Beatrice - A Short Story about a French Bulldog in Tampa Bay, Florida

Beatrice:  A short story that spans seven years.  

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It was June 30, 2004, the thirty year anniversary of graduating high school, a reminder of a transition in my lifetime.   Little did I know that this day would be the day I would lose my most beloved companion and soul mate.  Some of you may think it is odd to have a dog as a soul mate, but I consider myself honored.  I often wonder if she would have said the same about me, or protested about having a limited human as her soul mate.  I think her unconditional love would have overridden any concern she might have had.  Besides, she accepted all my human frailties and became my “rock” of support.  It is said that dogs are just projections of ourselves, and that we put our own feelings and emotions into them.  If that is true, I am a lot better person than I thought I was, if I am anything like the truly love filled Beatrice.

Let me tell you a little about her.  Her full name is Beatrice Isabel, and she is an English Bulldog, and she was born on October 18, 1996 in the year of the Tiger.  She didn’t look much like the bulldog standard.  That could be because I got her at a pet store in Brooklyn called A World of Pets, owned by a tough guy named Gary, and not a breeder. She was from a puppy mill in the Midwest .   I violated the first rule of purchasing a pet, and that is, never purchase a pet in a pet store.  In the case of Beatrice, this violation paid off.  She turned out to be the best thing I have ever done in my lifetime.  Beatrice taught me that some times bad decisions turn out really well.

Why Beatrice Isabel, you may ask?  I named her that because at the ripe old age of 16 weeks, she looked like a little old lady.  I thought of names of little old ladies, and Beatrice seemed fitting.  My grandmother’s name was Isabela and in Italian the name means beautiful.  When I was little, from birth to teenage years, we would go over on Sunday mornings after Sunday mass, and grandma, known to all as “mama” used to pinch our cheeks and say, “isabel,” meaning that we were beautiful.  I often thought that she called us all Isabel because there were so many of us, she could not remember all our names. 

The first time we walked past the nursing home across from my apartment house on Greenwood Avenue in Windsor Terrace and I called out to Beatrice, about three elderly women turned to me and said, “yes.”  They were so tickled to find that my Beatrice shared a name with them.  Beatrice loved those ladies and looked forward to her daily pets from them.

 Beatrice had such droopy bulldoggy cheeks that grabbing them and saying “Isabel” became so natural that I decided to make it her middle name, and also in honor of “mama,” who at the age she was, was beginning to look a bulldoggish herself in the same sweet way as my beloved Beatrice.

Beatrice would have certainly liked to have been around back in those days, Mama’s house was full of energy on Sunday morning.  She lived in a five story brownstone in Park Slope, my Aunt Pat lived on the top floor, my Aunt Vera and Yolanda lived with Mama, and Aunt Minnie lived on the third floor.  Uncle Joe and Aunt Mary were living around the corner.  We lived not to far away in Clinton Hill, a small neighborhood bordering Bedford Stuyvesant.  Bedford Stuyvesant was the area that my mother was from, and her mom, lived on the next block. 

Every Sunday the sisters (and this wasn’t all of them, my dad had 9 siblings) were down at Mama’s with the pot of gravy going, rolling out fresh cavatelli pasta on the metal farm table and dishing out fried meatballs before they ended up in the sauce to any of us persistent enough to hang around the kitchen.  My dad would bring “buns” from the Italian Bakery on Fifth Avenue and life was good.  Espresso was served and there was plenty of loud conversation and laughter.   Beatrice would have been in her glory, plenty of people and plenty of good food to beg.

Park Slope was different in those days than in the days that Beatrice’s paws beat the pavement of the concrete streets.  Then, and I speaking to the 1950’s and 1960’s, Park Slope was immigrants making a new way in this country.  Papa, my grandfather, was a bricklayer and brought his family over on the boat to find a better life in America .  In the cellar, Papa brought some of the traditions of Italy with him.  He had a wine press and made homemade Italian wine.  The backyard of the brownstone was rich with rose bushes, grapevines and beautiful statues and trellises reminiscent of Italian gardens.  It was old world.  It was economically poor, but it was culturally rich at the same time.  As time passed, the 1970’s brought a “bohemian” crowd, and Park Slope is now an area rich with yuppies and stock boomers.  The brownstone that Papa bought back in the 50s for around $18,000 is now worth about 2.8 million.

I remember being in the “parlor” and listening to music with my Aunt Vera, Yolanda and Uncle Frankie and some of my senior cousins, learning to do the twist and bouncing back and forth between the old world Italian music and the new rock and roll.  I recently went to a Cyndi Lauper concert here in Florida , at Ruth Eckerd Hall and Cyndi had a song on the new album that she performed at the show.  It was a version of “Stay.”  The music was a fusion of rock and roll and 1940’s cha cha music.  When I first heard it, it reminded me of mama’s on Sunday morning.  Cyndi explained that the music was what she heard when she was between rooms in her home in Queens , where her aunts and uncles were playing the “cha cha” music and her friends playing rock and roll.   I realized that this was the same era and that is why I felt at home when I heard the song.  This was my upbringing.  It was fusion of old world and new, and I am grateful for being part of these two eras.

