HinesSight

Watch out for dog psychic hotline

Wanted to share some recent correspondence with the Oregon Humane Society, just in case anyone else shares a home with a malcontent dog.

TO: Humane Society Dog Psychic Hotline Coordinator
FROM: Brian
RE: Complaint received from our family pet, Serena

This is in response to your recent letter expressing concern about the reported "starvation" of our dog. As you can imagine, I was more than a little surprised to learn that the Humane Society operates a Dog Psychic Hotline.

However, this is Oregon. Guess I should have seen this bit of woo-woo coming. (Except, I'm not psychic.)

At first I was deeply skeptical that your hotline could be picking up messages from our dog. But after reading the intimate details contained in your letter about my, um, bathroom habits, I became a believer.

From now on, Serena is going to be kept on the other side of a closed bathroom door. In retrospect, I should have been suspicious when she suddenly started to follow me around everywhere I went in the morning.

Regarding her ESP-conveyed complaints of food deprivation, please keep in mind that, despite her pleasant appearance, this can be a darn devious dog. Underneath her laid-back half-Lab personality is a semi-sinister German Shepherd alter ego.

I have attached a report from Serena's vet that says she could benefit from losing three or four pounds. Our recent efforts in that direction likely have led to the baseless claims of imminent starvation received by your hotline.

Here is my response to Serena's most egregious statements:

(1) "Forced to forage for my own food every morning." Give me a break. She voluntarily goes out with me to get the newspaper. Sometimes she sees a squirrel and runs after it. That must be what her malevolent dog brain is communicating to your psychic, who, in my opinion, is excessively gullible.

When we come in, I immediately go to her treat drawer and prepare her pre-breakfast. Currently this consists of five small dog biscuits (three different kinds – each completely natural, costing more per pound than our own food).

I carefully arrange these on a small towel, to minimize crumb dispersal, and lay it out on a corner of the living room rug. Upon calling "Serena, your pre-breakfast is ready!," she slowly walks over to the biscuits. (Perhaps these ten or fifteen steps also are what she means by "foraging.")

A bit later, my wife feeds Serena her regular breakfast, a mixture of dry and canned food. Believe me, this dog isn't being starved.

(2) "Often given grass for dinner." Absurd. She must be talking about the broccoli that I chop up and sprinkle over her evening meal. Which consists of the same cup of dry food and numerous spoonfuls of canned food that she got in the morning.

Our seriously spoiled pet probably is pissed about the reduction from 1 ¼ cups after we got the weight loss advice from the vet. I never would have guessed that she was keeping track of how much went into her bowl. But after reading about what she told you about my bathroom habits, clearly not much escapes her.

I note that Serena failed to mention what happens after she finishes her dinner. Allow me to fill in the gaps in her tale of gustatory woe.

Within a few microseconds of licking her bowl clean, our dog rushes over to me, tail wagging like crazy. We've got a little ritual going on here.

I walk over to the bowl, stare into its empty recesses, and intone, "Oh, my, what a good dog to finish all of your dinner. You deserve a treat!" I open the chewstick container and pull out a hunk of dried cow, anathema to my vegetarian soul.

Doing my best not to think about the karmic consequences, I make Serena sit and shake a paw, neither of which she does very convincingly. When the psychic transcribed, "Made to suffer horrible indignities in exchange for morsels of food," this must have been what our ingrate pet was referring to.

(3) "Always go to sleep hungry." Be aware that Serena really means "hungry for more." Before being put to bed in her own room, Serena jumps up onto a futon. My wife then croons dog baby talk while feeding her two large dog biscuits as a sleep-time snack.

I hope this puts to rest the starvation complaints you have received from our pet. I'd be interested to know what percentage of hotline messages received by your dog psychic turn out to be well-founded. In this case, for sure, you've been taken by a sneaky canine.

Sincerely, Brian

Images of 2006 Salem Dog Parade

Once again this year I guaranteed a loss for Serena in the Best Costume category by simply tying a bandana around her neck and heading off to yesterday's Salem Dog Parade.

I’d considered entering the dog/human look-alike contest, but couldn’t decide whether to dye my hair blonde or Serena’s fur gray. But this couple looked muy adorable even with different colored coiffures.

T-shirts and micro-skirts were, as always, popular on larger dogs. Next year we’re going to dress Serena up properly, I almost promise.

If I was an Oregon State fan, I’d caption this photo “A dog of an Oregon cheerleader.”

Anyone allergic to Cute needs to stay away from a dog parade.

Laurel, Official Humane Society Dog Walker Volunteer, took a shelter dog to the parade. “Shaggy” (don’t know its real name) attracted a lot of attention. Be nice if it’d pay off with an adoption.

A fetching Oriental look. For future dog dressing reference, I asked the owner how she was able to keep the hat on. She had a big roll of the secret in her hand: duct tape.

Pink ballerina skirts on big white dogs. A big cliched, but classic.

When I met up with Laurel at the end of the parade Serena showed just a teeny bit of jealousy toward Shaggy. All in good dog play fun, though. Sort of.

Here are two contestants in the Waggiest Tail contest. The little dog on the left won. While standing there taking photos, the M.C. asked me to show off Serena’s tail-wagging stuff. Pretty pathetic. Big tails just don’t move like little tails.

Lastly, I’ll fight against every instinct to the contrary and throw in a photo Laurel took of me and (half of) Serena. For the past few years, every time I look at a photo of myself I think, “Nick Nolte mug shot.”

Aside from Lyme disease and a drug reaction, we’re doing fine

For the first time, the dog and I are on our own at our Camp Sherman cabin. Laurel is off at a family reunion in Kentucky. So Serena and I are keeping things interesting by getting Lyme disease (me) and a Xanax drug reaction (dog). Or so I've diagnosed.

Hey, I’m looking at the bright side: it’s blogging material.

