A Very Good Beagle

Jasper has been carrying one leg in the air lately, and was having trouble jumping on the sofa. It took a big effort and once settled there he didn't want to get down. I didn't think too much of it since he is a hard running beagle who loves nothing better than to tear through the woods, singing at the top of his voice. Yesterday, a blistering hot day without a cloud in the sky, I was washing, dyeing and putting out fleeces. Matt was waiting on the neighbor farmer to come and bale hay, and putting it away when the wagon was finally full. I noticed Jasper sitting in the field, not too far from the house. I called him to come in, thinking it was too hot. He didn't budge and just gave me that "I don't want to come in" look. Knowing we would be home all day, I let him be. Last night at dusk, Matt called me and said Jasper's having trouble. He couldn't get up the hill to the door. Matt carried him in and set him down in the apartment. He was shaking a bit and I was sure he was dehydrated. I made him swallow some honey and water, then some chicken broth, but I knew something was not right. He just couldn't get comfortable, and kept shifting around. I slept on the sofa last night, after printing labels, wrapping soap, finishing up bags for the Farmer's Market today. I like to sleep on the couch, in front of the TV. It feels like vacation. Me on one sofa, doggies at my feet and piled up on the other sofa. Jasper wasn't breathing right. I was sure it was the dehydration. Then he woke me up at 6 crying. He was incontinent. I wrapped him in towels and lifted him onto the sofa where I could pet and stroke him better. Matt was calling to come on, we were late for the market. Suddenly Jasper became very calm and quiet, and I left. Matt was dropping me off and helping me set up the pop-up, then coming right back to move bales. I had a very bad feeling about going, but I had worked furiously for two days getting ready, and we need the money, and I thought for sure Jasper would be feeling better when I got back. I said goodbye to him and that was the last time I saw him alive. When Matt came to pick me up at the market, I could tell it was bad news. Matt has never been one to hold bad news and he let me have it. I tried to pack as quickly as possible and get in the truck. Jasper is lying in state on the coffee table he loved to sleep under. I was able to stroke those beautiful long ears and talk to him about what a wonderful friend he has been to me and how I enjoyed watching him grow into such a handsome, noble beagle. You see, Jasper and his sister, Georgia, were born on my Uncle Fred's farm in Sparta, Georgia, twelve years ago. It seems like an eternity. It was before my mother had her catastrophic stroke and could still talk to me, before I had to leave Morristown, while AJ, Mia and I were still living together in the house I raised them in. The phone rang and my mother told me about a litter of beagles born on her brother's farm. I was very familiar with Uncle Fred's beagle operation. There were several pens on the slope behind the house, filled with rusty steel drums and dogs. Twice I had brought home beagles, first Sparta, then Prissy. They were a pair and such a big part of our lives. This litter was in trouble. Their mother had been "killed by a rattlesnake" and Fred was tired of bottle feeding them. He had stood up in church and offered them to anyone who wanted to take the time to feed them. Although just born, and so tiny, they were still being kept in a wooden crate, out in the pen, away from the house, all alone. One puppy, hearing other dogs sounds coming from the adjacent pen, crawled out of the crate and through the fence. The young beagles kept in there "keeled it." My mother, born and raised in the South, had a hard time with those puppies being kept that way, and, in desperation, called ME, knowing I would have to do something. I got on a plane and flew from Newark, NJ, to Atlanta, rented a car, and went to get the puppies. By that time Uncle Fred had decided maybe he would keep them after all. They were surviving on three feedings of regular cows milk (?!) a day, and they must be "good dawgs." He let me pick two. I will never forget those wiggly little black and white worms, crawling around the newspaper. I picked Jasper, a bigger, more solid, puppy - and Georgia, the tiniest one, thinking she might not survive the harsh life of a hunting beagle in the Deep South. Georgia had a little kink in her tail, and people always thought I closed it in a car door, or the refrigerator. I thought later I should have called her "Flag," as the tail tip sailed behind her. My mother was thrilled that I came, and it turned out to be the last time we saw each other before her stroke. We could have a conversation, and I could listen to my mom participate in one of those fabulous rapid fire Southern conversations with her sisters and brothers, all talking at once. I called the airline and found out what I needed to do, purchased the box at the airport, and walked them through the exray, holding each puppy in my palms, up against my chest as directed. I bottle fed them on the plane with admiring flight attendants and passengers looking on. By that time I had purchased some puppy formula and correct bottles for them. When back in Morristown their little paws barely touched the floor. Never have there been such adored creatures, and so different you would never know they were from the same litter. Dr. Padover weighed Georgia in a little gram measuring scale, as she did not yet weigh a pound. Her fontanelle had not closed and she had water on the brain. The vet said she might always be a little "dizzy" and that was right. I bottle fed the puppies for months - longer than I had to. My mother was due to come for Christmas to be with us and see how the puppies were growing. The call came that she was in an Augusta hospital, sticken down with a stroke that left her aphasic and crippled. She lingered for two years. I always thought it was Jasper and Georgia who brought us together that one last time when Mom was a whole, happy person. Those puppies were the cutest things in the neighborhood. Neighbor kids would come to play with them and I was crazy about my doggies with the silken black ears and the atypical big brown eyes. My uncle had bred some Blue Tick hound in his beagles, and mine had some lovely spots on their legs. Jasper was large and long legged for a beagle, while Georgia was tiny, shy and demure...but when they were hot on the trail of a rabbit, oh, could they sing. They ran away once, crossing two highways, and leaving Morristown and Morris Township. I had three police departments roused looking for them, and went all around looking and calling through the night. Georgia was taken in by a couple who gave her a BATH and called the number on her collar. I went to pick her up and the woman was rocking her in a chair! When I got home with Georgia, Jasper was barking at the door. This young dog had gone miles and miles away and still found his way home. My uncle always said if a dog couldn't find his way home, he didn't need it! But that wasn't suburban New Jersey, 30 miles from Manhattan! When we lived on Creek Road, in the middle of 68 acres, Jasper would roam the land, scaring up herds of deer and chasing them forever. He could run like the wind with those long legs, singing all the way. I would watch in amazement as he would run, round and round the little shack I lived in, with his feet barely touching the ground. I could go on and on about my puppies...I lost Georgia four years ago to pancreatic cancer. I think Jasper had a tumor growing near or on his spine, causing him to hold up his leg and restricting his movement. Thankfully, I didn't surrender him to a vet the way I did with Georgia, who opened her up a second time just to show a visiting vet her cancer, and who put her down without calling me first. I'm still angry with him. Jasper died at home in his own barn, with his pack around him, and with the taste of honey in his mouth. He would have hated going to the vet in confusion and pain. Last time I took him in, it took three women to give him a vaccination. I have other dogs to love now, and I love them passionately, but the loss of my Georgia beagles signaled the end of an era. They were a link to my mother, my Georgia people, my house in Morristown, my kids while they were still home and we were all together. I always left a little ice cream in my bowl, a little milk from my cereal, a little food on my plate, for Jasper, and I could put it down without even looking to see if he was there - he just was. Matt says he would never have lived this long in Georgia, living in a rusty barrel. I know he is singing his way through a grassy field, hot on the trail of a rabbit or deer. I know there are so many sadder circumstances to think about, like the stories I hear from Mia about the little girls washing their dying mother's hair, or the bodies of little babies she sees wrapped up in the morgue, lying alone on a table - but nothing can make me feel better about losing my Jazzbo right now. I think I better go out and wander among my sheep, play with my dogs, feed my chickens and bunnies, and pick through a fleece, or sew a bag, or make Mattie some dinner. Yes, that would be nice.