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 …

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 ab…

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…

“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 t…

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,…

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 dep…

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 …

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…

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 th…

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, presu…