I was planning to write about how Lars Larson, the bozo conservative talk show host, thinks that the Surgeon General’s report on the dire health effects of second-hand smoke is a bunch of crap, because Lars took a glance at it via the Internet and has concluded that the 670 page study is, well, just blowing smoke. What an idiot.

But now that I have a disease to blog about, I’ve got to take advantage of it. For usually I’m abnormally healthy. When I get together with my fellow baby boomers I’m left out of the “let me tell you about my [fill in problem]” discussion. Which is just about all we late 50’s and early 60’s folks seem to talk about.

Finally I have my own story. About a week after our last trip to the cabin, Laurel spotted a suspicious growth on my back. “Oh my god, you’ve never had a bump in that place before. It’s irregular and discolored. You must have skin cancer!”

Well, I’m blessed with a wife who is exceedingly health conscious. And a bit prone to over-anxiousness.

Upon closer inspection with a magnifying glass, the “skin cancer” turned out to be an engorged tick. Following the instructions in a Lyme disease pamphlet we had lying around the house (Laurel is nothing if not well prepared) she managed to pull out the critter with some tweezers.

We put it in some alcohol. And I started researching Lyme disease. By email I asked the Oregon Lyme Disease Network for advice, saying that I probably picked up the tick while hiking or biking in the Camp Sherman area. I got a quick response from Theresa Denham, president of the network.

She told me that Camp Sherman has an higher incidence of Lyme disease than other areas and advised me to get the tick tested by the IgeneX laboratory. I sent the tiny demon off to them last Monday by express mail. Haven’t gotten the results yet.

My family doctor said that I should watch out for symptoms, most notable of which is a bulls-eye rash. This afternoon, after taking a shower, I saw what sure looks like that rash surrounding the tick bite. I’ll be seeking medical treatment tomorrow, for sure. The earlier antibiotics are given, the better. I was fortunate to have seen a tick, and to have been bitten in a clearly visible part of my body.

Of course, there’s a chance I don’t have Lyme disease. In that event, I’ll issue a blog retraction. But I’ll still be glad that I alerted people to the need to take precautions against picking up a tick.

There aren’t many reported cases in Oregon (here’s a national incidence map). However, an article in the Portland Oregonian discussed the controversy that is raging about whether under-diagnosis of cases (according to Lyme disease patient advocates) or mistaken self-diagnosis of cases (according to many physicians) is more likely to be happening.

Regardless, take measures to prevent tick bites. And know the symptoms of Lyme disease.

On the dog front, I can report that Xanax doesn’t do squat to relieve Serena’s thunderstorm anxiety. Yesterday, when the thunder started I gave her one 2mg pill. She spent several hours hiding in closets, under tables, and a desk.

Today, I maxed out the vet’s recommended dose (3mg, one and a half pills) and gave it to her about an hour before the thunder started. The difference was that instead of an anxious dog, I now had an anxious, stumbling, seemingly drunken dog. More interesting, to be sure, but no improvement.

This article by a vet about treating thunderstorm phobia points out some of the side effects of alprazolam (Xanax). I saw several of them this evening.

Serena definitely wasn’t herself. Not even her normal anxious self. In the space of a few minutes she first frantically tried to jump on top of me while I was sitting in a chair, then she curled up on the chair, almost instantly fell asleep, and started snoring loudly while I patted her.

I felt very paternal, sitting there with the head of a zonked-out dog in my lap, trying to soothe away both her thunder phobia and Xanax drug reaction. For a while I even forgot about my Lyme disease.

Which I might not have. When my wife phoned from Kentucky tonight she was incredulous about my self-diagnosis. “There are only a couple of dozen cases in Oregon each year,” she said. “You probably don’t have it.”

Well, we will see. Usually I like the feeling of being special. In this case, though, I’d be happy to be utterly commonplace.

(P.S. Forgot to mention that I'm going to try to find some herbal Rescue Remedy in Sisters tomorrow. It's supposed to work for dogs as well as people. Some dog owners say they've had success with it. Again, we will see.]

Listening attentively to the dog whisperer

We’ve become big fans of Cesar Milan, the Dog Whisperer. The Dish Network should be a fan too, because my wife upgraded our subscription to America’s Top 180 just so we could get the National Geographic Channel, home of Milan’s weekly program.

It was worth buying sixty more channels to be able to watch the Dog Whisperer, though. I’ve warmed up to him more slowly than my wife, but now on Friday evenings I’m right there with her on the television room couch.

Laurel’s interest in the Dog Whisperer was strong right from the start because she’s become a dog walker at the Salem Humane Society. She has to deal with difficult dogs every week. I just have to deal with our own mellow family pet, the aptly named “Serena.”

Even so, Milan has helped me become aware of how little I understand about dogs and how much I’ve been doing wrong in my daily interactions with Serena. Last night’s episode hit home for me when Milan gave a woman some advice about how to handle her overly protective and aggressive dachshund, Chocolate.

After he asked about what they’ve been trying, the woman’s daughter said, “She nags a lot.” Milan laughed and told them:

Yeah, but with dogs that doesn’t count. It’s just “blah, blah, blah, blah.”….In the dog world that really doesn’t count. Have you seen how Cinnamon [her other dachshund] disciplines Chocolate? [Milan makes a biting movement with his mouth]

…So a dog, when he controls another dog, he bites. And then he stays, and looks at him, or her, until the dog surrenders to what he wants. The dominant one never says, “Go to your room, now! You’re not getting a bone today.” That doesn’t exist in the dog world. Because we apply those concepts, we can accomplish what we want.

I talk a lot to Serena. “So, what do you think? Is it time to go for a walk? I wonder if there’s any dog in this house who wants to go for a walk. Hope I can find one. Do you think you might be that dog? Huh, do you?” And so on.

Actually, I often sound a lot more ridiculous than this. Both of us engage in “babytalk” with Serena. You wouldn’t believe what I say to her when I go downstairs to Serena’s dog room and wake her up in the morning. (Well, if you have a dog or cat, you probably will believe it, because most people do the same thing.)

