ohmidog!

This combines so many of my favorite things — springtime, Philadelphia, cartoons (the hand-drawn kind) and dogs — that I feel compelled to share.

Tony Auth, a former colleague of mine at the Philadelphia Inquirer, headed out to Rittenhouse Square last Tuesday to enjoy the first warm day of spring.

He intended to draw some people. But most of the people had dogs attached to them.

So Auth drew dogs and their people, and judging from these, he seemed to detect at least some physical similarities between owner and pooch.

For the entire series of sketches visit Auth’s blog, “Behind the Lines” at NewsWorks.

Auth, after 40 years as editorial cartoonist at the Inquirer, serves as the first “digital artist in residence” at NewsWorks, the online home of WHYY News.

You can find more of his work at TonyAuth.com.

We’re all getting a little tired of the “win-win.” For one thing, it’s a cliche. For another, with so many “win-wins” being pointed out these days, two wins just no longer seem enough.

So how about a win-win-win-win?

Last Friday, the PreVet Association at Illinois State University brought a dozen dogs to campus, accomplishing, by my count, four wins:

First, students, stressed out by exams, had an additional –  and far healthier than some other alternatives – way to unwind.

Second — with students paying $1 to walk, pet and play with rescue dogs — the event raised a little money for Wish Bone Canine Rescue, which brought the dogs to school.

Third, dogs in need of homes got a chance to show off, increasing the chances of getting adopted or fostered.

And fourth, the dogs got gobs of attention and a chance to socialize during  what organizers call “Dog Days on the Quad.”

“This is a good chance for stress relief,” said Erin Mortimer, ISU Student PreVet Association vice president. “A lot of students miss their dogs from home and enjoy taking these dogs for a walk.”

The dogs benefit at least as much as the young humans do. On top of getting some attention and learning socialization skills, it’s an opportunity for them to find a future forever home, or a temporary foster one.

“We try to let students know that they are also able to foster for Wish Bone,” said Kim Bill, volunteer coordinator for Wish Bone. “It is a great way for them to have a dog on their own schedule. On top of that, everything is provided by Wish Bone — food, toys, medical care, and support.”

You can see a slideshow of it all at Stateside, the school’s alumni magazine.

Half the proceeds from the event went to Wish Bone for food, shelter, and medical treatment. The other half went to the ISU Student PreVet Association to allow students to participate in symposiums and special lectures.

Adding up, actually, to five wins.

(Photo: Stateside magazine, Illinois State University)

The X-ray above shows some of the 109 stones a Lab named Barney consumed during a walk on the beach a few months ago. 

His owner, Kim Woollard, who’s used to Barney putting just about everything in his mouth, didn’t realize at the time he was swallowing them, but she noticed the next day that he seemed under the weather.

After taking him to the vet, Mrs. Woollard, who lives in Surrey in the UK, said she was “gobsmacked” by what she saw.

Barney, a chocolate Labrador, had eaten 109 pebbles during his walk on the beach, the Daily Mail reports.

The vets found 79 pebbles in stomach cavity – and Mrs. Woollard, after getting back home, found 30 more in his bed.

Mrs. Woollard, a 52-year-old jeweler, went for the walk with Barney and her husband, Andrew, back in September, on a beach in Kent.

“Barney was always full of energy and he loved going for walks on the beach. It was a pebbly beach and I let him off the lead there as there wasn’t anyone on the beach apart from us. Andrew and I were chatting and watching Barney, but we didn’t see him do anything out of the ordinary. He was racing along enjoying himself.”

Back at home, the Woollards noticed a few stones in Barney’s basket, but didn’t think anything of it. The next day, there were more, and when her husband ran his hand along Barney’s belly “we could actually hear them rattling,” she said.

Barney had an operation to remove the 70 stones remaining inside him and made a full recovery.

(Photos: WorldWideFeatures.com, via Daily Mail)

On his last day in office — Valentine’s Day – Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta spent some quiet time with his right hand man, who is also his sweetheart, and also happens to be a dog.

He’s seen above taking a final walk with Bravo at CIA headquarters.

Bravo is widely believed to be a golden retriever, but inside sources tell us not to jump too quickly to  that conclusion.

Bravo, who frequently accompanied Panetta to work, was at his side during his term as CIA chief, and as the operation to terminate Osama bin Laden was plotted.

“Bravo was in the room when we were talking about the bin Laden operation at the CIA,” Panetta said in an interview with Esquire magazine.

