In a home with two senior citizens and two beagles, routine becomes a sacrament.
Evening routine usually begins with turning off the TV. The silence brings the Beagle Posse trotting, if they aren't already in the room. For, the next step is for Dad to go to the kitchen, finish cleaning up, loading and starting the dishwasher, locking the doors, and heading for the bedroom. This part of the routine is important to the Posse, and they will paw and whine and demand until I am out of the chair and start on it.
It's important to Tommy and Tuppence because they assign themselves the chore of a tongue pre-rinse cycle on dishes going into the machine, and because lights out and leaving the kitchen includes a half milk-bone for each of them--final treat of the day. My prior-to-slumber routine in the bathroom and bed room is of no importance here, and the Posse routine will continue after I finish my prep with Tommy climbing into the bed and submarineing under the covers. (The under covers gas attacks are another post altogether.)
But the routine in question for this conversation with Tommy had nothing to do with my prep, dishwashers, or even cover diving. It has to do with his side trip during that interim. He goes through the dog door, down the side yard, and into the back yard, whereupon he sets to his nightly routine of beagle barking to the neighborhood. There is no one there. No intruders. No menacing wildlife or roaming dogs. Just the night, and the woof, woof, aarrroooo. Tuppence generally does not participate in either the barking or the bed climbing. She starts every night curled up in the seat of my recliner, and comes into the bed only about 5 to 6 am so as to not miss Deborah's awakening and the morning walk. In fact, at a certain point, she'll become insistent on THAT routine.
So, I sit on the couch with Tommy. "Tommy, what are you barking at every night?"
"I'm not barking."
"Tommy, I hear it, it goes on for about 5 minutes, then you come in. You bark."
"I don't call it that," he says.
"And," I continue, "it's a good thing we go to bed at old-fart o'clock, so it isn't late enough that the neighbors complain."
"Do you need a history lesson?" asks Tommy
"From you, a 9 year old dog who can't read? A history lesson for a 71 year old man?"
"Yes," he says.
"OK. Go ahead, dogsplain it to me."
"The word 'beagle,' describing our ancient people, comes from the same root as the word 'bugle,' as in trumpet."
"Go on."
"So, each night, it is my duty to go out and bugle Taps for the neighborhood."
"Taps?"
"So that Benny the beagle next door, and Finney the terrier on the other side, and the yappy mutt-mutt down the block, and the hated Angry Labrador up the street, all know that we are going to bed, and they should too."
He looked serious as a hound dog taking a......serious. I said,"Tommy, what you do doesn't sound anything like Taps to me, not like any bugle call I've ever heard, and I've been in both the Boy Scouts and the Army."
"Well," he snorts, you never have had much of an ear for music. Besides, if it comes out of a bugle--a beagle--it is a bugle call. That is both pure music and pure logic."
"Hmmm," I mused, "let's try it another way then. Could you do it a little quieter?"
I SWEAR the dog laughed at me. Out loud.
When he got his breath, he called to Tuppence who was in my lounger. "Tuppy, he wants me to bugle quieter!"
"I want you to quit bothering the neighbors."
"What?" he said. "I'm not bothering them, I'm signaling them. And I don't know about the humans, but all the other dogs in the neighborhood answer when I bugle Taps."
"But the people..." I began.
"Are your problem," said Tommy.
From the TV room, Tuppence finally joined in the conversation.
"AROOOOOOOO!"
