Happy Halloween. It's hardly fair-- Pugs and Boston Terriers look so natural in costume that other dogs never stand a chance. Other dogs in costumes look like, well, dogs, but these guys look like adorable little shrunken apple dolls.
Photos from Puplife contest.
I took Pappy and neighbor dog Molly to the dog park Sunday morning, part of the normal drill. All of the lamers who had skipped Saturday morning came up with various excuses. At least two or three had the same story of showing up, finding the dog area empty, and going for a walk in the park instead.
There was a crush at the gate when a newbie couple with a young Golden Retriever showed up, and so I helped get the dogs backed up to let them in. In the melee, Pappy decided, as he sometimes does, to mount the Golden. As I was going to get him off, the woman shrieked "NO!" When I told her it was okay, that he was neutered and I was getting him off, she said "NO IT IS NOT OKAY." Then I told her that maybe off-leash parks were a bad idea for her.
I am a huge prude, and Pappy's mounting is embarrassing for me-- you won't find me mentioning it much here. The Golden owner clearly thought Pappy was doing something terrible to her dog, and that bugs me more. He doesn't do it to a lot of dogs, and he's never "excited" during the process-- he generally seems to expect the dog to turn around and wrestle. One of the benefits of the dog park has been that other more experienced owners have reassured me that it is fairly typical of females as well as males, and encouraged me not to make the fatal error of interpreting the behavior in human terms. Once started with a dog Pappy is a little relentless about going back for a few minutes (he is a terrier), but these owners have given me the space to try and train him to get off on command without getting wiggy at him.
So I spent most of Sunday's visit trying to keep Pappy out of the vicinity of the Golden. Her spouse/boyfriend seemed fairly cool about things and beckoned to Pappy a couple of times, but the woman was too busy shrilling at her dog for playing with other dogs. Eeek, I wish that dog well and I hope I never see them again.
Pappy is a resident of Takoma Park, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, DC. An "alternative" community, we like to say this is where the hippies fled when the local communes shut down in the 70's. Whereas we would be considered bleeding-heart liberals in a "red" state, around here we fall squarely into the more conservative end of the bell curve. You always feel sad for the Republicans in the city, both of them; their lawn signs are drowned in the torrent of signs for opposing candidates and viewpoints.
Takoma Park has a friendly, small-town feel in the looming shadow of DC, and we have a diverse group of neighbors and local celebrities. Alternately known as "Azalea City" (because there are lots) and "Tree City" (because there are lots, and you can't cut any down), I've been thinking our true symbol ought to be the car bumper. Bumper stickers are a way of life here, and you'll routinely see references to world peace, the goddess, gay rights, vegans, midwives, UFOs, Democratic candidates, and, of course, uncomplimentary references to the President on the backs of the ten-year old minivans and beat-up economy cars. Personally, our cars keep a low profile.
By the way, Takoma Park is noted for being a Nuclear-Free Zone, but I never have been sure exactly what that means.
I did eventually make it to the dog park yesterday after the rain abated, taking neighbor dog Molly along with Pappy. The fair-weather dog parkers had skipped the day, and the only ones there was Piper and her owner. Piper's owner and I got into a discussion of aggression worries about our dogs-- "growls when on leash", "sometimes lunges at dogs entering the house", "mounts other dogs".
I left the dog area and took the dogs on a walk around the rest of the park. I began to consider how odd our conversation would sound to some others. While we're worrying about whether our dogs are companionable enough, somewhere else someone is saying "he's just not aggressive enough", "if an intruder yelled at him he'd just slink away", "I wouldn't trust him to guard his food bowl". Poor dogs can't win. They have to be all things to all people.
It's a rainy Saturday, putting a crimp in Pappy's dog park plans. We're likely to head over to my elderly Dad's at some point to drop off groceries. My father is in poor shape, and lives in a "progressive care" facility. They feed him, but he is a queer duck and gets hankerings for odd foods that are horrible for him. He's 81 and his condition is pretty rotten, so we can't see denying him. Also, he'd make our lives flat-out miserable by calling us at 3AM every morning asking for pickles, bacon, japanese rice crackers, and sugary cereal if we didn't keep him stocked... no, wait, he already does that. All I can say is may all the gods bless those of you who are caring for elderly parents in your homes; getting old isn't for sissies, and neither is caring for them.
But griping is not the point of my posting. Whenever I take Pappy to the old-folks home on a grocery run, most of the residents are just thrilled. Not like kids, who often seem to want to pet your dog like there's some secret competition to touch everything with fur. I am always stopped in the hall by residents who want to gush about Pappy. I wish they were in better shape to care for a pet themselves, because it seems it would do them a world of good. I can see how people get into training dogs for "pet therapy for the elderly" programs, because the mere presence of the dog elicits such joy. Sadly, a lot of the nursing staff are terrified of dogs, so I have to be careful to give them a wide berth.
