November 30th I had been home from my Mom's house in Oregon for about 12 hours, and was on my way home from therapy that morning. I pulled off the freeway and WHAT do I see out running in the middle of traffic?
THIS BEAGLE.
I looked at him running in and around traffic in the middle of the street while I was waiting at the light for about 3 seconds before I mentally said "Aww, crap."
I knew I had to catch this darn dog. He's a beagle. We had a beagle (named Happy)when I was little and the dog ran away 5 days a week. He spent recess at the elementry school, lunch at the high school, back to the middle school for afternoon break, and if he hadn't been caught by someone at that point, then he'd usually follow some kids home and play with them all afternoon until dinner time, when their mother would call them in and notice the random beagle hanging around and call our number on the tag. Every day around 5pm the phone would ring and my mom would pile the kids in the car to go pick up the dog. Assuming she hadn't picked him up earlier at one of the kids schools. My sisters have many hostile memories of sitting out in front of their schools holding on to Happy waiting for my mom to come pick him up. Happy also ran across the stage at an assembly once and across the field at a football game. "Hey, Greg, isn't that your DOG?!" My brother got a lot of crap for it. But we all loved Happy. He was just a hound. A very naughty hound, who went potty in the house, jumped six foot fences, climbed chicken wire without hesitation, climbed wood piles and dug several foot deep holes in his quest to ESCAPE THE YARD.
I knew when I saw this dog out in traffic that he wasn't going to go home. Wherever he belonged, his nose was leading the way and he wouldn't go home even if he wanted to. Beagles are just like that. How we ended up with Happy to begin with was he wandered into the yard one day. My mom took him to the pound but his family never showed up and my mom went back and rescued him before he was to be put down. My first word was "doggie."
I went through the intersection, flipped a U and started calling to the dog. That got him out of the street right away. Because he wanted to get away from me! I chased him through the grocery store parking lot, and then down the street. An hour later, 6 or 7 close calls, a couple face plants in the mud, several attempts at bribery with McDonald's wrappers (once he saw they were empty he lost all interest) I finally cornered this darn dog in a particular backyard for the second time... and this time had the smarts enough to just WAIT for him to decide to leave. I set myself up in the only place he could get out at the narrowest section and just waited. When he decided to leave, and saw me blocking his exit he started doing an inch by inch inspection of the fence looking for weaknesses- like a velociraptor. (lol) He found none and started trying to make a run for it past me. He tried one way, then the other,but the passage was too narrow. He realized there was no way past me without me getting him. The whole time I had been chasing him, he had just been flat out scared. Unlike what my sister said, he was NOT playing a game with me. He was terrified. He didn't know what I wanted with him or what I was going to do with him. But in that backyard, he realized he was trapped. He finally just sat down and hung his head, looking ashamed... defeated. I kept waiting for him to make a run for it so I could catch him but then I realized he had given up! I tentatively inched towards him but he didn't move. After an hour of chasing him in the car and on foot, at least 3 miles from where we had started, this little dog just let me pick him up and carry him to the car.
I took him to PetSmart and had him scanned for a microchip, where I figured we would get a phone number and I would take the little stinker home, right? Um... no such luck. He wasn't chipped. I stared at the Banfield employee like they were speaking Swedish and had her scan him like 3 more times before I realized this dog really didn't have a chip. He had a collar, but no tag. There wasn't any damage to the collar either so the tag hadn't fallen off. We checked him all over for breeder tattoos but nothing. What's a $1,000 purebred beagle doing running around loose on the street with no ID and no microchip?
I didn't know what to do with him. I was also leaving in 36 hours for Utah for a week. Um....
I brought him home and debated about calling the pound. I decided that I would probably have better luck in finding his family myself so I put up notices on Craig's List, Fido Finder, Pet Harbor, the shelter's website and everything else I could think of. I checked all the lost dog notices. He was crawling with fleas so I gave him two baths and gave him a flea treatment before I set him up on the couch for the night, with a full belly of cat food. (It was all I had!
