Mornings With Barney by Dick Wolfsie (e book reader .TXT) 📕

weatherman, who had just forecast colder temperatures. “If this keeps up,” spouted the sister, “you’re going to have a bunch of blue nuns walking around.”

In one Channel 8 segment, a fledgling band known as Dog Talk was slotted to play at a local pub. But the bar owner overslept and the musical instruments were locked inside the bar. Instead of canceling, I convinced the band to make do with assorted tin cans and other discarded items from the alley trash bin. It proved a winner, and the band went on to be one of the most successful musical groups in Central Indiana.

My favorite impromptu moment happened in front of a store on the west side of Indianapolis. When my scheduled guests didn’t show, we pulled up in front of a local business called Discount Vacuum’s. As a former English teacher, I had always been bothered by the unnecessary apostrophe in the sign.

And that became our show. I stopped people in cars and asked them what was wrong with the sign. “Are there two ‘u’s’ in ‘vacuum’?” several asked.

“Is one ‘c’ enough?” asked others. Finally, the store’s owner saw his shop on TV and raced to the scene to ask what the problem was.

“It’s your sign,” I explained. “It’s wrong.”

The owner, visibly shaken, replied, “Oh, yeah? Show me a place in town you can buy them cheaper!”

Segments like these prove something I’ve said a thousand times: if you plan certain things, they will fail miserably. I was quick to deal with the unexpected. And I think that’s why people watched me on the morning news. Then I added a dog to the mix. This was a train wreck waiting to happen. On the highway this is called rubbernecking. But people weren’t viewing a crash, they were watching the news and, at least in those days, it worked.

Barney, of course, was my sidekick in so many of these moments. Like the one that involved the search and rescue arm of the Indiana State Police. The folks there were justly proud of their trained German shepherds, who could seek out a victim buried under rock, debris, or dirt in an explosion or building collapse.

The officers suggested on the phone that I be buried in the rocks at a nearby limestone quarry and that their dogs would be released to find me before I died of starvation or exposure. There wasn’t much chance of this happening since the segments were only three minutes long. The idea of the dogs sniffing me out and then finding me sounded like good TV.

But what would Barney do on a mission like this? Could he compete with highly trained canines that did this for “a living”? Didn’t matter. And that was the beauty of these segments. Either he’d be totally distracted and wander off to a local trash can (hey, that would be funny!) or he’d take his assignment seriously while the home viewer rooted for him. It was a no-brainer. An all-noser. It couldn’t fail—unless it did. And how funny would that be? Are you with me?

That morning—cold and damp, as I remember—I opened the show with a serious look at the service these dogs performed and what a crucial role they played in public safety. This was always important to me. No matter how silly my interview ended up, I always felt a responsibility to pay attention to the guests’ agenda and treat them with respect. That obligation met, let the fun begin.

During the second segment, just as the sun began to rise at about 6, my cameraman, Carl Finchum, perched himself on the giant limestone rocks while I burrowed into a crevice created by two adjacent limestone boulders. From the top of the pile, Carl pointed his camera back toward the parking area where Barney sat alongside several restless German shepherds who sensed they were about to go into action. One difference: we blindfolded Barney with a bandanna, hoping to handicap the competition and build the suspense. The idea of blindfolding a dog is just downright stupid. I knew that. In fact, that’s why I did it.

All the shepherds stood by, drooling in anticipation as they awaited their command. Barney, agitated over my disappearance, was howling. Finally, all four dogs were released. They made a wide sweep of the area, spending several minutes snooping under every rock. Barney, whose departure we delayed to give him an additional disadvantage, hesitated for a moment, then made a direct line to me. Total time: forty seconds.

There are many possibilities for Barney’s surprising success, none of which the dog trainers could explain. They were, I think, just a little miffed at Barney’s natural ability. Amber, one of the officers, was good-natured about it as the show ended. “I think he peeked,” she said.

A few weeks after Barney’s search and rescue debut, I received a call from a local coonhound breeder interested in showing how his pride pack of four hounds could sniff and follow a fox scent to a tree. I remember smiling (an evil smile, at that) as the breeder explained the procedure. Once again, I was damn sure that this segment had Barney written all over it. It turned out to be the second most popular segment on the highlight tapes.

I met my guests at a southside Indianapolis park, where the dog coonhound owners dragged a raccoon scent along the ground, leading to a tree. “The dogs will follow the scent wherever it leads,” bragged the owners. “They are very smart.”

They are? It wasn’t even a raccoon. It was just the scent . . . and you can’t eat the scent. You just bark at it. I wasn’t going to argue. Guys with coonhounds carry guns.

I bet Barney can go them one better, I thought. Barney could smell an unopened package of barbecue potato chips in my glove compartment.

Here was the plan: I brought this greasy summer sausage with me to the park and dragged it along the ground, right next to the raccoon scent. About fifty