ohmidog!

When their dog Scamp was hit by a car, a Washington state family checked his seemingly lifeless body, then put him under a wheelbarrow, planning to bury him the next morning.

Paul McKinlay, 61, had been speaking with his son in his front yard in Yelm when Scamp, an 8-month-old Yorkie-shih tzu mix (not Shiatsu, as ABC News reported) slipped underneath the fence and ran into the street.

McKinlay heard a yelp and a thud and arrived at the street to find the dog motionless and the female driver crying.

“We checked to see if we felt any breathing out of his nose, and we couldn’t feel any heartbeat,” said Reta McKinlay.

Her husband wrapped the dog — who they’d brought home for their granchildren this summer — in a blanket. They placed his body under an overturned wheelbarrow so no animals could get to him, with plans to bury Scamp in the morning.

Then, they broke the news to the 6-year-old twins — granchildren who live with them.

“[Paul] was going to bury him the next morning so we went into the house and just told the kids the dog had gotten hit by a car and that he had gone to heaven like in that movie, ‘All Dogs Go to Heaven.’ My grandson was crying. He asked if [Scamp] evaporated like in the movie and I said, ‘Yes, that’s what happened.’”

But when Paul McKinlay went outside the next morning and lifted up the wheelbarrow, Scamp was sitting up.

Four days and $3,000 in vet bills later Scamp, who’d suffered a concussion, broken teeth and a possible jaw fracture, was brought home by the McKinlays — much to the suprise of their twin granchildren, who, just in case Scamp didn’t make it, hadn’t initially been told that the dog was still alive.

Mrs. McKinlay said her husband had been “distraught” that he left Scamp out in the cold, but vets told the couple that the cold temperatures could have kept the dog alive, by keeping his brain from swelling.

“Sometimes God’s just not ready to take something away,” she said.

Minty of Downalong. Black Bean. Esquire Mulatto. Georgia Judy. Tipsy. Petey’s Repeat. You can find them all — or their graves, at least — at Di-Lane Plantation in Waynesboro, Georgia.

Hidden under moss-draped oaks on the former quail hunting preserve of a New York millionaire is a cemetery for bird dogs — much like the Alabama coonhound cemetery we featured a few weeks ago,.

Rob Pavey, outdoors editor of the Augusta Chronicle, recently dropped by the bird dog cemetery at Di-Lane Plantation, which he originally wrote about in 1998.

More than 70 bird dogs are laid to rest at the cemetery, which is in the center of 8,100 acres that once belonged to Henry Berol, heir to Eagle Pencil Co. Berol died in 1976 and the plantation was purchased in 1992 by the Army Corps of Engineers as a public wildlife area.
 
“It’s gotten to be a real point of interest since the state took it over,’’ said wildlife biologist Haven Barnhill of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, which manages the property.

“Today, velvety moss creeps between the bricks along the front wall and the wrought iron cemetery gates are rarely opened,” Pavey wrote. “But the marble monuments are a testament to a glorious bird-hunting past.”
 
There’s Sierra June, buried in 1968, whose epitaph reads, “needless departure.” Lucky Lady’s tombstone points out that she was unlucky. Wrangler Sam’s refers to him as “almost great.” Tarheel Jack, according to his grave marker “met an early death due to neglect.”
 
Today, in addition to public hunting, hiking and recreation opportunities, Di-Lane Plantation is used for research programs designed to foster the return of Georgia wildlife, including quail, Barnhill said. Plans call for the cemetery to remain as it is, preserved for future generations.

(Photo: Augusta Chronicle)

Reports of Casey Johnson’s funeral have been greatly exaggerated.

Both TMZ and RadarOnline reported the heiress was buried Sunday — without her dog Zoe, who is reportedly still alive.

Now, still more celebrity-centric websites are reporting that information was erroneous. No funeral has taken place.

Nicky Hilton and Bijou Phillips, Johnson’s lifelong friends, went to the home Johnson shared with Tila Tequila last week to pick up Johnson’s two dogs, Zoe and Elvis.

Johnson before her death had expressed her wishes to be buried with Zoe’s cremated remains, and Tequila insisted there were plans to put the dog asleep so that it could be buried with the Johnson & Johnson heiress.

Spokesmen for the family have denied the claim.

UPI, based on information from TMZ,  reported today that the dogs have not been put to sleep and are with Johnson’s family.

The whole thing — too many celebrities, too much drama, too many lies, too many abbreviations and all the shabby reporting – is giving OMD a headache.

