In two months — April 25, the fourth Thursday in April — it’ll be Take Our Daughters and Sons To Work Day.  Beagle Man doesn’t have any daughters.  He has three sons, but none of them is home — and I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t want to be taken to work, anyway.  So last week he just up and declared it Take Our Dogs To Work Day.  The thing It's really, really easy scoring food from newbies is, since taking me to his office would just mean a trip upstairs...

Nick & Ricky: Still buddies after Ricky's . . . grand entrance It’s fast becoming a ritual for my dog:  Show up in a new city.  See someone who’s been dying to meet you.  Poop on their floor. Sunday, on our way home from Charlottesville, we decided to scrap our visit to Monticello in favor of dropping in on Robby’s friend Nick at Johns Hopkins.  Ricky, in his eagerness to scamper out of Baltimore’s freezing cold and in to see his old buddy Nick,...

Beagle Man puts the crate in the back of the Acura, same as always.  And my blue denim bed.  And my teddy bear.  The cooler.  All the standard stuff.  Mrs. B-Man takes shotgun, so I’m stuck in the backseat.  Now this is a new twist, but I’ll roll with it — for now.  We start off on I-95, heading south.  Check.  Just like we did for LA/XC-1.  And LA/XC-2.  We pass through Philly . . . and Baltimore . . . and D.C.  We reach what seems to be our first overnight,...

Fan favorite: Bugaboo the Old English Sheepdog Bummer!  Beagles dropped a notch from #3 to #4 in America’s most popular dog standings, according to rankings released by the AKC two weeks ago.  (Not your fault, Ricky!)  When I tweeted out that Ricky and his mates were holding down the #4 spot, my friend Langdon from Boston couldn’t help tweeting back at me, “Edged out by the best breed: Golden retrievers.”  Yes, beagles and goldens had, in fact, swapped...

I don’t mean to sound bitchy, but seriously, what does Rerun of Roirdan have that I don’t have?  That’s the three-year-old who won best in breed for 13-inch beagles this morning at Westminster.  Oh yeah, the “sire” is Ch Lanbur Carson City, and the “dam” is Encore Ginny Lind.  Well, excuse me, but my lineage ain’t exactly chopped liver, either.  My pop was Ch Saranan’s Gentle Ben, and my mom was Ch Chrisette’s the Crumb...

Over the years I’ve noticed a disturbing trend.  Whenever there’s a family celebration — particularly a celebration featuring food — I’m shipped out.  Banished behind closed doors.  Shut up in my crate.  Shuttled over to Luz’s.  It happens at Thanksgiving . . . and Passover . . . and July 4 barbecue . . . all the majors.  The thinking seems to be “I don’t do What? No J-E-T-S? well around food.”  If “not doing well around food”...

We were in VT for the weekend.  Yup, they finally took me along.  It’s about time. Anyway, Beagle Man went skiing at Stratton on Saturday, with Greg & Kelly, Geiger & Ashley, and Fighting Geli-ni.  It was 9 degrees when they left the house, and reached a high of 13.  They took the lift to the top of the mountain, then skied down.  Then they took the lift back up, and skied down again.  Took the lift up, skied down.  If I heard My alternative to skiing them right, and...

"What can I do for you?" I was just reading an article in my alma mater’s alumni magazine, The Pennsylvania Gazette, about the new Penn Vet Working Dog Center that’s now breeding and training the country’s top detection dogs.  The cover line for the article is “Dogs at Work.”  Well, I know a working dog, too:  He’s currently “employed” at Pure Elegance, the dry cleaner on the Post Road just blocks from my house — and he might...

Just what the world needed:  Beagle Man’s ratings of my walks.  I mean, really!  How many times have I heard him tell people, “It’s his half hour (nodding at me), so we go wherever he wants.  If he wants to just stand and sniff, then we stand and sniff.”  Really?  This morning, he’s all, let’s go down to Soundview Drive!  Yeah, B-Man, great idea!  The beach.  It’s not even 20 degrees.  You want to know the walks I like?  I like walking...

This morning at Greenfield Hill Church: Ricky was fine when I carried him Last week I wrote about Winslow Park, and its place in the panoply of “destination walks” that Ricky and I take daily.  Loyal followers know well by now that since Ricky is a “reluctant” walker on his home turf, I take him each day for a drive — his favorite activity in the entire world — to a different destination  in order to “walk.”  Though I somehow doubt that...