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A dog left tied to train tracks in California last month has found a new home.

Unlike that day last month, when he was secured to the tracks in the path of an oncoming train, he had many options to choose from.

Officials at Riverside County’s Department of Animal Services said they received more than 1,300 emails from people interested in adopting the rescued dog they dubbed Banjo. He was found by a Union Pacific crew in Mecca, where he’d been tied to the rails by a man who told authorities the dog was no longer wanted.

The 11-month-old poodle-terrier mix went home Friday with Jeff and Louisa Moore of Huntington Beach.

“He’s so beautiful isn’t he?” Louisa (above) said to her husband, holding Banjo in her arms for the first time.

Letters of interest came in from as far away as England and Puerto Rico, but animal services officials said the Moores were chosen because they constantly checked in on Banjo via e-mail and live close to the beach and a dog park.

Jeff Moore said he and his wife applied to adopt Banjo after seeing his story on the news and Facebook.

“Tonight we’re just going to go home and hang out,” Jeff told the Desert Sun in Palm Beach. “We have a big field that’s right next to our place that about a dozen of us all go out with our dogs, and they all get along really well, so it’ll be fun introducing him to all the dogs. I’m sure they’ll love him.”

Before the couple left, Jo Marie Upegui, a veterinarian technician at Coachella Valley Animal Campus, explained to them that Banjo liked tortillas and snuggling on the couch and that he feared brooms and men in uniform.

The Moores, who also have a Tibetan terrier named Lali, said they planed to create a Facebook page to keep those interested up to date on Banjo’s new life.

Banjo’s name refers to old traffic signals on rail lines. He was discovered when a westbound train crew noticed a hunched-over man walking away from the tracks, leaving the dog behind. The crew alerted dispatchers, who stopped the eastbound train coming down the tracks to which Banjo was tied.

A 78-year-old man was questioned, but not charged. He appeared confused and possibly suffering from dementia. He told investigators his family no longer wanted the dog and didn’t know what to do with him.

(Photo: Riverside County Department of Animal Services)

An engineer spotted a dog tied to train tracks in Riverside County, Calif., engaged the emergency braking system and was able to stop in time.

The dog’s owner, a 78-year-old man who was arrested at the scene, told authorities his family didn’t want the dog and he didn’t know what to do with him.

Union Pacific Railroad officials say the incident took place April 2.

The train’s engineer witnessed someone placing something on the tracks and, once he saw it was a dog, stopped the train in Mecca.

A Union Pacific special agent arrived, untied the 10-month-old poodle-terrier mix and detained the man, CBS in Los Angeles reported.

Charges weren’t pursued because ”the man appeared to be confused, or senile and didn’t fully understand what he had done,” John Welsh of the Riverside County Department of Animal Services said in a statement.

The man was released to family members.

The dog, who was nicknamed Banjo, was taken to the Coachella Valley Animal Campus in Thousand Palms where he was examined, treated and bathed.

Anyone interested in adopting Banjo, can email: shelterinfo@rivocha.org.

This excerpt from the award-winning documentary ”100,000″ focuses on the work of Island Dog, an animal welfare organization in Puerto Rico founded by Baltimore native Katie Block.

Block left Baltimore in 1999, looking for paradise, she admits. On her first day in Puerto Rico she came across a homeless dog and brought it home. When she  took it to a vet and explained how she had found it, he laughed at her.

She quickly learned the stray she’d found was just one of thousands — and that many of them spent their lives at a particular beach, called Los Machos, where they’d either been abandoned, or, sometimes, born from those previously abandoned.

She tried to do what she could. At her bartending job at a resort, she persuaded guests to take dogs home to the states. She enlisted her parents help in getting dogs shipped to new homes. Making a small dent in a very big problem, and swamped by veterinary bills, she, after three years, threw in the towel — but only temporarily, as it turned out.

In 2002, Block returned to Baltimore. She finished college and ended up in Puerto Rico again, where in 2006, she established Island Dog.

Today, as the founder and director of the organization, she works full-time to rescue dogs, find them homes in the states, and supply strays with food and medical attention — all while focused on longer term goals.

