Mornings With Barney

by Dick Wolfsie

  No more.

  I walked into the bedroom, where he was snoozing. I tried to roust him by bellowing his name. Barney! Barney, we’re home.

  No response.

  I walked over and gently scratched his belly. His head snapped up like a jack-in-the-box. “What in blazes was that?” he seemed to be saying. “You scared me half to death.” Like most dogs, and especially beagles, Barney was used to hearing it or smelling it before he saw it or felt it. Now I felt bad when I disturbed him. Maybe, I thought, I should call home and say we’re on the way . . . not that he would have heard the phone. Or knew how to answer it.

  Our walks in the woods changed, as well. Beagles are hounds, bred to travel in packs when they hunt. Barney often walked ahead of me but would on occasion twist his head around to be sure I was nearby, still part of the hunting party. But such confirmation was rare because he could hear my footsteps. On occasion, I would hide behind a tree. When the footsteps stopped, he predictably turned to check my whereabouts. This confirmed his devotion to me, a method that has never worked with my wife, who once walked ahead of me for a half mile while I hid behind a tree.

  My walk with Barney was changing. He didn’t hear my footsteps anymore, so he’d waddle along with his body almost at right angles, bent in the middle, so he could see me at every step. He looked as though he had a perpetual stiff neck years old. If he turned and looked ahead, he’d have no evidence I was following him.

  He could still smell a doughnut a block away and he remained bright-eyed and alert, even for almost thirteen years old. If you saw Barney at an event, you couldn’t tell his ears had failed him. It didn’t matter, he could still feel the love: Isn’t he cute? Isn’t he adorable? Isn’t he precious? I sometimes wondered if he could read lips.

  I’d known and loved Barney for a dozen years, but since I’d found him by my front door, I never knew his exact age. It was one of the questions I had to field throughout his our television careers.

  “How old is he?”

  I’m not sure how many times I answered that question over the years. Not about me. About Barney. My answer changed every year, of course. Inquiries about my age, however, required a more consistent response. Heck, I said I was about fifty for more than a decade.

  Each November when we made personal appearances at the local holiday gift and hobby show, I’d print up a sign with Barney’s age so I did not have to repeat the answer to literally thousands of fans who started each conversation this way.

  Naturally, I did get other questions, and some downright bizarre ones over the years.

  “Is Barney his real name?”

  No, his real name is Alan, but we changed it because it just doesn’t work on TV.

  “Is Barney your dog?”

  No, he’s a rental. Pet him quick. He’s due back in an hour.

  Honestly, I resisted those snappy retorts because they could suggest a lack of respect for the questioner, often just a sincere fan who wanted to make conversation. I was torn between the comic Dick Wolfsie and the pet lover Dick Wolfsie, Barney’s dad.

  As Barney grew in stature (both in fame and fat) I started hearing things like, “Whoa, he’s getting up there in years,” and “How’s ol’ Barn doing?” But the worst was, “Dick, what are you going to do when he’s gone?”

  Despite the hearing loss, Barney still remained ornery and mischievous, the two qualities that allowed him to keep his competitive edge as a TV talent.

  Brett was now in middle school and less bothered by Barney’s distractive behavior, but still not a fan. Three quarters of Brett’s life, as far back as his memory would take him, there had been a Barney. This tarnished and then cemented his view of all canines as needy, destructive competitors. To this day, my son—now an adult—doesn’t warm easily to dogs. How ironic that this self-professed cat lover hailed from a family whose dog stole the hearts of everyone else in central Indiana.

  Mary Ellen had become the reluctant admirer, now sensing that his days were numbered and recognizing what an impact he had made on Indianapolis. And our own lives. She remained until the end Barney’s mom, a mantle she once wore unwillingly, but now wore as a badge of honor, like a military hero tested in combat.

  Barney had never had a sick day in his life until his final years. Other than two nasty bites out of his butt, both by a couple of pugnacious pugs we encountered on a leisurely walk in the woods, his hearty beagle nature generally kept him away from the vet except for normal checkups. Save those few places he was clearly not allowed (and there weren’t many) and the one place I knew petrified him—the ice rink at Market Square arena, where he could never get his footing—he never missed a show. Not to brag, but I never missed a show myself. Like anyone ever noticed.

