Mornings With Barney

Copyright © 2009 by Dick Wolfsie

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wolfsie, Dick.

Mornings with Barney : the true story of an extraordinary beagle / by Dick Wolfsie.

p. cm.

9781602393530

1. Barney (Dog) I. Title.
PN1992.8.A58W654 2008
791.4502' 80929—dc22

2008034295

Printed in the United States of America

This book is dedicated to Mary Ellen and Brett. Without their patience with Barney—and their love for me—this story would have ended where it began.

Had I lost my mind?
Why would a seasoned television reporter do something like this? I shuffled the beagle into the backseat of my old 1978 Chevy Monte Carlo, adjusted the rearview mirror to keep him visible, and hoped that this approach to solving the problem was only temporary.

For the past week the dog had been an intruder in our home. And all of us had been his victims. “Victims” is not the word I would have chosen, but my wife, Mary Ellen, and my three-year-old son, Brett, decided it was the appropriate label. It was hard to argue.

As I drove to work, I checked the mirror constantly. The little interloper had gnawed through his new polyesternylon-blend leash. Did I know at the time that this trip would signal the beginning of a television legend in Central Indiana? No, I wasn't that smart. I had only one goal in mind: I wanted to save my marriage from this home wrecker.

The day I found the dog, I began my routine as I had every workday for the four previous months with the 3:30 AM buzz of the alarm. Even though I was a morning person, this new early wake-up time seemed contrary to the U.S. Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

I opened the front door of our Tudor home to get a sense of the weather. A few of my television segments in the winter were shot with me outside, standing in snow and ice, telling people (as though they were morons) to drive slowly. I had great respect for our meteorologist's overnight predictions, but there was nothing more accurate than getting smacked in the face with a frigid blast of midwestern January wind if you wanted to assess the current conditions.

It was bone-aching cold that morning, but before I turned back from the front door to retrieve still another layer of protection I had left on the sofa, a pair of soulful brown eyes stared up at me from the bushes. This was not the first time a beautiful pair of peepers had gotten me in trouble, but in the past, the glances had always been attached to a body with two comely legs, not four.

Then it began: a howl that I would hear on a daily basis for the next twelve years. That first time wasn't just a howl, it was a plea to open my home to a complete stranger, one who had possibly lived a good deal of his life on the streets of Indianapolis and now needed to find a place he could destroy all his own.

On closer inspection, I realized the creature was a beagle. Black and white and brown. And shivering. Despite his disheveled look, he appeared well-fed, so I assumed he had run away from a neighbor's home. But he had no collar. What he did have was a certain presence. For more than a few seconds, I just watched him as he vied for my attention. His head didn't budge but his eyes followed my every move. Then he sat up on his hind legs and flicked his paw at me, like he was giving me a high five. I was captivated. At the time it struck me as odd, the effect he had on me. Now I understand.

I couldn't leave the little guy out in the cold. I picked him up and was surprised he was so compliant.
What a sweet dog,
I thought. My wife and son were still asleep upstairs, and waking them seemed unnecessary. I placed the dog on the rug in the living room and he was content ... so tired from his apparent journey that I figured it was safe to just leave him there to rest for a few hours. My reporting obligations for the early morning show usually got me home by 7:30, almost a half-hour before the rest of the Wolfsies crawled out of bed. By the time I got back, I could explain the dog's presence and decide what to do next. What was the harm in that?

I'm an idiot.

That morning I reported live from the Boat, Sport & Travel Show, an annual event in Indianapolis that features everything for the sportsman and adventurer. One of my guests was a lumberjack who entertained the crowds with log-rolling and tree-chopping demonstrations. At the end of the program, as I prepared to head back, I told him about the beagle pup I had found on my doorstep. He flashed me a big, toothy smile and said, “Are you serious? You left a stray beagle alone, unattended in your house?” And with that, he gathered his tools, climbed into his sedan, and sped off. In Grimm's Fairy Tales, the woodsmen were good with foreshadowing, so I quickly headed home.

