Beauy Ohy Ohy Oh

  We found Beau in the early afternoon in Fayetteville, North Carolina when we were driving back to New York from Florida. We didn’t so much as find him as we had to swerve our car when the one ahead of us threw him out without stopping. The three of us, my husband, his teenage daughter, and I got to the pile in the road without knowing if he was dead or alive. He was in the gravel in a shallow ditch, very still, but managed to move his head and look up at us. We were relieved that he didn’t seem to be injured although he didn’t look well cared for. 

  “What should we do?” my husband asked.

  “Take him home and love him,”  Nina and I said, almost in unison.  

  So we gathered up this tired, thin, black and white puppy, put him in our car, wrapping him in a blanket, and stopped at the first decent looking motel we saw.  I stayed with the dog while Nina and my husband found a pet store to buy food and other supplies. I filled a big ashtray with water, which the exhausted dog drank without lifting his head. Then he slept.   I kept checking his breathing so afraid that he might die. We had dinner in the room so we could keep an eye on him. 

  When he woke, and had eaten a bit of food, we gave him a bath. The water was as black as the dog. It turned out he had mange,  a colony of fleas, a distended belly, and eyes as big as saucers that he could hardly keep open. He slept again, for nearly 12 hours. We got meds for the mange and fleas, a dog bed for the back seat of the car and drove him home, allowing ourselves to think how excited our five-year-old son, Charlie, would be when he found out about the new family member.

  We already had a Beagle, a female named Barney our daughter had fallen in love with through a pet store window. Charlie and Barney were waiting for us in New York, with my family. Beagles can be quite snooty, disdainful of almost everything in their paths because they know how adorable they are.   Ours was particularly so – adorable and snooty.  When we collected child and dog, Barney jumped up into the back seat, looked at the black lump next to her, sniffed haughtily, lifted her nose in the air, turned around and settled with her back to him. It was a few weeks before she would acknowledge Beau’s presence in the household. 

  Our little boy couldn’t believe his good fortune. He loved his new puppy from the start. We named him S. Beauregard – the S was for Stray, the rest for his southern roots. We called him Beau and Charlie, called him Beauy Ohy Ohy Oh. If a dog could be grateful, this one was. He seemed to know we had rescued him and loved us with a sweet adoration and eagerness to please.  He was easy to care for, always took the medications he needed without fuss, followed us from room to room and, slowly, he began to thrive, grow tall and sleek. He even seemed to defer to Barney, the Queen Beagle.

  We lived in a community on the Hudson River of pre-Revolutionary houses with many dogs from beautiful Goldens – one was in a movie shot nearby – to Labradors and Poodles, Irish Setters and smaller terriers and toys. The dogs ran free.  Barney never did, having moved there with us just a year before from New York City. She was a city apartment dog, with no knowledge of survival skills for the wilderness of our Rockland County enclave. We didn’t think she could find her way home if she ran free. As Beau grew strong, he had limited freedom, running the same route down to the Hudson River and back in the morning with our daughter but never allowed to go out alone. She reported that dogs barked at them on a couple of mornings.  We weren’t concerned.  By then, we knew all the neighbor dogs and their owners. 

  One morning, on their usual run, Nina was startled as several dogs ran out of a stand of trees. They startled Beau, too, and he ran off into the woods. The dogs took off after him.   Nina couldn’t get him to respond to her calls. As soon as she got back and told us what had happened, we went out together, calling for him and searching the woods but couldn’t find him.  We found out later from others in our community that those neighborhood dogs, sweet and well-behaved alone, became a pack when they ran together. That day, Beau was their target and victim.  We heard the thud on the porch before we realized what it was.  How he managed to make it home with puncture wounds all over his body was a miracle; the only one, though.

  He survived the complicated operation but didn’t have the stamina to last through the night. Everyone at the Vet’s office and all of us at home cried our hearts out. 

  That was our son’s first brush with death. A year later, his father was diagnosed with cancer. The next seven months until his death we were a household in crisis. We kept our son  and daughter close and gave them as much time with their Dad as he could tolerate. Charlie came to my rescue when the end was close, telling me he knew his Daddy was still on earth because his job here wasn’t done. That was how I was able to tell my son on the morning that his father’s job on earth was done.  

  I’ve always believed he was able to grasp what was happening because our sweet dog, Beau, was put on earth to give us a way to explain that we sometimes lose what we love. 

  It isn’t often that purpose is so clear. Even if I’ve made it up, that he was a gift to us for exactly that reason, I cling to the thought that I am going to see Beauy Ohy Ohy Oh again and tell him how grateful I am to him for easing the shock for my little boy.