ohmidog!

Name: Gotti

Breed: I’m not sure … Maltese, maybe?

Named After: John Gotti, the organized crime boss

Encountered: Riverside Park in Baltimore.

Backstory: It had been a while since I’d seen Gotti, who I used to regularly encounter at the park. The other dogs below, to Gotti’s right, are not members of his crime family. They do seem to be whispering something in Gotti’s ear, though. Maybe they’re his lawyers.

(Roadside Encounters is a regular feature of “Dog’s Country,” the continuing account of one man and one dog spending six months criss-crossing America.)

Thanks to an extended pool season, dogs will once again have a chance to take a swim at Baltimore’s Riverside Park.

Kids aren’t the  only ones climbing aboard the school bus these days in Miami.

Totally Dog, a day camp for dogs in southwest Miami, sends a yellow school bus to pick up its campers — and from what I can see in this video they seem to behave at least as good as schoolchildren.

Dog trainer Elena Sweet opened Totally Dog in 1999. Her husband Jeremy drives the bus. Owners pay about $45 a day for camp.