Sunday, August 24, 2014
Youngstown stray trotted
into couple’s life, hearts
after 2008 Peace Race
By Joe Scalzo
YOUNGSTOWN
Oct. 12, 2008, a homeless girl finished the Youngstown Peace Race in less than 45 minutes.
She finished in the top 25 percent out of nearly 750 runners even though she had never trained for a 10K and wasn’t even registered beforehand.
The craziest part? She wasn’t even 2 years old.
Her name is Stella. She’s a boxer/terrier/whatever mix who started that day on Indianola Avenue and finished it in a two-bedroom apartment in Pittsburgh. In between, she ran through Mill Creek Park and into the arms of a young married couple named Jim and Pam Gianoglio.
“The first night we had her in our apartment, when we went to bed, she crawled underneath it and fell asleep,” said Jim, speaking recently by phone from Pittsburgh. “At 1 or 2 in the morning, we heard just a single, big, loud, throaty, guttural bark. A big-dog bark, not a puppy bark. And that was it. For the first three months we had her, that was honestly the only time she ever barked.
“Whenever you take in a stray, you never know if it’s going to be good or not, but she was great right away.”
Pam’s father, a Youngstown bus driver named Ron Gianoglio, gave Stella her name. (“He mentioned it and it just fit,” said Jim, who took his wife’s last name when they were married.) Stella has since added some weight — “She’s probably about 70-75 pounds now, which is about 10 pounds too heavy,” Jim said — and some friends. The Gianoglios have a 4-year-old daughter and a 2-year-old son.
“She’s great with them,” said Jim, 34, who moved to a house soon after the 2008 Peace Race and has since moved to a bigger house. “It’s never been an issue at all. She’s just a lovable dog.”
Stella does have one vice, though.
“She doesn’t bark or bite, but she will lick you to death,” he said. “For a while, she’d just walk through the house and go up to the wall and lick the wall. Then she’d lick the doorknob. She doesn’t do that quite as much anymore.”
Ron Gianoglio has run the Peace Race between 20-25 times and is usually joined by several family members each year. Jim is more of a bicyclist — for instance, he’s ridden from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia, a 400-mile trek called “Crush the Commonwealth” — but he has run the Pittsburgh Marathon, doing an occasional training run with Stella.
“Nothing longer than a 5K, though,” he said.
Jim has also run the Peace Race seven of the last eight years and plans to bring Stella to this year’s event on Oct. 26, when the event celebrates its 40th anniversary.
Alas, Stella will be a spectator this time.
“She’s been a blessing,” Jim said. “We feel lucky to have her. She’s such a great dog.”