Hudson is a beagle rescued by B.O.N.E.S. from a bad situation in Limington, ME. After the gentleman called 911 (and subsequently passed away), the local ACO found 20 dogs living in squalid conditions. B.O.N.E.S. took most of them and found them new homes. Overall, Hudson was in very good shape but when he had his physical, they found a serious mast cell tumor in his nose. As much as possible was removed but his condition will forever remain unknown - it might come back and it might not. B.O.N.E.S. wanted to find a wonderful home for Hudson and we did. John is a long-haul trucker that had lost his beagle companion of 13 years. He wanted a new companion. Luckily John found Hudson or Hudson found John. This is a wonderful match. Hudson and John have started e-mailing us notes from the road and we want to share them with you.
**NEW** Now you can email Hudson since he has his very own B.O.N.E.S. email address! Write to him at hudson@bonesbeagles.org!
Greetings from Florida. John and I are on our first trip with the new company. He got sick and tired of dealing with all the cheap brokers and having to wait and even track down money that was owed to him. He has leased on to a company called Admiral Merchants, Based in Minnesota. They have 300 agents nationwide, so John deals directly with these agents and the rates, so far, seem to be much better. Another plus, is that John gets paid the same day the load is delivered.
Our first trip out was from Windsor, CT to Baltimore, MD. We had two A.C. units going to the port. From there, we went 5 miles to Curtis Bay Coast Guard Station to load a ship mounted gun. That was going down to the Coast Guard Station in Key West. It was an uneventful trip down, except for all the stares we got. After we unloaded the gun, John parked alongside the beach, and we wend for a walk on the beach, and spent the afternoon watching people. John had chained down his Tonka Bulldozer and we had fun watching a few people actually stop, or even turn around in their cars to take pictures.
The funniest one was later in the evening. John heard a voice say "dude, you missed it!" John saw a kid on a bike turn around and go back to the trailer where his buddy was pointing to the Tonka. John got out to say hi, and the two "stoners" offered him a beer out of their backpack and began to tell him how great the Tonka was, as well as tell him how terrific the quote from the Blues Brothers movie was on the back of his sleeper. The two then went into a deep, Philosophical discussion as to who would be better to hang out with, Dan Akroyd, who would be great to talk to about the history of the blues, or, Robert Downey JR, who you could get high with. This lasted for about 15 minutes, and then they hopped on their bikes, and were gone. John still gets a chuckle out of this.
We left Key West and headed up the keys to Marathon, where there was a place we could park. The next day, John found a load in Riviera Beach, that loaded Friday. Rather than spend the next three days in a gravel lot, John decided to find us a room. We got instead, was a nice little bungalow by the sea. there were two rows of connected bungalows running from the road down to the beach. They were right out of the days when Earnest Hemingway haunted these parts. They were clean and had hot and cold running water. John Needed a shower pretty badly!
After our two day vacation, it was time to get back to work. We headed up to Riviera Beach and loaded a 14 foot wide piece of pipe that went from the fabrication plant, across town to the new power plant, a total of 7 miles! It paid 1000 dollars, so that wasn't too bad for a couple hours work. Too bad there aren't more days like that in trucking!
John then found a load going up to Wisconsin later in the day and around 4:30, the load canceled, leaving us stranded for the weekend. Unfortunately, that's more like the trucking that we know and love.
That's all for now.
Hudson, the semi-beagle.
