Loving Willie: The Mountain-Ear’s Pet of the Year 2024

NEDERLAND - The story of Willie Grommit, a six-year-old Hound/Dachshund mutt and this year’s Pet of the Year, isn’t about the cruelty visited upon him by denizens of a culture deprived of the joys and well-being in life. It isn’t about the extent of his pain or degree of suffering. Nor about the grave injustices, neglect, abandonment, or mistreatment that he encountered in his young canine life.

Rather, Willie Grommit’s story is about the will he found to persist beyond all that would have stopped others.

After he was thrown like a bag of trash, on a rural Texas highway, out of the very family car in which he once felt safe, his uncharted path lay before him.

For some, the path might have looked bleak. And yet, to know Willie Grommit is to know that there lies beyond his brown eyes and Huckleberry Hound face a fierce determination to express his will to live on his own terms.

Willie Grommit’s story is about his spirit healing, recovering from the effects of the bullets in his ribs, after young and violent people unleashed their rage on his beautiful innocence. Even more impactfully, his story is about the goodness of the people rushing to his side after the violent cruelty of others broke his spine with a one-ton vehicular force.

It’s about how he managed to persist, feeding on grubs and garbage, lapping up putrid water and crawling around on two front legs and bloodying his back ones for fourteen excruciating days owing to his broken spine.

Until the day in October 2020 when a good Samaritan found him, chasing him down in the dark reeds of the Rio Grande Valley just outside of San Antonio, Texas, as he tried to flee in terror on two legs.

Lifting up his broken and bloody body when she finally overtook him, his personal angel placed him into the back of her car and drove him into the city, where his fate rested in the hands of beleaguered vets who had seen far too many others like him before his arrival.

“He’s suffered way too much. He’ll never walk again,” the attending vet in San Antonio Animal Control Services said, “He can’t go to the bathroom on his own. You won’t find anyone to take care of him.”

“Yes, we will,” objected Melissa McAllister, founder of Denver’s Redfern Animal Rescue and San Antonio refugee. “We’ll be down to get him on Friday. Don’t do anything until we get there.”

As with the tens of thousands of Southern dogs finding forever homes in Colorado, Willie Grommit got the ride of his life out of one of the worst states for a dog. His first stop: the Denver home of his foster family.

For two months, Jude W. and her family expressed his bladder four times daily, fed him a sweet potato and kibble diet (good for incontinent dogs), coupled him up with their French Bulldog Paco, and took him on wheelchair walks around Cherry Creek. Even more importantly, Jude W. promoted him on the best venue for homeless dogs in need: Instagram.

It was during the days of Covid-19 – homebound, lockdown – pervading American lives. Yours truly had taken to scrolling, as many of us had, liking and commenting on dogs in need, when Willie Grommit’s special-needs self came up:

“We have an incontinent dog,” I commented on the site. “We love her. She had a stroke; we express her bladder and make her a sweet potato diet. Her name is Sheba.”

Willie Grommit’s foster, Jude W., answered Gen-Z quick: “Would you ever adopt?”

It’s been four years this January since my husband and I said “Yes.” Four years of expressing his bladder four times daily. Four years of washing diapers. Four years of bringing him out and about in the world on his wheelchair, where his boundless joy and enthusiasm for life shines as brightly as his forgiveness prevails for all that happened to him. Four years of trotting him around in town, where he never meets a stranger.

During those four years, he has survived the assault of full-on heartworm, undetected because the tiny heartworm, or microfillia, lived insidiously in his body (and likely, from living unprotected outdoors). It was yet another assault on his young body, one triggering the need for new veterinarians: Drs. Cory Meier and Nate Siegel, formerly helping Redfern’s special needs rescue in Arvada. 

It was Willie Grommit’s fate that these same veterinarians would acquire the Nederland Veterinary Hospital last year, a move which brought his favorite veterinarians right into his own community.

After treating and monitoring Willie Grommit over the six-month recovery period, he rebounded to be back on his wheelchair, loping around his yard, to this very day. Occasionally, he incurs a few scrapes and scratches from scrabbles incurred in his one-dog rollovers.

A frequent flier at Sol Chiropractic, he turns to his doggie chiropractor, Jason O., who helps loosen up the kinks in his neck incurred from ambulating on his front legs. His favorite physical therapist, Cassie S., holds him in his lifejacket as he walks the water treadmill at his favorite physical therapy clinic in Boulder, Walking Paws. He hopes that one day his veterinarians will find a new laser technician to replace his favorite one, Ashley, who gave him peanut butter treats during treatment.

From the day he howled a final goodbye to his foster, Jude W., to the moments thereafter when he scampered into our arms here in the Valley of Tungsten, Willie and Sheba were gentle friends. Her matriarchal, nurturing energy was the healing he needed, and his was the devoted loyalty she craved. The pair bonded, and Willie Grommit lay quietly by her side when she left his world at the elderly age of sixteen.

Since Sheba, Willie Grommit has befriended all the animals in his four-dog, two-cat household. His best friend is Amos, another Texas refugee, with whom he carries on a fabulous bromance, not unlike the one he first enjoyed with his French friend Paco. He and Amos can often be seen on moose-sentry watch here in the Valley on gentle winter days, and, of course, walking the trails along Boulder Creek.

Willie Grommit feels it’s a deep, meaningful honor to be voted this year’s Pet of the Year, and offers up that he understands there are so very many candidates, many of whom are his friends. For them, he has all the hope that they, too, will find their loving, healthy and joyful forever homes.