ohmidog!

The office of Florida Gov. Rick Scott has shed more light on what happened to Reagan, the dog the governor’s family rescued during his campaign.

Reagan, after his much publicized adoption, disappeared from public view when Scott took office.

The governor said last week that the dog — whose name had been chosen by his fans on Facebook — was returned to the grooming shop where his family got him, due to behavior problems.

The governor told the Tampa Bay Times that the dog never hurt anyone, but it turns out Reagan both barked and bit.

A spokeswoman for the governor said this week that Reagan was returned to the grooming shop after biting a governor’s mansion employee who moved his water bowl.

“The governor and first lady love dogs, and they had to make a hard decision when it was clear that Reagan was very anxious around lots of different people,” Scott spokeswoman Melissa Sellers said.

The dog bite occurred while the governor was in Orlando on Jan. 7, 2011 — three days after he took office.

Mansion grounds employee Jennifer Kinsey was arranging flowers when Reagan bit her on the right hand, according to an incident report released by Scott’s office. The injury required no medical treatment.

Scott introduced the yellow Lab to Facebook readers on Sept. 7, 2010, shortly after he won the Republican nomination. Facebook friends chose the name Reagan from a list of three choices suggested by the campaign and they praised Scott for adopting a dog.

Sellers said Scott flew Reagan back to Naples on his private jet to return him to All Pets Grooming and Boarding. The shop’s owner has told one television station that Reagan’s name has been changed to Pluto and that he now lives on a horse ranch in Collier County.

“The family decided that the best decision for the dog and all those who visit  would be to have the grooming business find Reagan a more appropriate home with less people and activity,” Sellers said. “It was a hard choice that sometimes pet owners have to make.”

The Scotts have since adopted Tallee, another yellow Lab.

The governor’s communications directors initially refused to respond when asked about the disappearance of Reagan. Scott, when asked directly, said he returned the dog to previous owners because it barked a lot and frightened mansion staffers.

Sellers said Scott had been out of town and did not recall the biting incident when he talked to reporters.

As wonderful a tool as social media is for defending, locating, rehoming, advocating for and generally protecting man’s best friend, there are times when its power gets embarrasingly out of control.

The “nails in cheese” story is a case in point — one that proves yet again that, when stories go viral, not even a dose of truth can slow them down.

“New trend at dog parks, nails in pieces of cheese, if you take your dogs to dog parks, please be careful!!” Eric “Pack Ethic” Bellows, one of many overspreading the news, reports on his Facebook page.

It’s not a “new” trend, or even a trend at all — at least it wasn’t before the photo started getting “shared” all over the Internet.

It apparently was one incident, three months ago, at a dog park in South America.

True, it was a heinous act, and should be reported, but calling it a trend, blowing it out of proportion, making it sound like it’s happening next door, is irresponsible. And scarier yet, once that starts happening, it’s often irreversible — almost out of control.

In addition to planting evil seeds in twisted minds, the photo is unnecessarily alarming thousands of dog lovers, who, always willing to speak out from the heart about mistreated dogs, sometimes don’t check the facts first.

Bellow’s Sunday Facebook post on spiked cheese — the photo and a brief and vague description – had drawn nearly 2,500 comments by Monday, and been shared by nearly 3,900 people. By this morning, there were 9,000 comments and 12,000 shares.

Most of the comments, as you can imagine, address how reprehensible the act was, and what should be done with the perpetrator, once caught.

A few ask when and where it happened — information not included in Bellow’s post.

Of course Bellows, who runs a rescue organization out of his home, is not the only one inflating the story to mythical proportions.

Through through social networking sites like Tumblr and Facebook, the nails and cheese story is spreading like wildfire, according to ThatsNonsense.com.

The website reports the single incident – a dog walker found the spiked treats in in Centennial Park, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires — was reported locally and then picked up by Perfil.com.

“After research on the Internet, we were unable to find any other stories … thus making it unlikely that this is a “trend” — rather an apparently isolated incident many months ago.

ThatsNonsense.com concludes:

“Whilst it is difficult to ascertain for definite whether this has ever happened anywhere else before, we have to acknowledge we live in a big world full of sick, twisted people so the likelihood that some future events linked to the message above happening again is certainly possible, if not likely – however this appears to be nothing more than a relatively isolated incident – there is no trend or serial “cheese spiking” occurring, and circulating this message is most likely going to be a total waste of time rather than helpful.”