It is with a shattered heart that I announce that Freckles passed away on Saturday, April 13 after a short battle with brain cancer. She was the best of dogs and the standard bearer for every other dog I will ever know.
I adopted Freckles at the end of the first summer in my house near Broad Ripple in July 2010. She was my first indoor dog (actually second, but that is a very short and sad story.) I wanted to get a beagle mix. My childhood dog, Sissy, was a beagle mix, so they had always been my favorite. I found a hound rescue that was having an adoption event at a pet supply store in Noblesville and they listed a litter of beagle mix puppies. I went and they basically put me into a round pen to sit amongst bunch of puppies.
It was glorious!
I picked up one puppy and he was cute, but I had also decided I wanted to get a girl because I was not sure if marking would be an issue with a neutered boy, so I set him down and tried again. The next puppy was a girl with the softest fur and floppy ears that felt like velvet. Her eyes were lined in black for the perfect smoky eye. She also had a smattering of small red and black spots in the white patches of her fur.
She was perfect and her name was Tiffy.
No.
No self-respecting beagle can be named Tiffy, so I changed it to Freckles.
Again, first indoor dog, so I enrolled her at a puppy preschool called Bark Tutor. She loved it there. They had a puppy/small dog room and a big dog room. She spent most of her time in the big dog room because the staff said she did not know what to do with those little dogs. I would come and watch her entice a big dog to chase her and she would run under the bellies of other big dogs to make her getaway. At 13 years old, until the seizures started, she was still getting the zoomies and loved to play chase.
Another time at Bark Tutor, they told me they used her to help train other dogs. I was so proud until they continued that she was used as the distraction dog to try to get the trainee to misbehave.
Freckles loved small children and kittens. She took a particular interest in my niece Miriam when she was a baby. If Freckles saw Mary arrive, she would follow her around until she got to sniff Miriam and check that she was okay, then she would go about her business (usually napping). One time, Mary managed to pass Miriam on without Freckles seeing it. She followed Mary and cried until Mary figured it out and took her to the baby for her check-in sniff.
Traveling the US with Freckles was the start of this blog and she was a star attraction where ever we went. When we would walk and see a stroller or toddler, she would whine to get to meet them. She was often surrounded by children and would stand patiently to get her pets. On the odd occasion, she would sit for these and a couple of times I heard her make a mall whine in the back of her throat because a child was standing on her tail. She never snapped, barked, or moved to free her tail. She understood to be gentle.
Freckles was also so smart. On our trip, when we were camping in California, I had a small pop-up camper. Think canvas tent on a little trailer. We were sound asleep when we heard a tremendous banging right next to our campsite. It was clear to me it was a bear trying to break in to the dumpster we were about 25 feet from. Both of our heads popped up at the racket, and God bless her, we just looked at each other, put our heads back down, and did not make a peep. Beagles are generally not known for keeping their traps shut, but Freckles knew what was best for us. The next morning, the site on the other side of us as the dumpster had a nice claw mark through a citronella candle left out, so chances are the path of that bear to the dumpster was steps from our front door.
She also tricked me on this trip. We were hiking on the coastline in California and we had been walking a long time when Freckles started to limp. I checked her paws and couldn’t see anything (but my eyes suck so there are a lot of things I can’t see), so I decided to carry her. Freckles hated to be picked up, but this time she laid in my arms like a baby and looked positively blissful. After about a half an hour, I had to set her down for a bit and that little fraud started walking down the trail with a spring in her step! I really should have gotten her into acting.
She sometimes would play tricks on her brother, Lester. If he had a toy or bone she wanted, she would walk to the front door, bark like someone was there, and when Lester would come running to get in on the action, she would go to where he had left what she wanted and he would stand at the door with a confused look on his face.
I have so many happy memories of my time with her. Like when she ate all of Santa’s cookies while we were at the Christmas Eve service or when she was off leash and ran into the neighbor’s open door and did a lap and came back out with them none the wiser. Freckles was my steadfast companion through many of my ups and downs for the past 13 years. It’s hard to imagine her not in my life anymore trying to scam more treats, fooling her brother, chasing the cat, or snoring softly in the dog bed that now sits empty in front of me.
I love you, Freckles. I will always miss you and your velvet ears.
Travels with Freckles 