Owney is truly one of the great dogs of American history. A mutt who wandered into the post office in Albany, New York, he was adopted by the postal workers and took to sleeping on empty mail sacks. One day, he disappeared, creating great concern among his many fans.

Eventually, the Albany post office received a message from another post office. Owney had hitched a ride on a mail train and travelled down the road a bit. The workers at the second post office attached a metal tag (normally used to identify the origin of sacks of mail) to his collar and sent him home.

Owney took to bumming around post offices all over the country. His tag collection eventually became too large for his collar and the assistant postmaster general bought him a coat to carry his tags. Toward the end of his life, Owney began travelling around the world on ships carrying the U.S. mail.

The statue is located inside the National Postal Museum. The Owney collection includes a delightful three minute nickelodeon style film about the life of Owney and (I'm sorry to say) the museum has Owney himself stuffed and on display in a glass case.