Fifteen minutes later, I pulled into our driveway. Lights were on all through the house. Not a good sign at this hour. Despite the chilly temperature, the door was slightly ajar, so I peeked in, hoping to see that the dog was still asleep on the rug. I hoped he had not crawled up onto the couch.

Yeah, he was on the couch . . . what was left of it, along with what was left of the shredded pillows. I stepped inside. The curtains had been literally yanked off their rods, and one designer high-heel shoe, minus the heel but with a new fashionable hole in the toe, sat in the middle of the kitchen floor. A corner of the dining room rug had been ripped up, and the kitchen trash can had been knocked over, with the contents distributed across the floor. Later, after an extensive inventory, we concluded that a lot had been ingested, as well.

Incredibly, he had not had an accident. What a good dog!

As I surveyed the wreckage, my son, Brett, descended the stairs with a beheaded teddy bear and an unstuffed lion, more casualties of the dog's multilevel tirade. Tears rolled down Brett's cheeks. He stared at the beagle, then shot a glance at his decapitated menagerie.

“Daddy, can we
not
keep him?”

Brett was not a dog person. Our cats, Benson and Lindsay, had been family members for several years and Brett was comfortable with their unassuming, laid-back style. The two felines barely acknowledged each other, save an occasional spat when they encountered the food bowl at the same time. In just the couple of hours that the new dog had occupied our house, the cats had already formed an alliance to protect their turf. They began tormenting the trespasser by pawing and hissing at him. I don't think Barney had much experience with cats and was confused by the pandemonium he had created, clearly perplexed by the notion that another living creature might not take to him at first sight.

Mary Ellen was understandably a little stressed, not sure if this interloper might have a mean streak, so when Barney finally had the courage to lunge at one of the cats in selfdefense, my wife let out a scream that frightened both me and the beagle half to death. Brett, in the meantime, had grabbed a pillow from the couch and was swatting wildly at the dog. All this chaos was enough evidence for my son: we didn't need a dog, especially one that represented a serious threat to the relative tranquility in our home.

Mary Ellen zeroed in with a piercing gaze that I was unfamiliar with. After all these years, I don't remember her exact words, but I do remember that the expression on her face was one I was not familiar—or comfortable—with. Mary Ellen is a loving, giving, caring person, but she does not tolerate chaos. When she plans our vacations, she peruses maps, analyzes the landscape, and consults books for details of the climate and culture. “Are we planning a vacation or an invasion?” I always ask her. I was afraid what she was planning now.

No, the beagle had not made a good first impression. Mary Ellen offered me the “opportunity to return him.” She sure knew how to phrase things. This seemed like a reasonable request. Wait a second—I didn't know where he came from.

“What's his name?” Mary Ellen asked.

“I have no idea. We just met.”

That morning I had done a segment at a new café in Danville, Indiana, patterned after the old Andy Griffith Show. I guess the name Barney (as in Fife) was on my mind. He could have ended up being an Opie or a Floyd or even a Griffith. No, he was going to be Barney.

Mary Ellen, then an administrator at Community Hospital in Indianapolis, headed off for work and offered to drop Brett off at preschool, which was normally my job. She never said it, but I think she expected me to deal with the problem without telling her the details. She didn't want the dog, but the thought of me turning him loose or taking him to the pound would have disturbed her. Mary Ellen was like this with mice, as well. She wanted to rid the house of pests, but the details of a rodent's demise and how it was disposed of were not to be discussed. Kinda like when people got whacked on
The Sopranos.

While Mary Ellen and Brett were gone, I scrutinized the entire house for any additional damage. I wasn't sure why I felt so protective of him, but I knew that if I had any hope of keeping this dog, I needed to keep one mess ahead of him.

And did he belong to someone? Had he escaped? Been kicked out of someone's house? I don't know why, but it never dawned on me that someone might be looking for this dog. Quite the contrary. This dog was the one doing the looking. And he had found me.

I also found a few things. The beagle had gotten down in the basement and clawed the drywall all the way through to the insulation. I also discovered he had mangled Brett's treasured Lego collection. I don't think he swallowed any of the pieces, but it was fair to say that none of them fit together anymore. I thought some of this stuff was hilarious. Apparently I was the only one.

