Adios, Amos
November 26, 2011
On a cool October Saturday in 2007, the retired couple who had volunteered to drive the last leg of a rescue transport operation pulled into our driveway and let out the big, dark-furred and scruffy beagle mix that was to become our next foster dog for
Young At Heart Pet Rescue. He had been a stray in rural western Illinois whose days at the shelter were numbered in the single digits due to his age and the perpetual lack of space to house the homeless pet population.
But this shelter is one that gives older dogs a chance by assessing their temperament and connecting with rescue organizations. This dog was presumed to be eight or nine years old, a beagle mixed with some basset to give him his stretched-out, 40-plus pound frame. Intact, no identification, no microchip, a patch of fur missing from his tail and a piece of one ear long gone, he needed a name so they called him Amos. Lucky for him, they observed his gentle demeanor and friendly approachability. He came with one caution: no pig ears (chewy rawhide treats) because he apparently was quite possessive of them!
And that was the first clue in the not-so-difficult puzzle that was this new dog Amos. Within the dog world it is an axiom that hounds in general and beagles in particular are fond of food. Our pre-existing beagles, Katie and Emily, are excellent examples of this, as had been each of the handful of beagles we had fostered to date. We thought we knew from “food focused.” We were about to enter a whole new world of fun and frustration from the one, the only, a true Food Hound, Amos the Insatiable!
No story of Amos would be complete without including the two failed adoption attempts. First was the assisted-living facility that wanted a house dog to live there among the residents. There is a lovely symmetry in having a senior dog living at a home full of senior humans. And Amos would love all that attention! He was generally obedient and very hardy, and wouldn’t be the least bit bothered by a wheelchair bumping his leg or a noisy piece of equipment humming away. We did a trial run for a day and all seemed well. We were a tad concerned that there would be too many food temptations but figured with just a bit of guidance, he’d learn that he had access to all the snacks he could ever want if he just buddied up to the right residents.
But, two weeks after he went to live there, they called and said it was just too hard to keep him from wanting to eat every morsel he could smell, and that they felt it was best that they get a dog less concerned with getting to food. Strike One.
A few weeks later, a lovely woman whose old beagle had just passed away inquired about adopting Amos. Frances was an active, spry 87-year-old in need of a companion and daily walk partner. It would be heaven for Amos to have regular visitors (a handyman, daughter, granddaughters, neighbors) and a doting owner who was home all day long.
This time it took almost three weeks before we got the call. Frances was beside herself with worry that by turning him back in he might be put down, but we assured her that wasn’t the case. She liked him just fine but her family felt he was just too much dog for her, too much to deal with. Among the stories we heard from her: she made a sandwich for herself, turned to get something out of the cupboard, turned back and her sandwich was gone. Another time she came into the kitchen to find him standing on the table. Her granddaughter brought in a container of Chinese food for lunch and set it on the table. A few minutes later, the moo goo gai pan was doggone long gone. Strike Two.
For several more months, we pretended that an understanding home would be found; one that could learn to manage around his uncanny ability to get to food and would find it if not charming and delightful at least entertaining and tolerable. But there weren’t even any more nibbles from folks inquiring about him through the rescue's website, petfinder.com, adoption events, etc. And so, almost exactly one year to the day he first came into our home, we officially adopted Amos ourselves. We paid $165 and got about a million dollars worth of stories in return.
The world according to Amos was a fairly simple place. It consisted of food, food and more food. To say he lived for one thing and one thing only would be too weak a description.
I always imagined a short record repeating in his head, playing just one song over and over, to the tune of “When will I get food, where will it come from, what if they don’t bring me food, is that food in your hand, is there food in that plastic bag you’re carrying, I wonder if that person has any food, is it time to eat yet, what is taking those people so long to get home and feed me, uh oh, I may have to fend for myself so I may as well just be on food alert 24/7 and eat whatever I find when- and wherever I find it just in case it runs out or they forget to feed me or someone else takes it or sniffsniffsniffsniff I think I smell food nearby slurpslurpslurp, chompchompchomp, food, food, food, when will I get food…” And repeat. Again. Forever.
