Copyright (c) 2000 by Michael Finley

Most dogs, when they are puppies, are such a funny mixture of affection, self-absorption, and mischief that it is funny thinking of them being moral beings, or emissaries from heaven.

Mischief, for instance, can’t be evil. Beau has always been the sort of dog who, if he sees something he wants, he goes after it. As a puppy he was forever knocking over the trash and rooting through it for something aromatic. He would snarf down any Kleenex or paper towel, especially if there were some horrid treasure wadded up inside.

But it wasn’t until the sticks of butter turned up missing that I had to admit there was a problem.

Our family isn’t one to stand on ceremony. We don’t dine on fine china, and when the meal is over, we have no rule saying the butter must be rushed to the refrigerator. Barring a heat wave, we leave it out on the dining room table, for the convenience of any family member who might appreciate a dab of delicious butter on a cracker or slice of bread.

It’s an honor system, and that was why, when the sticks of butter began to disappear, it shook us so.

I lined the family members up and read them the riot act, demanding of each where he or she had been at the time of the disappearance. All seemed to glance nervously -- guiltily, it seemed to me -- around the room. “Make no mistake,” I told them, patting the dog’s greasy head, “I will use geometric logic and I will get to the bottom of this.”

Theft is kind of cute in a dog. Surely he must sense the pointlessness of stealing from people who have shown they will give him just about anything. And if he doesn’t grasp that, then that's cute, too.

My dog is a thief, and from the evidence I’ve been able to accumulate, he always will be. Just as the great thieves through history have been specialists -- some fancying pearls and jewels, others targeting fine automobiles, or objets d’art -- this thief focuses on food items. Butter was just the beginning. Beau has eaten at least two dozen sticks of the stuff now. But he has other interests -- chicken bones, cold cuts, whole hamburgers, spaghetti sauce, bacon fat. Egg shells. Pumpkin pie. French fries. He has eaten whole bananas. Peel and all. He once ate a used coffee filter.

I can reproach him, scold him, rub his nose in the coffee filter, lock him out of the kitchen, and let him know in every way I can that stealing is wrong. But he keeps stealing. He bends down low and pretends to be ashamed when I yell at him, but it’s a ruse. I didn’t get through to him, and the next chance he gets he will be up on the table feasting on leftovers, or shoulder deep in a tipped-over wastecan.

I brought this up with his breeder, Brigitte, on one of my many forlorn visits to her house in Dellwood, seeking advice on how to curtail his campaign of evil.

“Oh, he will never stop doing that,” she said. “His father was the same way. He is a villain, pure and simple.”

I paused, wondering whether it was a good time to remind her of her promises about him when I bought him from her. (“He is like an angel. He is kind. He wants to be a good boy for you.”) I decided to let it pass for now. “Is there anything else I should know about him?” I asked.

“Well,” she said, tentatively at first “-- when you are out with him do you carry a club?”

“A club? Why would I carry a club?”

“To break up fights,” she said, looking at the floor.

I turned to go. This was nonsense. My puppy loved other dogs. He was not about to get into fights with them. “You point the stick right at the other dog, right in its face,” she called to me as I headed for my car. “Don’t swing it like a bat -- shove it, and twist it, like a poker. They don't like that.”

The Blue Poodle

When Beau was about nine months old, I got another call from Brigitte. I took the call apprehensively, because Brigitte never called except when there was something horrific to tell me about my dog I did not know yet. Previously she had put the fear of God in me about parvovirus, heartworm, and frozen feet. This one was to be about hair pigment.

"We conducted a test on Razz [Beau's father]," she said excitedly, "and he appears to be a blue!"

For a moment I thought perhaps a sneeze had prevented her from finishing her sentence. But no, a blue was how she wanted to end it. Blue is one of the possible variations to a poodle's coat, along with black, white, chocolate and apricot. I knew nothing about it, so I had to take Brigitte at her word.

"If he is blue, there is a good chance Beauregard is also a blue," she said.

"Why wouldn't we know what color the dogs are?" I asked.

"It doesn't manifest until they are about two years old. The signs are a few white hairs at the small of the back, and in the hands."

I called Beau over to the phone, examined him briefly, and located perhaps a half dozen white hairs in the places she suggested.

"So," I asked, “is this good?”

"Michael, I have been trying for eighteen years to breed a blue. Razz would be my first."

"And it is good."

"Indeed, yes. It's unusual. It increases the breeding value by a lot."

"Well, that's great, Brigitte. I'm happy for you."

"It’s good news for you, too, if Beau is blue like his father."

I pulled apart Beau's fur. The color of his skin underneath was, as I had always known, bright blue, like the baked finish on a Dutch oven. "Why is it good for us?"

"You can breed him," she said. And she took on an accusatory note: "You haven't neutered him, have you?"

"No. But we got Beau just to be a pet."

"You could command stud fees of $400 per service."

"Wow," I said. "I wouldn't have to write any more."

"He would be in demand around the continent," she said.

"We could travel," I sighed.

"It's a grand life," she assured me. I pictured her palatial home on White Bear Lake. Of course, Lorraine, her daughter, who did the actual breeding, lived in a firetrap slum on the near east side of Saint Paul.

By the time I hung the receiver up, I was living a different life. 1996 was more than the year of the great flood. It was the Year of the Blue Poodle. Fate had seen fit to designate my dog as the bearer of DNA for a generation of as yet unborn blue dogs. And I, as the agent for the vessel of this honor, stood to ring up a pretty price for it.