Last week I received an email from my friend from Airdrie, that her Christmas present from her boyfriend this year is a new puppy.

She was having trouble finding a medium-sized dog, somewhere above a chihuahua and below a Great Dane. I directed her towards one of my favourite dog rescue sites for basset hounds, and suggested checking out her local shelter.

Our first dog was a beagle/basset (or Bagle, as he is known in some circles) hound named Ziggy, who to this day, is a million years old and still enjoying life.

But Ziggy is no ordinary dog, so the fact that he is pushing 13 is astonishing. When Ziggy was a pup he learned too quickly how to get into anything. He could open the door to let himself out, and frequently opened the fridge – and helped himself. 

We would always find packages of petrified bacon he had stolen and was unable to get into, stashed away under a pile of clothes in the closet. Ziggy loved to hide things, but he wasn’t very good at it. We got our beloved Black Labrador Amos less than a year after Ziggy, and the two were great friends. 

We would occasionally feed them soup bones as a treat. Amos would take his and spend hours gnawing away. Ziggy, however, liked to stash his for later. He would take his bone, chew for a few minutes, and as Amos’ watchful eyes followed him, he would sneak to a place in the middle of the wide-open lawn, nudge the ground with his nose, drop his bone, and push a few molecules of dirt on it. He would then happily trot away with the thoughts of that bone on his mind. 

Once Amos was finished, he would trot over to Ziggy’s “hiding spot” and steal it. Ziggy would return hours later and comically search with no success, while Amos chomped away on the bone nearby. 

Ziggy had a habit of liking things he wasn’t allowed to have. He once ate a hornet that had been buzzing around his head. He snapped – catching it in his mouth. The hornet stung him on the roof of his mouth and poor Ziggy cried. 

One time I finished up a banana, and placed the peel on the table. Ziggy stole it and took off. We chased him down but Ziggy growled when we got too near. He ate the whole thing just because he thought we wanted it. 

Amos was attacked by a Rottweiler as a pup, and wore the scar on his nose. It happened at an age that traumatized him. You could never yell or get mad at or near Amos, he would cower if you raised an eyebrow. That fear of the big scary Rotty later manifested into the consumption of our couch and chair. 

Amos passed away on Jan. 24, 2010, a year after we were told he had a week to live as a cancerous tumour had begun to grow in his stomach. For days after Amos died, Ziggy wandered around the farm lost, calling for his friend in his sad, drawn-out basset hound-cry. 

Ziggy’s shenanigans have slowed down as a senior, but he still has a twinkle in his now completely blind eyes. Turns out a hound doesn’t need to see, because he can still find any morsel of food within a 10-kilometre radius around the farm – but he still can’t find that damn bone.    

DISCLAIMER: The Last Word is an opinion column, it is meant to provoke thought and debate. As such, any opinions written here are the writers own and do not reflect the viewpoint of any other Fitzhugh staff member or the directors of the Jasper Media Group Inc.