Getting back to Bea, you may also ask, what was she doing in a pet store at 16 weeks?  That is kind of old to be in a pet store, pups usually leave when they are between eight and twelve weeks.  Well, Beatrice was all set to be sold to a young Asian couple when she developed “cherry eye,” a condition very common in the bulldog breed.  The connection with the Asian couple is why I mentioned that she was born in the year of the Tiger on the Chinese calendar.  Cherry eye is the rolling out of the mucus membrane in the bottom eyelid and looks like a cherry.  She had been in the store with a brother and sister, and was taken away to have her surgery.  When she returned, her brother and sister had been sold and the Asian couple had forgotten about Beatrice.  I was lucky that they forgot about her, and grateful for the cherry eye.  If things had not turned out as they did, I would not have had her in my life.

It was a rather mild Sunday in February, the date was February 28, 1997.  Since I was a child, after seeing Spike on Tweety Bird cartoons, I was taken with bulldogs.  I had bulldog clothing, statutes, medallions and just loved them.  At the time, I had Persian cats, Sal (a chocolate brown Persian with big green eyes) and Ziggy (a blue tip gray with big yellow eyes, a more timid cat than Sal). In the feline world, Persians with their flat faces, short snouts and underbite were the closest feline look to a bulldog.  Still, I had been dreaming about a white female bulldog since around October 18 of 1996, and learned later that was the day Beatrice was born. 

This day, I had gone out on Montague Street with a friend of mine, and after having sushi for lunch, I ventured to A World of Pets to see if I could find this bulldog that I had been dreaming of.  A World of Pets is located in Bensonhurst on 86^th Street , the same street in Saturday Night Fever, the one that John Travolta pranced up and down in the movie. 

When I arrived, in a crate full of beagles, was Beatrice.  She was not white, and not how I pictured her, and not really looking too much like a bulldog.  I thought she was a boxer.  Apparently, upon return from her surgery, she was crated with the beagles so that she would not be lonely and from that day on, I think she thought she was a beagle.  Whenever we would happen upon a beagle in Prospect Park , Beatrice would run towards the beagle as if it was a long lost family member.  She had a thing for beagles.  They must have treated her as one of their own.

The moment we saw each other in the pet store, it was love at first sight.  It was a crowded day at A World of Pets, there were at least twenty people in the store looking in the puppy area, but Bea locked eyes with me and I with her, and we did not take our eyes off each other.  I was unsure what kind of dog she was.  She looked to me like a boxer, had a black muzzle that was longer than the average bulldog and she was thinner and taller than most bulldogs I had seen.  She was then and always remained a sad excuse for the bulldog breed, but that did not matter to me or anyone else who knew her at all.  There was something about Beatrice.  There was a peace, a calm and a love.  There was a certain wisdom, old soul quality about her.

I asked one of the techs to get her out of the crate for me, and I went and sat on the floor of a petting booth.  Bea walked in, walked right over to me and sat in my lap.  She leaned back into my chest with her head in the crook of my neck and put her face next to mine.  She played me like a violin, probably saying, “I found a tsucker (Bea speaks with a bit of a lisp, so when she speaks you will always find a “t’”prefacing the “s”), I will be out of here in no time.”  After about a minute of sitting comfortably in my lap she turned around and gave me what became known as a Bea hug.  She took both paws, and placed one on each shoulder and squeezed in close to me, putting her face on the right side of my face and leaning her weight into me.  She knew what she was doing.  That was all she had to do to me.  I handed my charge card to my friend and said, “just pay for her, I need to take her with me.”

$1250.00 later, Beatrice owned me.  As soon as we hit the front door, she stopped dead in her tracks, a habit that soon became her signature trait, and refused to walk.  After some coaxing and sweet talk she eventually motored on forward wagging her little “fat butt” as it soon came to be know by many, and pranced, very unlike a bulldog to my truck.  At the time, I had a black Isuzu Rodeo and she seemed to like the truck idea.  She sat on my friend’s lap and was happy to have such an elevated view of the world.

I had never had a dog of my own before.  I had shared ownership, but never bonded, or was responsible for a dog.  I did not know what lie ahead in terms of dog needs.  Beatrice soon taught me many things.

