ohmidog!

A South Carolina woman called a county animal control office asking they come pick up a dog she no longer wanted.

Then she left the hound mix in a bag on the curb — for three days.

Veronica Crawford, 29,  of Florence, was arrested by Darlington County Sheriff’s deputies on June 14 and charged with ill treatment of animals, SCNow.com reported.

According to Capt. Andy Locklair of the Darlington County Sheriff Office, Crawford called the county Animal Control office on Monday, June 11, saying she had a dog she no longer wanted.

She asked that the dog be picked up, but was informed that she would have to bring it in and fill out paperwork.

Three days later, according to Locklair, Crawford called Animal Control again requesting that the dog be picked up — and noting that it had been outside her home since Monday, tied up in a bag.

Animal Control contacted the Sheriff’s Office, which sent deputies to the residence. The dehydrated dog was found with only her head protruding from a bag.

Crawford was arrested and taken to the Darlington County Detention Center.

The dog was named Belinda at the shelter, where she was being treated for dehydration and injuries from her collar having becoming embedded in her skin.

(Photo: Darlington County Animal Control)

Daniel, the miracle beagle, has a new home.

The dog who survived an Alabama gas chamber has been adopted by Joe Dwyer, a 50-year-old motivational speaker and dog trainer, his wife, Geralynn, and their daughter, Jenna.

While the family intends to continue the dual missions Daniel has already become part of — encouraging adoptions and ending the use of gas chambers to euthanize dogs — they promised that “his life as part of this family is paramount.”

“We can’t deny he has a purpose,” Dwyer of Nutley, N.J., told the Newark Star-Ledger. But, he added, “he won’t be exploited.”

The Dwyer family has four other dogs, including another famous one –  Shelby, an abused pit bull Dwyer adopted and trained as a therapy dog. Dwyer wrote a book about the dog and uses her in presentations at schools about bullying.

Dwyer said Daniel may become a therapy dog some day, but for now the family will allow him to continue to be used, as he has been since his rescue, as the poster child for the campaign to end gas chambers, which are still legal in 31 states.

Estimates are Daniel is around five, but the Star-Ledger reports he was behaving like a puppy as he dashed around the yard with the family’s other dogs.

Daniel was one of a group of dogs being euthanized in the gas chamber at the local pound in Florence, Ala. When the process was completed, though, Daniel walked out of the chamber.

Word of his survival spread across the country, prompting the Rockaway, N.J.- based rescue group Eleventh Hour Rescue to take him in. He was flown to New Jersey by Pilots N Paws.

On Saturday, Daniel made his first official appearance — in Pennsylvania at a rally for a bill to ban gas chambers. That bill is named after Daniel.

(Photo of Daniel and Shelby by Jennifer Brown / Newark Star-Ledger)

Daniel my brother you are older than me
Do you still feel the pain of the scars that won’t heal
Your eyes have died but you see more than I
Daniel you’re a star in the face of the sky …

– Elton John

There’s something about a dog-surviving-euthanasia story — and we’ve presented a few tales of such dogs, and cats, on these pages —  that grabs our hearts and won’t let go.

Maybe its because those dogs have beaten such overwhelming odds, or because we like to see the underdog (and a dog can’t get more under than this) triumph; or because we all just love to see death get cheated.

Or maybe it’s because it serves as a haunting reminder — penetrating our veil of denial — that we humans shouldn’t be killing dogs by the millions, whether it’s in outdated gas chambers or by lethal injection.

In that vein (cruel pun intended), we present the case of a beagle mix named Daniel.

Daniel was one of four or five dogs (who can keep count) loaded into the gas chamber recently at the Animal Control Department in Florence, Alabama.

“It’s the toughest part of the job,” said Cody Berry, the loader.

Berry turned the death machine on, carbon monoxide seeped into the chamber, and the fumes worked their black magic.

But when Berry went to unload the corpses, Daniel stood up and walked out.

As is often, but not always the case, the pound decided not to re-gas Daniel, and instead took him to a veterinarian before seeking a rescue group that might take the death-defying dog under its care.

On Wednesday, Daniel arrived in New Jersey, where, until a permanent home is found, he’ll live in a foster home provided through the Rockaway-based Eleventh Hour Rescue, according to the Newark Star-Ledger.

“He’s one in a million,” said Linda Schiller, the founder of the organization.

While finding him a home is the top priority, the group also hopes to make him the next  “poster child” in the campaign to end the use of gas as a form of animal euthanasia.

The practice has been banned in some states, including New Jersey.

