Travelog & Dog Blog

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Cheese

The egg is known as nature’s perfect food, and I do love eggs, but I lean toward cheese as having the top spot or at least sharing it. Cheese is terrific all by itself or paired with fruit or crackers or as an ingredient in a recipe or melted over tortilla chips. It’s just an all-round good food. Similarly the word "cheese" is a great word all by itself (doesn’t it feel good just to say it?) or as part of an expression. Expressions which include the word "cheese" are many and varied (and almost all funny). For instance, you say, "Cheese it–the cops!" when you want someone to stop doing something in front of someone else who is arriving; "Cheese it" when you want someone to shut up; "the big cheese" when referring to the head honcho; "The moon is made of green cheese" when you’re indulging in nonsense; "cut the cheese" when referring to flatulance; "cheesey" when describing something overblown and inauthentic; one of my faves, "How can you govern a country where there are 246 kinds of cheese?" attributed to Charles de Gaulle; and, of course, the one we all learn as babies, "Say ‘Cheese’," when you’re about to be photographed. Cheese has even been used in titles to sell books and movies: "Who Moved My Cheese?," "I Am the Cheese," "I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With." And, of course, there are the ubiquitous restaurant chains which capitalize on the attraction of cheese, "The Cheesecake Factory," "Chuck E. Cheese," and "Cheddars" (yeah, I know, that last one is cheating a bit, but not much).

In other words, the very word "cheese" carries with it some power. So it is no wonder that cheese can even become an object of fear. You might think I’m taking the power associated with cheese a bit too far with that, but seriously, cheese has been feared by one member of our household. I’m not talking about fear of the fat, calories or cholesterol it contains. I’m talking about Figaro thinking, "Oh, no, it’s cheese. What’s going to happen? What’s it going to do to me?? What can I do to save myself??? RUN!!!!!"

It all started several years ago when the vet taught me how to give pills to my dogs. I used to buy hot dogs, cut them into ½ inch slices, and cut a little nick on one of the flat sides in which to hide the pill. That worked fine until Maddie figured out what we were doing and started to somehow eat around the pill. She’d eat the hot dog and spit the now-pink soggy pill on the floor or we would find it hanging in the hair around her mouth. Then one of the other dogs would think it was something to lick up, either off the floor or off her, and the wrong dog would get the pill.

So the vet told me about using snack cheese. You know, the processed cheese food that comes in a tall narrow metal can with a skinny nozzle on top which you push against with your finger and out comes a stream of cheese? I call it squirt cheese. Wonderful invention for giving dogs pills. You just put the pill on the tip of your forefinger and squirt the cheese onto it covering it all over. Then you hand the cheese ball to the dog and he eats it thinking it’s a wonderful treat. But when you have three dogs, you can’t just treat the one, you have to give some to all three. So to the ones who don’t need a pill, I started just sticking the nozzle down near them and they’d immediately put their tongue, teeth, and lips all over it. I’d squirt the cheese right into their mouths. Great fun, until ....

One day I squirted the cheese can for Figaro and it ran out of cheese in mid-squirt. You wouldn’t think that would be much of a problem, unless you’ve ever had it happen to you. When that happens it doesn’t just stop. It sputters and pops. Loudly and wetly. And yes, you guessed it, it sputtered right in Figaro’s mouth, scaring the dickens out of him. He ran away from me and wouldn’t come back as long as I held the cheese can. After that every time I got the cheese can out and put it down near him so he could get a squirt, he ran the other way. So I took pity on him and stopped offering it as a treat. He’d watch from afar as the other two indulged.

But I still need the cheese to give him his periodically prescribed pills. Recently, after his teeth cleaning, Figaro needed 10 days of antibiotics, a pill twice a day. When I offered him the wad of cheese with the pill hidden in it and held it down for him to lick off my finger, he backed away. I didn’t even have the scary cheese can in my hand. He wanted nothing to do with me holding a wad of cheese on my finger toward him. I had to drop the cheese wad on the floor. After a moment of watching to see if the yellow mass did anything, he tiptoed tentatively toward it and when he was convinced it was safe, he ate it. Over the next ten days, he finally came to trust that my finger wasn’t going to explode into sputters and toward the end of the prescription he deemed my cheese-covered fingertip trustworthy and would eat the cheese right off the finger. He had overcome his fear of cheese-on-a-finger. Since then he allowed me to put the cheese can near him for a moment while he was lying on the couch. Once he even licked the nozzle.

 
What’s the lesson in all this? That fear is a powerful thing? That there is nothing to fear but fear itself? I don’t think so. I think there is something else going on here. So out of curiosity, I googled the phrase "fear of cheese" and found out that the fear of cheese is an actual psychiatric condition: turophobia. (Stop laughing. This is serious. Think of all those turophobics who can’t enjoy pizza, another staple in life.)  I think the lesson here is that with patience and understanding and the right therapist, turophobia can be overcome. Although Figaro still has some work to do on his condition, I think he might have a future as the poster child for turophobia. After all, he didn’t even know he was diagnosable and look what he accomplished almost all by himself. He ate cheese!

 

Love Me, Love My Dog

Rags and I left Chicago in 1989 with law degree in hand and a job waiting for me in my hometown of Wheeling, West Virginia. Our move there led to happy times together. Rags and I were inseparable. We went for nightly walks, sometimes with me hoisting him up on my shoulders around my neck when his four inch legs interfered with my pace. When I went shopping or to the grocery store, he would come along, waiting patiently in the car for my return. When I went over to my parents’ or my brother’s or down to my sister’s in Morgantown, he was with me. He would sit on my lap and put his front feet on the steering wheel and "drive." Most of us drivers have pet peeves and Rags was no different: when a truck would pass us on the left, he would snap at it as it flew by. He never liked those noisy things. Cars passing us was ok, just not trucks. Despite that, Rags was a great companion and we developed a bond that was never broken, even when we opened our life up to my future husband.

