Sixteen years ago, Michele Purcell and her family made their annual pilgrimage to the Mojave. It was a family tradition, multiple generations camping and bringing in the New Year together. Upon arriving, one of the very first orders of business, in preparation for many campfires, was to have a cord of wood delivered to their camp site at Dove Springs. They had a guy they called every year.
“We called him Tweaker Mike because he was a crazy guy from Mojave, but he was so nice,” she recalled. “We’d call him and get a cord of wood, which is like a whole flat bed, because there were 10 campers.”
This time, Tweaker Mike arrived not only with his flatbed loaded with wood, but a buddy to help unload it, as well as a female companion and a large dog.
“When we are camping out there, the kids are free, and the dogs are their off leashes,” Purcell said. “Our dogs are roaming around. There’s like 10 families out there, my parents and generations of people. So I said, ‘If your dog is friendly, you can let him out, because all our dogs are friendly.’”
So the woman let the dog out and they noticed that not only was the dog female, but she had clearly just given birth. The woman stayed in the car. A friend of Purcell’s noticed something disturbing in the vehicle.
“Oh my god, Michele,” she said. “I am pretty sure I just saw that lady throw a puppy in the back seat.”
Her friend expected Purcell to figure out what was going on. “Because everyone knows I am a crazy dog lady,” Purcell said, but instead, the woman got out of the car, “Holding this little fluffy ball of fluff, and just walked straight toward me.”
“Don’t tell me, he’s for sale too?” Purcell said.
“Oh no, he’s free to a good home,” the woman said. “We are sick and tired of him trying to eat off our dog all the time. He’s the last puppy of the litter. We gave all of them away already, at the mall the last few days. We thought maybe we’d keep him, because he looked so different from the others. But he keeps bugging our other dog. All he wants to do is eat.”
Purcell asked if she could hold him. The woman handed the fluffy puppy over. He was about six weeks old. He was soft and golden and with his pointy ears looked like maybe some kind of a shepherd mix. Purcell’s three kids and a bunch of their friends surrounded her.
“I was holding him, and then I was like the Pied Piper,” she said. “All the kids were around me. My three kids are like, ‘Can we keep him?’ And we had a dog, Maggie, sweet as pie, 14 years old. So I was like, ‘I don’t know. Go ask your Dad.’”
Her five year old daughter, Callie, came running back.
“He said it’s up to you, since you are going to be doing all the work anyways, so whatever you want to do,” Callie said.
Purcell was surprised, but it was true. She would be doing all the work in caring for the dog. “Okay,” she said. “Then we are keeping him.”
The kids were giddy with happiness. But about a half hour later, Purcell’s husband appeared. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“Well, you told Callie it was up to me because I am going to be doing all the work.”
“No, I didn’t. I said no.”
They looked at Callie, a little blonde girl with an angelically sweet face. She just looked up at them and smiled.
“It’s the best lie I ever told,” she said.
Purcell’s former husband first demanded they give the puppy back, and then suggested they at least leave him with the wood guy’s woman for the week while they camped. But that wasn’t happening. She’d held the puppy. He was hers.
“He goes, ‘Give it back,’” she recalled. “And I said, ‘Absolutely not. It’s my baby now.’ Because I had put him on the ground and he saw a beer and tipped it over, and so he started licking up the beer, and the lady goes, ‘Oh, don’t worry. He’s already had vodka and tequila.’ I was like, ‘What is going on here?’ And my ex was like, ‘Fine, if we are keeping him, then give him back and we’ll pick him up on the way home. I don’t want a puppy pooping and peeing all over the camper all week.’ And I said, ‘Are you crazy? We are not leaving him with them.’”
They named him Woody, after his woodsy beginnings, and he began his life with them at their campsite.
“We put a little light stick around his neck so he wouldn’t get lost in the dark while we were camping,” Purcell said. “And we kept him, and brought him home to the beach, and then the vets were like, ‘Wow, this dog is lucky, because you know how hot it gets in the Mojave, and how cold it gets in the winter.’ He was a very strong, smart dog from the beginning, then he grew into a rowdy teenager.”
Such were the humble beginnings of Woody, who would grow into a regal, proud dog, known by many as the King of Goodman Street. To live in a community is to know many faces and quite a few names, some who you maybe only know from passing acquaintances, maybe at your favorite coffee spot, or maybe just from passing on the sidewalk many times over the course of many years. Woody, who passed away at the age of almost 16 last month, was a familiar, distinctive figure throughout Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, and North Redondo.
Purcell lives with her partner, the photographer Brent Broza, across the street from Mira Costa High School, an area which is the nexus of all three towns. From his vigilant perch on the front porch to his frequent walks in the area to his daily trips to Gelson’s with Broza for coffee, Woody’s proud bearing and unusual wild mane of hair were a part of the local fabric.
“He was definitely the king around here,” Broza said.
“I’m telling you, everyone knows around here,” Purcell said. “He was definitely the man around town. And he was such a different looking dog, we couldn’t take him anywhere without someone saying, ‘Wow, what kind of dog is that?’ From when he was a puppy until the end, he looked good…just beautiful, gorgeous. He didn’t look 15.8 years old.”
