Oklahoma Archives - i Still Love Dogs

This Porch Pirate Was a Pooch

‘Tis the season…for so-called porch pirates, unfortunately. These thieves come out from under their rocks at this time each year to steal packages that don’t belong to them.

To deter porch pirates, some savvy pet owners have filled empty Amazon cartons with dog poop. And thanks to doorbells with video cameras, many porch pirates are getting caught in the act — including a thief in Oklahoma named Max.

When a present sent from her sister in California went missing from her Shady Point porch, Debbie Goines checked the video footage from her doorbell camera. Sure enough, she spotted the porch pirate. But in this case, the thief was what Goines called a “pooch pirate.”

It was her neighbor’s Great Pyrenees, Max. The big ol’ fluffy dog casually walked onto her porch, sniffed the package (which happened to contain jerky snacks and other foods), picked it up with his mouth and then wandered back home with it.

When Goines’ asked her neighbor about the package, its remains were found in the neighbor’s yard: the torn-apart carton and an unopened bottle of olive oil.

“I assume Max just ate what he wanted and buried the rest,” Goines said, according to a KABC report.

“He just smelled the jerky and said, ‘This has been delivered to the wrong house!'” Goines said, which sounds rerasonable.

Max’s owner offered to pay for the lost goods, but Goines refused. Apparently no charges were filed against the pooch pirate, but according to the news report, Max is currently in “doggie detention.”

Is it a coincidence that the Grinch’s dog was also named Max? Perhaps not. Speaking of the Grinch, last week a therapy dog for the Franklin Police Department in Massachusetts was caught red-pawed stealing toys from a donation bin at the police station. The toys were supposed to be given to children in need, not needy Golden Retrievers.

Like Max, this four-legged thief, whose name is Ben Franklin, will not be charged with any crime.

“We learned an extremely valuable lesson today,” the Franklin Police Department wrote on its Facebook page Dec. 18. “When you have a classroom full of toys ready to be shipped off to the Santa Foundation, you should…

1. Close the door to the classroom

2. Keep the toys elevated.”

Photo: Good Morning America/YouTube

Yellow Lab Puppy Shoots Woman (She’s Okay)

In what police reports call an “accidental” shooting — as if a dog could actually grab a gun and shoot someone intentionally — a 7-month-old Yellow Lab puppy named Molly apparently shot a 44-year-old woman named Tina Springer in Oklahoma last Thursday.

Molly was in the backseat and Springer was in the front passenger seat in a pickup truck driven by Brent Parks, 79, that was stopped at a railroad crossing. Spooked by the passing train, Molly jumped onto the console between the two front seats, causing a loaded .22 caliber handgun tucked beneath it to fire. Springer was shot in the thigh.

Parks called 911. “The dog [expletive] stepped on [the gun] and it went off,” he calmly told the operator.

“The dog shot her?” the operator asked, understandably sounding a wee bit suspicious.

“Yeah,” Parks replied. He said Springer, who could be heard moaning, was “bleeding pretty bad.” He was told to use his belt as a tourniquet. The Enid Police Department and Life EMS soon arrived, and Springer was rushed to a nearby hospital.

The good news is that Springer had surgery and is expected to make a full recovery. No one else was hurt. Molly apparently will not be charged with attempted murder. But what’s scary is that according to KFOR, police found three shell casings inside the truck, and the serial number on the gun had been scratched off.

While this case is being investigated, Deans, who told authorities the gun isn’t usually loaded, should definitely put that firearm away in a safe place.

It’s also pretty disturbing that in the video below, Molly is on a chain attached to a tree. Let’s hope it was only temporary. According to the Humane Society of the United States, “An otherwise friendly and docile dog, when kept continuously chained or intensively confined in any way, becomes neurotic, unhappy, anxious and often aggressive.” …And we already know just what Molly is capable of, har har.

Molly’s family “vows to steer clear of trains” in the future, KFOR reports. Hopefully they’ll also steer clear of keeping loaded guns in dangerous places — and they won’t chain their young dog.

Photo: KFOR Oklahoma’s News 4/YouTube

Oklahoma Shelter (Legally) Euthanizes Dogs with a Pistol

“We probably should have handled this with the vets involved, you know, instead of taking actions the way we had done,” Leonard Washington, mayor of Bristow, Okla., told Mashable today.

Just two days ago, the much less contrite mayor told The Daily Beast, “I don’t know why it’s a controversy … why such outrage now?”

In both cases, he’s referring to the shooting deaths of dogs in the Bristow Animal Shelter by its one animal control officer, George Moore. Over the past two weeks, Moore has taken three dogs to a pit behind the shelter, pushed them in and then shot them in the head. And these weren’t the only dogs at the shelter who have died in this cruel manner.

“This is something that’s been a practice for 40 years,” Washington told The Daily Beast. “I don’t know why it’s a controversy … why such outrage now?”

Why? Well, for one thing, the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) Guidelines for the Euthanasia of Animals recommends that killing an animal by shooting it should only be done in extreme circumstances, such as if the animal is attacking people, or is in extreme pain and a veterinarian is not available. In those cases, the shooting “should only be performed by highly skilled personnel trained in the use of firearms,” the AVMA states.

Moore has had no such training. The dogs had not been attacking people or in pain.

While Oklahoma law allows municipalities with fewer than 10,000 people to use “any humane method” to euthanize animals (Bristow’s population is about 4,000), it doesn’t define what those humane methods are. Therefore, Moore was not actually doing something illegal.

“We need to eliminate the practice of shooting these dogs in the head. It’s barbaric. It’s not up to the times. People are outraged,” local activist Beth Roberts told The Daily Beast.

Because the shelter is located on the property of a water treatment facility, it is not accessible to the public. Roberts only found out about the shootings after a shelter volunteer wrote about them in a private Facebook group. A city employee provided Roberts with more disturbing details, telling her he “was always the one to dig the holes and cover up the bodies when needed,” she told The Daily Beast.

Moore used a small, .22-caliber pistol to kill the dogs. Many of them were Pit Bulls, which he allegedly dislikes and would keep in the shelter for only a day or two before dragging them to the pit. The pistol is “not something that ends their life quickly,” Roberts added.

Washington blamed the shootings on the large number of strays entering the small shelter. “We’re trying to make sure we don’t have an overabundance of dogs in our dog pound because we can only have 10 at one time, so that’s a problem,” he told Mashable.

But Roberts and other local residents told The Daily Beast they’ve been trying for years to help get the dogs adopted, only to be turned away. One woman was banned from the shelter after she complained to the mayor that the dogs were being deprived of food and water.

The Oklahoma Alliance for Animals has created an online petition asking the Bristow Animal Shelter to only use a veterinarian for euthanizing animals, and to open the shelter to the public. It has more than 9,000 signatures as of Friday afternoon.

For now, euthanizations have been suspended at the shelter “so we can make sure that we do the process the way it’s supposed to be,” Washington told Mashable. Residents can adopt pets free of charge to clear more space in the shelter.

Photo credit: chrismetcalfTV