A Tail of Puppy Love for Wynonna Judd

By Stephen M. Silverman And Justin Ballheim

Thursday May 15, 2003 12:00 PM EDT

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Wynonna Judd has gone to the dogs -- for a good cause.

The country star, 38, adopted Pixie, a 5-year-old arthritic rat terrier, on Wednesday at the Animal Haven animal shelter in Manhattan, where she was on hand to help promote canine arthritis awareness in conjunction with National Arthritis Month, reports PEOPLE.

But Pixie won't be an only child on Judd's Nashville ranch -- which is already home to 13 dogs.

"It's organized chaos," admits Judd. "It started out as one."

Pixie will not be the only rat terrier in the Judd house. "Loretta Lynn -- my queen, the 20-year-old rat terrier -- she's in charge. It's funny, because the big dogs cower to her, and she's three times as little. So that's very curious to me ... It's not about size. It's about attitude."

As for the name of the older rat terrier, Judd says: "In country music, when you love somebody, you do name your dog after them. So Loretta Lynn was named after the Loretta Lynn."

The four-legged Loretta has "been through so much," Judd says. "Loretta jumped off the bus at a truck stop one time, and it was two hours down the road."

At the time of Loretta's adventure, "I was asleep, and she had gotten off the bus, and luckily a country music fan recognized her because I had been on the cover with her on a country music magazine -- and they brought her to the show, thank God.

"And of course I gave them tickets to the show."