ohmidog!

I can’t begin to tell you how much I miss my dog.

As mentioned yesterday, I’m in Arizona, and have been for a week, joining my brother and sister to help get my father settled in a place where he can get the care he needs.

Even though among loved ones, I’m pining for my significant other. Circumstances required Ace — a seasoned traveler — stay home for this trip, and this eight-day separation is the second longest in our seven years together.

It’s an empty feeling, not having him there when I wake up, or when I call his name (which I’ve only done about twice).

Fortunately for me, I have Roscoe, a yellow lab, to help fill  the void. Meanwhile Roscoe’s owner, James has Ace.

Here’s how all this came to be — how we ended up in the company of each others dogs.

James, my brother’s partner, lived in Arizona but recently started working in Winston-Salem, N.C., where I currently reside. My brother, and their dog Roscoe, a yellow lab, haven’t made the move yet and are still in the Phoenix area.

Last week, when my presence in Arizona was required, James agreed to care for Ace while I was away. I, planning on staying with my brother, agreed to lavish Roscoe with attention, and — against James’s advice — give him at least one walk.

James ended up with the more labor intensive duty, between the feedings and the walks Ace demands. I don’t have to feed Roscoe (my brother does that), and one walk convinced me, and my shoulder, that Roscoe was more of an in-the-house,  backyard kind of dog.

For Roscoe, it was just a matter of supplying treats and snuggling, and it was only a few days before it hit me that I had it backwards — James and I are not taking care of each other’s dogs, each other’s dogs are taking care of us.

James, who has been missing his dog something fierce since moving to North Carolina, seems to be enjoying Ace’s company. He posted the photo of him above on Facebook the other day, along with the words: “Thanks to Ace to keep me warm at night. I am dog-sitting Ace and he is such a wonderful boy!”

As Ace attends to James needs, Roscoe attends to mine.

The first few nights, he joined me on my floor mat, dividing his time between sleeping with me and my brother.

But when I got hit by a three-day bug, Roscoe turned it up a notch. He stayed by my side all night. He followed me to the bathroom — a frequent destination for a while there — waiting patiently outside the door for me to exit. He was at my side whenever I got up, generally carrying either his bone or a pillow in his mouth, tail wagging away.

He’s a totally different dog than Ace — a little more goofy, a little less needy, but equipped, it seems, with all the same sensors of human need.

Unlike Ace, who doesn’t like to get nudged in his sleep, Roscoe tolerates anything. A few times I woke up with both my legs atop him. He woke me up a few times sniffing my face, and a few more times by biting his toenails. Roscoe probably spends a couple of hours a day grooming his claws, and it can be a noisy affair.

But it was a small price to pay for all the attention he bestowed on me.

I was reminded, while scratching Roscoe’s big floppy ears, of the old Stephen Stills song, which had nothing to do with dogs at all:  And if you can’t be with the one you love, honey, love the one you’re with.

The lyrics always struck me as a tad slutty, but then that was probably just my dirty-minded interpetration. Maybe I never really understood it.

Dogs, on the other hand, totally get it.

(Photos: Ace photo by James Wong; Roscoe photo by John Woestendiek)

The office of Florida Gov. Rick Scott has shed more light on what happened to Reagan, the dog the governor’s family rescued during his campaign.

Reagan, after his much publicized adoption, disappeared from public view when Scott took office.

The governor said last week that the dog — whose name had been chosen by his fans on Facebook — was returned to the grooming shop where his family got him, due to behavior problems.

The governor told the Tampa Bay Times that the dog never hurt anyone, but it turns out Reagan both barked and bit.

A spokeswoman for the governor said this week that Reagan was returned to the grooming shop after biting a governor’s mansion employee who moved his water bowl.

“The governor and first lady love dogs, and they had to make a hard decision when it was clear that Reagan was very anxious around lots of different people,” Scott spokeswoman Melissa Sellers said.

The dog bite occurred while the governor was in Orlando on Jan. 7, 2011 — three days after he took office.

Mansion grounds employee Jennifer Kinsey was arranging flowers when Reagan bit her on the right hand, according to an incident report released by Scott’s office. The injury required no medical treatment.