Even before I started watching the Dog Whisperer I’d noticed that Serena is a lot more interested in what I’m doing around dog walk time than in what I’m saying. When I move toward the front door, or look like I’m about to change my clothes, she shifts into her excited “Let’s go, let’s go!” mode.

The cues she is responding to are almost entirely non-verbal. At the most, Serena seems to understand what “walk” means. But even that could be my imagination. So, in line with Cesar Milan’s oft-repeated tenet that dogs live in a dog world, not our human world, I’m trying to communicate with Serena more through body language and less through verbal language.

For example, Laurel (who knows a lot more about dog behavior than I do) has been telling me that I should always go out the door before Serena does to show my dominance. Usually I do, but when she’s especially enthusiastic about checking out the squirrel family after a long indoor stint I’ve been letting her squeeze by me.

No more. Taking my first faltering steps toward Dog Whisperer apprenticeship, I’ve begun to put my leg in front of Serena when she tries to push through the door first. I take a look outside, utter my “Run squirrels, run!” yell if any are in sight, and only then allow Serena to follow me.

Milan often says that it is a big mistake to treat dogs like people. They don’t want sympathy. They don’t want to be coddled. They don’t want kind words. What dogs want is to know their place in the canine/human “pack.” Dogs crave the security of a pack structure. If you don’t serve as the dominant pack leader, they’ll try to take the position because someone has to fill that role.

It reminds me of when Laurel and I took swing dancing lessons. We spent a good share of the time arguing.

Her: You’re supposed to be leading!
Me: What do you mean? I am.
Her: It doesn’t feel like it.
Me: Well, maybe it’s because I don’t really know what I’m doing. If you want to lead, go ahead.
Her: You’re the man. You’re supposed to be leading!
Me: I am.

It’s questionable how much swing dancing we learned, but we sure got good at going around in circles.

HinesLand happenings, 2/2/06

Surely nobody is more interested in what’s happening with us than, well, us. And we know it, because we’re the happenings that are happening. For the rest of you, here’s some reflected HinesLand headlines.

Straight talk about cougars. A few days ago Laurel dashed out a letter to the Statesman-Journal editor about the newspaper’s biased cougar coverage. Lo and behold, it was published immediately. Perhaps her truthiness struck a nerve. A few days earlier David Cox made equal good sense on a similar subject: let’s leave wildlife alone; after all, they’re wild.

Ridiculous reaction to Muhammad cartoons. Over on my Church of the Churchless blog I’ve been writing about the Muslim world freaking out over some drawings of Muhammad that were published in a Danish newspaper (and recently reprinted in other European papers). Just when I think Christian fundamentalists take the cake, their Islamic brethren up the ante on crazy dogmatism.

Doggy door bell training. For about a month Serena the Wonder Dog has been undergoing intensive doggy door bell, a.k.a. Pet Chime, training. It’s not going very well, based on what I hear coming from downstairs every night as Laurel puts Serena out for a final potty break before the family pet settles in on her futon for sweet dog dreams.

“Do you want to go out? Do you? Press the paw. Press it! Go ahead, press it. Press it to go out.” This goes on for about a minute, then I hear a ding followed by: “OK, I pressed it for you. That’s how you do it. Next time you’ll do it yourself.” Maybe. But it’s been weeks now, and I think Serena has made the pet chime go off once on her own. Laurel is getting good at it though.

Highlander Hybrid tanks on first fill-up. It was pretty thrilling yesterday to pull into the gas station for the first fill-up of our newly acquired Toyota Highlander Hybrid SUV. A few minutes later I wasn’t so thrilled, after calculating the mpg by hand (for some reason the HiHy computer doesn’t show mileage for each tankful): 22.9.

Not so good, given the EPA city/highway rating is 31/27. But in the real world 4WD HiHy owners are reporting an average of 25.4 at last report. We’ve been getting about 10% lower mileage with our Prius during the winter, compared to summer. So hopefully HiHy will perk up its mpg as the weather warms up.

Dog kissing: the slobbery truth

Who says the passion has to go when people are in their mid 50s? Why, every evening around midnight there are two bodies entwined on the rug in our family room. The kissing is noisy and uninhibited; the pillow talk sweet and sentimental.

“Who’s got the cutest little tummy in the whole world? You!...Who’s my special sweetums? You!” I never get tired of hearing my wife coo these words, which are regularly interrupted by the sound of lips enthusiastically pressing against soft flesh.

This raw display of affection usually takes place while I’m brushing my teeth in a nearby bathroom. “You’re going to get a dog disease if you keep that up!” I’ll say to Laurel. “I don’t care!” is her invariable reply. “I’ll die kissing my sweet little Serena-kins before she goes to bed.”

Fortunately, we learned from last night’s 20-20 program on ABC that while it’s a myth that dogs have cleaner mouths from humans, they’re safe to kiss. Just keep in mind that when one dog meets another, their usual practice is to press lips to a part of the canine body that humans don’t kiss in public.

If this doesn’t bother you, then the expert advice was to kiss away, for the bacteria in dog’s mouths is species-specific and won’t harm humans (but if you’re thinking of kissing a dog in the Dominican Republic or a similar under-developed country, you should read this first.)

Unrelated to dog kissing, but still on the subject of Laurel, I wish to submit this photo in support of a claim that she is the World’s Most Matching Woman.

I took it at last month’s Corvallis Art Fair. Laurel ended up buying this coffee cup from an artist who said that the pottery was obviously meant to be taken home by her (note the perfectly matching cap also).

Animal instinct

Yesterday some neighbors were treated, if that’s the right word, to a display of our dog’s kinky sexual behavior. Well, probably “kinky” isn’t the right word either. It was just instinctual sexual behavior.

Heck, leave out “sexual” too, because it seems that female dogs who hump other dogs (male or female) are motivated by a desire for dominance, not sex.

Regardless, it still was disconcerting to be talking to a man and his pre-teen daughter while our dog and their yellow Lab calmly sniffed each other at first, then to look down and see that Serena had mounted Ginger and was pumping away with a sailor-on-shore-leave exuberance.

