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

Despite the hearing loss, Barney still remained ornery and mischievous, the two qualities that allowed him to keep his competitive edge as a TV talent.

Brett was now in middle school and less bothered by Barney’s distractive behavior, but still not a fan. Three quarters of Brett’s life, as far back as his memory would take him, there had been a Barney. This tarnished and then cemented his view of all canines as needy, destructive competitors. To this day, my son—now an adult—doesn’t warm easily to dogs. How ironic that this self-professed cat lover hailed from a family whose dog stole the hearts of everyone else in central Indiana.

Mary Ellen had become the reluctant admirer, now sensing that his days were numbered and recognizing what an impact he had made on Indianapolis. And our own lives. She remained until the end Barney’s mom, a mantle she once wore unwillingly, but now wore as a badge of honor, like a military hero tested in combat.

Barney had never had a sick day in his life until his final years. Other than two nasty bites out of his butt, both by a couple of pugnacious pugs we encountered on a leisurely walk in the woods, his hearty beagle nature generally kept him away from the vet except for normal checkups. Save those few places he was clearly not allowed (and there weren’t many) and the one place I knew petrified him—the ice rink at Market Square arena, where he could never get his footing—he never missed a show. Not to brag, but I never missed a show myself. Like anyone ever noticed.

But then Barney started to gain even more additional weight. I knew something was wrong. Bob McCune, Barney’s regular doc, suggested I see a veterinary internist in Anderson, Indiana, who was part of a well-known clinic run by the state’s top animal orthopedist. But Dr. McCune also warned that specialists were inclined to suggest some rather heroic techniques that I might not be comfortable with.

I had taken Barney there once when I thought his tail had been caught in a door. The happy appendage had stopped wagging, a clear sign that Barney was suffering. Dr. Lee had X-rayed the tail and confirmed there had been a minor fracture.

“Does it hurt him?” I asked.

“It’s like impotence,” explained the vet. “Painless but humiliating.”

Needless to say, his tail healed. And wagged uninterruptedly for many years.

At the clinic, the internist ran some preliminary tests, then provided me with an entire list of options I could consider to better pinpoint the diagnosis. Many of the tests were intrusive. And expensive. Money was not the issue, but Barney had reached the stage where I believed that the entire ordeal would just result in a potential short extension of his life. And who was I doing that for—him or me?

I opted for a few of the procedures, primarily to rule out one disorder that was quite treatable. When the tests came back, so did a bombshell. Barney had a possible abscess on one of his kidneys and the specialist was suggesting that it be removed. Not the abscess, the kidney. I listened to her rationale but was unconvinced. This was a twelve-year-old dog suffering no apparent pain and still pleased as puppy chow to accompany me every day and do his thing.

The next day I went to see Dr. McCune, who agreed that it was a quality-of-life issue. The trauma of the surgery coupled with a tough recovery period dissuaded me from the dramatic procedure that was being recommended.

Going home in the car, I pulled over to the side of the road and gave Barney a hug, as I often did when we faced a mutual problem. “I think we made the right decision, ol’ buddy.”

The thought of his death, and life without Barney, was something I did not do a lot of thinking about. I had heard that Bob and Tom, hosts of a nationally syndicated radio show that originated in Indianapolis, had large insurance policies on each other’s lives, protecting them and their families against financial loss if one of the partners died. How clever that was, but probably not something even Lloyd’s of London would do for a guy and his dog. My life insurance agent was a good friend, but this was not a call I was going to make.

Heavenly Bed

Our twelfth appearance at the Indiana State Fair began with a beastly hot morning that would only get muggier as the day went on. A few days earlier we had reported live from the balloon race, where, as always, the governor stopped by for a quick interview.

We had invited a representative of the Westin Hotel chain to unveil their Heavenly Bed for Dogs, part of a campaign for the chain to promote traveling with pets.

Even now when I look at the videotape, I still marvel at how Barney always knew exactly what to do to make the segment work, how to make the audience laugh. How to make people say, “What a dog!”

The segment began with a quick explanation of the Westin’s decision to allow guests to bring their dogs to their hotel when on vacation, then ended with the first public display of the three-foot-square white poofy cushion that was provided to travelers for their pets. I thought it kind of ironic at the time. If the Westin was going to encourage people to bring destructive dogs like Barney to their hotel, the concept didn’t have much of a chance to succeed, which, by the way, it didn’t. They ended the program not long after. I never heard officially why, but the word was that allowing people to have dogs in the hotel room and encouraging them to do so was a line they shouldn’t have crossed. And a room they didn’t want to clean.

As soon