| Beare spent many hours in local classrooms teaching youngsters how to treat and care for animals. |
An animal that spent many hours in schools in the Carbon County area teaching children about the kindness they should show to living things died a couple of weeks ago.
Beare, a dog that captured many people’s hearts when a story in the Sun Advocate in 1996 described his traumatic life and his subsequent rise to health again, passed away at home.
The dog had become a sort of icon in the schools in Carbon County after Jennifer Lopez, the canine’s owner, had rescued the animal from near death in the mid-1990s.
Beare was originally acquired by Lopez as a puppy, but circumstances forced her to give the dog away. Three years later, she went to visit him and see how he was doing. She found the dog in a filthy cage with no water.
According to Lopez, it appeared that he had not been fed regularly, not only by how skinny he was, but also by the way his hair was falling out. He also could hardly walk.
Lopez took the dog and started nursing him back to health. She took Beare to a local veterinarian, who said the dog had been neglected.
After deciding to keep the dog, Lopez started working with the Carbon County Humane Society. Eventually, that led to Beare visiting schools to teach children about how animals should be treated.
During the visits, students would see the dog and most often would think the hair loss was due to a fight the pooch had been in or that he had been run over by a car.
When Lopez explained the hair loss was the result of neglect, it gave the kids a new perspective on how animals need to be cared for and treated.
“Beare was the kind of animal that made you believe that all dogs go to heaven,” pointed out Lopez.