admin
There are stories that make people better and more sensitive when they get to know them. Such is the story of Patsy Ann.
An extraordinary story, a story of pain, love, and mutual respect between an entire city and a dog, touched me as much as the story of the dog Hachiko in 1924 in Tokyo, Japan, a story that moved the world to tears at that time but also later with films dedicated to this topic.
I hadn’t heard anything about Patsy Ann’s story until I stepped onto the dock of Juneau Harbor, the capital of Alaska. A bronze statue of Patsy Ann greeted all those coming from the sea and greeted those who passed by first for the day.
I once read a quote by James Thurber that said, “If I have any faith in immortality, it’s because some dogs I’ve known will go to heaven.”
I have a dog named Marko and from this, I know how right what James Thurber said was.
Patsy Ann was a female dog of the Bull Terrier breed, who was born in Portland, Oregon, USA on October 12, 1929.
He had come to Juneau as a puppy, and here he was abandoned by his first and last owner. And she would never leave Juneau until she ended her life on March 30, 1942. Patsy Ann was loved and loved by all.
He was born deaf, but in an inexplicable way, he understood the arrival of ships in the port of the city from far away.
At that time, there were no modern means of communication to announce the arrival of ships in port before they appeared visually. And everyone knew from Patsy Ann that a ship was coming.
She was never wrong in her reflexes and always jumped into the icy waters of the harbor and swam towards the newly arrived ship.
It was absolutely the first greeting of all newly arrived ships in the port.
He often acted as a postman between the ship and the land, taking things or documents from one side to the other.
When no ships came, Patsy Ann visited the businesses, hotels, and bars in the port area and was greeted and petted by all the owners and passers-by who even kept food for her.
For her behavior and talents, Patsy Ann became famous and was probably the most photographed dog of the time.
What really made Patsy Ann famous was that in 1934, the mayor of Juneau, Mr. Goldstein, in an official ceremony, with the participation of the relevant officials and the city’s parish, in support of a general popular demand of the city’s residents, surprising the world with something that had never been heard before, officially gave Patsy Ann, i.e. a dog, the title “Official Greeter of Juneau, Alaska” which in Albanian translates as “Official Greeter of Juneau, Alaska”.
And even today these documents are kept in the city archives…
We must say that the title of the greeter for that time and before was very important because it presented the culture and education of the city in the first meeting with the newcomers.
For this, people with distinctive cultures, appearances,s and behavior were normally chosen.
And to think of a city in distant Alaska and in that distant time, without media and without information, where of course the arrival of a ship carrying news and goods from the unknown world was experienced as a very important event.
No matter what people say and do to her, Patsy Ann could never understand these things. Rejoicing in the love of people, she continued her daily rituals…
….On the last day of March 1942, Patsy Ann was escorted by all the residents of Juneay to her last home.
In respect of the place where she lived and worked, her small coffin was placed in that part of the port known as the Gastineau Channel, which is sometimes covered and sometimes revealed by the tides and ebbs of the sea.
