Mornings With Barney (8 page)

Barney's most famous disappearance
would become a true media event. It never quite rose to Jimmy Hoffa proportions, but in local lore it was pretty close.

One morning I was upstairs in my home office working on a TV segment when it dawned on me that I had not seen Barney for almost an hour. Not seeing him for that long was either a very good sign or a very bad sign. If he was asleep, the world was a safer place. If he was ambulatory, trouble was in the next room, or had been ... or around the corner, or down the block, or who knew where.

I cased the entire house. No dog, and sure enough, the back screen door had a huge hole in it where Barney had ripped the wood partition to shreds. Yes, he had gotten out, had been out for up to an hour. This was not the kind of head start you want to give a beagle. I felt like the sheriff in
High Noon
. It was going to be tough to find a posse. No one in my house was going to sign up. I spent the rest of the day scouring the neighborhood alone.

I searched for him for an entire week. I placed signs within a three-mile radius of my neighborhood. The $100 reward generated a modicum of interest—not quite like the mug shots in the post office, but in both cases the culprits were slippery and on the run. Whenever I got a call suggesting he had been spotted, I'd head in that direction with a photo and a glimmer of hope. Nothing. Did people not know the difference between a beagle and a basset hound? Or did they think I didn't?

Many of the calls were about a beagle stray that lived downtown. I knew this was not Barney, but the little guy was quite a story himself. He had been living on the streets for several years, frequenting the back doors of local eateries. He was a survivor, a testimony to how a hound can make it on his own. Maybe Barney was rehearsing for his job.

My search did bring me into several, shall we say, transitional neighborhoods. “Have you seen this dog?” I'd ask, flashing his photo to a group of young hoodlums.

“Is he in trouble? What did he do? Are you a cop? Did he escape?”

“Yes, he escaped, but he's not a criminal. You guys are watching too much TV. I just want to find my dog.”

Every radio station in town was now asking its listeners to keep an eye out for a stray beagle. The term “stray beagle” is considered redundant by anyone who knows anything about dogs. Over the six days, the on-air pleas and my ad in the local paper resulted in more than fifty calls from people who had either found or had seen a wayward beagle.

Several beagle rescue groups called to see if they could help by canvassing the pounds and humane societies. These volunteers are busy people—busier than, say, St. Bernard rescuers who, like Maytag repairmen, spend their time sitting around waiting for work. There just aren't a great number of lost St. Bernards in shelters, so the volunteers go out and rescue cocker spaniels and boxers every once in a while, just to keep their hand in the rescue business. Beagle rescuers are full-timers. Every beagle is a future escapee.

Some of the calls about Barney were downright bizarre. A vacationer in Florida called to tell me he saw a stray beagle at the Miami airport. Someone else claimed to have spotted Barney in a bookstore in North Carolina. I felt like the person in charge of logging Elvis sightings. People even called with female beagles, just in case I was confused. Or Barney was. One lady claimed she had seen Barney hanging around the NBC affiliate in town, implying, I guess, that he was thinking of breaking his contract and going with another station.

News director Lee Giles was concerned. It hadn't quite reached the point where the dog was
officially
a part of the morning show. Barney wasn't in the news open or used in station promotions. Oh, he was omnipresent on every show. An omnipresence that kept on giving.

After thirty years in the business, Giles's heart and head told him that the dog's absence from the program had caused quite a stir. But the decision was if and how to capitalize on his disappearance. If we milked his departure and he never returned, well, that was just a bummer for the audience. Not good for ratings and water-cooler talk. If he magically appeared one day, we'd seem like saviors. If we ignored the whole thing, maybe people would forget there was an adorable beagle puppy missing from the show. That would work. Yeah, right.

What did I want to do? I just wanted my dog back. Maybe Barney was on to a new life, a new doorstep. But in my gut, I knew that the dog and I had a deal—not a written contract, of course, but an emotional one. I knew it from day one. Call it a pre-pup agreement.

It was clear from viewer feedback that the audience was aware and anxious for updates. Radio disc jockeys asked their viewers to keep an eye out for the little bandit.
Daybreak
anchor Dave Barras inquired about Barney each morning during my first segment. I went to the Humane Society and the city pound every day in case he had been found. But after three days, I was losing hope.

I couldn't quite figure out how I felt during that time. If Barney was gone forever, I clearly had lost a business partner. But it was going to be tougher losing my best friend. I had never had a buddy at my side 24/7—man or beast. Or woman. I liked somebody sleeping next to me Sunday through Thursday, and that seat across from mine in the car was going to seem awfully empty. I stared at it for a week as I drove to work. It didn't seem possible he was gone. I wasn't sure I would find him. Maybe, just maybe, this time he'd find me. Like he did the first time.

