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Beau (April 15, 1991-November 19, 2001)
(Champion Palustrine New England Aster CGC)
Before Beau was born, he was promised to Cathy as a wedding present, but the truth of the matter is that he was not so much a gift from Cathy's old roommate as he was a gift from God. Full of heart, Beau was a great character, deeply loved and deeply missed.
He was born in Michigan, the only male in his litter, which might have explained his reticent nature at first. When Cathy brought him back East with his noisy little niece Maggie, who went to Tim's brother John, Beau was so quiet for so long in the crate on the backseat that at one point Cathy felt compelled to make an emergency stop just to see if he was okay. He was fine-just the strong, silent type.
Back home on Manhattan's West Side, Cathy, through books, classes, and energetic networking with other owners of flatcoat retrievers, went about educating herself, Tim, and Beau on everything that went into being a good dog. Commands were not to be repeated! Beau ended up with better manners than many people.
There was more to this little black puppy than met the eye. By nature calm, if not stoic, he would develop into a dynamic athlete. Although his early (and not-so-early) romantic episodes tended to have the elements of light comedy, Beau lived up to his name, as handsome and engaging a dog as one could want.
The neighborhood had a surprising amount of green space, including Riverside Park, and Beau soon was sniffing every inch of it and its four-legged denizens, or so it seemed, and Cathy and Tim were meeting half the dog owners of New York.
The agreement Cathy had with her old roommate, Alison, was that Beau was to be a show dog and thus serve as an advertisement for his breeding line. Cathy loved showing Beau, and in short time, he had won a large bowlful of ribbons from shows from New Jersey to Chicago. At one point, Alison asked if she could borrow Beau to show out her way in Michigan, and Beau returned to his home state. After a while, Alison and her husband announced they were going to keep Beau on the pretext that he hadn't beem trained properly back east. This was hogwash-as a number of witnesses would later state on depositions. Such was the sense of outrage that everyone from Tim's brothers to his boss to his hunting pals volunteered unasked to undertake a rescue mission if need be. It didn't come to that: Cathy went to Michigan, got a lawyer, and had a judge set things right.
Back home after this little melodrama, Beau went right on winning shows and soon became a champion. Two vignettes from that era:
 It's a hot summer day, Beau is in a show ring in Vermont, sitting on his own, waiting to perform. A big, stinging deerfly alights on his muzzle. Cathy, standing apart, is frozen with concern, but Beau looks calm as can be. Then, just like a chameleon's, his long, pink tongue flicks out and the deerfly is consumed. Beau doesn't change his expression. Lesson: Don't panic, leave it to the pro.
Beau was about to make one of his three appearances at the Westminister show in New York. The camera lights are on. Beau is in line behind the top flatcoat bitch in the country, whose impeccably dressed, highly paid handler is standing at attention, hopefully already catching the judge's eye. Beau's big paw is suddenly on the rump on the bitch-C'mon babe...The professional handler turns, glares at Beau-how dare you?-and whips out a little metal comb to rebrush his charge. Now everything is back to perfect-and Beau again plops his paw down on the bitch.
Beau was just as much in his element in the outdoors as he was in the show ring or sniffing poodles in Riverside Park. He was literally a born hunter, his father a Master Hunter (both parents, like Beau, were also Champions). At the age of five months, he was introduced to gamebirds at an upstate shooting preserve. Tim would plant a chukkar partridge in the field while Cathy distracted one very-interested Beau, and then Tim and Beau would "discover" the bird and Tim would shoot it as it flushed and Beau would see what it was all about. Well, the third or fourth chukkar was either a clean miss or very lightly hit and it flew off a good 150 yards or so over the rise and into a swamp. Beau took off after it at full speed. Cathy jumped on the hood of the car for a better look, but Beau had vanished. While wondering if we would ever see him again, he reappeared at full speed and delivered the chukkar right to Tim's hand-a performance by an untrained, totally inexperienced pup that would have won a ribbon at a field trial. That was the genes he got from his mom and dad.
On Oct. 5, 1991, under a power line that ran down to the Hudson River near Tim's mother's house on Mount Merino in upstate Columbia County, Beau retrieved his first wild bird, the only grouse we saw that day, and began an epic hunting career that would last eight full seasons and see scores of birds shot over him, mostly woodcock and grouse, plus rabbits and hares and the odd pheasant. He would hunt in the finest company, both men and dogs: with Mike Miller, John Kervan, Scott Cooper and Josie, Dave Girard and Myrtle, Pete Diminico and Brandy, among others.
