ohmidog!

The U.S. Postal Service says it is investigating the death of a northern Kentucky dog who family members say was deliberately run over by their postman.

The mail carrier has been suspended with pay, WLWT reported.

Nelson Hamm said his three-year-old golden retriever, Nala (or Nayla, according to some news reports) was struck and run over by a postal vehicle last week, and that he witnessed it.

Nala, he said, was sniffing the mail truck’s tires when the postal worker drove the truck over her neck.

“When he ran up on her, he knew he was on something, and her legs was going like this, and he kept going, gunning it and gunning it and gunning it,” Hamm said.

The postal worker then made his next delivery before speeding out of the neighborhood, according to the Kentucky Post.

“She laid down in the foyer, base of the steps. My dad was crying, he kissed her on the nose. She looked him right in the eye, she licked him, and she just died,” his daughter, Lisa Hamm, said.

Covington City Commissioner Steve Frank said the postal service told him they extended their sympathies to the family and are investigating. Officials could not say how long the investigation will take.

“We made a strong suggestion that the postman not carry mail in the city of Covington for a while,” Frank said. ”Our message to the public is you will not abuse animals in the city of Covington.”

The family has retained an attorney for a possible civil suit. Nala has been buried near some trees where she used to play.

(Photo: Kentucky Post)

Mitt Romney says, if he had a chance to do it all over again, he would not put the  family dog in a carrier on top of a station wagon for a 12-hour ride to Canada.

“Certainly not with the attention it’s received,” Romney said in an interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer.

In other words, he regrets getting caught. But does he regret the act?

His comments sound a lot like those Michael Vick has uttered since serving his sentence for dogfighting-related offenses. Like saying he regrets how the public perceived his acts. Like saying he’d still be doing it, if not for getting caught. Like saying it was all part of urban culture.

Dogfighting is no more a part of urban culture than putting a dog on your roof is part of suburban culture.

The tale of Seamus, the Romney’s Irish setter, is an old one, from the 1980s, first disclosed when Tagg Romney told the story in 2007  — how Seamus got sick during the trip, how Seamus got hosed down during the trip, how the Romneys continued on, dog still on the roof.

The question posed by Sawyer was submitted by a Yahoo! reader: “Would you transport Seamus like that again?”

Though the presidential candidate said no, his wife, Ann Romney, again pointed out how much Seamus “loved it.”

“He would see that crate and would … go crazy because he was going with us on vacation,” she said. “It was to me a kinder thing to bring him along than to leave him in the kennel…”

(Photo: ABC)

A protester emulating Mitt Romney’s dog-on-the-car-roof trick — but without a dog — was pulled over by police in Littleton, Colorado.

“Our 911 center received a call from a motorist who saw the car in the photo drive past, and she said the door to the animal carrier was open and a large white dog was in it,” Littleton city spokeswoman Kelli Narde said in an interview, reported on the Huffington Post.

Turns out the rooftop crate contained only a stuffed animal.

The unidentified motorist was re-enacting what the Republican presidential candidate did on a family vacation in 1983, when his crated dog, Seamus, rode on the roof of his car for 12 hours.

Resurgence of that tale led to the formation of a “Dogs Against Romney” protest movement/website.

When police received the call, a dispatcher radioed nearby officers, who spotted the car and pulled it over, finding only a stuffed animal in the cage. Police said the motorist was not cited for having a kennel on his car roof, but did get a ticket for failing to provide proof of insurance.

“We respect anyone’s right to support or oppose anyone’s candidate but when you pull a stunt like that and lead passersby to think there’s a live animal in there, it’s probably taking it too far,” Narde said.

Police didn’t identify the man by name, but Dogs Against Romney confirmed he was a “pack member” known on the Internet as “Oredigger.”

In a blog post Tuesday, Dogs Against Romney said the fact that motorist was pulled over “clearly illustrates how blatantly awful, incredibly dangerous, outrageously insensitive — and even illegal — Mitt Romney’s decision to transport his own dog on the roof of his car was.”

In a new campaign ad, Newt Gingrich has seized upon opponent Mitt Romney’s 25-year-old doggie debacle — the boneheaded transporting of his Irish setter Seamus on the roof of his car.

The web ad released yesterday by the Gingrich campaign revives the story of a Romney family road trip during which Romney put a crate holding his dog on the roof of his station wagon for a 12-hour drive from Boston to Ontario, according to ABC News.