Some of my friends from my 10 years in Chicago had worried about me moving to such a small town. They thought that I’d die of boredom without the culture and variety a big city has to offer, but worse, they thought I’d die a spinster. Apparently since I hadn’t found my soulmate after ten years in Chicago, a city filled with eligible men, they thought the pickin’s would be slim in little Wheeling, WV.

My concerned friends were wrong on both counts. Wheeling is located only about 50 minutes outside of Pittsburgh which offers everything Chicago does in the way of theatre, opera, symphony, restaurants, museums, universities, architecture, shopping, and activities on the river. In fact, Pittsburgh boasts three rivers to Chicago’s one. But Wheeling itself, despite the fact that it has gone the way of most small towns (i.e. its population has dwindled as its young people have left in droves), is filled with things to do and places to go, if one only looks for them. So I learned almost immediately that it was not the cultural desert that my friends had feared for me.

As for eligible interesting men, I beg to differ with my friends. Wheeling and vicinity has plenty of them. But most importantly I found my eligible interesting man in the courtroom. No, he wasn’t one of my criminal clients. But he was the prosecutor of one of my criminal cases. Although it wasn’t love at first sight (he thought I was either the most arrogant women he’d ever met or that I knew something about my case that he didn’t and I thought "Why is he wearing those granny glasses?"), it was love at first kiss on our second date.

On our first date in 1992, John and I had gone out on a Friday night after work, meeting at the bar of a restaurant where he was waiting for me. Relying on my baby lawyer’s powers of observation and analysis, I noticed he was drinking a cup of coffee and my immediate reaction was "Uh-oh...he’s an alcoholic." Wary, but not one to hold back in light of someone’s alcoholism, I ordered a beer (nice, huh?).  Then, when we left the bar and were seated at our table he ordered a scotch and soda, and I thought, "Oh, no, he’s falling off the wagon right in front of me." It only got worse: I almost fell off my chair when after his first sip he said it was the first drink he’d had in 18 months. I couldn’t hold back, I had to ask him: "Are you an alcoholic?" I was relieved to learn it was only that he’d been dating a recovering alcoholic during that time, whom he was no longer seeing, and out of respect for her he had not indulged. I was finally able to relax and start to get to know him.

The real turning point of the evening was when, trying to impress him, I told John that one of my favorite poets was Dylan Thomas. Instead, he impressed me by quoting one of Thomas’s lines from my favorite poem: "Do not go gentle into that good night; Rage, rage against the dying of the light."  When he said he related to that line, I cocked my head and smiled at him: I suddenly saw real possibilities in this dignified man sitting across from me. So I asked him an important question: "Why do you wear those granny glasses?" I thought I’d better get that cleared up.

We were intrigued enough with each other to plan a second date for the next evening. This time he drove. We spent the evening revealing more and more about ourselves to each other and the more we talked the more we wanted to talk. So when we arrived at my house at the end of the evening, I took the relationship to the next step: I asked John in to meet my dog. And I warned him outright, "Love me, love my dog."

This could have been our first stumble. I found out later that, until he met Rags, John thought the only real dog was a big dog. When he met nine pound Rags, it was his first experience with a rug rat, but he handled it beautifully. Rags, recognizing a new victim, immediately ran to get his blue rubber ring and brought it to John, inviting John to throw it. And John obliged. So Rags chased it and brought it back to John for another go at it. Again John obliged. So Rags ... well, you get the idea. This went on for quite awhile as I got a little bored watching their friendship develop. But John had passed muster (and he'd earned that first kiss, the one that made me fall in love). John became Rag’s staunchest blue rubber ring thrower. And that never changed until years later when the blue rubber ring had disintegrated to a point that I finally had to hide it and secretly throw it away when Rags (and John) wasn’t looking.

I had known Rags longer than I’d known John, when in 2001, Rags had to be put to sleep. He’d been such an integral part of John’s and my relationship to the point when we got married in 1994 and throughout our marriage that when we felt forced to put him down, John and I stayed with Rags until he was gone. With John at my side, I held Rags when the doctor injected the serum, and we sat quietly loving Rags as he slowly stopped breathing. It was the only time in our eighteen years together that I ever saw tears in John’s eyes. It is an amazing thing, how a little dog can have such an affect on your heart. It is still not something I understand, that relationship, even after having four dogs share our life. It is a special mysterious bond that I thank God for allowing me to experience and I pray that there never comes a time when I have to live without it. Rags holds a special place in my heart for having been the first dog to teach me about that.

   RAGS  1987 - 2001
 

The Chicken, The Cow, and The Donuts: Overeating Doggy Style

We’ve heard the statistics: about 66% of Americans are overweight.  We’re aware that the major reason we are overweight is because we overeat.  It does not matter if you count calories, fats, or carbohydrates, or if you follow Weight Watchers, Jennie Craig, or NutriSystem: if you overeat you will still be overweight.  And this is not one of those periods in history when fat is fashionable.  Of course, we know all that and yet we persist in overeating and becoming the third fattest nation on earth, along with, in descending order (according to the World Health Organization), American Samoa, Kiribati, Germany, Egypt, Bosnia-Herzegovina, New Zealand, Israel, Croatia, and the United Kingdom.  Okay, so we're in good company, but if we would react to overeating like dogs do, we might create different statistics.  Wouldn't it be great if we were able to join Japan, Korea, Norway, Switzerland and Italy as the thinnest nations on earth, simply by overeating doggy style?  Let me illustrate the process.

