About the time I adopted Raffie—September 11, 1996—I was reading a lovely old book called The Amateur Cracksman by E.W. Hornung, a collection of short stories about a dashing gentleman safecracker. The hero's name is A.J. Raffles, and at one point a secondary character remarks, "Nor was this simply because Raffles had the subtle power of making himself irresistible at will." The moment I saw Raffie at the animal shelter he made himself irresistible to me, and so that's how he got his name.

We had eleven wonderful years together. We came to Coppell and joined the Loupas clan together. After a valiant year-long battle against kidney failure and complicating congestive heart failure, Raffie slipped away on August 24, 2007, in the sun-dappled grass of his own beloved back yard, with Jim and me holding him in our arms. Here, in no particular order, are some of my favorite pictures of my beloved boy.

I've always called this one "Tail Waggin' Boy," because his tail's wagging so fast it's just a blur. It's one of my all-time favorites. It's also one of the earliest pictures of Raffie, taken in my friend Helen's back yard in Austin, probably in January 1997. We'd traveled down there for Raffie's first Beaglefest. He never liked riding in the car, but he surely loved visiting Helen and her big beautiful back yard.

I call this one "My Precious Raff." He's lying in front of the television set in our den here in Coppell, in December 2005. For some reason this picture seems to show his personality so vividly... alert, interested, easygoing. It also shows his beautiful coloring... although his face has turned white, his ears are still rich russet velvet and his body coloring is still vivid. I suspect someone was saying, "Raffie? Treat?" at the moment I snapped this picture.

It's funny how I seem to have names for all these pictures. I call this one "Busy Yucca Beagle," for obvious reasons. It was taken in our back yard, probably within a year or two of us moving here. I wasn't intending any artistic effect with the yucca plant, but somehow it came out that way. Raffie is very focused on following some kind of scent... "nose down and tail a-rising," as my father used to say about our childhood beagle. I love pictures where Raffie has his tail up like this—that always meant that he was happy and felt good about whatever it was he was doing.

These are the first pictures I took of Raffie, scanned from old-fashioned Polaroids, no less! On the left is "Green Grass Beagle," one of Raffie's first forays into his new back yard on Coppertowne Lane. Notice the leash! We didn't have a fenced yard and so Raffie never really knew the joy of running free outdoors until we came to live in Coppell. Center is what I've always called "The Cutest Beagle in the Whole Wide World," and I have to say that I never changed that opinion. Upper right, "Frog Dog." Always Raffie's favorite way to lounge. He's been with me for a while in these pictures, because his coat's taken on a nice gloss. Thin as he looks, he's also gained weight from what he weighed when I adopted him. When the animal control people first weighed him, he was twelve pounds! His normal body weight was about twenty-six to twenty-eight pounds.

Here we are, Raffie and I, both of us looking impossibly young, at our first Beaglefest. It was in Austin, in January or February 1997. My hair is still brown and Raffie's face is still red, and I'm hugging him tightly in my arms with a huge smile of love and pride on my face. He's looking off to the right, probably at a squirrel! Later Beaglefests were much larger, and at one of them Raffie won the coveted blue ribbon as the "Best Begger in Texas." There will be more Beaglefest pictures to come.

More Beaglefest fun. I took this at one of the subsequent Beaglefests—not sure if it was the second or third. Raffie is circled. You will notice that he has snagged the prime position right beside the treat-giver. He polished this skill through the years, and Cressie will vouch for the fact that he became a Grand Master.

I call this picture "Raffie Basking." It was taken at the end of July 2007, and is one of the last good pictures of Raffie. Even as sick as he was, he loved his yard, loved all the wonderful smells in his grass, and loved basking in the sun. He had a special little den in the stand of pampas grass that you can just see behind him here. Another thing I love about this picture is that it shows how thick and soft his coat was. All his life he had what I called "puppy fur" behind his ears—very soft, short, fluffy fur—and when I look at this picture I can feel that wonderful puppy fur under my fingertips.

This is one of my favorite pictures of Raffie as a young doggie. We are out in the back yard of the condo on Coppertowne Lane, and Raffie has found a STICK to carry around. I love the way he's grinning with pleasure because that stick is HIS, by golly, and nobody's going to take it away from him. I think he ultimately chewed it up and ate most of it, but I certainly wasn't going to take it away from him and spoil his beagley delight.