I saw people in my neighborhood walking their dogs in the morning and in the evening. I thought I had it all figured out, I would walk her before work and when I came home. I did not know that puppies needed to be walked four to five times a day, and needed to be fed three times a day.  When I got home and read the instructions that came with Beatrice, in a neat little packet entitled, “Your New Puppy,” I could not believe what I was expected to do. 

As Sal, Ziggy and I sat on the bed and stared down and Beatrice, we all wondered why she had picked me, and how we were going to deal with this situation.  We discussed the impulsiveness of my purchase and questioned if I had done the right thing.  Cats are easy. Dogs are hard.  Sal looked at me with a Garfield like sarcastic look, and it reminded me of some of the comic strips where Garfield referred to dogs as dumb and sloppy.  I think Sal predicted the days and years to come.  Sal lived for a year or two more and passed on to liver cancer.  Ziggy eventually had to be given away as he could never remain in the home he had shared with Sal his litter mate.  Ziggy still lives in Brooklyn , in an apartment over a car wash on Pennsylvania Avenue .  Ziggy was named after my best friend who passed away a few years earlier, and was a gentle a soul as the human Ziggy.

Beatrice proved that timing is not necessarily always everything.  For me, this  was not the best time to take on such a responsibility, I was in the middle of finishing my Master’s Degree, studying for a Captain’s exam (as I was a Lieutenant in the NYPD), and had just moved into a new apartment, that, guess what, did not allow any new dogs!

I figured, it could not be that bad (what an understatement), and resigned myself to deal with this new commitment.  The techs at the pet store told me  that Bea would sleep in a crate and that I should crate train her if I was to be away from the house for periods of time.  She came with a book, “The Natural Way to Train Dogs” by Carol Benjamin, and I set out to read the book.  It seemed pretty neat and sweet and it seemed as if it would be easy.

While reading, I smelled the worst smell I had ever smelled in my life.  I looked at Sal and Ziggy, they looked back at me in disbelief.  It was beyond all of our collective comprehensions that something so little could make such a smell.  I looked in the crate and found that Beatrice had pooped in the crate, and rolled in it.  She was covered from head to toe with poop.  I looked closely and deduced that the poop did not look right.  I was right.  The next day, we went to the vet, to find that she had giardia, a parasite that caused diarrhea, which fondly came to be known by everyone who knew Bea at the time as “propelled poop.”  Suddenly, wherever she was, whatever she was doing, a bout of this “propelled poop” would come over her and it would cover anything in its path.  It was as if it was charged with a propellant, it could reach great distances.  Some of the like indoor targets were the bed, the couch, the wall, and the refrigerator.  The giardia made it difficult to confine her to a crate so I gated her into the kitchen using a wooden gate.  It was a galley kitchen and not much room to get into trouble, so I thought.  This is when I found out that bulldogs are chewers and that they love to chew wood.  In the time it took me to take out the bucket and mop to clean the mess, Beatrice had mulched my lower kitchen cabinets. 

When I let her out, as she had a bout of propelled poop, she stepped directly into the bucket I was using to clean up the first mess, and sent the water cascading throughout the dining room and living room.  As soon as I went to clean the water, Bea jumped all over the furniture, spreading poop and dirty water as she went.

I knew then why Dr. Maddox, my veterinarian for years, gave me an “over the glasses” look and said, “WHY” the day before on our first visit.  “Why did you do this to yourself, you were fine with the cats,” while he lovingly examined and was taken with Beatrice.  Dr. Maddox is an African American gay may, very flamboyant in many ways, and a graduate of Tuskeegee University .  He is the owner of the Cobble Hill Veterinary Clinic, in Brooklyn Heights .  Sal, Ziggy and I lived in the Heights for about eight years before moving to Park Slope and Dr. M tended to all of their needs.

Dr. M is the best vet a person could ever wish for, and after a few visits with Bea told me that she was the gentlest soul he had ever met.  That coming from a vet with thousands of patients was a very big compliment and I realized I had someone very special in my life.  This said after he found that Bea had contracted a rare form of llama skin rash.  He timidly came out of the lab and said, “Carol, I know this is crazy, but I have to ask, has Bea been around any llamas?”  I responded, “why yes doc, she was playing with them at the East Hampton Classic, the dressage event last month.”  He shook his head, went into the lab and came out with some skin cream.  He said no more.  He said no less.

Dr. Maddox was the one who told me to go to the doctor myself at the end of that summer, as I was very tired, fluish and could not shake it.  He said, I think you got lyme disease.  A tick probably got in on the dog and you got it, she has been vaccinated for it.  He was right, that was the first bout of two bouts in successive years, contracted from my llama and deer loving dog.

Back to the giardia.  While cleaning up after Bea, I had forgotten that my bathtub water was running.  What a better way to end a day than to take a relaxing bath. Those days were over. I did not remember the running water until Beatrice, apparently impatient that I did not get to washing her off first before cleaning the house, jumped into the full tub of bubble bath.  She exited and proceeded to get the bed and all the bedroom furniture covered in water and bubbles.   Beatrice in that moment taught me priorities, her priorities.

