ohmidog!

Did you hear the one about the gay bulldog?

Of course you did.

The story that quickly rose to the top of the dog news charts yesterday all stemmed from a Facebook post by a Tennessee woman who regularly visits her local animal shelter and posts photos of animals who might be euthanized if they’re not adopted.

This week, she met Elton, a bulldog — actually a bulldog mix — at the shelter in Madison County, and was told that his owner had surrendered him because he had seen Elton hump another dog and thought he was gay.

She took a photo of Elton and put it on Facebook, along with Elton’s not exactly confirmed but fairly sensational story: 

“… His owner says he’s gay! He hunched another male dog so his owner threw him away bc he refuses to have a “gay” dog! Even if that weren’t the most assinine thing I’ve ever heard, its still discrimination! Don’t let this gorgeous dog die bc his owner is ignorant of normal dog behavior! He’s in kennel 10L and he WILL be put down tomorrow bc there is no room at the inn!”

The post was picked up by the website Gawker, and went viral from there, with news articles appearing in everything from the Daily Beast to the Daily Mail. It also led to a barrage of phone calls to the shelter, mostly from people who wanted to adopt Elton — one of whom did Thursday.

“Stop calling the Madison County animal shelter — the gay bulldog was adopted hours ago,” the Nashville Tennessean reported yesterday. 

The Facebook poster is a mother of four who calls herself “Jackson Madison Rabies Control Stalker” (rabies control being what the animal control office in Madison County calls itself).

According to the biographical information on her Facebook page, she started visiting the shelter a year earlier and adopted a schnoodle that had both a neurological disorder and, it turns out, parvovirus.

Because of the dog’s suffering, she and her husband decided to have it put down, but changed their minds and called the veterinarian back 15 minutes later, which was too late.

What followed, she says, was a depression that lasted for weeks:

“I felt like all my joy and happiness left with that schnoodle! my depression went on so long my husband became concerned! i told him there was nothing to replace my loss, and i didnt know how to get over wanting the schnoodle back!”

A month later, her family adopted another schnauzer-poodle mix in Memphis, and named her Tess.

“… Tess came into my life and the healing began for me … But, I sit here crying even now …  I will always feel as if I gave up on the (first) schnoodle, like I never gave him the chance he deserved. I will always wonder if I had tried, would he have made it.

She adds, “I hated Jackson Rabies Control for the parvo. I blamed the place for my heartache. Until I went back, a few weeks later….I went back and started taking pictures and sharing their stories. and friend requests came in and I sent more out….and my page blew up with people who had no idea Jackson TN had a kill shelter…

Her other recent posts depict a dog at the shelter who she says was being overlooked because he is black, and a dog who was “allegedly poisoned.”

(Photo: Facebook)

A Welsh Corgi who was assumed to have died in an avalanche that killed one of his owners in Montana Saturday turned up Wednesday at the door of the motel room the family had occupied.

The dog, named Ole, was with Dave Gaillard, 44, of Bozeman, when he was buried by an avalanche while skiing with his wife, Kerry, on Saturday. Kerry, who hung onto a tree to avoid being swept away, survived.

Search and rescue personnel saw no sign of Ole at the site, and it was thought he had been buried in the slide, the Billings Gazette reported.

Apparently, though, he managed to dig his way out — no small feat for any dog, let alone a Corgi. After that, amid temperatures in the teens, the stubby-legged dog managed to find his way back to the motel, four miles away,

Officials said the dog arrived at the Alpine Motel in Cooke City and took a seat at the door of the room the Gaillard’s had occupied four days earlier.

The dog’s return provided a bright spot for the grieving family, according to Gallatin National Forest officials who investigated the incident.

Cooke City businessman Bill Whittle, who drove the dog back to his family on Wednesday, said Ole appeared to be in good condition.

When he first approached the dog, Whittle said, Ole was scared. But when he called his name, he came right over. Whittle was a member of the search and rescue crew that helped retrieve Gaillard’s body.

Gaillard’s death was the second avalanche related death in the area over the weekend.

“We needed this,” Whittle said of the dog’s survival. “It kind of cheered everyone up.”

(Photo: Gaillard’s daughter, with Ole and Whittle, Billings Gazette)

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.