This was taken not long after we adopted Cressie, probably in the fall of 2002. Both doggies have made themselves comfy in our guest bedroom, rearranging the sheets, pillows, and blanket on the bed to suit themselves. Raffie (who is in the front) has the most darling little curl of a smile in his expression, as if to say, "All right, you brought home this little sister for me, but I've got her well under control." And he did. The two of them had one or two, er, discussions, accompanied by much vicious snarling on Raffie's part and drama-queen squealing on Cressie's, ending with Cressie's throat wet from Raffie's slavering jaws but not so much as a mark on her. Once he had her put in her place, they got along quite well.

I call this picture "My Beautiful Boy." Pretty self-explanatory, isn't it?

This is a companion picture to "Tail Waggin' Boy" above. I call it "Coy Boy." Raffie always loved to play, and when he was a young dog like this he was quite a ham. He had such an expressive face and such wonderful eyes, didn't he?

On our refrigerator, we have a sign that says, "CAUTION! This area patrolled by Beagle Security Co.!" If you happened to be standing in front of the fridge and looked down to your right, this is what you would always see. Raffie was the President and CEO (Chief Eating Officer) of Beagle Security, and he took his job very seriously.

In this picture you can also see the odd fact that although Raffie had white paws, he had dark nails, and nail-trimming time was not his favorite thing. I always opted to trim a bit long to keep from hurting him, and so the sound of Raffie claw-clicking on the quarry tile will always be part of our household.

How Raffie loved his green pillow! It was originally part of a daybed set, but about the time he had the surgery to repair his torn cruciate ligament (pictures of that to come), the pillow osmosed to the floor and became Raffie's. It lived by a bookcase in my office on Coppertowne Lane, and when Raffie and I moved to Coppell, it came with us and settled into my office here, again by a bookcase. The cedar chest on the other side is my grandmother's (Nana's) beautiful hope chest. This was Raffie's very favorite place of all.

He'd often sleep with his little muzzle resting on the wood of the bookcase, and if you look closely you can see the dark mark he made, between Understanding Statistics and Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality. I haven't been able to bear the thought of moving the green pillow, so it's still there. A few of the books have been moved, and the little brass box with Raffie's ashes rests there on the bottom shelf of the bookcase, by the dark mark on the wood. His very favorite place of all.

I call this one "Tail Waggin' Boy, Part Two." It was taken in March 2002, not quite a year after we moved to Coppell, and a few months before we adopted Cressie. We're at the back door. Obviously it's been wet, from the footprints! But Raffie is clearly looking up at me with his, "I want to go IN, Mama, right now, please. Enough with the picture-taking."

I think there's a law in Texas that says everyone must take their little ones out into fields of bluebonnets for pictures, and of course Raffie and I were no exception. This was taken in Austin, probably in the summer of 1997. Don't I look like a proud and happy beagle mama? And doesn't Raffie look like a happy boy? I wish I had more pictures of the two of us together like this, but a) I was usually the one taking the pictures, and b) I'm a little camera-shy, I fear.

Raffie and I made many trips to Austin, both for Beaglefests and just to visit Helen, my friend from graduate school. He did not like riding in the car, and I never knew why—on his very first car-ride with me, coming home from the vet's office where he'd been neutered, bathed and flea-dipped after being extracted from the pound, he wedged himself so deeply into the tiny space between the passenger door and the seat of the car that I thought I would never get him out. He wasn't afraid of the car from the outside, or even of being in the car if it wasn't moving, but the moment I turned on the engine he went into a state of pitiful panic. After that first ride home, he always rode in his crate, with plenty of blankies to burrow down and hide in; I'd buckle the seat belt over and around the crate to hold it in place as firmly and steadily (and safely) as possible. Poor Raffie! Something bad happened to him in a moving car, I suspect, and he never quite got over it.