One night John and I were looking forward to our favorite quick and easy dinner, a broasted chicken I’d picked up from Kroger on the way home from the office.  We had set the table in the dining room, put the uncarved chicken on a platter on the table, and momentarily stepped out of the dining room to collect the other components of our meal.  When I came back into the dining room, Phoenix, the little sneak thief, had somehow pulled the entire chicken onto the floor and was chowing down.  Well, there went dinner.  We had no intentions of attempting to salvage that bird, even though Phoenix, in all his glory, had not figured out exactly how to inhale it as fast as he does his kibbles.  So I dumped the ruined chicken in the garbage can under the prep sink in the kitchen island.  Oh, well, it gave us an excuse to eat out that night.  We secured the dogs in the kitchen and left.

The garbage can under the sink is an innovative contraption.  It is actually a large rectangular pail which sits on a rectangular rolling metal platform with a panel on the back end that is curved exactly like the garbage pail, with a hinged metal lid attached to it.  The garbage pail has a lip on its rim that fits down over the top rim of the panel which secures it to the rolling platform, so we can slide the garbage pail in and out under the lid.  This is all closed in with a cabinet door.  In other words, we'd deposited the chicken behind a barrier that was pretty tough to break.  But apparently not tough enough.

When we returned home, we found the cabinet door open, the garbage pail overturned on the floor, and garbage strewn around it.  But there was no chicken to be found.  Not a carcass, not a bone, not a piece of cartilage.  Nothing.  At least, nothing on the floor.  Then I saw Maddie, and by the appearance of her torso, she looked like she’d swallowed it whole.  And she waddled that way, too.  I talked to the vet on the phone who said the concern after such a blowout was that she might develop pancreatitis.  Luckily, Maddie escaped unscathed this time.  He warned me, though, that she had turned into a little scavenger and we needed to be careful not to let it happen again, because she might not be so fortunate the next time.  So, being conscientious parents, we installed a baby lock on the garbage cabinet door.

A few weeks later, John decided to cook a real homemade pot roast, instead of that newfangled kind which you can buy prepackaged with thousands of grams of everything unhealthy.  Unfortunately, he made a 4-pound pot roast for the 2 of us.  It was delicious, but I can truthfully say that there were at least 3 pounds left over.  He had cooked the roast in a cast iron pot so we left the leftovers in the pot for easy reheating and placed it in the garage for storage, it being winter and quite cold out there.  We went out that evening, with the dogs snugly ensconced in the kitchen.

Now John had placed the cast iron pot on a surface about 27" off the floor. The cast iron pot with its lid weighs in at a hefty 12 pounds when it’s empty.  So, even though the dogs had access to the garage through the doggy door, we never dreamed they could pull that baby down.  Well, as I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, we were wrong.

When we came home later night, we found the pot overturned and most of its contents gone, though there were a few (very few) bits of meat sitting in the congealing grease on the garage floor.  I figured the three dogs had shared in this extraordinary banquet and when each had had its fill, they left the pickings for the mice.  Well, one look at Maddie told the whole story.  She looked just like a pot roast.  I mean it, she was square.  Embarrassed, we took her to the vet and he put her on something to take care of the pancreatitis she developed that time.  It took a few days but she returned to her normal physique and good-naturedly resumed eating her meals of dry kibbles.

We did pretty well with the scavengers after that.  That is, until recently, after Maddie died (thankfully not from overeating).  I had been in charge of an early morning event for our church and brought 3 dozen donuts of various kinds and colors.  After the event, there were half a dozen donuts left which I brought home.  When I arrived home, I absentmindedly put the half-filled box of donuts on the island in the kitchen.  We left for a little while, locking the dogs in the kitchen.

To discourage Phoenix from climbing onto the kitchen table to watch for us out the big picture window it  sits in front of, we always tipped the chairs up against the table so he couldn’t use them to climb.  Recently Phoenix had found a way to "untip" one of the two chairs facing the window and was leaving his dirty little paw prints on the table again.  Trying to stay one step ahead of him, we had taken to pulling those two chairs out from the table and sliding them back against the island.  This new trick had worked so far.  But that day--yep, you got it--Phoenix, sensing a fortuitous find, used the chairs to climb onto the island and pulled the donut box down so he and Figaro could share in a midday nosh.

Upon finding the donut box on the floor and sugar smeared all over, we discovered that one donut had survived.  It was the same kind of donut that no one at the event had wanted.  I guess after sampling the other three of that kind, the dogs decided they didn’t like them either.  Picky, picky, picky.  Figaro in particular was hurting after his share of their remarkable refreshments and kept throwing up white smeary stuff that afternoon.  I sent them both to bed without dinner that night.  They survived and excitedly returned to their usual diet of dry kibbles the next morning.

Considering those true confessions of canine discomfort, you have to admit that if we humans suffered from overeating the way dogs do, we would not be so fat.  If we looked like what we just swallowed, not only would we be strangely shaped, but what we overindulged in would be out there for all to see.  Everyone would see that big square pot roast sticking out of your gut.  They would notice your middle shaped like a whole chicken carcass turned on end and your thighs with lumps shaped like the 6 donuts you just ate.

Or if we threw up every time we overindulged, we would not be so eager to stuff our bodies with the needless surplus of food, no matter how enticing.  I realize that some people have deliberately developed that ability, bulimia, but that psychological disorder only effects a tiny percentage of the population, not the 66% of us that are overweight.

Too bad those things don’t naturally happen to us like they do to dogs.  Because if they did, we could not continue to hide behind our lame excuses like "It must be my metabolism," or "I have a thyroid problem," or "It doesn’t matter what I try, I cannot lose weight."  We would be forced to admit that "It must be the 2 pounds of pot roast I ate," or "I just couldn’t pass up that whole broasted chicken," or "I can’t believe I just ate those 6 donuts."

