The best gifts don’t always come gift-wrapped. Sometimes they don’t even look like gifts.

But for my diminutive, soft-hearted 79-year-old mother, a small, strange-looking, malnourished hybrid pooch, found scared and alone in the middle of a busy local street, has added a touch of love, optimism and, yes, laughter to our Christmas season.

It’s proof that one of the ugliest dogs I’ve seen can win hearts and lighten souls, whatever the season.

In a way, Poochie is the last but most unique dog adopted as a result of the first-ever “Home for the Holidays” animal adoption event this month. The ironic thing is he was never showcased at the event.

He was at the Waco Humane Society that weekend, waiting for adoption or execution. The time in which an owner might be reunited with his or her lost dog had passed. No one came looking for Poochie.

His status went from lost dog to one desperately in need of a home.

My mother knew that full well. She had not forgotten young Poochie and was resolved that he would not meet his Maker. It seems he had already worked his magic over her in his quiet but loving way.

I found Poochie a week and a half before while I was driving in West Waco. I’d begun moving through a neighborhood intersection when I spotted this brindle-colored bit of a dog standing on the center stripe, either unable or unwilling to dodge the cars and trucks that converge there.

Another driver and I stopped and we rescued the poor dog, seemingly oblivious to the traffic and sure to perish because of it.

I did whatever I do when I come upon a lost dog. I dropped him off at Mom’s.

My mother has lived alone two and a half years since the death of my father from Alzheimer’s. She has a huge back yard and no dog to roam it. My wife and I originally bought the home thinking my parents might get another fuzzy, full-breed dog, as has long been the Whitaker way — mostly Airedales and Kerry Blues. But my father’s final years shelved that idea.

After caring for Dad at home until the end, the idea of caring for another, even a pooch, no doubt seemed immense, even intimidating, to my mother.

That said, Mom has a big heart for dogs. Whenever I found a pooch loose, I’d prevail on her to keep the lost dog while my wife and I sought the owners. Once, she briefly kept a massive but friendly German Shepherd that absolutely dwarfed her in size.

So what was it about Poochie that moved Mom? Hard to say. I know when, after failing to find the owner, I came over to her home to take him to the shelter, she looked upon him with real worry. So began her daily question of me thereafter: “Has anyone come to pick up Poochie?”

When Mom went to Home for the Holidays, she was distraught to find Poochie not among dogs up for adoption. She pressed me to check on his welfare.

Finally, not willing to risk his death, she offered to be his foster parent. Now she’s inquiring about becoming his owner. She’s already had his health checked by a local veterinarian and had him fixed at the Waco Animal Birth Control clinic. Go figure.

I asked Mom the other day why she would even bother to care for this dog, adoring though he may be. He’s not fuzzy. He looks as if several breeds had a train wreck converging into this one dog. His back is bowed, his spine stands out like a marimba because of how malnourished he is. One ear sticks up, the other doesn’t.

Mom always tells me the same thing. “He just seems to need me.” Something, perhaps, that her family no longer does, at least not in any sort of daily, heavily dependent sort of way — not the way kids do when they’re growing up, not the way a loved one does when he’s sick and dying.

But Poochie does need someone. And at last, someone needs Poochie, too.