I muttered, “Ha, ha, got a little dominance thing going on here, I guess” and yanked Serena off of the considerably smaller and younger Ginger. Then I did the exact same thing three more times, feeling increasingly embarrassed as the neighbor girl watched our Shepherd/Lab mix climb on top of her sweet little pet.

Ginger eventually snapped, literally. That led to some growling and “Oh yeah! Let’s see who’s Top Dog!” posturing from Serena, which spurred me to head on down the trail toward home. Somewhat strangely, Ginger ran after us, tail wagging, seemingly now ready to play after having asserted herself.

The whole Serena-Ginger episode was largely a play of animal instinctual behavior. Serena is a spayed female. So far as I know, she has never seen a male dog mate with a female (unless she has some doggie porn stashed under her pad that she looks at after we’ve gone to sleep).

How does she know what to do? Serena has the sex act down pretty well, as you can see from this photo I took of a previous neighborhood escapade. Also, Serena was raised in Portland for the first year of her life. Yet she is expert at stalking field mice like a coyote, doing the “Gotcha!” leap from above just like I remember seeing on “Living Desert” Walt Disney shows.

Instinct. It’s a mystery. I thought I’d get some good answers from Google this morning, but I was surprised to find that solid scientific explanations were lacking about how animals act out complex instinctual behaviors. To say that these are genetic doesn’t explain much.

How the heck does DNA enable an arctic tern to make its way from near the north pole to near the south pole, and then back again? Some fledgling migrating birds leave before their parents do, yet somehow they get to the same place.

The mystery of bird migration has been somewhat unraveled by science, but to my mind learning some of the secrets of how birds navigate doesn’t begin to explain how that “how” is implanted in their instinctual repertoire. Yes, birds apparently use the sun, stars, moon, magnetic fields, and such to keep on track. Yet, how do genes make that happen?

I can understand how DNA produces a physical bird body. How, though, does DNA lead that body to perform amazingly complex instinctual behavior? Not to take away anything from dogs, but dog humping is nothing compared to bird navigating (still, it’s fascinating that Labrador Retrievers who haven’t had anything to do with hunting will spontaneously point completely on their own).

Some people get all mystical when they marvel at bird migration and other “How do they do that?!” animal behaviors. A woman finds Allah behind it all, while genetic memory that could explain past life regression also has been hypothesized. Me, I don’t know. As Isaac Armour says, every answer concerning the nature of life leads to more questions that take you all the way back to the beginning of time.

Go figure. When you get down to it, that’s my basic response.

This afternoon a heron paid our little pond a visit, the first time this has happened. We have a metal sculpture of a heron stuck in the ground. The real heron stood for quite a while looking at it. I hope it wasn’t falling in love. Eventually it flew away, perhaps to puzzle out the meaning of a two-dimensional member of his species who bore just a passing resemblance to the herons he’s used to.

Crazy animals. Instinct makes them do such bizarre things. I was expressing these sentiments to someone once, complaining about a robin who was pecking on our bedroom window every morning, believing that the bird he saw reflected in the glass was the real thing.

The guy listened to my rant, then said, “How is that different from Playboy magazine?” That shut me up. Hit too close to home.

People are animals too. We just are able to make up explanations for our animal instincts. Those explanations could be instinctual too, of course.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this weblog post was written by an animal who was driven by instinct to write about instinct. And you’ve been driven to read about it.

Things I know, things I don’t

(1) I don’t know why our dog, Serena, likes to lie directly in the hot sun when it’s over 90 degrees. Every afternoon, about 2:00, I let her out when I go to get the mail. She walks up to an area of brown cut grass under a bird feeder and plops down.

When I get back from the mailbox and call her, she just stares at me. Sometimes I have to drag her by the collar to get her to come inside. She seems to love being hot, notwithstanding being covered with fur. Does anyone have an explanation?

Dog web sites I perused say that dogs may dig a hole in hot weather to stay cool, but I couldn’t find any other examples of hot dogs who like to cook in the sun.

(2) I now know that homeopathy is a crock, something I’ve always suspected. A report in the Lancet medical journal reviewed 110 trials of homeopathy and conventional medicine (allopathy).

Sophisticated statistical analyses showed "no convincing evidence that homeopathy was superior to placebo, whereas for conventional medicine an important effect remained." Some alternative health care works, some doesn’t—like homeopathy.

(3) In one sense, I don’t know how it is possible for a man to be married to an absolute babe and still not be satisfied with her. Also, I do know, because it is the human condition to always want more than you have, no matter how good it is.

Consider the case of baseball star Jose Canseco, who used to be married to the knock-out Jessica Canseco. Jessica is featured in this month’s Playboy. As the saying goes, it’s hard to imagine that any (heterosexual) man would kick her out of bed. But Jose did, so to speak, having numerous affairs. He even spurned Jessica after she gave him a threesome with her and a female friend.

Moral: fantasies aren’t reality. Billy Bob Thornton reportedly said that sex with Angelina Jolie wasn’t so hot. Of course, nothing as insignificant as reality is going to come between me and my own Angelina fantasies.

(4) I now know that bouncing can be a fascinating job, thanks to the blog Clublife, billed as “An online narrative of the life of a bouncer at two of New York's most popular nightclubs.” Take a read and peek into a lifestyle far removed from our own life in the slow lane.

Images of the 2005 Salem Dog Parade

Caution: if your heart palpitates at the sight of cute dogs, do not look at any more of this post without a cardiologist’s permission.

But if you’re feeling adventurous, here’s some photos that I took yesterday at downtown Salem’s “Dog Days of Summer” First Wednesday celebration. Our dog, Serena, took part in the dog parade along with lots of other canines.

The parade formed on State Street next to Jonathan’s Oyster Bar. These cute puppies got lots of attention from some equally cute girls.

This golden retriever, Jake Beebe, got the award for best costume, masquerading as a black cat.

