Blog

I have a guest dog for a few weeks. I’ve known Leila for a few years – she’s about six or seven, and supposed to be a Papillion – but I’ve never hosted her when her family goes on vacation. This year, though, my availability jibed with their vacation plans, and so here she is, one of my pack for a couple weeks. So far, she’s pretty low-maintenance and easy: a tiny bit clingy (appropriate when ditched with people, dogs, and cats you don’t know) but overall well behaved.

I stayed with some of my best friends recently, a family whose sons are close to my son, and whose dog Carly has been a part of WDJ since her adoption as an adolescent some 13-plus years ago. Carly has been used as a model for WDJ only sporadically for two reasons: she’s mostly black, which doesn’t always show well in print; and she’s never been all that crazy about the camera – she yawns and looks away a lot (two signs of mild anxiety) when the camera is trained on her.

So, one of my friends saw that I “liked” the photos that my former sister-in-law (now divorced) posted of a litter of puppies. My FSIL has a darling Border Collie female, whom she bred to a handsome BC, planning to keep one pup as a companion to the mama dog and sell the rest. My FSIL “tagged” me in the photos, because she remembered my Border Collie Rupert (who died in 2001) and thought maybe I’d be interested in one.

Last week, the dog blogs and all of my dog-owning friends were upset about a column in the New York Times, written by a mother whose then-two-year-old got badly bitten by a dog. In the column, the mother recounts the incident, which happened three years ago. Long story short, the dog involved used to be her dog, but proved to be uncomfortable around kids, so she rehomed him with her father; and then some months later, when visiting her father’s house, the dog bit the child – badly, and in the face.

I’ve had relatively trouble-free dogs for a while. Long enough to forget how bad an owner can feel when one of our pets puts us between a rock and a hard place. I have a friend who owns three dogs: a senior Chihuahua; a middle-aged probable Lab/Cattle Dog-mix; and 5-year-old Lena, a tall, lanky, who-knows-what-mix. Lena used to be (my dog) Otto’s BFF. They are still friends, but don’t get to see each other a lot, ever since Lena tore her ACL and had surgery

Over the next few days, I’m going to see a half-dozen manufacturing facilities that produce raw frozen and/or raw dehydrated canine diets. Some of these are produced in human food manufacturing plants. This gives me a great opportunity to compare their HACCP (hazard analysis and critical control points) plans with those of the various dog food plants I’ve seen.

The other day, I took a walk with my two dogs, and a friend and her two dogs (one of whom is Chaco, a Kelpie, one of my former fosters from my local shelter). We hiked on a trail next to the Feather River, which flows through my town. It’s hot here already, and the dogs jumped in the river and drank and swam frequently as we walked. About a mile from the trailhead, I, too, took the opportunity to clamber down an embankment and take a quick swim (the water is like ice).

Lots of dog owners I know are making plans for summer travel – and negotiating with friends to dog-sit. I had agreed to care for a lovely young Border Collie for a friend’s parents while they traveled to their native Germany for a month, but they’ve decided to “award” her custody to their next-door neighbor, who owns her favorite playmate, a young Boxer. I’m hideously disappointed; I have a crush on that dog! But maybe it’s for the best. I don’t know if Otto could handle my ardor for the BC, or a month of playing patient Uncle Otto to a pushy canine “teenage” girl.

Almost all of my friends have dogs. And I like almost every one of those dogs -- but that doesn't mean I want to walk with all of them. I actually really enjoy walking with just a few of them.One reason has more to do with our walking styles. I really like to walk fast. Most dogs I know like to get out and really cover some miles, too. The one exception to this was a female dog I knew who was the most persistent urine-marker I've ever known.

I think of my dog Otto as a really well-behaved dog. And he is, mostly. But not dog is perfect. And he definitely has some flaws. One is that, if an unnamed husband leaves one of the gates on the side of our house open, or even just unlatched, Otto will wander out to the front yard, and eventually, if he’s left out there unsupervised long enough, he’ll do something naughty.

I’m exhausted. I’ve been dealing with a challenging family situation for the past couple of months, a home construction project for the past few weeks, and oh look! We owe more than we thought we would on our taxes. (Both my husband and I are independent contractors and pay quarterly taxes, but somehow we always at least a bit more than the estimates.) And I just shipped the May issue of WDJ to the printer, a few hours late, even after putting in 14-hour days for the past week, solid.

I have calendars that are dedicated for noting things about my pets' health. Time and time again they have come in handy when trying to investigate an abnormal condition. In recent months, notes on the calendar (and the clipped-out ingredients lists from their food labels, taped to the dates that I opened the bags of food) helped me put it together that Tito's stool get loose every time I feed him a food that contains lamb, and that Otto is reluctant to eat foods that contain any fish or fish oil (probably due to oxidation in the fragile fish oils). Someday, I hope to be smart enough to use them to ANTICIPATE problems that arise annually.