Mornings With Barney (20 page)

Our twelfth appearance
at the Indiana State Fair began with a beastly hot morning that would only get muggier as the day went on. A few days earlier we had reported live from the balloon race, where, as always, the governor stopped by for a quick interview.

We had invited a representative of the Westin Hotel chain to unveil their Heavenly Bed for Dogs, part of a campaign for the chain to promote traveling with pets.

Even now when I look at the videotape, I still marvel at how Barney always knew exactly what to do to make the segment work, how to make the audience laugh. How to make people say, “What a dog!”

The segment began with a quick explanation of the Westin's decision to allow guests to bring their dogs to their hotel when on vacation, then ended with the first public display of the three-foot-square white poofy cushion that was provided to travelers for their pets. I thought it kind of ironic at the time. If the Westin was going to encourage people to bring destructive dogs like Barney to their hotel, the concept didn't have much of a chance to succeed, which, by the way, it didn't. They ended the program not long after. I never heard officially why, but the word was that allowing people to have dogs in the hotel room and encouraging them to do so was a line they shouldn't have crossed. And a room they didn't want to clean.

As soon as the hotel manager placed the pillow on the ground, Barney, who had been otherwise distracted by about a million State Fair odors, made a beeline for the cushion, sniffed it for a few seconds, then proceeded to roll over on his back and fall asleep belly up . . . all in about twenty seconds, just before we went to a commercial break. “I don't think I could afford that kind of advertising,” said the general manager of the Westin. “How'd you get him to do that?”

I knew that the rest of that day was going to be difficult for the aging hound. After the morning show, we returned home so both of us could enjoy our daily nap, a custom that had spanned our entire career together.

The routine was standard: I'd grab a book, prop up two pillows against the headboard in my room, then lie back and begin to read. Barney would rest his head on my stomach. In ninety seconds we were both sound asleep. With that method, it took me three years to read
Tuesdays with Morrie.

The plan that day was to return for the State Fair celebrity parade, an annual event that featured most of the WISH-TV personalities. Barney had been in nine of these events, always outshining the newsmen and newswomen who never quite garnered the same fan response from the crowd.

“Barney! I watch you every day!”

“Wow, it's Barney!”

“Look, there's Barney!”

He reveled in every minute of it as we rumbled down the main drag at the fair in a wagon pulled by a green John Deere tractor. I held him in my lap, propping him up so the masses could clearly see him, often taking his paw and waving it to the crowd. The other Channel 8 on-air personalities waved as well. As many admitted later, all eyes were on Barney.

Once the parade was over, though, I had a problem. The temperature was nearing 90 and I had a book signing and tickets to watch Garrison Keillor that night at the Fairgrounds Coliseum. Even with the brief respite at home, I knew I was pushing the old guy.

One of the WISH-TV staffers, marketing director Carol Sergi, sensed my concern, so she offered to drop Barney at my house on her way home around 5:30. Barney was clearly feeling the effects of the weather and I knew he'd be glad to be taxied back to the air-conditioned house. But I still wasn't overly concerned with his present condition. There was a huge crowd at the fair that evening—and more cows, pigs, and horses than you could shake a shovel at. Overall, everyone seemed to be coping with the heat and humidity.

I attended the Keillor concert and even had a chance to meet him backstage before the show, then found my seat and was thrilled to be sitting right behind Governor O'Bannon and his wife, Judy. We exchanged hellos and they asked how Barney was doing. Toward the end of the event, I snuck out a little early, hoping to beat the exiting crowd. I also wanted to get home in time to bathe Barney. He had spent a few minutes that day in the cow barn with me and had enjoyed the aromatic benefits of rolling in manure.

I found my SUV in the giant infield lot and negotiated it out onto the main highway, then headed toward my house. My cell phone rang.

“It's Barney,” my wife said. “There's something wrong.”

“I'll be right home.” I hung up. I jammed on the accelerator. The cell phone rang one more time. It was Mary Ellen again: “Don't have an accident. It's too late. He's gone. Barney is gone. Please be careful. There is nothing you can do.”

I banged my wrists against the steering wheel. I wanted it to hurt. I wanted to feel something. I couldn't find the tears. Not yet. I remember saying, “Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!”

How odd to talk to yourself like that. Even then, I knew how strange it was. My life is performing in front of people. But there was no audience there. Just me. In a car. Alone. I was still ten miles from what would be one of the most difficult moments of my life.

For the next several minutes, all was just a blur. I knew he had not suffered, and that I had avoided the unthinkable: the prospect of someday putting him “down.” I missed him already. Damn. I wasn't with him at the end. Then more questions. Could I have done something? What would I do tomorrow without him? What would I do ... from now on?

I shot into the driveway, slammed on the brakes, shut off the car, and barreled up the stairs to the extra bedroom where Barney always napped. I'm not sure why I hurried. It was over. The inevitable had happened. Barney the beagle, my best friend, my business partner, was gone.

The Heavenly Bed spot was Barney's final TV appearance. Would I have wanted to know that this was the last time our viewers would see him and the last time the two of us would be a team? Or did I want to enjoy that Barney moment in the same way I had enjoyed the thousands before it? In the end, I was glad for the latter. I also knew that if Barney could have planned his last day, it would have been at the State Fair: 50,000 people, hundreds of smells. He didn't have to die that day. He was already in heaven.

