This section is devoted to our beloved dogs who are waiting at the Rainbow Bridge. If you would like to include a tribute to your B.O.N.E.S. beagle(s) that crossed to Rainbow Bridge, please send your story and/or photo(s) to tributes@bonesbeagles.org.
Read all of the tributes by paging through them below or click on a name to go to a specific article.
In early January, 2013, B.O.N.E.S. was contacted by a family who claimed that their 12-year-old beagle was "terrorizing" their toddler: they let the toddler ride the 13-inch beagle like a horse, and the beagle objected. And so Pinta came to B.O.N.E.S., surrendered on a weekend morning in a motel parking lot by adults who insisted that their daughter was frightened of Pinta — and a toddler happily cuddling a small beagle mix with one oddly mottled ear who was quietly sitting next to the car seat in the back of the car.
Within days, Pinta made herself comfortable in her foster home, playing happily with the resident dog, Fitch, making friends with neighbors on morning walks, and showing none of behaviors her former owner had described. She especially loved the fenced yard, with its low stone walls separating a patio from the grassy area, and on encouragement to "run, Pinta, run," would dash in circles around the whole yard, leaping over the stone walls and going around and around until, finally tired, she'd happily skid to a stop next to her human.
Within two months, she became a "foster failure." She and Fitch, along with a succession of foster dogs, had nearly three happy years until Fitch died just before Christmas in 2016. Pinta bonded readily with each foster dog; each seemed comforted by her gentle and welcoming nature.
In May of 2016, while playing "chase" in the yard with a temporary foster, she tore an ACL. Too old for the corrective surgery, but too active and engaged with life to lose it too soon, she submitted to being carried everywhere through most of the summer, while my vet and I crossed our fingers and hoped for reasonable non-surgical healing. Her morning walks became rides in a "dog stroller," which she accepted increasingly impatiently despite loving the attention she and her bright red carriage attracted. Finally allowed at summer's end again to move freely about the house, play in the yard, and walk in the neighborhood, she resumed tracking the rabbits and chipmunks, and in the house delighted in jumping from a den ottoman four feet to her favorite spot on the sofa.
She welcomed new generations of foster dogs — Sophie, Sheldon, and Donald — and bonded happily with each, accepting Sophie as Fitch's successor in 2017 and forming close bonds with Sheldon and then with Donald who joined the household as another senior "foster failure" early in 2019.
Unfailingly sweet, she loved to cuddle on the sofa and happily shared both dog and human beds, always being the first to finish licking the dab of peanut butter from her "good night bone" and claiming her favorite spot each night. Wherever she started each night, though, she always ended up at the head of the human bed before morning, eager for cuddle time to start each day.
As she passed 18, her spirit never faltered, but by early autumn of 2019, advanced liver and kidney failure robbed her of her appetite and her energy, and her eyes signaled that her time had come. And so on a sunny September morning, she patrolled the yard for one last time with Donald, snuggled once more on the sofa with Sophie, and then accepted the last, best, gift my longtime house call vet and I could give her.
Rest well, sweet little Pinta. Know how much you've been loved and what a joy it was for so many to share good times with you.
Ibby Nathans