Not to take anything away from Jake, but Laurel and I think this bulldog bee should have won.

There were lots of little dogs in baby carriages. If I owned these guys I don’t know how I’d ever stop smiling when they had their curly tongues out.

I absolutely had to take a photo of this dog. He was wonderfully stationary. One thing I learned about dog photography yesterday: your subjects hardly ever stay still.

Oops. How’d this photo sneak in here? Obviously my eyes weren’t only on the dogs.

Dog yin and yang.

The dog parade ended at the Equitable Center, where a Waggiest Tail Contest was held. This was our best shot for Serena, since her costume consisted of a couple of bandanas and we didn’t hold out much hope for a Best Dog Trick award. Laurel did her best to get the tail wagging, but Serena was beaten out by a couple of shorter-tailed dogs with faster-moving appendages.

Oh, well, We still had a good time. Serena wished that we had stopped at this table, though, and taken home something she could have a really good time with.

Our dog’s play date

Serena didn’t have to find this cute boy Basset Hound through an online service like Dog Play Date. No, she picked Sam up the old-fashioned way while on a walk with Laurel and brought him home.

We were pretty sure unattached Sam belonged to a neighbor. But nobody answered the phone when we called them, so Sam and Serena had time to get better acquainted in the dog yard. Laurel and I chaperoned their first date.

They started off with some dancing.

Then had their first kiss.

After that, things started to heat up pretty fast.

The sexual tension was palpable.

Yet, whew!, they ended up just being friends.

Blow-drying dog paws

You might think that we have reached a new level of pet pampering, given our new habit of blow-drying Serena’s paws several times a day. She does seem to like it. And we do pamper her.

But we’re doing this on the advice of her vet, for on three paws she has some sort of bacterial infection —that first appeared to be a fungus among us (ah, it feels good to write those words; I don’t get to use that wonderful term often enough). We’re reluctant to give her antibiotics, so are trying to clear up the problem by reducing the moisture that breeds bacteria.

By the way, as my fingers were poised over the keyboard to begin writing this post synchronicity popped up in the guise of a phone call from a Pet Medical Center employee. She wanted to know how Serena’s paws were and if we had any questions about her treatment.

Never in my life have I gone to the doctor and then gotten an unsolicited callback from his or her office enquiring about my condition. One day may all Americans receive as good health care as our dog enjoys.

When I am kneeling on the floor with a blow-dryer, dutifully warming each of Serena’s infected paws to a suitable temperature, not too hot and not too cold, just like Goldilocks would have wanted, I can’t help but think of the Discovery Channel program that we’ve been watching in bits and pieces: “Living With Wolves.”

Serena is a close relative of the wild wolf, but her pampered pet status makes this lupine ancestry seems more distant than it really is. Wolves don’t repose on futons; Serena does. Wolves don’t have a dinner prepared for them each night that features dog food topped with finely chopped broccoli and parmesan cheese; Serena does.

However, an interesting recent article in TIME magazine, “Honor Among Beasts,” describes how an ethologist discovered that there is lot more going on in dog play than is readily apparent. Marc Bekoff’s research found that the familiar “play bow” (hind end up, forelegs stretched forward, eager expression on face) is common to wolves and coyotes as well as dogs.

Further, the play bow is just the beginning of a complex series of interactions between playful animals. The article says, “Canine play is actually a complex social interaction in which the participants constantly signal their intentions and check to make sure that their behavior is correctly interpreted. Dogs that cheat—promising a playful bite but delivering a harsh one, for example—tend to be ostracized.”

This is right in line with the theory of evolution, which predicts that animals other than humans also would have some form of morality, albeit more rudimentary than that of Homo sapiens.

Thus it really isn’t so strange to treat our pets like people. In the grand scheme of evolutionary history, they’re not that far removed from us.

Free kittens with purchase

I am so happy that our dog neither (1) knows how to read, nor (2) has a credit card. If both of these things were true, Serena’s account would be maxed out to the limit with buys from this Salem establishment.

Bad Dog Police case file: Serena

Date of report: 4-26-05.
Location: South Salem
Alleged violation: excessive digging
Suspect: Serena, a Shepherd/Lab mix, a.k.a. “Wonder Dog”

Dispatcher notes: Received call at 4:15 pm from man identifying himself as suspect’s owner. Said his dog needed to be scared straight. Incoherent babbling about “rooting!, rooting!” made it difficult to determine details of situation. Assigned case level 1 priority; determined address and forwarded to Bad Dog officer in area.

Officer notes: 4:32 p.m., arrived at suspect’s home. Met in driveway by excited owner who kept saying, “She’s over there! Hurry, before she licks off the evidence!” Followed owner around side of house.

Suspect encountered lying down next to hose. Made no attempt to escape. Appeared unnaturally ecstatic. Asked suspect if she was high. Responded, “Just high on life, officer.”

Owner yelled, “Look at her paws! She’s high on digging for field mice!” Told owner to back off, that I’d ask the questions here. Paws did appear dirty. Asked suspect to explain. Replied, “I just had my paws done. Don’t you love the dusky brown highlighting!”

Took sample of substance covering front paws. Visual and tactile inspection strongly suggests dirt. Laboratory results needed to confirm.

Hair loss and probable dirt streaks observed on muzzle. Owner claimed suspect is chronic rooter. Suspect retorted that owner is chronic liar. Growling ensued. Told owner I’d have to book him if he didn’t quiet down. Suspect said, “Just make sure that he feeds me before you take him in.”

Told suspect that she’d be the one in dog jail if she doesn’t change her behavior. Asked her how she’d like to be somebody’s bitch. Said she already was one, so no big deal.

Wrote suspect a citation for rooting and dirty paws. After wagging tail in sarcastic manner, added additional charge of Dog Police insubordination. Told owner to call again if problem recurs. Suspect’s unrepentant attitude not encouraging. Will keep on watch list.

Dog news flash: Retriever retrieves!

