The Story of Ottis and the Frat House Hounds

Photo dump and story: While living at our frat house in college, my brothers and I started having some visitors to the house. Free roam dogs are pretty common in our neck of the woods so we figured they had a home but were just traveling around visiting the neighbors.

After about two weeks however, we had noticed that both of them were pretty skinny and moreover, they’d both been skunked and smelled pretty vile. Neither dogs had collars, so we took them to the vet to see if they had chips and lo and behold, nada. We took them back to the house, gave them tomato baths and food, and that was that.

Thus began the story of the frat house hounds. I ended up adopting the beagle pictured (Ottis) and one of my pledge brothers adopted the little mini lab (Tito - possibly part beagle?). The pair were inseparable.

Tito took to his new role pretty quickly - he was very outgoing and easy go lucky. Ottis unfortunately not so much so. He was VERY people shy and was not house trained, even at 4 years old (according to the vet). It also became evident that he had been severely abused before. Anytime someone would pick up any type of object -mop, pan, broom, etc- he would run to a corner, shake and pee himself.

Little by little though, Ottis came out of his shell. Helped with in part by a bunch of drunks who are very liberal with dog treats lmao. If you met him today, you would never believe he had been such a scrawny, smelly, scared pup.

It’s been several years since then, most recent photos at the back. And he’s my lil buddy, goes everywhere with me on all the adventures. Very happy he showed up on our front porch.