Beech Tree News Network

I don’t know why I can’t seem to have a normal dog.  I am sixty years old, and you’d think by this point in my life, I would have figured out what constitutes a normal dog and be able to find one.  Obviously, that is not the case.  Let’s review.  There was Spot, the mutt, who wouldn’t stop killing my neighbor’s roosters.  Joe, the bird dog, who had a glove and sock fetish and would take either or both from the clothes line or Garey’s truck or from beside you in the garden as soon as your back was turned.  He was fast, and it was no use to chase him into the pasture, because he would roll the items in cow manure before you could get to him.  You had to count those things a loss. Then there was Scout, the Border collie, who wouldn’t stop chasing cars and met his demise doing so.  I thought when I got a Beagle, I had surely entered the world of normalcy.  Boy, was I wrong.
    It’s not like I demand a lot from a dog.  I don’t expect my dog to fetch or sit or roll over, although there have been times, after a night of listening to incessant barking, I have wished I’d taught one or more of them to play dead.  All I want from a dog is for him to hang around the yard, play with my granddaughter and bark at the occasional stranger.  I didn’t think that was too much to ask, but evidently it is.
    My Beagle, Copper, is now three years old.  You’d think he’d be out of the chewing stage by now, but of course, he isn’t because he is my dog.  Nothing is safe. He carries off my granddaughter’s shoes which she removes before getting on the trampoline.  He grabs Garey’s tools if he lays them down while he is working on something.  Garey has had to chase him down to retrieve screw drivers, wrenches and hammers.  If I open the front door to carry in groceries and fail to close it behind me, Copper dashes in, heads straight for my granddaughter’s toy room and runs out with one of her stuffed animals.  This fall, he carried off the yellow garden stakes we used to secure netting over the sweet potato vines—he didn’t care for the green ones—then carried off the sweet potatoes as they lay in piles drying.  He has a collection of those shiny aluminum pie pans.  I think he’s part magpie.
    We returned from a weekend in Alabama to find Garey’s heart pill bottle chewed to bits and the meds missing.  Garey orders his prescriptions from the VA, and they arrive in plastic bottles with childproof caps wrapped in bubble wrap and enclosed in padded mailers, which means they were no challenge for Copper.  He doesn’t seem to have suffered any lasting effects from having eaten a prescription of heart medication pills, because he is my dog.  Garey had to call his doctor to tell him his dog ate his heart pills.  Luckily, the doctor believed him.  I had to put one of those drink barrels, like you see at convenience stores with drinks iced down in them, on the front porch for delivery people to put our packages in.  It doesn’t match the rest of the décor, but I had little choice.  I don’t want to come home to Copper wearing the hat and snow boots I ordered for my granddaughter.
    When we first got Copper, he chased rabbits all the time, which is what a normal Beagle does.  Last month sometime, he lost interest in rabbits and turned his attention to coyotes, especially at night.  He circles the house, at all hours of the night and early morning, barking and barking at the glaring eyes in the nearby woods.  Garey has made several attempts at getting him by the collar in order to put him up for the night so we can actually get a decent night’s sleep, but Copper takes off in the direction he is barking, stopping occasionally to see if Garey is following him.  Garey returns to the house, saying, “Timmy must have fallen in the well again,” referring to the way Lassie insisted on people following him to the place where there was trouble.
    I got Copper a dog toy.  It’s a yellow rubber bone with a red and white rope attached.  He paid it no mind.  I put it in Garey’s recliner while he was watching an Alabama game, so it would pick up his scent—Copper loves Garey.  I had Garey give the toy to him.  Copper took it and ran off down in the pasture and out of sight with it.  He brought it back three days later.  It was in pristine condition.  There wasn’t a chew mark one on it.  He dropped it at my feet as I strung Christmas lights, as if to say, “I’m not that easy.”  He hasn’t touched it since. 
    Maybe I should just stick with cats.  They’re like me, nobody expects them to be normal.