Our elegant and beautiful Winnie passed over to the Rainbow Bridge in February 2006.

Winnie came to us in July 2002. OBG rescued her from Philadelphia where her owner had passed away. She was 11 years old, and her owner had been so sick that he was unable to care for her. She was a mess when OBG got her, she hadn’t been groomed in a year. But she was very sweet and with a little TLC, she turned into a beauty. We always got complements on her looks.

Like most cockers, Winnie immediately adopted us and bonded with her new bichon sister Lucky. She happily supervised and followed us around the house, hung out for treats, and demonstrated her mastery of the art of napping while somehow still watching us. She was completely and profoundly deaf, with the exception of the audible range of 2,150 hz, which happens to coincide with the sound made by our treat jar lid. Because of her deafness, Winnie always followed us around, keeping us within sight and making sure that we were all ok.

Winnie demonstrated a wide range of talents. She could catch a treat thrown from 56 feet. And boy could she eat snow. She could have been a snow removal employee for Montgomery County, heck even upstate New York. She had an intuitive grasp of Feng Shui - within days of arriving she claimed the one chair in our family room where she could view all the activity in the house . She loved to travel and happily went on all our day trips around the mid Atlantic. She loved hanging out at the Rams Head for Sunday brunch in Annapolis. She really loved Georgetown where she would run up and down the steps of the brownstones as we walked around the neighborhood. We surmised that her fascination with steps was either a holdover trait from the cocker legacy of flushing out game, or had something to do with her Philadelphia background.

Winnie’s most endearing trait was her beautiful constantly shifting eyebrows that accented her eyes as they darted back and forth in search of attention and/or treats. Since she couldn’t hear, she kept a close eye on Lucky. If Lucky barked, Winnie was right with her. Winnie welcomed a number of foster dogs in our house, and with a few subtle growls would train them on proper food bowl etiquette. She really liked the boy foster dogs, and was especially fond of Gino.

Aside from her ears, the insides of which led us to believe that she had cauliflower mixed into in her gene pool, Winnie had always been in good health. But in January 2006, she started turning away from her food, and the blood tests showed her kidneys were rapidly declining. She hung on like a trooper to make sure we were all ok, but then in early February her 15 year old body finally gave out. She was a good girl and even though we only had 4 years with her, it was as if she had been with us forever. She was a wonderful, loyal friend and she looked at us lovingly as we cried our goodbyes.

It’s been a year since she passed, but seems like just yesterday when she was happily perched in her favorite chair, grooming herself while keeping an eye on us. We’ve had a number of foster dogs through the house since then, and we recently adopted another wonderful senior dog, Shayne. But out of an intuitive canine respect, none of them have gone near Winnie’s chair.

Thanks Winnie for those wonderful years, and for watching over us. Say hello to Shelby and compare notes. Don’t fight over Gino. We’ll meet up with you later and throw you some treats over that rainbow

Jim, Tracey and Lucky