More accurately, this headline should read: “Half-retriever retrieves!” That’s why this story, documented by the photo, is such big news for us.

For we have spent the past four and a half years with Serena, a Shepherd/Lab mix, whose independent German side overshadows her compliant retriever side when it comes to bringing balls and sticks back to Laurel and me (see “What you’re missing if you don’t have a dog” for details of my Buddy Ball travails).

Lately we’d noticed that Serena had become even more retrieving-resistant than usual. Partly this was due to the allure of spring smells, notably the scent of newly active field mice, gophers, and other denizens of the fields that adjoin our dog exercise area. And partly it seemed due to dog laziness.

Whereas previously Serena would “retrieve” (in our experience this word always should appear in quotation marks when used in connection with a dog that has significant German Shepherd breeding) a ball or stick a few times half-heartedly before deciding there were more interesting things to do in her dog life, now she either would run right by the thrown object on her way to greater pleasures, or would collapse in feigned exhaustion as soon as she reached it.

Since Serena still needs to lose weight, and I’m having difficulty stopping myself from sneaking bits of cheese into her evening meal (notwithstanding the vet’s advice and Laurel’s admonishments), bringing her already deficient retrieving skills back up to their usual “D” grade level was important from a health standpoint.

Also, from a “who’s the top dog?” standpoint. A long time ago I accepted my role as Serena’s handmaiden, but Laurel—who knows much more about dog training than I do—correctly recognizes the need to show Serena who is in charge in our three-animal pack (I know that I’m #3; the battle is between Serena and Laurel for the first and second spots).

A mere half-hour of dog training on our lawn proved that, just as in politics, a little bribery goes a long way in getting the behavior that you want. This was the first time that Laurel had combined clicker training with Serena’s favorite jerky treats.

Using Pavlovian conditioning when Serena brought the stick back, (a click followed by a treat, then just a click as a stand-alone "reward") it wasn’t long before our Wonder Dog was dropping the stick right at Laurel’s feet (Admission of Photographic Dishonesty: this shot of a mouth to hand retrieval was staged for dramatic effect, since Serena wouldn’t be this obedient on her own for all the jerky sticks in the world).

I just hope this doesn’t give Laurel ideas for training the other recalcitrant animal in our household. I’m not wild about hearing a clicker every time I forget to close a cupboard door, clean out my toothbrush, or leave food unwrapped. However, I guess it all depends on what sort of a treat I get along with the click.

Not our dog’s best week

Poor Serena. First, she got cut running her heart out to retrieve the Buddy Glow Ball that I had thrown. Then, she got poisoned (sort of) when Laurel gave her a Gabapentin (Neurontin) pill instead of the Amoxi-capsule antibiotic that the emergency vet prescribed after stitching her up.

Here’s a phone number that every animal owner should have ready at hand: the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center, 1-800-548-2423 (or 1-888-426-4435). Our local vet said that if we wanted to pay $50 for a consultation, we should call the center and learn how serious taking 100 mg of Gabapentin would be for a dog.

Both medications were in similar green bottles, so Laurel absent-mindedly picked up the wrong bottle as she was in the midst of telling me something. It wasn’t until after Serena had swallowed the butter-encased Gabapentin and she took a glance at the container that a cry of “Oh my god I gave her the wrong pill what are we going to do!” echoed in our kitchen.

While Laurel phoned our vet I raced off to my computer to Google “Gabapentin dog.” I quickly learned that Gabapentin/Neurontin was used to treat dog seizures with doses of 100 to 300 mg every eight hours. The only problem was, Serena doesn’t have seizures. So our vet advised that she be given a quarter cup of hydrogen peroxide to make her throw up both the pill and a full meal that she had just eaten.

All three of us felt terrible as Serena retched on the linoleum after a few minutes. Well, two of us felt worse than the third, since Serena was the one throwing up, Laurel was the one poking through vomit looking for the pill, and I was merely still searching for information on the Internet about how Gabapentin would affect a healthy dog. Once we reached the Poison Control Center (after being on hold for several minutes--not desirable for such an entity) we were told that the Gabapentin dose was so mild, the vomiting wasn't necessary. Well, we can't blame the vet for playing it safe.

A couple of lessons can be gained from this experience. One, if you have a pet, be sure to have a poison safety kit on hand. Fortunately we had some hydrogen peroxide that wasn’t too far past its expiration date, because it worked. There must be other ways to make a dog throw up, but giving Serena the quarter cup of hydrogen peroxide was easy and effective. Sticking a finger down a dog’s throat seems like a decidedly less desirable option (especially if you’re interested in keeping all of your fingers).

Two, practice mindfulness. Laurel wasn’t fully conscious of what she was doing when she opened the pill container. I act similarly, often. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve parked the car, started to walk away, and then thought, “Did I lock the car?” I always go back to check. And I always find that I’ve locked the car. But I wasn’t conscious of locking the car even though I was pressing the “lock” button.

How much do we do without really knowing what we’re doing? Life is too short to be gone through unaware. And unawareness also is too dangerous for dogs and other living things, as evidenced by what a difference picking up one pill bottle rather than another makes.

Serena is fine. Her cuts are healing and she’s even back to playing some Buddy Ball (I’ve put cushioning around the edges of the well house roof in case our dog ever is unaware again of where she’s running).

[Note: the original version of this post had the Poison Control Center recommending that Serena be made to throw up, whereas actually it was our local vet. I've corrected what I mistakenly first wrote because I didn't want to leave an impression that the Center failed to realize that 100 mg of Gabapentin is a mild dose for a dog.]

Serena needs “Extreme Makeover, Dog Edition”

Laurel has started to call Serena “Frankendog.” The stitches she got last night at the Salem Emergency Vet clinic do indeed have a Frankensteinian quality, but we’ve been told that she should be left with only a slight scar.

Serena got hurt when she ran into the metal roof of our well enclosure. Caught up in the spirit of our litigious age, I’ve been wondering whether the Buddy Glow Ball that I was throwing in the dark for Serena to retrieve contained a consumer warning on the original packaging: “Caution. While this dog toy is designed for nighttime play, do not throw in the direction of sharp objects.”

