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Winston-Salem Journal | The wanderer: Half-blind, nearly deaf Yorkie looking for danger on the open road runs into the Man
Picture this: A 14-year-old Yorkie is wearing a colorful plastic barrette to keep the hair out of his eyes. The Yorkie is half-blind, almost deaf, bowlegged, humpbacked and down to a measly 5 pounds from his peak weight of 7 pounds.
And he is walking through the infamous Hawthorne Curve on Business 40 at 4:30 a.m.
You may think that you don’t want to picture what comes next, but, as a matter of fact, you do. Today’s story comes from the Land of Happy Endings. Thanks to a Forsyth County sheriff’s deputy and Lassie Come Home–N.C. - a nonprofit organization that works to reunite lost pets with their owners - Winston is back at home with John and Lou Ann Watson.
Here’s the story: At 2:15 a.m. Saturday, July 14, Nature put in a call to Winston. John Watson, who turned 65 earlier this month, doesn’t mind because Nature generally puts in a call to him about the same time.
Winston’s custom is to go out, sniff a couple of his favorite spots, take care of business and come right back. John Watson sat down on the stoop to wait for him. When Winston didn’t come back after a couple of minutes, he stepped into the yard to see what was going on. It was quite dark and, with no glasses and no flashlight, he couldn’t make out much of anything.
“When I didn’t turn him up immediately, I got my glasses and a flashlight,” he said. “I made a quick trip around the block on foot.”
Nothing. He roused his wife. While she continued to search on foot with a flashlight, he drove around. The Watsons live on Miller Street just down from Hawthorne Road. They searched the rest of the night. With the morning sun came joggers, parents with strollers and dog walkers.
Many were regulars who considered Winston a friend, and more than one joined the search. When Suzanne Danhauer, who lives around the corner, heard the news she said she would register Winston on the Web site for Lassie Come Home. She did.
When Jill East, who runs the North Carolina chapter of Lassie Come Home, saw the report, she thought the same thing that a lot of people looking for Winston thought.
“I thought he had gone somewhere to die,” East said.
Yorkie with an independent spirit
That’s not what the Watsons thought. Although Winston had plenty of troubles, including congestive heart failure, he was still vigorous. One searcher speculated that an owl or hawk could have made off with a dog that small.
The Watsons did everything else they could think to do. They made posters. They checked in with animal control, the after-hours vet and other organizations where a lost dog might turn up.
Nothing.
“It was as though he vaporized,” Lou Ann Watson said.
When they met Winston as a puppy, he brought to mind Winston Churchill, the British prime minister who inspired so many during World War II.
“He has an independent spirit,” John Watson said.
Just when they had given up....
Unfortunately, he was not wearing ID tags. When Winston - also called Winnie - goes out for his official walks, he wears a collar with tags. But after one of the Watsons’ earlier dogs got its tags caught in a heating vent grate that it was fond of sleeping on, they started taking off their dogs’ collars when they were in the house.
Although John Watson didn’t say so, he came to the conclusion after five or six hours that, if they hadn’t found Winston by then, they weren’t going to find him alive. Lou Ann Watson held out hope for a few days. By the time Tuesday rolled around, she said, “We had all concluded that he was gone.”
That Wednesday morning, though, Lou Ann Watson answered the phone to find Jill East of Lassie Come Home on the other end of the line.
At 4:30 on the morning Winston disappeared, East said, a sheriff’s deputy found a dog fitting Winston’s description strolling on the Hawthorne Curve. After picking up the dog, the deputy (whom I was unable to reach), had taken it home, where his wife has a Yorkie. With no tags, it had taken a few days to make the connection through Lassie Come Home.
East felt pretty sure the dog was Winston.
“How many blind Yorkies are running around in the middle of the night?” she said.
But Lou Ann Watson was fearful that she would get her hopes up for nothing. She called her husband at his business, Watson Woodworks, and asked him to call. When she told him that Winston had been found on Hawthorne Curve, he heard her say Hawthorne Road, which made perfect sense.
No, she said, Hawthorne Curve. From the Watsons’ house, the Hawthorne Curve is about a mile down Miller and Cloverdale and up a ramp onto the interstate - quite doable for an unleashed greyhound in his prime but quite a journey through untold detours, hazards and misadventures for a disoriented Yorkie of advanced years.
Hearing a familiar bark
How on earth would Winston have made it all the way onto the interstate? John Watson wondered.
When he called, he heard Winston barking in the background.
“I didn’t have any doubt at all,” he said.
He called his wife and told her that it was indeed their boy. To make Winston feel at home on the trip back from Pfafftown, she gathered up such things as his N.C. State fleece blanket, and she was off.
And there he was.
So, Winston had not only escaped the perils of the Hawthorne Curve unscathed but also had been snug with a family that had a Yorkie of its own.
