For the second time in less than a month, Richmond police today responded to a report of a body -- only to find the remains were not human, but canine.

Police were called shortly after 7:30 this morning when someone reported a body wrapped in a dark-colored tarp in the corner of a yard at 28th and Y streets.

Five police cruisers responded to the East End neighborhood. Officers secured a large area around the body with yellow crime-scene tape and began knocking on doors in the neighborhood, seeking information from residents.

But when detectives arrived, they discovered the body was actually that of a large dog.

The scene bore a close resemblance to one on the morning of June 23, when officers responded to an alley on the south side of the 2700 block of Midlothian Turnpike, also for a report of a body, this time wrapped in a faded white sheet.

Again, the yellow tape came out, officers fanned out to interview neighbors and detectives were summoned -- only to find that the body shrouded in the sheet was that of a large dog.

Richmond laws allow residents to literally put their pets out with the garbage. The city code gives owners the option to bury, cremate or dispose of their pets "sanitarily" or to call Richmond's animal-control staff and arrange to have the pet picked up for disposal.

The Richmond SPCA recommends cremation or burial as the most humane ways to dispose of a pet's remains.

-- Joe Macenka