How It All Started: Winchester

Before there was a Bad Hound Gang, before there were neighborhood alerts, Puppy Police, perimeter inspections, or half-dressed men sprinting through Westmoreland...

There was Winchester.

And Winchester has always carried himself like a gentleman.

A proper English foxhound.

Long ears. Noble face. Calm demeanor.

The kind of dog who looks like he should be sitting beside a fireplace in an old Virginia estate while someone pours bourbon in the next room.

The problem is...

Nobody told Winchester that he was supposed to act proper.

Because underneath that distinguished exterior lives a hound whose brain was built for one thing:

Find the scent. Follow the scent. Ask questions later.

Winchester was our first lesson in what it really means to live with a hound.

You can provide a warm house.

A comfortable couch.

A full food bowl.

Air conditioning.

People who love him.

And Winchester will appreciate every bit of it.

Right up until a Fox walks past the wood line.

Then several hundred years of breeding suddenly overrides every luxury modern civilization has provided.

His nose goes up.

His ears change.

His eyes lock toward the woods.

And you realize...

You have approximately four seconds to negotiate.

Winchester was the one who taught us that a five-foot fence is not necessarily a fence.

To most dogs, it's a boundary.

To Winchester, it's a suggestion.

He doesn't frantically scramble over it.

That would be undignified.

He simply approaches at speed, launches himself into the air, clears the thing without breaking stride, and continues on like the fence had the audacity to temporarily occupy his flight path.

That's Winchester.

Even his escapes have class.

And somehow, despite being responsible for starting more than a few neighborhood operations, Winchester has always been different from his brothers.

He usually knows where he is.

More importantly...

he usually knows where home is.

Dean can disappear into another ZIP code.

Roscoe can become distracted by a squirrel thirty yards into an operation.

Winchester?

He completes the mission and eventually decides he's had enough.

Sometimes he even makes practical decisions.

Like the night he cleared the fence during brutal summer heat, took off on patrol, and quickly realized he'd made a significant tactical error.

I jumped into the truck looking for him.

Soon I heard barking behind me.

There was Winchester...

Running after the truck.

Not after a deer.

Not after a fox.

After air conditioning.

Even seasoned professionals occasionally miscalculate.

Then there is Sammie.

Winchester's girlfriend.

Because apparently the neighborhood's most distinguished fugitive also has a romantic side.

More than once, Winchester has slipped away only to appear near Sammie's house, barking outside like something straight out of an '80s movie.

If he'd had arms, I'm convinced there would've been a boom box over his head.

That's the thing about Winchester.

He's mischievous without seeming mischievous.

He'll return from an unauthorized patrol, walk through the door, get a drink, climb onto the couch and look at you as though he has absolutely no knowledge of the incident you're describing.

Meanwhile...

Dean is exhausted.

Roscoe is panting.

Dad's covered in sweat.

And Winchester looks ready for tea.

He started everything.

The stories.

The escapes.

The neighborhood alerts.

The realization that life with hounds would never be completely normal again.

Eventually Dean and Roscoe would join him, and the chaos would multiply.

But Winchester was there first.

The original Bad Hound.

The gentleman.

The fence jumper.

The romantic.

The hound who can look completely innocent approximately thirty seconds after committing a parole violation.

And somewhere along the way, we stopped asking why he does it.

Because the answer is pretty simple.

He's a hound.

This is what generations before him were bred to do.

Today he may live the comfortable life of a retired gentleman...

But retirement doesn't erase instinct.

As an old soldier might understand:

You can retire from the job.

The job doesn't always retire from you.

And so began the story of the Bad Hounds.

With Winchester.

One fence.

One scent.

And one very questionable decision.