Foul

Other than the smells of feces and liver with garlic, the smell of chicken. Betty could tell, almost before the lady reached the front door, that she brought home a cooked chicken from the store. And that's when the tracking began. The proximity from the lady's leg to Betty's nose was never more than 8 inches. All night long.

Listen, she sits when told to sit. Barely cares about the early morning newspaper boy or the late afternoon mailman. She is content with the life and the sleeping places she has created for herself. But when the smell of cooked poultry enters the room, you would think Betty was up all night on cocaine. Every moment a heightened sense of where, tracking of all associated with the smells, no napping just tracking.

She sits when told to sit. Because frankly, she hates standing. But she will sneak that bird off of your plate faster than you can tell her to 'heel'. The relationship of Beagle to Bird came before you found her on a dusty country road. And will continue, until a chicken bone stuck in throat takes our sweet Betty to her grave. Because, good lord, if there is a chicken bone anywhere within 15 miles, Betty will find it.

Seeing the Light

Ralph was an idiot for a flashlight. He memorized where they were kept, whimpered at the drawer handle until someone opened it and pulled one out. Inevitably, the first one wouldn't work. Nor the second, the third or the fourth. By the time the fifth and sixth were tried, whoever had ventured into that drawer began to suspect within the drawer lay a mystical land of light-less torches. But it's always the tiny ones at the bottom that work. And so Ralph would make a gleeful little sound and wait for circles of light to appear on the wooden floor, arcing around him, over and off at odd angles.

Betty was mystified by this ridiculous display. It's light - you can't catch it, ridiculous boy! He would chase in circles and jump and scamper about, and she would lie on the couch, dozing. Unless these shenanigans occurred upstairs. Scampering about where the people and the dogs sleep at night, particularly when we are getting ready to sleep...well that's just too much.

This night, she had to step in and tell him, very firmly, to knock it the heck off. She got yelled at, of course. But the point was made. Because if the flashlight game got the point that Betty intervened, then it was always ended by the people. So order over the house remained firmly in Betty's control. And reaffirmed just in time, because she was absolutely exhausted from such a tumultuous day.

Returning

Betty felt older and wiser as she reached four years.  She wore it gracefully, but was exasperated by Ralph and his incessant playing.  He'd already stolen the little girl's affection, having followed them home and looking scared and hungry and absolutely tolerating the girl's unquenchable thirst for carrying a dog like a clutch and dressing it up like a penguin or an elf.  You would think that with the immense amount of indoor urination he brought in his first few months in the house, the girl would have thrown him out.  But it only made her laugh, almost as much as it made the lady yell and stomp and spray smelly stickiness from cans and then grumble as she wiped away the smelly stickiness.

He messed up everything.  Now toys had to be played with quickly and guarded.  She had to eat her food in her cage and do it right away in the morning or else he would wander in and vacuum it up in seconds.  For a while, before he had gone to the vet's office for an overnight, he was overly attentive to her.  All she wanted was to sleep in a lap, under covers, or eat the squeakers from things that squeak.  But there he was, licking her weepy eye, sniffing the same spots, putting his paws where they had no business letting the rest of him be.

She realized, one night at what hoped to be the tail-end of a very very cold winter, that she had practically forgotten herself while he was interrupting her very cozy lifestyle.  It was as if she had fallen asleep before he showed up, then was so jolted awake by his mania, that she hadn't had a moment to think at all in years.  She decided that what she really needed to do was pay better attention, perhaps to take notes even, so that slowly she could regain her place as center of the house.