I could fill pages with Amos’s food exploits, but there are some highlights.
As any guardian of a beagle worth its hound-hood can verify, counter tops, tables and any surfaces within tongue’s reach are fair game. So many things we placed waaaayyy back out of his reach only to find empty wrappers, baggies, and every kind of container imaginable in his dog bed. The list is nearly endless – bread (an entire loaf inhaled moments before we took him for a pre-scheduled vet appointment), leftovers, plates that had just held food, and on and on. He would consume virtually any food product.
And, of course, the garbage can is a perpetual source of discovery. We’re convinced that an Amos-proof trash container does not exist. And he’d grab and lick the plate left behind when your back was turned, pull napkins out from under cups and glasses, and eat used paper towels and tissues if you left them behind. He opened more plastic bags, foil wraps, Styrofoam shells and whatever else food might be found inside than we could begin to count.
But some of his ploys were a bit uncommon. Examples of his more impressive accomplishments:
Climbed onto a chair, then onto the counter, then from there had to ssttrreeeetttch way up to reach on top of the refrigerator where, as he so well knew, the dog treats reside. So I could truthfully say that my dog got himself treats off the top of the fridge!
Pulled pans off the top of the stove from the front burners, including, one time, a sheet cake which he enjoyed for a few moments until we could get there to intervene.
Got up on the kitchen table and, from the fruit basket pulled off ONE banana from the bunch, took it to his bed and ate out the fruit, leaving the peel in amazingly good shape. He did this a few times. The first two incidents took us a few days to figure out. We each had come home to find a banana peel in his dog bed, assuming the other had eaten a banana, tossed the peel which Amos grabbed out of the garbage. Only after we compared notes did we realize that neither of us had touched a banana. It was all Amos.
Rolled a cantaloupe, whole, off the counter, across the kitchen, into the living room to his bed, and ate off the top third of the melon.
Grabbed an avocado off the counter and peeled the skin off to eat most of the insides out. A similar fate was met by one orange, a nectarine or two, and several apples from the fruit basket on the table.
Found, stacked among other boxes, a sealed-with-plastic box of holiday rawhide candy canes, opened and ate them all while we were out one evening. We might not have noticed for a while except that they didn’t all stay down. Ewww.
Tore apart the cardboard of a twelve-pack of beer bottles, leaving them strewn about the kitchen floor. Amazingly none broke, and no, he didn’t get any open.
Pulled a box of pumpkin bread mix out of the cabinet, opened and ate it. Similarly, pulled out and ate a box of Cajun-seasoned rice mix. We believe that didn’t feel so great coming back out the other end, what with all the spices.
Gobbled up a large bunch of freshly-washed seedless grapes from a Ziploc bag (on the counter, from further back than he could possibly reach…sounding familiar?). Grapes can be toxic to dogs but luckily this happened while we were at home and we realized it quickly enough to administer the hydrogen peroxide procedure, thus bringing the grapes back up, whole!
One time Hector returned home while I was out of town to find several cookie sheets and baking pans on the kitchen floor, the oven storage drawer pulled out and some of the metal framework bent. Did I mention it’s a WALL oven, up higher than he should have been able to reach or pull?
A funny trait of his was a truly amazing ability to watch, watch, watch as you ate, eyeing the food in your hand, and the moment you looked away, in one silent, speed-of-light, superbly precise and perfectly timed motion he’d have YOUR food in HIS mouth, swallowing it virtually whole in one gulp.
And then, there’s his defining moment, his masterpiece if you will, when he
ate the can of dog food.
