July 27th marked the launch of the US Postal Service’s newest stamp bearing the image of a dog.
The Owney stamp features the image of Owney, a mixed breed dog that was drawn to the US mail and followed it onto mail wagons, subsequently traveling across the United States collecting tags from each of his stops. Owney lived at the Albany, New York, post office but would regularly sleep among empty mail bags and travel with them to locations across the United States.
Workers thought Owney was a good luck charm because, in an age of many train accidents, Owney’s trains were never involved in one.
The dog died in 1897 and his body was sent to a taxidermist for preservation. Since 1993, Owney has been on display at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Postal Museum in Washington DC, which hosted the launch of the new stamp. The tags Owney collected have also been preserved.
Read more about the Owney and the launch of the new stamp on this page.
DoggyMom.com 