‘He’s crazy about me. He knows I saved his life.’

Wylcie Murray loves dogs. She doesn’t have as many as she once did, but at age 75 she still feeds and cares for 165 in rows of pens near her log house tucked among the hills of Saugus.

I’ve had dogs all of my life, but not like this. When we were kids in Texas, we always had two dogs.

When I lived in Covina, there was a large apartment nearby with one of those big trash bins out back. The kids that lived in the apartment were always bringing me dogs that had been put in the trash bin. I collected about 30 like that. I got so many, and I wasn’t zoned for dogs there, so I went to the desert, to Lucerne Valley.

People bring dogs out there and throw them out, just abandon them. Sometimes you’d find eight or 10 in one group, a mother dog and some pups and then half-grown pups out in the desert where there was no water within 10 miles. I didn’t go looking for more dogs. People would bring them to me or tell me where they were, and then I’d go back out and get them. And the first thing you know I had 249 dogs. We had a pen and five acres, and we just kept building and building until we had enough pens to put them all in. My daughter thought I was getting too old to stay out there alone, so she brought me in here. And the dogs, of course.

My husband was a railroad man, and I got a pension when he died. I spent all of that for dog food. My daughter always helped. The bill for food ran about a thousand dollars a month. Sometimes we’d have a truck bring it out, but most of the time I just got in the station wagon and went and got it, a dozen sacks at a time.

They’re everyone different, just like humans. Every one has a name. They have their own personality. It seems like they pick their own name. You can name a dog two or three times and he won’t accept that name, but if he likes the name he’ll take it by the time you say it three times.

I have all kinds of names. That old dog I picked up in the desert with a can around his neck was the prettiest thing you ever saw, so we just called him Pretty. He’s 20 years old now. He had a can around his neck and in the can was a note. The note says, “I’m a cat killer. They know I am because they saw me do it. If I’m ever caught back home I’m a dead dog.” I’ve had that dog 10 or 12 years, but he’s blind now. He has to be taken out and put in the sun, poor thing. We just call him Pretty because he’s so beautiful.

Now that’s Lark. I thought Lark was a girl, and I named him Lark, but then I found out that he was a boy. I didn’t think Lark was a good name for a boy, so I tried to change it and call him Clark. I thought that would sound like Lark and he’d go for it, but he won’t. He won’t answer to Clark at all. He just answers to Lark.

Wildie won’t let me get the leash off his neck. He bites, even me. I call him Wildie because, when I caught him out in the desert, he bit me 18 times on my arm. A man was trying to kill him and shot him through the back leg, but I finally caught him.

Not long ago I went into a pen and there was something wrong with Flint. He had choked, so I opened his mouth, stuck my finger down his throat and pulled out what was in there. His eyes were already set to be dead. I started breathing in his mouth and he started opening his eyes and looking around, and then he started wagging his tail. He’s crazy about me. I can’t get rid of him. He knows I saved his life.

So many of my dogs are getting old. I’ve got a couple that are 20 years old and a lot of them 15 and 16 years old. They start getting little things wrong with them. That takes up an awful lot of your time. I feed them all in the evening, but, if they’re real old and don’t have any teeth, I give them a little in the morning too.

I don’t get tired of it. I’d like to go to Las Vegas once in a while, but it seems like that’s out now. It’s hard to leave the place. I’ll probably kick the bucket right here.