Pandora’s Beagle

Author: Marjie Alonso

Once a child who couldn’t resist “borrowing” the neighborhood dogs, Marjie Alonso grew up to make her passion her profession. She spent decades as a dog trainer, behavior consultant, and executive director of animal behavior nonprofits. Over the years she shared her life with Emma, an American Eskimo, Betty and Addie, a pair of Greater Swiss Mountain Dogs, Nellie, her first beagle, and now Alice, along with countless foster dogs. A devoted parent and storyteller, Marjie writes with humor and heart about the joy, mischief, and everyday conversations that make life with dogs so deeply meaningful.

Marjie has just completed a memoir about taking her sons to meet their biological mothers in Paraguay and a reckoning about adoption. She writes essays for publication, and has a weekly Substack.

Dear Goddamned Beagle,

I do understand that until recently no one had thought to teach your brilliant mind about things like higher learning. Or sit. Or down.

So though it may seem premature in your education, I’m going to refer you to the classics and a story about Pandora’s Box, in which a human (clearly not a beagle person, but to give her credit, the first woman on earth, so she hadn’t had much time to develop her taste in hounds) opens a jar and unleashes all the evils upon the world, leaving only hope within it by the time she thought to close it. She was slow, Beagz – way too slow to have you in her house.

I refer you to this tale because your brain is very much like that jar. While your innate cleverness is impressive, introducing you to new skills and devices is turning out to unleash only more diabolical schemes from your brain. Meanwhile hope remains planted firmly in there, the impetus for even more plans and experiments to come.

In the sprit of celebrating your intellect while vaguely hoping for it to subside, I have a few points I’d like to make:

~ The Pet Tutor is not intended for you to operate. Please stop climbing to where it is and turning it on. (I have a hard time turning it on, so if you could at least show me how you’re doing it I’d appreciate it. Also, I’m running out of high places you can’t reach, so above all else never grow even an inch.)

~ I do not feel that I should routinely find paw prints on my desk. This is especially the case when I’ve been gone only for a few seconds, have pushed my chair in and booby trapped all access points with items I’d frankly rather be using as intended. Sitting when I catch you up there does not make up for scattering my papers all over the place, and I don’t appreciate your tilted head as I try to figure out if I should be scolding you for getting on my desk, or rewarding you for sitting.

~ Please stop eating other people’s lunches. Those zippers and snaps are for keeping you out, so you could at least be polite about it and pretend they work for the company. A successful “drop it” with an empty baggie is a Phyrric victory.

~ Yes, “down” does get good things, but while suddenly dropping down in front of a person when she’s carrying plates of food may get you an immediate meal, you might be killing the goose in the process. Since my ankle mobility device is now stacked next to my printer to keep you off my desk, I’m not as nimble as I could be and am likely to go down like Dixie one of these days.

I look forward to the day that we discuss “stimulus control.” In the mean time, come have another Benedryl. I need to get some work done.

Love,

Your Person