ohmidog!

We ran our “Christmas miracle” story yesterday — that of an eyeless dog named Stevie Oedipus Wonder, who, with a lot of help, found his way back home.

Then we came across another we have to share, too — that of a pit bull named Kapone, who, missing for six months, also made his way back home for Christmas.

Kapone, 11 years old, was one of two family pit bulls who escaped from their fenced yard six months ago in Cordova, Tenn., and were picked up by a Memphis animal control officer.

But when the family arrived at the Memphis Animal Shelter the next day to pick up the duo, only one dog was there.

“We found Jersey in the back row,” Brooke Shoup, the owner of the dogs said. “…Then we kept looking for Kapone and he wasn’t anywhere.” Shoup said a shelter manager told her his staff didn’t know where Kapone was. “He said he would review the videos and try to find out where my dog was, and what happened, and he would be in contact with me.”

Not until the next month did word come out that, while animal control records indicated both dogs were picked up, records indicated only one arrived at the shelter. What happened to Kapone was a mystery, and not exactly a new one in Memphis.

According to statistics from No Kill Memphis, in addition to the nearly 12,000 dogs euthanized at the Memphis Animal Shelter in 2010, 155 went missing — that’s right, missing, from a shelter.

Since then, the shelter has been the subject of investigations, some firings — including Demetria Hogan, the animal control employee who picked up the Shoup’s dogs — and lingering suspicions that impounded dogs were being sold, possibly to dogfighting operations.

None of that was helping to find Kapone, though, until last week.

A week ago today, the Shoup’s and animal advocates got an anonymous tip from the Memphis CrimeStoppers hotline that Kapone (an $8,000 reward was being offered for his return) was at a house in Senatobia, Miss., about 50 miles to the south.

Senatobia police escorted Darrel Shoup to the home. “I called his name, went over to pet him and he just went crazy,” Shoup said. “And we put him in the back of the van.”

You can see last week’s reunion in this Action News 5 report.

No charges have been filed against the homeowners, who had two other pit bulls. They told police Kapone had just wandered into their yard.

(Photo: From the Where’s Kapone? Facebook page)