Scott introduced the yellow Lab to Facebook readers on Sept. 7, 2010, shortly after he won the Republican nomination. Facebook friends chose the name Reagan from a list of three choices suggested by the campaign and they praised Scott for adopting a dog.

Sellers said Scott flew Reagan back to Naples on his private jet to return him to All Pets Grooming and Boarding. The shop’s owner has told one television station that Reagan’s name has been changed to Pluto and that he now lives on a horse ranch in Collier County.

“The family decided that the best decision for the dog and all those who visit  would be to have the grooming business find Reagan a more appropriate home with less people and activity,” Sellers said. “It was a hard choice that sometimes pet owners have to make.”

The Scotts have since adopted Tallee, another yellow Lab.

The governor’s communications directors initially refused to respond when asked about the disappearance of Reagan. Scott, when asked directly, said he returned the dog to previous owners because it barked a lot and frightened mansion staffers.

Sellers said Scott had been out of town and did not recall the biting incident when he talked to reporters.

Mu Shu was just four pounds and four weeks old when she fell off a livestock truck in Kansas and was picked up off the highway and taken home by the owner of Hunter, a yellow Lab.

That was in April, and Hunter would go on to become best friends with the piglet who, before bouncing off the truck, was likely destined for a growing farm and a future as ham.

Stacie Tonn picked the unconscious pig up off U.S. Highway 50, and with help from her veterinarian husband, Shane, their four daughters and Hunter, nursed Mu Shu back to health.

Hunter licked and nudged the injured piglet, and helped her get around when she regained consciousness. Left blinded — only temporarily — by the accident, the piglet would sniff Hunter out and follow him around, curling up with him for naps, according to Kansas.com.

Seven months later, Mu Shu is now 300 pounds, and living at Walton Rural Life Center, a charter school, where she helps teach children about livestock and agriculture.

But she still gets together with Hunter, who visits her once or twice a month.

“She still knows the sound of my truck. When I pull up to her pen, she will pop out with excitement. She knows she’s going to get snacks,” Stacie Tonn said.

Walton Rural Life Center serves 167 students, from kindergarten to fourth grade, and students are responsible for feeding Mu Shu and the other animals and maintaining their pens.

“Pigs are our biggest project,” said kindergarten teacher Rhonda Roux. “If she stays healthy, we are thinking of breeding her and having a litter of piglets.”

As for Hunter, he doesn’t seem intimidated in the least by Mu Shu’s girth, or how she so quickly passed him in size since the days he was licking her motionless body.

“She had a lot of bruising and was pretty unresponsive … Neither one of us thought she would live past 48 hours,” Shane Tonn told Kansas.com in an earlier story

You can see a video of Hunter playing with Mu Shu, when she was still a piglet, here.

(Top photo, taken in April, by Mike Hutmacher / Kansas.com)

Losing weight is what it’s all about for Alfie — a yellow Lab described as “Britain’s fattest dog,” who was 175 pounds when the RSPCA took him in back in March.

That’s about three times the average weight of a Labrador — and enough that it required four people using towels as slings to lift him when he arrived at the RSPCA’s Leybourne Animal Centre in Kent.

The 12-year-old dog was surrendered to the RSPCA by an elderly owner who kept forgetting he had already fed his pet, according to the Daily Mail.

(I am pretty sure I did that with Ace yesterday, giving him dinner twice.)

Alfie struggled to walk more than a few steps when he arrived, and he couldn’t lift his legs the few inches needed to get into a slightly raised bed at the kennel. He’s now about halfway to his target weight, staff members say.

“He literally could not stand up when he arrived because he was so fat,” said Christine Dooley, center manager. “I have never seen a dog that fat before in my 27 years with the RSPCA … He was just a massive blob with a leg at each corner. He was being fed to death …”

“When he first came in he couldn’t go on walks because of his size, but each day as the weight is coming off he is able to take a few steps further. We have to be careful when staff take him for a walk because if he sits down and refuses to get back up we have to call in extra people to lift him up again.

“We want the weight to come off slowly to give his leg muscles a chance to build up strength and for his skin to shrink … He’s such a lovely dog and his tail never stops wagging. Everyone here has fallen in love with him.’

