Willy Wonka Born With an Attitude, November 2008 - January 2012

by Danielle W
(British Columbia, Canada)

Willy was my doberman pinscher, whom we lost at the age of three and a half to liver failure. He wasn't a good dog by anyone's standards.

He bit people. He chased birds, cats rodents, other dogs, his sister Abigale, our older doberman who died in 2009, pretty much anything that moved. He chewed and ate anything. He was really a bad dog, but he was my baby boy and I would give anything to have him back.

Willy was a big dog who didn't get along with many people but adored the ones he did. I liked him because he wasn't a pushover. You had to work hard to get him to trust you and once you did he was a big softie. He was sort of like a gigantic 80 lb teddy bear.

He helped me get over the loss of Bartholomew, our 11 year old doberman, who was the sweetest dog I've ever had. Unlike Bart, who lived to a ripe old age, Willy was lost at a young age, making it harder to accept.

Willy had a thing for chocolate. Here are the most memorable ones. The start was when he was a puppy. He ate a box of valentines chocolate.

His second christmas marked his record of eating two jumbo Toblerone bars and a chocolate santa, hence the nickname Willy Wonka from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

I can't seem to get over Willy, maybe because he was so young. Willy cheated death before. Almost exactly a year before we lost him, he had a near death experience that was the result of shredding a pop can and ingesting the pieces. 2,700 dollars later, he made it through alive.

Then this year we thought he did it again. We were wrong. Unfortunately he wasn't lucky enough to escape fate another time.

Willy's eyes were amazing. They were this honey gold color that I always thought reflected him well. One glance at the look in his eyes and you got the message "Don't even bother calling me a good boy, I'm really not." He had a sinister look in his eyes that gave him away when he was up to something.

When they say no dog is born evil, I think they're mistaken. Obviously they never met Willy. He was bad right from the start. Even as a puppy, he had that look in his eye and you knew he was bad and looking for trouble. But we loved him whether he was bad or not.

I miss him as much as any of my other dogs, even if he was born with an attitude.

I love you, buddy. See you in heaven with your buddy Bart.

Love,

Danielle