swimming pool, and Bear, her black labrador retriever beside him, struggling to keep the boy’s head above water.

“We all believe that if it wasn’t for Bear he would have sunk down,” Patricia Drauch  told the Sturgis Journal. “It was incredible to see Bear holding him up like that.”

Drauch said her son was unresponsive when removed from the water. Unable to get a cell phone signal, she took him to the Marcellus Fire Department Sunday afternoon. On the way to the hospital, Stanley regained consciousness. He was found to be in good condition and later released.

Drauch said she has had Bear since he was a puppy.

“I’ve always told him (Bear), that these are his babies and he has to watch over them,” she said.

Drauch said she realizes the outcome could have been much worse.

“Don’t leave your kids outside alone no matter what age. Keep your eyes on them at all times,” she said. “It only takes a second.”

(Photo: Sturgis Journal)

We don’t know the story behind this video — it seems nobody does — but that isn’t stopping anyone from voicing opinions about it.

On the surface, it appears to show a dog saving a puppy from a swimming pool.

Did the puppy need saving? Was it thrown into the pool? If the pup was drowning, why didn’t whoever was doing the videotaping try to save it?

Don’t expect to find any answers. Every story we looked up was  just assumption and conjecture. More and more that seems to have become the norm, online, for what we once called news: “Post first and ask questions later, if at all.”

“Hero Lifeguard Dog Saves Puppy From Drowning in Pool,” says the Huffington Post.

“Dog saves puppy in pool while owner nonchalantly films,” MSN’s headline said.

The  accompanying stories contain no facts, but lots of  speculation — even more of which can be found in their comment sections.

Our guess is it’s a backyard trick that dog and owner have done before — why else have the video camera at the ready? And based on the splash in the middle of the pool at the beginning of the video, it does appear the pup was tossed in.

So, unlike some commenters, we aren’t sure that the dog’s owner should be tracked down and arrested, or that the golden retriever should immediately be awarded a trophy — at least not until a fact or two surfaces.

The mansion whose basement I’m living in has a big back yard, and in that big back yard is a big swimming pool, covered with a big black plastic tarp.

Ace likes to venture deep into the ivy behind the pool to do his business, and he’s always careful to avoid the pool on his way back.

Yesterday — and I blame the Valium — he didn’t.

As I watched — I’m monitoring him closely because he has been diagnosed with a herniated disc – he finished up and started walking straight for the pool. As I yelled “NOOOOOO!,” or words to that effect, he stepped right onto the black plastic tarp, which, unable to hold his 127 pounds, split, causing him to fall into the pool with a huge splash and disappear.

As far as scary moments in our continuing travels, it was right up there, second only to when, while I was holding his leash, he jumped over the railing at Niagara Falls, landing on a patch of grass that led to a sheer unprotected drop off into misty oblivion.

Fortunately, he jumped right back over then. And fortunately yesterday, his head almost immediately popped back up through the same hole he went through, and it was close enough to the side that he could drape his front paws over the edge of the pool and cling to it with a look of panic in his eyes.

On doggie swim days at Riverside Park back in Baltimore, Ace only went into the big boy pool once, preferring to wade in the baby one. When he did try the big one he was unable to get out. It took me and two friends to hoist him up and over the pool’s edge.

Yesterday, thanks either to adrenalin or the harness he’s been wearing instead of a collar since his diagnosis, I was able to pull him up enough for him to be able to get his back paws on the edge of the pool. I pulled, he pushed, and within a few seconds, he was out.

At that point, either invigorated by the cold and slightly green water, or just happy to be alive, he took off, darting around the yard for five minutes over my protestations. He’s supposed to be limiting his physical activity.

Once he calmed down, I noticed how bad he smelled and, with a public appearance scheduled for tonight, a bath was in order. In the middle of that, fully soaped up, he took off again, running in circles around the yard.

His herniated disc seemed far from his mind. I feared the incident would lead to a relapse, but all day, as in the past two days, it appeared to be bothering him less and less, and the yelps have ceased.

Between the tranquilizers and the the NSAIDs — and despite an unplanned morning swim in a yet to be opened pool — I think he’s making progress.

I haven’t yet told the lady of the manor about the damage he did. Earlier, she offered me the job of pool boy, if I end up staying into the summer, which would certainly look good — unlike the actual pasty and balding, pot-bellied, 57-year-old pool boy would himself — on the resume.

Now I may have no choice, needing to work off my debt for the torn tarp. How’s this for a deal? If you pay me extra, I’ll keep my shirt on.

Nathan App was sentenced in Montgomery County Court in Pennsylvania to five years of probation and 60 hours of community service after trying to drown a woman’s dachshund in a backyard swimming pool.

Under a plea agreement, App, 20, of Douglass Township, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of cruelty to animals.

“His conduct was disgusting. It was a small, helpless dog. He was basically torturing the dog by repeatedly dunking the dog in water and dragging it by its leash in the water,” Assistant District Attorney Abby Silverman said of the July incident.

Judge William R. Carpenter, who accepted a plea agreement in the case, also ordered App to undergo a psychological evaluation, and prohibited App from owning any animals, according to an article in the Delaware County Daily Times.

App apparently has a history with the dog’s owner — a previous court order had prohibited him from having any contact with her. Apparently, her dog was another matter.

The dog’s owner, who rushed the dog to a veterinarian for treatment after the incident, told police she was alerted to the attempted drowning by her neighbors who had witnessed the cruelty.

Two neighbors reported they observed App pull the dog by a leash into the pool area and then throw the dog into the water, according to the arrest affidavit. One witness claimed App tossed the dog into the air and watched the dog land in the pool, then repeatedly dunked the dog under the water.

Neighbors yelled at App and he pulled the dog out of the water, police said.

The dachshund survived.

Baltimore’s Riverside Park opened the pool to dogs yesterday, the last day of the swim season. Here’s what happened.