ohmidog!

A one-eyed Pekingese who ran off from his home nearly two years ago was reunited with his family in Arizona this week — after running out of another home and into the side of a police car.

Buddy had been missing since May 2011 when, during a monsoon, a gate flew open and he darted off the property of his owner, Jessica Rowe of Mesa.

Rowe searched, but was unable to find the small black and white dog.

On Friday — 22 months later — Buddy ran out the door of a home in Phoenix and into the street, AZFamily reported.

“That’s when I heard this really horrible sound as if a large stone or some object hit the driver side of my patrol vehicle, looked out the rear view and saw the dog down on the road,” Phoenix police officer Don Martin said.

Martin and another officer wrapped up the dog and took him to a vet, where a microchip was discovered, showing the dog was owned by Rowe.

Police called her and she reunited with Buddy Monday.

Martin said a citizen found Buddy about a week ago and had been caring for him up until his run in with the police cruiser. It’s unclear where Buddy had been before that.

“… We all like being police officers, because of moments like this,” Martin said as he watched dog and owner reconnect. ” … This is what you live for.”

Officer Martin also paid the dog’s vet bill.

(Photo: AZFamily.com)

A near-death experience turned into a free ride for an owl that was struck by an SUV on the Florida Turnpike and became lodged behind the vehicle’s grill.

Sonji Coney Williams was headed south on the turnpike when she struck what she thought was a bird.

“I felt so bad but it was very dark and we didn’t pull over,” she said. Instead she drove another 100 miles, to Plantation, Fla.

Not until the next day, when she was parking her car, did she discover what she struck was a great horned owl, and that it was alive, well and winking from behind the grill of her car.

“There was a family that pulled in front of my parking space and flagged me down and said don’t move, don’t move, you have something in the grill of your truck. I said, ‘Yes, what is it?’ And they said, ‘It’s an owl.’ And I said, ‘An owl?’” said Williams.

She called Florida Fish and Wildlife and an officer opened the hood and freed the bird from the vehicle.

The owl’s journey was nearly as long as the maybe-record-setting, 110-mile one taken last year by a dog in California, later named Chevy, in the engine compartment of a pick up truck.

Officers say the owl appeared not to have suffered any injuries. It was moved to the South Florida Wildlife Center in Ft. Lauderdale, which said the owl — after some good meals and more testing — would eventually be returned to its natural habitat in Central Florida.

When a dog who’d lived on the streets for three years got hit by a car in Roseville, Calif.,  a veterinarian treating her new injuries found evidence of some old ones.

X-rays showed the old dog, named Lady, had apparently been used for target practice and shot with a BB gun several times, said Karen Johnson, of the Johnson Ranch Veterinary Clinic.

Lady was about to be rescued from life on the streets when she was hit by a car.

Kristell Stout, who works in Roseville, had been feeding the dog for three years. When she left the job, she couldn’t bear the thought of not seeing Lady anymore and contacted an animal rescuing friend.

He was on her way to catch her when news came she’d been hit by a car, according to Fox40 in Sacramento.

The dog who took an 11-mile ride stuck in the grill of a car has been reclaimed by her family.

On Tuesday evening, a family from Dighton family was reunited with Suzie, who had been missing for nearly two weeks.

Animal control officers had dubbed the dog Lucky after she was struck by a Toyota Camry Sept. 20, became wedged in its grill and was and transported 11 miles across Rhode Island before the driver stopped.

The dog’s journey ended when the driver stopped at the East Providence Police Department, where officers and animal control personnel removed her from the front of the car.

“Thing’s as happy as can be. It’s fine,” said the dog’s owner, who asked not to be identified. “My daughter loves the dog to death … she was wicked upset when we lost it and wicked happy when we found it,” he told the Taunton Daily Gazette.

A family pet for the past six years, Suzie escaped their enclosed yard in Dighton on Sept. 20 by digging under the fence.

“Dog digs like a backhoe,” the owner said.

The owners learned about Suzie’s story after her story of survival spread across the country on Monday and Tuesday.

“One of my buddies called me on the phone. He caught the 11 o’clock news on T.V., and he said, ‘Hey, I think your dog’s on T.V.’”

A poodle mix struck by a Toyota Camry became wedged in the car’s grill and survived an 11-mile ride in Rhode Island.

“It’s the first time we’ve ever seen anything like this,” East Providence Animal Control Officer Will Muggle told East Bay Newspapers.

 ”Considering the speed the driver said he was going and the distance he traveled, for her to survive is definitely a miracle.”

Authorities said the Toyota was traveling about 50 miles per hour when the small dog — a poodle-Bichon Frise mix — darted in front of it. The driver said he had little time to react. Unsure whether his car had struck the dog, he stopped, got out, checked the front of the car, saw nothing and assumed the dog had run off. He continued on his way from Taunton to East Providence.

But the dog was there, stuck in the recessed air intake section just below the car’s front grill and above the car’s license plate frame. Eleven miles later, when another motorist told him at a stop light that there was a dog in his grill, the driver headed straight to the East Providence police station.

Animal control officer Muggle was called to the scene.

“It was difficult to get her out of there, not only because of how she was stuck in there, but because she was grabbing on pretty tight,” Muggle said.

