ohmidog!

What happens in Vegas is usually superficial, of little lasting importance and brings but a fleeting moment of pleasure.

So we are all in when it comes to the decision by newlyweds Clare and Ceri Morgan of south Wales to can their honeymoon and pay for cancer treatment for their dog Teeto instead.

After their wedding, the Morgans, of Swansea, were due to fly to Las Vegas when they discovered their five-year-old American bulldog Teeto had cancer and need his leg amputated, as well as chemotherapy treatments.

That’s where the honeymoon money went.

“Teeto had to come first,” Ceri Morgan, 36, is quoted as saying in this BBC report. “We had no hesitation, we had to use the money for his vets bills,” he said.

“We told the vet that it didn’t matter about the money, just do whatever it takes to make him better,” said Clare Morgan, 26. “We can go on honeymoon again when we’ve saved up, but a dog is for life and we want Teeto around for a lot longer.”

Teeto had his rightfront leg amputated and underwent a course of chemotherapy to fight the cancer in his right shoulder. They report he is doing well.

(Photo: BBC)

An 81-year-old man is crediting his Lhasa Apso with saving his life after he fell from a ridge into a deep pool of mud and clung to a bridge rail to keep from sinking as his dog ran for help.

Derek Ramsden was on vacation in Wales and taking his dogs for a walk when he fell.

He says his 18-year-old terrier mix took no action, but his seven-year-old Lhasa Apso, Toby, ran for a quarter of a mile and, just like Lassie, barked at park officials until they followed him back to the scene.

“I managed to get hold of a railing on the bridge. It was frightening. I could not get out and you can’t hold your grip for long at my age,” he told The Telegraph. “I was scared that I was going to tumble down the bank. I don’t like to think what would have happened if not for Toby. He definitely saved my life.”

“Toby is dedicated to both of us and I think he is a hero,” said Ramsden, from Halifax, West Yorks. “He’s my very own Lassie. He saved my life and I’m very grateful.”

Ramsden’s wife, Ada, who had not gone along for the walk at Bryowen Holiday Park, said she went searching for him after an hour and found him as he was being pulled to safety by park staff.

“He was covered in mud from head to foot. If he had let go he could have slipped down further. Toby saved him,” she said.

“The dog knew what it was doing. It ran past apartments through bushes and alerted security,” said park maintenance manager Ben Thompson. “The dog was leading the way and without the dog we would not have known he was there. That dog certainly has something about it.”

(Photo: Ross Parry / The Telegraph)

Given we were among the first to suggest the saga of Seamus was worth a ballad, we’re proud to report there are now two.

Last week we told you about DEVO’s  ”Don’t Roof Rack Me, Bro!” a song written by band member Jerry Casale that mocks Mitt Romney for strapping his Irish setter, in a crate, to the roof of his car on a 12-hour family vacation trip.

This week, Ry Cooder is releasing his own Seamus-inspired song — “Mutt Romney Blues,” sung from the perspective of Seamus:

It don’t look right, don’t seem right

Hot in the day, cold all night

Where I’m goin’ I just don’t know

Po’ dog got to bottle up and go.

The song is the first on the album, “Election Special,” a bluesy collection of political songs from Cooder, who considers Romney “dangerous,” “cruel,” and a ”perfect creation for what the Republican Party is all about.”

Though DEVO got their song on the Internet first, Cooder’s will be officially released first — the album comes out Tuesday. “Don’t Roof Rack Me, Bro” is being released, both as a song and a game app on August 26, which is both National Dog Day and the day before the Republican National Convention.

Seamus finally got a song.

DEVO’s Jerry Casale has released, “Don’t Roof Rack Me, Bro,” a song that mocks Mitt Romney for strapping his Irish setter, in a crate, to the roof of his car on a family vacation trip.

The  new single, subtitled “Seamus Unleashed,” was written by Casale and will be released in conjunction with a game app titled The Crate Escape: Seamus Unleashed.

The song and the game will launch August 26, which is both National Dog Day and the day before the Republican National Convention.

In releasing the single, DEVO joined forces with Dogs Against Romney, an online advocacy group with more than 70,000 members on Facebook, to help call attention to Mitt Romney’s “crate-gate” scandal.

Have a listen:

“I can’t overstate how excited we are to have DEVO’s Gerald Casale as a partner with us in making sure every voter in America knows Mitt Romney strapped his dog, Seamus, to the roof of his car for a 12-hour trip to Canada,” said Scott Crider, founder of Dogs Against Romney. “The new DEVO song Gerald created with his bandmates is awesome, and I believe it will be the soundtrack for Romney’s defeat in November.”

DEVO recorded the song as an anthem for pet lovers and as a message to others to never forget what happened to Seamus in 1983, when the Romneys drove from Boston to Ontario with the dog crated on the roof of their station wagon.

