Canine Holiday Cheer II

And don't miss Bailey the Unknown Reindeer!

Working Girl

Here is Ruby (foreground) with her mother and father, at her breeder's house. Mom (aka "Milk Bar") is nursing Ruby's nine new brothers and sisters, while Ruby and Dad have been hitting the dog show circuit. In the past three weekends, Ruby has taken one third place, two second places, and two firsts. She's back home tonight, resting from her labors. Actually, dogs seem to do a lot of resting, no matter what.

Today is Memorial Day, on which we remember those patriots who have refreshed the well-spring of liberty with their blood. Let us also remember those survivors who left pieces of themselves (physical, emotional, or both) on the battlefield. You don't have to go it alone. To all of you who have returned, thank you for serving, and welcome back.

We now have pictures of both our fathers in WWII Army uniforms. My father was on the American side, my wife's on the German. Let the old wounds heal. The rest of what I have to say is in VCBC's Military Chapel.

Doggie PMS

Since every male dog for miles around knows it, you may as well know it, too. Ruby is in season for her first time. Mostly, she is mellow and cuddly. But every now and then, she grabs her latest chew-toy and rips the stuffing out of it. Here she is amid the extracted fluff and squeakers of a now flaccid pink dachshund doll. To her left lie shards of a plastic water jug.

Other than that, she believes that she wears a perfectly tailored and tres chic fur coat. It simply won't do to cover it with a diaper. The little spots on the floor and on her bedding - well - clean them up, that's what humans are for.

Her biggest hardship is doing without those daily off-lead romps with other dogs in the local parks. Maybe some playtime in a fenced yard with our neighbors' bitch will help relieve the tension.

Now for some lunch. She's back on her chow again, and weighed in this week at a svelte 87 pounds.

In the meantime, here is a video of what she really lives for:

Merry Christmas!

On this Feast of the Nativity of our Lord, we decided to give Ruby a smoked ham bone from a genuine German Wursthaus. Here she accepts it with enthusiasm, and then chews it with her eyes closed. May this Christmas be as satisfying to you and all those you hold dear. May joy this intense and complete be yours in the new year.

Here is more canine holiday cheer. And our Christmas message from PostSermon.

Outdoor Furniture

After more than a dozen years of this type of abuse from two Great Danes, a German Shorthaired Pointer, and now Ruby, our 80+ pound Rhodesian Ridgeback, our Brown Jordan patio furniture is holding up very well. The tempered glass table top has held twice her weight, and provides a unique vantage point to observe squirrels in the neighbor's yard. And tasty though all that plastic webbing appears, it has so far not tempted toothy scrutiny. May it continue even so.

Puppy Update

Ruby has been a busy girl. She won two ribbons in her class (6-9 months), and has taken other trophies as well. The welcome mat that used to lie outside our kitchen door entrance has been reduced to shreds of recycled tire rubber. This mat survived the combined efforts of Nessa (Great Dane) and Pongo (German Shorthaired Pointer), but somehow Ruby, at a svelte 80 pounds now, has been able to do what her predecessors' combined 230 pounds could not. It seems that she has a special talent for disassembly. Search out the weakest spot and just keep working it until it gives. Then on the next weakest spot. And so on, in a canine combination of intellectual exercise and oral gratification. As if her daily 1-2 hour walks/playtimes with other dogs just left her so keyed up that she needed a post-peripatetic chomp and chill. As if digging three-foot wide craters in the yard to tear out tree roots was not entirely satisfying (they're like sticks from the woodpile but much more challenging and flavorful).



She also triumphed over the pink hedgehog by biting off its nose. Now its formerly vicious squeak has been reduced to a whimper (because so much air escapes through the nose hole instead of the squeaker), and Ruby can munch it in peace. Its days as a recognizable object are numbered.

I'm off in search of a more robust doormat this weekend, plus a new cord for the lamp in the living-room. Fortunately for her, she pulled the plug out of the electrical outlet before she chewed it off.

Whenever I watch Ruby play with other dogs I'm reminded of this song:



She's such a party animal.

Show Bitch

We entered Ruby in her first dog show, and she was in three events this Saturday and Sunday. Here she is being handled by one of her breeders in the 6-9 month class. At 6 months and 2 days, she was the youngest puppy in the ring. She didn't win any prizes, but she didn't get excused for misbehavior, either. We and her breeders were quite pleased.

Since the show was within walking distance of our house, we invited her breeders and their three adult Ridgebacks (Ruby's mother, father, and aunt) to stay with us. Ruby made everyone play until we were all exhausted. Sort of like family camp for canines. It was quite a weekend.

Clever Girl

Ruby is now adolescent. She has all her adult teeth, although some are not quite finished emerging. Thus armed, she has taken an interest in squirrels, which naturally leads to an interest in trees. Indeed, she has discovered that some can be climbed.

