A woman who went to a shelter intending to adopt a dog walked out carrying an animal she judged unattractive, then brought him home for the holidays — a small, private decision recounted in a recent column by Westfall in the Sterling Journal-Advocate.

Westfall tells the anecdote plainly and without fanfare, using the encounter as a frame to examine everyday compassion during the Christmas season. The column, headlined “Westfall: Even ugly dogs need love,” ran in the lead-up to Christmas and centers on the woman’s single act: seeing value in an animal she believed few would choose and taking him into her household.

According to Westfall’s account, the sequence was straightforward. The woman visited the shelter intending to find a dog to adopt. While there, she encountered an animal she judged unattractive and, in an immediate decision, chose to bring him home. The column records the woman’s reaction in a direct, plainspoken line: “I think he’s the ugliest dog I’ve ever seen. I went to the shelter to find a dog and when I saw him, I thought, ‘Oh my, that’s an ugly dog—no one will ever adopt him—so I decided to take him home. After all, even ugly dogs need love.'”

Westfall’s piece does not present the event as part of a formal rescue operation or an . Instead, it focuses on the private character of the decision and its moral significance. There is no account of a lengthy adoption process, no description of negotiations with shelter staff, and no claim of a high-profile campaign. The story is deliberately small in scale: a single household, a single dog and a single choice.

That narrowness is the point, Westfall suggests. The column uses the episode to explore larger themes of community and compassion, arguing that seasonal displays and public celebration gain depth when paired with unpublicized acts of care. The adopted dog, in Westfall’s telling, becomes a modest emblem of noticing and responding to need — an ordinary example of how a private decision can quietly change an animal’s prospects and shift a community’s sense of worth.

Readers are invited to treat the woman’s choice as illustrative rather than exceptional. Westfall frames the adoption as a reminder that goodwill can take small forms repeated across households and neighborhoods. The column positions the act of taking an overlooked animal home as part of a wider seasonal ethic: that the lights, the gatherings and the public cheer of the holidays are more meaningful when they are matched by everyday attention to others, human or animal.

The column closes on that contrast between public celebration and private mercy. Westfall underscores that the woman’s home — not a rescue operation or a media moment — becomes the endpoint of the story. The adopted dog’s move from shelter to household is left as the clear outcome and the piece’s central image: a dog once dismissed for appearance now placed in a setting where simple attention and affection will, Westfall implies, matter materially to his life.

Published under the Sterling Journal-Advocate banner, the column functions as a short moral reflection in the run-up to Christmas. It neither elevates the woman to hero status nor minimizes the practical realities of shelter work; rather, it offers a compact portrait of how a single, unglamorous act can embody the season’s best intentions. In Westfall’s telling, even an animal described as “ugly” is sufficient invitation for care — and the decision to provide that care quietly reorients how a community might regard shelter animals and the people who adopt them.

The anecdote is brief, specific and entirely domestic: a woman sees a dog, decides to take him home, and in doing so provides a modest demonstration of compassion during the holidays. Westfall leaves the reader with that simple image and the implicit challenge to notice needs that might otherwise go unseen, including the need for ugly animals.