I suppose we should have thought of this ourselves, though, so I’ll let the Buddy Glow Ball manufacturer off the hook. During our regular evening dog outings frequently I would hear the ball hit the well enclosure with a “thunk” as Serena bounded off to fetch it. Last night I heard a louder “thunk” than usual, but assumed it was due to the clear cold air.

Actually, it was due to Serena running head first into a corner of the roof. I didn’t know she was hurt, so I kept on throwing the ball a few more times. When we got to the light by the front door I noticed cuts and blood on her face, so off to the Emergency Vet she went.

The vet on duty said that dogs are amazingly tough and resistant to pain. A person who suffered such an injury, such as me, would be crying like a baby. Serena didn’t even seem to know that anything was wrong. I guess this is an artifact of dogs’ wolf heritage: if you want to survive in the wild, it’s good to have a high pain threshold.

Serena is still the beautiful Wonder Dog to us, stitches and all. Yet if we get a call for her to be on “Extreme Makeover, Dog Edition” as a result of this posting, we’ll answer it gladly. Of course, first ABC has to realize that an animal plastic surgery show would be a great idea (if they pass on the concept, we’ll pitch it to Animal Planet).

This isn’t an original idea, though. A vet in Sao Paulo, Brazil, already has a thriving cosmetic dog surgery practice. If you ever open up a branch in Salem, Dr. Brito, be sure to let us know.

Oh great, our dog is fatter

I have some bad news for the throngs in the blogosphere who have been anxiously awaiting an update on our dog’s weight reduction program after reading my initial "Oh great, our dog is fat" posting six months ago. Serena just got a new Pet Health Report Card, and things aren’t going so well. All because of me, supposedly.

The green highlighting on the Report Card was put there by Laurel to grab my attention. And the “so no more cheese!” entry in the “Weight (Abnormal)” category also can be attributed to Laurel, since the only way the vet could have found out about this canine nutrition supplement that I have been adding to Serena’s dinner is if someone in our household snitched.

Given that Serena can’t talk (and even if she could, would never do anything to jeopardize his cheese treats) and I didn’t go to the vet appointment, the snitch is pretty easy to identify. I sensed another subtle clue that it was Laurel when she yelled at me, after returning from the Pet Medical Center, “I wish you could have been there to hear what the vet had to say about Serena’s weight!”

Me? Little innocent me? Putting on my most innocent expression, I said: “What do you mean I should have been there? You and I both feed the dog.” “Yes, but you are the only one who adds chunks of cheese to her bowl.”

OK, that’s true. But as I wrote last June, my initial caloric calculations were that Serena would experience a net loss in weight by my giving her some small chunks of cheese each night, per the formula NWC = CC – TWE (in layman’s terms, Net Weight Change equals Cheese Consumption minus Tail Wagging Exertion).

I had figured that the calories Serena burned up wagging her tail while I got the cheese out of the refrigerator, cut a few slices, chopped the slices into tiny chunks, and scattered the chunks on top of her regular dog food would be greater than the calories in the cheese. However, apparently my formula needs some refining, since the experimental results from the vet’s scale show a weight gain of 3.7 pounds from June 21 to December 30.

We had friends over for a New Year’s Eve party last night. I asked the first dog owners who walked in the door, Hans and Laura, if they thought Serena was fat. If I got a “no” from them, then I was going to ask the first lawyer who walked in the door what my chances would be if I filed a malpractice suit against the vet who wrongly diagnosed our dog as obese.

But after both of them felt Serena’s rib cage, I got two responses of “Yes, she’s fat.” So I’ve given up on plans for the lawsuit. Still, I still don’t believe the diagnosis. Doesn’t this look like a wonderfully thin dog to you?

I’m complying with Laurel’s orders though, and have just been putting a miniscule sprinkling of parmesan cheese on Serena’s dinner. This is necessary, I believe, to ease her through the symptoms of cheddar cheese withdrawal. We’re also reducing her regular dog food a bit.

Today is Serena’s birthday. The Millennium Dog is five! She got an extra large chew stick for dessert a little while ago. On your birthday, calories don’t count.

What you’re missing if you don’t have a dog

Oh, you poor cat owners. If you came home late tonight from a class, as I did, your pet probably greeted you with a meek “Meow” (if he or she even deigned to wake up). You then poured some kibble in a bowl, went on to prepare your own dinner, and now you and your cat likely are sitting in front of the TV, kitty contentedly purring on your lap.

How sad. You are missing out on the "joys" of dog ownership (note the ironic quotation marks.) Let me give you an example of what having a dog can add to your life. Specifically, a large mixed breed dog named Serena, a blend of energetic German Shepherd and mellow Labrador Retriever.

That blend isn’t much in evidence when I go to free Serena from her outdoor kennel, where she has been cooped up for all of two and a half hours. The liberators of Paris were not greeted with so much enthusiasm, believe me. Serena is bouncing up and down in the kennel even before I have the outside door unlatched, for she knows that when a light goes on downstairs, freedom is soon to follow.

I’m hungry. I’d like to eat while reading the Oregonian that I just picked up. No matter. My destiny is fixed as soon as Serena bounds inside and starts leaping around in the living room like a kangaroo on speed. For she knows that Brian-coming-home-at-night means play time, and she will not let me rest until Buddy Ball is taken out of the pantry dog toy box.

Buddy Ball, formally known as Buddy Glow Ball, is her favorite toy. It is large, a Shepherd/Lab mix mouthful. It is soft, offering the joyous simulation of chomping a furry baby bunny. And it glows in the dark after you shine a light on it. Which doesn’t mean much to Serena, but means an awful lot to me, since often I end up doing more of the Buddy Ball retrieving than our 50% supposed retriever.

