We settled into our house in Don
Mills, Ontario and Beau set out to discover his new world. The house backed onto a park with a lengthy
bike path, baseball diamonds and hundreds of trees. The bike path meant Beau could run beside our
bikes. The park meant he could go for a
prolonged romp at night. The squirrels
were there to chase and the trees were for the squirrels to scamper up as the
fearless hunting dog gave pursuit. Beau
tried them all. He took advantage of all
that the neighbourhood offered.
Unfortunately, Beau was not the one of the most well disciplined dogs in
creation. As we ran around the bike
path, Beau could not be counted on to stay on course – he might spy a family
barbecuing and choose to run off the path and see what they had to eat. Beau found it fascinating. We found it
embarrassing. The folks barbecuing found
it annoying.
The Bible student
More than anything else in Canada,
Beau’s true self emerged as he responded to the various guests who came to the
house. On Wednesday evenings we hosted
the College and Careers Bible study group associated with The Salvation Army’s
North Toronto community church. Beau
longed to join the group of about 12 young adults. He would be willing to lie on the floor and
listen to the discussion. Or, he might
lick the occasional attendee. Or he
might wander around and put his paws on the occasional open Bible. We knew that in his heart he was zealous and
loved seeing everybody come. But his style was a bit disruptive, so we had to
put him down the basement. The problem,
of course, was that we then had to endure 90 minutes of whimpering and
scratching at the basement door as Beau indicated his displeasure at being
locked out of this gathering.
“I’m going now, Beau”
Further social interaction took
place when Eleanor’s parents came to visit – most often for Sunday dinner. Eleanor’s dad took a real shine to Beau and
loved to offer him candy when he left.
It took Beau about two visits to figure this one out. As soon as Dad said, “I’m going now, Beau”,
the pooch was there, kneeling in classical begging position. He knew the candy was coming. If there was not candy offered immediately,
Beau would investigate Dad’s jacket pocket with his super-sensitive nose to
help in the location of candy. The
routine became so predictable that Eleanor would have candies ready to give her
father in the event that he was preparing to leave without offering a candy to
the attentive dog.
What screen door?
In the fall of 1994 we moved house
to Parkview Hill Crescent. It was a
beautiful big house, with a sun-room on the back and a sliding screen door that
opened into a big backyard. On a nice
summer evening we would sit there reading and watching television as Beau eyed
the goings-on in the backyard.
Periodically a cat would wander through. The dog always rose to, as he
saw it, the call of duty to rid the neighbourhood of cats. Off he would go through the screen door to
teach the cats once and for all not to trespass in his yard. Over the course of the summer it would be
necessary to replace the screen several times.
In fact it got to the point we kept a full roll of screening in the
garage so that the screen could be replaced without a trip to Home Depot to
purchase replacement parts. In this, as
in so many areas of life, Beau never adapted to the realities of suburban life. He was willing to adapt to human food, but as
far as he was concerned, the rest of the adaptation was up to the human
community.
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| Word Guild Award 2011 |
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| Word Guild Award 2009 |
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