On a cold night in 1888, a bony and bedraggled terrier stray was looking for a place to escape from the rain. He squeezed through the open back door of an Albany, New York postal office and plopped down on a heap of mailbags. The staff discovered him the next day. He sniffed their wool uniforms. Mistaken for the dog of a postal clerk named Owen, he was given the name “Owney.”
That’s one story, at least. Another is that he accompanied a postal clerk to work, who then abandoned him at the station. No one knows exactly how old Owney was when he appeared there, though he was probably born around 1887.