“I remember going through that whole thing with him sitting by me,” Panetta said. “And the ability to put my hand on his head and feel his presence just kinda made me feel ‘OK, this is an important issue and it’s a big issue, but in many ways, it’s about whether or not we are able to protect the quality of life that we enjoy,’ and having a dog there just makes you a little more aware of what life is really about.”

(Department of Defense photo by Glenn Fawcett)

Baltimore Animal Rescue and Care Shelter’s annual fundraiser is this Saturday (October 20, 2012).

The event begins at 11 a.m. near the pagoda  in Patterson Park, but you’re welcome to come earlier and get some exercise.

This year BARCStober Fest, in partnership with Charm City Run, will be featuring its first “Ready…Set…Sniff 5 K Run OR Walk.”

Dogs are welcome to join their humans on the course around Baltimore’s Patterson Park.

Click here to register for the run.

BARCStober Fest is Baltimore Animal Rescue & Care Shelter’s primary annual fundraiser, and proceeds benefit the more than 12,000 homeless animals that come to BARCS each year.

The fest  includes: pet contests (including costume), pet health and welfare specialists, pet blessings, pet micro-chipping, stage entertainment, food vendors, local artists, representatives from other rescue groups, a silent auction, raffles and, of course, some ready-to-be-adopted pets.

Some dogs stories tend to sound a lot like fish stories.

But that’s not to say we’re casting any aspersions on this one.

Mark Wessells of Myrtle Beach, S.C., says that six months after he dropped his black Lab mix off at his father’s house in Winchester, Va., the dog named Buck, managed to walk all the way back to Myrtle Beach — a distance of 500 miles.

Wessells was in the process of moving and had left the dog with his father to keep temporarily.

“I wanted him to be up in Virginia where my dad has all this other property and he would’ve been happy,” Wessells said.

But a week after Wessells dropped Buck off, the dog disappeared from his father’s home.

Six months later, Buck showed up in South Carolina, where he was found by Brett Gallagher. For two weeks, the dog played happily with Gallagher’s yellow lab mix Hannah. Gallagher eventually took the dog, who he was calling Deuce, for a checkup at Grand Strand Animal Hospital where a veterinarian found a microchip identifying the dog and his owners.

“The nurse came back and said, ‘Are you Buck?’ and he got so excited,” Gallagher said. “It must have been the first time he heard his name since he left.”

Wessells was notified and came to claim his dog, according to the Myrtle Beach Sun. (Click the link for video of the reunion.)

“I still don’t know how I feel,” Wessells said. “I’m just glad he’s back.”

Subaru isn’t suggesting you avoid the Super Bowl entirely — even though, as an advertiser, it is — it’s just that they want to make sure you don’t forget to take the dog out.

The company is skipping the Super Bowl this year, opting instead to advertise its cars during the Puppy Bowl, and through social marketing and apps.

These four new ads are part of the automaker’s third annual “Dog Tested, Dog Approved” marketing campaign.

The company seems intent on keeping its standing among the dog-loving community, and with good reason — about 70 percent of Subaru owners have a pet, roughly twice the figure for car owners in general.

For the second year in a row, it’s sponsoring the “Game Day Dog Walk,” in which pet owners sign a pledge on Subaru’s Facebook page, as 88,000 pet owners did last year, to walk their dog on Game Day.

Subaru also sponsors the “Dogbook” app — basically Facebook for pets — and it has partnered to launch a new app called “MapMyDOGWALK,” a canine version of the “MapMyFITNESS” app you can download to your Smartphone.

The new ads feature groups of dogs headed out on adventures – a ski trip, camping, a trip to the lake in which the dogs join in to help the doggie driver parallel park and, of course, a day at the beach.

(To see all our “Woof in Advertising” posts, click here.)

With a promised break in the stifling heat, I decided to put Ace to the test on Saturday — giving him that long walk he has seemed to be wanting but I, due to his episode last week, wasn’t permitting.

It was only about a two and a half mile trek, round trip, and I planned a stop for lunch before we returned. What I hadn’t planned on — based on the TV weatherman’s promise of a cooler day — was the heat. (I assure you nothing bad is ahead, don’t worry.)

Our destination was Reynolda Village — part of what was once tobacco baron R.J. Reynolds estate — and in particular a little restaurant there with outdoor seating that we go to regularly, though by car.

It’s about a 1.5 mile drive, but I figured a shortcut through the grounds of another famous Winston-Salem mansion, Graylyn, would shave about a half mile off our round trip walk.

