By Ken Anderson — Columnist
Dogs. Every household should have one unless you’re a cat person.
I grew up on the end of Hubbard Street closer to downtown. My first memory of a dog in our house was my brother’s beagle named Peri. Peri was named after two of his friends, Peter Brown and Richard Battle. My dog Arbo came from Peri’s litter. I selected one dog which I named Arbo, after Seth Aronie and John Boynton.
Though most breeds will manage what they eat, beagles are a different type of dog. I have heard that beagles will eat relentlessly and have been known to eat themselves to death.
Peri was not in this category, while Arbo definitely liked her food. Arbo was a frequent visitor to the back doors of the stores where the butchers worked. Peri, much to Arbo’s consternation, would eat grapes. Arbo drew the line there.
A tough break
One day, as I turned the corner from Stow Street to Hubbard Street, I saw Arbo get hit by a car. She suffered a broken front leg and had to wear a cast which was a little longer than her leg. As she ran, she dragged her cast along. Luckily, she never got near flammable material. Shortly after she recovered, she jumped out of my mother’s arms and rebroke it. The joint was frozen which, with her peg leg, gave her a distinctive gait.
Years later, after our three children were born, we realized that they were afraid of dogs. So we got a beagle puppy, Fleagle the Beagle. At first, our children were afraid of Fleagle, but they quickly overcame their fear and Fleagle became a dear part of our family. Unfortunately, while my son Cato was playing basketball at a friend’s house, Fleagle went into the street and was hit by a car. After receiving the call, Lynda drove up the street to join Cato in comforting Fleagle as she passed away.
We replaced Fleagle with Chocolate and installed The Invisible Fence.
Chocolate later had a litter of eight puppies, the first born at 4:30 p.m. and the last at 1:30 a.m. Over the course of those nine hours, several different waves of friends visited. We kept one puppy, Sneaker, who, much like Arbo, would eat almost anything. Chocolate, like Peri, had a more refined diet.
Doggy duos
One dog is your best friend; two dogs are each other’s best friend. Their relationship included tracking scents. From time to time, they would get a scent and follow it up to the electric barrier. On other occasions, they would go right through the fence to freedom. They were often gone for as long as two days. Eventually, we would get calls from different neighborhoods. One week they made the police blotter. Another time we chased them down over snow-covered backyards at 2 a.m. Another time I was driving by the boathouse when they crossed the street in front of me. They happily got in the car, and I took two very dirty beagles home.
After every escapade, they were filthy dirty, their noses resembled hamburger from tracking scents over asphalt, their eyes were slits, and they were exhausted. But after a couple of days of rest, after forgetting about the pain of the electric fence or just out of lust for the open road, they would be gone again.
Where’s Bella?
Time went by and we opened our house to a young lady, my cousin’s daughter from Tennessee, who came to Boston to study optometry. Her boyfriend had given her a dog, Bella, a Maltese-Pomeranian mix, which we inherited a year later when they moved to a dog-free apartment in Boston. Bella had spent the first several months of her life in a fraternity house at University of Tennessee. Needless to say, Bella was a little unsettled and would hide under things. Woe to your toe if you moved your foot under a desk where Bella might be hiding.
After Bella passed away, Tully arrived. Tully is a goldendoodle: part golden retriever and part poodle. Our early days were uncertain as it fell to me to walk her, at night, even after being roused from a deep sleep at 2 a.m.
Tully has been with us for 10½ years and she is a love cake — 45 pounds of what was supposed to be a mini goldendoodle. She has staredowns with squirrels and birds. She barks at people who dare to walk by the house. Otherwise, she is even-tempered. She can hear the letter carrier’s truck go down the street, will demand to go out, and will wait by the mailbox for her to return in the expectation, always met, that our mail person will give her a dog biscuit. She does demand room on the bed, and at those 45 pounds, she is a commanding presence.
