Mornings With Barney (9 page)

Those who don't have dogs
may not fully appreciate how motivated animals can be when it comes to food. Their obsession is understandable. Dogs sleep, wait for you . . . and eat.

No matter where I took Barney, I tried to take extra care in limiting his exposure to anything edible. I was just as nervous when it came to things that were not edible, but you can't hide a couch or a table leg. He was very willing to taste anything.

When I arrived at my location each morning, I walked in with Barney, his tail wagging in anticipation of a new adventure. Barney reminded me of an FBI agent who was not apt to exchange any pleasantries or conversation until every portion of the environment had been checked first for anything amiss, like a bomb or listening device.

Before Barney would officially greet the guest, he would scrutinize with his supersensitive nose every corner of every room; he would knock over every trash basket and nose up to every table his nose could reach, often balancing on his hind legs to get a better view of the landscape. Once that was accomplished, he'd reappear and interact with humans. That was his MO. It never varied.

I knew when I entered someone's house or place of business that I had to prevent any potential trouble that could harm Barney. “Are there any animal traps in the place? Is there any rat poison he could get to?” That's how I started. I took no chances.

Then it was time to protect the guest. “Is there any human food in the garbage or elsewhere that this dog could reach considering he can open a refrigerator door with his nose, and climb up on a chair to get on a table. DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT I AM SAYING? NOTHING IS SAFE.
Nothing.
” I usually calmed down at the end of the rants so people didn't think I was a lunatic.

This approach never worked. People don't have a very good perception of what accessible rations are stashed about their surroundings. On one St. Patrick's Day, Barney and I paid a visit to a local retail shop that specialized in everything Irish. The woman and her daughter were big Barney fans and even brought their Irish wolfhound to meet Barney. We walked in, and I said (and this may sound a little familiar) . . .

“Is there any human food, in the garbage or otherwise, that this dog could reach considering he can open a refrigerator door with his nose, and climb up on a chair to get to a table. DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT I AM SAYING? NOTHING IS SAFE.
Nothing.
”

“I don't think so,” said the Irish lady. Then she glanced at her twelve-year-old daughter, who gave a shrug, which was probably a clue I should have done my own investigation.

The show went well, although I was distracted because I was trying to keep a careful eye on the expensive Irish cashmere scarves that were displayed at beagle level. The scarves did not appear to be digestible, but that distinction could never be confirmed until Barney had eaten something.

I did think it odd that Barney was not lurking during the segment. I figured it was because the Irish wolfhound, although a gentle giant the size of a pony, had pretty much scared the heck out of him, and Barney had gone somewhere to hide.

As the segment ended, the Irish lady's daughter motioned to her mother.

“Mom,” she whispered, “where are those four sticks of butter for the cookies we're going to bake?”

I turned red. Green would have been more appropriate for St. Patrick's Day.

“You told me there was no food out!” I barked.

“Well,” said the store owner, a touch indignant, “I didn't think he'd eat four sticks of butter.”

“Oh, I see. You thought he was on a low-fat diet?”

I always tried to avoid even the hint of exasperation with guests, but incidents like this really tested my patience. Jeez, a pound of butter. It couldn't have been a worse food choice. At least Barney wasn't lactose intolerant.

I herded Barney into the car. We had a speaking engagement at 10 that morning in Columbus, Indiana, about ninety minutes away. I'm obviously no expert on animal digestion, but I do have a suggestion: don't travel in a car for almost two hours with a dog that has just eaten four sticks of butter. Enough said.

A month later we paid a visit to an office complex where I was to interview the CEO of a new company. The secretary greeted us at the door and gave Barney a hug, the only thing that ever deterred him temporarily from his customary routine of wall-to-wall inspection.

That's when I told her . . . well, I think you know what I told her.

“Oh, heavens no,” she said. “We never keep food around. That's unsanitary.”

Ten minutes later, the boss, who had returned to his office for a brochure, informed his secretary, “Rita, I think Barney ate the cheese Danishes that were on my desk.”

Rita's response was a classic. “Both of them?”

Yes, Rita. Both of them. Go figure. And he was supposed to be watching his figure. I turned so she wouldn't see me grinning. Rat poison is not funny. Four sticks of butter, not funny. Two cheese Danishes? Very funny.

The dog's obsession with food was hilarious on TV, humorous at the State Fair, and a hoot at the television station, but it didn't go down well with Mary Ellen and Brett, who also never quite understood how nimble a hound can be when aromatically motivated. I sometimes thought that Barney's periodic escapes from the house were the only respite we had from his gluttonous ways. For a while, he was someone else's problem.

And so much of it was our fault. Leave the garage door open and every trash can was upturned; forget to close the pantry door and anything on the floor was fair game. (Actual game, by the way, was of no interest to him. He was scared of moving food.) We finally realized the only way to keep him from prying the refrigerator door open with his nose and using his head as a lever to complete the operation was to duct tape the door shut.

