ohmidog!

Singer/songwriter Jen Foster is donating 50 percent of proceeds from downloads of the song “Christmas Time is Here” to Hope for Paws, a Los-Angeles-based rescue organization.

Written with LA songwriter/producer Rich Jacques, the song represents a departure for her. Most of her songs, she says, are “thematically intense.”

“I wanted to create something light, fun, and feel-good for the holidays,” she said. 

For the video, Foster, who has a dog named Bug, invited submissions of photos of pets celebrating the holidays.

A heartless soul stole 7-year-old Mia Bendrat’s dog on Christmas Eve — scooping him off the sidewalk in front of a store in Manhattan where her owner’s left him tied.

Fortunately, a good-hearted one was out there, too.

Tina Cohen, a teacher, saw a man a couple of neighborhoods away trying to sell a dog on the street, circumstances that made her suspicious. She purchased the dog from him and, on Christmas day, returned the dog to the owners.

New York City police arrested the alleged thief, who they say took the Cavalier King Charles spaniel, named Marley, from outside a shop in Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood, all under the eye of a surveillance camera.

“Thank you, the people of Washington Heights … Those great Samaritans… And now we got him on Christmas Day,” Mia’s mother Angie Estrada told WABC-TV.

Cohen, a high school Spanish teacher came across a man on Monday in another section of Manhattan standing on a street corner and yelling that he had a dog for sale.

“I said that’s not right. I said I’d like to buy the dog. I only have $100,” Cohen said.

When the man demanded more cash, Cohen went to a nearby Staples, bought some merchandise with her credit card, then returned it for cash.

She paid $200 for Marley and took him straight to a veterinarian, where he was identified through his microchip.

On Tuesday Cohen watched Marley jump into Mia’s arms.

“You guys belong together,” she said. “I’m so happy you are together.”

No word on whether Cohen got her $200 back, but — in the event Santa is listening, and maybe is willing to make a return trip — we’d say she deserves that and much more.

When Abby wandered off from her home in Fairbanks, Alaska, during a snowstorm, her family held out only a little hope.

Abby was 8-years-old. Temperatures were dipping to 40 degrees below zero. And Abby was blind.

But a little hope turned out to be enough.

Seven days later, after walking 10 miles to the edge of a local musher’s dog yard, Abby, a brown-and-white mixed breed rescued from a shelter as a pup, was found and returned to her owners, The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported.

“It’s a miracle, there’s no other words to describe it,” said McKenzie Grapengeter, who has three sons under the age of 10.  “We never expected to have her to be returned safe and alive.”

Musher and veterinarian Mark May said he came across the dog while running his team on Dec. 19, but didn’t stop to pick her up. The next day, the dog showed up at May’s house.

May said the dog had no signs of frostbite. “No frozen ears, no frozen toes, she’ll probably go back home and it’ll (be) business as usual. She’s no worse for wear but quite an adventure,” he said.

“We’re so, so grateful…” Grapengeter said, calling Abby’s return “the most amazing Christmas gift we could ever ask for.”

We told you so, way back in November, when we carried a report about a dog crawling out alive from the ashes of a house fire in Tennessee.

‘Tis the season for doggie Christmas miracles.

You don’t have to look very far, this time of year, to find one.

The first of two we bring you today comes from North Carolina, where a Jack Russell terrier named Rowdy mysteriously disappeared while chasing squirrels on the Davidson College campus.

Mary Kay Taylor, his owner, often takes him there, and lets him frolic off leash for a few minutes.

“I walk him usually well into campus and let him off the leash for maybe a five-minute run around. Looking for squirrels is his favorite thing in the whole wide world to do,” she told WCNC in Charlotte.

On the Sunday before Christmas, he ran out of her sight. She heard a yelp.

For the next two hours she searched, calling the 8-year-old dog’s name. After that, she posted fliers on campus light posts.

The next two days were lonely ones, she said: “When you come home and he’s not there to greet you and all that kind of stuff, it’s sad.”

Early Christmas morning, her phone rang.

Rowdy had been found in a 12-foot pit in the well of a window outside the campus library.