Those include teaching responsible pet ownership, expanding the practice of spaying and neutering, and increasing awareness around the world about  the cruelties animal face in U.S. territories in the Caribbean. Her hope is to make Puerto Rico more animal friendly, and get an animal education program started at every school in the territory.

Island Dog estimates that 98 percent of the dogs that end up in Puerto Rico’s few under-equipped and under-funded shelters are euthanized; and that about 500 dogs and cats die a day.

Only about 10 percent of Puerto Rico’s pet population ever visit a veterinarian, it’s estimated.

In the documentary “100,000,” which we’re featuring all week on ohmidog!, director Juan Agustin Marquez captured the scene at Los Machos beach, and a lot of the work Island Dog does — feeding and medicating homeless animals, rescuing and rehabilitating strays, and finding them homes in the states.

The organization also offer clinics for free or low cost spay/neuter services and vaccinations, provides a humane education program for children that encourages kindness to animals and responsible pet ownership, and supplies medication and food to other animal welfare organizations working in the U.S. Caribbean.

You can find Island Dog listed with our other animal welfare friends on our rightside column, and you can visit its website and learn how to donate to the cause here.

(Photos courtesy of Island Dog)

This week, we’ll be bringing you clips from the Emmy-winning documentary “100,000,” an investigation into dog overpopulation in Puerto Rico.

It’s a stunning look at what has led to the problem, the staggering heights it has reached, and what’s being done about it. (In three words, not nearly enough.)

The movie’s title, “100,000” refers to estimates of the number of strays roaming the streets and beaches of Puerto Rico. (Some others suspect the actual number may be twice as high.)

The video above is a trailer for the documentary, but in each of the next three days we’ll bring you substantial clips from it, including a look at a villager who tries to help street dogs; an organization (our friends at Island Dog) that patrols the beaches, frequently used as a dumping ground for unwanted dogs; and at how the handful of shelters on the island rely heavily on euthanasia.

Directed by Juan Agustin Marquez, the documentary has been broadcast in over 17 countries and has won numerous honors at film festivals.

Forty years of selling the public on spaying and neutering pets is paying off:

This year fewer than 4 million unwanted dogs and cats will be euthanized, down from as many as 20 million before 1970, the Associated Press reported this week.

That figure’s still nothing to brag about, but it’s a massive improvement, and a testament — not just to surgery, but to the work shelters, rescue groups and animal welfare organizations do to encourage adoptions.

Most animal experts, though, according to the AP story, believe spaying and neutering has played the biggest role in reducing the number of unwanted, euthanized pets.

Nearly every public shelter, private rescue or animal welfare organization in the country now donates money, space or time to low-cost spay and neuter clinics, and spaying and neutering, in addition to becoming a requirement for most adoptions, has become the law in some states, counties and cities.

Spaying and neutering have also become less traumatic — for pets and owners.

“Now they make a one- or two-inch incision and use self-absorbing sutures” that mean a much quicker recovery for the animals, said Stephen Zawistowski, science adviser for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA).

Zawistowski recalled when he got his first dog spayed 50 years ago, “she had an incision that must have been a foot long and was sewn up with what looked like piano wire.”

In addition to eliminating shelter kills, spaying and neutering can make pets easier to manage, less aggressive and healthier, said Andrew N. Rowan, president and CEO of Humane Society International and chief scientific officer for the Humane Society of the United States.

The first public spay and neuter clinic in the U.S., according to the AP story, was opened in Los Angeles in 1969.

What makes the figures all the more impressive is that the decline in the number of animals being euthanized each year comes even as the pet population has boomed. There were about 62 million companion pets in 1970, versus about 170 million today, Zawistowski said.

In years ahead, sterilizing a dog or cat may not always mean surgery. Work continues on pills, implants and vaccines that render cats and dogs unable to reproduce.

Dr. Gary Michelson, a billionaire orthopedic spinal surgeon and founder of Found Animals, posted a $25 million prize in 2008 for the creator of an affordable chemical sterilant, and has put up another $25 million for grants to scientists doing the research.

“When we first saw grant proposals coming in, we saw old ideas that had been laying around for 15 or 20 years. What we are seeing now are proposals based on cutting edge science — areas related to cancer and stem cell research. The level and sophistication of the science has moved to a higher level,” said Zawistowski, who is on the prize board.

