Bajan's Tale

Bajan—the fledgling immigrant dog settled into his new life and environment with relative ease.  His carefree days on the beach—the easy life style had imbued in him a sense of inevitability, a patience with his environment and a trusting nature that permitted him to both learn and adapt to all the changes that he was experiencing. The concept of weather was new to him. In Barbados it was usually sunny and warm unless it was rainy and warm!  Here it was warm or cold, dry or wet, wet with rain or wet with snow, windy or calm, cloudy or clear—and somehow he enjoyed them all looking forward to each new day.

Snow came not long after he had arrived.  The household was awake early that day as everyone wanted to see how the Beach Dog would react to this cold white blanket. As David opened the back door, Bajan was at first transfixed by the sight but after a minute put one paw into the 3 or 4 inch accumulation , quickly withdrew it, turned and headed for his bed!.”  Bajan come here” said Robyne as she gently guided those long legs into the snow and then joined him a few feet from the door to encourage him to walk and perhaps even put his nose in it. This was a short lesson and was followed during the day by quite a few others. And by night fall, Bajan was not just sticking his nose in the snow but was rolling in it with reckless abandon!

Riding in the car followed a similar pattern. Bajan as far as we know had had two car or motor vehicle rides in his life. First the ride in the old Humane Society van when the beach boys picked him up and sent him to the kennel and secondly the ride to the airport with Deedra Dread in the old hearse. Bajan didn’t really understand cars.  They were noisy. Dogs barked at them.  They were shiny bright. Men washed them frequently! But, they sure got you places in a nice comfortable way.  And after a few timid rides, Bajan began to assess the need for and the pleasures of owning a nice vehicle.  He also somewhere along the way decided that he could be helpful if he got as close to the driver as possible. Thus when in the car, Bajan generally rode standing up with front paws on the console that separates the two front seats and back paws on the back seat.  Ears up, eyes fixed keenly on the road ahead and tail slowly wagging the Beach Dog assumed the role of “chief navigator” and on long trips would sternly strand his watch for hours on end without a break. David once counted a stretch of over four hours during which the stalwart Navigator remained at his post monitoring the progress of his family on the highway.

It was not always thus however, as in the early days of his arrival he was quite timid about cars and rides. Witness the infamous “Easter Escape”! For some unknown reason Tyler and Bajan in mid-afternoon as guests were about to sit down for dinner decided to shove off for their own version of the Easter Parade.  One can only imagine the agony, the consternation, the trauma of the discovery that the dogs had disappeared.  Cars were manned, search parties were formed to fan out in all directions to apprehend the ungrateful and head strong canines.

And all to no avail as the searchers with heavy hearts returned to home base. Robyne of course had just supposed the World had ended. David had lost all speech .  Guests and relis not knowing what to do shuffled their feet in embarrassed silence. And then as the mood was about to turn to human sacrifice—the telephone rang!  Could it be? It rang again.  What if its just Aunt Minnie calling to say Happy Easter!  Ring! Ring!! David finally answered “hello”.  “Yes, is this the Taylors and have you perhaps misplaced two dogs?  If so I have them and would appreciate your coming to get them before they eat us out of our Easter dinner.”

Cheers filled the air as David and Robyne raced for the car.  No it wasn’t the Resurrection!  It was the Taylor dogs had been found!

The charming Frenchlady seemed even more charming as she led Robyne and David inside to their roving animals. It was quickly determined that the searches had failed because people did not search far enough away from the house.  When found by the lovely, charming French lady they were walking along the busiest four lane highway and were upwards of 3 miles from home!  The beautiful creature had stopped her car turned around and crossed the road to apprehend the boys. She said the Beagle had jumped right into the car but the “other one” had to be coaxed and finally lifted into the car.

Shortly, David and Robyne reunited with their pets were happily on their way back home.  “What a wonderful lady. Imagine stopping her car on that busy road to pick up two stray dogs!”  “You said it Robyne! Tomorrow she gets the biggest bouquet of flowers we can find! But most importantly my dear Robyne is the fact that they both have their ID tags on. Without those, we probably would never have found them.