It's a shame Pappy is a bit of a spazz in strange surroundings, getting a little skittish when strangers get too close. Otherwise he'd be a pretty fine therapy dog. It doesn't take much-- a little calm and a little charm.
I've submitted my blog for National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo), sponsored by fussy.org. I'm committing to one post a day for the entire month of November. Though I've been keeping that pace recently, I think it will be harder than it sounds. Thankfully November has only 30 days... phew.
I learned about it via the Blog Pound (which seems to have had some problems with hacking phishers or phishing hackers last night-- making the idea of hosting one's own blog a lot less attractive).
Back Yard, 7:10AM
The home owner (that would be me) steps into the yard to check on the dogs, Pappy and Molly, during their morning play date. The scene is dark, and there is a cool nip in the fall morning air. The home owner shreiks in horror as he sees the three-foot shrub (the bottom branches seen to the right of the downspout in this photo) reduced to a stump surrounded by a pile of chewed branches. The home owner scolds the dogs who stare at him blankly, and then crumples in a shuddering heap as a sense of futility passes over him.
This is the evidence we have collected thusfar: a) two days ago a witness (me again) found the dogs quarreling over a branch from the same bush; b) Pappy has some early history of chewing branches off of the small maple tree, but has been pretty good by himself out back for some time; c) Molly likes to rest in the vicinity of this bush; d) Molly has a bit of a chewing issue, and has to be crated at home during the day because of it. The circumstantial evidence points to involvement by Molly, with possible complicity from Pappy.
Last year, before we got Pappy, we pumped a lot of moolah into landscaping the yard. Since the wonderous Pappy came into our lives, this investment has been in decline-- the hostas are pulp, there are well worn paths through the lariope and ivy, and bushes have lost many branches to fast moving dogs. To have this disappointment driven home by a wanton shrub mauling was pretty distressing this morning. I'm left pondering the wisdom of these manic morning play dates. Molly's owner was pretty sad about it too.
The worst thing is that Molly's favorite pink ball (seen here again) might have prevented all this-- once that is in her mouth, she rarely puts it down. Molly routinely attempts to smuggle the ball out of the yard when we are taking her home, and it occurs to me that it disappeared earlier this week when I took it from her and left it out front. Note to self... must replace ball.
I came across this Onion article... and it's Pappy that is a good boy. I'm glad we settled that.
In reading other dog blogs, I realize that Pappy's blog is missing much of the gooey warmth and dog-as-child references of other sites. This is due to local regulations in the DC metro area requiring clear delineation between pet and owner in all public statements. I can assure you that, behind closed doors, we have all of the shmoopy talk of other doggy households.
With this in mind, you may re-sentimentalize Pappy's blog for your personal use with the following procedure:
Color me outraged. Each day the Daily Puppy posts an adorable poppet on their pages. Yes, they have a few rescues and mixes, so I can't knock them for being totally elitist. But what about those bazillions of older dogs! Why fuel the cult of puppyism dominating our land and undermining our shelters?
The main source of my fury is that we got Pappy at one year, and don't even have a picture of his puppyhood. So he can't earn his rightful place as "Most Unconventionally Good Looking Dog for Life" at the top of the Daily Puppy home page. Yes, they do have an adult dog page as a consolation prize for puppies past their prime, but the only visitors are people who got lost trying to find the puppy of the day.
So I doctored up a photo of Pappy (sitting in the mud pit that is our back yard) as a reconstruction of the adorable puppy Pappy in the lovely back yard we'd have if we never let him use it. I hope this persuades you that Daily Puppy can end their search for the dog beautiful. And y'all can bow down too.
For the dog owner in northern climes, the prospect of winter has you staring down the double barrels of freezing cold dog walks and extreme guilt over cutting them short. For me, the recipe for cooking up some enthusiasm for walks in the bitter weather is the following: get an audio player and listen to good audio books. I find myself anxious to get out there and listen to the next chapter, and it takes my mind off of the conditions.
I'm not sure many people are aware of this, but an increasing number of public library systems, including ours in Montgomery County, Maryland, have relationships with online audio book services like Netlibrary.com. All you need is a library card, and you can create a free account to "check out" audio books to download to a computer or audio player for several weeks. You aren't necessarily going to find all the bestsellers there, but I find plenty of interesting books. You can also borrow books on CD from the library, but ripping these to a digital audio player is some trouble and is of questionable legality.
You need a digital audio player supporting the appropriate Digital Rights Management (for copy protection) for the audio download service you are using-- for example, an iPod doesn't have the PlaysForSure DRM support needed for NetLibrary, while other players may not be able to play iTunes downloads. I use an inexpensive Creative Zen Nano player, and it works very well with content from Netlibrary.