I was a very neat and clean before Bea, cleaning the apartment, like clockwork every Saturday morning, while blasting Frank Sinatra, and making the apartment spotless.  My friends, Loretta and Ginny were even more fanatical than I, and could not believe I would allow an animal whose feet were on the dirty pavement into my home and especially into the bed.  I was a closeted “dog in the bed” person.  I could not tell them the dog slept with me, they would have sanitized themselves and me prior to any future contact.

These types of incidents and new white lies began to define my life.  My life as I knew it, had ended, and I was now the custodian to this little bulldog.  I did not know what to do.  Around the fourth night of Bea’s ownership of me, I got under the covers of my bed and called my therapist for an emergency telephone session at $90.00 per hour, whispering to her.  She asked why I was whispering, and I said, I can not wake the dog up.  If I do, I am in for more hours of havoc.  She laughed and said, “it is funny to me that a police lieutenant is under the covers whispering, afraid to wake up a puppy.”

Sal and Ziggy came to love Bea, as did I and everyone else Beatrice would meet.  I would find them washing her face and bringing her cat food, which did wonders for the giardia condition.  I was, however, pleased that we had a harmonious environment where the only one tortured was me.

Bea and I would walk many times a day, and I mean many.  Within the two weeks, I got her a dog walker, a lovely woman by the name of Adena.  Adena had a beautiful white wolf named Cheyanne, who quickly became Beatrice’s role model.  I had heard of Adena and was searching frantically to find her, to avoid the poop cleanups after work, when Bea would use the “wee wee” pad and then chew it up and shred it throughout the house.  I was on an early 5:30 a.m. walk with Bea at Prospect Park and Bea stopped dead in her tracks when she laid eyes on Cheyanne.  As soon as I saw this beautiful animal, I knew I had found Adena, as I heard tales of the beautiful Cheyanne.  Adena and Cheyanne, needless to say, both fell in love with the little wiggly, overly friendly and funny Beatrice.  Adena could not stop laughing at the sight of her. Cheyanne looked surprised that so little a dog would chance approaching the famous and regal Cheyanne.   Everyone fell in love with Bea, she was the cutest puppy, and lucky for her that she was, because she did so many bad things as a puppy, it was her cute appearance and loving disposition that saved her.  Adena went on to be a park ranger, Bea then had a dog walker named Efrain who she loved as she did Adena.

The first day I walked her in the rain, I was perplexed.  I did not know what to do with a wet dog. I do not know how someone in pursuit of a master’s degree in Organizational Behavior, a degree rich in forecasting and planning, had not anticipated this inevitable event, but I did not.  Common sense was something that Beatrice eventually taught me.  I asked the woman next to me on the curb, who was walking a lab/beagle mix named Saki, and who became one of Bea’s best friends, and she looked at me and said, “get a big old towel, wrap it around her and dry her off.”  I had been envisioning blow drying and all sorts of complicated solutions, but Bea taught me the lesson that things were not as hard as I could make them.

About a week later, Bea and I were on our way home from our walk in Prospect Park and found ourselves on the same curb with the woman and Saki, only this time I looked down and Bea was covered in red.  I started screaming that the dog was bleeding.  Three people, also walking dogs, and crossing the street from the park, helped me inspect her, and one realized that she was wearing a new red leather collar that when wet bled red dye on her fur.  I have still not lived that particular incident.  Beatrice taught me that things are not always as they appear.

About a month later, now friends with Kathy and Saki, when Beatrice appeared not to be able to walk in the middle of the night, and me fearing the worst, called Kathy and we found ourselves driving to the Animal Medical Center in Manhattan at 2:00 a.m.  Beatrice got into the waiting room, took a big poop and began to walk fine.  While we were there, I had her checked out anyway to find that she had sprained her rear ankle, the same ankle that I had sprained myself two days earlier.  For the next few days, we hobbled around town, with me bending over to support her when she had to poop.  We were quite a pair.

About a week later, in thanks for Kathy’s support through the ordeal, Beatrice found it fitting to eat two pairs of Kathy’s new prescription Armani eyeglasses.  These were eaten just days after Ariana’s Internal Affairs beeper had been consumed by her, and when guests came over to our house and asked for the remote control, I would point Bea’s bottom to the TV as she had eaten that as well.  I could never figure out what he had done with the batteries.  I cannot imagine that those would have gone down very smoothly.  Bea had a thing for electronics. 

Prospect Park is a wonderful park designed by Olmstead, the same man who designed Central Park in New York City , and who landscaped many of the Biltmore estates.  He thought of everything a dog could want.  A lake, meadows, woods, resting areas, streams and areas to get lost in.

