Mornings With Barney by Dick Wolfsie (reading books for 4 year olds .txt) 📗

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