ohmidog!

Anyone who reads this website – or its companion website, “Travels with Ace” — with any regularity knows I can’t pass up a homeless dog and homeless person duo, especially when I have my camera.

This week, I was accompanying a friend who was shopping for a car when I noticed this gentleman and his dog seeking handouts on an Interstate 40 exit ramp in Winston-Salem.

Given the alternative was dealing with a car salesman, I left Ace and my friend at the dealership, explained that I had to go take some photos and walked down the road to meet the man with a cardboard sign and his dog, tied to the guard rail.

When I asked if his dog was friendly, he said, “No, she can be a little temperamental,” which, he added, is how he wants her to be. He was fine with me taking some pictures, though.

When I asked what her name was, he said, “I just call her Dog.”

He explained that he got Dog in Wytheville, Virginia, where he “camped” — his preferred term — before he and Dog hitchhiked down to Winston-Salem.

Dog was among several dogs that were being transported from a southern shelter to a northern one, where they had a better chance of being adopted.

She wasn’t part of the original shipment, but apparently was picked up as a stray along the way, he said.

He admired her for a while and felt a connection — “She was a stray and so was I,” he said — and he asked the driver if he could have her.

They’ve been together ever since, about a year and a half now.

She’s a barker, and helps protect his sleeping bag and other belongings, he said.

Dog barked nearly the whole time I was taking her picture, and when she wasn’t barking at me, she barked at trucks that passed by.