ohmidog!

An upper Manhattan animal clinic let a woman’s dog “bark itself to death,” the New York Post and other news media are reporting.

It’s not an entirely accurate description, and to make matters worse the Post originally misidentified the veterinary office named in a lawsuit that charges it covered up the cause of the dog’s death.

A veterinarian at Riverside Animal Clinic — not Riverside Animal Hospital, as the newspaper first reported – told Marie Moore that X-rays showed her bulldog, Cowboy, had died from congestive heart failure.

A necropsy, however, showed that the dog’s heart was fine, and that he actually suffocated. The lawsuit says Cowboy was suffering from ”severe laryngeal edema and airway obstruction” and that his life could have been saved with proper emergency procedures.

While barking didn’t cause his death — even the Post story eventually points out a dog can’t die from over-barking – it could have contributed to the difficulties he was having breathing.

“Defendants ignored obvious signs of Cowboy’s distress, allowing Cowboy to continue barking for days without proper care or intervention, until his severely swollen throat suffocated him and caused his death,” Moore said in her suit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court. It charges the clinic and kennel with veterinary malpractice.

“Moreover,” the lawsuit says, “the X-rays Dr. [Javier] Ramos claims to have relied upon to substantiate his claim that Cowboy died from heart failure actually show that Cowboy’s heart was normal.”

Moor took Cowboy, an English bulldog “who was in good health,” for boarding at the clinic in March.