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

At the Fair. If it moved, he chased it. If it didn’t, he ate it.

On top of a diving platform at the local natatorium. He didn’t jump, but all of Indiana held their breath.

Barney jazzes it up at a local club. He was always ready to party.

At the second annual Barney Look-alike contest. Even the Bulldog won a prize.

With a little help from my (best) friend. There was only one Barney. That was enough.

Playing to a special audience. Barney spends the morning with children who have Down Syndrome.

Barney gets his own TV show.

He once slept through Lassie Come Home.

Time to go home. Where’s the limo?

Barney and I promote a local movie theater.

Hey, leave that popcorn alone!

Sorry, I forgot the butter.

With the Girl Scouts promoting the American Dairy Association. Always a trooper.

Emily Hunt had been paralyzed in a tragic accident, but Barney always brightened her spirits.

My first interview after Barney’s death. I said there would never be another Barney. And I was right.

The doctors in this clinic never treated Barney. They just loved him like everyone else.

During all this, Barney remained my rock. Because he was with me during every morning TV segment, he also accompanied me to the radio station. We arrived each morning at about 8:30, just in time for me to review notes I had prepared at home and make a transition from my segment on TV baking chocolate éclairs or laser tag to three hours of ranting about abortion rights or gun control. There was no tougher segue in television.

In the radio studio, Barney had his own chair, actually more of a bar stool, that required some human assistance for him to negotiate. But once perched in place, he never moved the entire three hours, proof he had (1) great patience with my liberal lectures and (2) a healthy pair of kidneys.

One reason for Barney’s patience—hardly a beagle trait—was that a procession of the radio staff filtered into the studio each morning, armed with a variety of dog treats. Barney sat there, unmoved (in more ways than one) by diatribes about the merits of universal health care or a harangue about prayer in school, but always with his radar set for the next person to enter the booth and slip him a nosh of pepperoni or a chocolate chip cookie.

His favorite provider was Sally, one of the veterans of the WIBC sales department who never missed a morning visit. At 10 AM Sharp, just before they ran the Rush Limbaugh promo, she’d slip into the studio with a biscuit. Soon, Barney actually connected the Limbaugh theme music with her arrival. The irony never escaped me. The music got us both riled up.

I savored every minute on the air, but it had a devastating impact on me physically and emotionally. Most feedback on the air was negative, complaints about my liberal views. I thought I handled things pretty well....

Caller: “I hate the government. They never do anything right. The less government, the better. We’d be better off if they would just shut down.”

“What do you do for a living, sir?” I asked.

“Nothing. I’m on Social Security.”

“How do you pay your medical bills?”

“I have Medicare. Oh, and I’m on disability.”

“Did you go to college?”

“Yeah, on the GI Bill.”

“How’d you buy your house?”

“I got an FHA loan. Say, listen, Wolfsie, what the heck does this have to do with how much I hate the government?”

The grueling part of the job was the preparation. Unlike one of the other radio hosts at the time who thought that the facts were just a distraction to his point of view, I read every newspaper and magazine. I watched every news show. I was obsessed with being totally prepared. It consumed my life, more so than the TV. I had so little time in the day to get everything done that I booked TV guests during commercial breaks on the radio.

In addition, I accepted a weekend job in New York, guesthosting a cable show, a precursor to shows like The Factor and Hannity & Colmes. Again, a job I should have turned down. Damn ego. Now I was on TV three hours each morning, then radio the next three. The rest of the weekdays my face was either buried in a newspaper or watching news shows. Then on Friday afternoon, I’d fly to New York to do the cable show.

Brett, who was then seven, saw little of me. To Mary Ellen, I was just a rumor. It was the best year of my life. It was also the worst.

Because I was on TV every morning and because Barney was always at my side, I was a moving target with a bull’s-eye on my back. Why call into the radio show when you could accost Dick Wolfsie in the supermarket or the drugstore? All of a sudden, people weren’t thanking me for telling them about the new bakery in town or showing them the new museum exhibit, they were carping about my defense of the ACLU.

I was once stopped by an angry listener in a parking lot who took great issue with my views on home schooling. I listened to the guy for about ten minutes. Maybe I was just having a bad day, but for some reason I realized what a toll this radio experience was having on me.

I climbed into the car, drove about three blocks, pulled over to the side of the road, and burst into tears. I hugged Barney so hard, he squealed.

My approach on the radio didn’t sell. I refused to rant. I tried to be