Some of the calls and letters might have been pranks. It was hard to tell. But I had to take every sighting seriously. I could dismiss most of the tips after a brief conversation. A description of his coat markings, size, and weight were good clues whether this might have been Barney, but on several occasions, I needed to make a house call to confirm the identity of the dog. In many cases, the caller had simply seen a beagle in his or her vicinity, and while I did make a few excursions across town, I was convinced I'd never find him by willy-nilly combing a strange neighborhood.

He had to be relatively close to home—certainly within a few miles—so as a general rule, I did not respond to sightings outside our county. I deserved the dumber-than-a-box-of-biscuits award. He really could have been anywhere. Not only can beagles wander for miles, but I did not consider that he might have been picked up by someone in a car and transported across the county from Indy.

The magic call came on the seventh day of his disappearance. A lady in Southport, Indiana, was excited: “I think I have your dog, Mr. Wolfsie. I heard them talk about it on the radio.”

“That can't be. Southport is twenty miles from my house.”

She described the dog. It sounded like Barney, but no way. Not Southport. And he wasn't wearing a collar, which meant it couldn't be Barney. Thanks for calling. I was about to hang up, when something made me ask: “What else can you tell me about him?”

“Well, he howled all day, he jumped up and ate our dinner off the dining room table, he sleeps right next to me . . .”

“I'll be there in thirty minutes.”

Sure enough, it was Barney. I was ecstatic. So was the lady who found him. She looked a little flustered. Was Barney happy to see me? No, he expected to see me. That was part of the game he played. I run away; you find me. He was probably miffed it took a whole week.

That was a Sunday afternoon and I decided to surprise the TV audience with his return on Monday morning during my segment on WISH-TV. I planned an entire segment where Barney would make a surprise entrance.

That evening, the phone rang. “Have you found your little friend?” an elderly woman inquired. “I've been so worried.”

“Yes, I have,” I said, beaming. “Aren't you nice to call? You can see us both tomorrow on TV.”

“The dog will be on TV?”

“Yes, of course. Isn't that how you knew to call?”

“No, I'm eighty years old and don't watch TV. But I saw your ad in the paper. Every Sunday night I call everyone who's lost a pet just to see if they found their little friend. I'm glad you found him. I have six more calls to make. Bye.”

The next morning, I did the morning show from my house. Barney made an entrance through my dining room doors. I could hear the cheers from the crew in the studio. I truly believed I could feel the sighs of relief all over central Indiana. I admit I milked his return for every “ooh” and “ahh” I could get. But everywhere I went for the next month, all people could say was, “I'm so glad he's back” “We were so worried” “What would you have done if you hadn't found him?”

A variation of that last question haunted me during Barney's entire life. What was I without Barney?

Did Barney really walk to Southport? Even I doubt that. He hitched a ride from someone, jumped onto a UPS truck, or hopped into the backseat of a 4x4, then hopped back out at the first stop. The lady who found him said he'd just appeared on her front step and howled to come in. That was Barney. He did not relish spending the evening outside in the cold. He knew he had to find a hot meal and a warm body to sleep next to. It was simply a matter of charming the pants off someone. And he was very good at that. He could do that to anyone.

Except Mary Ellen. She always saw through
both
of us. A common question fielded by my wife over the years was: “Is he the same at home as on TV?” This, of course, was usually in reference to Barney, not me. But when Mary Ellen wasn't sure who the questioner meant, she simply said “high maintenance,” which pretty much covered all bases.

Sometimes she used the terms
loyal, loving,
and
good with people.
I guess I had never realized how similar the dog and I were. There was one difference. Except when I accidentally threw away my paycheck, Mary Ellen seldom caught me in the garbage.

When we moved into a new house in the mid-nineties we solved one of our major problems: Barney's running away. We installed an electric fence, which delivers a mild zap if your pet tries to venture outside the parameters of the yard. With Barney's wanderlust now controlled, he seemed to mellow a bit, especially as he aged. But he only mellowed at home. Not at work.

At each new remote location, his natural beagle curiosity led him into constant exploration because there were always new people to meet, or maybe people
with
meat. But back at the house, once he had established that there was no way to score a treat and had been gently reminded by his electric collar that he was confined to the yard, he took the option I always favored when my basic desires were thwarted: He took a nap.

Unlike his daily excursions with me, home had become a bit old hat. Except for an occasional surprise visitor at the front door, life was mundane. His breeding required the equivalent of a fox hunt each morning to get the juices flowing. That mission was accomplished on TV. Then it was back to the lair—
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
. He seldom watched TV, although I was struck over the years at how many people sent me photos of their dogs watching Barney on the boob tube.