I picked him up, draped him over my shoulder, buried my head in his neck, and sobbed. Mary Ellen stroked Barney while I held him. Brett just kept staring at me. He had never seen me cry. This frightened him. I remember the first time I saw my father weep. It made him seem more human than I ever realized. I doubt Brett was truly saddened by Barney's passing, but he grieved for me. He must have wondered what this event would mean, what effect it would have on the family. I wondered, too.

Then I asked Mary Ellen and Brett to give me a few minutes alone with Barney. I just hugged him and hugged him.

For most of the evening, I lay on the guest bed with him next to me. Finally, around midnight, I fell asleep. Morning for me was only four hours away.

It's human nature that when you fall asleep, burdened by some horrible event, there is that fleeting hope that when you awaken the next morning, it will have all been a dream—that somehow a new day will bring a fresh perspective, and with it, the ability to rewind the tape and do some fancy editing. Not so, and just hours later, I got up, wrapped Barney in a blanket, and placed him in his doggie bed. Then I headed for work. That's right, for work.

I was scheduled to do my regular TV remote at the State Fair, a segment with Howard Helmer, officially known as the world's fastest omelet maker. At that point, I had no choice but to do the show. There was no viable way to cancel a live segment at the last minute.

Howard was a great guest who had achieved recordbreaking notoriety in his career by preparing 427 of his egg dishes in under thirty minutes. “Very wet ones,” he'd often admit. Howard and I had been doing television together for twenty-five years, starting back at my early TV days in Columbus. Howard's snappy comments during his demos made him the ultimate talk-show guest. After completing an omelet, he'd present his masterpiece to the crowd and declare its approximate menu value: “$2.95,” he'd say, to a smattering of applause. Then he'd place a sprig of parsley next to his creation: “$6.95,” he'd deadpan. Big laugh. Even from me, and I had heard it thirty times.

I met my photographer, Carl Finchum, at the fairgrounds and we exchanged our customary good mornings. Carl was not a 5 a.m. kind of person, so I suspected that he would not pick up on what I assumed was a transparent change in my demeanor. I was a morning person, a quality that annoyed my wife and many other people. Most of my guests assumed my generosity of spirit at dawn was a charade. It wasn't. I liked mornings. Except this one.

My plan was not to share the previous night's events with anyone, convinced that verbalizing my grief would result in a total breakdown. It had taken me a good three hours the night before to compose myself, and now I was about twenty minutes from persuading tens of thousands of people watching the show that you could make a presentable spinach and cheddar cheese omelet in less than sixty seconds. This would have to be an Oscar-winning performance.

Suddenly Howard appeared with his entourage, a flock of volunteers from the Indiana Poultry Association who were also committed to Howard's egg-promoting mission. Howard and I exchanged hugs. Turns out he was good at reading embraces.

“What's the matter?”

“Nothing, nothing. Just a bad night.”

“Are you sure? You seem . . . different.”

“No. I'm fine.”

“Where's Barney?”

“Oh, he was up late last night at the fair. I let him sleep in.”

And so, I had told my first whopper. More to come. I had a whole weekend ahead of me: book signings, a speech, dinner with friends. I had no idea how I would spin the events.

I also realized I had to make the necessary arrangements. Despite my awareness of Barney's age and illness, I had given no thought—zero—to where his final resting place would be. Cremation was a possibility and available through most veterinarians, but I had never been comfortable with this choice for either man or beast, so I nixed that option.

There was a pet cemetery in town, but somehow that was terribly wrong. I wanted Barney near me, like he had been for almost thirteen years. And Barney was a people-dog, not a dog-dog. Other dogs were never a real kick for Barney. At dog parks and on trails, he gravitated toward humans, hardly giving the other dogs a sniff. Dogs didn't have pockets with treats. It was always an easy choice: people over pooches. And so, I didn't want to stick him in between a lot of strangers almost an hour from my house. Home was where the hound would be, I decided. That was my decision and both Mary Ellen and Brett agreed.

Burying an animal in your backyard is forbidden by Indiana code, but I was never a big fan of rules. A few friends said something about the law being health related, but the woods behind our house had the carcass of a dead deer, and when I had reported that to the city months earlier, they didn't seem to care enough to do anything about it. What a stupid law. I chose to ignore it.

Marking the final site was the easiest part of the final arrangements and it had, believe it or not, been determined years earlier. I had done a segment at a local funeral home in 1995 where they offered laser-engraved tombstones that not only had the person's name, but the deceased's image, as well.

Originally the show was booked with the idea that the artist would make a stone for Barney's ultimate gravesite, a real eventuality, but it struck me at the time to be so far in the future. We made it very clear on the segment that this funeral home did not cater to pet owners and this was just a demonstration. That didn't stop thirty people from calling about their pets. People hear what they want to hear.

Barney's image was engraved onto the 20 × 20-inch piece of marble as tens of thousands watched the process. It was a little spooky, but again, another opportunity to insert Barney into the show content. Now I had a gravestone when Barney died. I'd kept it hidden in the basement because the daily sight of it creeped me out. I thought of that marble stone as I held Barney in my arms that night.

The question of what sort of container I should use for his body troubled me. He deserved a wooden box, but a canine coffin was not something you can put your finger on at a moment's notice. Instead, I simply wrapped him in one of my bedsheets, a sheet he had probably spent more than a few thousand hours sleeping on.