ohmidog!

A New York tattoo artist known as Mistah Metro posted a photo of his dog’s new tattoo on his Instagram page, and bragged that having the decoration makes his dog “cooler than yours.”

Mistah Metro wrote in the post that his veterinarian allowed him to administer the tattoo — a heart with an arrow through and the names Alex and Mel — while the dog was under anesthesia to have her spleen removed.

We don’t think that makes his dog cool. We think it makes his dog a victim of animal abuse, his veterinarian an accomplice, and Mistah Metro — if he wasn’t one already — a moron.

Mistah Metro, shown at left in a reflective moment, works at Red Legged Devil in Prospect Heights, but the owner of the tattoo shop, Chris Torres, wrote in an online post that neither he nor his shop had anything to do with the canine inking, and that it was not done on the premises, according to Gothamist.

Critics have blasted the inking online, while others have come to the tattoo artist’s defense.

The ASPCA is against tattooing dogs, even though it puts small tattoos on dogs it has spayed or neutered, under the thinking that it can prevent unnecessary surgeries for altered dogs.

In a statement, the ASPCA said, “Tattooing an animal for the vain sake of joy and entertainment of the owner — without any regard for the well-being of the animal — is not at all comparable to the incident in question and is not something the ASPCA supports.”

 (Photos: Mistah Metro’s tattooed dog / Instagram; Mistah Metro / Afropunk.com)

That Florida veterinary technician videotaped holding a dog by its neck and slamming it against the wall has been fired.

And the footage apparently is finally being reviewed by the state attorney’s office.

The video was recorded on a cellphone, and it was posted on YouTube just over a month ago.

Mohammad Hassan, the veterinarian who heads Emergency Pet Hospital in Orlando, originally defended the employee, but he recently apologized for her actions on on the hospital’s Facebook page.

“I want to apologize to all of the pet owners and animal lovers who were rightly shocked by the cruelty on the video,” he wrote in the post.

Hassan also says the vet tech, Stefanie Stasse, has been fired.

Meanwhile, WFTV in Orlando reports that the state attorney’s office has received a copy of the video from the Orange County sheriff’s office for review.

Eight months after she was stabbed seven times with a steak knife, Chloe the Shih Tzu lives in a new and happy home with a veterinarian who works at the animal hospital where she was treated for her injuries.

“…She certainly hasn’t let it get her down,” said Abby Dunlap, of Vienna, Va., who took the patient home after it was decided her previous owner shouldn’t get her back.

The three-year-old dog, formerly known as Coco, was living with her owner in  Southeast D.C. when the owner’s brother, claiming the dog was Satan, stabbed her seven times, according to the Washington Times

Miraculously, no vital organs were hit, and Chloe, after being stitched and bandaged, recovered.

Police took her to  the animal hospital, where it was discovered that, miraculously, the knife had not hit any vital  organs.

“She was very lucky,” said Scott  Giacoppo, a spokesman for the Washington Humane Society.  ”…I’ve seen animals stabbed, beaten, set on fire and discarded like trash.  It’s horrible. But we  get stories like Chloe’s and it brings a smile to our faces that we can make a  difference.”

Dunlap said she and her husband had just lost their own dog when they volunteered to foster Chloe.

“It took a little bit of time for me to trust her and figure out if we wanted to keep her.”

But now Chloe has bonded — with Dunlap, her husband, their children and other dogs in the neighborhood, she says.

(Photo: Washington Times)

A majority of pet owners would pay $500 for life-saving veterinary care, but less than half would fork over $1,000, only a third would spend $2,000, and only about 20 percent would be willing to pay $5,000.

So says an Associated Press-Petside.com poll about the cost of health care for animals, conducted by GfK Roper Public Affairs & Media.

Only at the $500 level were dog owners (74 percent) more likely than cat owners (46 percent) to say they would likely seek treatment. In the higher price ranges, the two are about equally likely to seek vet care.

“Euthanasia is always sad but when finances have to be considered, when you feel there is a possibility you didn’t or couldn’t do the right thing, you feel guilty,” said veterinarian Jane Shaw, director of the Argus Institute in the College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences at Colorado State University. “We are at a point where we are talking about basic life needs or survival needs.”

One in five pet owners said they fret a lot about being unable to afford seeing a vet. Dog owners are more likely to worry than cat owners, and low-income people are among the biggest worriers, which is probably because they have the biggest worries.

About one in four people, or 27 percent, said pet insurance is a good way to save money on vet bills, though only about 5 percent of pet owners actually have it.

The AP-Petside.com Poll was conducted April 7-12, 2010, and involved phone interviews with 1,112 pet owners nationwide. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.

A dog has gone missing from the Compassion Veterinary Clinic in Marlborough, Mass. He’s described as small, black and plywood.

Debbie Cassinelli, the clinic manager, made the wooden dog silhouette — and several cats, as well — and attached them a couple of months ago to the clinic’s sign.

She suspects kids took the dog, which disappeared just after Thanksgiving. The cats were spared. 

Cassinelli told Metro West Daily News that she worked on the animals off and on for about three months. The dog was based on her own pet, a border collie-terrier mix. Cats looked down at the dog, which rested its paws on the edge of the sign.