The big difference between dogs’ overeating and ours is that, if they have a conscientious owner, theirs is a one-time or only occasional overindulgence.  They might get temporarily sick or bloated, but they happily resume eating their dry kibbles or stinky canned food and quickly return to normal.  While we often see overweight dogs, that's only because their overweight owners consistently overindulge the dogs the same way they consistently overindulge themselves.  Our problem is also with consistency.  After we have overeaten, we don’t happily return to normal.  We consistently continue to overindulge, because we don’t get sick and we don’t immediately display the shape of our most recent food choices for all to see.  Instead the results are so gradual that we don't become alarmed until it is too late.  Too bad our bodies don't rebel immediately after we've overeaten like our dogs' bodies do when they've voraciously overindulged.  We’d be healthier.

Okay, so we don't take on the shape of the food we just gulped down and we don't throw up everytime we overeat.  But we could still become thin simply by "going to the dogs."   We feed each of our small dogs the manufacturer's recommended amount of 1/2 cup of high quality dry kibbles twice a day, every day, day in and day out, year after year.  We rarely give them snacks--I mean so rarely that I could count on four hands (John's and mine) how many times a year we do.  When Maddie got older and someone pointed out that she had porked out a bit on that regimen (it had happened so gradually that we hadn't noticed-- sound familiar?), we simply cut her food rations in half until she'd slimmed down.  It didn't take long, only about 2 weeks, and then we increased her food to 1/3 cup twice a day and she maintained her newly svelt figure.  Pretty darned simple. 

Of course, the dogs do have an advantage: they have humans to supply their "willpower" by controlling their access to food.  Gosh, it's easy to be someone else's willpower, isn't it?  Of course, if I didn't have any money and I didn't have any thumbs, I could probably lose weight, too, and maybe even keep it off.  Still, if we followed the eating patterns I've imposed on my dogs, we'd all have figures like movie stars.

Incidentally, I've finally had enough of the dogs and the messes they make in the kitchen while we’re gone.  I took the recent advice of a friend, who happens to be a non-dog owner and views the situation more objectively than I.  I got two large wire crates, one for each of the dogs, and put them in the kitchen at opposite ends of the kitchen table.  Now when we leave the house, in they go.  I know, I know, you’re wondering, "What took you so long?"  Some might say I have the patience of Job, but my husband, my mother and my office staff would tell you that I am not really known for my patience, to put it mildly.  That leaves the other explanation:  I’m an overindulgent dog owner. Hmmm...yes...that would be it.

Below: Figaro, Maddie and Phoenix sharing their watering hole with Sasha the cat, in the kitchen which is the scene of so many of their canine crimes

The Day My Dog Wore Underpants

Or How I Learned To Pick Up My Clothing And Shut My Closet Doors.

Back in September of 1988, I decided to get a dog.  I was a third-year law student living in Chicago at the time and as such had become quite the couch potato.  I thought having a dog would help me get some exercise.  So one day before my last year of law school started in the fall, I asked my friend Joanne and her 6-year-old son Danny to drive me to the Anti-Cruelty Society animal shelter with full intentions of coming home with a golden retriever.  It didn’t take long to discover that on that particular day there were none to be had.  I was disappointed, but I figured this was just my first stop, and I would now begin scouring the other Chicago area animal shelters to find my golden.

Since we were already at the shelter and Joanne and Danny were off exploring, I decided to look at the other dogs anyway.  I saw a little white dog on the 3^rd level of wire cages and stopped in front of him.  As I looked up at him, the little white fluffy thing walked slowly to the front of his cage toward me.  I put my fingers up to the wire and he gave them a little lick.  Awww, I thought, charmed, and commented to the attendant, "He seems like a nice quiet little fellow."  The attendant cocked her head doubtfully and said, "Well, he’s pretty perky.  He was just neutered and might still be recovering from the anesthesia."  She offered to take him out of his cage and put him in the little arena in the middle of the room so I could hang out with him for a few minutes.  As I acquiesced, I thought, "He’s not the golden retriever I want, but what can it hurt?"  Well, what it hurt was that golden retriever’s chance at a new home, because this nine pound ball of cotton captured my heart in no time flat!  He was so sweet and quiet and gentle.  Kind of like a golden retriever.  In my infinite inexperience and misplaced confidence, I wasn't convinced that he was "pretty perky" and started the proceedings to adopt him.  I named my new-found friend Rags.

A few days later when the adoption had been approved, Joanne and Danny took me back to the Anti-Cruelty Society and helped me get Rags home.  When we arrived at my house, we brought him inside and let him look around.  But Joanne was pretty insistent that I needed to "take him for a walk," that famous euphemism for getting him outside to relieve himself.  So, fighting over who got to hold the leash, Danny and I took him for a walk, and Rags almost immediately pooped.  Yay!  My first success!  It wasn’t in the house!  And he peed a lot!  More Yays!  A couple hours later he pooped again and Joanne expressed amazement...she obviously didn’t know anything about dogs either, because she said she had no idea they did that more than once a day.  (We were all learning.)

   

Joanne had a good laugh, though, when she reminded me later of when I thought Rags must be a calm quiet type.  She imitated the animal shelter attendant, reiterating, "He’s pretty perky!"  He was indeed pretty perky!

I had picked up a good-sized crate for Rags so that when law school started a few days later, I could put him in the crate during the day while I was gone, because I had two cats that he had immediately learned to chase.  The cats had to live on the table tops and counters to avoid him, so I thought that when I wasn’t home, they might enjoy being able to walk on the floor again.  However, a law school friend told me that her husband was concerned that I was keeping the dog crated for up to 8 hours a day.  He didn’t think that was a very good for Rags.  Knowing nothing about caring for dogs, I was immediately chagrined and convinced "Oh!  He must be right!"  So I decided to leave Rags out of the crate while I was gone the next day.

