El Bee: The Littlest Big Dog

This is the story of the lovable demonic dog that everyone has come to know as El Bee. Our story with him starts back in the late spring, early summer of 2017.

Out For A Run

I started running then and was at the 3—5 miles per run stage. One of my regular routes was to head down our street and then along the I-25 east frontage road, or rather off to the side of the road on a worn dirt utilities path. At some point on one of my runs this tiny black dog started to follow me. He wasn’t aggressive in the least, just seemed to be curious about me, unless I tried to approach him. I never noticed where he came from. There are only a few clusters of homes near this route, one being my own street, another about a mile into the run, and a third neighborhood about 2 miles in, at a turn-around point. I ran this route about 2 times per week and invariably, he’d show up on at least one of the days. He would follow me all the way back towards my house, which is about a half-mile from the end of our street, where it meets up with the frontage road.

Several times I would stop and try to approach him but then he would become aggressive, growling and snapping at me. Then he’d back away, or just turn and run away altogether. Some time around October of that year I did mange to get him to enter our yard, where I had a dog treat waiting for him. I tried to offer it to him but he wouldn’t have it. Instead, I set it on the ground and walked away. Only when he thought I was a safe enough distance away did he then snatch it up and run off. I never had the energy to try and follow him to see where he would return.

The following month, November, we adopted a rescued white husky mix, a 1-1/2-year-old girl we named Luna. With her abundance of energy and need for walks, she instantly became my running inspiration. I bought a running harness for her and we worked up to 6-mile runs and, one day, an 8-mile run. It was on this long run that we again encountered the little black dog. On our return route with about 3 miles to go, he joined in and rather than stay behind me, he stayed out front with Luna, trying to get closer to her. We made it all the way back to the house and Luna and I collapsed in the yard (8 miles is a lot of miles) to stretch and drink the rest of the water. The little black dog watched us from the edge of the yard with a yearning look, but he wouldn’t come any closer. Finally, I got up to undo the harness on Luna but he immediately took off.

The Overnight House Guest

A few weeks later, in early December, we had a scheduled appointment to take Luna in for spaying. Just two days away, however, Sonya woke up in the middle of the night to use the restroom and on returning to bed, spotted a black dog curled up with Luna on the floor. We only have one black dog, our then 11-year-old pug, China. She went to pet China but was greeted by a guttural growl that made her jump back. She turned on the bedroom light and woke me up with, “Dave! There’s a dog in the house!”

We had four dogs at that point, 3 pugs and a husky, so my reaction was a groggy “Yes, yes there is.”

“No, I mean a different dog!”

Finally opening my eyes and reaching for my glasses, I looked at the foot of the bed and there he was, the little black dog from the neighborhood lying next to Luna. And he was guarding her quite closely. We couldn’t come near the pair of them for risk of being bitten.

Luna had gone into heat before we could have her spayed, and she attracted him (he was also un-neutered). He found his way into the yard and let himself into the house through the rear dog door.

He was still around in the morning so we fed him along with the rest of the dogs. We had to feed him and Luna in the bedroom since he was still very protective of her and unwilling to let us near them. During the day, he kept following her around, out in the yard, trying on many occasions to mount her. Such slapstick comedy that hasn’t been produced since the silent Charlie Chaplin films. Luna could care less about him nor his advances, and yet he kept trying and immediately falling off.

From that point forward, we just started to refer to him as “Luna’s boyfriend”, LB for short. He hung around for the next few days and disappeared on the day we took Luna in to get spayed. She recovered indoors for a few days and we didn’t see him until day 3, when she returned outside. She was no longer in estrus and he wasn’t as eager to mount her, but they seemed to play together and hit it off. Luna had previously tried to engage the pugs in play but being much older and turned off by her size, they shied away each time. Now Luna had an equally energetic, if not much smaller, playmate who had a knack for getting through tiny faults in the fence to come play with her.

LB also stayed around for meals and quickly learned what time of the morning and the evenings those would be served. He never stayed overnight again during this time, but he was an early visitor, disappearing for the day to make the rounds in the neighborhood, and then returning in the evening around dinner time.

Another Safe House

LB showed up for yet another run, around February 2018. On the return home, Luna and I made a stop at my in-laws place. Sonya’s folks, Deborah and David Martinez, live a few properties over from us and I wanted to take Luna in to meet their pack of dogs. At the time, they also had three pugs as well as a border collie. Deborah Martinez is a modern day Dr. Doolittle. She has never encountered an animal who did not instantly like her and LB was no exception. He followed Luna and I into her home and immediately set to playing with the border collie. He also readily took treats from Deborah—straight from her hand! We stayed a bit until it was time to head back home, but LB decided to stay behind.