Such was Woody’s prominence as a canine citizen that he will be memorialized at the local Gelson’s.
“They’re talking about putting a photo up of him there at the Gelson’s, where we’d get coffee every morning,” Broza said. “The owner wants to put a photo of him up by the bakery bar. So we are in the process of going through photos. Woody was probably the most photographed dog on Earth. I mean, we have thousands of photos of him, because he looked so beautiful, in so many different ways, to us.”
Woody was a Golden German Chow Chow, likely a mix of Golden Retriever, German Shepard, and Chow Chow breeds, which is such a common mix that it has become known as its own breed, one known for playfulness and protectiveness as well as its fluffy coat. Early on, one of the veterinarians Purcell took Woody to thought this mix was going to be too much for her to handle — after all, she had three children, Callie, Jesse, and Cody, were ages 5, 7, and 9, so her hands were already more than full. The vet offered to take Woody, but Purcell was committed to him. And in turn, he was deeply committed to her, and to the three Purcell children.
“He was a Golden German Chow Chow, so he was kind of like a one-person dog,” Purcell said. “He was my dog. But when they were growing up, he was like the enforcer with my kids, too. If they were in trouble and if I raised my voice and they went running into the room, he would chase after them and grunt and growl, and they’d stop, like ‘Okay! Okay!’ I’d be like, ‘That’s right. Good job, Woody.”
Woody was fundamentally a working dog. Watching the perimeter of their house was his fulltime job. He’d sit out front, like a sentinel, until late every night. Every visitor faced his scrutiny until they were let inside the front gate by a member of the family. His face would scrunch up as he barked and jumped, straight up in the air, off his back two feet, using the fence as leverage. Even familiar visitors faced Woody’s stern greeting. It wasn’t personal, just him fulfilling his duty.
“The thing about the perimeter of our house, he would pogo [jump] and it didn’t matter if you were best friends forever, he’s on that jump,” Broza said. “But the second we give him the okay at the gate, he was like, ‘Okay, come on in.’”
This was a daily ritual with the mailman. He and Woody knew and loved each other, but Woody gave him the treatment daily.
“The mailman loved Woody,” Broza said. “It was kind of a game to him. In the end, it was almost like what kept Woody alive, to get the mailman. Still, it was game on, day after day after day. He was still just wanting to be outside waiting for the mailman. He would back himself into a corner so nobody could get behind him. He was very aware of his surroundings, and was just always on guard.”
Another ritual was that when anyone came home, they first had to report to Woody. If the neighborhood was Woody’s realm, the house was his castle.
“Everybody, when you come home, you say hi to him for five minutes before you say hi to anybody else in the house,” Broza said. “He commanded and demanded that respect. You go in and give him love, lay down with him and chill and relax.”
When Purcell and Broza first started seeing each other, Woody was suspicious, especially of all the hugging. Soon enough, however, when Woody and Purcell were out on walks, he’d try to pull her towards Broza’s home, across the Hermosa border.
“Brent became his favorite person pretty quickly,” Purcell said. “I had this loop down to the beach from here, and I would stop [at Brent’s house] to give him treats and water. After we did that a couple times, every time I did the beach loop, he wanted to veer off to go see Brent. I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, he’s not home right now.’”
Broza knew he was inside Purcell’s family circle when Woody gave him his approval.
“I definitely felt that way, when I basically could start calling him my dog,” Broza said. “He was so good and so healing for me, it’s crazy hard to talk about. He was such a good buddy.”
Three years ago, another prominent local dog, a Chihuahua named Gino, was recognized by Guinness World Records as the oldest living dog in the world. He was 23. His owner, Alex Wolf, credited his longevity on a careful diet, daily massages, and the fact that Gino lived with purpose, within a community. Woody’s 15 years and 8 months didn’t set any records, although a veterinarian told Purcell that given his size — about 85 pounds — and breed, those years were the equivalent to a human living to 100. Woody wasn’t a particularly big eater, but he was fed high quality food. His favorite meal was salmon.
“I love making salmon from Manhattan Meats,” Broza said. “To me, it’s the best salmon there is. And so whenever I’d be barbecuing, he’d be out there…He was never a beggar, either, but he knew the minute I brought the salmon out. He was like, ‘Hell yeah,” just watching.”
So Woody ate well, stayed active (he was passionate about playing ball, any ball), lived within a community, and with strong purpose — not unlike the keys to longevity found for human beings in the Blue Zones. When they knew his final day was approaching, Broza cooked him a nice fat salmon steak, and Woody relished the meal like a king. The three kids, now all adults, all gathered for a final hang with their childhood enforcer, protector, and four-legged sibling. And then Woody went to rest.
“It was really hard letting go because….I mean, everybody’s dog is the best, but I would be hard pressed to find another dog that was so aware, so loyal and just crazy super smart,” Broza said. “He read the room minutes before anybody else could. He knew what was up.”
Purcell said there was another key factor in Woody’s long life.
“He was smothered in love,” she said, “by everyone.” ER