On that first day of not using the crate, I left in the morning with Rags free to roam the house while I was away.  When I arrived home that afternoon, I opened the front door to be eagerly greeted by Rags!  I put my backpack away and flopped down on the couch.  I looked over at Rags who was standing there looking at me expectantly.  At first I did not notice anything unusual about him.  Then I peered at him more closely and saw something on him.  I couldn’t figure out what it was, so I got up and walked over toward him to take a closer look.  I suddenly realized that he had my white underpants on!!!  Not in the right holes, but most definitely ON!  Over one shoulder, around his waist, at least one front leg through one leg hole, and who knows how else he was tangled up in them!

It was hard to see through the fits of laughter that left me weak-kneed and teary-eyed, as I attempted to release Rags from his little underwear straightjacket.  When I was finally able to free him, he was none the worse for wear.  In fact, he seemed quite proud of himself.

Needless to say, that was the last time Rags ever got the opportunity to wear my underpants.

Lessons I've Learned From My Dogs

Perspectives on your approach to life:

1. Awaken with an anticipation of What’s Up!

2. If you’re served a tasty meal, eat with unbridled enthusiasm.

3. If you’re served a tasteless meal, eat with unbridled enthusiasm.

4. Greet your friends with unbridled enthusiasm.

5. Approach all forms of recreation with unbridled enthusiasm.

6. Realize that not everyone appreciates unbridled enthusiasm.

 

Perspectives on Fashion:

1. Clothing is not all it’s cracked up to be.

2. A good haircut can make up for a lack of fashion sense.

3. Sometimes people think you look good in an outfit that you feel like a complete jerk in.

 

 

Perspectives on Technology:

1. Spending time with your computer instead of with your family makes them feel left out and lonely.

2. TV is not that interesting or important, but cuddling while it is on can be awesome.

3. You don’t need new stuff to be comfortable and happy, and high tech is not necessary for fun. Torn balls, ripped frisbees and mud are a blast!

 

Perspectives on Communication:

1. Talking is overrated.

2. After too many words, it all sounds like "blah, blah, blah."

3. There is nothing better than falling asleep in your loved one’s arms.

Perspectives on Housekeeping:

1. Always pick up your clothing and shut your closet doors.

2. Never leave food out on a counter or table, no matter what the height or how inaccessible you think it is.

3. Tangential light can be a housekeeper’s best friend (or worst enemy).

4. Babygates can be incorporated into a home without sacrificing style.

 

At the end of the day:

1. No worries: eating candy still in the wrapper comes out alright in the end.

2. Too many doughnuts will make anyone sick.

3. Although what the Bible says about dogs is true, that’s no reason to hold it against them.

4. Sometimes it turns out that you don’t want what you thought you wanted.

5. Patience is a virtue, but eventually you may just have to go for it.

The end.

The Contest, ver. 2??

After I posted "Grace" last week and "The Contest" the week before, I received the following email from my friend Michelle (not Obama, though that would have been nice, too):

"I can so relate. My boxer, Mishka, who is 18 months old, reverted to brand new puppy last week.  I thought Doug was going to kill her and if he didn’t I thought I might.  I love love love this dog, but she was SO SO SO BAD last week: tried to dig her way out of our family room through the NEW carpet and padding (strike 1); went on a LONG freedom run for over an hour playing "you can’t catch me" so close to Route 88 I thought she’d get hit by a car (strike 2); ate Noah’s Chinese dinner off the counter (she managed to open the container by only slightly removing the lid and ate about half, didn’t spill it on the container, either; she’s quite talented) (strike 3); "helped"me on the porch by digging up my freshly potted flowers (strike 4)!  Oh, wait, there are no strike 4's in baseball.  I see I have to teach her baseball rules now, too.  And as I was emailing you (when I should have been well on my way to work), Mishka left me a present in the family room.  She hasn’t done that in over a year.  I heard you saying "Forgiveness" as I called her a dumb*** and she wiggled her tail and begged for forgiveness.  Aaaagh...!"

Seems to be a humorous anecdote, yes?  Well, I say NO.  I have a sneaking suspicion that our seemingly cozy canine companions have cunningly created a clandestine cosa nostra to cast The Contest in various versions throughout our unsuspecting world.  Mishka’s version is apparently known as "Control, Control, Who’s got Control."  Figaro and Phoenix’s version is best dubbed "Let’s Pretend," as in let’s pretend there is no outside and just do it indoors, heh-heh-heh.  I have a sinking feeling that there are dozens of other versions of The Contest and that, contrary to my espousal in "The Contest," there is a purpose and there is a winner.  It’s not just to perpetuate itself, it’s to drive the dog lovers of this world crazy!  And the dogs win!

But why?  After all, most of us do a pretty good job of taking care of our furry friends and, in fact, go overboard to accommodate them in our lives.  I mean, we give them stuff we don’t even give our spouses!  Meals, without expecting them to take us out to dinner next time!  Hugs, even after we clean up their messes!  Kisses, even though they don’t brush their teeth!  Massages, even when their hair is dirty and unkempt!  Cuddling, when we just got done yelling at them!  They have it pretty darned good.  So what is it with The Contest and driving us dog lovers crazy?

Well, my theory is that they have lessons to teach us that we haven’t been too quick to pick up on.  Maybe the real purpose of The Contest is to teach them to us, and it is only a happy bi-product that they have fun driving us crazy while trying.  So, in the end, the dogs win either way?  We either learn the lessons or go crazy?  But if we learn the lessons they are trying to teach us, we actually win, too.  Ah-ha, the quintessential win-win situation.  So what lessons might they be trying to teach us?  Look for my upcoming exploration of "Lessons I’ve Learned From My Dogs."  On the other hand, better not hold me to that title...I may have to change it to "Lessons My Dogs Are Trying To Teach Me."  Remember, I am a slow-learner (see "Grace").  In the meantime, I wonder how many versions of The Contest there are out there.  I cringe just trying to imagine.