On a dreary Labor Day in 1937, Key Underwood wrapped his faithful hunting companion of 15 years in a cotton sack, buried him in a three-foot deep grave in a meadow in northwest Alabama and used a hammer and a screwdriver to chisel his dog’s name into a rock: Troop.

Since then, 184 more hunting dogs from across the U.S. have been laid to rest in the remote wilderness of Freedom Hills — all of them coonhounds.

The Key Underwood Coon Dog Memorial Graveyard is, according to its website, the only cemetery in the U.S. that allows only coonhounds.

The burial spot was a popular hunting camp “where coon hunters from miles around gathered to plot their hunting strategies, tell tall tales, chew tobacco and compare coon hounds. Those comparisons usually began and ended with Troop … He was the best around.”

Troop, who was half redbone coonhound and half birdsong, was known throughout the region as the best, according to the website, and after his burial, other hunters started burying their favorite coon dogs at the same site.

The coonhound cemetery’s headstones are crafted of wood, rock and sometimes sheet metal, and they pay homage to dogs with names like Patches, Preacher, Smoky, Bean Blossom Bomma and Night Ranger. Often, etched along with the names, are brief tributes such as one that reads: ”He wasn’t the best, but he was the best I ever had.”

In a 1985 interview, Underwood said he once received a letter from a woman in California, asking why other breeds couldn’t be buried there.  “You must not know much about coon hunters and their dogs,” he responded, “if you think we would contaminate this burial place with poodles and lap dogs.”

To qualify for burial in the cemetery, the dog’s owner must claim their pet is an authentic coon dog, a witness must testify to the same, and a member of the local coonhunters’ organization must be allowed to view the coonhound to confirm its breed.

“We have stipulations on this thing,” says the cemetery’s caretaker, William O. Bolton, secretary/treasurer of the Tennessee Valley Coon Hunters Association. “A dog can’t run no deer, possum — nothing like that. He’s got to be a straight coon dog, and he’s got to be full hound. Couldn’t be a mixed up breed dog, a house dog.”

There’s a creepy story unraveling in Hoosick, New York, where the town’s animal control officer has been charged with unlawfully euthanizing dogs and burying them on his property.

Matthew Beck, 46, a former member of the town council who’s still listed as animal control officer, was charged after a May 27 state police search of his farm revealed “several” dog carcasses.

Since then, Beck has also been charged possession of stolen property in connection with a missing hay rake that was found on his property during the search, the Albany Times Union reports.

Beck is suspected in the disappearance of two dogs reported missing by April Stevens, a local resident. When three of her dogs ran off, and only one returned, she searched for the other two, then put up posters, according to News 10 in New York. After that she contacted Beck, who  told her he had picked up two dogs, but they were of a different breed than her’s.

Later, though, the woman who had handed the dogs over to Beck saw them on a flyer, and told Stevens they were the dogs she turned over to Beck.

Beck told state troopers the carcasses found on the property were not those of the dogs that he had picked up. Those dogs, he said, were turned over to another town resident.

Beck has been charged with filing a false written statement, second-degree forgery, official misconduct as a public servant and larceny, troopers said.

An Oregon man used a hammer to euthanize his daughter’s old and ailing dog, then buried it — only to later get arrested when the dog’s cries were heard by a neighbor, according to police.

Responding to that neighbor’s report, police found Molly, a 13-year-old lab mix, buried up to her neck in the family’s backyard, but still alive.

Hyrum Long, 75, and his daughter, 49-year-old Susan Johnson, were arrested Monday by Forest Grove police and charged with animal abuse and neglect, according to KGW News in Portland, Oregon.

Long admitted he made a mistake when he tried to euthanize his daughter’s dog, and said they thought the dog had cancer. Family members said they didn’t have the money to pay to euthanize their dog.

Forest Grove Police Capt. Aaron Ashbaugh said a necropsy report from the Oregon Humane Society indicated the dog had suffered from a chronic skin disease, body sores from lying down for prolonged periods of time, long-term malnutrition and chronic starvation. He said there were indications the dog had not eaten for at least four to five days.

The father and daughter were not at the home when police arrived and found the dog buried up to its neck with an obvious head injury. Officers dug Molly out of the ground, and she was taken by Washington County Animal Control to the Humane Society.

Spokesperson Barbara Baugnon said the 13-year-old dog was in extreme pain and in terrible condition when she arrived. “She couldn’t lift her head but her eyes were following people around the room; obviously she was suffering,” Baugnon said.

Baugnon said they decided the only “humane thing to do” was euthanize the dog.