A man walking his dog heard Rowdy crying and called the campus police. With help from the fire department, Rowdy was hoisted out and, within hours, was back home snuggling by the fireplace with his owner.

“It’s a miracle,” said Taylor. “It’s a Christmas miracle and I feel so grateful.”

We interrupt our regular Monday “Sleeping Dogs” feature to present some singing dogs.

For your Christmas Eve enjoyment, here are Crooning Cody and Singing Sierra, who have appeared here before, and also once made it on Anderson Cooper’s show.

They belong to Adam Yamada-Hanff, a friend of mine in Baltimore and proprietor of the website singingdogs.net.

“I have started to record a few special and unique versions of classic Christmas songs,” Adam informs me. “We are still working on a couple currently but we decided to start off with the well known classic, ‘Rudolph the Rednose Reindeer’ since that was requested via email by a fan of the singing dogs.

“While I was playing the song I started laughing, since it was just too funny not to laugh! Even after playing with Cody and Sierra for awhile it is still very hard not to laugh when they are both singing loudly together.”

Here they are performing “Oh Christmas Tree”:

Adam and  his family work with the National English Shepherd Rescue, Ltd.

As for our sleeping dogs, they’ll return next Monday.

Here’s the latest in the ASPCA’s anti-puppy mill campaign — a video that reminds those considering going to a pet store to purchase a puppy for Christmas of the unjoyous kind of place that dog likely came from.

“Our goal with this video is to educate consumers in a very compelling way about the connection between pet store puppies and puppy mills, with hopes of reaching millions,” the ASPCA said.

The video, entitled Puppies Are Not Toys, is part of the ASPCA’s  No Pet Store Puppies campaign.

It’s timed for Christmas because polls show Americans plan to spend more than $2.5 million on pets over the holidays — the vast majority of that on pets they already have.

The ASPCA is suggesting that consumers avoid buying anything from pet stores that sell puppies because “some of that $2.5 billion in revenue may be supporting the puppy mill industry.”

It cited polls showing about 60 percent of consumers would still consider shopping at a store that also sells puppies.

As an alternative, it suggested shoppers consider giving gifts that make a difference in the lives of animals in need, such as those from its own online store.

Here’s Bo Obama, tip-toeing through the White House to check out the First Family’s holiday decorations — many of which he inspired.

The video was released by the White House yesterday.

The seasonal decorations include 40 “Bo-flake” ornaments hanging from the trees, a life-sized replica of Bo in the East Garden Room, and a larger than life, edible Bo in front of a 300-pound gingerbread house located in the State Dining Room.

About 90,000 visitors are expected to go through the White House this holiday season.

You can find out more about the 2012 White House Holiday celebrations, including the special tributes to troops, veterans and military families at wh.gov/holidays.

With December just around the corner, brace yourself for some doggie Christmas miracle stories.

Dogs, of course, do amazing things all year round, but there’s a tendency this time of year for those stories to get told more often, and generally in a somewhat breathless and hyped up way that gives Christmas, rather than smart dogs, all the credit.

While we’ll hold off on proclaiming it a miracle, how this little dog survived a house fire in Tennessee is pretty amazing.

Abigail apparently took shelter in a crawl space beneath the floor, and, though the house was 90 percent consumed by flames, managed to survive long enough to be pulled out by a firefighter.

“You never see a house that has fully burned to the ground — and 90 percent of the home is gone, I mean it’s up in smoke –- and something lived,” firefighter Pat Boone told News Channel 11

Boone, who pulled the dog out, said firefighters were calling her Miracle, until they learned her name was Abigail.

Her owners, who lost everything else in the fire, were thankful that Abigail was found. “Houses can be replaced, clothes can be replaced; family and animals can’t,” one family member said.

Boone said community members are stepping forward to help the family. An anonymous donor is covering all of the veterinary expenses for Abigail, who’s expected to be fine.

We question the wisdom of dressing your dog as Santa Claus.

We question the wisdom of calling your dog, while he’s wearing Santa pants, to come down the stairs.

We question the wisdom of posting it on YouTube and giving other numbskulls the idea of trying it at home.

But we don’t question the cleverness or the agility of this dog, who, saddled with the silly costume, manages, amazingly, to get downstairs just using his front legs.

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)