She has also discovered how to unlatch our gates. After confirming with the neighbors that she could let herself out at will, we put locks on them. This is only the beginning. She's a clever girl.

Puppy vs Pink Hedgehog

Ruby has inherited The Pink Hedgehog from Maya and Nessa. You might wonder how the thing could survive two Great Dane puppies, but it has a formidable squeak. It hurts Ruby's ears, but she can't resist chewing it at least once or twice a day. Happiness, at least in part, really is a warm puppy.

We just had to ...

This is Ruby, our new Rhodesian Ridgeback, at 14 weeks. Today, at 15 weeks she is about 1/6 larger and considerably more active. We just couldn't resist. She now takes the baton from Samwise, Frodo, Maya, Pongo, and Nessa of blessed memory.

Remembering Nessa

This Thursday past, we sent our Great Dane Nessa to walk with our Master. We were facing at heat wave and fireworks, either of which could have precipitated a terrifying and agonizing death for her, and she was on her last legs as far as getting into the car was concerned. Her death was peaceful, as was her life, considering that she was, after all, a dog.

And she was our dog, or rather we were her people. From the moment we brought her home she liked the place. She explored it quickly, even going up and down stairs (a thing she had not encountered before), and settled in. She didn't whine her first night. So intent on claiming the territory was she, that she ate the rosebush under which we had buried the ashes of Maya, her predecessor. We didn't punish her for it, and it was the only one of our plants she ever destroyed. She chewed it to bits, thorns and all. It seemed like a kind of doggie exorcism.

Her greatest enthusiasm was food. She is shown above as a puppy relishing her first taste of sour cream! The greatest tragedy of her life was that she became lactose intolerant, and had to do without it in her last years. This was more than compensated by our discovery of liverwurst as a medium for administering her medications.

Her second greatest enthusiasm was fur-to-skin deep conditioning aromatherapy spa treatments which she would self-administer by rolling in carnivore scats, or preferably cow manure. (Horse manure was a problematic decision - should one wear it or eat it?) Once during a walk through what turned out to be a pasture, she encrusted herself from head to tail in a cow manure rind over an inch thick. We had to shout to other hikers not to pet her lest their hands get stuck. Cleaning her (and our car, and ourselves) took hours, causing us to miss an opportunity to reconnect with former neighbors.

She took no trophies during her life (she didn't even like raw meat) other than title of Miss Congeniality. She was the easiest to train, most obedient, most compliant dog we have ever owned. When we put her on the lunge line we used to train Maya, our first Great Dane, she didn't lunge anywhere. She just looked at us as if to say, "OK. Where do you want to go?"

She was also a champion sleeper, having spent less than 2 of her almost 10 years on this planet in a state of wakefulness. Nevertheless, she was a quick learner of obedience commands and a student of human behavior who developed the ability to tell when we were going to take her for a walk before we knew ourselves. Or perhaps she had learned to shape human behavior rather than to predict it. She never revealed her secret.

She was the girlfriend/dominatrix of Pongo, our German Shorthaired Pointer, who preceded her in death. Although they rarely cuddled, they played until they were played out.

She struggled with early onset arthritis which eventually spread from her neck to her tail, laryngeal paralysis which gave her breathing difficulty, and female spay incontinence. This last could be spectacular: she awoke to greet us, wagging her tail which had been soaked in the puddle that appeared while she was sleeping. We were up until the wee hours cleaning the wee off the ceiling! We got this under control with PROIN (phenylpropanolamine), but in her last months she anointed the chair she inherited from Pongo so deeply that we had to let it go after she no longer needed it.

She was also great protection. When she held her head up, her nose was about chest height for an average sized person. This gave a new meaning to the phrase, "Eat your heart out," and served to help door-to-door salespeople take us seriously when we said we weren't interested. Her bark was loud enough to make the reflections in the windows waver.

As a puppy, she was afraid of children, and would bark at them. After some socialization, however, Halloween became her favorite day of the year, because she could greet the trick-or-treaters. Their parents even got used to her looming over their costumed kids. Although she was not cuddly, she was sweet and friendly, and loved to be stroked and petted. If she particularly liked the way she was being petted, she would lean on the person petting her, and sigh.

She never lost her enthusiasm for a good walk, provided it wasn't too hot or too long. This picture is from her last one.

Canine Holiday Cheer

The most endearing thing about dogs is their capacity for unbounded enthusiasm and pure, unbridled joy.

As in this video, for example.

May joy be yours this Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa season.

Obey the Chihuahua!

I suppose this had to happen sometime.

Click here and here.