Pictured: Top: Noah with Mishka as a pup; Bottom: Mishka wearing her "oh oh I’m in trouble" look

 

The Contest

The seed of The Contest was planted on the day before my birthday in October, 2001, a day that will live in infamy (at least in our family). That is the day we introduced our second Bichon rescue, 2-year-old Phoenix, to our household. When we got him, we had no idea of his background. We only knew that he was a male, that he was recently neutered, and that when he was found, he’d been on his own for a while, undernourished, filthy, with a coat full of burrs. And we knew that we wanted to give him a good home. On that first day, we went to great lengths to ensure a happy homecoming for one and all. We seemed to be successful, but it didn’t forestall The Contest!

I had read that when transitioning a dog into a household containing other dogs it would be helpful if we introduced them on neutral territory. To accomplish this, we’d made arrangements to meet at a nearby park as John drove in with Phoenix from four hours away after retrieving him from the fellow dog-lover who’d rescued him from a kill shelter. I brought our other Bichon, 1-year-old Figaro, and the leader of the pack, 7-year-old Maddie, to the park and introduced each of them to Phoenix and let all three sniff and explore and walk around together on leashes. After about an hour of letting them get to know one another in ways that only dogs can appreciate, we took them all home. As I had learned to do years before from a dog trainer, I then kept Phoenix tethered to me with a leash for the next 24 hours so I could learn to recognize on his need to go outside and prevent an accident indoors. As you can see, I had really thought this through! I was ready! ( and so unsuspecting...)

All went swimmingly, at least until the next morning when I opened the front door to get the paper – and Phoenix bolted. I grabbed an overcoat, threw it over my nightshirt and ran after him from yard to yard through the neighborhood. I was mortified, praying that the neighbors would not see me tearing through their front yards with naked legs under my overcoat! It took Phoenix awhile to stop following his nose long enough for me to grab him. He finally paused to lift his leg (prophetically) and I was able to grab him (and resist strangling him). Little did I know that this was my debut performance in The Contest!

A bit of background: when Maddie came to us she was perfectly housetrained. I mean, being a girl she probably trained herself, as we ladies are wont to do in almost anything we have to learn in order to get along in life. When we acquired Figaro as a seven-month-old, he’d been in a nice home, so after a few days in our home, we were pleased to see that he remembered his housetraining and was performing perfectly in that regard. We lived accident-free for the 6 months before Phoenix arrived (an era known as B.P., or Be Pee, as I like to call it), blissfully ignorant of what was to come.

When we discovered Phoenix lifting his leg inside the house soon after he arrived, we tattled on him to his vet. The vet suggested taking Phoenix to work with me each day, to build his confidence and reduce the competition he probably perceived at home. It made a lot of sense, because at the office, Phoenix was top dog! The staff loved him so much that he was never without someone to take him out when he asked to go, so he did not have accidents there. And being the only dog at the office, he did not need to mark it as his territory. But at home the problem became entrenched. Phoenix seemed to have an unsatisfiable desire to mark his territory, which included the whole house, inside and out, and every single leaf and blade of grass in our sizeable yard; hense, The Contest.

For the uninitiated, the object of The Contest is for the dog to mark by peeing on them as many locations as he possibly can before his human opponent notices it and tries to erase it, or after his canine opponent notices it and tries to cover it with his own mark! As Phoenix’ human opponent, I gave him a run for his money from the beginning. After all, I have an eye like an eagle, a nose like a bloodhound, and reflexes like a ... I don’t know what. Figaro, on the other hand, was not as eager to join in the competition. He did his level best to ignore the challenge to enter into The Contest for about a year. He was such a good boy, bless his little heart...he tuned out Phoenix’ taunting as long as he could. But finally he could no longer resist the constant temptation. He cringed and picked up the gauntlet that Phoenix had thrown down the year before. He knew it was wrong, but he couldn’t help himself: he just had to compete!!!

For a mere human, The Contest is a trying game, take my word for it. I have eventually come to realize what the dogs knew all along: The Contest doesn’t presume a winner. The object of it is merely to perpetuate itself, day after day, year after year, for the rest of the dogs’ lives. Can I win? Never! Will I survive? I’m not so sure ... let me put it this way: I am no match for these two canine contestants. Their perseverance outweighs their chagrin when I catch them in the act or, more often, after the fact. And I know their love of the game will far outlast my vocal cords. You’d think my ability to yell would give me an advantage over the dogs, but noooooooo! As I weary from their ever-widening lead, everyone seems to have advice about how to put an end to The Contest. I thank them for their concern and politely assure them that I have tried everything in my power. No, The Contest is here to stay, as long as Phoenix and Figaro occupy our home at the same time.

Since there is no winner in The Contest, you may wonder what the status of the players is after, lo, these many years in the competition. Well, from the beginning, John refused to participate. He even refuses to root for me! He simply will not take sides (except his own side, which is to steer clear when I find that the next move is mine). As for me, the years of competition have taken their toll. For one thing, coming in dead last all the time has shaken my faith in the system. You know, the one in which Man has dominion over animals? For another, it has lead me to a life of gambling. I now invest heavily in the stock market: the makers of Bounty, Nature’s Miracle, Pledge, and Mr. Clean are my favorite companies on which to roll the dice. When it comes to the dogs, Phoenix remains a real player, but I think Figaro has surpassed him as a competitor. I think Phoenix now realizes that he created a monster when he challenged Figaro to compete. I could have warned him. As I always say, be careful what you wish for, you might just get it. Would that I had heeded my own advice!

