About a Dog

I first read about Owney in a children's book that Rebecca found at the library.

When I saw the book, I thought,. "Too many words", but read it at bed time anyway and actually found the "biography" interesting and even endearing.

I had to read it several more times to Rebecca before we returned it.

Owney was a stray that wandered in through the back door of an Albany, NY post office one night in 1888, to get in out of the rain, and because he guarded the bags of mail and the blue suited mailmen, he became a mascot.

One day he jumped on a mail train and traveled all over the country and even up into Canada.

Local papers covered his appearances and the medals, tokens and tags he received on his journey documented his stops.

He made more than one trip.

Later he was even shipped over seas once as an unofficial postal embassader.

You can read Owney's story in this book.

It's really not too may words for a bedtime story.

I kind of envied his freedom to travel and the adventures he had.

I was very excited when I found out that there was a commemorative Owney stamp coming out. It went on sale yesterday.

I bought two sheets.

If your post office doesn't carry it, you can go to USPS.com to order some and have them delivered to your door (along with a lot of other interesting and pretty stamps!)

Owney was stuffed, mounted and now "lives" at the Smithsonian Postal Museum.

Might be fun to make a journey to see him.

He's displayed with his harness full of tags.

Hmmm, he could make an interesting subject for a round robin.

If a dog deco shows up in your mailbox, with instructions to collect a postmark from your local post office, you will know who it's from!
:)