Am My Terrier Dum?

As a follow on to my bit on the dog IQ testing, I'd like to examine the question of whether Pappy, and terriers in general, are blithering ee-jits. The opening example Stanley Coren uses in "Intelligence of Dogs" is the case of the Dandy Dinmont Terrier. He describes them as dogs bred to go with reckless abandon into dens after foxes and otters as large or larger than themselves. One might admire their courage, but "a more intelligent dog would simply say... 'this is too dangerous'". He then goes on to infer that they are untrainable morons. Ooooh, them's fightin' words.

I'm not sure Pappy is exactly the kind of terrier that Coren had in mind. I mean he's a bit leggy to be headed down the fox hole. In keeping with his terrier kin, he is reckless and obsessive in chasing things, and has a prey-drive that won't quit. But he also has a pretty good instinct for self-preservation-- when he goes flying around after balls he never collides with anything, and he never rough-houses with a dog that might take it the wrong way. He's very distractable, but where there are treats involved he has total focus. He's not well trained, but he's certainly not untrainable.

As Temperatures Drop Dogs Go Crazy, Eat Each Other

Okay, the eating each other part is probably an overstatement. But neighbor dog, Molly, did chew off Pappy's leash on the way to the dog park. As I opened the car door to let the dogs out, I had a moment of baffled amazement as Pappy ran towards the gate with only three inches of leash attached to his collar.

Prior to the dog park, Pappy was absolutely nutzo all morning and others had similar stories about how manic their dogs had been. The moon isn't full, so the only reasonable explanation is the sudden cold snap in the Metro DC area. Even Ollie the Collie was wrestling rather than just doing color commentary (barking), so you know something singular was going on. Tonight we are supposed to have the first freeze, so I dread the Pappy antics tomorrow morning.

Since her first visit to the blog elicited the comment "I only saw text", this picture is in honor of Ollie's owner-- here's the old posting too. As usual, Pappy and Jack are at it; I think it's because they accessorize so well.

Rules of the Dog

Here are some classic dog rules. I'm proud to say, after eight months, we are still at number 6-- though Pappy sometimes likes to ease his front legs onto the sofa.

Selling Out

That's right, Pappy's Dog Blog has sold out. We've signed up with several dog blog registries in hopes of expanding the audience of the site beyond my wife and me. There's no denying it... we are a d-o-g b-l-o-g.

By the way, welcome to all of you folks arriving via DogsWithBlogs.com.au or WikiFido.com! Delighted to have you! Make yourself at home! Just ignore that selling out comment, 'kay?

To all of my long-time visitors, I can promise the same bitter cynicism mixed into the unabashed, mooshy, dog-love articles. We won't pander to dog owners, because we want to retain our very tiny crossover demographic of normal humans. This is in keeping with our mission of sucking all of you into adopting your own dog so that you too have something to blog about. By the way, have you visited Petfinder.com lately?

How Smart Is Your Dog?

In Stanley Coren's "Intelligence of Dogs" he proposes a series of tests to measure your dog's intelligence. There are some folks out there that get a little steamed about the real-world applicability of these tests, but you have to suspect that their dogs didn't do so well. To me, it looks like they'd be fun for most dogs and owners.

This is a quick summary of the tests listed in the book:

• Act like you are taking the dog for a walk (get the leash, keys, coat) without walking towards the door. Does the dog race to you or the door in clear anticipation of the walk?
• Let the dog see you put a treat under an empty can. Does the dog knock over the can to get to the treat?
• Rearrange five pieces of furniture in a room when the dog is out of the house. Does the dog notice the difference and start investigating?
• Put a towel over the dog's head. Does the dog free himself within fifteen seconds?
• Stare intently at your dog for a few seconds, then smile broadly. Does the dog come to you or start wagging his tail?
• Let the dog see you put a hand towel over a treat. Does he retrieve the treat within fifteen seconds?
• Let the dog see you put a treat in the corner of a room, then lead him out of the room for a couple of seconds. When you let him back in does he go straight to the treat?
• The same as the previous test, only take the dog from the room for five minutes.
• Set up or use a table too low for the dog to get his head under, and place a treat underneath. Can he figure out how to use his paws to get to the treat?
• Call to the dog with a nonsense word twice, then call to him with his name. Does he wait until his name is called to come?

There are a couple of more tests that are hard to summarize in brief. The links here and here describe subsets of Coren's tests in more detail, including scoring.

In hopes of getting a leg up on the actual IQ tests, we tried an experiment with Pappy (I don't see anything wrong with getting a little advance practice, after all they have SAT prep classes). With him watching carefully, we dropped a small hand towel over a beloved tennis ball. He then started looking around everywhere in amazement as if he had witnessed an extraordinary disappearing act, completely oblivious to the big lump under the towel. I then recalled that, after a bath, he'll just stand there with the towel draped over his head and his tail wagging-- doesn't look like he'd do too well on that test either. I'm thinking he may not be one of the "high-flyers" on this doggy IQ test, but he's popular at the dog park and he sure is good looking.