After about a month, I had established a circle of dog and owner friends that would take morning walks together in the park.  Adena and her boyfriend Ernest (who later became Beatrice’s dog trainer, if you think it is possible to train a bulldog), encouraged me to take a walk to the Great Meadow.  This was an area in the park where dogs could romp off leash and have a great time.  Well, for me, this journey was tantamount to the journey to the Green Valley in the movie, A Land Before Time.  It was over the meadow and through the woods, and I never thought I would get there.  The group consisted of Adena, Cheyanne, Ernest and Duke (who has gone on to doggie heaven, and whom I am sure is with Beatrice as we speak and who is a beautiful German Shepherd), Bea and me.  Well, when we got there, it was worth it.  Little Beatrice got to the crest of the hill, as I was almost in cardiac arrest behind her, and as she looked over the hill, she saw a meadow filled with hundreds of dogs, running off leash and playing and romping in the grass.  She looked at me and I looked at her, and it was like being in “doggy heaven.”  She ran down that hill, stumbling, wiggling in her awkward way, and ran right into her next friend, a Heinz 97 puppy named Babette, owned by Ramona and Kirsten.  This adventure became our daily walk.  Before long, Bea had stolen the hearts of the dogs and most of the owners in the meadow.  People would thereafter greet her screaming “BEA.”  As they got to know her they were careful as she approached. She became known for rolling in poop or dead animals, two tricks she learned from her role model Cheyanne.  I would follow behind her yelling, “don’t touch her, she is covered in poop.”  It came to pass that almost every day, we would have to dunk her in the lake on the way home to remove some of the poop before I would give her a bath to remove the rest of it.  Beatrice taught me that a life of poop was not that bad.  It was easy to get into and not as easy to get out of, but anything was possible.

And that brings us to Lassie, and anything being possible.  One day, Bea and I were watching Lassie on television and she was mesmerized (another favorite film of hers is “The Bear”).  Every time Timmy called Lassie, Bea lifted her ears.  For fun, one day on our walk I called her “Lassie” and to my amazement, she responded to Lassie better than she had been responding to Beatrice.  There is a famous story about a little bird who thought she was an Eagle, and because she thought she was one, she achieved the same heights.  In many respects, this is how I felt about Beatrice, she thought she was Lassie, and therefore she was.  People would roll in the field as I would yell Lassie, expecting to see a collie, and instead would come this awkward little bulldog at full speed, tripping over rocks and dirt and her own four paws.

Prospect Park was now filled with the dogs and residents of the late 90s, which were very different than the immigrants of the 1950s and 1960s.  The dogs, many of which were pedigree breeds (Beatrice was the only bulldog at the time), others were Brooklyn Terriers, and these were pit bulls rescued from the fighting rings from the new yuppies of Park Slope. 

Prospect Park sits in the middle of a very interesting area.  On one side were the yuppies, in Park Slope and Windsor Terrace.  The other side was Crown Heights a primarily inner city, African American/Hispanic area.  On that side of the park, the pits were trained with 30 pound chains around their necks and taught to fight.  On the yuppie side, they were rescued when their owners found them not to be strong or fast enough for the ring, and left them abandoned in the park.  I soon found that pit bulls had a very bad rap.  I found them to be a gentle and sweet breed, and some of the most loyal dogs I have ever come to know.  It was the owners of these animals that tried to turn them into the fighting machines and aggressive dogs, hence the bad reputation.  It is the owners that are aggressive, not the breed.   I learned pretty quickly that there are no bad dogs, just bad owners. 

In those first months of the trials and tribulations of Beatrice, I would think of things like leaving her in Prospect Park , but I knew that everyone knew she belonged to me and they would return her to me.  I had to face it, I was stuck with her, and I grinned and gave it my best shot.  Of course, I would have never left her in the park but it did not keep me from dreaming of my old days of independence.

I began to understand why the single moms at work were so concerned about getting home on time.  I being childless always thought it was an excuse, Beatrice changed all that as well.  Before long, when she was old enough to hold her water for more than two hours, I began taking her with me to teach DARE classes in the public grammar schools in Manhattan .  Beatrice loved every minute of it, and the attention was much to a standard she seemed to be accustomed. 

Before long, the 5^th and 6^th graders would not greet me anymore, and if I arrived without Beatrice, they would all cry, “Where’s B Kool?”  As rap was their main form of music, they gave her a rap name.  She again stole the hearts of another group of people. 

Beatrice got me so frazzled each day traveling to Manhattan that one day I was so preoccupied with her that I left my truck running with the keys in it in front of the stationhouse.  My sergeant, Mary, came in with a look of disbelief on her face, and said, “Lieu, do you know your car is running outside?”  Beatrice and I looked at each other and I certainly did not seem very competent in that moment, and began to become more humble as I became more distracted by Bea.  Beatrice taught me humility.

