BENJI MY BEAGLE WITH THE BIG ATTITUDE
 |
Benji is my female Beagle who is 14 years old. We got her when she was a puppy and my son was 7 years old. My son didn't care whether she was male or female, he just had to name her Benji after the Movie Star of the same name. Benji the girl, ruled my home from the moment she entered the front door at 3 months old and she rules today, as we speak, fourteen years later. |
 |
We were fore-warned that she had attitude the first day we met her, still with her mother and bothers and sisters, in a big cardboard box in my friend's kitchen. She had just escaped from the box for the umpteeth time, and was heading off across the kitchen to the back door, to see what there was to see. She was so tiny that I had to pick her up to get a good look at her. The little go-getter promptly gave me "what-for" for putting a stop to her exploring plans. For a little dog she had a mighty yap, so I put her down immediately. She huffed and snorted at me before she headed toward the door once again. We decided that we just had to have this fiesty little pup. |
 |
She has been one determined little momma, with an attitude as big as an elephant ever since. Not only that, she is very intelligent and almost impossible to fool. The best example I can think of is the issue of when and where she goes for a walk. She learned to like going for a walk on her leash at a very young age. The only problem was she had to go where she wanted to go and at a hundred miles per hour or she'd sit and not move a muscle. She foiled many a dog trainer as we attempted to persuade her to give a little and perhaps compromise a bit. Finally, half way through the last obedience class I enrolled her in, the trainer threw up her hands in dismay and made us drop out. The trainer insisted that Benji was being a bad influence on the other dogs in the class. |
My son thought she was the best and appreciated her sassy determined attitude very much. I told him he could think it was cute all he wanted but he'd better not get any ideas from her or else!
 |
As time passed, I was able to teach her tons of tricks. The ones that she felt like doing that is. She did the usual things like sit, stay(sort of), and lay down. Well thanks to my son, Benji did "lay down" with a slight twist. When we aimed our pointer finger at her and said "Bang", once, she would lay down. Then, still pointing our trigger finger at her and saying "Bang, Bang, twice she'd roll over and play dead. Then when we said "Come alive", she would leap to her feet and bark wildly at us. I figure she was ticked-off at us for making her work so hard. In keeping with the cowboy theme when we told her to "Reach for the Sky," she would get up on her two hind feet until we told her to relax. My son has grown up now, so no one shoots her anymore but every so often I try to see if she remembers. She does. |
 |
Sometimes she's so "full-of-it", and barks at me something fierce. I mean, she become, down-right rude, about it all. When this happens, I just look her right in the eye and tell that if she insists on being rude she might as well take her act outside, because I'm not going to put up with her when she's in this kind of mood. I insist that Benji speak to me in a polite tone of bark or I'm not going to listen. As soon as she hears the word "nice" she tones down her bark to gargley-whiney-sniffly sounds, which I am expected to accept as her nice tone. Hey, I'm not hard to please, apology accepted. |
 |
Of course, not to be out done by the neighbor's dog, Benji learned how to count to three. When I get her to count, I have to be ready with her treat immediately upon completion of her three count, or we're back to rude again. Here's how it works. I say; Benji, One...Benji barks once; Benji, Two...Benji barks twice; Benji, Three...Benji barks three times; Good Girl, here's your treat. If I'm not fast enough with her treat, she scolds me, but good. |
 |
All of her barks have a different tone. Her sassy bark, sounds totally different than her scolding bark, and her rude bark is different than the other two. When she speaks nice her tone is very soft and sort of whimpy. |
 |
Then there are the tricks that she has taught herself. The one that immediately comes to mind is her act at the supper table. You see she knows she's not supposed to bark or beg while the family is eating so she devised her own way of getting our attention. She picks up her favorite little plastic dish that my son used to use when he was a baby, and she literally throws if all over the kitchen and chases after it. What a production! |
 |
Another self-taught trick of Benji's that comes to mind is how she hints to me that she'd really like to go for a walk...now! She gets her leash and drops it at my feet. If I don't pay attention to her, she picks her leash back up and follows me all over the house with it. Her leash is made out of thick chain so it really makes a clatter. If I want to put a stop to the clatter all I have to do is drop what I'm doing right now, and take her highness for her walk! |
They say that dogs grow to be very much like their master. I think with Benji and I, it has been the other way around.
| |
|
Click on the SunShine to Return to Pats Page