The single will be available at all digital music retailers; the game is initially being launched as an app on iTunes.

“We are delighted to have a new DEVO song as part of our game’s offering,” said Andy Berryman, chief marketing officer for Censault, LLC, the game’s developer. “It’s exciting to break new ground in the mobile/social gaming space – first as a game that is both fun to play and promotes a positive social message, and now as a new distribution medium for popular music.”

More info on the game can be found at www.facebook.com/CrateEscapeGame.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Casale, who has raised funds for Obama in Akron through a DEVO performance, said of Romney’s nearly 30-year-old mistake, ”It’s just a deal-breaker about the man … What you want in a leader is a guy with some humanity at his core … I think any animal lover that hears the story will learn so much about the character flaw of Romney.”

DEVO may include the song in its act when it tours America this fall with Blondie, he said.

While the song may or may not become the 1970′s-80′s-era band’s first hit in a long, long time, it has already gotten off to a better start than my suggestion for a Seamus song, a reworking of the Pink Floyd tune of the same name.

How nice is this?

Ace and I were taking the mile-long walk down to the end of Figure 8 Island and back on Sunday when we stopped to meet some other dogs — a golden retriever named Mac and a black Lab named Jet.

Their owners were on the beach, and though strangers — to me, at least – they offered Ace, who was looking a little bedraggled by then, some water. He graciously accepted and drank their entire supply.

After some chatting, Ace, I and friends moved on, walking to the inlet and turning around for the hike back. By then — it being especially hot, and our morning walk having started around noon — Ace was really dragging. In addition to being nearly as out of shape as his master, he had been taking in a little salt water each time he gingerly waded into the ocean.

We were passing by Mac and Jet’s house again when — though the people and dogs had all gone inside – we came across the note above, written in the sand, with an arrow that pointed to a full bowl of fresh water.

Ace made a beeline for it, lapped some up, then laid down, resting his chin on the edge and drinking almost the whole bowl before lazily getting up and lumbering a few hundred more yards.

All along the way, in addition to sniffing in the smells, he was keeping an eye open for shade. Anytime he saw a group under an umbrella, he felt the need to visit, and not being on a leash (shame on me) he did.

We hadn’t gotten far from the Ace watering station when another woman beckoned, and we, eyeing the shade of her umbrella, veered in her direction. She went to a cooler and pulled out a bottled water, pouring it into her cupped hand for Ace. He polished off the whole thing.

Issuing thanks again (though no one was offering me water, I might point out), we trudged homeward — by now having fallen far behind our friends, due to our slower pace and Ace’s philosophy when it comes to humans: There are no strangers — only friends he hasn’t yet met (who might also have good stuff like water and treats and shade).

Shade can be hard to find at the beach.

Kindness, though, is usually only as far as the next beach chair.

(Photos by Amelia Bellows)

Given that the story of  Mitt Romney’s dog, Seamus, refuses to disappear, some are suggesting “Seamus,” the old Pink Floyd song, should be revived as well, and perhaps played during his opponent’s campaign rallies.

The lyrics, what little there are of them, don’t exactly fit the tale of Romney’s dog and his 12-hour rooftop ride to Canada, but the 1971 song does have a sad and bluesy feel that seems just right.

Perhaps a slight reworking of the words could make it even more relevant to the 30-year-old story that David Letterman, Rick Santorum and others refuse to stop talking about – how the Romney family dog rode in a crate on the car roof to a family vacation, with a stop to hose him down after he soiled himself.

Here are the real lyrics of the Pink Floyd song, which already features haunting, dog-like howls:

I was in the kitchen,
Seamus, that’s the dog, was outside.
Well, I was in the kitchen,
Seamus, my old hound, was outside.
Well, you know the sun was sinkin’ slowly,
But my old hound dog sat right down and cried

Here are some suggested new ones (and yes, they are for sale), just in case Pink Floyd has any interest in redoing the song:

My dog was on the car roof
I was nice and comfy inside
Seamus, he didn’t mind it
A 12-hour trip, bonafide
Now, you know, I want to run the country
I hope that you don’t mind a bumpy ride

Whether you’re looking for a homey environment in which to board your dog, or want to make some money by hosting one in your home, a new company called DogVacay.com is offering to help hook you up.

The site launched March 1 in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and will soon be adding other cities to its listings, through which dog owners and dog sitters can connect.

“Right now there are kennels and there are private pet sitters,” said Aaron Hirschhorn, who founded DogVacay.com with his wife, Karine Nissim Hirschhorn. “And we realized there was a need for a marketplace to bring together responsible dog lovers with causal and professional dog sitters who can provide a more affordable and better experience for dogs.”

Hirschhorn said that rates offered by hosts on DogVacay.com can be as little as half of those of boarding kennels.

On the site, each dog sitter sets his or her own prices with assistance from DogVacay.com. Listings are free. The site takes a 3 percent to 10 percent transaction fee from dog sitters, according to MSNBC.

