Basbeaux Lévrier
(the skinny one)
A jester, a pizza joint, a greyhound... Basbeaux
I
was whelped in October, 1993 and raised at a racetrack in Florida, where
I went by the name J.D.'s Beach Bum.
When I retired from the racetrack
I was loaded into a truck with thirty other greyhounds, all to be distributed
to greyhound adoption agencies up and down the East Coast. In the lottery
of life, I and one other greyhound, named Bill, drew the
ASPCA
national headquarters in New York City. After I'd been there a few days,
some greyhound lover noticed us on their Web page and informed the Greyhound-L
mailing list that we were there.
Deborah Peters, a regular list
reader who'd been lobbying for a second greyhound since about five minutes
after she got her first one, Odo, persuaded her husband
Stephen Bloch to visit the ASPCA
and take a look at us. I got to them first, just as I returned from my evening
walk. I
started with the time-tested "hide your nose in his armpit" opening
gambit, then moved on to the "lean on someone's leg and gaze up with
gorgeous, mascara-ed brown eyes" strategy. They never had a chance.
(Incidentally, Bill, using the "nervous Nellie" approach, apparently
found a home in the New York area too. But the ASPCA still gets an occasional
greyhound; if you live in the New York city area and have room for a dog,
check out their list of
dogs available for adoption.)
Anyway,
a day or two later they brought Odo to meet me. We
almost completely ignored one another, but they decided if we weren't actually
fighting, it would probably work out. So they brought me home to their
apartment in Queens, where I found all sorts of things to lie on.
Deborah and Steve agreed immediately that they didn't like the name
"Beach Bum", so they started looking for another name. After
considering exotic, dignified names like Omar and Said,
they realized I was entirely too goofy for that, and settled on Basbeaux,
the name of Deborah's favorite Indianapolis pizza joint,
which in turn claims to be named after a medieval French jester.
In my new home, I spent great time and energy in the study of Squeaky Toys,
in which I shortly taught Odo a thing or two (like, if you shake a squeaky
toy really hard, it squeaks a lot and then stops squeaking entirely). In
exchange, Odo showed me how to climb Stairs, which I now do at a sprint
while he takes them one at a time (but then, Odo always was a bit of a
stick-in-the-mud).
The Greyhounds is an ancient breed, dating (depending on how precise you
are) to at least the Middle Ages, perhaps as far as Classical Egypt.
Some of my ancestors posed for the marginalia in the Book of Kells, and
here's my attempt at one of those poses.
If you'd like, you can see more pictures of my housemate
Odo, or
both of us together.
Here's a more recent picture (February, 2004) taken by dog-sitter
Allison Wolcoff (who, incidentally, does pet photography and animal care
professionally.)
In January, 2004, Basbeaux abruptly lost a lot of weight and energy.
The vet found that he had a high temperature, put him on intravenous
fluids and antibiotics, and tooks some X-rays, which revealed an
enormously enlarged spleen. The spleen was removed the next day, with
no indication of what was wrong except that it had grown much larger
than it should. Basbeaux quickly regained his appetite, weight, and
lust for life, only to lose weight and energy again a month later. For
several months, he alternated between good spells and bad spells, and
the vets were unable to identify any reason for the problem. In August,
2004, while lying on the dining room carpet, he stopped breathing of his
own accord. We still don't know why.
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Stephen Bloch / sbloch@adelphi.edu