  But then Barney started to gain even more additional weight. I knew something was wrong. Bob McCune, Barney’s regular doc, suggested I see a veterinary internist in Anderson, Indiana, who was part of a well-known clinic run by the state’s top animal orthopedist. But Dr. McCune also warned that specialists were inclined to suggest some rather heroic techniques that I might not be comfortable with.

  I had taken Barney there once when I thought his tail had been caught in a door. The happy appendage had stopped wagging, a clear sign that Barney was suffering. Dr. Lee had X-rayed the tail and confirmed there had been a minor fracture.

  “Does it hurt him?” I asked.

  “It’s like impotence,” explained the vet. “Painless but humiliating.”

  Needless to say, his tail healed. And wagged uninterruptedly for many years.

  At the clinic, the internist ran some preliminary tests, then provided me with an entire list of options I could consider to better pinpoint the diagnosis. Many of the tests were intrusive. And expensive. Money was not the issue, but Barney had reached the stage where I believed that the entire ordeal would just result in a potential short extension of his life. And who was I doing that for—him or me?

  I opted for a few of the procedures, primarily to rule out one disorder that was quite treatable. When the tests came back, so did a bombshell. Barney had a possible abscess on one of his kidneys and the specialist was suggesting that it be removed. Not the abscess, the kidney. I listened to her rationale but was unconvinced. This was a twelve-year-old dog suffering no apparent pain and still pleased as puppy chow to accompany me every day and do his thing.

  The next day I went to see Dr. McCune, who agreed that it was a quality-of-life issue. The trauma of the surgery coupled with a tough recovery period dissuaded me from the dramatic procedure that was being recommended.

  Going home in the car, I pulled over to the side of the road and gave Barney a hug, as I often did when we faced a mutual problem. “I think we made the right decision, ol’ buddy.”

  The thought of his death, and life without Barney, was something I did not do a lot of thinking about. I had heard that Bob and Tom, hosts of a nationally syndicated radio show that originated in Indianapolis, had large insurance policies on each other’s lives, protecting them and their families against financial loss if one of the partners died. How clever that was, but probably not something even Lloyd’s of London would do for a guy and his dog. My life insurance agent was a good friend, but this was not a call I was going to make.

  Heavenly Bed

  Our twelfth appearance at the Indiana State Fair began with a beastly hot morning that would only get muggier as the day went on. A few days earlier we had reported live from the balloon race, where, as always, the governor stopped by for a quick interview.

  We had invited a representative of the Westin Hotel chain to unveil their Heavenly Bed for Dogs, part of a campaign for the chain to promote traveling with pets.

  Even now when I look at the videotape, I still marvel at how Barney always knew exactly what to do to make the segment work, how to make the audience laugh. How to make people say, “What a dog!”

  The segment began with a quick explanation of the Westin’s decision to allow guests to bring their dogs
to their hotel when on vacation, then ended with the first public display of the three-foot-square white poofy cushion that was provided to travelers for their pets. I thought it kind of ironic at the time. If the Westin was going to encourage people to bring destructive dogs like Barney to their hotel, the concept didn’t have much of a chance to succeed, which, by the way, it didn’t. They ended the program not long after. I never heard officially why, but the word was that allowing people to have dogs in the hotel room and encouraging them to do so was a line they shouldn’t have crossed. And a room they didn’t want to clean.

  As soon as the hotel manager placed the pillow on the ground, Barney, who had been otherwise distracted by about a million State Fair odors, made a beeline for the cushion, sniffed it for a few seconds, then proceeded to roll over on his back and fall asleep belly up . . . all in about twenty seconds, just before we went to a commercial break. “I don’t think I could afford that kind of advertising,” said the general manager of the Westin. “How’d you get him to do that?”

  I knew that the rest of that day was going to be difficult for the aging hound. After the morning show, we returned home so both of us could enjoy our daily nap, a custom that had spanned our entire career together.