Once Alfie has reached a manageable weight, the center will put him up for adoption.

(Photo: Ferrari Press Agency, via Daily Mail)

Sure, we frown upon the humanization of dogs, and the new heights it keeps reaching.

On the other hand, we do have a funny bone, and this — moreso than the many others of its ilk on the Internet — hits it.

So, if you haven’t already seen it — and it has gone way viral — here’s “”Two Dogs Dining in a Crowded Restaurant.”

The video, starring NoNo, the yellow lab, and Sia, a Danish Broholmer, was posted in January and is nearing 8 million views.

The video’s makers say they’ve received mostly good comments, but a few from people expressing worries that the dogs were “forced” to take part, or might have hurt themselves on the forks and knives.

“Firstly the dogs loved it – they are best friends and really like getting all the attention,” they say on YouTube. “We practiced with the cutlery in advance, and both dogs very quickly figured it out. Besides the ‘waitress’ kept on talking to them and encouraging them. They are very well behaved, and know when to sit still, take it slow and wait.

“Enjoy and don´t be worried – both dogs love it, and we love them.”

Robert Cottingham was duck hunting when he took a shotgun blast to his buttocks — fired, from all indications, by Piper, a yellow Labrador that belonged to a hunting companion.

The 46-year-old resident of Brigham City, Utah, was was hunting Sunday with his son and brother-in-law at the north end of the Great Salt Lake near a bird refuge, said Box Elder County Sherriff’s Chief Deputy Kevin Potter.

The victim told Fox 13 that the dog was in a marshy area of the lake and jumped into the boat, triggering a 12-gauge shotgun resting inside of it.

Cottingham was taken to the hospital where 27 birdshot pellets — most but not all of those he was struck by – were removed from his backside.

Milo is a boy. Chad is a dog. Together, they are an anecdote — one used to start off this New York Times story, but more importantly one that shows the tremendous, and not fully understood, therapeutic power of dogs.

As the Times recounts it, Chad, a yellow Labrador retriever, moved in with Milo and his family in Manhattan last spring. The hope was, as an autism service dog, he would protect Milo, who sometimes has tantrums or tries to run away while outside.

He did that and more, and the effects were nearly immediate.

“Within, I would say, a week, I noticed enormous changes,” Milo’s mother said of her son. “More and more changes have happened over the months as their bond has grown. He’s much calmer. He can concentrate for much longer periods of time. It’s almost like a cloud has lifted.”

Doctors noticed it as well. “He started to give me narratives in a way he never did,” one said of Milo, adding that Milo mostly talked about the dog. The changes have been so profound that doctors are considering weaning Milo from some of his medication.

While anecdotal evidence has long been piling up on how dogs benefit human health, research has been limited.

Now, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, part of the National Institutes of Health, wants to take a closer look, the Times reports.

In partnership with the Waltham Center for Pet Nutrition in England (part of the Mars candy and pet food company), the child health institute is seeking proposals for research projects that “focus on the interaction between humans and animals.”

It is looking to fund studies on how dog-human interactions affect typical development and health, and whether they have therapeutic and public-health benefits.

When Mars became aware of the institutes’ interest, a public-private partnership was established, with the company committing more than $2 million. The National Institute of Nursing is also providing money.

As for Milo and Chad, you can see more of them in this CBS photo story, and you can learn more about them at their website.

(Photo: CBS News)

Name: Piero

Age: 6

Breed: Yellow Lab

Encountered: At Washington Perk, a coffee house/grocery/deli in Winston-Salem, N.C. that — just down the street from the city’s dog park — has become one of Ace’s favorite hangouts.

Backstory: We were enjoying some breakfast Saturday morning on the outside deck when Piero arrived with his humans.

His owners said the name was Italian for Peter, or at least one variation of that, and that they gave all their pets Italian names.

Like Ace, Piero sat quietly, and grew more intent when food arrived.

Piero seemed a very happy dog. Being a yellow lab, he may not be headed for the dean’s list, his owner noted.

But then he did know enough to get into the shade, which was more than you could say for us.

