BeagleMania

By Belinda I Eaton

Take a Queen Beagle and two unruly beagle subjects... add a trio of frisky felines and ALOT of love and laughs, and what do you get? An adventureous romp through the amazing Land of BEAGLEMANIA!! This story is about the ongoing fued between three beagles and several cats living in the same house. It gives a sneak preview into the animals minds and lets the reader imagine what their pets could be thinking and saying when no humans are watching!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 29, 2011
• ISBN: 9781257193431

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Welcome to Beaglemania

Every land needs a leader and it just so happens that in the Land of Beaglemania, Queen Lady leads the pack. She was small in size, much smaller than everyone else, almost frail in comparison. But what the good Queen lacked in size she more than made up for in brains and personality.

Her coat was shiny and smooth. It was tri-colored and adorned her small frame with all the glory of pure gold. Her tail, which was constantly on the move, was crowned with the purest white tip. Her eyes were a deep, dark brown that hid her thoughts like a mask hides one’s face at a party.

Queen Lady’s kingdom was a small one but it was hers and she took her job as Queen very seriously indeed. She had come here quite by chance, being rescued just days away from death at the local humane society. The couple that had adopted her had wanted a different dog but it had not worked out. They saw Queen Lady as they were leaving and it was love at first sight. She was so small that they thought she was a puppy at first but they were happily surprised to find out she was already full grown. She had been brought home as a Mother’s Day gift for the wife and a companion for the dog they already had. The intentions of the couple were good but misguided as only minutes after coming home with them, Queen Lady knew that her human would be Quinten, the small boy of the household. Yes, this boy needed her and she needed him so that, she decided, was that.

Under her rule was Sir Smokey, a much taller beagle-lab mix who by all rights should have been king of the land, having been the first dog to enter the home. He was brought into the family when his mother had an unexpected litter after an unwanted encounter with the dog down the street. His mother’s owners said all the puppies had to go to new homes. When the couple came to look at the puppies, Smokey lifted one eyebrow and tilted his small black head to one side as if to beg, Take me, please take me.

That little gesture was all it took to endear him to the heart of the wife and he knew before she uttered the words that he was going to be hers. Being Christmas week, the couple made arrangements to pick the puppy up on Christmas Eve so as to surprise their children on Christmas Day. As the mother kept the kids busy that night, dad snuck away from the home and went to get the puppy. He hid it in the schoolhouse behind the main house and came back in, nodding to mom to let her know that all was well. As with most kids, the excitement of the season so filled their children that it was very hard to get the little ones into bed. They did get them down eventually though, and then the mother anxiously ran out to the schoolhouse to greet their new addition.

Upon opening the flap to the box, the kind lady could tell immediately that there had been a mistake. This was not her puppy. Sure, they looked almost identical but this definitely was not the little ball of joy that had wrapped himself so firmly around her heart in the few minutes she had been with him in that cold barn. With sadness in her eyes she returned to the house to tell her husband. At first he tried to convince her that all puppies were the same. They all needed homes he had argued, so why not keep this one as it was already midnight and very cold outside. With a heavy sigh the woman agreed but seeing how sad the decision made her, her loving husband placed the puppy back into the box and headed back to the house from where he had gotten it.

When he reached the barn where the puppies were, he slowly picked them up one by one, trying to see what it was that his wife had seen the week before. With the snow falling and the wind blowing, he almost gave up hope, willing to take any one of them and go home to warm up. Finally, with all the puppies together on the ground, he shone his flashlight across them, looking for any sign at all of who to pick. One puppy stood slightly out from the rest. He almost seemed to be trying to get the man’s attention. As soon as the man looked him square in the face, the small dog tilted his head to one side and lifted one brown eyebrow in a way that was almost comical. The man knew immediately that this was the one, so he scooped up the little jester and placed him carefully in the cardboard box. Together they headed home to the impatient woman waiting for them. When they arrived and the wife warmly lifted him from his box, the puppy snuggled into her neck, knowing that at last he was home.

The main reason that Sir Smokey didn’t rule was because from the minute Queen Lady came into the house, Sir Smokey was completely bowled over by her presence. Yes, she was small, but she never once backed down from him. She played every bit as hard as he did and she had so much energy that she was still raring to go long after he had drifted off to sleep.

Also under the great Queen’s rule came Sir Chase, a regal beagle who used to be a great hunter until the human that owned him decided he wasn’t doing his job anymore. It wasn’t that Sir Chase had forgotten how to hunt, or even that he no longer wanted to. It was simply that he was tired of being out in the cold and snow, driven to chase poor bunnies until he could barely stand up from the exhaustion of the hunt. Then, when his human decided it was time to pack it in for the day and finally headed home, poor Sir Chase knew what to expect.

They would reach home and his human would chain him to the old wooden doghouse out back, the one that had so many holes in it that the snow drifted right through the roof and blanketed his already shivering body. If he was real lucky and his human wasn’t too terribly tired, then he might even get a cup of fresh water and some food in his frozen bowl. During the night he would shift about trying to find a spot to lay where the fluffy white cold stuff couldn’t touch him. But, even in the farthest corner of the old doghouse, his body would put off enough heat to melt the nearby snow and he would find himself settled into a puddle of cold water. Sir Chase did not miss those days, no, not at all. Now he was in Beaglemania with a new owner who loved him dearly and treated him like family. No longer did he watch from his cold, dark doghouse as his humans warmed themselves by the fire. Now if he was cold, Sir Chase could settle himself on the big braided rug by the coal stove or, even better, into the nice warm lap of one of his new humans. By all rights he belonged to Kellie, the young girl of the house but a lap was a lap and Sir Chase would take any one offered to him as long as it came with plenty of loving.

Clearly the dogs ruled this house. After all, dogs are man’s best friends. They were not, however, the only pets blessed to be in this loving home. The humans here in fact were often helping out other poor animals in need. Sometimes just a meal for a stray, sometimes it was providing a bed for days or even months. Sometimes the visitors became permanent