In 2003, the FDA approved the first sterilant for male dogs. But at about $50 a shot, Neutersol was too costly. It was reworked, the price was cut to about $6 a dose and it was again approved by the FDA under the name Esterilsol. After trials around the world, it is expected to be available in the United States later this year.

After nearly seven months missing on the cold mean streets of Middletown, Connecticut, a wayward hound named Lady has been found — but the family that had adopted her before she ran off doesn’t want her anymore.

Not exactly the happy ending of a Disney movie, but it’s not quite as hard-boiled as it sounds. The adoptive family had only had Lady for a few hours when, while on a walk, she bolted.

That was back in November. Ever since then animal control officers have been trying to track her down as reports came in about her being spotted in different parts of town. At one point, she was seen negotiating the rugged terrain of Wesleyan University. Another time she was spotted in a family’s backyard dog house.

Each time, though, according to the Middletown Press, she would elude authorities.

“She obviously has very good survival instincts to last through the frigid winter,” Middletown Animal Control Officer Gail Petras said. “It’s rare we have a dog like this that’s out for so long.”

Petras said those who spotted Lady about town in the first two months — after she was adopted from the Connecticut Humane Society and then fled — reported she was dragging a long, bright pink leash behind her. Later sightings had her pulling a short pink leash. After that, reports had her pulling no leash at all.

In early March, the night before a bad snowstorm, Lady showed up in Ruth and Cliff Drechsler-Martells’ doghouse. They left food for her and, while she’d eat it, she wouldn’t let them near her. When they approached, she ran away.

Over Memorial Day weekend, Lady — a hound mix, about two years old, picked out another house, walked through the open door and curled up on the living room floor. The homeowners, holding a barbecue, assumed she’d been brought by a guest. After all their guests left, Lady was still there. The hound was still wearing her tags from the Humane Society, and her adopters were contacted.

Shocked to hear Lady was still alive, the owners told Petras they couldn’t take her back because they’d gotten another dog in the interim.

The Drechsler-Martells are considering adopting Lady, but aren’t sure she’d get along with their 9-year-old dog.

Petras said Lady loves other dogs; she is spayed and she has all of her shots, and she can be reached in care of Middletown Animal Control at 860-344-3298.

As part of its continuing “Making a Difference” series, NBC Nightly News recently featured the Circle L Ranch — an Arizona sanctuary for dogs, cats, horses and other farm animals that, though we’ve yet to pay it a visit, I have a hunch we someday will.

That’s because the woman behind it, Phoenix physician Deborah Wilson, happens to be married to one of my many former bosses — a member, in fact, of that extremely small and highly exclusive group, “Bosses I liked.”

Dr. Wilson, who’s the wife of Steve Wilson, communications director for Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard, says the Circle L, like most sanctuaries and shelters, has seen unprecedented numbers of animals coming in due to the faltering economy, foreclosures and layoffs. “It’s just one sad, heartbreaking story after another,” she told NBC’s Maria Menounos.

The Circle L Ranch, on 37 acres in the Prescott Valley, was established as a sanctuary in 2006 and is now home to 70 horses and an assortment of cows, goats, sheep, not to mention cats and dogs.

Dr. Wilson, its founder, is an animal rights advocate who has been active in the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, the Humane Society of the United States, Farm Sanctuary, and PETA. She’s on the Board of Directors of Audubon Arizona and Liberty Wildlife.

Dumped into an underground death pit, two homeless dogs named Haley and Hana are rescued and rehabilitated on tonight’s episode of National Geographic Channel’s “DogTown,” proving once again that dogs are a lot more forgiving than us more “intellectually developed” humans.

The dogs are believed to have spent two months in an underground cave in Ethiopia where locals periodically dispose of unwanted dogs, unfortunately while they are still alive. With no food or water, they may have survived by consuming the bodies of other dogs that died in the cave.

Best Friends Animal Society behavior consultant Sherry Woodard works with the former street dogs to help them overcome their fears and improve their social skills.

Also on tonight’s episode are the stories of Hugo, a 100-pound bloodhound, returned to DogTown after seriously biting a family member, and Ava, a golden retriever whose paw has been ripped apart by a coyote trap.