Beagleman – Page 53

USC or Bust!

Just one more day until our much-anticipated road trip. Yup, tomorrow Ricky and I em-BARK. Though I like the image of me and my pooch riding side by side across the country, carefree and up for anything, kind of like Butch and the Kid, in reality . . . a hell of a lot of planning went into this t…

Hurricane Who?

Sunday morning, 4:50 AM. I hear the shakety-shake. Ricky had jumped out of his bed and was doing his morning dog-thing. The moment I had half-dreaded, half-anticipated had arrived: My beagle was going out in the pitch black to pee in Hurricane Irene! I was well-prepared for the “event” — had…

Anticipation

I’d by lying if I said I wasn’t starting to really look forward to my cross-country drive to L.A. with my doggy. I know it all started as a promise to Robby to bring his pup out to USC for an early-fall visit . . . but let’s face it — how great is this gonna be for me!? Three thousand miles of…

Missing Ricky

Have been out at the beach in Montauk on vacation for the last two weeks. Have forgotten — as you can see — how to write in complete sentences. In the midst of this sun-sand-surf interlude, with nothing but picture-perfect weather, my niece Kat had a baby — George Edward. To be called Teddy, a…

Banned From the Beach

We were on the beach yesterday — a reasonable move, I think, with the temperature up over 100 — when Romeo, our neighbor’s nosey little Yorkie, came scooting over as fast as his tiny legs could carry him to check things out at our little sand chair community. Seeing Romeo enjoying life on the b…

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…