He actually ATE the CAN, and the dog food contained therein. It was on the counter, way further back than he should have been able to reach, an unopened can. And we had never even fed him canned food at that point, so how did he know what it was? There was a can of pumpkin next to it that I was going to mix with the food and freeze as treats. The pumpkin he left alone and went for the Alpo. He managed to partially open the pull-top, proceeded to slurp out some food, then resorted to chewing the metal can down to squeeze out the rest. Not a cut on his paws or gums to show for it, but a few pieces of chewed can inside his intestinal tract, thanks to the x-ray taken by the emergency, late-night vet office. We opted for a no-surgery, hope-it-all-comes-out-well-in-the-end (ahem) approach, knowing he had an iron constitution (ahem), and in fact it did work out fine. So he truly did have abs of steel.
One of his favorite things to do was to get up on the kitchen table. Partly this was because he knew we sometimes kept fruit there, and also at any given time there would likely be a molecule of food still his for the taking. He would sometimes just lie down there and hang out, like it was just another place to rest. He could get up there, sniff around, take whatever he wanted, and not move anything else. He truly had a stealth approach. The weirdest part is that we pushed in all the chairs and even tilted some in, yet he would figure out how to get up and back down without moving them. Hmmm.
And when we ate at the table and one of us would get up, there he’d be, fast as a flash up sitting in the chair, looking for crumbs. All things considered, he had pretty good table manners, for a dog.
On the more positive side, he never chewed a single thing not related to food foraging. He never grabbed a shoe, socks, underwear, a table leg, nothing at all. Also he loved to ride shotgun in the car, and because of his size he could sit there and look out the window with his old-man features and seem all too human. Also, he was absolutely solidly house trained from the moment he walked in the door. He only went out when he had business to do, he did a lot of it very few times a day and he was utterly trustworthy for way more hours than a dog should have to be.
Over the years we decided that he was mostly beagle, with just enough basset in him to provide a little extra drool, legs a bit shorter than necessary, a slightly elongated torso, and a surprisingly deep, throaty RUUUFFFFF! That sound could echo across the neighborhood but fortunately he didn't feel the need to use it very often outdoors. Inside it was his way of pointing out to us that there was food on the counter and treats in the cupboard and WHY WEREN'T WE GIVING HIM ANY?????
Amos was a dog who had what I called “old man vibe.” He just seemed like he’d been born old. Not truly decrepit or cranky, just old. We never knew his exact age since he’d been a stray with no history. The shelter that picked him up put on the paperwork in 2007 that he was 8-9 years old. But everywhere we took him for grooming, and any time we were around people who know a lot about dogs, they all thought he was much older. Generally the consensus was that he was, to be just slightly vague, Very Old. Near the end, our veterinarian surmised that he was at least 16 and possibly even 17, which is pretty impressive for a hound.
I always used the word stoic in describing Amos. He never showed any sign of pain or discomfort when we knew he must be feeling it. Not once did we hear him utter a yelp or whimper. Not when it was discovered that he had completely torn ligaments in one knee, not after surgery to repair it, not if he took the slick wood stairs too quickly and landed in a heap at the bottom, and not in his last days when he must have been really uncomfortable. It haunts us that he may have been more miserable than we realized due to his “never let ‘em see you sweat” attitude, and that we should have intervened sooner. But he really didn’t seem ready to go so we didn’t want to force him, and in the end he went out on his own terms, gently and in his favorite dog bed, dozing off one last time.
Amos taught us many things, some very practical and most related to the futility of trying to keep food and food-like items out of a determined beagle’s reach. But transcending all of that, he taught us about the power of laser-like focus on a basic goal and how, with the simple gifts of focus, optimism and perseverance, you can Reach.The.Un.Reach.Able…JAR (or bag or box or can or container of any kind!).
Adios, Amos. It was a wild ride at times but we wouldn’t trade a moment of it for all the rice in China. Because you’d just eat it anyway. Vaya con Dios, nuestro perro dulce. AROOOO!
P.S. Much of this blog is about his various exploits and escapades. In other words, what food he got into when. Take a spin in older posts, particularly those from 2009 and early 2010. See the Blog Archive at left, then click the arrows to open to the titles of the posts to find those about Amos.
