DOG’S DINNER

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“Fraggle the beagle danced around the garden with cookie crumbs all over his face
and looking very pleased with himself”

By Judith Ana Johnson

I wasn’t exactly invited to dinner but then, neither was the dog!

Arriving by surprise at the lakeside home of a friend, a beagle ran eagerly out to meet me and the friend I came with the moment we opened the car door then jumped right into the car. I was flattered by so effusive a welcome! For some inexplicable reason, I have always had a penchant for beagles, perhaps because they are cute and notoriously naughty or, at the least, unruly.

Despite showing up unannounced my friend and I got a warm reception at the house. We went back to the car to get our bags, but my offering for the host, a box of fancy peanut butter cookies, was missing.

Then I saw Fraggle the beagle dancing around the garden with cookie crumbs all over his face and looking very pleased with himself! So much for my offering to his master!

My host-friend’s subsequent story about Fraggle bore out the dog’s unruly behavior. He pointed out that this was really his wife’s dog but he had to put up with it! The beagle wore an electric shock collar around his neck to bring him back with a remote device when he ran away, which he did all the time. “We tried everything,” our host said. “But he even failed dog obedience school!”

But the crowning event was our host-friend’s 20th wedding anniversary dinner at their country home by the lake. The numerous guests were served a delicious formal dinner in the dining room. After which, champagne in hand, the host proudly led the charmed guests and his wife to the next room where he had successfully hidden a surprise for his wife, a towering four-tier wedding cake!

We entered the room: total devastation! Cake and frosting were smeared all around the place. Fraggle shot out from under the table, his beagle spots camouflaged with frosting! The parts of the cake that were not in his stomach were smudged helter-skelter on the walls!

Needless to say, the host, a stalwart Albertan, did not find anything funny about it. The mishap portended a dark future.

Running into him recently, he announced that he no longer had either the beagle or the wife! Now, at last, he was sure he could lead a tranquil life.

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Images
Featured image by Nicki Mannix (https://www.flickr.com/photos/71774187@N05/), CC BY2.0
Wedding cake by crayonmonkey (https://www.flickr.com/photos/crayonmonkey/) CC BY2.0
Disaster room by Elizabeth (https://www.flickr.com/photos/table4five/), CC BY 2.0

Judith is a long-time friend and writer of GUIDEPOST equipped with inexhaustible alegría de vivir and TALENT. She used to live in Madrid which she knows inside and out but for some time now she’s back in Calgary, Canada, where she owns Actionco, a language firm. She’s passionate about Flamenco and makes the Amor de Dios studios her second home whenever she’s in Madrid.