Who is Peppy?

(NOTE: I had written this article several years ago when I first set up my web-site, but since then Peppy has died - of old age actually after 13 years - and I've re-edited her story so that it is accurate to today.)

Peppy was our family dog. She was a pure-bred Beagle with the papers to prove it. As far as Beagles go, she was certainly the runt of the litter, as her size and weight had always been at the petite end of the scale. Typical sizes for Beagles are 30-35 pounds, but Peppy was only about 25 pounds. She had the classic short tri-color brown/white/black coat, although in later years the brown in her face was replaced by more white and gray. I almost named her Pontiac instead of Peppy because of a nearly perfect white version of the red Pontiac car symbol on her forehead. Whenever visitors come over she was especially energetic and friendly, ready to romp and play, especially so with my father-in-law.

She was a great family dog over the years, especially friendly with children and visitors, but like all Beagles she had her quirks and habits that were usually amusing, but sometimes were very aggravating. Ask anyone who has one for a pet and they can testify as well as to the manipulative and impulsive behavior of which these dogs are capable. Sometimes I think she had us trained more than we had her! Naturally we had many memorable events, most of which are humorous in hindsight. So I'd like to share some of the better episodes.

Perhaps the most consistent culprit in the story of her life was her nose. Being a member of the hound family, Beagles have an excellent sense of smell, comparable to or even exceeding the sensitivity of dogs with loftier reputations such as bloodhounds. Recently I saw on the Discovery Channel that Federal authorities are using them at airports to sniff out contraband foods and other substances from luggage. To me this hardly comes as a surprise because nearly every time Peppy had gotten into serious trouble, the catalyst was always her nose.

Although she was fairly well trained to heel when on leash, and usually came immediately when called when off leash, all discipline was out the window if she picked up the smell of something interesting. Over the years she escaped several times from our fenced in backyard whenever the gate was accidentally left open (usually by a utility service tech who forgot to close it). Invariably she was too busy tracking the scent of some rabbit or other critter to realize that she had wandered away too far to know her way back home. Fortunately, with only one exception (see below) she's had never gone past the block we live on and I was always able to grab her before she was gone very long. But we're convinced that if we didn't go out and get her, she'd wander off so far as to be gone forever.

Unfortunately, her occasional wanderlust was not the only manifestation of her nose's influence. Many times over the years she attempted, and occasionally succeeded, in pilfering food from the table, the counter, or even from the barbecue grill. The latter episode was pretty funny in that she stole a raw chicken thigh from the platter on the grill shelf, then tried to eat it while running at top speed through the backyard grass as I was chasing her and swearing. It wedged in the back of her throat when she tried to swallow it whole (bone and all), causing her to keel over nearly unconscious, which allowed me catch up and subsequently save her life by yanking it out. During another party sometime later, she raided the kitchen garbage can when nobody was looking and started wolfing down the scraps of grilled chicken (again with the chicken!). My sister-in-law caught her in the act and yelled that the dog was choking, and once again I sprang to her rescue. I picked Peppy up and dug a wad of chicken out of her throat, and just after my sister-in-law said "you saved her life!", Peppy hocked up an even bigger loogie of meat from her gullet, plop in the middle of the kitchen floor in front of the whole party. You had to be there - it was pretty damn funny! There have been a host of temptations, from my girls' 5th birthday party cake, the box of wrapped chocolates under the Christmas tree, to the loaf of freshly baked bread, that Peppy and her incorrigible nose were unable to resist sampling.

More serious than her periodic raids on human food was her addiction to eating various crap she finds out in the backyard. She had an affinity for things like peanut shells and bird feeder suet, both of which the crows will drop in my yard after ransacking the neighbor's bird feeders. But her most disgusting favorite delicacy was rabbit droppings (ugh!), which she found simply irresistible. Naturally these things were incompatible with her sensitive stomach, so she managed to vomit them up in the house a short time later, usually right by the back door as she made a desperate but futile attempt to get back outside to spew. I had seriously thought about buying her a muzzle just for use whenever she goes outside to try and prevent her from eating such crap.

Despite her questionable culinary habits, Peppy was generally a smart dog but not in a manner that benefits her owners. She had managed through careful observation to identify habitual human behaviors, analyze them for weaknesses, and exploit them to her own advantage. She could be napping quietly on the floor by the living room sofa, but when I got up and left the room she instinctively seemed to know whether or not I was going to be gone long enough for a successful raid on the kitchen garbage can. I've tried to ambush her and catch her in the act, but such calculated entrapment usually ends in failure. Her all-time favorite trick was to conduct a covert evening expedition to the upstairs bathroom and lap up the remaining soapy water on the shower floor. Of course, drinking such water occasionally resulted in another one of the aforementioned futile attempts to make it outside before hurling. We always provided her plenty of fresh water in her own bowl, so why she desired lukewarm soapy water was a complete mystery. I guess I should be thankful that she was too short to discover how to drink from the toilet!

One Saturday in the last year of her life we almost lost Peppy due to her wandering off. I was working on finishing our basement the whole day and the kids were in and out of the house constantly all afternoon. Around 7pm we were just sitting down to eat when we noticed that Peppy wasn't underfoot like she usually was at mealtime. So we called her name. No Peppy. We searched the house. No Peppy. We searched the fenced in backyard and the house again. Still no Peppy.

By then we realized she had gotten out, and what really scared us was none of us could remember even seeing her for several hours. I called my neighbor to ask if he could help look - his daughter had some friends over so she and about ten other kids pitched in to search for her. We canvassed the neighborhood on foot by flashlight and by car. By 9pm we had searched around the house for several blocks in each direction and still no Peppy.

My kids were understandably hysterical by then, but there wasn't any more we could do until morning, except call the police to see if animal control had by a long shot picked her up. Here is where we got really lucky. It seems that Peppy had crossed the street in front of our house, went down a few houses to a side street, and after about a block was noticed by a considerate man out walking his dog. Peppy went to them, and he called animal control who came and picked her up. By my own stupidity, Peppy didn't have her collar on at the time, and thus with no tags the officer didn't know whom to contact. But as soon as I called and described her to the officer, we knew they had got her. What was horrible was the officer had picked her up around 4pm - we hadn't even noticed that she was missing for another three hours.

So Sunday morning we picked her up from the shelter, and after paying 90 dollars in fines and fees (ouch!), Peppy was safely home again. A happy ending to what easily could have been a tragic event.

After reading this summary of Peppy's more crafty adventures, you might think that she was a real pain in the ass to have around. Some days I would probably had agreed with you. But on the whole she was a great low maintenance companion. After all, I was fond enough of Peppy to name this web site after her, albeit with an aptly fitting adjective after her name.