In Alabama, it will become illegal next year under Beckham’s law, named for another dog who survived the gas chamber.

In far too many other states and counties, it continues.

The American Humane Association, among others, has been lobbying to end the use of gas chambers, which it says cost more than lethal injection and is a crueler form of death.

Daniel arrived in New Jersey, with 11 other rescued dogs, in a single-engine plane piloted by Scott Messinger, a volunteer with the group Pilots N Paws.

As soon as the 5-year-old dog was on the ground, his tail started wagging, the Star-Ledger reported.  

He’ll be staying with Jill Pavlik, a volunteer with Eleventh Hour Rescue.

Roger Keyser, another Eleventh Hour volunteer predicted we’ll be hearing more about the 20-pound beagle mix who outsmarted death.

“This dog has got to have some destiny,” he said.

More than 400 people gathered in Alabama last week to pay their last respects to Bo, a black and tan coonhound whose family traveled 300 miles to bury him at the Key Underwood Memorial Coon Dog Cemetery.

Bo, the 2008 Purina Outstanding Show Dog of the Year, was eulogized for his ability to hunt raccoons, his unfailing nose and his ability to speedily navigate all terrains. But it was probably as a friend that he made his biggest impact.

“He was the goodest dog ever,” Ericka Seets, 6, explained at the service. “I loved BoBo.”

Bo, whose full name was Shawnee Hills Beaujolais, lived in southern Illinois. But he was buried Thursday at the world’s only cemetery dedicated to hounds who hunt raccoons.

It was Ericka who insisted he be brought to Alabama for burial, according to  the Times Daily in Florence, Alabama.

As her grandfather, Michael Seets, explained it, he brought Bo to his home in Illinois in 2007 to help train him for dog shows and hunting for his owner, who lived in Georgia.

While Bo was an attentive student, he also liked to spend time with Ericka, laying in bed, eating doughnuts and watching cartoons on television.

Because of Ericka, Seets made an exception to his rule of never letting dogs into the house. And when it came time to return the dog to his owner, Ericka, 3-years old at the time, said no.

“I said we’ve got to take BoBo home,” Michael Seets said. “She said, `no, BoBo’s mine.’ I thought, `Now ain’t this something.”‘

Seets said that when he explained to the owner about how the hunting dog had become a house pet, and the connection between Bo and Ericka, the owner gave them the dog.

Two years ago, the Seets learned about the Key Underwood Memorial Coon Dog Cemetery from a friend in Pennsylvania who had a dog buried there. They watched a video of the service, and Ericka decided then that Bo would be buried there when his time came.

“Bo was a good dog. This is the place you bury a good dog,” said Michael Seets, who lives in Stonefort, Ill.

“We’ve had other good dogs, and when they died, we buried them behind the barn or beside a tree. But Bo was special because Little Red (Ericka) loved him so much.”

(Photo: WAAY-TV;  video: WAFF-TV)

 
Ace stepped lightly between the tombstones, paused to sniff a clump of artificial flowers, then moved on – past Flop, Train, Daisy, Black Ranger and Bear. He paused at the final resting places of Patches and Preacher and Bean Blossom Bomma, then sauntered by Smoky, Squeek and Easy Going Sam, whose rusting collar is looped over the cross marking his grave.

We were alone at the Coon Dog Cemetery in Cherokee, Alabama – except for the 215 dogs buried beneath us — on a hot and drizzly Friday, silent except for the chirps of birds and the whining hum of mosquitos sizing up my ears.

I’d long wanted to visit the Coon Dog Cemetery. We’ve featured it on this website before. But those were long distance, second hand dispatches. Being there, especially when no one else is, is another story.

Between the bursts of color provided by the fake flowers on almost every grave; the eclectic mix of memorials, ranging from engraved stone, to etched metal to carved wooden crosses, and the homey epitaphs and monikers, the cemetery is at once haunting and inspiring – a Southern icon, and a reminder of the powerful, difficult to relinquish, connection between dog and owner.

Especially when that dog and owner were hunting buddies.

Located in a grassy meadow in the wilderness of Freedom Hills, the cemetery permits only coon dogs – 215 of which are buried there, according to Susann Hamlin, executive director of the Colbert County Tourism & Convention Bureau, which now maintains the property.

The cemetery got its start when Key Underwood chose the spot – not far from where coon hunters gathered to share stories – to bury his faithful coon dog Troop. On a dreary Labor Day in 1937, Troop was wrapped in a cotton sack and buried three feet down. Underwood marked the grave with a rock from an old chimney. He used a hammer and screwdriver to chisel Troop’s name and date.