It’s the same story — and a true one — that came up during Romney’s  2008 White House bid. Four years later, it infuriates animal lovers no less. At a campaign event in South Carolina last week, a protester with a “Dogs Against Romney” sign greeted Romney supporters while standing next to a car with a stuffed animal dog strapped to the roof.

Romney has continued to defend his actions: “This is a completely air-tight kennel, mounted on the top of our car,” he said in a Fox News interview, part of which is used in Gingrich’s ad. “He was in a kennel at home a great deal of time as well. It was where he was comfortable.”

The Gingrich video, which includes six clips of other “Romney gaffes,” then shows white words flashing across a black screen: “Imagine what Obama would do with a candidate like that.”

Gingrich had a vaguely dog-related gaffe of his own a few years back — one which led to him receiving a VIP membership in a Dallas strip club.

Here’s the short version (a longer one is here):

In 2009, Dawn Rizos, the operator of The Lodge, a gentlemen’s club that does business under the name DCG, Inc., was informed she’d been selected to receive an “Entrepeneur of the Year” award from Gingrich’s organization, American Solutions.

Gingrich invited Rizos to a private dinner in Washington to receive the award, provided she made the requested $5,000 donation, which she did.

The week before the event, though, American Solutions realized they had accidentally bestowed the award on a strip club, and rescinded the invitation. The organization refunded the $5,000 to Rizos, who donated it to an animal rescue organization — specifically to create a shelter for pit bulls, which was dubbed “Newt’s Nook.”

The next year, Rizos got another letter, under Gingrich’s signature, containing a membership card to American Solutions and requesting a donation. This time around, in light of the previous snub, Rizos didn’t take him up on the offer.

But she did send him a Lodge VIP card, entitling him to preferred seating, free auto detailing, steak and lobster dinners and access to the the club’s “intimate members-only lounge.”

Here’s a story out of California that has Orange County written all over it.

Seems Don Ninow, 76, was returning home after picking up his dogs — Sassy Lassy and Mister Magoo — from the groomer, a place called Critter Clipper.

He placed his dogs, a Yorkshire terrier and a Maltese, in the car, a Jaguar of course.

On the way home, he rear-ended a car at a red light and the driver called police. Ninow was arrested by police in Huntington Beach on a charge of  driving under the influence of drugs — though he maintains he had only taken his diabetes, blood pressure and heart medications, according to the Orange County Register.

Ninow, released after the arrest, went to Orange County Animal Care to pick up his dogs, but only one was there — Mister Magoo. Ninow was able to get him back for a $136 fee, but Sassy Lassy was missing in action, and none of the various authorities knew anything about her.

Turns out the police officer  — perhaps a bit Magooish himself — never saw the second dog. Mister Magoo had been sitting in the car, but Sassy Lassy was in a carrier. Apparently the tow truck driver didn’t notice Sassy Lassy either, when he towed the Jaguar to an impound lot.

The dog was left in the car from about 4 p.m. July 3 to about 6 p.m. July 4.

Now Ninow has filed a claim seeking $9,999 for the impounding of his 12-year-old dog.

Police confirmed that one of the dogs was unintentionally left in the car. They are still investigating the claim, filed by Ninow Dec. 18, as well as the case against Ninow.

(Photo: Orange County Register)

Yet more proof that technology is for the birds: Carrier pigeons are being used to transfer data between offices because bosses believe it is quicker than broadband.

Computer experts at a South African firm said it took six hours to transfer four gigabytes of encrypted data to a call center 50 miles away.

Unlimited Group, a financial services company, yesterday attached a memory card to the leg of a pigeon called Winston who took just over an hour for the trip, according to the Daily Mail.

Even counting the time needed to upload the data once it arrives, the information shipped by pigeon took under three hours, less than half of what using the Internet — at least in Durban, South Africa — could accomplish.

“It might sound crazy in this day and age, but we’re always looking for new ways to move our business forward and we think this might just work,” said Kevin Rolfe, head of  Unlimited Group. ”For years we’ve struggled with the internet as a method of communication. It’s fine for emails and correspondence, but we need to transfer a lot of data from office to another and find it often lets us down.”

To send four gigabytes of encrypted information takes around six hours on a good day, he said, up to two days if the weather is bad and the service goes down.

“We started looking at other ways to solve the problem and discovered that carrier pigeons could do the job a lot more quickly.”

“If Winston can do the job as efficiently then we’d be silly not to think about using him instead — especially as he’ll only cost us a little of bird seed to run,” Rolfe added.