ohmidog!

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.

In terms of the highway carnage it leads to, driving with a dog in your lap may not be up there with drinking and driving, or texting and driving.

But it apparently concerns one state legislator enough that he has proposed making it illegal.

Dogs would be forbidden from sharing the driver’s seat with motorists under a bill introduced in the General Assembly by Rep. Peter G. Palumbo, D-Cranston.

The proposed fines are $85 for a first offense, $100 for the second and $125 for subsequent offenses, according to the Providence Journal.

Palumbo said he submitted the proposal on behalf of a constituent who told him of a near accident she said was almost caused by a driver sharing the front seat with a dog.

Early results of a reader poll on the issue showed more than 70 percent supporting such a law.

The bill has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee.

(Photo:  John Freidah / Providence Journal)

With the sun in our faces, a coffee — both venti and bold — in my cupholder, and a gas tank half empty, we’re departing Connecticut for the 3-hour drive (we hope) to Provincetown, located at the wispy tip of Cape Cod.

We won’t be making it in time to see Provincetown get its official award as the dog-friendliest town in America, but we’ll be pulling in at some point.

Already we have veered off the course taken by John Steinbeck and Charley. His first stop after crossing the sound was to visit his son, at a school called Eaglebrook in Deerfield, Massachusetts. Our route is veering widely east, through Providence, along Cape Cod and up to the island’s northern tip.

The honor of being the dog-friendliest town is being bestowed on Provincetown today by Dog Fancy magazine, which put it at the top of its list of the of dog-friendliest cities in its 2010 DogTown USA contest.

The criteria used to select the winning city included dog-friendly open spaces and dog parks, events celebrating dogs and their owners, ample veterinary care, abundant pet supply and other services, and municipal laws that support and protect all pets.

Provincetown’s Pilgrim Bark Park finished at No. 2 in the magazine’s national dog park ratings, and Dog Fancy editor Ernie Slone called Provincetown “an entire town where virtually every establishment opens its doors to dogs – even the bank.”

We’ll see about that – chances are, it being a ritzy sort of area, we’ll be needing to visit a bank.

The drive, I expect, will be an invigorating one. Already the trees are showing a tiny tinge of fall color, a hint of the breathtaking blast and crisper temperatures that lie ahead as the season progresses and we go further north.

Come to think of it, my gas tank isn’t half empty after all; it’s half full.

Here — just because it all seems so circular — is a Japanese trailer for an American movie based on a Japanese legend.

The soon to be released “Hachiko: A Dog’s Story”  is an Americanized version of the true account of the Akita who waited everyday at the train station for his master, a University of Tokyo professor, to return home from work. When his master died on the job, Hachiko continued the vigil — for another 10 years.

In the American movie, Richard Gere plays the professor, with Rhode Island substituting for Japan.

Hachiko was brought to Tokyo by his owner, Eisaburo Uyeno, a professor in the agriculture department at the University of Tokyo. For a year, the dog greeted him at the end of the day at Shibuya Station. In May 1925,  Professor Uyeno, after a stroke, died at work. While the dog was passed on to new owners, he continued to go to the train station everyday, in hopes of seeing his owner.

A bronze statue of Hachiko is now a permanent fixture at the train station in Shibuya, and his mounted remains are kept at the National Science Museum of Japan in Tokyo.

You can find the trailer in English on YouTube. The movie — and you can count on it being a tearjerker — was originally scheduled to come out in August 2009. It will be released in the U.S. by March.

As Rhode Island debates the fate of its only greyhound racing track, an advocacy group is planning a weekend rally calling for an end to the sport in the state, the Associated Press reports.

The group GREY2K USA, a chief proponent of a successful ballot question in Massachusetts last year to ban greyhound racing at the state’s two tracks, is planning a Saturday rally in Providence to urge Rhode Islanders to ban the sport as well.

The Massachusetts ban takes effect in January. And New Hampshire’s two remaining tracks plan to end live racing.

“The handwriting is on the wall, and it makes little sense for lawmakers to stand up and buck this trend,” said Christine Dorchak, president and general counsel of the organization.

In Rhode Island the debate has focused more on the sport’s profitability rather than on the treatment of dogs.  Legislators awant to expand greyhound racing. Over the objection of Gov. Don Carcieri, lawmakers have moved to force a bankrupt, state-licensed slot parlor to run 200 days of live racing at its greyhound track even though current law only requires 125.

Carcieri, a Republican, vetoed the legislation, but lawmakers in the Democratic-dominated General Assembly say they expect to override it. Supporters of the dog racing bill say it’s necessary to save 225 jobs, including pari-mutuel clerks, bartenders and security workers, and preserve tax revenue. They also argue the public shouldn’t be penalized for what they say are the bad business decisions of the owners of the gambling parlor, called Twin River.

The story of Hachiko, an Akita who came to a train station in Tokyo to wait for his master every day – and for another 10 years after the man died — is coming to the big screen in an Americanized version that stars Richard Gere and takes place in Rhode Island.

The movie still features an Akita, and it’s still named “Hachiko,” but his master isn’t Hidesaburo Ueno, the professor of agriculture at the University of Tokyo whose dog never stopped looking for him.

Instead, the story of one dog’s lifelong devotion to his owner centers around a Rhode Island music professor, played by Gere.

Lasse Hallstrom’s “Hachiko: A Dog’s Story” recently had its North American premiere at the Seattle International Film Festival, and reportedly produced enough sniffling to rival “Marley & Me.”.

The movie, from Sony Pictures, is based on a screenplay by Stephen P. Lindsey’s, who adapted a Japanese film about Hachiko made 20 years ago.

Lindsey changed the setting to Rhode Island and updated the story, according to Reuters,  but retained the basic idea of a loyal Akita who achieves an almost transcendental bond with his owner.

Gere , who’s no stranger to things transcendental, is one of the producers of the film, the story line of which begins when the professor discovers an Akita puppy that has been abandoned at the train station where he commutes to work. He brings the dog home on a temporary basis, but it soon becomes a permanent member of his household.

The role of Hachiko is  played by three dogs as an adult and about 20 as a puppy.

The real Hachiko was present in April 1934, when a bronze statue in his honor was erected at Shibuya Station. The statue was recycled for the war effort during World War II, but recommissioned after the war. Takeshi Ando, son of the original artist, made the second statue, which was erected in August 1948, and still stands at one of the exits of Shibuya Station.