The Mother of All Dogs

Several months before my wife and I were married, I bought her a 3-week-old St. Bernard puppy as a wedding present. If 3 weeks old seems a bit early to you, it did to that dog as well. However, that was arguably the most adorable carbon-based life form on Planet Earth. We named him Beauregard.

Beau stayed small for about 20 minutes. We fed him the cheapest generic dog food we could find at Kroger (“100% Real Ingredients”). They sold that gnarly stuff in bags the size of Volkswagens. We burned through astronomical volumes of it. Beau ultimately gained about a pound a day.

My two male roommates and I raised the beast in the months leading up to the wedding. It turned out that our duplex had a prohibition against pets. I discovered this when the landlord came around to collect the rent, and Beau tried to pee on his foot. It seems I had not technically read the lease agreement in much detail. That long-suffering guy had mercy on me and let me keep the dog until I got married and moved out.

Dietary Considerations

Beau would eat anything except pork patties out of GI-issue MREs and bananas. Literally everything else was fair game. I came home from the grocery store one day with a couple of big paper bags full of groceries. Included among the foodstuffs was a box of Hostess Ding Dongs. This was back in the old days when Ding Dongs came individually wrapped in aluminum foil.

Beau jumped up on me and split one of the bags such that the box of Ding Dongs fell out onto the floor. In the time it took me to put the other bag down and turn around, he had inhaled three of them. The aluminum foil showed up three days later. They say chocolate is poisonous to dogs. Beau did not think so.

Bigger is Better … Or Is It?

Beau topped out at 160 pounds. People think St. Bernards are big, floppy teddy bear animals who love everybody. Not so, Beauregard. That monster adored my wife and tolerated me. Literally everybody else in the world was either a threat or food. That’s the safest I have ever felt. If some evil-doer got past that dog, he deserved anything he could find.

Eventually, I got orders to report for active duty in the Army. There was no way we could travel around the world with a 160-pound hyper-territorial dog that tried to kill every single person he met. As a result, we put out flyers at local vet offices looking for just the right forever home. Miraculously, we found it.

Joyce was estranged from her violent, abusive husband and needed some protection. It took nine trips to her place before Beau adopted her as the third human he did not try to eat. We drove away feeling bittersweet but relieved. Three weeks later, we got a call from Joyce.

Trouble in Paradise

Joyce’s rural home was surrounded with a chain link fence that reached to about my chest. She kept her car inside the fence. Every morning she would open the gate, pull out her car, close the gate, and head off to work. In the evening, she would repeat this process in reverse. Beauregard observed the proceedings from the comfort of the front porch.

One Saturday, Joyce’s daughter left in the morning for some errand at about the same time Joyce left during the week. Beau was a really smart dog, but he couldn’t use a calendar. As soon as her daughter rounded the corner, Joyce watched Beau stroll over to the fence, leap over it, and wander about the neighborhood. He would jump back over the fence to get water or a snack and then resume his wandering. Joyce assumed that there was no harm done.

One night when Joyce got home from work she found Beau in his regular spot inside the fence on the porch. There was a squad car in front of the neighbor’s house with the lights flashing. She walked over to see what was amiss.

It seemed the neighbors were having a massive family meal, and the weather was warm. As a result, they opened the big door but left the screen door closed. Beau smelled the fresh aromatic grub, vaulted the fence, and proceeded to tear a massive hole in the screen door to gain admittance. He then ran everybody out of the house before messily devouring the entire meal straight off the dinner table. The largest male member of the family fetched a 2×4 and marched inside to make things right. Beau took the board away from the man and finished his meal before jumping back over the fence and awaiting Joyce’s return.

I felt genuinely bad. Joyce didn’t have much in the way of resources, and I had developed an undeniable attachment to the dog. As a result, we invested in a strand of electrified wire and a transformer and gave it to Joyce to string around the top of her fence. We never heard anything else from her.

It has been 48 years now. In my mind, Beauregard is still living there peacefully with Joyce and scaring the holy bejeebers out of her abusive ex-husband. In reality, the big dog might have actually eaten her. I sincerely hope that is not the case.

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