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

write that much about a dog?” he asked her. The Star at the time had undergone many changes including a huge influx of editors from the Gannett newspaper chain who did not know the city.

The phone rang all night. E-mails piled in, more than 500 by 10 PM Dozens of floral bouquets showed up on my doorstep and at the studio. Two days later, my mailbox at WISH-TV was crammed with cards and letters of condolence. Truly astonishing in this age when dashing off something at the computer is the easiest way to communicate. People even sent dog biscuits. Huh? By the end of the week, I had more than 3,000 e-mails, including one from AOL asking what was going on. Had I been spammed to death?

At first I tried to answer every correspondence. The task was monumental, and finally I realized that I couldn’t spend the next two weeks in the basement responding to every wellwisher. Every now and then, I occasionally run into people who did get one of my few thank-you notes, and their gratitude is so sincere I have some regrets that I did not finish the task.

Most people were doing more than expressing condolences; they were sharing a personal story of their own losses. Barney’s passing was an opportunity to vent these feelings. And it wasn’t always about a pet. For some, grieving over Barney helped deal with memories of family, parents, and siblings. Some of the letters were hard to read because they were so intensely personal from people I had never met. Yes, they felt as though they knew me and could share what they had gone through in a similar situation.

Almost every fan had a favorite Barney memory. I was struck at how different segments had tickled different people, occasionally even reminding me of a show that I had long since forgotten. “Dick, do you remember the time Barney got his nose stuck on the dry ice?” Actually, I had forgotten all about that. Thanks for the memory.

Viewers had been touched by Barney, amused by him, maybe even had food stolen by him—and they wanted me to know it. As much as I had come to understand Barney’s celebrity, I now fully appreciated the emotional attachment people had to him. I have the letters. I’ve read them. And wept.

Friends, colleagues, and fans also shared their feelings about my getting a new dog. Some felt that a replacement would mend my broken heart and repair a professional setback. But should it be a beagle? “No,” said many. “There will never be another Barney.” “He will remind you too much of Barney.” “It would be an insult to Barney.” Others urged me to find another beagle. Only then, they said, could I fill the void.

Barney’s appearance on TV at 5 AM, or whenever in the morning you first tuned in, was a signal for the day to start. Car crashes, murders, floods, scams, all the stations covered that stuff. But for tens of thousands of people every morning, the little brown and white and black menace was the official beginning of the day. Hundreds of my e-mails began: “I can’t start my morning until I see Barney” or “It takes a little mischief to get my adrenaline going.” I was struck by the depth of the emotion. These were not just fans: they were more like converts to some kind of beagle cult.

Many of the letters shared favorite moments, personal interactions with Barney, usually at a public appearance. “You won’t remember me, but I held Barney at the Tipton Library while you made a speech. He got in my purse and ate half my lipstick.” “I walked Barney at the fair while you were selling books.” “Hey, Dick. I rescued Barney from the thorn bushes once.”

With all the grief I was feeling, I still felt guilt about how I had pushed Barney his final day at the fair. A letter from animal behavior expert Dr. Gary Sampson finally eased the pain.

I had not heard from Gary since the day on my front porch nine years earlier when Barney had gnawed through the microphone cable and uprooted the rosebushes during Dr. Sampson’s explanation of how to cure destructive behavior in dogs.

“I will always remember Barney and what a neat dog he was,” said Dr. Sampson. “And how special for both of you that he should have spent his final day just as he lived his whole life, in front of the people he loved and those who loved him.”

I still have every e-mail and letter—several thousand of them—and I reread most of them in preparation for writing this book. Had I exaggerated in my own mind how much he was loved? Not a bit. But if I had to pick one public acknowledgment of how Barney affected people, it would be the billboard a local veterinarian placed outside his clinic. He was not Barney’s doctor, just a fan. I saw it quite by accident as I drove by a few days after I buried my sidekick.

GOODBYE, BARNEY,

WE WILL MISS YOU

I pulled over to the side of the road. I didn’t cry. Instead, I had a huge grin on my face. For the next hour.

On live TV the first morning after his death was announced, I acknowledged the condolences of the Daybreak team but did not make any attempt to relate the events of the previous days, in part because I had spun a story related to the date of his death. But also because I feared that I would break down emotionally prior to the beginning of the next segment. That night I went home and wrote this column for local newspapers.

Goodbye, Barney

I lost my best friend this week. And my business partner. Barney was 12 or 13 or 14. I never really knew his exact age. He was a street kid who wandered onto my doorstep looking for a better life. He found it. And