After taking Pappy to the regular dog park this morning, we headed out to Quiet Waters Dog Park in Annapolis with my auntie.
When Quiet Waters is mentioned among dog owners in our area, it is spoken of with such reverence. "There are separate areas for big and little dogs", "they have a dog beach", "there are miles of trails". A lot of people head out there with the notion that this is some pet Disney World, and some come back a little disappointed.
Don't get me wrong, I looove the park. It's about a mile from my aunt's house, so we go for a visit, bundle the dogs into the car, and head on out to the park. And, if you have a swimmer, it has one of the few beaches in striking distance of DC which allow dogs (and has nice pet showers nearby). In an over-regulated, over-populated region like ours, this is really hard to come by.
But the truth is that the beach is only a couple of hundred feet long, and can be crowded. The separate big/little dog areas are nice and big, but not categorically different from dog exercise areas nearer our house. Ditto the walking trails. It's a pretty terrific park, just don't be picturing a pet utopia like Dog Island (more on Dog Island at Snopes.com).
If you are not yet a dog owner, you just might want to stop reading now. My wife is not quick to wake up, but she has an unfortunate sensitivity to the strains of Pappy's recent late night heaves. She's been instantly tuned in when Pappy has been "looking for O'Rourke" in the wee hours-- for some reason always on the carpeting on the second from the top step. There have been a couple of incidents this week.
He's quick to (really, turn back now if you want to maintain your rosy picture of Pappy) lap it up, so she doesn't get a good look at what's disagreeing with him. I'm a bit concerned that he's developing an allergy to his food, but this is happening five or ten hours after feeding. He's still energetic and in good spirits, so I don't think he's ill. Maybe it's just all the stuffing from his toys.
I'm not sure Pappy actually invented the tousle haired look, but he certainly sets the standard. He's got full-body bed head.
As Pappy took me on a walk through the ominously dark park last night, we stumbled on someone in the gloom. A big guy in a hoodie, a goon really, was practicing Kung Fu moves on a sapling in the pitch black. I was a bit leery of him, but Pappy just went off on the guy. I halfheartedly told Pappy to quiet down, but was secretly kind of pleased. My wife often asks herself whether he would protect us in a dangerous situation, and it looks like Pappy's our 36-pound badass. You'd never know it to meet him-- normally he has trouble keeping his tail from wagging.
It looks like some snafu has knocked the Ayatollah Mugsy's blog out of commission. I may have to convert from the Pug Life Ministries to The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I hope my credits transfer.
By the way, for those of you curious about the FSM's Pastafarian movement but have a limited attention span, there's a nice little Flash thingy here.
Pappy is always standing at the sliding door to the back yard, pining to go outside and chase a ball after dinner. Now, in the heart of the Fall, this takes place in total darkness. When we first tried this I was sure that he'd lose the ball immediately, followed by him searching frantically with his tail whisking in circles and the occasional whine. Then, I envisioned, we'd be done until we found the ball the next morning.
But this isn't what happened. He was retreiving balls in the pitch black. He was snatching a ball out of mid-air, when I couldn't even find it after he dropped it at my feet. So I asked myself how he did that. A dog's bionic hearing is great, but it isn't radar. Hearing a ball's bounce is helpful, but won't tell you its trajectory and he was catching them on the fly. Smell is great for finding stationary balls, but there's some latency in scent that isn't going be as helpful in chasing them in motion.
So it had to be something to do with sight. But how can a dog who can't see the treat on the floor in front of him see a ball at night? Once, on a walk, he nearly desocketed my arm chasing after a pipe sticking out of the ground that stood a little too much like a squirrel. I looked up a couple of articles on dog sight here and here. Though dogs don't just see in black and white, their vision is only dichromatic (blue/yellow) and they don't distinguish many colors well. Apparently their visual acuity also isn't great-- if a human's vision is 20/20, a typical dog may only see from 20 feet what the person sees from 75 feet. But dogs have great night vision. First off, they have a much higher ratio of rods to cones than humans-- these are the high-definition, motion sensitive, black and white receptors in the retina. Humans have greater concentrations of rods in the peripheral vision, sometimes making it easier to see things at night by not looking directly at them. Dogs also have a "tapitum lucidum," a reflective layer behind the photoreceptors. This is what gives them the creepy glowing eyes at night. With the extra reflective layer, somehow the wavelength of dim light is enhanced providing better contrast.
Bottom line... looks like I am going out after dinner to toss balls all winter long.
Having failed miserably in gaining Pappy the exposure he deserves via this blog, I have been shamelessly peddling his likeness to other web sites. The latest place is SluttyPuppy.com! Check lucky number 45 to see his soft core antics. The photo is from early in his career, and he did it just to put kibble on the table.