(Roadside Encounters is a regular feature of Travels With Ace. To see them all click here.)

Apparently, there was no need to even question the cat after this yellow lab, in the view of his owner, all but confessed to the crime — getting into the cat treat bag.

For all those who say dogs don’t feel guilt, or something closely akin to it, explain this reaction.

Based on it, Denver, the yellow lab who is the second to be interrogated, is sent to the pen — though I would point out the evidence was entirely circumstantial, there was no DNA testing,  he was never read his rights and he received no trial before a jury of his peers.

We hope his sentence was a short one.

And we still think it’s possible the cat did it.

I finally got my Thanksgiving dinner, and while I didn’t bite the hand that fed me, Ace did bite the head of the dog belonging to the man who fed us.

My brother and his partner, James, knowing my travels had precluded me from enjoying a turkey dinner, invited us to come over Sunday for one, with all the fixings.

James, a master chef, put out quite a spread — numerous appetizers, turkey, stuffing, green bean casserole, yams, all followed by pumpkin cake.

During the preparation, Ace — having learned from previous experiences — was at his side every moment, followed every dish to the table, and as we ate, sat down and waited hopefully that a bite or two might be passed his way. Roscoe, too, approached the table from time to time, but didn’t seem obsessive about it, like Ace.

Though about the same age, they are two very different dogs, I’ve noticed in the time we’ve shared over the past months. Roscoe is the more goofy and dog-like of the two, more prone to barking, more likely to slather your face with kisses. Where Ace seems to have a desire to be a human, Roscoe seems perfectly content with his dog-ness. Where Ace seems to think “if I behave well, I will be rewarded,” Roscoe’s attitude is more “to heck with that stuff.”

I’d always considered Ace the smarter of the two. But now I’m not so sure. At dinner, Ace would sit and stare at whoever was chewing. He does that, almost as if watching a tennis match. He will sit and stare as long as a person is chewing, and even after that, probably until whatever is being masticated has cleared the esophagus. Then he’ll stare until every last plate is cleared, and loaded in the dishwasher, and the kitchen light goes off. Hope springs eternal.

Roscoe uses a different strategy.

He’s prone — not just during meals, but anytime — to grabbing household items with his mouth and not letting go. During my last visit, it was my underwear (not while I was wearing them). Sometimes it’s a pillow from the bed, or a pillow from the couch, or a camera bag, or a pair of socks.

He doesn’t destroy the item. Rather he just walks around with it dangling from his mouth, wagging his tail and absolutely refusing to let go until he gets a better offer — i.e. a treat.

At our belated Thanksgiving dinner, Roscoe grabbed a cloth napkin off the table, then paraded around, as if he wanted everybody to see. Not until some turkey was offered did he relinquish it.

This, while maybe not a perfect example of how humans should train their dogs, is a perfect example of how dogs train their humans. I think if we ever caught on, and tallied up how much our dogs manage to manipulate us, we’d be shocked. Fortunately, most of us are too busy to do that, and go on thinking we’re smarter than our dogs.

After dinner, we watched some TV — perhaps the only thing that manipulates us more than our dogs. If you need more proof that our dogs are smarter than us, ask yourself this question. When was the last time your dog tuned in to “Glee?”

After that, I was full, sleepy and gleeful enough to accept an offer to stay the night. Ace slept at my side until James woke up, at which point, I can only assume, he resumed his I-must-follow-this-man-everywhere-he-goes routine.

I was awakened by the sound of fighting dogs, then the sound of screaming humans, after a second or two of which all was quiet. Ace came back and took his place by my couch, and I went back to sleep.

It wasn’t until I really woke up, a couple of hours later, that I noticed Roscoe had a red mark on his head, and the side of his face. Ace, meanwhile, showed no signs of injuries.

Apparently, while James was in the bathroom, both dogs decided to join him there, and in those close quarters decided the room wasn’t big enough for the both of them. Their rare spat, seemingly, wasn’t over turkey, but attention.

Once it was over they were back to their normally peacefully coexisting selves. Roscoe, despite a slightly punctured head, seemed sad to see Ace leave.

Evidence of yet one more thing at which dogs just might be better than us — forgiveness.