ohmidog!

Google “Christmas miracle” and “dog” and you’ll find 31 million or so stories — but none quite like that of Stevie Oedipus Wonder.

A cairn terrier mix, Stevie was found earlier this year wandering around a duck pond by the daughter of Belinda Gutierrez. She called her mother, crying, and told her about the puppy, which had no eyes.

Gutierrez, 49, said she told her daughter to bring the puppy home.

He quickly became part of the family. While Stevie seemed to have been abused, he apparently was born without eyes, a veterinarian told the family.

“He wouldn’t go up to anyone if it wasn’t my voice or my daughter’s voice,” Gutierrez said. “He didn’t like men’s voices. He would bark.” The dog became a big part of her life. Then, on Nov. 29, he disappeared from the family’s mobile home on San Antonio’s far West Side. They tried to find him, and put a missing notice on Craigslist.

A few days later — because every good Christmas story needs a scrooge, or at least an asshole — Gutierrez’ landlord told her that her dog was dead.

“We thought, ‘OK, he’s gone and he’ll have to just wait for us at the rainbow bridge,’” Gutierrez told the San Antonio Express-News.

Last week, though, Stevie Oedipus Wonder came home.

“This is my Christmas miracle,” Gutierrez said.

Here’s how it happened:

Stevie wasn’t dead after all. Instead he’d been picked up and taken to Animal Care Services.

He arrived on Dec. 11. The contact information on his tag was out of date, so the shelter couldn’t find his owners. As a result, Stevie, about a year old, had five days to get adopted or be euthanized.

That’s when Brooke Orr, an English as a second language teacher at Highlands High School and a co-sponsor of the school’s Voices for Animals Club, saw a post that ACS had put online in an attempt to find the blind dog a home.

She asked the shelter to put a “Save a Life” hold on him, thinking she’d take him in over the holidays. Then she checked Craigslist to see if he’d been listed as missing.

“I went to Craigslist and went to lost and found and I put in ‘blind dog,’ and there he was,” she said.

She contacted Gutierrez, whose daughter had posted the information, and let her know Stevie was safe.

Gutierrez picked Stevie up from the shelter Thursday, and, though blind, he recognized her right away.

“All he had to do was hear my voice,” she said. “And I stood at the entrance of the kennel building and called out, ‘Stevie, Stevie.’ And he started barking all over the place.”

Gutierrez said her family has since moved out of the mobile home, where she suspects the landlord contributed to Stevie’s escape.

They’re in an apartment now, celebrating Christmas, with Stevie.

(Photo: By Helen L. Montoya / San Antonio Express-News)