From that visit, we saw less and less of LB at our house, as he preferred to hang out at the Martinez Ranch instead. Eventually, we would see him for a few days a week, often with overnight stays. Deborah & Dave would also see him a few nights a week, and then there would always be stretches for a few days where we’d never see him at all. He was still very much a free spirit.

Not So Trapped…

The more LB stayed with us, the more worried I got every time I didn’t see him after a day or two. In April of 2018 I went around the perimeter fence and filled in every little nook that he could squeeze through. I buried large rocks in areas he was known to dig and lined large sections of the chain-link portions of the fence with heavy flagstone rock. This was done to keep Luna from digging and escaping but I had to work harder to keep the tiny LB from escaping as well. We decided he’d be a domesticated, stay-at-home dog.

This worked somewhat. LB would come over for a visit, usually by spotting my car on the road and jumping inside for a ride as I stopped. Then I’d take him home and he would be confined to our place, at least for a week or so. He always managed to find some weak spot in the fence to escape through.

Around this time, Deborah had tried the same thing with about the same level of success. First, she took LB for what must have been his first-ever vet visit. He was not microchipped and on no one’s radar. She had him given a proper physical, got a full array of necessary shots, had him microchipped, and finally, neutered! We didn’t want any more stray puppies in the neighborhood. He was then ours, at least on paper. The vet guessed that he was about 2 to 2-1/2 years old at that point.

Sonya and I also canvassed the neighborhood, going door to door to inquire if LB was anyone’s dog or if they knew who he belonged to. We didn’t find anyone who had more information about him other than “Oh, yeah, I know him. He plays with our dogs sometimes.”

While starting a run one morning, Luna, LB and I reached the end of our street when a woman stopped her car and asked me if “that little black dog” was ours. I told her no and gave her a short version of his story and she came back with, “Oh, well, he comes to my house every couple of days and has some food and plays with my dogs. He’s always a welcome friend at my house.” So that was yet another house where this little scamp has made himself at home.

At one point, we managed to get a festive sweater on LB without being bit. He was wearing it on one of the days he escaped. When he showed up again a few days later, the sweater was nowhere to be found. This also happened with various dog collars from time to time.

A Camping Stowaway

For the July 4th weekend of 2018 we took our camper trailer down to Elephant Butte Lake for four days of relaxation. LB had somehow managed to escape yet again and was nowhere to be found as we packed up. We took our pugs as well as Luna, and a recently adopted pit-mix named Willow with us¹. Once we arrived at the camp site, we set up and greeted Deborah and Dave at their site and low and behold! LB was there hanging out with the rest of her dogs. He had been at her house earlier that day and she decided he needed a vacation, too. For the entire long weekend he was off-leash and remained around the campsite with us, never wandering off too far even if he did go off exploring by himself a lot.

Over the Christmas holidays we head down to the Mexican town of Puerto Peñasco with the RV. My lab shuts down for the entire week, until after the new year, so this gives us a chance to relax and recoup before starting the new year. We have always brought our two elder pugs, China and Tasha, along with us and left the rest at home in the care of a house sitter. We had to say goodbye to Tasha in April of 2018 and we decided to bring all of the dogs with us on this trip, with the exception of LB since we still didn’t officially own him nor have travel papers for him. As was the case then, LB was nowhere to be found on the morning we left anyway.

We packed up the RV and headed down the road, meeting up with Sonya’s mom who was pulling out with their 5th wheel. As we turned onto the frontage road, I saw Deborah stopping in my side mirror. Then I saw her door open, and the tiny little LB jump into the truck. That was it, he found us at the last second and Deborah decided he was going to see the beaches of Mexico.

We had a fantastic week with great weather. Luna and I found a 3.5 mile course in order to get some running in, and LB continued to follow us on every run, always sans leash. The best times were in the afternoons, however, when we’d take all the dogs to the beach and let them run around. We did an impromptu photo shoot of LB living it up, for some light social media humor.

