ohmidog!

A dog separated from his owners during Hurricane Katrina was found wandering in North Carolina — and may be headed back to his original family.

A veterinarian in Cabarrus County  is asking for the public’s help in returning the dog, named Shorty, to his first family, even though Shorty has lived nearly seven years with new caretakers.

Shorty was spotted on a roadway in Cabarrus County about two weeks ago, according to NEWS14, and when the vet checked for a microchip Shorty’s original owner’s name came up.

“We traced the dog to Louisiana and thank goodness the gentleman did not change his cell phone number,” said Brenda Tortoreo, the receptionist at Cabarrus Animal Hospital.

That family had given Shorty up seven years ago when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, said said Dr. Blake Peurifoy, a veterinarian at Cabarrus Animal Hospital who has been treating the dog.

“They (the owners) were hit really hard during Katrina. They lost their home and didn’t have the ability to take care of their dog so they gave it away. They don’t know where it went from there,” Peurifoy told NBC.

Shorty is now 15, and has spent almost half of his life with his new owners, who  came forward when Shorty appeared on the TV news. They live in Concord, N.C.

WCNC reports that a teenager called the station on Sunday after seeing news reports about the found dog. Ta’layza Miller and her grandmother, Oclisha Miller, who adopted Shorty from a Concord shelter more than six years ago, said he’d been missing since September 10.

Unlike Shorty’s first family, the second didn’t have a microchip installed.

The family said they understand why Shorty’s original family in Louisiana wants him back and that, given the circumstances, they don’t object.

“Since they lost everything in Hurricane Katrina and they lost him … I wouldn’t mind them keeping him or anything because it was their dog first,” said 15-year-old Ta’layza said.

Given the second family’s agreement, the veterinary hospital plans to get Shorty back to the original family in Lousiana — but he needs some medical attention first.

Shorty was found with infected eyes, badly matted fur, dental disease that requires surgery and a heart murmur.

The hospital is treating Shorty free of charge, and is hoping someone will volunteer to help transport Shorty back to Louisiana when the time comes — probably around two weeks.

“I don’t want to add additional hardship to them … With it’s heart condition and the condition his mouth is in, it’s like saying, ‘Here. Here’s your sick dog back and you’ve got $2,000 worth of stuff to deal with in his mouth,’” said Peurifoy.

The hospital is interested in hearing from people who might be able to take Shorty to Louisiana.

“I know these people have had the past seven years or so a hard life. Thank God I’m not in their position, and we just hope this serves as a sort of a bright spot for them because they certainly deserve it,” said Peurifoy.

That wolf-like creature that state wildlife officials are trying to capture in Philadelphia’s Pennypack Park may be somebody’s pet.

Kasey Lyons, 21, says it looks a lot like Levi, the timber wolf-Alaskan malamute mix he bought in Florida on Valentine’s Day for his then-fiancee. (That’s him above in his street clothes.)

A month later, while visiting Lyons’ mother, the couple lost the dog in Pennypack Park. Lyons placed ads and put up posters, but to no avail, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.

Tuesday night, Lyons saw a photo of the animal (left) and a story about the mystery creature on Philly.com.

He says it looked just like Levi, whose name is the same as Lyons’ middle one.

On Wednesday evening, Lyons searched a section of Pennypack Park where the animal had been spotted repeatedly over several months, bringing along Levi’s old leash, and his other dog, Tiny, a Lab-bulldog mix.

He had no luck, and while he vowed to resume the search this morning, his mission — like his relationship — doesn’t seem destined for a happy ending .

Lyons was living in Florida when he got the hybrid pup. He and then-fiancee Brittany Hopkin were training Levi when, according to Lyons, she let him loose and the hybrid ran off.

The couple have since broken up. Lyons lives in Philadelphia now, and Hopkin has relocated to Georgia.

Still, he wants to find the dog and return him to her. In Pennsylvania, though, one needs a special permit to own a hybrid wolf-dog. While Lyons says he bought the dog legally, for $400, in Florida and has papers and receipts, he doesn’t hold a permit.

Jerry Czech, a wildlife conservation officer with the Pennsylvania Game Commission, said the wolf-dog, once found, would have to be forfeited.

(Photos: Philadelphia Inquirer)

I was blogging with one eye, watching Ellen Degeneres with the other, when I noticed Ace standing at the front door, wagging his tail and whimpering.

I got up to see what he was looking at — an older black and brown dog, one I’d never seen before, standing on my doorstep.

When I let Ace out, they quickly made friends. I checked her tags, and discovered her name was Lucy Brown. There was a phone number, but I’d never heard of the street the tags said she lived on. With no human in sight, I opened the door and let Ace lead her inside.

He showed her around, and she followed wherever he went — bedroom, office, living room, kitchen, and the back porch where the dog food is kept. She drank some of his water, came up to be petted and explored some more as I called the phone number.

The person who answered said she’d be over in five minutes.

Turns out Lucy Brown, a sweet, sweet girl, hadn’t strayed too far — just a couple of blocks. She was being house sat, and there were workmen in and out, and Lucy Brown had wandered off, the housesitter explained when she came to pick her up.

