The Beagle is Beyond Me

In my defense, let me begin by saying that I am an animal lover.

My animal cred includes raising and releasing dozens of songbirds, keeping pets of every group of vertebrates in my preschool classroom, learning to wrangle pygmy goats, cleaning

the pens of pot bellied pigs, caring for a hamster through her surgery, postponing a weekend vacation by several hours to take a rat to the vet, rearranging my life and house to accommodate a blind cat in her last year of life, spending weeks nursing a car-struck kitty back to health, scrambling to find veterinary care for a squirrel with a broken leg and a young barn owl who was dehydrated, and even risking real injury to rescue a northern harrier with a broken wing. A dog has never been a live-in companion before now, but I enjoy dogs and am eager to know my friends' canine companions. I am an animal girl.


Full disclosure: I do swat mosquitoes and flies, and see to it that the stinkbugs that find their way into our house meet a swift but merciful end.  Spiders I capture and take outside whenever possible, although I have been known to leave them in the corners because they help catch the stinkbugs (this is life in the mid-Atlantic).

But the beagle.  The beagle is beyond me.

Beautiful Girl!

Emily and Aric brought Atucker into their home as a little puppy not long after they got married, and we first met her when they brought her out on the airplane for their first visit back to California after they got married, Christmas of 2007.  Our Granddog!  We welcomed her, we fawned over her, we bought her holiday gifts and made sure she had everything she needed, and we even locked our 17 year old cat in the laundry room for a few days to give the puppy free run of the house and yard.  She was - and is - a beautiful creature, just as she was - and is - an unmannerly beast.  But I could forgive that in a puppy.  She was so little, after all!  Puppies jump on people, right?  Puppies steal food from the table and bark at nothing, bay at everything and piddle on the floor.  Right?

We had many visits with Atucker as guests in Em and Aric's home before we moved out to DC.  Special treats were in our bags for her, we took her on walks, loved her up, and began to wonder when she would get over some of those puppy behaviors.

Friends, she hasn't gotten over them. Listing all of her transgressions seems unkind (and would take volumes).  Just know that each day comes with some standard situations that run the gamut from annoying to crazymaking.  Okay, I will tell you this one:  every time anyone comes to the door we are treated to Atucker's loud barking, baying, and snarling.  This includes the mailman, the UPS man, neighbors and friends, and imaginary guests who

aren't really there.  She responds to no one - no one at all - who attempts to quiet her, and must be dragged away, howling and snapping, by the collar if we want to open the door to someone.

I try to keep positive, and think about the good she brings to the household.  She is the definition of patience and kindness with the children, which is a big mark in the plus column for her.  And, one day when someone that looked a little sketchy came to the door, I actually appreciated her threatening noises. And . . . well . . . that's probably it.

What has moved me to the edge with her is what she did the other day when Em and I were out with the children.  Here is the story:  we had received a package from my sister and were delighted to open it and find that she had sent us a lovely handmade Christmas treat called peppernuts.  These are a seasonal, ethnic treat that are a lot of effort to make, and my sister is a master.  The gift almost made me cry because it was so thoughtful and so very welcomed.  Knowing that the dog likes to snatch food left near the edge of the table, we put the precious packages in the middle (and it's a wide table) before we left the house.

Evidently Atucker was as excited about the peppernuts as we were because when we got back the packages were on the floor, torn open, all peppernuts consumed, and the table had multiple deep gouges in it where she had scrambled to climb up.

That was last Thursday.  As some great wisdom had arranged it, Em, Aric and little ones were leaving town the next day and Atucker was taken to spend this time with their friends who are dog lovers. This was a very good thing, as I was so sad and angry and completely confused about the value of this animal that it was hard to be in the house with her. 

The question, I realize, is not at its core about the dog.  The question is about how people who love each other and want to live together find a way to work with what seems acceptable for some and intolerable to others. Do we do things your way?  My way?  Can we find another way? There are always tensions in household relationships, things to work out about housework and schedules and decorating how we relate to each other and so forth. But somehow this beast brings out the touchiest part of finding the middle path. She's not, after all, a painting to argue over placement on wall, or a bathroom that needs cleaning, or an impatient remark that needs to be apologized for. She's a part of the family. Like the crazy wife in the attic or the uncle given to alcoholic rages, she is here and must be dealt with.  Emily and Aric love her and find her behavior something they are willing to put up with. Me, not so much.

So on Saturday, after a couple of days to breathe through this, I was in the beauty shop reading People magazine, waiting to get my curls trimmed.  An article about Drew Barrymore caught my eye, probably because she is so cute.  She was talking about some of the best advice she'd been given, and said something like this:  when you really don't know what to do and are banging your head against a wall, just love more. That's all. Just love more.

Well.  That's not new wisdom, but it is a call back to the basics of family life.  Just love more.  I have two more days to figure out what "loving more" looks like before the kids and the dog come home.  Wish me luck.