Just this past summer, a Chinese cucumber plant from my vegetable garden escaped over the fence and twined with a rosebush to make a perfect little Beatrix-Potter-style arch. Both doggies loved it, and we started calling it "Beagle Hollow." I waited and waited for the perfect moment to snap a picture, and this is the result—Raffie peeking out of Beagle Hollow, with cucumbers dangling all around him. Cressie would actually eat the cucumbers, but Raffie had a much more developed palate and preferred delicacies like pears and Pecorino Romano cheese. "Eurodog," we called him sometimes. He also liked old-fashioned pot roast and down home Texas brisket and pizza crusts and plain small hamburgers from Sonic and bits of Master's ham-and-cheese sandwiches.

Here's another of my few precious pictures of me with my boy. This one was taken in March 2002, and I call it "Sunday Morning," because it has that, well, Sunday morning feel. I'm still in my wrapper, as my mother would say, and I'm sure there are big cups of coffee and stacks of the Sunday paper nearby. This black futon couch was one of Raffie's favorite places, and the end where he's sitting was his end. Both Cressie and Bob learned quickly to give that particular spot a wide, wide berth.

For Christmas 1997 I gave Raffie a pig ear, which vanished almost immediately. I was hornswoggled, as we say here in Texas. Where did it go? Had he hidden it somewhere? He did spend the first hour or so slinking around the house looking for a place to "bury" it... he actually did "bury" it and "dig it up" several times, to the point that he gave himself a little pink raw spot on the top of his nose from "pushing the dirt" over the pig ear, when the "dirt" was really carpet.

The end of the story: an agonized Raffie was rushed to the vet the next day. An X-ray certainly hornswoggled the poor vet—in Raffie's stomach, ghostly but perfectly identifiable, was the image of a whole pig ear. Whole. We never did figure out how he managed to swallow it whole. It was touch and go for a while as to whether it would have to be removed surgically, but the vet gave Raffie medication and special food to soften and dissolve it, and after a few very uncomfortable days the remnants of the pig ear made their way out safely. Poor Raffie—he loved that pig ear so much, but he never got another one!

Raffie was always so good with the babies. Here he’s getting some loving from Miranda (probably not quite a year old) and her daddy Jeff. I’ll never forget the time that Miranda (then a couple of years older) came up to put something on my lap to show me. Naturally Raffie was right at my feet, and as I looked at Miranda’s treasure I became aware of Raffie looking up at me with big, silent, anguished eyes. I looked down, and Miranda, all unknowing, was standing right on his tail! And he never moved or made a peep. Dear Raffie.

Another time, when we were babysitting for Grayson, Miranda’s younger brother, I lay down with Grayson to take a nap. Raffie jumped up to snuggle with us, and when I woke up Grayson had one hand clutching one of Raffie’s front paws, and Raffie was just lying there sleeping, as good as gold. I would have loved to have had a picture, but of course it would have waked them both up. There are always so many moments that live on in our hearts alone.

I call this picture "A Wink and a Slurp." It was sheer luck, of course, that I snapped the shutter at exactly the moment that Raffie was winking and slurping! It's another wonderful image of Raffie having fun with life, and I treasure it for that.

This is something of a companion piece to "Sunday Morning" above—I call it "Master and Friends." It's like one of those old Flemish paintings in which the subject is painted among symbols of their interests: here we have Jim with one arm around Raffie and one arm around Bob, and his newspaper and crossword puzzles strewn over the couch and the table next to him. Truly the master of all he surveys. Raffie loved his Master dearly and often jumped up on the black couch for some Master-loving. As arthritis began to slow him down a bit (Raffie, not Jim), we bought a set of those "Doggie Steps" as advertised on TV, and Raffie would trot up his steps with the greatest of ease to get some petting, or just to curl up on his end of the couch while Master and Mama watched TV in the evenings.

In those last few months when Raffie was so sick and weak, he sometimes had trouble standing, and particularly standing on our slippery quarry tile floors. (I myself can attest to their slipperiness, and have two enormous titanium screws in my right elbow to remind me.) Often we also had to coax him to eat. The result was that he began to eat in the dining room, on the carpet, and in a reclining position—we called it "eating like a Roman." He became quite adept at it, and we used to chuckle that we would have to make him a little beagle-sized toga and olive wreath. Having to coax a beagle to eat was a new experience for us!

