A Tribute To Butch

[Dawna]

For some reason I've been remembering an incident that happened with my grandfather's Beagle, Butch, when I was 7 years old. When I was a child, every year at Easter time the local Woolworths and WT Grants sold baby chicks and ducklings for pets. My family was opposed to this practice and wouldn't let me get one. One year the girl next door brought a duckling home and her parents wouldn't let her keep it. After much begging my family let me have him. She had named him him Pinup and we kept that name. He grew into a fat, noisy white duck. One day I was playing in the yard and my grandfather was doing yard work. I heard my duck quacking but it made an echoing sound. I looked up to see Butch the Beagle running up and down the sidewalk and Pinup was running with him. Pinup HAD to run with him, because his entire head was inside Butch's mouth. (hence the echoing sound!) I screamed that Butch was killing my duck and my grandfather came rushing over and at some point Butch must have opened his mouth because Pinup ran off unscathed! My grandfather explained to me that if Butch had WANTED to kill Pinup all he would have had to do was close his jaws! We never knew if Butch had just been playing or if he'd been jealous of Pinup, who was now a full grown duck. I always thought of Butch as a dumb dog, because every time we threw him a bite of table food(which was every day!) he could NEVER find it, until we showed him exactly where it had dropped.(and he was a full bred BEAGLE!) Butchie was a big,goofy,smelly friendly Beagle who lived to a ripe old age of 16, and was in great health until the year he died.

. RIP Butch!

[Dawna]

Addendum: Butch died when I was 10 years old. So he would have been around 13 years old when the duck incident happened.

[kutyuska]

RIP Butch!