Dog Daily News

Yet another dog has been tossed from a high place to his or her demise this summer. On Wednesday, a Chicago man was arrested for throwing his ailing 17-year-old Labrador retriever from his third-floor balcony.

He said his dog was sick and he couldn’t afford to euthanize him the traditional way. I find it curious that he was able to come up with money for his $50,000 bail.

Tragically, the man is not alone in his hound hurling. Most weeks this summer I’ve come across at least one example of yet another human throwing yet another of my kind from a bridge or building. Here’s a rundown of a few of the recent tragedies:

• Yesterday a Maryland man was charged with throwing a Chihuahua off a bridge. Police say he had had a run-in with the Chihuahua’s people earlier in the day, and they asked him to get off their property. He did. But he came back after later and absconded with the four-pound dog. He admitted to the brutal deed. The dog was never found.

• Diners at Joe’s Crab Shack in Louisville, Kentucky, heard a loud smack in the Ohio River four weeks ago. “It sounded like something hitting a wall. It was very, very loud,” a server said.

Someone had just tossed a recently pregnant pit bull into the water 80 feet below. By some small miracle, a fire crew was doing dive-team training close by and sped by boat to rescue her. She’s one of the lucky ones who survived.

• A Labrador retriever got out of her Minnesota home, and not long after, she landed at the feet of some fisherman under a bridge. Her distraught owners can be seen here talking about this poor dog, whose start in life – less than a year earlier — was as sad as her end.

• In Virginia, a woman allegedly asked a man to “find a place” for her small dog, Franklin. The man found a place, all right. He tossed him off a small bridge into a ravine. Somehow, Franklin lived.

• Earlier in the summer, a man threw a dog off the roof of a six-storey Brooklyn apartment building. She survived, but has multiple fractures in her legs, bruised lungs, an injured liver, and a list of other physical woes I can’t stomach describing.

What’s going on here? Why this sudden rash of people tossing dogs from high places? Dogs can do so many things, but we can’t fly. Do we blame the economy? Is there something in the air (besides dogs)?

If you Google “Dog thrown,” the suggestions box comes up with all kinds of goodies, like “Dog thrown off cliff,” “Dog thrown off tower clock,” and “Dog thrown off roof.”

The throwing doesn’t always involve high places, either. Three weeks ago a Washington, D.C. dog was tightly wrapped in a garbage bag with duct tape, thrown in a dumpster, and left to die.  But she didn’t. Her new name: Trooper.

Some of these dogs are pit bulls, and their demises may have a direct or tangential link to illegal dog fighting. Maybe Michael Vick can shed some light on this.

But what of the other dogs, like the labs, or the wee Chihuahua? I wish I had the answer.

I wish dogs could fly.

I have to end this on an up note, or my kibble is going to be salty with my tears this afternoon. So I’ll tell you something: One dog did fly.

Earlier this week, gale-force winds in Melbourne, Australia blew a tiny Maltese-shitzu cross named Bibi off a pier and into the chilly, churning waters below. Her person watched helplessly as the 100 km winds blew the frantically paddling pooch farther from the pier.

Suddenly, a 20-year-old man who was on the pier to scatter his grandmother’s ashes, stripped down to his shirt, pants, and socks, and dived in after the terrified dog. You’ve got to see the pictures of Raden Soemawinata’s heroic rescue.

“It was pretty cold and windy but it wasn’t such a hard decision to jump in, it wasn’t such a great feat,” he said.

You are my hero, Raden. Thank you for restoring my faith in humanity. (Not that it was ever truly lost. There are lots of extraordinarily good humans out there.)

And please watch for me on windy days in San Francisco…