“Sometimes God’s just not ready to take something away,” marvels Reta McKinlay, affectionately petting her family’s mixed-breed puppy, Scamp.

A few days ago, the eight-month-old half-Yorkshire terrier, half-Shihtzu was hit by a car. He was obviously a goner — not moving, no apparent pulse.

“His eyes were fixed, he wasn’t breathing and he was covered in blood,” reports Daniel Bates for the British tabloid the Daily Mail. “There was just only thing left to say — Scamp was dead.”

He had escaped the back yard through a hole under the fence, had run out into the road and was hit by a car. He was apparently so badly injured that he had died on the road.

Reta’s husband, Paul, wrapped him a blanket and worried how to break the news to the 6-year-old twin grandsons who live with them.

Paul had been talking to their son, the twins’ dad, when they heard a yelp and then a thud. He ran out to the street to find the dog motionless and the female driver crying.

“We checked to see if we felt any breathing out of his nose, and we couldn’t feel any heartbeat,” recalls Reta.

Paul wrapped Scamp in a blanket. They placed his body under an overturned wheelbarrow so no animals could get to him, with plans to talk to the first graders, plan a puppy funeral, then bury Scamp in the garden the next morning.

Reta sat down with the boys and explained that Scamp “had gotten hit by a car and that he had gone to heaven like in that movie, All Dogs Go to Heaven.”

The boys took it badly and started crying.

The next morning, Paul went outside to put the puppie’s body in a shoebox for the upcoming ceremonies. He lifted up the wheelbarrow.

Scamp was sitting up, looking baffled by the whole thing.

Four days and $3,000 later in veterinary bills, Scamp came home. He’d suffered a concussion and broken teeth — and a possible fractured jaw. Fearing Scamp wouldn’t make it, they hadn’t told the kids their dog was still alive.

Reta says Paul had been “distraught” that he left Scamp out in the cold, but the vets told the couple that’s probably what saved the unconscious pup’s life.

The cold temperatures kept the dog alive, keeping his brain from swelling.

It just seems it wasn’t God’s plan for Scamp to leave his twins.

Not for now, anyway.