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

I also found a few things. The beagle had gotten down in the basement and clawed the drywall all the way through to the insulation. I also discovered he had mangled Brett’s treasured Lego collection. I don’t think he swallowed any of the pieces, but it was fair to say that none of them fit together anymore. I thought some of this stuff was hilarious. Apparently I was the only one.

No, Mary Ellen was not amused. She was a dog lover, but Barney would be a clear test of her true canine adoration. He seemed nothing like Sabra, the mixed breed we’d acquired just after we got married and moved to Columbus, Ohio. Sabra was what a dog was supposed to be: a joy, not a job. Nor was Barney like Tina, Mary Ellen’s dog when she was growing up in Michigan. Tina was a border collie. Barney was borderline crazy. It would be hard for Mary Ellen to make the transition from previous loyal and protective companions to a hyper hound. My wife liked her dogs docile, not demonic. The Wolfsies had wanted a new pet ever since Sabra died, but the plan was that we would select the dog, not the other way around.

Barney remained at home for almost a week while I went to work. It seemed like a year to Mary Ellen. His behavior did not improve. On the second day, I locked him in an empty downstairs bedroom while I was on location for a television shoot. He howled so incessantly that Mary Ellen had to tie him up in the backyard. This was not a dog with a lot of experience being tethered to anything. More howling. Howling for the remainder of the decade and beyond. And this was week one.

“I think he misses you,” Mary Ellen told me after several days. “And he loves you.” I was being set up. I knew it . . . she knew it ...hell, the dog knew it. I was unsure what my wife’s motive was in this declaration. Clearly, the dog was going to pose a problem if we adopted him, but Mary Ellen was good at reading me—over the years she had become a little too good. She knew the dog and I had the potential for some serious separation anxiety if our relationship had to end. And so Mary Ellen went on the offensive. Her mission was first and foremost homeland security, but I think she also knew it was already too late to break up the relationship between Barney and me. We were soul mates. Mary Ellen thought we had the potential to be cell mates.

For most of the next week, I covered for Barney. Any mischief that occurred during the day, I tried to clean up before Mary Ellen got home, and I attempted, sometimes unsuccessfully, to always keep him within my sight. If I did have to leave the house, I again locked him in that basement bedroom. But after the second day of confinement, he chewed and scratched through the corrugated wood door, creating a ragged porthole he could stick his state of the art nose through.

Mary Ellen tried to be understanding. She really did. But the handwriting was on the wall—what was left of it. “Look, this is real simple, Dick. We have to find the dog a loving home or a minimum-security facility. Either that or you take him to work with you.”

She was quite serious. She never actually used the phrase “It’s either me or the dog,” but implicit in the original options presented was the recognition that the dog needed my supervision 24/7 if he was to stay a member of our household. Oh, yeah: Mary Ellen kept reminding me how much he adored me. She kept bringing that up. She knew exactly what she was doing. She loved it when a plan worked.

She was right, of course. I was head-over-paws crazy about the dog. Yes, he had pain-in-the-ass written all over him, but I knew I could overlook it—the way my elementary school teachers had failed to do with me. Like Barney, I had always been a troublemaker, but most of my teachers never saw through the mischief—and I was judged by the disruption I caused in their lives, not the smiles I was bringing to others. That’s the potential I saw in Barney. He might be disruptive, but he could be an impending source of amusement. That dog was me when I was in grade school.

Maybe there was even more to it. A dog is man’s best friend, and I was a man who needed a friend. Oh, I knew everybody in Indianapolis and everybody knew me. But my whole existence was about trying to please people, then waiting for their judgment or that of my bosses. I was one of those TV personalities you either found very funny or extremely annoying. I yearned for a companion, but one who wouldn’t say, “Boy, the show really stunk today.” Or “You are a hoot, Wolfsie.” Actually, I wanted somebody who wouldn’t say anything.

Oh, and he was beagle. And a guy. A frou frou French poodle would not have worked. Thanks for not making me explain that.

Yeah, I was hooked. It would be nice to have a furry friend next to me in the car as I drove back and forth to work. I didn’t give much thought as to what to do with him during the two hours I was on TV.

I also hoped his behavior would change. But it was my life that changed. And the lives of everyone else Barney touched.

The First Week

I was a feature reporter at WISH-TV, the Indianapolis CBS affiliate, when Barney came into my life. Every morning I reported live from various places around the city, updating the viewers on what was going on in Indy. The problem was that there wasn’t that