She attached the dog to the sign with steel rods.

Cassinelli said she added the animals to the sign to draw attention to it. People tended to “fly down the road” and not notice the sign before the animals went up, she said.

Cassinelli  does not think she will get the dog back, but she plans to make a new one.

As yet more proof that dogs eat the strangest things, a terrier required veterinary treatment after wolfing down one of his owner’s silicone falsies.

The incident — despite its vast pun potential — was straightforwardly reported on Dogster back in August, in a dispatch written by the veterinarian, Dr. Eric Barchas.

“Last night at the emergency hospital a nurse carried a five-year-old Terrier cross into the treatment room. She advised me matter-of-factly that the dog had consumed a fake breast three hours earlier.”

Barchas determined that the fake breast, while not toxic, would ultimately lodge in the dog’s intestines — the dog being only 15 pounds and the breast being a size B.

With only three hours having passed since ingestion, the vet decided to try to make the dog vomit. The clients authorized the procedure — and the vet forced the dog to vomit with an intravenous injection of a drug called apomorphine.

“The dog vomited copious dog food, a moderate amount of grass, several small twigs, an ear plug, some yarn, and a fake breast, size B,” Barchas wrote. Forty-five minutes later the dog was ready to go home. Barchas didn’t mention how much he billed the family, apparently heeding the Biblical advice:

“Beware of falsie profits.”

Colleagues laid floral tributes in honor of the two police dogs who died last week after being left in a car by their handler on one of the hottest days of the year.

Animal welfare experts said that, while it’s not known how long the two German Shepherds were left in the car, parked outside Nottinghamshire Police headquarter, they could have died in as little as 20 minutes.

Their handler, who has not been named, has been interviewed by an RSPCA inspector and could be prosecuted under the Animal Welfare Act, according to the Daily Mail.

The dogs were found dead in the handler’s private car last Tuesday – the hottest day in three years.

The Sunday Times said at least 10 dogs died last week after being left in vehicles, including one that belonged to a veterinarian.

Here’s a household pet hazard that — dastardly as it is — you don’t hear about too often.

But first the moral of the story: If you have a pet at home, or a child for that matter, don’t ever leave your paper shredder on automatic.

The owners of a mixed breed dog named Diamond found that out the hard way last week, when their 8-year-old dog licked their’s, only to have her tongue pulled into the sharp blades.

“She had licked a paper shredder in the house that was set on automatic,” Dr. Marc Wosar, of Miami Veterinary Specialists, told TV station WPLG.

Fortunately, Diamond’s owners were home and responded quickly. They disconnected the head of the shredder, carefully taking it and the dog whose tongue it held to the animal hospital.

“We anesthetized her first, then reversed the shredder off the tongue and assessed the damage,” said Wosar. “There were a lot of lacerations to the tongue as well as a lot of bite wounds. In her panic, she’d also bitten her tongue.”

It took more than a 100 stitches to repair Diamond’s tongue. A portion that was too severely damaged had to be removed, but doctors expect her to make a full recovery.

“She just won’t have a perfectly round tongue. She’ll have a little nick in it,” said Wosar.

(Photo: WPLG)

A University of Cincinnati researcher says the canine hearing aid he is developing may be ready for the market by the end of this year.

Pete Scheifele began working on a hearing aid for dogs after his own 17-year-old dog — a miniature pinscher/beagle mix — lost his hearing.

The highly trained dog has appeared on television and performed for schools and didn’t seem to mind wearing the prototype. In fact, he would seek it out and nudge it when he wasn’t wearing it, Scheifele says.

Researchers are now working on modifications to make the prototype version smaller and more comfortable, according to a report in DVM 360.

The hearing aid would only work on dogs with acquired hearing loss, according to Scheifele, Director of UC’s Bioacoustics and Canine Audiology Clinic.

Scheifele says he is in discussions for commercialization of the prototype and hopes it might be available for sale later this year.

(Photo: Courtesy of University of Cincinnati)

An oldie but a goodie:

A woman brought a very limp duck into the office of a veterinary surgeon. She laid her pet on the table and the vet pulled out his stethoscope to listen to the bird’s chest.

After a moment or two, the vet shook his head sadly and said, “I’m sorry, ma’am, your duck has passed away.”

The distressed woman wailed, “Are you sure?”

“Yes, I am sure,” replied the vet. “The duck is dead,” .

“How can you be so sure?” she protested. “He might just be in a coma or something.”

The vet left the room and returned a few minutes later with a Labrador Retriever.

As the duck’s owner looked on, the dog stood on his hind legs, put his front paws on the examination table, sniffed the duck and barked twice. The vet took the dog out of the room, returning with a cat. The cat jumped on the table and looked the duck over, then jumped back down and strolled out of the room.

The vet looked at the woman and said, “I’m sorry, but as I said, your duck is dead.”

Turning to his computer terminal, the vet hit a few keys and printed out a bill, which he handed to the owner.

“One hundred and fifty dollars!” she cried, “just to tell me my duck is dead?”

The vet shrugged, “I’m sorry. If you had just taken my word for it, the bill would have been $20, but with the Lab Report and the Cat Scan it’s now $150.”