CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- During her frequent travels, Charleston psychiatrist Gina Puzzouli is drawn to quirky little neighborhoods. She lingers and often purchases unusual, secondhand items and frequents hip restaurants or coffeehouses.

Downtown Charleston could be like that, Puzzouli thought, so four years ago she opened Stray Dog Antiques on Hale Street. She provided most of the initial inventory from her extensive collection of art and well-worn items that crowded her home, a contemporary loft in the building next door.

She filled the spacious first floor with items that caught her eye at estate sales and secondhand and antique shops near and far. Two years ago, she gutted and renovated the building's second floor. The space turned out so beautifully that she used it as an art gallery before Puzzouli filled it with her growing collection of saleable paintings, small bits of furniture and household items.

"I'm really out of my realm of knowledge here. I'm a psychiatrist. I buy what I like," she said. "My grandparents had a store. Perhaps they gave me the courage to do this."

The enticing and substantial inventory fills every tabletop, display case and counter and covers every wall. Customers with large handbags keep them pressed tightly to their sides to avoid accidentally knocking something over.

Puzzouli summed up her eclectic shop with a conversation she once had with a customer who said, "I kind of feel like I walked into somebody's imagination."

Her sense of style leads her to some savvy purchases. She pointed to a table that held a collection of oversized glass domes that are all the rage since Renovation Hardware featured them in a catalogue. Their retail prices were between $300 to $600.

"These are hand blown. They're 100 years old," she said. They're priced at $100.

When popular stores feature reproductions of older furniture and accessories, customers can sometimes find the real thing at Stray Dog. A couple came in looking for a drop leaf table similar to one featured in Pottery Barn for about $1,000. Puzzouli had three, including a solid mahogany one for $250 of incomparably better quality than the new version.

"I like the aesthetics of Pottery Barn, but they wouldn't be able to sell that in a yard sale in five years," Puzzouli said of the construction quality of modern versus older furniture.

Recently, she noticed that pieces of vintage costume jewelry and accessories were selling well, so she set up clothes racks and hung an array of dresses, jackets and coats that were "smart" when they were popular years ago. They're smart again.

Customers, mostly young girls, snatch them up.

"I find cool, funky stuff. The young girls especially look so cute in them," she said.

About 20 percent to 30 percent of the clothes she buys were sewn by the owners in an era when many women made their own clothes. An avid sewer herself, Puzzouli appreciates the skill and effort that went into making the garments. She often repairs the damaged pieces she finds.

"It's fun to get a piece in and bring it life," she said.

Indeed, the concept of providing a second life for older items motivates many of Puzzouli's purchase decisions. She bought an old metal storage locker unit she found on the third floor of Merrill's Photo when the Hale Street store went out of business. Placed by the front door of a busy family's home, the cubbies on top and open spaces with hooks below would make a perfect place to stow jackets, boots, book and gym bags, she thought.

"I like stuff. I like old, used stuff that's been loved and cared for by somebody else," she said. "I also love the stories that go with them. Sometimes I buy them because of the stories. If it has a cool story, I tell the girls [sales] so they can share it with the customer."

Textiles are a weakness of hers. She admires good fabrics and handmade crocheted and knitted pieces. "You know somebody spent the better part of a winter making this," she said as she picked up an intricate crocheted antimacassar.

She buys items that speak to her, knowing that they may never leave her store. A devoted vegetarian and animal lover, she was inexplicably drawn to a large stuffed boar's head she spotted. She named him Truffles and hung him in the shop where it stayed for two years.

Truffles' slight smile greeted her everyday from his position at the top of the stairs. She figured he'd always be there, but eventually a well-known Charleston restaurant owner, also an unflinching vegetarian, bought it.

"She was drawn to him. He spoke to her, too," she said.

As she told that story, a customer from Michigan paused to ask the price of a framed print portraying the back view of a nude large-bottomed woman. "I saw that and thought, 'Now, there's a woman with confidence,'" she said. The print adorned the back of Puzzouli's kitchen counter for several months before making its way to the showroom.

The man bought the print.

Out of town customers frequently find her, as well as regulars who wander in on lunch hours or lazy Saturday afternoons. Business isn't exactly booming, but Stray Dog is still open, and has grown, since its inception four years ago. She won't be leaving her day job as a psychiatrist any time soon, and the store's probably not going to provide any retirement funds.

"I get a lot of warm fuzzies from it," she said of her determination to keep her downtown business alive. "Charleston has been very good to me. I would like to come to this store."