About that same time, the Youth Division was scheduled to take a group of inner city, at risk teens away on a weekend to the Fresh Air Fund, specifically to Camp Mariah , a camp for inner city youth funded by Mariah Carey.  The officers came to like me and suggested that I be the supervisor to attend the weekend.  Of course, “I replied,” and followed it with the usual question, “what about Bea?”  Laverne Yard, the officer who coordinated the event had already anticipated that question, and had arranged a room in the “big house” that would accommodate me and Bea.

So, off we all went.  We passed the scenic Fishkill Prison on the way up and Beatrice decided that this was where she needed a rest stop.  It was a sobering moment for me, I was seeing the place where many of the people I had arrested were now existing.  It made me think.  Beatrice showed me the fruits of my work.  Even though I had put away many violent, predicate felons, it still affected me to see them in this way.  My dog had a better existence than them.

We arrived at Camp Mariah , Beatrice immediately ran to the manmade lake, rolled in duck poop and fell in.  The teens were hysterical and immediately she endeared herself to the group, all still sitting in four buses waiting to embark upon the weekend.

That first night, Bea and I went to bed, there were two twin beds in the room, and from the window, I had oversight of the whole facility.  The heat was on pretty high, and I opened the window.  Of course, even though there were two beds, Bea decided to sleep with me in the narrow bed.  In the middle of the night, Bea started twitching and trembling.  I am the consummate hypochondriac and immediately worried that she was about to have a seizure or some sort of neurological bout.  I sat with it for about an hour and could not take it anymore.  I knew that Laverne was in the room next to me and, even knowing that they all had been up very late, I could not help knocking on the door to get some help for Bea.  Laverne came to the door with her hair up in a cloth thingamajig, wearing a moo moo type nightgown.  She walked into my room, looked at Bea and said, “Lieu, I don’t know what is wrong with you white people, why do you have the window open, she is only a baby, she is freezing.”  Laverne was right, I closed the window, Bea stopped shaking and I was scared to look at Laverne the next day. 

At about 5:00 a.m., Bea woke up, needing to go outside.  I tip toed down the stairs in my pajamas, and Bea on the third step fell down the stairs, making enough noise to wake the dead.  We went outside and attempted to quietly take a walk, without waking anyone else in the other buildings and without calling attention to the Lieutenant walking the grounds in an old lady flannel nightgown. 

Bea went down to the shoreline of the lake and all seemed well, until she ran in my direction like the devil was chasing her.  Behind her were some pretty angry geese.  Apparently she happened upon a nest and some eggs.  Eggs are Beatrice favorite food, besides bait in the bait cans of fisherman along the beach in Montauk.  One of the geese nipped her in the tail.  The geese were screaming, Bea was howling and we were all running up the hill.  Needless to say, every occupant of that weekend tells the story of waking to the noise and vision of Bea and me running up the hill, and me wearing my old lady nightgown.

Back at home, I was noticing something and this was that Bea was beginning to act like a cat.  She was sitting on the side arms of furniture and jumping down from things, not landing as gracefully as the cats, but trying as hard as she could.  I realized she needed some dog companionship.  When we went each weekend to Montauk to our little apartment on Love Lane , off of Paradise Lane , I noticed that she wanted to make friends with the deer.  That brings us to Darla and also to my two bouts with lyme disease.

I called around to breeders and others in search of another bulldog.  A friend found an ad in the newspaper where someone in Staten Island was selling a 4 month old female English bulldog.  Beatrice was 8 months at the time, and I thought the ages were a match.  Bea and I set out to Staten Island to meet this bulldog.  When we arrived at the address, we were greeted at the door by a woman with bleached blonde hair wearing white knee high go-go boots and a mini-skirt.  In the back room was a presumed husband, who was not happy that visitors were present.  There were other people in the basement, checking out American Bulldog puppies that her other dog had birthed eight weeks ago.  The woman said, “come down stairs, I have people looking at the pups, and then I will show you Darla.”  While downstairs, peering in through a small basement window from the yard was a bulldog, and this bulldog looked like a bulldog.  She had a massive head, chest and underbite.

This was the first time I saw Darla.  When we went upstairs, and met her, she had no fur, and was totally out of shape.  I asked the woman why she did not want her, she said that they wanted an American Bulldog, had made a mistake and that Darla was too strong for her young son to handle.  As we sat in the kitchen the woman showed me how Darla was trained by giving her a handful of cold cuts.