  The routine was standard: I’d grab a book, prop up two pillows against the headboard in my room, then lie back and begin to read. Barney would rest his head on my stomach. In ninety seconds we were both sound asleep. With that method, it took me three years to read Tuesdays with Morrie.

  The plan that day was to return for the State Fair celebrity parade, an annual event that featured most of the WISH-TV personalities. Barney had been in nine of these events, always outshining the newsmen and newswomen who never quite garnered the same fan response from the crowd.

  “Barney! I watch you every day!”

  “Wow, it’s Barney!”

  “Look, there’s Barney!”

  He reveled in every minute of it as we rumbled down the main drag at the fair in a wagon pulled by a green John Deere tractor. I held him in my lap, propping him up so the masses could clearly see him, often taking his paw and waving it to the crowd. The other Channel 8 on-air personalities waved as well. As many admitted later, all eyes were on Barney.

  Once the parade was over, though, I had a problem. The temperature was nearing 90 and I had a book signing and tickets to watch Garrison Keillor that night at the Fairgrounds Coliseum. Even with the brief respite at home, I knew I was pushing the old guy.

  One of the WISH-TV staffers, marketing director Carol Sergi, sensed my concern, so she offered to drop Barney at my house on her way home around 5:30. Barney was clearly feeling the effects of the weather and I knew he’d be glad to be taxied back to the air-conditioned house. But I still wasn’t overly concerned with his present condition. There was a huge crowd at the fair that evening—and more cows, pigs, and horses than you could shake a shovel at. Overall, everyone seemed to be coping with the heat and humidity.

  I attended the Keillor concert and even had a chance to meet him backstage before the show, then found my seat and was thrilled to be sitting right behind Governor O’Bannon and his wife, Judy. We exchanged hellos and they asked how Barney was doing. Toward the end of the event, I snuck out a little early, hoping to beat the exiting crowd. I also wanted to get home in time to bathe Barney. He had spent a few minutes that day in the cow barn with me and had enjoyed the aromatic benefits of rolling in manure.

  I found my SUV in the giant infield lot and negotiated it out onto the main highway, then headed toward my house. My cell phone rang.

  “It’s Barney,” my wife said. “There’s something wrong.”

  “I’ll be right home.” I hung up. I jammed on the accelerator. The cell phone rang one more time. It was Mary Ellen again: “Don’t have an accident. It’s too late. He’s gone. Barney is gone. Please be careful. There is nothing you can do.”

  I banged my wrists against the steering wheel. I wanted it to hurt. I wanted to feel something. I couldn’t find the tears. Not yet. I remember saying, “Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!”

  How odd to talk to yourself like that. Even then, I knew how strange it was. My life is performing in front of people. But there was no audience there. Just me. In a car. Alone. I was still ten miles from what would be one of the most difficult moments of my life.

  For the next several minutes, all was just a blur. I knew he had not suffered, and that I had avoided the unthinkable: the prospect of someday putting him “down.” I missed him already. Damn. I wasn’t with him at the end. Then more questions. Could I have done something? What would I do tomorrow without him? What would I do ... from now on?

  I shot into the driveway, slammed on the brakes, shut off the car, and barreled up the stairs to the extra bedroom where Barney always napped. I’m not sure why I hurried. It was over. The inevitable had happened. Barney the beagle, my best friend, my business partner, was gone.

  The Heavenly Bed spot was Barney’s final TV appearance. Would I have wanted to know that this was the last time our viewers would see him and the last time the two of us would be a team? Or did I want to enjoy that Barney moment in the same way I had enjoyed the thousands before it? In the end, I was glad for the latter. I also knew that if Barney could have planned his last day, it would have been at the State Fair: 50,000 people, hundreds of smells. He didn’t have to die that day. He was already in heaven.

  I picked him up, draped him over my shoulder, buried my head in his neck, and sobbed. Mary Ellen stroked Barney while I held him. Brett just kept staring at me. He had never seen me cry. This frightened him. I remember the first time I saw my father weep. It made him seem more human than I ever realized. I doubt Brett was truly saddened by Barney’s passing, but he grieved for me. He must have wondered what this event would mean, what effect it would have on the family. I wondered, too.

