Dogs

Happy Thanksgiving!

And have a heart, give the pooch some turkey.

An animal rescue group on Sunday picked up a U.S. soldier’s adopted dog from Iraq, ending the soldier’s weeks-long struggle to send the animal to her Minnesota home.

Operation Baghdad Pups, which said the U.S. military prevented its first attempt to take Ratchet the dog on October 1, picked up the animal in Baghdad with military clearance and flew it to Kuwait on Sunday.

The dog is expected to be flown to Washington on Monday, and if a veterinarian determines it is healthy, sent to Sgt. Gwen Beberg’s home state on Wednesday, Baghdad Pups publicist Larry Garrison said.

Beberg, who adopted the dog after soldiers rescued it from a burning trash pile in May, tried to have the group fly Ratchet to the United States on October 1 as her deployment neared an end.

But the military, which prohibits soldiers from adopting pets abroad and bringing them to the United States, confiscated the animal after Beberg put it on a convoy bound for Baghdad Airport, according to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which runs OBP.

Ratchet and Beberg, 28, drew the attention of thousands of people who signed two online petitions — linked through the SPCA’s Web site — urging the military to let Ratchet go to the United States.

The military cleared OBP to take Ratchet on Wednesday, but not in time for the group’s flight from Baghdad that day, the SPCA said.

An assisstance dog calls 911 and saves his owner’s life last week in Scottsdale.

A dispatcher with the Scottsdale Police Department took a call from an assistance dog who barked on the other end of the line.

The dog was trained to call 911 whenever his owner lays down and is unresponsive. All the buttons on the phone are preprogrammed to dial 911.

This isn’t the first time the dog has called 911.

My wife and I woke up this morning to a rather gruesome scene in our front yard. At some point in the night, a rabbit got whacked in the front lawn.

Now, I’m not 100% sure if my dog was involved but I have a suspicion that she was behind the hit. She was with us the whole time so I know that it wasn’t her taking out the rabbit. But she has a hate for all critters. So somewhere along the lines, I’m pretty sure she made the arrangement for the “accident” to happen.

Last night we had some thunderstorms roll through the area. This is nothing new, its Iowa after all. We’re on the northern edge of Tornado Alley so we have more than our share of storms in the spring and summer months.

But for whatever reason, Dilly (the dog) has been waking up when the thunder starts to roll in. She typically will sleep at my feet but soon we are greeted with a dog wanting to cuddle higher up in the bed.