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

It was ironic in a way. Here was a beagle that had become Central Indiana’s dog, but my own son was distancing himself from him like a political candidate from his crazy uncle in the attic.

By contrast, Mary Ellen got a kick out of the fact that for the previous fifteen years, the mention of her last name had always resulted in the inevitable query, “Are you Dick’s wife?” This was no longer the case. Now Mary Ellen was asked, “Are you Barney’s mom?” Every time this happened in the grocery or department store, she took great delight in dashing home and dishing it out to me. For some reason, Mary Ellen liked being known as Barney’s mother. Being known as Dick’s wife? Not so much.

But the label “Barney’s mom” was a bit awkward at times because fans of the show wanted my wife to sing the praises of Indiana’s mascot, and that required a little lip-biting on her part. It was hard to break into song when the night before, the entire family had been scouring the neighborhood looking for Barney or cleaning up trash he had strewn all over the front yard after tipping over the garbage. Overall, Mary Ellen played the role effectively. Bad-mouthing the dog was not going to help my career.

Eventually, Mary Ellen would warm to the dog, though it was never the hot and heavy relationship it could have been. But she recognized Barney’s value to me on TV.

Once when I caught her lavishing attention on Barney, actually on the floor hugging him, she put the whole thing in perspective. “I think he has finally made us more money than he has cost us.” My wife, the business major.

I really am to blame for stunting Barney’s potential as a family dog (meaning that the entire family loved him). My first big mistake was laughing when he was bad. Second, and this goes in hand with the first, I taught him that stealing food and destroying things was okay. In fact, I taught him tricks—tricks you don’t want your family dog to do—by using food. I could manipulate the devil in the dog by simply providing the desired culinary treat at the proper time or in the appropriate place during a TV broadcast: a cookie on the edge of a table, a pepperoni stick in a boxing glove, or a biscuit in my pocket where the aroma of food would be evident. Or I’d give him something to tear apart on TV because people loved to see the terminator in action. Then, of course, he did the same thing at home.

Most dogs, for example, would not instinctively jump on the chair to procure the food from the table. That’s more like chimpanzee behavior. But with a little help from his friendly coconspirator, Barney learned the technique. I encouraged his bad behavior. I rewarded it. Think of us as Barney and Clyde.

Why? It was funny. Damn funny. Whenever he stole a morsel, nosed into a cupboard, or had his way with a loaf of bread, the viewers loved it. “What a great dog.” Everyone would say it. Everyone except Mary Ellen Wolfsie.

At first, my wife didn’t understand why Barney could be bad on TV but not mend his evil ways back at our house. “When William Shatner gets home from shooting Star Trek, he knows he is no longer Captain Kirk, doesn’t he?” This was not the best example she could have picked, but I understood her point.

In his beagle brain, every infraction of normal canine decorum not only went unpunished, but it was rewarded with laughter and permission to keep the bounty. I was a textbook enabler.

The result was that there was no way to discipline Barney at home. After all, the dog was only human. He didn’t know he was just playing a bad dog on TV. When he was scolded for tipping over the trash in the garage, he appeared honestly puzzled. Hours earlier everyone had been laughing; now we were scolding him. “What gives?” he must have been saying. “Don’t you people know how to raise a dog?”

And so Mary Ellen, who would have counted herself as a dog lover, initially counted herself out as a Barney fan. In the little time she had to devote to Brett—reading stories, helping with school projects, watching TV together—she was constantly being interrupted by the attention she had to pay to a dog who couldn’t make up his mind whether he wanted to be more incorrigible in the house or in the yard, or wanted to make trouble four blocks away.

My wife would walk in the door at 5:30 PM and he’d be waiting for her arrival. To run away. He’d bolt out the door if she wasn’t careful and scamper across the road to places unknown. Now what Mary Ellen had thought would be a quiet evening with Brett was instead another episode from the current series Lost, or Without a Trace.

Barney’s escapes came in two forms: your common garden variety that resulted in a neighborhood adventure for him and us, and those that occurred during the TV show, a departure that I had to deal with live, on the air. Those were scary. And they happened often.

I sometimes wonder how my life, my career, would have been different if any of Barney’s escapes had been successful. I never thought Barney was running away from me, but his wanderlust motivated him to look for every opportunity to enjoy a new adventure. I guess he just liked meeting new people, which is pretty much a beagle trait. But Barney clearly kicked it up a notch. On more than one occasion, he’d jump into a FedEx truck or the UPS van and enjoy the ride until the driver found him hiding in the back behind the parcels.

I do think that was part of the reason people embraced him. He was