ohmidog!

The death of his owner during Hurricane Sandy has sent Lucas, a collie-shepherd mix, back to the same shelter he was adopted from about five years ago.

He’s grayer around the muzzle now than he was then — when a couple dropped him at the Staten Island animal care and control facility, saying they’d just had a baby and no longer had room for him.

This time, his route there was even sadder.

According to Examiner.com, Lucas remained by his dead owner’s side until they were both discovered in the aftermath of the superstorm.

A Facebook page for Lucas says he seems stressed and confused, and doesn’t like being caged. “When Lucas is out of the cage and outside his personality shines through. We think that a home with older children is best because he appears to have been in a home as a single dog with no other animals and is used to quiet.”

Rachael Ray is donating $500,000 to the ASPCA to help pets who were displaced, hurt or lost during Superstorm Sandy.

On top of that, Ray’s pet food company, Nutrish, is sending four tons of wet and dry dog food to help feed the animals affected by Sandy. It’s the largest donation ever by the company.

Ray announced the donations Friday, and again on her television program today. 

The $500,000 will be used by the ASPCA to lease a building that can be used as a central shelter for Sandy animals,  provide mobile veterinary services, hand out supplies and continue searching for lost pets.

Since Sandy, the ASPCA had rescued more than 250 animals and treated or provided supplies to nearly 6,000 in New York City and Long Island.

Ray teamed up with the ASPCA earlier thisyear for its $100,000 shelter challenge, a photo contest whose winners are to be announced this week.

Ray is also donating $100,000 to City Harvest and the Food Bank for New York City.

“When you make your living in food, you have to give back in the same way,” she said.

Ripped apart by Sandy, some New Yorkers and their pets have been lucky enough to reunite after the storm.

Here are photos of a few reunions, courtesy of PeoplePets.

Above is OTIS, a pit bull rescued by the Humane Society of the United States from a second floor apartment in Staten Island and reunited with his family at a local shelter.

PRECIOUS (above) and the three cats he lives with had to be left behind when LeeAnn Rivera and her seven children fled their Queens apartment. ASCPA responders rescued them from the completely flooded building and brought them to the Queens College evacuation shelter where the family is now living.

MAGGIE belongs to the Schramm family in Breezy Point, who lost everything in the storm — including her. The Finnish Spitz-shepherd mix was found wandering by photographer Ann Lewis, who took her in and created a Facebook page in an attempt to find her owners.  It worked, and Maggie and family were reunited.

You can see more reunion photos at PeoplePets.

The Baltimore Animal Rescue and Care Shelter (BARCS) expects to reopen tomorrow, after evacuating all of its dogs and cats to a temporary home at First Mariner Arena on Monday morning.

Because the shelter lies in a flood-prone part of South Baltimore, BARCS convened a team of volunteers for the emergency evacuation before Hurricane Sandy hit.

More than 200 animals were moved to the arena.

BARCS stopped accepting animals and ceased adoptions, but said it planned to reopen Wednesday at 2 p.m.

The sun will come out tomorrow — at least it did for Macy.

Macy was a scruffy little mutt, picked up as a stray and taken to Pontotoc County Animal Welfare Society in Ada, Oklahoma — a facility that generally holds dogs for three days before “deciding their future.”

(Meaning, especially in times of shelter overcrowding, whether they are going to have one.)

Macy, though unadopted and unclaimed, managed to stay there for several months, but as time passed her chances were growing dimmer.

She caught a break when she was chosen for a prison dog program called New Leash on Life at the CCA-Davis Correctional Facility in Holdenville, Okla. But it turned out to be a temporary reprieve.

“Unfortunately, despite being a model student, Macy was the only dog at the end of the program scheduled to return to a kill shelter instead of an adoptive home or no-kill rescue,” according to RockySpot Rescue in Newcastle.

Macy’s future was looking pretty bleak again when, after her time in the prison program, RockySpot rescue took her in. RockySpot put a photo of Macy on its website, in hopes of finding her a home.

Another three months had passed when her picture was spotted by Bill Berloni, who trains animals for Broadway shows.

Berloni flew in from New York to look at her, and he liked what he saw.

Macy will be performing on Broadway, playing the role of Sandy in the musical “Annie.”

The moral of the story? Every time an orphaned dog is “euthanized,” a potential happy ending bites the dust.

(Photo: RockySpot Rescue)