This was Raffie's favorite corner in my office on Coppertowne Lane. I love this picture particularly because it shows his beautiful coloring as a young doggie, and the quirky little crooked streak that ran up between his eyes. This was taken sometime in the fall of 1997—he had had the surgery to repair his torn cruciate ligament in June, and his fur was almost completely grown back. You can just see a bit of a line of demarcation halfway down his hind leg. He recovered well from the surgery and went on to walk, run, and jump on four good legs for the rest of his life.

Most of the pictures I have of Raffie with his cherished Froggie are blurred—he simply wouldn't stay still for anyone to take his picture when he had Froggie in his mouth. In this one, however, he had decided that Froggie made a nice pillow for a beagle boy who wasn't feeling so hot. You can see the shaved patch on his foreleg, reminder of yet another hospitalization for IV fluids. Froggie made it better, though.

In the first days after I brought Raffie home from the shelter, I noticed him favoring his left hind leg. This was an on-and-off thing at first, and the vet did x-rays and exams without coming to any conclusion. But then on June 1, 1997, while running around the house after a bath (why do doggies always run around crazily after having a bath?) he collapsed, screaming in pain and fear. I rushed him to the emergency vet and finally got a diagnosis: a ruptured cruciate ligament. Apparently it had been partly torn through for some time, which accounted for the on-and-off symptoms, and he'd torn it through completely in his after-bath running. He went in for surgery as soon as it could be scheduled. Here he is on the day after he came home, his little hindquarter shaved naked and a big cast on his leg, tottering out to his favorite bushes to pee. I quickly learned to put a sandwich bag over the "foot" of the cast when he went outside.

I swear that I did not set up this picture. After the surgery Raffie was supposed to be on "crate rest," but I was working at home at the time and it made more sense to just keep him by me—he certainly didn't have any desire to go running around. He had his "hospital" nest beside my desk, and he soon learned to prop the cast up against the leg of the desk. Presumably elevating it felt better to him. He was a smart, smart boy, my Raffie.

Here's one more picture of Raffie in his cast. I was so amazed by the way they'd shaved his poor little hindquarter with such perfectly straight lines. And how naked his skin looked without its beautiful thick fur! I'm not sure if the skin itself was darker under the black fur, or if it just looked darker because there was a tiny growth of new fur. It took several months to grow back completely, and parts of it were re-shaved because he had to have a second surgery to clean up some stitches that hadn't dissolved properly.

Raffie only stayed overnight in the hospital once—the animals weren't monitored twenty-four hours a day and the moment the techs turned their backs he pulled out his IVs and generally created havoc trying to get out of the cage and get home. My dear Raff! That one night, though, I left him one of my black t-shirts (out of the dirty laundry, mmmmmmm!) in an attempt to comfort him. It didn't help much while he was in the hospital but he surely liked it once he got home—he would drag it into his snuggle bed and sleep with it, breathing in that sweet (!) scent of Mama.

This is another of my favorite pictures of Raffie, because his personality shines through so clearly—he is the alpha dog, the "Big Fella," his head high and his tail high, totally in charge of his yard and all he surveys. Oh, and peeing on the grass just to make sure everybody knows it. Heh. This was taken in the wintertime, because of the color of the grass, and clearly before he got sick—so I would guess that it was taken in 2003 or 2004. I wish I'd written the dates on the pictures.

Another unique thing about Raffie that shows clearly in this picture is the little tuft of black fur within the russet color on his right shoulder. I always thought that would be one way to prove that he was my boy if he were to get lost. That, and of course the cat-scratch scar on his nose he got when he poked his little face unwisely but too well through a hole in a fence along Coppertowne Lane!

Raffie and I took only one long road trip—we drove to Rockford one summer. I was so proud of my boy and I wanted my family in Rockford to meet him! Here he is at my mother's apartment of the time—in typical Raffie-esque fashion he had collected all the pillows (and for some unknown reason, a spray of yellow artifical flowers) and made a little nest for himself beside the bench of the organ. In retrospect, it was probably a selfish thing for me to have done, because poor Raffie hated riding in the car so much. But he hated being left at home alone, too, so all in all I think he was happier to be with me.