We cut through a residential area and into the immaculately landscaped grounds of Graylyn, where, of course, Ace — who tends to hold his bowel movements in until we arrive at immaculately landscaped areas — dropped his load.

I, of course, then got to tote it across the sweeping grounds, past the 46,000-square-foot home, and all the way to the next mansion, where we finally found a Dumpster.

Graylyn, like Reynolda, was owned by a tobacco executive. The 87-acre plot was purchased from R.J. Reynolds, by Nathalie and Bowman Gray.

Bowman Gray, a son of the founder of Wachovia, was chairman of R.J. Reynolds, Inc., when construction started in 1927. The 60-room home was completed a year and a half later. In 1932 Gray and his family moved in. Three years later, Bowman Gray died aboard a ship in the northern Atlantic while vacationing with his family.

In 1946 his widow and sons gave the estate to Wake Forest University’s medical school, which now bears his name. At the time, the university was located in Wake Forest, N.C., but, 10 years later, it would move to Winston-Salem.

Operated by the medical school, Graylyn served as a teaching psychiatric hospital until 1959, and was then used for academic programs.

In 1980, during an outdoor concert at Graylyn by the Winston-Salem symphony, the third floor of the mansion caught fire, and more than 7,000 people are said to have watched it burn. The next day, the president of the university said it would be rebuilt and restored to its original condition.

By the time that work was completed, the mansion, initially worth $1.6 million was worth $15 million. In 1993 — still owned by Wake Forest University — it officially became a conference center.

I’ve never been inside — for a peek you can check out this slide show — but the grounds are impressive, with sweeping laws, massive weeping willow trees, outlying cottages, bridges, fountains and ponds.

We ambled through, then crossed Reynolda Road, into the former estate of R.J. Reynolds, known as Reynolda.

By then our slow pace had slowed even more, Ace was panting and I was watching him like a hawk, while assuring him we were almost at our destination.

At Simply Yummy, we grabbed an outside table and were brought some much needed water, which Ace slurped down before meeting the dog at the next table, a mixed breed named Kelpie, adopted from a shelter in Florida.

We’d walked so slowly that breakfast was no longer being served, so I opted for a bacon, lettuce, tomato and avocado sandwich, which Ace shared with me.

Ace got most of the bacon, while the toxic-to-dogs avocado (didn’t I tell you to stop worrying?) was all mine.

We lingered over more water, then got up for the long trek home. Back at Graylyn, we stopped and sat for a while in a shady spot under a weeping willow tree, then kept walking, keeping to the shade as much as possible.

By the time we were back on our own road, we were both dragging, but when I unleashed him, Ace broke into a trot until he got to the front door. Inside he lapped up water, then collapsed with a harrumph on the air conditioner vent.

The city council member in Washington who was attacked by a bear while walking his dogs described his ordeal yesterday in a news conference at a Seattle hospital.

John Chelminiak, a member of the Bellevue City Council, was attacked outside his family’s cabin on Lake Wenatchee on Sept. 17 while taking the family dogs out for their evening walk.

Chelminiak, 57, his dogs Boji and Peekaboo on their leashes, had barely gotten out of the drieway and crossed the road when he heard a rustle in the bushes, the Seattle Times reported.

A 150-pound bear pounced on Chelminiak, causing deep lacerations to his scalp and face, and injuries to his left eye that were so severe doctors had to remove it.

During the attack, Chelminiak said, he managed to get away, at which point the  bear rounded a corner and pounced on the dogs. Chelminiak said he pulled on the dog leashes, which were still in his hand, and yanked them out from beneath the bear.

Family members say neither dog was seriously injured, though one limped slightly after the attack.

The Maryland SPCA’s March for the Animals — a 1.5 mile fundraising walk and more — takes place this Sunday, April 18, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Druid Hill Park in Baltimore.

The organization’s largest fundraising event attracts thousands of walkers and their dogs each year — and helps make it possible for the SPCA to continue its work, which last year saw 3,200 pets adopted and 9,700 spayed or neutered.

(Sorry to say ohmidog! won’t have a booth this year, so those who patronized Ace’s Kissing Booth and Dog Breath Emporium last year — shown in the video above — will just have to wait til next year for another smooch.)

In addition to the walk, activities at the event will include pet contests, an agility course, training classes, pet demonstrations, pet-friendly vendors, adoptable animals and entertainment.

Individual walkers can register online thru April 16. Walk up registration starts at 9:00 a.m. the day of the event.

All of the money raised goes toward the SPCA’s adoption center, pet owner education, and the care of lost and homeless animals

For the complete schedule, keep reading.

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