I really don't understand how someone could have beaten and abandoned a sweet, adorable doggy like Charlie. Or Charlie's companion, Peanut, for that matter. They were abused and dumped like trash, and even so, they were still just the sweetest dogs and all they wanted was love and attention, oh and of course food!

Charlie was such a pretty boy, with his big floppy Basset Hound ears, and sweet, sad eyes. He had this problem with one of his eyes, though. It was sort of uneven with his normal-looking eye and always reddish-looking, sometimes more so than others. I called it his "crazy eye".

Mr. Charles and his companion Peanut were dumped together and we brought them home together. Peanut was very pregnant at the time and had their first litter of puppies (with us) the very next night after bringing them home. Eventually, all those puppies from that litter died and almost exactly one year later, Peanut and Charlie had their second and final litter.

We had Peanut and Charlie on chains for a while, (the other dogs didn't get along with them) and they had to be near one another, otherwise Peanut would get very upset. They must have been a little too near each other, because nearly a year after her last litter was born, she gave birth to five beagle-mix pups.

They were such cute puppies, but shortly after they were weaned from their momma, two of the pups began having seizures. They were taken to the vet and wormed and that stopped the seizures, though unfortunately, one of the seizure puppies developed a hernia. We were able to give away all but the seizure/hernia puppy, we decided to keep him and call him Usti, which means baby in Cherokee.

As Usti matured, he began to fight for dominance with his papa. Charlie and Usti fought and argued a lot, especially over Peanut. But sadly, Peanut had breast cancer and had to be put to sleep. I'm sure they both missed her very much.

Then not even a year later, Charlie was gone too.

We had taken him to the vet because he had had trouble eating. The vet said he had an abscessed tooth and decided he would anesthetize him in a couple days and see what teeth needed cleaning or removed. Charlie was given antibiotics for the abscess in the meantime. We thought it would just be a simple tooth extraction, but when we brought him home he had a huge knot above his good eye and his eye was rolled up into his head.

I had noticed he had a small knot above his eye a couple days before he was taken to the vet. I just thought maybe he had bumped his head or he had a fight with Usti. The vet said it was unrelated to his dental issues.

Charlie's eye looked terrible and started oozing pus. We had to rush him back to the vet because we didn't know what was wrong with him. Well, I guess someone forgot to give us the note the vet left for us about Charlie's eye. The vet said he thought Charlie had a possible tumor.

We left him at the vet all that weekend. The swelling of his eye didn't go away with what they gave him for it and because it was putting so much pressure on his eye, they wanted to remove it. Even it they had, the swelling was also pressing on his brain. We thought, why have him lose his eye, after losing some of his teeth too, and that still wouldn't stop the tumor from causing brain damage to dear Charlie. So we decided to have him put to sleep instead of having him endure more pointless surgery.

It was so unexpected. A week earlier we thought he had a simple toothache and I had planned on giving him a bath after he felt better, getting him a new collar and taking him riding in the car, because he suprisingly loved that.

I thought we would have Charlie for much longer than we did. He seemed so young and puppy-like, though I guess he was probably around Peanut's age. I'm glad we were able to take care of dear Charlie, and sweet Peanut. And now they're buried side-by-side in the front yard.

He was the most darling and adorable Beagle-Basset Hound ever.