Winston's Story

Winston is an Airedale of exceptional character.  There isn’t anyone who has met him that hasn’t fallen in love with this woolly clown.  He has been in and out of trouble since the day I bought him, but I am sure he thinks that all of the ‘trouble’ was just a misunderstanding.

 Some of Winston’s greatest antics take place in the garden.  When I brought him home as a 9-week-old pup, I should have known that he had great promise as a landscaper.  His first job was to chew the handle down on a broom so that he could help sweep up the leaves.   That fall he helped me plant a multitude of bulbs in the garden – he carefully watched me dig the holes and put in the bulbs.  Once he knew what to do, he too started digging holes – unfortunately not in exactly the right places.  In the spring, I was looking out my kitchen window and noticed that Winston was sitting on the bulb patch obviously trying to hatch them.  For almost a week, every time he went outside he checked out the flowerbed and invariably sat on the bulbs. One day I looked out and low and behold, there was Winston with an iris bulb in his mouth, about to plant it in a small hole he dug in the grass in the middle of the yard.  As I looked on open-mouthed, he went back to the garden, pulled out another bulb and planted it in yet another hole he had ready in the yard.   This was Winston’s first attempt of many to naturalize my backyard. 

 He has always had a penchant for digging and I have had holes of every size and shape imaginable.   He still likes to plant things in the newly dug holes and quite often you will find all of the toys in a hole, or a number of plants, a new shrub, or my favorite gardening gloves.  He is very proud of his digging capabilities and is a master teacher.  One summer he and Chelsea dug a hole in their dog run in which I could put a 400 Vari-Kennel.  He believes that he is a master digger and his main role is to teach all the puppies how to dig and where to dig.

He also has a penchant for garden hoses.  Once again, being environmentally conscious, Winston has decided that to conserve water, all hoses should be soakers.  Every year I go through at least 2 or 3 hoses, to say nothing of sprinklers.  He thinks it is great fun to get the sprinkler in his mouth, run across the yard as fast as he can with the hose unreeling behind him and wrap it around a tree in the corner of the garden.  He hasn’t taught LaraJane that trick yet, but he has certainly taught her and the rest of the crew about the soaker hoses – and I have already replaced 2 hoses this spring.  Nothing is more disconcerting than turning on the hose to water the garden and being sprayed from all directions by their handiwork.

 I am not too sure what 2002 will bring – but I am sure that he is already scheming to put some new landscaping features in place in the yard.

Winsea Kennel