Do We Have A Winner?

Following up on my earlier posting, I am pretty taken with this entry someone put in the Puplife Halloween competition. The down side is that I don't think it's homemade, so we may see a few more lobsters before all is said and done.

A Pappy of Your Own...

...or rather a Papette.

Every once in a while I like to trawl Petfinder.com to recall the excitment of searching for our perfect dog-- a woman at the dog park said she gets the kind of thrill from adoption sites that others get from internet porn. Today I came across this adoptable girl, Daisy. She looks like she has a lot of the old Pappy charm, and probably can see a bit better without so much grizzled brow.

The Taunt

Well it's the Columbus Day holiday, so we had puppy Molly over for an extended play date this morning. There's something really primal about their favorite game, keep-away; as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Competing Blogs

Many dog blogs are written by wacky owners in the persona of their pup-- "my people are sooo cwazy and I love tweats." It sometimes works, like here and here, but it can get stale pretty quickly. I came across a more interesting, if not too frequently updated, blog about Thai street dogs here. Their gritty-but-happy stories, sort of a low-rent "Archy and Mehitabel", make Pappy's posh suburban lifestyle seem *yawn*. We're going to have to get Pappy some better adventures, or at least make some up.

By the way, if you want to see what a blog entry from a dog would actually look like, here it is:

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(This was the product of ten minutes' work trying to get Pappy to walk across the keyboard or drop a ball on it. It's great that he is so disinclined to messing with our stuff, but it's not looking good for him typing the works of Shakespeare.)

Boo!

With Halloween fast approaching, BuyCostumes.com is flogging outfits for pets. Now, I'm not a big one for dressing up fido. In fact, I have strong reservations about sites whose raison d'être is to host embarassing photos of dogs in togs. But Pappy would look sharp in some cowboy duds.

Sadly, the pickings in western wear for your pets are pretty thin. The only cowboy I see is this Woody outfit, and it's really dorky-- might as well just put on a bandana and call it a day. This Wonder Woman outfit is fabulous, but Pappy would never be able to show his face at the dog park again.



Not that I'm gonna do it, but if you dressed up your dog you could enter him in the contest here.

Be a Part of It All!

After brief despair following the temporary failure of Google searches on Pappy's Blog, we are now back and hungrier than ever. If you want to be part of the phenomenon that is Pappy and you have a web site, this is your chance. You can now link to Pappy's Dog Blog on your site, and have this attractive icon appearing on your page.

All you need to do is embed the following HTML code somewhere on your web page, and you can consider yourself a full-fledged member of the Pappy Fan Club... for life.
<a href="http://pappys-blog.blogspot.com" target="_top"><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/5749/3500/1600/PappysBlogTag.0.gif" width="176" height="62" alt="Pappy's Dog Blog!" border="0" align="BOTTOM" /></a>

Angry Nitwits Sue Dog Talent Agency

I feel these owners' pain. It's entirely unfair when your unconventionally good looking dog doesn't make it to the big time.

Link.

Pappies of the Internet

I spent some time reviewing a Google image search of "Pappy", and did a thorough analysis of each entry's relevance to our own Pappy. In descending order, we have the following:

10. Pappy the Clown. Clowns are just plain creepy.	9. This is some feature of the Antarctic's Boyd Glacier called Pappy-- not the Pappy Shelf or something, just Pappy. Who knows what those scientists are thinking?	8. Poopdeck Pappy, Popeye's dad. Sorry, he hasn't got enough hair for a Pappy.
7. Pappy Yokum, of Li'l Abner fame. He got the beard, but he h'aint got the ha'r. See 8.	6. Yes, this is a dog picture called "Pappy", but this is no Pappy. I don't even think it is a boy. This is a Russian site, and I think the meaning of the name may have been lost in translation.	5. Pappy and Willy. This is definitely a classic Pappy, but I don't much like the way he's looking at Willy.
4. Saul, a.k.a. Pappy. Though I am pretty convinced all bulldogs should be named Churchill, this one could pass for a different kind of Pappy.	3. These are Pappy food bowls, from Milan. They really should consider a sponsorship deal with our dog-- he's very reasonable.	2. Pappy Boyington of the Black Sheep Squadron. He doesn't look much like Pappy. But he had a TV show about himself ("Baa Baa Black Sheep"), so he and Pappy have similar goals.

Then, of course, there's our boy at number 1:

Outdoors

With it getting darker earlier in the evening, we are beginning to have to race home from work to get in Pappy's walk along Sligo Creek. Soon I'm going to have to find an alternate route, because the path isn't lit for ambles in the pitch black.

