Winston the pug on CD

Symphony flutist accompanies her pet

Provided

CSO flutist Regina Helcher Yost spent four years recording a Christmas music CD with her pug, Winston.

Winston the pug took a different path from the rest of his family.

While they were show dogs — his grandfather was once even "Best in Breed" at the Westminster Dog Show — Winston had different aspirations. He also has a white paw that kept him from being a show dog.

"When I purchased Winston, his breeder actually gave me a $100 discount because Winston was very vocal and she was afraid that I might bring him back," says his owner, Regina Helcher Yost of Mount Pleasant. "She told me, 'Winston really lets you know what he wants.' "

Now almost 5, Winston has just become a recording artist.

Winston and Yost, a flutist with the Charleston Symphony Orchestra, have released a CD of Christmas music, "Winston's Wonderland."

"I have wanted to make a Christmas flute CD for many years," Yost says. "I decided that since Winston was so vocal, why not make a CD with him? It sounds like a weird idea, but people seem to really like it."

The recording took four years, as Yost captured Winston making sounds and later set them to her music.

"He barks when someone's at the door," she says. "He snores a lot and makes sounds like he's humming. He's got quite an array of sounds, but it's not like he's yippy and barks all the time."

Catching him making those sounds was quite a challenge.

"Sometimes I'd be like, 'Oh, he's snoring now,' and by the time I got the recorder, he'd stop," she says. "At night, he likes to go into his crate to sleep, and I ended up putting the recording machine on the top of the crate with the microphone right next to it so I could hit it without waking him up."

She also set up the recorder to tape Winston barking when guests left her house.

"Sometimes when I play the piccolo or high notes on the flute, he sings along, so I would play and then he'd be making sounds and I'd hit the recorder," she says. "Recording Winston was definitely a lot harder than recording myself."

Yost arranged all the songs on the CD and plays them herself.

"After I recorded all my parts, we put Winston's sounds in a computer and we'd listen to them and plug them in where we thought they should go," she says. "The tricky thing about that was getting it on the right beat."

The CD includes traditional Christmas music such as "Jingle Bells" and "Up on the Housetop," but the "12 Days of Christmas" is changed to "The 12 Pugs of Christmas" and features different dog sounds for each day.

"People really seem to like that one," Yost says.

Winston sings along on every song but one.

"He doesn't sing on 'O Holy Night,' " Yost says. "I was afraid people would get offended."

The CD sells for $17, and a portion of the proceeds goes to the Pug Rescue of North Carolina (www.pugrescuenc.org). The CDs are available at www.charlestonflutist.com, the symphony's Gaillard Auditorium concerts (a portion of these sales also goes to the symphony), local Barnes & Noble stores, Amazon.com and many local pet stores.

Brenda Rindge can be reached at 937-5713 or brindge@postandcourier.com.