The Owney’s story with the US Postal Service began in 1888 when the brown stray wandered into the Albany, N.Y., post office. The clerks there took him in fed him and allowed him to stay at the Post Office as their mascot. From day one Owney showed a connection to the mail after receiving some food and water he found a comfortable looking place to sleep on top of a full mailbag. When the next mail service train rolled through town and the bags were removed from the Post Office Owney followed them right on the train and went for a ride. He rode on top of the mailbags all around New York.
Back then railroad accidents were quite common but no train that Owney hopped a ride on with the mail ever had an issue. Mail clerks looked at Owney as a good-luck charm for the mail and even became part of railroad folklore. Owney eventually rode across America and railway employees fitted him with a special collar to display souvenir tags from each of his stops. His collection grew to hundreds of tags, everything from baggage check tokens to freebie “good for” merchant tokens. By May 1895 it seems Owney lost the use of one of is eyes but he was still happy to be traveling around the country with his mailbags.
Owney was such a good luck charm for the US Postal Service that he was shipped out on a steamship and embarked on a world trip. He made such a stir that Japan’s emperor at the time granted him an audience because he wanted to meet the special mail dog everyone was talking about. After his world travels delivering the mail to ports around the world Owney came back to the US to ride the mail trains until ill-health ended his travels. He died in 1897 after logging more than 143,000 miles and keeping his perfect safety record intact both on land and at sea.
From unwanted dog to world famous mail carrier all it took was one person seeing his potential to turn his life around.
Great story, never heard of this. This baby got to do something fun & meeting new people was probably fun for him!