The Lost Dog Finds Its Home
In 1995, Garth Janssen found an opportunity to realize his own vision when he saw a space being vacated by another shop-keeper and opened the Lost Dog. For 25 years, that vision was his life, his family, his community, his art. There was coffee, tea, baked goods, conversation, and attitude too. All part of a performance canvas that found its way into the Lost Dog. Garth talks about listening, watching — years behind the counter can make one attuned to the whispers of the world and things to come. What he heard earlier this year made him uneasy. “I saw this coming in January, it wasn’t going to be good. Week after week it felt darker. I made the decision to close on March 12. A lot of people argued with me about that, but I knew where it was going and yelled back, hoping others would listen.”
Since opening in 1995, Garth counts that the Lost Dog has been open almost “365 days a year, every year. Maybe we were closed 19 or 20 days that whole time. When I hung up the ‘closed’ sign in March it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. To know that I wouldn’t be coming back in the morning. I was numb. I stared at the walls. I cried. I even started a garden.”
“As this stretched on, I knew I had to make a decision. Cash out? Rebuild? The tired part of me wanted to wrap it up and find something different. But I thought about this crazy place and the crazy people and kept thinking about what holds the fabric together and who comes next — will they understand the spirit of this town? That’s when Brad Lewis came into the picture and tilted me to the decision, not to rebuild, but to rethink. He bought the building, but he also invested in the idea.”
“You can see the new to-go window we put in. Actually, it’s the old window, we just figured out how to get it open and put in steps so customers could get up to it. That was Butch Deal. He had an idea and showed up and did it. Like a lot of others who helped with this rebirth process. The idea of the window isn’t new either, I thought about it in 1995, but never got to it and everything else built up. Now that we have cleaned out the old, we’ll have a dining room and a service counter that works when we can let customers inside. And patio out back too.”
“I need to be open, but I’m not sure I should be. We clean, we wear masks, we welcome our customers. For me it’s a calculated risk. I owe it to myself and I owe it to the community to be here. I just hope I set an example.”
Lost Dog Coffee Fine Arts Drink Emporium at 134 East German Street, Shepherdstown WV. Visit the Lost Dog online at their website and Facebook.
By Staff Contributor