ohmidog!

Everybody who has seen Titanic, the movie, knows that it centers on a tragic love story.

Not everybody knows that, when the ship went down 100 years ago Saturday, it threatened to cut short at least 12 more, of the inter-species variety.

As Amy Worden reports in the Philadelphia Inquirer, that’s how many dogs boarded the Titanic for its fateful voyage in 1912. Three of them survived the tragedy.

One of them was Lily, a Pomeranian whose owner, Margaret Hays, 24 at the time, grabbed her from the cabin and wrapped her in a blanket before boarding a lifeboat.

Other, less lucky dogs were an Airedale named Kitty, who belonged to financier John Jacob Astor, and a fox terrier named Dog, owned by William Dulles, a Philadelphia attorney.

The dogs of Titanic are featured in an exhibit, RMS Titanic: 100 Years, that opened this week at the Widener Art Gallery at Widener University in Chester.

“Not a whole lot is known about the dogs,” said exhibit curator J. Joseph Edgette, a Titanic scholar and professor emeritus of education and folklore at Widener. “All belonged to first class passengers. When the rich and famous traveled they took their dogs with them.”

Since dogs were considered cargo there was no official list of those on board.

But Edgette, based on his research into the personal papers of passengers, created his own “pet manifest” listing the dogs, their names, breeds and owners.

All of the objects in the exhibit, which runs through May 12,  come from Edgette’s collection, including the photograph (above) of a group of Titanic dogs on the deck.

Edgette says one popular Titanic dog story turns out not to be true.

Capt. Edward Smith’s dog, Ben, did not go down the with ship. Ben spent the night before on the ship, but was taken to Smith’s home before it sailed from Southampton.

One year after he was rescued from an ice floe, Baltic remains on the high seas — just not in them.

The crew of a Polish ship, named Baltica, pulled the dog from the icy waters of the Baltic Sea after observing him struggling. The dog was first seen on an ice floe in the Vistula River. Some estimated at the time that he traveled 70 miles atop the floe on the river, then another 20 miles out to sea.

Several people came forward wanting to adopt Baltic after his story gained headlines around Europe, but his rescuer Adam Buczynski decided to keep him.

Despite his bad experience, the dog is now there regularly at sea, serving as the research ship’s pet and mascot. He shows signs of anxiety when the sea is rough but sails around happily with the crew when it is calm, Buczynski said.

Likely the oldest dog to ever appear at Crufts — and probably one of few mutts ever allowed entry – the skeleton of a sea dog named Hatch is on display at the prestigous UK dog show before heading to her forever home.

Hatch — a mongrel, believed to have been about two years old — died in 1545 when her ship, the Mary Rose, sank in the Solent Channel.

After Crufts, she’ll return to the south coast for display at the Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth.

The dog was likely assigned to catch rats aboard the ship, a common practice at the time because cats were believed to bring bad luck.

According to experts, the formation of her skeleton suggests that she spent almost all of her life confined to the ship’s smallest and darkest areas.

The Mary Rose, the flagship of Henry VIII, sank in 1545 at the Battle of the Solent. Artifacts including clothing, jewelry, furniture, musical instruments, medical equipment and weapons were discovered when the vessel was raised in 1982.

The bones of Hatch were found on board the ship, near a hatch door that led to the carpenter’s cabin, the BBC reported. Staff at the Mary Rose Trust reconstructed her bones, and came up with her name.

John Lippiett, chief executive of the Mary Rose Trust, said: “Expert analysis of Hatch’s bones suggests that she spent most of her short life within the close confines of the ship … It is likely that the longest walks she took were along the quayside at Portsmouth, her home town.”

The animal’s skeleton  and will go on display March 26 at the Mary Rose Museum at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. A new museum to house the Mary Rose Collection is scheduled to open in 2012, and will display the preserved hull of the ship.

OK, so maybe it was slightly more dramatic than my rescue of Miley, the cat living under a nail-filled stairway next to a south Baltimore bar, who — unlike the dog who floated at least 75 miles on an ice floe out to sea — is, by the way, still looking for a good home.

Baltic, the dog who floated down Poland’s Vistula River and into the Baltic Sea, has a new owner — the seaman who rescued him.

Wojciech Pelczarski of the Sea Fisheries Institute in Gdynia said the decision was made after the dog rejected six people who had claimed to be his original owner, NPR reported.

He suspected the would-be owners were merely trying to be part of the media attention surrounding the dog’s rescue.

Pelczarski, whose institute co-owns the research ship “Baltica” that rescued the dog, says Baltic — as he has been nicknamed — is sociable, affectionate and was getting his first bath since his icy ordeal because his fur was still salty.

The dog’s new master is Adam Buczynski, who pulled him to safety from an ice sheet in the Baltic Sea last week.

Buczynski and other crew members spotted the dog Jan. 25 floating at least 15 miles from land, shivering and precariously perched on an ice floe. The crew lowered a pontoon to the water and Buczynski, the ship mechanic, managed to grab the dog and pull him to safety.

“He was very lucky,” Pelczarski said. “If the vessel had passed him at night, no one would have spotted him.”

Baltic was first seen two days earlier on the Vistula River, 60 miles inland, drifting on ice past the city of Grudziadz, where local firefighters tried but failed to save him.

(Photos: Top, Baltic on ice, by Ryszard Moroz/Associated Press /IMGW; bottom, Baltic with Buczynski, by Krzysztof Mystkowski /Associated Press

A dog that was carried nearly 100 miles on an ice floe was pulled out of the Baltic Sea by sailors.

“My crew saw… a shape moving on the water and we immediately decided to get closer to check if it was a dog or maybe a seal relaxing on the ice,” Jan Joachim, senior officer aboard the Baltica, told Reuters.

The dog was struggling not to fall into the water when the sailors found him.

“He didn’t even squeal. There was just fear in his big eyes,” said Adam Buczynski, engineer of the Polish ship. Buczynski managed to scoop the dog off the floe onto an inflatable dinghy and wrapped him in a blanket.

The dog was first seen on an ice floe in the Vistula River. It’s estimated he traveled 70 miles atop the floe on the river, then another 20 miles out to sea when the Baltica crew found him.

The crew is trying to locate the dog’s owner.