From English Author to British Survivalist

Most married LDS women my age either have a kid, nursing a kid, or begging their husbands for one. Not me! When Chris and I got married I begged him for a dog. He made me wait a while, but I finally got what I wanted. (Not to say that Chris didn’t want one. He was just worried about the price.) You see, I didn’t want just ANY dog…

If you know me, you probably know all about Dickens. In case you’re thinking of the author Charles Dickens, PLEASE, let me fill you in. When I was about four or five years old, my parents brought home a seven week old Beagle for my older brother, Scott. He let my mom name him, and my mother, being the English teacher that she was for thirteen years, decided on the name ‘Dickens,’ after the above mentioned author. So I tagged on the full name, “Charles Dickens the Sixth Jensen.” (There were already five other dogs with the name ‘Charles Dickens’ at the vet. Can you believe it?!)

Well anyways, I loved that dog to death. (Some would say quite literally.) He may have been my brother’s dog, but in my eyes he belonged to me. We were the best of pals. Well after about nine years of unconditional love, my sister, Melissa and sister-in-law, Heidi took him away on the day we moved from Springfield.

About seven years later, I come to find out that they had just dropped him off at the shelter/vet’s office to have him put down (due to age, obesity, and many cancerous cysts on his belly). All those seven years, I had thought that he had been adopted by another loving family that could have loved him only a fraction of what I had. As tears are strolling down my face at the age of twenty, I listen to Melissa tell me that she and Heidi DIDN’T EVEN STAY to hold Dickens’ little paw as he slowly drifted off to sleep for the very last time.

While completely enraged and bawling, I march into my parents’ bedroom, who were getting ready for bed. I swung the door open, my mom by her bed, and I cried uncontrollably, trying to explain what was going on. She looked at me with the most worried look on her face I had ever seen. “HONEY, what happened? What happened?” As my dad hears this, he runs out of their master bath in his underwear with a look to kill. (I later find out that he immediately thought that my boyfriend at the time, who was present for all this, had broken up with me, or worse!) When I could finally mutter out the word “Di…..di…..di….dickens,” he rolled his eyes and continued to brush his teeth. My mother tried to comfort me, but all I could think was, “You need to PUNISH Melissa!!!”

And THAT is how much I loved my dog, Charles Dickens the Sixth Jensen!

And so, with this strong bond I have with Beagles, I didn’t want to get another one and feel like I was replacing Dickens. So I researched and found the next best thing. PUGGLES! Half pug, half beagle. You see, when a female Beagle and a male Pug fall in love...

This is where Chris put on the brakes for a while. Puggle breeders in the Northwest are few and far between and they charge an arm and a leg (close to a thousand dollars). So we turned to the internet. And on the cutest little website http://www.puppyfind.com/ we had plenty of pups to choose from. The majority were in the Mid-West which I learned from Oprah is due to all the puppy mills. So we were careful and took our time finding the perfect one to join our family. We wanted a male, with long Beagle ears, a slight curl of the tail, long Beagle legs, a fawn coat, and long muzzle. And he needed to be in our price range most of all. Until then, I read the book All About Puggles. I researched everything I could about the breed and what to expect about raising a puppy.

And then one day I found “Chico.” He was four weeks old and the cutest little thing ever. He was in Oklahoma and I was quick to call the breeder. She told me that he was the runt of the litter (just like Dickens) and the last to be adopted. We made our arrangements and were scheduled to pick him up at PDX on June 20, 2008 at 11:25 a.m.


For the longest time, Chris and I had decided on the name “Akamaru.” Since I wanted a dog so badly, I let Chris choose his name. Akamaru is the name of a cool dog on one of his favorite TV shows. I liked it. It was original and witty that it was from a cartoon. Before we had even picked our dog we had always said, Akamaru this and Akamaru that. But when we finally picked out “Chico” we realized that it would be too hard to yell at him, and really annoying to have to explain to people why we had chosen that name. So to avoid all of the headache and confusion, we decided to go back to the drawing board. That’s when “Bear” popped up. I found it in a list of names and it stuck out. It’s cute and to get Chris to agree I told him we would name him after Bear Grylls. Bear is the coolest guy alive, from Man vs. Wild, one of our favorite shows on Discovery Channel. So this is “Bear Grylls Levanger.” (Even though Chris never let’s me call him by his full name.)