Barney followed me around from room to room, always preferring to nap within a few feet of my location. This allowed him to lobby for inclusion in any errands I had to run around town. He'd sit up on his back legs and howl at me when I put on my shoes. I was a soft touch. I never went anywhere without him.

On occasion, he'd nest next to Mary Ellen on the couch, especially if I had to leave the house without him. Barney seldom had much to do with Brett, who continued to believe that cats were where it was at.

Brett was never cruel to Barney. Not once. It was simply a loveless, arranged marriage. Brett had an unspoken deal with this devil: I'll stay out of your face; you stay out of my room.

That was the reality of life at home. Some people may have thought that Barney was a laugh a minute 24/7. That he led some kind of celebrity life. It wasn't that he was a different dog at home; it was simply that he
was
a dog at home. Not always a well-behaved one, but still a dog.

Early in 1994,
I did a segment from the swimming championships at the Natatorium in downtown Indy. This seemed like a place where it would be safe to let him roam. The area was enclosed, no trash was visible anywhere, and Barney did not like to swim—so I knew he wouldn't skirt the edge of the water and sniff around. I figured he'd be a touch disappointed when, unlike other places with pools we had visited, there were no beach chairs for him to sack out in once snuffle patrol was over.

As was often the case, once I got into a TV interview that did not specifically require the dog, I would temporarily forget his whereabouts, focusing instead on the task at hand. This time my conversations were with the swimming officials and a few of the athletes.

I was often faced with a kind of catch-22. Recognizing Barney's thirst for exploration, I knew it was necessary to let him wander during the TV segments. Tying him up restricted his troublemaking nature, but that, I realized quickly, was what viewers wanted to see. Even inside a building he could get into a lot of trouble. He'd investigate every nook and cranny, climbing back staircases and snooping in areas that were clearly off limits. Call it rubbernecking or beaglenecking, people tuned in every morning to see the havoc that was going to be wrought.

During the brief interview with the Purdue University diving coach, I noticed Carl, my photographer, trying to suppress a laugh, although there seemed to also be a touch of horror in his expression. If you are shooting live television and your photographer is laughing while you are on camera and there is nothing amusing going on that you are aware of, it is safe to say that there is something amusing going on you are not aware of. Like your fly is open.

Because of the informality of my segment and the morning show in general, I often talked directly to the cameraman while the show was in progress, something that is not a conventional practice on most news shows.

Carl, by the way, did with Barney and me what any good photographer does with a reporter . . . or any fashion photographer does with a model. Carl came to understand the personality of his two subjects.

Carl seldom knew what I was going to do next—nor did I—and no one ever knew what Barney was up to. Carl had to be ready for the unexpected. As the years progressed, he and I started to think the same way. Like married couples. He'd anticipate my next move; after the show he'd say, “I knew where you were going with that.”

Sometimes I'd throw Carl a curve by darting to a different location across the room, or requesting live on the air that he pan his camera quickly to the right or left. In the context of the show, this spontaneity worked just fine.

Barney and Carl bonded. If Barney was bored with his surroundings, he would sit right at Carl's feet. But when Barney roamed during the segment, Carl kept one eye on the dog, in case he did anything newsworthy or, more important, something funny. At that point, the camera would zero in on the real star.

But back to the Natatorium. “What's the matter, Carl?” I asked on camera, assuming that his facial expression had something to do with Barney. With that, Carl tilted the camera toward the diving board just above my left shoulder. There, at the very end of the sixty-foot diving platform, looking out over the pool, was Barney.

“Oh, my God!” I screamed. “How the hell did he get up there?”

You try to restrict references to hell on TV unless you are a televangelist, but this seemed quite an appropriate use of the expletive. I dropped the microphone in the middle of the interview and bolted for the platform. In my mind, I could hear people all over the city gasping—okay, maybe a few laughing—but this scene had serious consequences written all over it. A first-time platform dive for either the dog or me in front of tens of thousands of people was not good PR for the station. Even if he scored a 10.

You're probably wondering how a dog climbs a sixty-foot ladder. I wondered the same thing as I broke into a sweat galloping toward the diving apparatus.

No, Barney didn't climb a ladder. Entrance to the diving boards and platforms are via traditional stairs, a safety precaution for the athletes—and apparently beagles, as well.

Nevertheless, Barney was now literally living on the edge. He was looking over the platform. What was he thinking? I didn't want to know.