Here's Raffie on his first Christmas in Coppell. What a beautiful, beautiful boy he is, and how festive with his bright red satin ribbon. That's me in an all-black outfit with a long duster-length sweater and all (not sure what I was thinking—guess I was a Christmas Goth that year), holding my boy's collar protectively.

I'm not sure which Christmas this picture was taken—probably 2004 or 2005. Just look at the expression on Raffie's face! Clearly he's thinking, "All right, Mama, I'll wear these ridiculous Christmas bells on my collar, but only for ONE DAY, got it?"

This is another of my favorite pictures of Raffie, although I suppose I should just give up and admit that they're all my favorites. This was taken not long after I adopted him, so he's probably about two years old. He's lying in front of the back door in his favorite "frog" position, and I'm lying face to face with him in a somewhat similar position. Heh. In the background you can see the section of slats that someone (ahem) removed from the miniblind over the door, so that someone (double ahem) could look out without bending any more slats than he already had.

My beautiful, beautiful boy. I miss you so much. We all miss you so much.

At one of the Texas Beaglefests we attended—I think it was the second or third—Raffie competed enthusiastically in the "Best Begger" contest. The main attractions, of course, were the many treats being offered to coax all the beagles to beg. (Not much coaxing required when one is dealing with beagles.) Anyway, as you can see here, Raffie out-begged all the competition and was awarded the blue ribbon as the "Best Begger in Texas." I still have the ribbon, tucked away among my treasured mementos.

I wish this picture were better—we were right out in the bright sunlight. But doesn't he look delighted? If there'd been a red carpet for the prize-winning beagles he'd have been right out there strutting.

I haven't been dating these entries. But today is February 24, 2008, and it's been six months now that Raffie's been gone. We still miss him dreadfully, and always will. I see him sometimes, just glimpses out of the corner of my eye—peeking around the corner into the kitchen, in the back yard behind the canna lilies, walking along a curb when we walk. Why was it that Raffie always loved to walk along any straight, narrow raised line? He especially loved the railroad ties that the local grade school uses to frame its play areas, and I've "seen" him there several times.

This picture was taken sometime in the spring of 2007. Raffie is sitting on his beloved green pillow, with "his" bookcase in the background. What a distinguished, literary gentleman beagle he was. And how handsome, always.

Somewhere up there I promised more Beaglefest pictures, and so here's another. What fun the Fests always were! Raffie is wearing his "Best Begger" blue ribbon and surveying the crowd like the champion he is. Heh. He's probably looking for someone with more treats!

Everybody always took lots of pictures and the lady in the red shorts appears to be taking a picture of me taking a picture!

Before Raffie had Froggie, he had Lambie. How he loved her! He was definitely a faithful, one-toy sort of doggie.

Here you see him in one of his favorite spots in our condo on Coppertowne Lane, under my little Queen Anne desk, with Lambie as his pillow. Poor Lambie suffered a sad fate and Raffie was bereft for a while, but at last he allowed Froggie to comfort him. Froggie remained his constant companion for the rest of his life and was cremated with him.

It's April 24th, 2008. Eight months today. How I still miss you, my precious boy.

This is what Jim and I always called Raffie's "Give the dog your fooooooooooooood" look. Raffie could have starred in Underdog, at least as far as the mesmerizing food look was concerned. Whenever you sat down in the den to enjoy a little snack, this was what you saw. And somehow Raffie always ended up getting a taste of whatever you were eating.

It's May 24th, 2008. Nine months. For some reason the last couple of weeks have been particularly hard for me. Although I did have one wonderful dream about my Raff—we were on the road together, going nowhere in particular, and just magically popping up in different places without having to do the driving in between, which was fine with Raffie—he always hated riding in the car. It was a good dream. And I'm sure that when I sat down to eat, wherever we were, this is what I saw at my feet.

The answers quick and keen,
The honest look, the laughter, the love,
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses.
Elegant and curled is the blossom.
Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes
Than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve.
And I am not resigned.

--from "Dirge Without Music"
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

One of Raffie's responsibilities around the house—and one he took very seriously—was propping up the walls. He did it so well. It's a miracle, really, that the house is still standing.

You left us a year ago today, my precious boy. But you never really left us at all, did you?

I'll continue to add pictures every so often. If you'd like to send me an email, click here.