No, it’s not my intention to turn BEAGLE MAN into a travelogue; it just happens that we found ourselves in Southern California a few days after our Costa Rica vacation. Seems our youngest son may be L.A.-bound for college next year, and we were out on campus for a meet-and-greet. Imagine if we have to be visiting him in sunny la-la land over the next four years. Boo-hoo. We stayed in Santa Monica, right on the beach. I managed to spend quite a bit of time on Ocean Front...

They were a sight for sore eyes, the Beagle Brigade — the first thing we saw back on U.S. soil at Miami International Airport. We’d read about them before in the newspapers, but here they were, up close and personal (see photo, right), sniffing and tugging and pulling — caring not one iota about where the security guards attached to them might want to go. The beagles, and their behavior, reminded me, of course, of Ricky. Then again, you don’t have to be a...

Yeah, I suppose it’s okay that a Scottish deerhound took the top prize earlier this week at Westminster; after all, that breed had never won before. Sure, I’d like to see a beagle — clearly the cutest and most lovable breed in the world — honored every year, but I guess that wouldn’t really be fair.Uno There’s no denying, however, that when Uno the beagle won the whole shooting match at Westminster in 2008, it was a heady time for our family, and...

“Dad,” Robby said, “Luke’s drinking Ricky’s water — and he didn’t even ask!” Luke is a big German shepherd, about three times Ricky’s size, who visits from time to time. “How do you know?” I answered. “Maybe he did ask. And I’m sure Ricky would say yes.” All of us dog-owners insist we have the cutest dog, the most loyal dog — but I can say, without a speck of doubt in my mind, that I have...

Did I ever mention how we came to have Ricky in the first place? Well, before Greg (Robby’s second brother) was even out the door en route to his college career, Robby began playing the “only child” card to lobby for a dog. This was the summer of ’02, and he was eight years old. To his credit, his campaign was never whiney, always upbeat and pleasant. “Dad, can I have a dog,” he’d ask at least once a day, often two or three times, and...

Here’s what I do for Ricky. I buy his food, his treats . . . whatever it is he needs. I take him for a good long walk, every day; neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of nights keeps us from our appointed rounds. I feed him. I give him his pills — such a daunting array that I have to depend on a cheat sheet — five times a day, always right on time. When he barks, “Play fetch!”, I ask, “For how long?” I take pains to correct his...

So dazzled was my friend Cathy from Easton by her 15 minutes of fame from being mentioned in my last post (“A Beagle Named Jeep”) that she immediately began angling for an encore appearance “We fly off to Bequia,” she e-mailed me, “to dog sit for all of February and part of March. Another blog post, perhaps? Beagles and island dogs?” When I replied, “Nice work, if you can get it,” or something to that effect — as I always do...

Last week I sent out an e-mail blast introducing BEAGLE MAN to friends and family. Now since the author photo (above) happens to show Ricky and me peering out of the driver seat of my Jeep Wrangler, and since I happened to mention that Ricky often rides shotgun in my Jeep in my most recent post, I received this e-mail response from my old friend Cathy, from Easton: “The timing of this is too funny. Yesterday a friend told me his beagle, Jeep, appears in the latest Orvis...

Pretty much every Sunday morning I lift my little ride-along beagle into the shotgun seat of my Jeep Wrangler, where he nestles up into a cozy little furball, and I get the pleasure of stroking him as we drive blissfully up Bayberry. We make a right on Lyons Plains Road, pass the red barn on the right, and continue to wend our way along the curves of Valley Forge Road until we get to the most perfect, woodsy dog-hiking trails in the county. (I don’t want to give away the...

Whenever I walk my little beagle – his nose to the ground, his floppity ears swinging left-right, left-right, looking for all the world like Snoopy – I get admiring comments from fellow dog-walkers: “Oh, he’s the cutest dog I’ve ever seen!” (This right in front of their very own dog, who, presumably they think is fairly cute.) “Is that a face?! And look at that square head! So handsome!” “He’s so adorable! Is he a puppy?” But the one line I hear, more than any other, is: “My...