We ended up having a great trip and we repeated this for the other camping trips we took during 2019. Again to Elephant Butte, a camping trip with my homebrewing crew, and another year-end trip to Puerto Peñasco. On the trip down for that one, we noticed that LB was having some kind of gastrointestinal issue. At every stop, his stool was nearly liquid and he wasn’t acting as lively as normal. We took him to see our vet in Peurto Peñasco who put him on some meds and put him back to his normal self within a few days. However, when we picked him up from the vet and saw his prescription, we had a good laugh. They had literally transcribed his name on all their paperwork as “El Bee”. That name resonated with us—as he does like to “sting” us from time to time. And that is what we have been calling him ever since.

At Long Last, An Origin Story: Deuces

El Bee has become one of the favorite topics of ours on Facebook and other social media platforms. He has quite the following, in fact. I posted his picture to “Dogs of Santa Fe”, a local Facebook group, in October of 2019, and was surprised to see comments from one of the members there. First, “I think I know who this dog is.” We exchanged messages and learned that El Bee was previously “Deuces” and lived with a young girl on one of the houses I would pass on my runs. His backstory is just heartbreaking. Here is the story sent to us.

So, this dog is/was “Deuces” (Little Boy is much better). My sister-in-law, who is 14 now, has a really awful father, who used to physically abuse this guy. I mean, really awful stuff. I’m sure when you met him he was probably really snarly. So anyway, my mother-in-law was awarded full custody of her daughter, and her daughter basically just grabbed the dog and took it with her. He lived in their house for awhile. He got along with her, but was still just really traumatized. We brought our dog to meet him, and he loved it, so they ended up moving him to her grandmother’s house. She has three other dogs and he knew her and was comfortable with her, so he ended up being a lot happier with her. They think LB was crossing through the chicken wire between their yard and the neighbor who lives on Corral Blanco (maybe you?) and that they’d taken him in. They said he still visits every once in a while with his hair cut, new collar, etc and since he seems a lot happier now, and since he seems like he is getting the attention he needs more now, they are happy about it and not trying to track him down every time after letting him out anymore.

El Bee was a young puppy living with a 12-year-old girl in the home of an abusive father. It explains so much about him. He immediately hates any new male he encounters, less so for females. He flinches and turns aggressive at sudden moves, especially if an arm is raised near him or around anyone he is protective of—and he is extremely protective of anyone whose lap he is resting in. His temper will change in a fraction of a second if he perceives the slightest threat. It has taken us two years for him to fully trust us and there is still a lot of work to do, but he has come a long way as well. People like to poke fun at him for being this demonic dog, but now that we know his background, it makes it less funny to us. We do like to laugh at him from time-to-time, however, with how quickly he will change from “love me” to “GET AWAY!” and growling at us, but with his tail wagging wildly and giving his newfound softness away.

The woman who sent us his story relayed the news of El Bee’s new home back to the grandmother and to the young girl. Here was their responses.

These days we have a GPS tracking collar on him that will now alert us whenever he manages to “escape”². By escape, this means that we will often set El Bee free so he’ll run down the street to grandma Deb’s house, which usually takes around 10 minutes, more if there are other strays out for him to chat with. We can now see the circuitous routes he takes, much like the kid Billy from the Family Circus comics.

And on the occasion he never shows up at Deborah’s place, we can see on the map that he is roaming around the yard of his original owner’s grandmother’s place. It’s a quick hop in the car and to their driveway gate whenever that happens. He usually hears us calling him before we stop and he’s always waiting at the entrance, ready to jump in and head out for a short car ride.

“What kind of dog is that?”

That is a question we get asked just about any time someone new meets El Bee. This past spring we sent off samples of his DNA and the results came back surprisingly close to what we suspected. He is mostly chihuahua with some Chinese Crested mixed in. The actual amounts was given with the DNA results and a basic family tree were included.

He has the human-like expression and eyes of the Münsterlander, so that is also not too surprising. The rest are 1%—2% contributions but most of them seem reasonable. He likes to run around with the larger dogs and animals, like a herding-animal, which could be purely coincidental or could be the contribution from the Maremma sheepdog.On the health front, he was screened for 29 common genetic disease markers and he is clear of all of those. So there you have it, he’s 100% pure lovable mutt.

1. Willow was our first attempt to find a better-sized playmate for Luna. She was extremely lovable and they got along great for a few months. She ended up being deemed an only-dog situation and we had to return her to the shelter after a rather brutal fight between her and Luna. She ended up in a better home about a month later.
2. In February 2019 I lined our fence with a low-voltage wire used to keep herd animals from leaving their enclosure. This has worked 100% to keep the huskies from digging (we adopted a rescued husky in March 2019 who has become a steadfast playmate for Luna) and it has kept El Bee from digging or otherwise trying to escape as well.