City Lights:

When I lived in Connecticut years ago, there was a hardware store by the newsroom whose owner had a dachshund. Her name was Casey, and two or three times a week, she would wander out of the store and take a nap on the sidewalk. As I made my reporting rounds, it was a common sight to watch pedestrians leaning over to give her belly rubs — an image that I remember better than most of the stories I wrote there.

I love dachshunds. I’m not much of a pet person and don’t know if I’ll ever adopt a dog, but with the possible exception of Kate Winslet, there’s nothing that melts my heart faster than the large, imploring eyes of a wiener dog. Watching them trot down the sidewalk on those 2-inch legs as their ears bounce up and down is proof positive that God has a soft spot, or at least a whimsical sense of humor.

In Connecticut, I had to make do with a single dachshund in town. Huntington Beach, though, is without question the dachshund capital of Southern California. That may be largely thanks to one shop at Old World Village, which started life selling coffee beans three decades ago and has now branched out to offer clothing, mouse pads, bumper stickers, calendars and just about anything else you can stick a dachshund on.

The store’s name was originally the Coffee Mill, but as canine merchandise began to dominate, its owner re-christened it Paws at the Coffee Mill.

Now, the coffee supply consists of 12 wooden barrels of beans behind the counter, and the rest of the shop is . . . well, just about the greatest niche business in Orange County, unless there’s a retailer I don’t know about that specializes in root beer and koalas.

Who was the mad genius who came up with such an idea? I decided to pay Paws at the Coffee Mill a visit Thursday and find out. As it turns out, the original Coffee Mill was the brainchild of owner Inge McKellop’s parents, who were among the original tenants at Old World Village when the shopping center opened in the late 1970s.

The store’s inventory originally centered on coffee, but when a local dachshund club brought their prize wieners to the Coffee Mill and offered to put on a race, a tradition was born. At first, the races were annual events, but as their popularity grew, they expanded to once a month — and once a week during Oktoberfest, the shopping center’s busiest time of the year, from September to November.

McKellop, who took over the store when her parents retired, spends a considerable amount of her time on the job scouring the Internet, catalogs and pet expos for dachshund products. Among her recent finds are a beer stein, a nutcracker and a blown-glass statue. Oh, and boxer shorts.

Obviously, a job like this is a labor of love. But when McKellop was growing up, did she ever imagine her role in life would be Surf City’s No. 1 dachshund supplier?

Far from it. Growing up, McKellop had dogs around the house, but she went into the restaurant business after college. She went on to open an espresso bar at Old World Village and took over the Coffee Mill after she had her daughter, since it was easier to look after a child there. Then the dachshund club arrived, and the rest was history.

McKellop’s daughter is now 21. And whatever path she chooses in life, her mother wants to make sure she follows her bliss as well.

“I tell my daughter, whatever you choose to do in life, you don’t want to feel like you’re going to work,” McKellop said. “You have to really love what you do.”

City Editor MICHAEL MILLER can be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at [email protected] .