Seamus

A Tough Mutt Learns to be a Good Dog

"I have a very needy dog," Nancy Ocean of Loudoun says about her terrier mix, Seamus. "He follows me around like a shadow. He follows me to the bathroom. He sleeps next to me all night long."

Named for the luck of the Irish, Seamus was discovered foraging in the streets of New Orleans after Katrina hit. His photo was posted on several Web sites, but no one seemed interested in the worm-infested canine Ocean describes as "one of the ugliest dogs I've ever seen."

"By the time I came to him, it was sort of the last ditch. They were running out of options. They were looking for suckers, frankly," she says.

Ocean says it was difficult at first for Seamus to adjust to his new home. He was nervous and constantly trying to forage for food in the streets.

"He would get so excited and start wagging his tail and pulling when he saw a dumpster," she says. "That had become a place for food and shelter."

He was reluctant to learn basic obedience training as well.

"He acted like a teenage boy that was raised in a barn, at first," Ocean says. "Then I put him on a leash and told him to heel and sit, and he looked up at me with a look like 'you know that stuff too?'"

He is pretty calm now and is worm-free, but still suffers from some aftereffects of Katrina. Ocean says he gets terrified and "trembles like crazy" whenever there is a storm. He also suffered from separation anxiety at first.

"It took a while for him to realize that he was in a home and that I wasn't going to go away," she says.

Both owner and dog are very happy with how everything turned out.

"He boosts my ego," Ocean says.