Emmylou Harris Hosts Woofstock Music Festival
Emmylou Harris loves animals as much as she does music, so it was a natural move for her to create Woofstock, a music festival that welcomes dogs. The event, to be held Aug. 18 at the Fontanel mansion just outside Nashville, will help raise money for Bonaparte's Retreat, the facility Emmylou founded to help rescue dogs from certain death and place them in homes with loving, responsible owners.
Emmylou's love for animals began when she was four years old, with a cocker spaniel-Mexican spitz mix named Duchess. The pup lived to be 13, and the singer says it was "devastating" for her to lose the only dog she'd ever known. "Soon I went off to college and I never owned another dog until I moved to Nashville and bought a house with a yard," she tells The Boot.
In fact, Emmylou rescued her first dog at that time, a Cairn terrier named Radar, because she thought her daughter should experience the joys of owning a pooch.
"We went to Metro Humane Association and got Radar and my idea was that since I had the huge yard he would be an outdoor dog. Right! Obviously he was a small dog so he became an indoor dog, and I started learning about dogs. Then we got Bonaparte as a companion for Radar but he ended up being my traveling companion and went everywhere with me for 10 years. So Bonaparte's Retreat celebrates his life and all he meant to me."
Emmylou had done no previous rescue work before she opened the retreat. "I was clueless," she admits. "I thought I was opening it as an extension of the Nashville Humane Association and didn't see it as a hands-on thing because I was on the road all the time. I just thought I'd be providing a little extra space. I think there was a misunderstanding because the people from Nashville Humane came out the
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