  Then I asked Mary Ellen and Brett to give me a few minutes alone with Barney. I just hugged him and hugged him.

  For most of the evening, I lay on the guest bed with him next to me. Finally, around midnight, I fell asleep. Morning for me was only four hours away.

  It’s human nature that when you fall asleep, burdened by some horrible event, there is that fleeting hope that when you awaken the next morning, it will have all been a dream—that somehow a new day will bring a fresh perspective, and with it, the ability to rewind the tape and do some fancy editing. Not so, and just hours later, I got up, wrapped Barney in a blanket, and placed him in his doggie bed. Then I headed for work. That’s right, for work.

  I was scheduled to do my regular TV remote at the State Fair, a segment with Howard Helmer, officially known as the world’s fastest omelet maker. At that point, I had no choice but to do the show. There was no viable way to cancel a live segment at the last minute.

  Howard was a great guest who had achieved recordbreaking notoriety in his career by preparing 427 of his egg dishes in under thirty minutes. “Very wet ones,” he’d often admit. Howard and I had been doing television together for twenty-five years, starting back at my early TV days in Columbus. Howard’s snappy comments during his demos made him the ultimate talk-show guest. After completing an omelet, he’d present his masterpiece to the crowd and declare its approximate menu value: “$2.95,” he’d say, to a smattering of applause. Then he’d place a sprig of parsley next to his creation: “$6.95,” he’d deadpan. Big laugh. Even from me, and I had heard it thirty times.

  I met my photographer, Carl Finchum, at the fairgrounds and we exchanged our customary good mornings. Carl was not a 5 a.m. kind of person, so I suspected that he would not pick up on what I assumed was a transparent change in my demeanor. I was a morning person, a quality that annoyed my wife and many other people. Most of my guests assumed my generosity of spirit at dawn was a charade. It wasn’t. I liked mornings. Except this one.

  My plan was not to share the previous night’s events with anyone, convinced that verbalizing my grief would result in a total breakdown. It had taken m
e a good three hours the night before to compose myself, and now I was about twenty minutes from persuading tens of thousands of people watching the show that you could make a presentable spinach and cheddar cheese omelet in less than sixty seconds. This would have to be an Oscar-winning performance.

  Suddenly Howard appeared with his entourage, a flock of volunteers from the Indiana Poultry Association who were also committed to Howard’s egg-promoting mission. Howard and I exchanged hugs. Turns out he was good at reading embraces.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing, nothing. Just a bad night.”

  “Are you sure? You seem . . . different.”

  “No. I’m fine.”

  “Where’s Barney?”

  “Oh, he was up late last night at the fair. I let him sleep in.”

  And so, I had told my first whopper. More to come. I had a whole weekend ahead of me: book signings, a speech, dinner with friends. I had no idea how I would spin the events.

  I also realized I had to make the necessary arrangements. Despite my awareness of Barney’s age and illness, I had given no thought—zero—to where his final resting place would be. Cremation was a possibility and available through most veterinarians, but I had never been comfortable with this choice for either man or beast, so I nixed that option.

  There was a pet cemetery in town, but somehow that was terribly wrong. I wanted Barney near me, like he had been for almost thirteen years. And Barney was a people-dog, not a dog-dog. Other dogs were never a real kick for Barney. At dog parks and on trails, he gravitated toward humans, hardly giving the other dogs a sniff. Dogs didn’t have pockets with treats. It was always an easy choice: people over pooches. And so, I didn’t want to stick him in between a lot of strangers almost an hour from my house. Home was where the hound would be, I decided. That was my decision and both Mary Ellen and Brett agreed.

  Burying an animal in your backyard is forbidden by Indiana code, but I was never a big fan of rules. A few friends said something about the law being health related, but the woods behind our house had the carcass of a dead deer, and when I had reported that to the city months earlier, they didn’t seem to care enough to do anything about it. What a stupid law. I chose to ignore it.