Huey the UK Jack Russell Terrier — AKA Baby Huey

Huey ... chillin'.

My dog, Huey, has a past. But don’t we all?

His past, however, may not be as checkered as the rest of ours.

Before we purchased Huey, we were looking for a very small Jack Russel Terrier (JRT), like the one on the old TV show Frasier. We already had Elle, a very small JRT that weighed less than 10 pounds, and wanted to mate her.

On our quest to find a mate for Elle, we combed through local newspapers, online pet-selling sites, Craigslist and dog rescues. We found an ad in the KC Star that caught our attention, but it was way out in the boonies of Western Missouri.

As we started our trek to the home of the dog we later would call Huey, we found ourselves driving late in the evening through winding roads that led to a dirt road on which the property was supposed to reside. The seller told me her home was about 1.5 miles off the paved road. She said we’d have no trouble finding it, because she just added on a huge wraparound porch.

Assuming it was a large home, we drove that 1.5 miles without seeing one home with a “huge wraparound porch.” After retracing our tracks two or three times, our eyes finally fell on a small home set quite a ways back from the road with a small added on porch. Wraparound, it was not. Huge? Far from it, but we did find it about 1.5 miles off the paved road.

My husband approached the front door to find that this was, indeed, the home of the seller who said she had a huge wraparound porch — I guess those things are all relative. It made me wonder, though, about her perception of size.

When I called, I was clear that I only wanted a small Jack Russell, not over 10 pounds full-grown. She told me the parents (of the puppies, that is) were only about 11″ tall, maybe 20″ long and maybe 12 pounds full-grown. I was okay with that, since Elle was so small.

After entering the home, we noticed two fairly large adult dogs and two other dogs that weren’t much smaller than the adults — the puppies were supposed to be only 12 weeks old. My husband was a talker, so after maybe 15 minutes of chatting, I finally asked the seller about the whereabouts of the puppies. As I feared, the puppies were the humongous monsters running about under our feet.

I felt deceived. She led me to believe she had SMALL adult dogs, a HUGE wraparound front porch and SMALL puppies. Not one adjective she used was a true description of any of those things. Those puppies looked like they were full-grown JRTs, except for their over-the-top energy and exuberance.

Michelle, our youngest.

Though shocked and confused, I tried, as politely as possible, to excuse myself to make a phone call to our teenage daughter, Michelle. She was the one who really wanted a puppy as Elle’s mate. I was hoping she would be so disappointed that she wouldn’t want either puppy.

To my surprise, she said she wouldn’t mind having one. I did not want a puppy that large and told the sellers that we really were looking for something smaller. On our way to leave, the sellers told us they’d sell both puppies for the price of the one. My husband responded that we did not come all that way to leave without one, so we ended up purchasing one of the puppies. I couldn’t believe it.

We left with this 7-pound “puppy” that was thrilled to be out of that place.

Honestly, the family could’ve been featured on the TV series Swamp People. I’m not sure that they had all their teeth and I got the feeling the husband was kind of abusive — not that any of the Swamp People are abusive, but I just got a feeling about that guy. With that in mind, I chose the puppy that seemed most abused. I knew my daughter would lavish love on him and make him feel very loved.

The registration papers they sent with us were for a UK JRT, which are much larger dogs that American JRTs. He was such a large puppy, I thought his registered name should relate to his size, so I named him Baby Huey. If you remember, Baby Huey was an extremely over-sized baby duckling cartoon character, so we thought it was only appropriate to register our new puppy with the same name — only we called him Huey.

That was almost 10 years ago. In his younger years, he gnawed through the expensive antique wood trim on our bedroom door frame; ran across the street to bark at children at school thinking they were in his “yard;” and incessantly chased motorcycles, cars and large trucks. He tipped the scales at 31 pounds, a far cry from either of his parents — I’m thinking his mother had an illicit affair with the milkman’s dog.

Not a day went by during the first two years of his life that I did not want to get rid of him.

In 2004, our youngest daughter graduated from high school and left home … without Huey. We gave Elle to our oldest and Huey was the only dog left in the home. It was not immediate, but over the next few months I gained an affinity for Huey. He became the only dog for me. He was my protector and friend.

He stopped chasing cars, kids and people a couple of years ago … finally. He still barks at things that he knows shouldn’t normally be there — a motorcycle parked in our driveway due to a visitor, a car parked along the street that usually isn’t there and the trash can set out on the curb on Thursdays. Like I said, he’s my protector. He isn’t always the smartest about what to protect me from, but he tries.

Even though his life with us had a rocky start, he’s turned out to be the best dog ever … because he’s mine. Huey. The dog. The legend.

Do you have any pet stories you’d like to share?

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