My slender little mutt, the day I picked him up from the Friendship Animal Protective League in Elyria.

In an early post on this blog, I described the process of getting a dog.

The TV show, Star Trek: Enterprise convinced me to get a beagle.  A news article about 42 beagles getting rescued from a house in Lakewood got me motivated to go to the pound.

Sparky was not one of that lot, but after a news report like that, it’s hard not to wonder how that situation came to be.

Danny and Kenzie’s wedding was officiated by a Lakewood judge who is a friend of her family.  We got to talking, and she told me that she was presided over that case.  She explained what happened.

The son of the Lakewood man, had passed away.  The son left two beagles that the dad took in.  The two beagles had puppies.  Then more puppies, then more puppies.  The inside of the house was appalling. 

After reading a news report about too many animals kept in a house, it’s reasonable to imagine that the interior of the house is deplorable.  I usually suppose the problem started small, and slowly grew until the situation was untenable.

The Lakewood story is stupid, as most of these are.  The guy could have had the two beagles spayed or neutered.  Problem solved.  Alternatively, take them to an animal shelter.  Or, sell the pups.

There is a relevant quote from Theodore Roosevelt:

“In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”

Sparky may have a wandering eye.  Not in the Bill Clinton, man-whore, way.  The dog pound cut his nuts off before they handed him over.  I mean in the amblyopia way I recall from those after-school specials they used to have on TV.  The kid with the lazy eye gets picked on until his mom takes him to the doctor.  He still gets picked on because he has to wear an eye patch.  A kind Art teacher makes him a pirate eye patch and he becomes popular on the playground.

That was back when pirates were the Treasure Island kind, and not the skinny Somali pirates we have now.

While I’m having dinner, Sparky will chide me for being fat, hoping I will give my food to him.  I tried a counter-strike by making fun of his lazy eye.  It didn’t work.  Sparky says that he trained himself to do that.  He said that when one eye hits a hard-stop because his nose is in the way, his other eye can sweep a little farther.  That additional field of view gives him a predator advantage.

Sparky says that’s also why he occasionally blinks one eye at a time.  He wants to maintain his sight picture.  That’s good to know.  I thought he was flirting with me.

I didn’t ask why he needed a predator advantage when his main prey is dead birds and baby bunnies.  He had a full life before he retired with me.  Sparky doesn’t talk about it much, but I get the sense that he was involved in some dodgy work.

When Sparky is busting my chops, I can go back to pointing out that he doesn’t have the ground clearance he had when I picked him up.

Last night, Sparky explained the spirit animal business.

As Sparky was patrolling the back yard, I thought I’d have a beer and enjoy the evening.  Sparky spilled my beer as he was attempting an innovative new way to get on my lap.  He drank some of it. 

When we went outside for the last time of the night, Sparky was pensive.  Not eager to pursue, but concerned and observant.  Something was out there, and he wasn’t sure what.

Sparky didn’t think it was prudent to take a dump, so we came inside.  To minimize wet footprints all over the house, I send him to his crate to wipe his feet.  Sparky wouldn’t go in his crate.  He likes his crate, taking naps in there and going in prior to every meal.  That was odd.

This morning, I was curious for Sparky to investigate the grounds.  He told me about the coyotes, so I documented his report.

Sparky’s gut was making extraordinarily loud gurgling noises last night.   Loud enough that it was audible, 10 feet away, with my CPAP on.  When I’m asleep, Sparky has limited options to resolve an urgent intestinal issue.  He wouldn’t dream of barking or howling to wake me up.  If the situation were dire, he might make some decisions that, in the morning, I’d find appalling.  

We stayed up and talked for a while, then he went outside to eat some grass.  His situation has improved today, but we haven’t come to a consensus on the cause of the problem.

Sparky insists that since he has completed his course of antibiotics, his gut hasn’t adapted to the lack of peanut butter and gravy in his food.

I believe that Sparky should stop eating rotten garbage that he finds in the woods.