It Should Have Been Bean

Bean! Bean! Bean! the crowd chanted as the award for Best in Show was about to given out. That, my friends, is the sound of a winner. Yet only seconds later after the people sung his name, Bean, the Sussex Spaniel, had to sit there and watch his rightful prize be given to another dog for the second year in a row.

Bean has ears that look like golden bells. His legs are short, but his body is thick. He is long like a log. He is stately, but not arrogant. As he trots around the ring he frowns, concentrating only on delivering for the crowd.

And boy does this heroic Bean know what the crowd wants. Winner of the Sporting Group for two years straight, Bean celebrated both years by sitting down on the ground, looking like a lost child and also a rectangle. The people lost it.

“We all know and love Bean,” the interviewer said to Bean’s owner in the ring after he won in the Sporting Group. We really do, I whispered to myself. Bean’s owner told us that this would be Bean’s “last show.” Damn you, Bean, I said as I found out the news.

Bean is the grandbean of Stump, a 2009 Best in Show winner. Maybe things were fairer back in those days, but in 2019, the dogs of the people end up losing to kings. In Bean’s case, he literally lost to a wire fox terrier named King.

Will there be any justice for Bean, the little log who could? No, because Bean is retiring. May Bean sit on the couch, preferably next to me, and watch TV for the rest of his days.