Whippoorwill's Singing: a dog named Winnie

I love dogs. I always have. Life with them can be challenging at times but always interesting. The thing I love most about dogs is, like people, they have their own quirks and personalities. I know a dog name Winnie who has plenty of both.

Winnie entered my life as a kind of fluke, a simple twist of fate you might say. One day at work (many moons ago) my co-worker Paula was browsing the Internet looking for her mom a dog. It was slow that day and being a bit bored I decided to help her look. I went to http://www.petfinder.com/ and as I sat scrolling merrily along a rather odd looking critter caught my eye. Actually, not just odd looking; more like downright ugly. I thought to myself “What the heck kind of dog is THAT?” I called Paula over to my desk and we both had a good chuckle over its picture. It looked like a rather small dog with wild straggly hair and a head way too big for its body. And its eyes...they were barely discernable, almost like it didn’t have any. After my initial amusement, and the more I sat and looked at it, the sorrier I began to feel for this creature. I thought “Who in the world is going to adopt this strange dog named Winnie?” hmmm, who indeed.

It was never my plan to get a second dog. I have a friend who thinks nothing of living with 3 or 4 dogs. Not me. I'd always lived with only one at a time. But there was something about this dog and after reading she would be at PetSmart’s “Adopt-A-Pet-Day” the following Saturday I completely forgot about finding a dog for Paula's mom. I was going to PetSmart! That fateful Saturday found me there bright and early standing in line with other pet parent wannabes. I thought it amusing we had all arrived before the pets. We weren’t excited! :) Suddenly I wondered if others were waiting in line for Winnie too, a little competition maybe?

Finally a couple vans pulled up outside PetSmart and still waiting with anticipation I watched as one by one the critters were brought in. I kept thinking “Winnie’s just got to be next.” But no, dog after dog came through the door (and some very cute dogs at that) but no Winnie. Finally after convincing myself I had the date or place wrong, one last woman came in, or I should say was heaved in by a big hairy over-exuberant ~~beast~~ dog?! My first thought was “No, that can’t be my Winnie!” This dog was too big, too strong, too boisterous, too crazy!!! But I was wrong. It was Winnie, the one and only dog of her kind. What kind I’m not sure. All I knew was she was a force to be reckoned with and much bigger than her picture had led me to believe. All of a sudden it hit me; her head wasn’t too big for her body at all. It was actually quite proportionate with the rest of her.

As I said, I love dogs, all shapes, all sizes but the funny thing is I had never had a large dog before, ever. My previous pets were all pretty much poodle-sized (and not the Standard kind). So when I first eyed Winnie I was taken aback and felt deceived…she was not the small creature with an oversized head so deserving of my pity. It was the camera angle that fooled me. And though she did have wild crazy hair she really wasn’t all that ugly. How strangely disappointed was I that she wasn't as pitiful as her picture? Disappointed enough to consider leaving without giving her a second thought. And as I turned to do so, I looked back and saw her, along with the other dogs, being put into separate cages for all to eww and aww over. I hesitated and quickly realized no one else was going to give Winnie a second thought either. Of all the dogs, she was the only one not being taken out to be checked out, petted, played with. Dogs smaller and dogs larger were being considered but not Winnie. My heart sank as she lost her earlier exuberance and sat still and unnoticed in her cage. And the look on her face? How could no one see it? Winnie to this day can still get that same look, a look that can bore through you, a look that hurts. That day I knew by her expression she understood she was being passed over…again. Suddenly, I found myself debating whether to leave the store empty handed...or not. Thoughts danced around my head…could I handle a dog like her, is she really too big, did I just feel sorry for her, would it be a mistake, should I check her out, should I escape now before it’s too late, what oh what should I do? My undoing was that look. I couldn’t get it out of my head.

So I stayed and I asked an assistant to bring Winnie out of her cage. I told myself that if this was a good dog (no matter her size, or her looks), I’d give her a chance and I’d take her home. Well, imagine my surprise when this creature, who appeared so forlorn and alone in her cage, suddenly sprang to life again -- like a rocket! She pulled me through the aisles so hard I thought my arm would surely fall off. I'm sure my feet left the ground. As I tried to reign Winnie in, calm her down, make eye contact, get to know her, etc, she continued to burst with joy at being free (or as free as she was going to get in a PetSmart store). After having enough of this and thinking WHOA, no way can I handle this one… she suddenly settled down. I’m not sure why. Maybe she sensed my displeasure with her behavior or maybe she just wore herself out. Whatever the reason, I was finally able to bend down and meet her eye to eye and what I saw look back at me was an incredibly sweet dog just a bit too excitable for her own good. I wondered if that had been her undoing. If that’s why at two years old she was still (or possibly once again) homeless.

Fast forward nine or so years and Winnie is still incredibly sweet. She’s a dog that’s eager to please but doesn't always know how. The first day I brought her home I discovered she was a fence jumper. And not because she wants to run away. But because she wants to run. It's in her blood. It's her favorite thing to do and she never wants to stop. Winnie is older now but still a trickster who will bolt out the door when you least expect it. And she's a game player who loves nothing more than looking in the door from the outside, pretending to want in, and as soon as you get up to let her in, takes off running again. Winnie is many things. She's a sensitive dog so petrified of storms that she will hide shaking under the bed for hours. She's also a pure-hearted, goofy, spirited, big lug of a dog, a gentle soul that loves people and has never hurt a living thing. Simply put she's a good dog that wants and deserves to be loved.

I nearly gave Winnie up after she and I left PetSmart that day. After a couple months I almost decided she was too much for me and I almost broke my commitment to her. I went so far as to contact the shelter she came from and when they said they’d love to take her back I remember feeling relieved. But something happened the day I was to take her back. I’m not sure what. All I know is I couldn’t give up on her and after all these years she’s still with me. Sometimes the best dogs get the least attention and that's always been true of Winnie. I know she still doesn't get the attention she deserves, maybe in part because she is so undemanding of it. She's an unselfish dog always willing to take second place. She's a dog that deserves to be first. Sometimes I wonder if by adopting Winnie all those years ago I unknowingly did her an injustice. Sometimes I wonder if she had gone home with someone else would she have been happier? Would she be living on a farm and running free in the country somewhere right now? But then I remind myself that when she does jump the fence or bolts out the door she always comes back to me. And the crazy thing is of all the places she runs she never runs far.