“The driver of the car was pretty shaken up about the whole thing,” he added. “He came back the next day to check on her to make sure she was alright.”

The dog — she’s being called Lucky — was taken to the East Bay Animal Hospital and later transferred to Bay State Animal Hospital for additional testing.

Muggle said the dog had a concussion, a small cut above her eye and a slight tear in her intestine. She has recovered and been returned to the custody of animal control. A search for the dog’s owner is underway.

An electronic tracking device implanted under her skin indicated she may have at one point lived in Kentucky, but no registered owners were listed.

If no owner is found likely by the end of the week, the dog will be put up for adoption.

Anyone with information about the dog’s owner, or interested in adopting her, can call East Providence Animal Control at 401-435-7675 or 401-435-7676.

The homeless and formerly homeless gathered on Skid Row in Los Angeles late last week to remember one of their own — Sheba, a shepherd mix who spent 17 years living on the streets.

On Tuesday, at about 11:30 p.m., Sheba was struck by a car and killed on Alameda Street.

About a  dozen current and former street dwellers and animal activists showed up Thursday at a sidewalk memorial service for Sheba on Gladys Avenue.

Among those paying respects was Georgina Warren, who, homeless and addicted to drugs at the time, heard Sheba’s cries while living in a tent on a Skid Row parking lot 17 years ago.

She went to investigate and found a  young German shepherd mix chained to a pole, unable to reach a bowl of water someone had left. Warren borrowed some bolt cutters from a nearby mechanic and freed the dog.

“After that, she followed me and wouldn’t leave me alone,” Warren said. “She just became my baby.”

It was Warren who, noting how protective the dog was of her shopping cart, came up with the name Sheba, because she seemed to be respected like a queen.

Warren spent the next 10 years with the dog, Downtown News in Los Angeles reports — minus those periods she ended up in jail. When that happened, fellow street dwellers pitched in to take care of Sheba.

Warren left Skid Row in 2008 and is now in recovery. Sheba stayed.

“Sheba was the community’s dog,” said Lori Weise, founder of Downtown Dog Rescue, which provides services for low-income dog owners.

Weise helped care for Sheba, and arranged for the dog to be spayed and microchipped. She was registered on the microchip as the official contact, and there were 11 times that Weise was called to pick up Sheba from animal shelters, always returning her to the streets and the person who was taking care of her — if not always keeping her leashed — at the time.

Weise and others are making arrangements to have Sheba’s ashes buried in the garden at the Hippie Kitchen, a Gladys Avenue service center where Sheba often hung out.

(Top photo:  Georgina Warren, left, and Catherine Harris of the nearby Hippie Kitchen, at the memorial service;  by Gary Leonard, Downtown News)

(Bottom  photo, of Warren and Sheba, courtesy of Lori Weise, Downtown Dog Rescue)

A pitbull mix missing part of a rear leg was found last month by the side of some railroad tracks in Baltimore.

Today, she’s up and around, and scheduled to appear at a press conference where her sad but inspiring story will be told.

Baltimore City Animal Control picked the emaciated dog up Feb. 13. The bottom third of her rear leg was missing, leading officers to believe she had been hit by a train.

Staff at the Baltimore Animal Rescue & Care Shelter (BARCS), examined her, and promptly dubbed her Kisses because of her sweet disposition and all the licks she gave them, despite the pain she clearly had to be in.

As bleak as her outlook was, BARCS staff — “seeing her strength and will to live” — dipped into its Franky Fund, created to help homeless animals  in need of immediate medical care, in hopes she could be saved.

BARCS contacted Essex Middle River Veterinary Center, which agreed to take a look at the dog.

BARCS staff assumed Kisses would have the rest of her leg amputated, but Dr.  Joseph Zulty and his staff instead recommended closing the wound and raising funds to get her a prosthetic device.

The surgery was a success and Kisses has been fitted for a prosthetic. A member of the veterinary center staff took her home to provide foster care during her recovery, and BARCS reports that the hospital staff member plans to keep her.

BARCS & Essex Middle River Veterinary Center are holding a press conference this afternoon to tell the story of Kisses.

More information about the Franky Fund can be found at the BARCS website.

(Photo courtesy of BARCS)

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.

A dachshund mix who police thought might have been fed LSD by his owners turned out not to have drugs in his system.

The dog was hit by car, and later had to be euthanized.

Necropsy results show Oscar had a broken back, but his body showed no traces of drugs, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Police in Snellville, Ga., arrested the dog’s owners after complaints that they were running naked through their neighborhood on Oct. 29. Officers said the couple told them they had taken LSD and also given some to their dog, who was missing.

Nicholas Modrich and Jamie Hughes, both 25, are awaiting trial on drug charges.

(Photo: Channel 2 Action News)

Clif, a police dog in Vineland, N.J., died yesterday after being struck by a car while on duty.

The police department said in a news release that Clif and his handler, Sgt. William Bontcue, had just completed a search for a burglary suspect.

They were returning to their car shortly before 6 a.m. when Clif was struck by a car driven by a 75-year-old woman, The Press of Atlantic City reported.

Clif died from his injuries at Linwood Veterinary Hospital about 7 a.m.

A five-year-old German shepherd from Europe,  Clif began working for the police department in 2008.