It would be hard to estimate how many potential dinners (raw food on the counter) and actual dinners (meals on the dining room table) Barney managed to negotiate into his belly. Nothing ticked off Mary Ellen and Brett more than this (to me, understandable) affinity for human food. I called it natural behavior. And ironically, it should have been easy to prevent. Push the food back farther on the counter. How hard could that be? And yet, we could never get it through our thick Homo sapiens skulls. Countless times even our take-out dinners never made it home. Once after putting a bucket of KFC in the backseat, I ran into the liquor store for some beer. Barney didn't require a personal dinner invitation from the Colonel. That night we had mostly beer for dinner. Barney never read the owner's manual about not eating chicken bones. And I never got the memo that dog owners need behavior modification more than dogs. They really should call it human obedience school.

And again, no amount of discipline was going to make a difference. Why? Because the next day on-air I would reward him for this very same atrocious behavior. Barney knew if he could deliver a laugh, he was earning his kibble.

And speaking of delivery, I discovered that Barney loved pizza the week Mary Ellen was on a long business trip. She said it was to earn a living but it was more likely to seek a beagle-free zone. I was left to care for my son even though I don't think Mary Ellen fully trusted me alone with Brett, then ten years old, and the dog.

To make me feel more comfortable, Mary Ellen gave me a detailed list of do's and don'ts. If I was unsure about anything, she told me, I was to consult the list. Everything—yes, everything—was in alphabetical order. Some examples:

She also made it quite clear that she expected Brett and me to eat healthy meals. So that Friday night, I ordered an extra-large pizza from Noble Roman's with toppings representing all the major food groups. The pizza was big enough for the next three dinners and a couple of breakfasts. The phone rang as Brett and I sat at the kitchen table.

“It's probably Mom,” I said. “I'm going upstairs to take the call. Watch the pizza.”

It would be about ten minutes before I first realized what part of “I'm going upstairs to take the call. Watch the pizza,” Brett paid no attention to. At first I thought he'd headed back to his homework, but I had confused him with the boy next door. No, he apparently still had four hours left on his Nintendo game.

When I returned to the kitchen, there was no pizza left. And no box. And I knew that Brett seldom ate the box, so it must have been the canine trash compactor.

The culprit was hiding behind the couch, which was apparently tough for him because before he ate the pizza he weighed forty pounds and now he was tipping the scales at forty-five pounds. He was stuck, wedged between the sofa and table. He was gasping. Hopefully, I thought, it was an errant piece of mozzarella that would work its way down and nothing to worry about, but on more careful analysis I decided it was best to panic.

I got Barney from behind the couch and tried to get him to walk, but Barney's tummy was so distended that it scraped along the ground like a basset hound's ears. His stomach was making strange gurgling sounds as though it was about to erupt like a volcano.

Now I figured I had to get all that pizza out of him. I wasn't sure why this was a good idea, but it gave me a sense I was doing something. I had read about it in some pet firstaid book, but I had confused in my mind the appropriate over-the-counter drug that would accomplish this. I had a sneaking feeling that the difference between hydrogen peroxide, sodium bicarbonate, and hydrogen chloride was pretty significant. It was one of the three, but I couldn't be sure. But I did remember it was two teaspoons. Of what, I didn't know.

I ran to the phone and called Barney's vet, Dr. McCune, who answered the phone from a dead sleep at his home. Charlie Bob, as his friends called him, was a great guy with forty years' experience. But could he handle an emergency of this breadth and magnitude?

“Doc, it's Dick Wolfsie.”

“What's the matter, Dick? It's awfully late.”

“Barney just ate an extra-large pepperoni pizza. What should I give him?”

There was pause. I'm sure that he too, at this hour, was trying to remember the difference between hydrogen peroxide, sodium bicarbonate, and hydrogen chloride.

“Doc,” I repeated, “what should I give him?”

“A Budweiser?”

Then he hung up the phone. All great comedy lines require the proper denouement. The click of the phone beautifully framed the irony of the situation, highlighting my hopelessness, my frustration, and my sense of futility.

Clearly this was not the emergency I thought it was. As Dr. McCune would later explain, the treatment for Barney was the same as for humans: do nothing and let the patient vomit. For two hours.

I have to admit. It worked like a charm.

Usually after an experience like this I would promise myself that the next time Barney ingested something I considered inappropriate, I would just kick back and chill. The dog had ingested so many things, his stomach had clearly made the necessary accommodations. But two weeks later, another crisis.

It was Friday night—actually very early on Saturday morning. “What's that noise downstairs?” asked Mary Ellen. I loved questions like that. Either it was a burglar or it was nothing. And either way, I had no intention of going downstairs. I sat up in bed and it was clear that it was Barney snooping around in the kitchen, grazing for food. Barney had sometimes made his way down the steps in the middle of the night to see if he could rustle up a snack, so I figured he was pawing at the pantry door where his treats were kept.

I stumbled down to the kitchen and there was Barney chewing on what appeared to be a piece of aluminum foil. No, it was an ant trap that the beagle had negotiated from beneath the fridge with his paw! The blue “poison” was dripping from his mouth.