Pictured Below: The contestants, relaxing between bouts:

Figaro in the background, Phoenix in the foreground.

These Three Strangers

The ordeal of losing our beloved little dog Maddie was physically over for me after the several days' search resulted in an impasse.  However it did not even begin for three strangers until two weeks later.  I have pieced together their experience involving Maddie from two phone messages, one face-to-face meeting, and several Facebook posts and messages from three members of three families who make up this team of strangers.  I refer to the three families and their various members as the three strangers, because I only had contact with one member of each family, though other members of their families were involved as well.  By the term "stranger" I mean only that they were strangers to me, not to each other.  If I get a detail or two wrong, it doesn't matter: it is the big picture that contains the important message here.

The three strangers all live side-by-side on Romney Road which is in a different neighborhood than mine.  Romney Road is a fairly flat street which is not accessible by road from our neighborhood in the hills above and beyond it.  The two neighborhoods are adjoined only by a creek which flows through the ravines behind our houses in Oakmont Hills down to one side of Romney Road, the side on which the three strangers live.

Because of the creek, the three strangers’ neighborhood is where I had hoped Maddie might ultimately be found.  I thought she might smell the creek and follow it down to Romney Road.  So Romney was one of several streets on which we papered mailboxes and car windshields with fliers containing a large colored picture of Maddie, a description of the two collars she was wearing, an explanation of the situation, and our name address and phone number.

Two nights after Maddie disappeared it had rained and the creek was flowing pretty hard.  The day after the rain, the search and rescue dog had followed her scent to the creek behind a house a few lots uphill from mine.  So when our continued search was fruitless, I began to believe that Maddie had drowned in the creek the night of the rain.  Knowing all we had done to search for and spread the word about Maddie, we felt there was little else we could do and so, four days after the disappearance, we stopped our search.

Two and a half weeks after Maddie disappeared, two of the three strangers who lived side-by-side on Romney Road had saved their fliers and still had them.  Lee and Lisa, who lived in the middle of the three houses, had kept their flier on their refrigerator all that time, so their six-year-old daughter Sara was quite aware of little Maddie’s plight.  One sunny Saturday morning two and a half weeks after Maddie disappeared, Lee saw the body of a small black dog in the creek behind their house and told his wife.  Lisa tried to shield Sara and her eight-year-old brother Matt from the discovery, but the children couldn’t help but know that something was going on as the neighbors on either side of their house, DuWayne and Sheila, became involved with the situation.

DuWayne left me two voice messages that morning.  I was in a meeting and didn’t receive them until several hours later when we took a break and I checked my messages.  DuWayne’s voice was gentle and understanding.  He said, "Hey, Jo Lynne, this is DuWayne C---.  Behind the house next door, there is a little black dog, deceased, in the creek.  We believe it might have been the one that you sent the flier out on....It’s down below us in the creek and you can tell it’s been there for some time now, because it’s got some dirt laying on the bottom of it.  It looks like it’s preserved, probably the cold water.  From standing up here it looks like it has a blue collar on it, it’s black, it has ears sticking up on it. ... You’re welcome to stop up ... You can stand in Lisa’s backyard at the fence and look straight down below and see it.  I’m sorry to give you this news, but I’m sure you appreciate knowing about it.  Thank you.  ’Bye."  He had included Lisa’s address and a description of her house and he left his phone number as well.

In his second message about half an hour later, DuWayne, again in his soothingly considerate tone, said "Sheila has the body of your dog.  She got it out of the creek.  It does have both collars.  It is definitely your dog.  Sheila is cleaning it up and wrapping it up in a blanket for you."  He gave Sheila’s address and phone number and a description of her house.

I did so appreciate the detail DuWayne provided, because I was not left to fill in the blanks in my imagination.  It was comforting, actually, to know, for example, that her body was well-preserved, and I didn’t have to wonder what I was going to find when I picked her up.  And how calming it was to learn that I was not going to have to fish her body out of the creek, that these three strangers had done it for me.

When my meeting was finished and I got home to tell John, I finally called Sheila.  I didn’t call DuWayne because I was afraid I would begin to cry and I’d make him uncomfortable.  I figured if I could only handle one phone call it had better be to Sheila.  When I called her, she told me she had cleaned Maddie up, wrapped her in a blanket, and I could come to retrieve her any time.  Of course we went right away.  When we got there Sheila met us in her driveway and, talking quietly, lead me into the back of her garage where she had placed Maddie on a table in a blanket and wrapped in a black plastic bag.  She told me something which was very comforting: that Maddie was not emaciated and that she was in perfect condition, the condition in which she would have wanted to find her if Maddie were her deceased dog.  Sheila carried her to the car for me and placed her very gently in the back seat on a towel we’d brought, even thinking to tell me at which end of the little bundle was Maddie’s head.  I tearfully hugged her and departed.

That afternoon we were able to bury Maddie next to Rags, her first "brother," whom we’d buried in 2001.  All I could think was "Okay, this is ‘closure’."  But a short time later something delightful happened which I realized was the real closure to this whole experience.

Two nights after the three strangers recovered Maddie's body, I posted a comment on my friend Jenn's Facebook page in response to something Jenn had posted about not being able to sleep when I was also up late with the same problem.  The next day I received a responsive post from a Lisa, who turned out to be one of the three strangers!  She had come across my comment because she happened to be a friend of Jenn’s and she recognized my name on Jenn's post.  What a fluke...and what a blessing!

First Lisa explained who she was: "My husband found her.  Sheila took great care of her for you.  I have been thinking about Maddie all weekend.  May God bless you during this difficult time."