To be fair to Serena, many nights she brings Buddy Ball back to within a fair approximation of where I threw it. If I don’t have to walk more than twenty feet to pick Buddy Ball up, as Serena dashes madly on to the next anticipated throw spot, I’m happy.

The nights I’m not happy are when a cat, or a deer, or any other animal with an unbelievably fascinating scent has wandered around our rural home not long before Serena and I venture out for playtime. For then we engage in our ritual Kabuki play, dog and man acting out the same roles night after scent-filled night.

I throw the ball into the darkness, helpfully shining my not-so-bright LED flashlight onto the distant grass and brush to aid Serena in her retrieving. Not that she needs this help, probably, since I suspect sound and smell are the senses she mainly uses to pounce on Buddy Ball.

Which she does. Until she is distracted by a more alluring, and sentient, prey potential. Cat! Deer! Close, for sure! I can catch it if I run fast! Now! Go, go, go!!! Serena bounds off on one of our trails, Buddy Ball in mouth. Briefly. Invariably she drops Buddy Ball not long into the chase, but far enough away so that she is out of sight in the no-streetlight country night.

“Where’s your Buddy Ball, Serena? Get your Buddy Ball! Come on, Serena, bring back Buddy Ball.” So goes my mantra, a dog owner pleading into a now dogless countryside. I can’t hear Serena. I can’t see Serena. I’m alone with my flashlight, acres of potential Buddy Ball dropping spots, and an irrational (because Buddy Ball is rarely lost for good) fear that, at $6 or more a pop, losing one Buddy Ball a night is going to seriously strain our family finances.

So I decide to start looking for the elusive Buddy Ball while waiting for Serena to return from her chase. I keep calling—“Come find Buddy Ball, Serena”—but with less vocalization.

For there comes a moment when I remember that if I can hear the cat lovers who live on the lot next to us softly calling “Muffy! Dinnertime Muffy!”, they can darn well hear me yelling, “Serena, come here, you worthless dog!” I don’t like the thought of them fondling Muffy as they stand on their deck listening to me call my disobedient pet. “I sure am glad we just have cats; Brian is coming in loud and clear tonight” the Mrs. surely is telling the Mr.

Eventually Serena comes back. I’m still searching for Buddy Ball where I’m guessing Serena dropped it. She sits on her haunches, tail wagging, tongue drooping out of a dog mouth that has a happy hot-from-the-chase expression. “Where’s Buddy Ball, Serena? Help me find Buddy Ball!” Serena now is as motionless as a stone Buddha. Serene, as (very) occasionally she lives up to her name.

I’m starting to get exasperated. This play time is not so fun for one of the players anymore. I keep on poking through the trees and brush, foggy dew falling off the leaves onto the back of my neck. It’s dark. It’s cold. And I haven’t had dinner yet.

I turn around to yell at Serena again. She seems to sense my darkening mood. She gets up, trots over to an entirely different part of the yard from where I had been searching, reaches down, picks up Buddy Ball in her mouth, and trots back to me, dropping Buddy Ball her habitual twenty feet away.

Serena looks at me as if to say, “This is as close as a half-German Shepherd is going to bring a ball, guy. If you want closer, you should have gotten a Border Collie.” I don’t care. I’m just happy to see Buddy Ball again, who had stopped glowing quite a while ago, the Buddy Glow Ball creators apparently not having tested their invention with a mixed-breed retrieving-challenged dog who lives in the country and is easily distracted.

I go over to Serena, give her a pat, and say “Good dog. You found Buddy Ball. Let’s go have some dog food.” I roll the ball one last time down our driveway toward the front door, Serena close behind. I wash her muddy paws with a garden hose, as Laurel has instructed me. I carefully wipe and dry them with a dog towel. We go inside. I fix Serena’s dinner: dry food, wet food, chopped broccoli, a sprinkling of her favorite white cheddar cheese.

“Food, food!” I say. Serena runs to her bowl. “Shake!” She half-heartedly raises a paw, which I grab as she lunges toward her dinner. I still haven’t had mine. But who cares? I’ve just experienced the joy of owning a dog. Who needs to eat when I’ve just been filled with such delight?

Pampered pet, humbled husband

First, yesterday’s post about our dog’s overheating may have alarmed the many admirers of Serena the Wonder Dog, the Hines Family Animal Companion (we eschew calling her our “pet,” this being terribly Homo sapiens-centric, though the verb form of this word accurately describes how we spend much of every evening).

Hopefully this photo that I snapped this morning when I went in to the dog room to wake her up will reassure anyone concerned about her welfare. Serena has an entire futon on which to sleep in her amazingly cute contorted dog postures. This is her famous “straight arm” pose, a favorite. About a week ago Laurel switched her futon covering from a teal sheet to this more harmonious earth tone design, into which Serena blends nicely.

Second, in writing about the frequent “told you so!”s I hear from Laurel, in which she corrects my many erroneous conceptions about the world, I may have left readers with the impression that this is a bad thing, that I long for a subservient, docile woman who will unthinkingly agree with everything I say and obediently comply with everything I ask her to do. Well, I do have to admit that this sounds pretty appealing. But only for a little while, like a few hours a week in the bedroom.

The rest of the time I want a woman who is herself, not me. Otherwise I’d feel like I was married to myself. What’s the point in that? “Yes, yes, yes” would get boring. I like the unpredictable mix of “Yes, no, yes, no you bozo!” Recently I ran across a great (and possibly tongue-in-cheek) quotation from Rumi’s Fihi ma Fihi where this incomparable Sufi mystic speaks of the spiritual benefits of marriage (to get the full impact of this passage recall that Muhammad had at least ten wives).

God most High and Mighty showed the Prophet [Muhammad] a narrow and hidden way (to refine himself), and that was to marry women, so that he might endure their tyranny, listen to their absurdities and let them ride roughshod over him….The way of Jesus was to struggle in solitude and not to gratify one’s lust; the way of Muhammad is to endure the tyranny and grief inflicted by men and women. If you cannot go the way of Muhammad, at least take the way of Jesus, lest you be altoget