I scrambled up the staircase to the entrance of the diving platform. Barney turned his head back over his shoulder with a perplexed look on his face, if that's possible with a dog. He certainly had no intention of jumping. Or did he? And were we still on live TV? Would he come to me when I called him? Well, that hadn't happened since . . . well, ever. I rummaged through my pants. I often carried bits of human food in my pocket to lure him back to me in situations like this—not that there had ever been a situation like this.

Sure enough, tiny slices of pepperoni in the fold of my front pocket. As I waved them at him, the spicy odor wafted to his nose. Barney carefully—very carefully—turned and walked back toward me.

If your doctor ever tells you that pepperoni is not good for your health, you may repeat this story. It prevented my heart attack.

I always had mixed feelings about whether to share on TV the fact that Barney had gone missing, especially if it occurred while we were on the air. What would the viewers think? Barney didn't love me? I wasn't careful enough watching him? In some cases, his disappearance and his mischief led to some great television. When left to meander inside a building, Barney could, despite his girth, manage to squeeze his way through any aperture. If he couldn't find an open door, Barney would find an unsuspecting accomplice, roll his big brown eyes, and convince someone that he required some assistance in vacating the premises.

Yes, Barney had a great many famous escapes, but he also had some dramatic rescues. At least once a week, Barney fans still come up to me and boast that they once found Barney at a Burger King, or they rescued Barney from a prickly bush, or they found Barney in their garage. That was part of the allure. So many felt a connection to him. He wasn't just a name on a page or even a dog on TV. There were scores of people who could honestly say: “If it weren't for me, Barney might have been lost forever.”

He was almost lost forever in Greenwood, Indiana, during a show. My major mistake that morning? I asked a sixteen-year-old boy who was there with his fifteen-year-old girl-friend to watch Barney while I did my segment. That's right: I requested that teenagers take some responsibility, to keep their paws off each other for two hours and instead watch four canine paws. I guess I didn't learn anything teaching high school for nine years.

After the first segment, I asked my helpers where Barney had gone. “We haven't seen him,” they said in exact unison, a good indication they were more into each other than scrupulous surveillance of the dog.

“
You haven't seen him?
” I bellowed. “Excuse me, but what exactly do you mean by ‘you haven't seen him'? You were supposed to watch him, isn't that right?”

“Well, we didn't think he'd run away. The door was half-closed.”

“It was also half-open,” I pointed out, but this was a subtle distinction to be sure, and one that apparently had escaped this dynamic duo.

I panicked. This was always my first mode of response. Based on past experience, Barney could travel half a mile in about six minutes . . . unless he stopped to tip over a trash can or pick up some fast food on the way.

I ran up and down Meridian Street, the main thoroughfare in town, hollering his name. Cars whizzed by and a thunderstorm had rolled in. As always, my mind flashed forward to how I would deal with his disappearance on the air. Or what I would say if the unthinkable happened on that busy street where huge vehicles barreled by every second.

I called the local police chief and begged him to put out an APB. I wasn't sure what an APB was, but I knew the police took it seriously. Maybe they would find Barney.

Incredibly, the chief agreed to do it—further proof, I guess, that the dog enjoyed a certain status in the community. If my wife had called and said I was missing, there would have been a two-day waiting period before valuable police resources were squandered on a guy who had just made a wrong turn. Or had been kidnapped. I kept checking back with the police, but there had been some kind of bank robbery across town and, understandably, a lost dog had ceased to be a priority.

An hour later, still no Barney. And no previous experience to suggest he would return on his own. I was about to head home. Suddenly, police sirens and swirling colored lights. The police car rounded the corner at about 70 mph and skidded to a halt next to me in the mall parking lot.
Oh, no,
I thought,
he wasn't hit by a car. Please, God, no.

I looked in the vehicle. Sitting next to the officer was Barney. Both his front and back paws were locked securely in handcuffs. Barney looked guilty, like most people do in the back of a police car. And he was guilty. Of being Barney.

“What happened, Officer?”

“Your dog has been arrested.”

“For what?”

“I was off duty and went to the supermarket to get some milk for my family. I look up and there's your dog walking down aisle 4 with a barbecued chicken in his mouth. He's in serious trouble, Mr. Wolfsie. Hoosiers don't take chicken stealing lightly.”

Barney was remanded to me. The people at the supermarket were very nice and no theft charges were pressed.

Barney would have hated prison food. But he would have eaten it. The fact is, Barney would eat anything. Even though I was in the communication business, I wasn't very successful in making people understand that nothing was safe from his jaws if it was in the same ZIP code. But nobody ever believed me. Part of the problem was that many of the guests had never lived with a beagle before, so my concerns seemed a bit overwrought. Part of it was just people's almost instantaneous affection toward him. He was so cute, so lovable. How could he ever do anything wrong? Were these people not watching television? Had they not seen him in action?