The next morning I checked my email and found... nothing. No one had responded to any of my notices. I had posted ads everywhere from SF Bay Area to Reno to Redding to Fresno... and nothing. Now this dog had spent the night in my home and I looked at him and I couldn't imagine calling animal control and having him thrown in the back of a scary metal cage.
Aw, crap.
I talked to just about everyone I knew. I called rescue groups. I plead my case to No Cal Beagle Rescue. No one helped. No one offered the kind of help I needed, other than to turn the dog in, but I just couldn't do it. I wanted to find his family, but I had to leave on this trip. I talked to my dad several times and he pressured me into calling my brother. Whose wife instantly said NO WAY. My brother said Sure!
And the dog was dropped off the night before I left for the airport. They ordered me to name him before he came otherwise he would be called "Javier" during his stay at their house, or something "equally gay" they informed me (with a hand flip and high squeaky voice- makes me think of Javier on Felicity, who I LOVED, but still, not for a dog!). He wasn't my dog and I had no plans on keeping him so I wasn't going to name him but I wasn't going to punnish the darn thing by having him called Javier for a week, so Charlie Brown Bagel was henceforth christened.
Charlie was extremely well behaved and utterly charming at my brother's house. He peed in the house, pooed on the carpet immediately after a walk, cried and howled for an hour at bedtime, did "revenge poops" in the crate (when they tried to crate him) and in the first 10 minutes he was put int he backyard to play, he jumped the six foot fence and was missing for 5 hours, leaving my brother driving around calling for him during the workday. (Luckily he happened to wander back to my brother's neighbor's house and was howling at their dog and my brother heard him, called for him, and he actually came!) I heavily compensated them for their charming houseguest with a Sweet Tooth Fairy and the BYU chocolate shop settlement when I got back from Utah. Ugh.
I was gone for almost a week and although I did get a few emails... Charlie's family never emerged. It has now been 7 weeks. After 30 days of possession, Charlie legally became mine. He was neutered on Saturday of last week and is currently a sporting an e-collar, making him look like a space alien, or like he has a lampshade on his head. lol
He came pre-trained on some things, he could sit, was housetrained (his antics at my brother's have been deciphered as marking, or as not being taken out when asked to be taken out since he couldn't be trusted in the backyard) and could fetch, and is learning to like a crate and this week just learned 'down' although he's not wild about the command and barks his contempt for the command before he goes lays down. lol He also knows "wait" pretty good!
The only problem we have at present is that my current housing only allows 2 pets. I know have 3. I completely and absolutely abhore those people who break the pet rules because I don't think it's fair to the animals. I now am one of those people. Am I ready to pick up and move if management tells me it's the dog or the unit? Not really. I have no idea where I would go. Where am I going to find housing that would allow 3 pets? Where would I come up with the money? Where would I come up with the energy? You know how much it costs to move a piano? But if I commit to adopting an animal, I am that animal's parent for life. If I decide to keep him, I will never give him up. Ever, no matter what. I am hoping they won't notice or care, or by the time they do I will be ready to move on. But at this point, I need more time.
December 1st, the day after I found him, after his 2 baths and flea treatments. Charlie probably weighed... 15 pounds? Very underweight, all ribs and bones, although this was a very flattering angle. You should have seen him from above- his waist was SO tiny... Even now people still comment on how small he is, not knowing his story and how much he has fattened up...
Here is Charlie at 18.6 pounds! A little fatter! Sporting his new red collar and his new Charlie Brown name tag! (With the classic yellow and black zig zag)
His official weight when he went in for his neuter was 20.4. Not too shabby! :)
I love my handsome little boy, and I have some great digging pictures (like the one in the header) that I'm going to post soon! Hopefully he will just keep getting better. As my dad said... we are kind of saving each other. I thought that was nice. Charlie gets me out of the house, takes me on walks, makes me talk to people at the dog park, at PetSmart... he is a very naughty little boy sometimes (he's never had an accident in my house though [knock on wood]) but I love him so, so much.
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