Country Music Gives Dogs Their Day on 14-Track Set : VARIOUS ARTISTS “Doggone Country” CMH (***)

It’s long been said that half the hits in country music are about mamas, prisons or truck stops--and the other half are about barrooms, broken hearts and dogs.

Lots of album retrospectives have saluted some of those classic themes, but this 14-track collection may be the first to honor the oft-neglected canine factor in country music.

Among the highlights:

* Dock Walsh with the Columbia Tar Heels’ “Bull Dog Down in Sunny Tennessee.” In this 1962 recording, a hopeful suitor comes calling on his dream girl and runs into a disapproving father and his growling dog: “Round the corner I heard a click . . . (and) . . . the old man holler ‘sic.’ ”

* T. Texas Tyler’s “Dad Gave My Dog Away.” Tyler was a major country hitmaker after World War II, and his eight Top 10 hits included this weeper about a father who gives his son’s dog away as a character-building lesson. Tyler sets up the story with the lines, “Dad says that boys outgrow such things / As counting dogs as friends / He says that I’ll have to learn / That all childish hurts do mend.”

Tyler continues the story by having the boy, who finds a new bike no substitute for his missing dog, vow to never be so cruel: “I’ll think of all the grief I knew / When I came out to play / And no small paws pounced on my knees / Dad gave my dog away.”

* The Hoosier Hot Shots’ “Hound Dog.” Though you could make a case for including the Elvis Presley version of this bluesy tune, this parody--complete with howling dog noises--fits better in some ways, thanks to its zany approach.

There are some glaring omissions in the album: Presley’s rendition of “Old Shep” (it’s done here by the Stonemans), Patti Page’s “The Doggie in the Window” (or even Homer & Jethro’s novelty version), the Everly Brothers’ “Bird Dog” and Johnny Cash’s “Dirty Old Egg-Sucking Dog.”

Fortunately, there are enough other entertaining tunes to make “Doggone County” a satisfying, if not definitive work. Among the other colorful titles: Gid Tanner & the Skillet Lickers’ “Ya Gotta Quit Kicking My Dog Aroun’ ” and Burl Ives’ “I Found My Friend in the Dog Pound.”

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