For customers, fees include insurance coverage for veterinary emergencies. Pet sitters are vetted via reviews, social network connections and direct interviews by DogVacay.com staff.

Pet owners who take their dogs along on trips may also use the service to find sitters or host homes in cities they visit. “We think this will help free people up to travel because some people don’t want to kennel their dogs while they’re away and don’t want to bother their friends,” said Hirschhorn. “This way, more dogs can go along.”

Like Airbnb.com, the site allows customers to rate the hosts, and hosts are encouraged to go online after the stay and rate the behavior of their guest.

The Hirschhorns say the idea for the company came from experiences with their dogs.

“Vacations were always overshadowed with the guilt of leaving our dogs, Rocky and Rambo, in a caged kennel where they may not get the attention they need,” said Karine Nissim Hirschhorn. “We believed there was a better way of caring for dogs, so we tested out the concept for Dog Vacay in our own home, and before we knew it, we had more clients than we could handle and decided to launch the Dog Vacay platform.”

(Photo from MSNBC.com)

That’s Rick Santorum atop the car roof, and Mitt Romney behind the wheel, on the cover of next week’s New Yorker.

Robert Staake, the artist behind the New Yorker’s March 12 cover, apparently saw some similarities between Seamus’ 12-hour ride in a kennel atop the Romney family car and the less than smooth sailing Santorum’s presidential campaign has encountered of late as Romney appears to be taking control.

Romney, as we’ve duly noted, strapped the kennel containing his Irish Setter atop the family car during a trip to Canada in 1993.

A member of Dogs Against Romney has posted this video on YouTube, portraying what it must have been like for Seamus when Mitt Romney transported the Irish setter in a crate atop his car on a 12-hour drive nearly 30 years ago.

“Mitt claims the dog enjoyed the ride, so I decided to test to see how enjoyable being strapped to the roof of a car in a kennel really was,” Erik Mayer explains.

The video reenactment — for which a stuff dog was used — shows “how terrifying such a ride would be … The callousness — the cruelty — of subjecting a family pet to this FOR 12 HOURS, even after the dog soiled himself in fear, is difficult to fathom,” Dogs Against Romney says on its website and Facebook page.

Romney admits to transporting Seamus on the roof of his car during a family trip from Boston to Canada. At a stop along the way, after noticing the dog had soiled himself, he hosed down the dog and crate before continuing.

“Think about it — a loving, loyal member of the Romney family, strapped dangerously atop the car, lonely, wind-whipped, uncomfortable, sick and now wet,” Dogs Against Romney said. “We believe this is wrong — and a clear indication that Mitt Romney possesses a degree of detached coldness not easily comprehended by families who love their pets.”

However old and rehashed it is, the saga of Seamus may be a character-revealing tale,  and it sure is a far cry — when it comes to reflecting the bond between man and dog — from our previous traveling dog story, the one about Ladybug.

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Since it was a 25-year-old story when we first wrote about it, and since it’s nearing 30 now, we haven’t weighed in too much during this latest rebirth of the saga of Seamus, the dog Mitt Romney put on the roof of his car for a trip to Canada.

But now comes a report that, after arriving in Canada, Seamus ran away. (And who could blame him?)

The Observer.com report, on the blog Politicker, seems to imply that Seamus ran away for good, but it’s a little vague, and the new developments, if they can be called that, are based on pretty flimsy reporting:

“Mitt Romney may not have told the whole truth about the scandalous tale of his Irish Setter, Seamus, being strapped to the roof of his car during a 12-hour family road trip to Canada. According to a trusted Politicker tipster, two of Mr. Romney’s sons had an off-record conversation with reporters where they revealed the dog ran away when they reached their destination on that infamous journey in 1983.”

Romney’s wife, Ann, has previously been reported as saying Seamus survived the trip and went on to live to a “ripe old age” — one would presume with the same family.

Other reports indicate Seamus moved in with Romney’s sister — but don’t say why — and that he lived happily on a farm until his death.

Politicker reported that Romney’s campaign has not responded to multiple requests for comment on the most recent twist in the old story.

Seamus’ story first came to light in a 2007 Boston Globe profile of Romney. The family was on its annual drive to Ontario, to visit Romney’s father’s cottage in the gated Beach O’ Pines community on Lake Huron. The story included details about Romney’s son noting a brown fluid dripping down the rear window, apparently from the dog, who was in a crate on the roof, with a barrier in front to shield him from the wind. It recounts a gas station stop where Seamus and car were hosed down before moving on.

The original story didn’t get into what became of Seamus, and the reporter, Neil Swidey, doesn’t answer the question in a recent article about the story’s continued resurgence.

So we’ll join in asking the question that other bloggers — including Dogs Against Romney — are raising: Whatever happened to Seamus?