The film revolves around a young boy who rescues and hides a golden retriever carrying a fortune in stolen diamonds from a band of thugs.

[1] When Owen (Luke Benward) and his distracted older sister, Lilly (Brittany Curran), are alone and their parents are away, Owen delivers the paper while being bullied by a school bully named Dexter and his gang (who harass Owen by throwing his bike, newspapers and pants off a bridge), and spends afternoons in a forest hideaway making inventions and spinning tall tales about a "Mad Man of the Mountain" in which he claims to be a scary man who used to work in a circus freak show but later moved to live in the mountains to be free.

He encounters three thugs named Blackie (French Stewart), Bud (Kevin Farley) and Arty (Kelly Perine) who have a mistreated dog and Owen's life changes.

As he heads back to his house, he is caught by the thugs again, but Owen manages to escape from their grasp.

Before Blackie gets a chance to hurt Owen, he ends up being thrown into the canoe with Bud and Arty by the "Mad Man of the Mountain" and the thugs roll down the hill in the trailer into town.

Along the way, they encounter Dexter riding his bike and ends up landing in a nearby trash bin where he is presumably thrown into a garbage truck.

With help from the "Mad Man of the Mountain," Owen comes home with Diamond sick, and he asks his sister for help.

His name was Carl Westmeister, who had been living up in the woods for years ever since his wife died from a car crash and was badly burned trying to save her.

Dog Gone is the only film shot in Cheney, Washington, a small town located 16 miles southeast of Spokane.