Mine, all Mine

Nessa, our 160 pound Great Dane, is sleeping on the chair (and ottoman) formerly owned by Pongo. "Mine," she seems to be thinking, "it's mine now. All mine. This chair. This house. This yard. These people. Mine."

She seems a bit subdued, it's true. But also self-satisfied.

Remembering Pongo

On this Michaelmas and Eve of Rosh Hashanah, we sent our German Shorthaired Pointer Pongo's little soul to walk with our Master. He was almost fifteen. He had had a long struggle with nasal disease, kidney disease, and bowel disease. In his time he overcame epilepsy and two cancers. What we know of his lifetime trophies include two squirrels, two birds, and a vole. It is impossible to tell of his victories over gophers, because we never saw evidence of any in our backyard during his lifetime. He also successfully hunted and destroyed two sprinkler systems (until we learned not to use impact heads), two screen doors (one wood, one metal), two sets of interior wooden shutters, and part of a wooden deck. In his prime, he was known for his speed, his daring, and his obliviousness to the numerous athletic injuries he incurred by doing things like running through barbed wire fences, and pawing at the neighbor's Rottweiler.

He was originally brought in to our pack to take the pressure that our first Great Dane Maya, then a puppy, was putting on our first dog, the then aging Samwise. This he did admirably. When we would come home from work, Maya would stagger in, look at us as if to say, "Take the child," and collapse with exhaustion. Maya could outrun him on the straight stretches, but Pongo could out maneuver her in the corners. The would run back and forth in our yard until Maya had raspberries on both sides of her butt from colliding with the fences. Then they would cuddle together as if they were mother and son.

After Maya passed, Pongo went into emotional decline and tore off his second screen door. We then brought our second Great Dane, Nessa into the pack. Pongo brightened considerably, and did his best to move up to Top Dog, but it was not to be. When your girlfriend grows to outweigh you by a factor of three, you are going to have to learn to toe her line. Still they played together energetically, running at each other from two corners of our yard and colliding in the middle. This lasted until Pongo's back began going out, after which they switched from the equivalent of tackle to touch.

Pongo had a long prime, keeping most of his speed, enthusiasm for life, and strength until the past year. His strength of will never left him. Although he was not intellectual, he had strong opinions, which he advanced with cunning and patience. He seduced our late mother-in-law into letting him cuddle against her legs while she sat in a favorite chair. Over two months he used techniques of operant conditioning, positive reinforcement, and desensitization to move from floor to lap, and from lap to chair, conquering our prohibition concerning pets on furniture and making the chair his own.

Really his own. It smells like him, even to a human. We had fantasies of putting his corpse in the chair, and the chair on a wooden barge on a lake, and burning the lot together in a Viking style funeral. As it is, we will probably get it reupholstered and keep it in memory of him. He is pictured above, having gone from 65 to 46 pounds because of his illnesses, in the chair that he prized so much.

Farewell, little fella. May you be as blessed in the next world as you were a blessing to us in this one.

For those of you in similar need, here is a link to a canine funeral service.

Note added 9/30: And then there was the time he ate the car. For some forgotten reason we had to leave him unattended in our vehicle for a few minutes. He chewed the steering wheel, ate the ends off the gear shift and emergency brake levers, and completely severed a seat belt. Fortunately, we were thinking of trading in the car anyway. Pongo just accelerated the process by a few months.

Where have I been?

Apologies to my avid reader(s). I have been engaging in a controlled experiment with my neurologist in trying to reduce what may be neuropathic pain (don't worry, it isn't bad, but I do need to deal with it) by taking medicine that turns my mind into mush in the evenings. This is why I haven't been posting much lately.

That and the prolonged feeding ritual for our 14.5 year old German Shorthaired Pointer, Pongo, who, contrary to all expectations, is still alive and doing reasonably well. In the meantime, his 9 year old girlfriend, Nessa, our Great Dane, has developed laryngeal paralysis, and has difficulty breathing whenever she gets hot, excited, or anxious. Basically, we are doing hospice care for our two geriatric dogs.

And there is so much to think about. Barack Obama and his choice of Joe Biden, a smart guy no doubt, but he can come across as an arrogant a--hole when his dander and his mouth get motored up. John McCain and his choice of Sarah Palin, perhaps a ploy to simultaneously make a bid for the farther right and the disappointed Hillaryites, but also - win, lose, or draw - a move to tee her up to run for President in 2012 or 2016 against HRC herself. The upcoming test of FEMA as hurricane Gustav nears New Orleans. Heck, the upcoming test of whether Ray Nagin has learned anything from Katrina.