Later Lisa shared with me that "Sheila handled Maddie with such great care, grace and dignity. I asked my children to stay in our house; however, they both knew about it because your flier was hanging on our fridge.  My six year old has been talking about Maddie all weekend.  She actually cried a lot on Saturday.  It is a situation that has affected everyone including strangers.  My heart goes out to you.  The only comfort I received from this is knowing that you are able to put closure on the matter.  Maddie is buried at home and that is nice to know.  May God bless you during this time.  I will think of Maddie often.  I am a firm believer that things happen for a reason.  Maddie ended up in our neighborhood because He knew that good neighbors would take care of her for you."

Lisa also posted this simple but profound observation: "Unfortunately dealing with death is something we all have to experience.  I wouldn't let her [Sara] see Maddie, but she was aware of the situation.  It was a good lesson for her to learn that you do nice things for people you don't know too."

Lisa posted a final comment of sympathy on my Facebook post announcing to my friends that Maddie's body had been recovered by these caring strangers.  She wrote, "She was taken care of with such great care and dignity.  Sorry for your loss.  Lee - thank you for finding her. Sheila - you are an angel.  DuWayne - you handled the phone calls with great care and concern."

I couldn't have said it better.

It is almost mysterious that these three strangers knew exactly the right things to do and say at exactly the right moments in the difficult and awkward circumstances in which each found themselves.  They treated Maddie and me with such love and respect.  These three strangers truly and naturally live out God’s Great Commandments:  "The most important one is this: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.  The second one is this: Love your neighbor as yourself.  There is no commandment greater than these."  Mark 12:29-31 (NIV)

Thank you, God, for the kindness of these three strangers.  Bless them for their obedience to you.  And bless little Sara, who hoped a lost dog would be found but was unexpectedly touched by its death instead.  Bless her as she struggles to understand at 6 what many of us still struggle with at 66.

Portrait of Phoenix

Phoenix, one of my two Bichon Frise, is just too cute. He can't help himself. Can you believe I shot and created this portrait with my iPhone, just using PhotoShop.com Mobile (a free app)? Of course, it helps to have a good subject!

Disappearance

I haven’t blogged for two weeks because of a small tragedy that occurred a week and half ago in our household: the passing of a pet. Madame Butterfly disappeared, seemingly into thin air.

I put Maddie out at 11:30 or so on Tuesday night, April 6, 2010, and she wandered off, never to be seen again. It seems odd because she had her Invisible Fence collar on, but when I went out to get her about 10 minutes later, I could hear her rustling in the leaves on the hillside behind our house outside the Invisible Fence. Search ensued...for 5 days, including with a search and rescue dog from NOVASAR (Northern Ohio Valley Area Search and Rescue). We never found her.

A dear friend who is living through the recent death of the love of his life suggested I need to post a tribute to Maddie. But I am not going to do that. Not that she doesn’t warrant it, because she certainly does, the dear little thing. But if you go back through my previous posts, especially "Ta-Da: It’s Madame Butterfly" and "What’s In a Name," you’ll find my written tributes to her. There is not much more I can write about the old girl and the pleasure she added to our lives.

However, Maddie’s disappearance has lead me to ruminate on how life is for people who are forced to endure the disappearance of a family member, especially the horrific experience of the disappearance of a child. You see accounts of these family cataclysms in newspapers (Elizabeth Smart), novels ("The Deep End of the Ocean"), TV news (Jaycee Lee Dugard), TV shows (Adam Walsh) and TV movies ("I Know My First Name is Steven"). Despairingly, the list is endless. And it hurts my heart to think of the panic, desperation, and anguish that the parents and families experience as they begin to comprehend that the child is actually gone.

Until we lost Maddie, I had no real concept of that wretchedness. It is simply inconceivable unless you’ve gone through it yourself. And I don’t pretend to know it all just through the loss of Maddie, a mere dog, a beloved dog no doubt but still only a dog. My experience cannot compare with the disappearance of a child. But I have now experienced enough so that I can imagine it.

The imagination is a powerful and, at times, destructive thing. So is our fear of the unknown. When we don’t know something, our imaginations tend to fill in the blanks. In Maddie’s case, I finally had to turn my imagination off. It was not doing any good anymore. It did at first, when we tried to imagine what route she could have taken when she first wandered off or where she could have gone from the creek where the Search and Rescue dog lost her scent. But after we explored the environs where our imaginations lead us from there, we had to stop. We had done everything we knew to do, so continuing to imagine what may have happened after Maddie reached that creek was a masochistic massaging of pain and fear. At that point we began to assume she was probably no longer alive, because she was very old, frail, blind, deaf, and on the second day of her disappearance it rained heavily and that night the temperature dropped to freezing. She might even have left us deliberately to pass away in private. Whatever the story, Maddie was gone and we simply had to accept it.

Not so with a child. The parents’ imaginations cannot help but run rampant. Now I completely understand why it is so absolutely necessary to have dozens or hundreds of people spreading out over fields, woods, swamps, and neighborhoods to search where their imaginations take them. I completely understand how the disappearance would cause the parents to burn their porch lights at night forever after. Or how they would never want to leave the house with no one home. Or why they can never, ever move to a different house, much less a different town or state. Or how they couldn’t change their phone numbers. These people can never turn off their imaginations. And my heart aches for their consequential lot in life, one not of their own making and seemingly under the control of the unknown. I cannot imagine living life in those circumstances.

Yes, Maddie’s disappearance was devastating. We feel the hole she’s left in our household. Figaro demonstrated it one night when he went to her bed, sniffed it, climbed into it and sat down looking up at me for a moment, before he got into his own bed. So, yes, we are all sad. But now my heart goes out to parents whose children have disappeared. Assuredly, I will be moved by this experience to offer support in its various forms in those types of cases where I wouldn’t have thought to do so before.

That is our tribute to Maddie.

(Maddie on her last date with her boyfriend Kit Nugent, 3/21/10)