As East said, “Winston had angels all around him that night.”
Picture this: A 14-year-old Yorkie is wearing a colorful plastic barrette to keep the hair out of his eyes. The Yorkie is half-blind, almost deaf, bowlegged, humpbacked and down to a measly 5 pounds from his peak weight of 7 pounds.
And he is walking through the infamous Hawthorne Curve on Business 40 at 4:30 a.m.
You may think that you don’t want to picture what comes next, but, as a matter of fact, you do. Today’s story comes from the Land of Happy Endings. Thanks to a Forsyth County sheriff’s deputy and Lassie Come Home–N.C. - a nonprofit organization that works to reunite lost pets with their owners - Winston is back at home with John and Lou Ann Watson.
Here’s the story: At 2:15 a.m. Saturday, July 14, Nature put in a call to Winston. John Watson, who turned 65 earlier this month, doesn’t mind because Nature generally puts in a call to him about the same time.
Winston’s custom is to go out, sniff a couple of his favorite spots, take care of business and come right back. John Watson sat down on the stoop to wait for him. When Winston didn’t come back after a couple of minutes, he stepped into the yard to see what was going on. It was quite dark and, with no glasses and no flashlight, he couldn’t make out much of anything.
“When I didn’t turn him up immediately, I got my glasses and a flashlight,” he said. “I made a quick trip around the block on foot.”
Nothing. He roused his wife. While she continued to search on foot with a flashlight, he drove around. The Watsons live on Miller Street just down from Hawthorne Road. They searched the rest of the night. With the morning sun came joggers, parents with strollers and dog walkers.
Many were regulars who considered Winston a friend, and more than one joined the search. When Suzanne Danhauer, who lives around the corner, heard the news she said she would register Winston on the Web site for Lassie Come Home. She did.
When Jill East, who runs the North Carolina chapter of Lassie Come Home, saw the report, she thought the same thing that a lot of people looking for Winston thought.
“I thought he had gone somewhere to die,” East said.
Yorkie with an independent spirit
That’s not what the Watsons thought. Although Winston had plenty of troubles, including congestive heart failure, he was still vigorous. One searcher speculated that an owl or hawk could have made off with a dog that small.
The Watsons did everything else they could think to do. They made posters. They checked in with animal control, the after-hours vet and other organizations where a lost dog might turn up.
Nothing.
“It was as though he vaporized,” Lou Ann Watson said.
When they met Winston as a puppy, he brought to mind Winston Churchill, the British prime minister who inspired so many during World War II.
“He has an independent spirit,” John Watson said.
Just when they had given up....
Unfortunately, he was not wearing ID tags. When Winston - also called Winnie - goes out for his official walks, he wears a collar with tags. But after one of the Watsons’ earlier dogs got its tags caught in a heating vent grate that it was fond of sleeping on, they started taking off their dogs’ collars when they were in the house.
Although John Watson didn’t say so, he came to the conclusion after five or six hours that, if they hadn’t found Winston by then, they weren’t going to find him alive. Lou Ann Watson held out hope for a few days. By the time Tuesday rolled around, she said, “We had all concluded that he was gone.”
That Wednesday morning, though, Lou Ann Watson answered the phone to find Jill East of Lassie Come Home on the other end of the line.
At 4:30 on the morning Winston disappeared, East said, a sheriff’s deputy found a dog fitting Winston’s description strolling on the Hawthorne Curve. After picking up the dog, the deputy (whom I was unable to reach), had taken it home, where his wife has a Yorkie. With no tags, it had taken a few days to make the connection through Lassie Come Home.
East felt pretty sure the dog was Winston.
“How many blind Yorkies are running around in the middle of the night?” she said.
But Lou Ann Watson was fearful that she would get her hopes up for nothing. She called her husband at his business, Watson Woodworks, and asked him to call. When she told him that Winston had been found on Hawthorne Curve, he heard her say Hawthorne Road, which made perfect sense.
No, she said, Hawthorne Curve. From the Watsons’ house, the Hawthorne Curve is about a mile down Miller and Cloverdale and up a ramp onto the interstate - quite doable for an unleashed greyhound in his prime but quite a journey through untold detours, hazards and misadventures for a disoriented Yorkie of advanced years.
Hearing a familiar bark
How on earth would Winston have made it all the way onto the interstate? John Watson wondered.
When he called, he heard Winston barking in the background.
“I didn’t have any doubt at all,” he said.
He called his wife and told her that it was indeed their boy. To make Winston feel at home on the trip back from Pfafftown, she gathered up such things as his N.C. State fleece blanket, and she was off.
And there he was.
So, Winston had not only escaped the perils of the Hawthorne Curve unscathed but also had been snug with a family that had a Yorkie of its own.
As East said, “Winston had angels all around him that night.”