Quick as she appeared, Lucy Brown disappeared, jumping into the back seat for the short ride home.

For the second time in just over a month, Anne Arundel County officials are trying to track down owners of a pit bull found severely injured and abandoned.

A resident brought an injured female pit bull to animal control headquarters last week after she was found on Ritchie Highway near 11th Avenue — less than five miles from where a male pit bull, also injured, was discovered early last month.

Police suspect both were used by dogfighters as as bait dogs.

The female had deep scars and had sustained numerous bites, including a large open wound under her front arm, according to the Baltimore Sun.

She’s being called Princess at Waugh Chapel Animal Hospital, which is treating both her and Rocky Road, the pit bull found injured last month.

Both animals are expected to survive, officers said.

Princess will stay at the animal hospital for treatment and then be released to the SPCA of Anne Arundel County, WUSA reported. Rocky Road is expected to be released to Tara’s House rescue soon, say police.

Police are investigating both cases, and have asked the public to report any suspicious activity, such as “high numbers of dogs, particularly dominant breed dogs, being kept in one location, a high volume of people coming and going from a particular area and injured dogs, who appear to have been involved in a fight.”

The Humane Society of the United States is offering a reward of up to $2,500 for information leading to the identification, arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for abandoning the Rocky Road and Princess.

Like something out of a zombie movie, hundreds of dogs are wandering the no-entry zone around the Fukishima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, waiting — Hachiko-like — for owners who no longer live there.

The Fukushima prefectural government and Japan’s Environment Ministry are trying to capture pets left within a 12.4 mile radius of the plant, which was crippled by the disastrous March 11 earthquake, leading to the declaration of a nuclear emergency and evacuation of the area.

Before the disaster, there were about 5,800 registered dogs in the area that became the no-entry zone, according to a report in the Seattle Times.

It’s not known how many escaped the area with their owners.

From May 10 to the end of August, the prefectural government captured a total of 323 pets, mainly dogs, that were left leashed at empty houses.

While many dogs are suspected to have died in the tsunami or from starvation, hundreds of dogs are believed to still be living within the zone, and it’s likely that some will soon be producing litters of pups.

“(The) offspring will be wild dogs with no experience with people,” an official said. “We want to catch these puppies before they grow up.”

A warehouse in Fukushima is serving as home to about 150 captured dogs.

Most of the dogs’ owners now live in makeshift accommodation units or apartments, outside the no-entry zone, so there are no prospects of them collecting the dogs.

The prefectural government said it plans to establish another shelter for dogs. Care of the dogs is being paid for with about $444,000 in donations, but at the end of August, only about $116,000 of that remained.

“Pets provide people with mental support, so we’d like to return them to their owners as soon as possible, but there’s no end to this problem in sight,” the official said.

(Photo: A dog walks across a street in the deserted town of Futaba in April, inside the 12-mile evacuation zone around the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. By Sergey Ponomarev / Associated Press)

We took the shortcut John Steinbeck couldn’t.

And it wasn’t because he didn’t have Mapquest. It was because he had a dog.

Steinbeck, once seeing Niagara Falls, had hoped to scoot west across southern Ontario, re-entering the U.S. at Michigan. But Canadian border officials told him that, while Charley was welcome in Canada, the author might have some problems getting his poodle back into the U.S.

Steinbeck lacked papers documenting that Charley was vaccinated against rabies, and — 1960 being pre-email, pre-fax — getting sent an instant copy wasn’t a possibility. His only choice, other than waiting on the U.S. mail, would have been to drive back into America and get Charley re-vaccinated.

So he opted to turn around. Even that proved problematic. While he never got through the gate to Canada, he got a good grilling once he was back at the entrance to the U.S., and, from the sound of it, got it bit frustrated with the U.S. officials. Steinbeck didn’t like government bureaucracies. “Government can make you feet so small and mean that it takes some doing to build back a sense of self-importance.”

Ace and I on the other hand would have no problem on either end. I had his paperwork, but wasn’t asked for it at any point.

We zipped right through Ontario, traveling less than four hours, and under 200 miles, as opposed to the seven hours and more than 400 miles it would have taken had we stayed in the U.S., veering south and north again.

The scenery, once we got outside of Niagara Falls, wasn’t much different than what Pennsylvania and Ohio would have offered — a lot of the same flat land and fast food franchises. The only real difference was the money and the metric system. I stopped for some 99-cent gas — even though I knew it was that much per liter. And even though it cost about the same to fill my tank, it still felt good to get something — ephemeral as it was — for under a dollar.

I popped inside the gas station to get some cigarettes, and asked when I didn’t see the standard racks of them behind the counter. The employee pulled open a big drawer — law requires them to be kept out of view — revealing numerous brands I’d never heard of in funny boxes. I asked her what was cheap.

She recommended “Next.” I paid in American, got change in Canadian. The pack’s government-required warning — one of several really hard-hitting ones — showed a burned cigarette, with all its ash hanging on, though in a very limp manner, and a written reminder that the cigarettes I intended to smoke could make me impotent.

That not being a big factor in my life right now, I lit one up. They were shorter than American cigarettes, which is how America would want it, but there are more to the pack.