She wanted $1500 for her, and it would have cost me that much to clear up the skin issues and get Darla into shape.  Even though she and Bea got along from the first minute, I passed on the purchase.  For a month, I kept thinking of the face in the basement window, and called the woman back.  She was grateful to hear from me, as obviously no one would buy Darla in that condition.  She said, we liked you so much that we will give her to you for $800.00.  I had already resigned myself to rescue Darla for the full price and this seemed reasonable to me.

Darla, unlike Bea, was perfectly behaved, a bit play aggressive and not as smart as Bea, but a good dog.  She never had an accident in the house, we already had the dog walker, and it seemed like a good thing.  I had adjusted to the dog thing, and was ready for another.

The first time we embarked upon our walk in the park, Darla made it about 1000 feet and fell to the ground.  This after Bea did her usual “middle of the intersection” lay down on the yellow line trick.  It was more difficult to get her out of the way of the oncoming city bus, the ambulance, the police car and twenty other vehicles with Darla, but luckily we made it.

Darla was so out of shape she could not walk another inch and I had to send a friend home to get a wagon to use as Darla’s ambulette.  For about four months, I would walk Bea and Darla, dragging the wagon along so that when Darla gave out, we were not stuck in the middle of the park.  She eventually was able to make the entire walk.  It was around Memorial Day, and people were beginning to barbeque and picnic in the park.  This meant good garbage.  While Darla rode in the wagon, Bea and Saki tore through garbage, eating left over chicken, hamburgers, French fries and the dreaded corn cob.  Dogs cannot digest corn cob.  Most know better than to eat it.  Beatrice did not.  I was forever chasing her down to get it out of her mouth.  One morning, I opened her mouth, took out a piece of corn and forgot my fingers were inside her mouth when I let her mouth close.  Her canine tooth went into my finger.  I then learned a lesson about bulldogs.  When they bite, their jaws lock.  So here I am, one dog in a wagon and my finger locked in the jaw of Beatrice.  Eventually, I had to massage her throat to loosen her jaw, and managed to get my finger out.  I then felt like Tarzan, having to wrap my bleeding finger in leaves until I got home with the deadly duo, Beatrice and Darla.

We all got through the summer, and when winter arrived, Darla did not need the wagon and the cool crisp air was good for her breathing.  She began to enjoy the walks and would venture away from me from time to time.  She was, however, the faithful companion usually right at my heels. 

One morning, Kathy (Saki’s mom) and I were being walked by Saki, Beatrice and Darla.  Saki and Beatrice took off towards the lake through the woods by the stream in the Neathermead.  Suddenly, Darla, always by my side took off after them.  She got to the cobblestone edge of the lake, and I said to Kathy, “you don’t think she will jump in,” knowing that bulldogs cannot swim.  They are too heavy in muscle mass and too top heavy.  The words were no sooner out of my mouth when Darla fell head first into the lake, and this was the middle of the winter. Kathy and I looked down to see Darla at the bottom, sunk like a rock, looking up at us with bubbles coming out of her nose.  I did what every good mom would do and jumped in to save her.  I cannot swim and luckily the water was only about 4 ½ feet deep.  I lifted her onto the lake bed and she shook off and walked away like nothing happened.  Meanwhile, I am wearing a down jacket, sweat pants and rubber fisherman boots and cannot lift the wet weight of it all out of the lake.  So here I am, in probably 28 degrees, stripping naked to get out of the lake and onto the lake bed where I dressed and walked home freezing.

I became a member of the the Long Island Bulldog Club, and came to know Marge Deyorra, who encouraged me to show and breed Darla.  At one show, a woman aghast at Beatrice’s departure from the bulldog standard, screamed,
what is that?”  Beatrice proudly pranced by as if she did not hear, probably not understanding why the woman did not see that see was Lassie.  I did show Darla that day and she won a ribbon and thereafter, went on to have three litters of puppies.  The last litter, born September 21, 2000 is how I came to have Margie.  During the time period when Darla was being bred, Marge had a stroke and died.  I vowed that if I had a female pup, I would name her Margie after Marge.  Margie’s full name is Darla’s Little Margie Dey, and is dumber than a box of rocks.  Not the best tribute to a woman who bred bulldogs for thirty years, but Margie is very loving despite her mental capacities.  Darla was never the smartest, but Margie makes Darla look like Einstein.  Beatrice would always look at them as if to say, “get with it you guys, you are making us all look bad.”

Breeding was a whole other story.  Bulldogs must be bred through artificial insemination and must have a C-Section.  I would take trips out to Bellmore Long Island to have Darla inseminated by Zeus, at the hand, and I say that literally and figuratively, of Marge.  Marge collected the semen and we put it into Darla with a syringe and had to hold her rear end up in the air for fifteen minutes.  I watched a movie, “If these Walls Could Talk” and there was a scene with Ellen Degeneres where she was driving her partner home after insemination, and the partner was riding upside down in the car with her feet out of the sun roof.  I knew that this was not too far from the truth after dealing with Darla and her three inseminations each time she went into heat.