No, Mary Ellen was not amused. She was a dog lover, but Barney would be a clear test of her true canine adoration. He seemed nothing like Sabra, the mixed breed we'd acquired just after we got married and moved to Columbus, Ohio. Sabra was what a dog was supposed to be: a joy, not a job. Nor was Barney like Tina, Mary Ellen's dog when she was growing up in Michigan. Tina was a border collie. Barney was borderline crazy. It would be hard for Mary Ellen to make the transition from previous loyal and protective companions to a hyper hound. My wife liked her dogs docile, not demonic. The Wolfsies had wanted a new pet ever since Sabra died, but the plan was that we would select the dog, not the other way around.

Barney remained at home for almost a week while I went to work. It seemed like a year to Mary Ellen. His behavior did not improve. On the second day, I locked him in an empty downstairs bedroom while I was on location for a television shoot. He howled so incessantly that Mary Ellen had to tie him up in the backyard. This was not a dog with a lot of experience being tethered to anything. More howling. Howling for the remainder of the decade and beyond. And this was week one.

“I think he misses you,” Mary Ellen told me after several days. “And he loves you.” I was being set up. I knew it . . . she knew it ...hell, the dog knew it. I was unsure what my wife's motive was in this declaration. Clearly, the dog was going to pose a problem if we adopted him, but Mary Ellen was good at reading me—over the years she had become a little too good. She knew the dog and I had the potential for some serious separation anxiety if our relationship had to end. And so Mary Ellen went on the offensive. Her mission was first and foremost homeland security, but I think she also knew it was already too late to break up the relationship between Barney and me. We were soul mates. Mary Ellen thought we had the potential to be cell mates.

For most of the next week, I covered for Barney. Any mischief that occurred during the day, I tried to clean up before Mary Ellen got home, and I attempted, sometimes unsuccessfully, to always keep him within my sight. If I did have to leave the house, I again locked him in that basement bedroom. But after the second day of confinement, he chewed and scratched through the corrugated wood door, creating a ragged porthole he could stick his state of the art nose through.

Mary Ellen tried to be understanding. She really did. But the handwriting was on the wall—what was left of it. “Look, this is real simple, Dick. We have to find the dog a loving home or a minimum-security facility. Either that or you take him to work with you.”

She was quite serious. She never actually used the phrase “It's either me or the dog,” but implicit in the original options presented was the recognition that the dog needed my supervision 24/7 if he was to stay a member of our household. Oh, yeah: Mary Ellen kept reminding me how much he adored me. She kept bringing that up. She knew exactly what she was doing. She loved it when a plan worked.

She was right, of course. I was head-over-paws crazy about the dog. Yes, he had pain-in-the-ass written all over him, but I knew I could overlook it—the way my elementary school teachers had failed to do with me. Like Barney, I had always been a troublemaker, but most of my teachers never saw through the mischief—and I was judged by the disruption I caused in their lives, not the smiles I was bringing to others. That's the potential I saw in Barney. He might be disruptive, but he could be an impending source of amusement. That dog was me when I was in grade school.

Maybe there was even more to it. A dog is man's best friend, and I was a man who needed a friend. Oh, I knew everybody in Indianapolis and everybody knew me. But my whole existence was about trying to please people, then waiting for their judgment or that of my bosses. I was one of those TV personalities you either found very funny or extremely annoying. I yearned for a companion, but one who wouldn't say, “Boy, the show really stunk today.” Or “You are a hoot, Wolfsie.” Actually, I wanted somebody who wouldn't say anything.

Oh, and he was beagle. And a guy. A frou frou French poodle would not have worked. Thanks for not making me explain that.

Yeah, I was hooked. It would be nice to have a furry friend next to me in the car as I drove back and forth to work. I didn't give much thought as to what to do with him during the two hours I was on TV.

I also hoped his behavior would change. But it was my life that changed. And the lives of everyone else Barney touched.