I would have liked to spend a night in Ontario, smoking my Nexts, and the only reason I didn’t was fear of big roaming charges if I got on my phone or my computer.

Leave it to America to come up with roaming charges (I’m assuming we invented them). What’s next? Freedom fees. Wanderlust taxes? Curiosity tolls? America seems to like us to stay put and spend money, and if we go somewhere, have a destination and reach it, thruway style. Do what the GPS lady says. Don’t you dare stray from the path. Stay within the parameters of your network.

I’m sure there are good reasons for roaming fees, I just don’t like the name. The word “fees” should just not be attached to a concept as free and wide open as “roaming.”

I feel a song coming on:

Oh, give me a home, where the buffalo roam (fees may apply)

And the deer and the antelope text.

As a society, partly because of our increasing tendency to take directions from computers, we have grown less likely to be vacilando. It’s a Spanish word, from the verb vacilar. As Steinbeck notes in Travels With Charley: “If one is vacilando, he is going somewhere, but doesn’t greatly care whether or not he gets there.”

Steinbeck said there is no English equivalent for the Spanish word. I would argue “roaming” comes pretty close, though.

Vacilando as we’ve been on our journey, we didn’t wander much in Ontario, and managed to get to Sarnia and the U.S. entry gate just as the sun was going down. There was no search, there were no seizures, just a flash of the passport, a peek at the dog and a few polite questions about whether I’d purchased anything in Canada (“Just these funny little cigarettes,” I replied).

We stopped for the night right there — in Port Huron — and took off the next morning for the other side of Michigan and step two of our shortcut: a ferry ride across Lake Michigan.

A cat from New Mexico turned up unexplainedly in Chicago –1,300 miles from his Albuquerque home.

No one knows how he got there, but eight months after disappearing from his home in New Mexico, Charles was picked up by Chicago Animal Care and Control.

Fortunately, he was checked there for a microchip — and had one.

That still wasn’t the end of his troubles. His owner said she lacked the funds to go there and pick him up, raising the possibility that, after traveling so far, he would be euthanized.

Then another Albuquerque resident came to the rescue. Headed to Chicago on a trip, he agreed to pick up Charles and bring him back home.

 
This little beauty was found wandering the streets of Dundalk Saturday.

She was taken in by one good samaritan and passed along to another good samaritan, who is fostering her in Baltimore until a home can be found — either her original one or a new one.

She being called ”Ella.”

A spirited and loving mutt — my guess is a Rottweiler/Jack Russell mix …”Jack Rottsell?” — she was found just off Dundalk Avenue, near Sollers Point Road.

She was found without a collar or tags, is estimated to be about five months old and gets along wonderfully with other dogs.

If you’re interested in Ella, contact Lori at l.besse@verizon.net

A dog seen wandering around Danville, Virginia last week with a plastic container stuck over his head — in the fashion of a spaceman or deep sea diver — has been captured and relieved of his involuntary helmet.

A police officer captured the dog Friday morning, after a resident spotted him and called for help.

He’s now in the custody of the the Danville Humane Society, which has named him “Jughead.”

The Humane Society had been trying to catch “Jughead” all week because the plastic container — similar to one cheese puffs might come in — was preventing him from eating or drinking. They’d offered a $500 reward to anyone who could capture him.

Danville Police Officer Mike Smith captured the dog Friday after a woman spotted him resting on a porch on Colquhoun Street, the Danville News reported.

“He was eager to drink. He seems to be doing better now. He seems to have come around a little bit. He was very scared and very shy when we first saw him but he seems to be doing better now, Danville Humane Society Director Paulette Dean said.

The Humane Society says it will put Jughead — believed to be a pit bull-chow mix, about four years old — up for adoption if no owner is found.

Dean said Jughead wasn’t the first animal to get entrapped in litter. The society has had cases of stray cats, a fox and a raccoon getting their head stuck in containers.

“There are dangers of littering,” she said. “People need to keep their trash contained.”

And their dogs, too.

 
Gary Rowley hadn’t seen Brindle since 1999, when his dog nosed open a door and disappeared into the night.

This past Sunday — thanks to a microchip, Facebook and an animal lover who volunteered to drive the dog  1,300 miles back home from Oklahoma – they reunited at Rowley’s home in Fredricksburg, Virginia.

“He needed a way home,” said Laurie Swain, who flew from Virginia to Oklahoma, then drove the dog back. “If the dog can wander 1,300 plus miles in 10 years I can certainly spend a few days driving.”

Rowley had given up on finding the dog in the decade since he went missing, shortly before the Super Bowl in 1999.

Then, last month, he received a message on Facebook: “Did you ever have a dog named Brindle?”

The question came from an Oklahoma military family who had discovered Brindle hiding under a bush, NBC News in Washington reported. After a local veterinarian found a microchip in Brindle’s neck, the family tracked Rowley down.

“I don’t know what to say. I just can’t believe someone would do this,” Rowley said.

Rowley has no idea how Brindle managed to wander so far from home, but he says it won’t happen again.

“For him to get out now, he’s going to have to turn a knob and flip a dead bolt,” Rowley said. “I’m still thinking about some of those child safety locks.”