After that, other hunters started doing the same – first those from Alabama and Mississippi, later from all around the country.

 
We found it after driving 15 miles down a winding road through the gently rolling hills of northwest Alabama, and for an hour had it all to ourselves. Then another car pulled up, driven by Hamlin, who was escorting a photographer working on a project about Alabama for the National Archives.

Hamlin said about three dogs a year are buried at the cemetery nowadays – a reflection of the declining popularity of the sport, in which the dogs track raccoons and chase them up trees before the hunters … well, you know the rest.

How much pride those hunters took in their dogs still lingers though, in tall tales, folklore and, most of all, at the cemetery, where heartfelt tributes are hammered, carved and burned into grave markers:

“He wasn’t the best, but he was the best I ever had.”

“He was good as the best and better than the rest.”

“He was a joy to hunt with.”

Every year on Labor Day, a festival is held at the cemetery, hosted by the Tennessee Valley Coon Hunters Association. The cemetery is spruced up and decorated, and the event features bluegrass music, food and a liar’s contest.

For more information, visit Coondogcemetery.com and Colbertcountytourism.org. Caps and T-shirts can be purchased online, and proceeds help support the cemetery.

Better yet, check it out in person. Admission is free, but the mosquitos do take up donations. I added about a dozen more bites to my ongoing collection – a small price to pay for such a big, colorful and moving sampling of southern culture.

To read all of Dog’s Country, click here.

 
Lots of sports teams call themselves Lions, but the University of North Alabama boasts the only live lion mascots in the country — two of them.

I dropped by to see them– Leo III and Una — Friday. Ace, because I didn’t want to start a roaring contest, especially after our gas station run in with the big yellow dog, stayed in the air conditioned car with my son, who, living in Florence, had seen the lions many times before.

While I was all ready to lambaste the university for keeping captive lions in this way too hot and humid (for my taste) state, I quickly saw that Leo and Una have it better than many Alabamans.

Now 7 years old,  they reside  in the climate-controlled, 12,764-square-foot George H. Carroll Lion Habitat, which was built with a waterfall, babbling streams, two observatories, private dens with skylights, beamed ceilings and a shaded area provided by a thatched roof. The habitat cost $1.3 million. Feeding and caring for the lions cost $35,000 annually, all of which, like the habitat’s construction, is covered by charitable contributions. The habitat also boasts what it describes as the “largest kitty litter box in this part of the state.”

UNA‘s live lion mascot tradition began in 1974, when then-President Dr. Robert Guillot acquired a 12-pound lion cub, Leo I, from a Knoxville zoo.

Leo I lived 14 years, becoming a locally beloved mascot, and the outpouring of support after his death led to Leo II being brought to UNA in July 1988. Leo II, who Sports Illustrated once named the second best college mascot in the country, died in 2000. 

Leo III and Una, born on November 18, 2002, were the first residents of the new habitat, which opened that year.

You can also see them via a university lioncam.

Tomorrow: Coon Dog Cemetery

To read all of Dog’s Country, click here.

When you get off the Interstate Highway system, the country becomes a far more interesting place.

We finally did that today, for the first time on this trip, leaving behind all the monotonously lookalike exits to get a taste of yet-to-be homogenized America, where some character still exists.

Our drive across Alabama from Huntsville to Florence on Highway 72 — less than two hours — took us through Decatur, where we noticed this establishment on the side of the road.

I didn’t have time to drop in – I’m not sure I’m ready for that kind of makeover, anyway  – because I had to get to Florence, get checked in and get myself gussied up for my son’s high school graduation tonight.

Ace won’t be attending that function. He’s more than content, I’m sure, to stay in the air conditioned room, even if it means he’ll be by himself.

The Knights Inn in Florence allows dogs, with a an extra $10 fee, but has a weight limit of 20 pounds, which wasn’t pointed out — neither the fee nor the limit — on the website where I made the reservation.

“What kind of dog do you have?” the desk clerk asked.

“A big mutt,” I answered.

“We have a limit of 20 pounds,” she said.

“Okay,” I said, “then he’s 19 and a half pounds.”

I’m not sure how I will handle it if I get confronted about my 130-pound dog — nearly seven times the limit:

Maybe, “He’s grown a lot since I checked in.”

Or, “He’s actually very small, he just has a lot of hair.”

Or perhaps, “Praise the Lord! He was a Chihuahua yesterday. It’s a miracle!”

For all of “Dog’s Country” – the adventures of Ace and me as we spend a month or more traveling around the country – click the picture to the left.