Hi, everyone.  Today I'm talking about Beagles and other dogs I have known, prompted by my friend Rebeca Schiller who blogged about humiliating her Beagle, Trumbo by posting his overweight picture on Facebook.  I've only known two Beagles in real life, and I didn't really like either one of them.  Neither did my daughter's long haired Chihuahua, but I did manage to humiliate him once.  I'll tell you about that shortly.

My first "Beagle" was a half Beagle, half Basset Hound pound puppy named Basil.  My daughters knew I wanted a Basset, so they rescued Basil from certain death in the pound.  Of course, I had to foot the bill!  From day one, it was apparent Basil had only two goals in life - to eat all the food he could find, and to escape from prison, i.e. my back yard with the chain link fence secluded by fifteen foot Arbor Vitae.  He loved the chase, and could only be bribed back into my car with an expensive cut of meat, like sirloin steak.  Basil lived with with us about two months.  The last time I saw him he was headed east through the woods, aiming for the golf course.  I waved, wished him well, and returned home to enjoy a nice supper of fillet Mignon,  small baked potato, and salad with a nice red wine.  I think I even toasted the little half bast - er, Basset!

The other Beagle I knew was a purebred named Hank, who liked three things - his chow, hunting with his daddy, Jerry, and escaping his nice chain link dog run to annoy the daylights out of all the neighborhood cats and my granddogger, Xoxchipili.  For some unknown impulse, Xoxchi had an unreasoning hatred of Beagles.  Every one he saw, he wanted to fight.  Since he only weighed five and a half pounds, I thought he had a serious weight disadvantage, but he didn't see it that way. Neither did Hank, a big, friendly doofus who just wanted to play. 

Once Xoxchi stayed with me while his mommy took a two week trip to California with a friend. One sunny afternoon Xoxchi  and I had lunch on the patio. I was editing Ghost Walk and Xoxchi was sunning himself in the cool October air.  I had Xoxchi's leash looped on one of those cast iron hooks used to hold a bird feeder in the garden.   Sure enough, here comes Hank, trotting down the driveway, his floppy tongue hanging out of his mouth, dripping drool as he looked for a playmate.  Xoxchi lunged after Hank so hard and fast that when he reached the end of  his leash, he took a couple of low, swinging arcs through the air before I rescued him.  Envisioning having to explain to my daughter how her dog hanged himself, I called Jerry to come pick up Hank, and only took Xoxchi out on a leash for bathroom duties.  That brings us to the story of how I humiliated him.

Once, he was staying with me in weather that was cold, wet, rainy, and snowy.  Bred for southern climes, aye Chihuahua, he hated to perform his ablutions in rain or snow, so I bought him a fur lined parka.  Problem was, the only color they had in his size was pink.  What the heck, I thought, dogs are color blind.  He ducked his head when the cats walked by.  I swear, they were snickering.  Day after day, he was reluctantly coaxed into the back yard.  Then one night we had "sneet," a mixture of freezing rain and snow.  He decided that "cross-dressing" wasn't such a bad deal, and gratefully, if not proudly wore his pink parka!  

Xoxchipili

(Aztec for "God of the Volcanoes."

It fit - he thought he was hot stuff!)

Settling down for a cuppa and a biscuit.

I did eventually get my purebred Basset Hound.  His name was Sir Bernard Kensington Paddington, but that's a story for another day, perhaps tomorrow.