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amstel
September 2009 
Finally Forgiven
Posted on Jun 28th, 2009
by 
Eric
Eric
As any animal lover would tell you, pets come with their own personalities and set of quirks just like us humans. But our one and a half year old beagle, "Amstel" just isn't any other animal. Amstel takes just about every imaginable thing in life to the next level.
Amstel, true to his breed, is pretty much fearless, very determined, and has the demeanor of a prince. Both he and his grandfather, "Bud" (now deceased and yes they were both named after beers) go absolutely crazy when we cooked bison meat at home. So we, very creatively, imagined that a few hundred years back large packs of howling beagles dotted the Great Plains in pursute of the thundering buffalo herds. It had to have taken at least 100 of them to take down a single buffalo but as I said they are determined little buggers. If you have known a beagle this isn't a far stretch of the imagination. So I digress.
I recently went on a 4-day trip out of town to Chicago. Amstel is typically my constant shadow so when I leave he gets the blues. My fiancee read where leaving a shirt that you've worn for the dog lessens the separation anxiety a bit so we tried it. She said that he curled up on that shirt every night that I was gone. She said he became noticably depressed but much easier to handle. Normally he's a handful.
I came home from the airport at the end of the fourth day and Amstel greeted me at the door with his tail wagging a million miles an hour. After the initial exuberance a look of disgust quickly flashed across his face. Where ever I was he came into the room and turned his back to me. I threw his favorite chew toy, he played with it for roughly 10 seconds and then walked away from it looking angrily over his shoulder at me as if to say, "Hey, I'm supposed to be mad at you".
We're going into the third week since I came back from my trip and Amstel is, at last, getting back to normal. He's only shooting my and angry glance every now and then. The bison steaks may've helped but, afterall, that was a small price to pay for finally being forgiven.
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