Afield, Beau was something to see. One morning, fresh out of the car, he located a grouse in cover so thick that Tim could only hear, not observe, what went down-the commotion of the grouse flushing, then the flapping of a bird down. Beau, fast as he was, had pulled the bird out of the air without Tim firing a shot-in other words, subtracting the human from the hunting equation except as chauffeur.
 Another time, in the National Forest behind the home Tim bought in 1992 in Vermont, Beau ranges a bit out sight. Again, a big commotion, and a cow moose trots out of cover, Beau herding her along with his tail wagging. Later in that forest, there would be less cheerful encounters with porcupines.
Yes, Beau was born to hunt. Mike Miller, in his condolence note, pointed out that "we had limited hunting skills and had to work for what we achieved afield but he was a natural to whom it all came with great ease and boundless energy." One needs to know the godawful cover that grouse and woodcock tend to be found in to appreciate Mike's next thought, about Beau's utility in locating fallen birds that "most certainly would have been lost had he not been along."
Beau not only had a great nose but the ability to range perfectly-to know just where the right distance would be to circle the hunter to stray in search of scent. Too far, the bird flushes unnoticed or out of range; too close, and too much cover goes unexplored. He knew how to work a logging road, a swamp, a field's edge. He could team up with pointers, he could work with fellow flushers. And as he seasoned, he was finally able to make perhaps the hardest technical adjustment for an upland dog: to range in close when a flight of woodcock is found. Many fine dogs cannot do that, and Beau couldn't always, but he wasn't one for forgetting lesssons hard-learned (except for those porcupines).
Beau is gone, but the memories aren't: A young dog on one of his first forays into the woods, his eyes locked in like radar, pointing at a leaf as it bobbed down a tiny brook. Beau's initial checkup with his first-and best-vet, Paula Belknap. On countless trips, Beau's chin resting on Tim's forearm on the console of the pickup truck-as Mike wrote, "not only your hunting partner, but just plain your partner." The day Tim restored Beau to life using CPR, the time Beau caught a trout and other stories too tall to believe, except they're true. (Well, Beau helped catch the trout, put it that way. If he hadn't been obediently standing behind Tim in the middle of the stream, Tim wouldn't have noticed the broken fishing line draped over Beau's shoulder, on the other end of which was a 12-inch brown Tim had broken off 10 minutes earlier and given up for lost.)
Beau's life, like any, wasn't all roses. He saw his first little family dissolve when Tim and Cathy split up. But one reason, no doubt, that the divorce was amicable was the presence of this gentle creature, the calming role he played, and the desire of both humans to minimize the impact on a beloved pet. Beau spent an awful lot of time on the road between New York and Vermont, always a welcome, undemanding passenger; good company no matter where. More than one cop was charmed out of giving a ticket, it seemed, by nothing more than a big black dog with friendly eyes.
Beau's extended family in Vermont encompassed Susan and Chief, and, as arthritis slowed down Beau's hunting career, he and Chief became great friends, thick as thiefs, as Audra Hobbkirk, who was housesitting for us, discovered when both dogs, on some silent doggie cue, jumped up on the bed to hang out with her as if that were their God-given right, which they knew it certainly wasn't.
Beau loved being part of a family. In bed, all you had to do was say something like: "Wonder were that big black dog is?" and his tail thumping on the floor would respond. He was a happy, uncontentious dog right up to the end, and for all that he got out of life, he gave his full measure back.
 Lord Byron once wrote about a similar dog, in a different century:
"Near this spot are deposited the remains of one who possessed beauty without vanity, strength without insolence, courage without ferocity, and all the virtues of man, without his vices. This praise, which would be unmeaning flattery if inscribed over human ashes, is but a tribute to...a dog."
As for Beau's remains, on a deer-hunting trip last fall, Tim put some on his ashes in the upper Hudson River at Riparius, N.Y., from where they will find their way under the bridges Beau crossed so often on his Vermont trips, by the power line where he got his first grouse, by Riverside Park where he romped in his youth. Much of the route Tim sees every week on his rail commute, and now the river will seem even more peaceful. In the next few weeks, at a time convenient to Cathy, the remaining ashes will go into the beaver pond and stream on the Vermont property, the first stage on a trip to Lake Champlain, which eventually drains into the Hudson and the ocean.
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