In The Beginning

Tinker's Tale - I wanted to find a good place to document the injury and recovery of one of our dogs, Tinker, and figured this was as good a place as any. First, a little background. We adopted Tinker on April 29, 2004 from BREW Beagle Rescue We were looking for a high-spirited dog as a pal for our first beagle, Virginia. She was adopted from SOS Beagle Rescue on April 20, 2000. I guess we have a thing about April and beagles. Virginia suffers from separation anxiety. Being pack-oriented, it's not an uncommon malady for beagles. So we wanted a pal to inspire Virginia to play and also to keep her anxieties at bay while my wife and I were at work.

Things couldn't have worked out better. Although Virginia still had her barking moments, things were working out great. Tinker absolutely loved his big sister and she did him a favor and tolerated him. They played, they romped, they wolfed down their food.

Both dogs are also high jumpers. The day we met Virginia at the home of SOS founder/head Linda Forrest, we were amazed at how fast she ran and how high she could jump. It's not common for Beagles to jump quite like that. Tinker impressed us with his speed as well when we met him. We didn't know at that time just how high this Beagle/Jack Russell Terrier could jump.

Word to the wise: don't let your dogs jump like that. Beagles are predisposed to back problems. Once we realized the seriousness of it, we started discouraging Virginia from jumping. It was not so easy with Tinker who is more of a "wild child".

As I said, things were going swimmingly- that was until Friday night, February 18, 2005.