When we let Pappy out in the back yard after dinner, he's staying out a lot longer. Used to be we'd give him ten minutes, and he'd be waiting by the back door to get back in. Now he's happy to be alone out there for thirty or forty minutes, poking around and gnawing on tennis balls in the dark. When I call to see if he wants to come in he just looks at me blankly, as if to say "if you aren't going to come out and throw the ball, I'm not sure what good you are to me". Teenagers...

Pappy's 15 Minutes Are Past...

"In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes" -- Andy Warhol

I mentioned in a past posting that Pappy's blog was Googlable. For a short time in the past couple of weeks you could even search on the terms Pappy's Dog Blog, unquoted, and we were number one in Google.

Suddenly, just in the last couple of days, pfffft-- we're gone. One or two searches work, but many of the old search terms that used to bring up Pappy's Blog are gone. Purged like yesterday's cache. This is probably how Kato Kaelin felt.

Edit: Weird...now the old searches work again on Google. There's something rinky-dink about that company. I don't know if they are going to make it.

Neoteny

One of the interesting ideas in my dog books is the concept of neoteny, or the retention of juvenile characteristics, as a common feature of almost all breeds of domesticated dogs (see this article). When you look at dogs in light of this, you really do see the "puppy-like" traits and behaviors.

One of the references used in a couple of the books concerns a 40-year experiment in domesticating Siberian Foxes to simplify their care in (originally) Soviet fur farms. After a just a few generations of selecting for tameness, the foxes underwent a number of seemingly unrelated physical and behavioral changes. They developed shorter snouts and floppy ears-- common to many canid puppies-- and multicolored fur, which undermined their value in the fur trade. They also took to barking, wagging their tails, and whining for joy at seeing a friendly face, which are behaviors unknown in wild foxes. They were just trying to make a less freaky fox, and they reinvented the dog in a person's lifetime.

There's a bit more about the study here.

Truman

In my old posting on the dog park crew, I missed out on one of the regulars-- Truman, the German Shorthaired Pointer. Pappy and Truman don't play together that much, but I like his style. There's something about the look and athleticism of these dogs that I admire. Not that I am knocking Pappy, mind you.

The downside to these dogs is that they need a lot of exercise. They shed more than you'd expect, like beagles, but Truman's owner says she just takes him outside with one of those grooming gloves and strips him down once in a while. She's now falling hard for a seven month old buddy for Truman at the Mid-Atlantic GSP Rescue site.

Ball Crisis

The Big Bad Woof is out of the little bouncy rubber balls that Pappy loves-- they are kind of like racquet balls. He's probably lost or demolished fifteen of these things. While going cold turkey he's making due with the methadone of ball chasing, vanilla-scented tennis balls.

Misery

Yesterday must have been a painful one for the Papster. The morning routine is that Molly, the Labradoodle from up the street, comes by for a mad frolic with Pappy before work. Since Pappy's and Molly's mutual dog walker recently injured her foot, she's been letting them race around our back yard at midday too. They get on pretty well.

But the heartbreaking part of our story is when we take Molly home on our way to work. Yesterday, we ran into a neighbor who wanted to discuss parking problems in the 'hood, and so I was standing out front with Molly in plain sight of our dining room window. Our neighbor didn't tune in to Pappy yipping and yowling like his world was ending. It was all I could do to slip away and end Pappy's torment.

We dreaded what destruction we might find when we got home, but our dog was a good boy-- as usual.

What Is It About Elizabeth Marshall whozits?

As I've mentioned, I've been listening to Temple Grandin's "Animals in Translation", and in it she paraphrases my least favorite dog-book hack, Elizabeth Marshall whozits (EMw) of "Hidden Life of Dogs" notoriety.

Given that I can accept when Temple Grandin, Stanley Coren, and most other animal authors tell their share of unbelievable whoppers over the course of their books, why do I dislike EMw so? I'm capable of taking in the information, weighing how well-founded it seems, and accepting the solid research while overlooking the idle speculation. Why can't I give EMw the benefit of this balanced assessment?

Probably because she starts off poorly in the introduction of "Hidden Life" with an explanation that she is no scientist, followed by a lame-brained rationalization of anthropomorphism of dog behavior as a vital element in her "research" method. To translate, she describes a tiny scrap of dog behavior and proceeds to weave it into a tapestry of thorough nonsense. She brags of logging thousands and thousands of hours observing her pets, yet she is blithely unaware when they dig an extensive den feet away from her back door. One of the scenes that drives me nuts is when she is trying to comfort her pregnant dog by telling her that she'll be fine, but the dog won't believe her. I sure don't believe her.

Amazon is always an interesting forum for rants about authors, though it's impossible to come away with a common opinion. Here are some links to people weighing in on EMw, Temple Grandin, and Stanley Coren. In looking over the reviews for EMw, I see that I posted one many moons ago-- can you guess which one?