During Darla’s times of pregnancy, she did not take the long walk, stayed home on the doggie bed and rested, while Bea and I continued the adventure in the park.  When Bea would come home from the walk she would spend time with Darla and I truly believe she was telling her the events of the walk, and who she saw and what they spoke of.

Beatrice and I had our best times in Montauk and East Hampton , pre-Darla and Margie.  I got Beatrice a purple and yellow tent to shield her from the sun and she loved to sit in that tent with her water and food and enjoy the surf sounds of the ocean.  Early in the mornings, we walked in Montauk along the shore line and Beatrice, if left unsupervised for the shortest time, would raid the bait bucket of some unsuspecting fisherman.  We made many a trip to the bait store to replace pounds of squid.  This spot of beach in Montauk, under the cliffs is where Beatrice and I will have our ashes spread someday, so that we can always enjoy our favorite place.

I was coming up onto retirement, and I was finished with my Master’s, had missed the Captain’s examination by one question (a godsend in that if I had passed the test, I would have been in NY through 9/11).  I began to put out feelers for warm areas that were not too far from New York .  I wanted to be in the warmest place I could be, and still be able to drive home in 24 hours if I had to.  I found the Tampa area, and fell in love with Gulfport .  It is a little artsy town in the south of Pinellas County on the West Coast of Florida.  I had owned a small condo on the East Coast in Ft. Lauderdale , and wanted more of an “old Florida ” feel.

I realized that my planned easy life of having a condo was over, as most had dog restrictions and weight restrictions on the dogs.  Most would allow one 15 lb dog and I had two sixty pounders, and one two pounder, who would be a sixty pounder in no time.  The commitment to Beatrice was what made the decision about the house.

Once in Florida , Bea and I found other places to romp.  We often went down into Clam Bayou park and watched the sunset, we went to the Gandy where dogs were allowed off leash.  On one of the first visits to the Gandy, Bea managed to find some poop under a bush and I ended up in the Gulf waters rinsing her off as I did so many times in Prospect Park , and I knew at that point, you could take the girl out of Brooklyn, but not the Brooklyn out of the girl.

When I sit and look at my life over the past seven years, I realize much of it would have been very different without Beatrice. Many of the decisions were made around her.  It amazes me how important she was to me.  It amazes me how freely I made life changes and left preexisting plans for her.  Now that she is gone, I can look back on this and realize that it was all worth it, and who knows what I may have done without her.

When she left this world the other day, she left it as graciously as she arrived.  She had been battling what was diagnosed as Cushing’s Disease.  I believe it was bulldog brain cancer and was misdiagnosed, but it stands as Cushings.  Around September, last year, Bea started bobbing her head and twitching her body.  It prompted me to do blood work during her yearly exam.  The blood work showed some thyroid issues and she started medication.  Then she seemed to develop an Alzheimer’s type syndrome where she would stare into space, not respond and forget what she was doing.  This is when we did all the tests to find out about the Cushing’s.  The medication for the Cushing’s caused her to have two adrenal crises and these were in the beginning of June and on the day she passed away. 

The first time she came around, like magic with steroids and fluids.  It allowed us to enjoy four more wonderful weeks with her.  During this time, she seemed to have regained much of old personality and was like a young, healthy dog again.  The second time, it seemed worse, and Gail and I decided to ask the vet if we should continue putting her through this.  We did, while Bea was on the examining table, and he said, “we came this far, let’s do the fluids and steroids.” 

Somehow I felt in my heart that it was time for her to go, and could not make the decision myself.  I leaned over her, kissed her head and said, “Beba, it has to be your choice, I cannot make the decision, if this is too much for you, you can go.”  Well about an hour after the fluids were administered, I got a call from the vet, and he said, “we are seeing something that we don’t usually see with Cushing’s, Bea is turning bluish and having difficulty breathing, what should we do if she goes into cardiac arrest?”  I told him to let her go.  As far as I was convinced Beatrice had made her decision, and spared me the most difficult decision I would have had to make in my lifetime.  About a half hour later he called with the news that she was gone.  Even in her death, she was my strength.

The last visual I have of Beatrice is a peaceful one.  Even though we were in the vet and she was on the stainless steel table waiting to be seen, her stomach was facing me and I said to Gail, “Bea is such a girl, look at that belly, she has all the folds that a girl has.”  I always kissed that belly and of all the places she liked to be petted, that was her favorite. 

I think I now have to think about the messages Bea has given me and the lessons she has taught me and I think it will bring me to what this current transition is to be.  Whatever the transition, I am sure it involves unconditional love.

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