Posts by Hank

Your Dog Ate What???

Dog owners are always trying to one-up each other. My last post on Ricky’s relentless pursuit of food elicited comments from followers about their own beagles’ never-ending quest. One reader says her Boo has snagged and devoured a tray of fudge, toffee bars, a pound of cheese, a pound of ham –…

Easy Pickin’s

All dogs live to eat. Most dogs would be happy to eat — anything — 24/7. The thing that separates my very special beagle from the pack is his resourcefulness in sniffing out the newbie in any given group (the person not used to dogs in general, to Ricky in particular, and hence, the one who’s…

Is It Maggie and Dutch?

There are two little beagles Ricky and I have been running into lately on our “destination” walks at Southport Harbor. They’re brother and sister, seven years old, and a lot smaller than Ricky. (The two of them are the 13-inch breed of beagle; Ricky is the 15-inch.) The boy is lean; the girl is…

My Son, the Hiker

All three of my sons — the human ones, that is — are excellent athletes. Football, basketball, baseball . . . I’ve gotten a huge kick watching them play over the years. I’ve also coached tons of their youth sports teams, and it would be fair to say that, as much as anything, sports is the glue…

My Animal Companion

Usually when I visit my barber shop, they’ve got Shibani Joshi or Neil Cavuto or some other talking head from the Fox Business Network squawking about the U.S.’s role in the global economy — and I promptly fall asleep. But last time I was there, Mario, my barber, was in charge of the remote (his…

Kemba, Mom, and Ricky

Somewhere along the line during UConn’s historic and magnificent run through the Big East Tournament and then March Madness, Kemba Walker mentioned Sunday, May 8 as being a very big day for him. It would not only be his 21st birthday — reason enough to go wild — but also the day of his early gr…

Long-Distance Doggy

Though I hinted this might be the case in an earlier post, now it’s fact: Our youngest son is heading west to USC in August to start his college career, and my wife and I couldn’t be happier: We’ve often said where the third kid goes to school should be all about where the parents want to visit…

The Two Rickys

Last October, my friend Chris — also a writer — informed me that Lukie, her beloved Lhasa Apso, had passed away. So I was glad to hear that recently she got a new pup, another Lhasa Apso. She also told me that she’d named him Ricky. After congratulating her, I had to give her a little grief, o…

Greetings from Ricky!

As Carol came in from the garage to the playroom last night, she was blitzed by an eager, kissing, licking, tail-wagging little beagle. He, of course, had heard the car pull up, and was waiting by the door. I followed Carol a moment later, and got the exact same treatment. We’d been in Vermont f…

Ricky’s Best Friends

Ricky’s not a perfect dog. Where food is concerned, he has no morals whatsoever. What’s his is his, and what’s yours is his. He’d steal your croissant soon as look at you. On top of that, he’s stubborn to the point of obsession. Let’s say I want to walk on Turkey Hill, and he wants to walk on…