But, you know, the two biggest things are money and oil. Our national debt is so huge that whoever wins the presidential election is likely to have their hands tied unless they inflate the dollar to gain some wiggle room. And we really need to develop and export the technologies necessary to get the entire world off burning petroleum products for energy. It's not just good stewardship of the planet - it's a strategic necessity for disempowering regimes that live on unearned wealth. Governments that subsist off taxes have to create and maintain the conditions that enable their citizens to make the money to be taxed. Governments propped up by petrodollars do not. Hence they can be totalitarian, and can foster uncivil societies in which many of the citizens feel the urge to take their frustrations out on the safest target available - us.

Let me give you a hint as to whom I might be referring to. Will all the happy people in Saudi Arabia please stand up?

And the Russian government... Let's see, just as soon as they got back on their economic feet using mostly petrodollars, here they come, right back in our faces. Not because they're Communist (they're not), but because they're Russian. Realistically, we have two ways to confront them - our nuclear deterrent (always a bad idea), or trying to invent the technology that makes oil and natural gas uninteresting as sources of energy (a better idea, which will ultimately make the whole world, including Russia, richer).

Oh well. I expect that the next week or two will consist largely of the press trying to decide how closely Sarah Palin can be compared to Betty Bowers. (Yawn.)

Not Dead Yet

For those of you who recall the Plague scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Pongo is like the the old man who says, "I'm not dead yet. I'm gettin' better!" We have been through a couple of varieties of prescription food, and now have settled on homemade chicken soup with vegetables and brown rice. Our geriatric little German Shorthaired Pointer gets a first course of that, followed by bone dry (his preference, discovered by experimentation) prescription high fiber kibble (for his irritable bowel disease) mixed with torn pieces of rabbit jerky (which acts like a catalyst to get him eating). Then he has to run around outside and hunt things, whether he can smell them or not. Then it's back inside for another dry kibble and rabbit jerky course.

Why rabbit jerky? Because our Great Dane thinks that rodents are not food. The other category of things being, of course, food. This enables us to maintain discipline during Pongo's protracted feeding ritual, because the stuff he gets has limited appeal to her.

Anyway, his weight seems to have increased a little, despite his nasal and kidney diseases. He has now made it to the average survival time since first diagnosis for nasal cancer. So far, so good.

So far, so good for my career, too. Tomorrow I find out if I still have a job. If not, I'll shop myself around, and try to gin up a bit of consulting. If I stay, I'll continue to do my best for God and country.

And finally, so far, so good working through the Book of Mormon. I'm struck that the original plates were passed from father to son through so many generations. Each son added to the record, and passed it on to his own son. Very strong family values. And quite unlike the books of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and the New Testament, which were written by people who usually had no relation to each other.

Fade to Black

I come home from picking up prescription food at vet, and there sits Pongo, a long bloody booger hanging from his nose. Why is this dog bleeding? Drop the food, pick up the dog, go back to the vet and ask her. After another visit and some diagnostic work, bad news. The two most likely possibilities are nasal cancer, and fungal disease. Both are treatable, but we must make a definitive diagnosis first, which involves anesthesia, scopes, biopsies, at least 48 hours at the vet, and several more days of bleeding.

And then what? Treatment. If it's cancer we could board Pongo for 3 or 4 weeks at a specialist vet in another city for radiation treatments. Most dogs have a 50% chance of living a year after that. If it's fungal disease, its one or more 24 hour vet stays during which Pongo gets anesthesia and has his nose filled with Lotrimin, with a 60% to 80% chance of cure, but with a chance of recurrence.

On the other hand, Pongo is 14, and he has kidney disease, too. Even without nasal disease, he is on his way out. It isn't clear that further diagnosis and treatment would significantly prolong his life, or even add to its quality.

You see, Pongo has lost 1/5 of his body weight over the past year. He hasn't been eating much, not even what were once his favorite foods. And now we know why. He has been losing his sense of smell. To a dog, if it doesn't smell like food, it isn't food. He has been starving, and wondering why we keep offering him this inedible cardboard stuff that just looks like food.

So, we have a temporary fix: stinkier food. Pongo is eating well again. His nosebleed and snuffling/snorting symptoms appear to be in remission for now. He is happier than he has been in a long time.

It is not clear that treatment of any kind would restore his sense of smell. Whether it's cancer or fungus, the damage may already have been done. What's more, cancer treatment may cause nerve damage that could make the sense of smell worse, as well as cause blindness. Not a recipe for a happy dog. Especially for a dog who just wants to be with us.

Pongo has stopped sleeping in his chair downstairs (a long story - if you're able to keep your pets off the furniture, you probably don't own a German Shorthaired Pointer) and moved upstairs to sleep next to us. He can no longer smell us from downstairs, and if he can't smell us, we're not there. So he's moved upstairs to be less lonely and insecure.

As his sense of smell fades, we will fade. He will be living in a house of people who look and sound like us, but we will have vanished. He will stop eating. And then, for him, everything will fade. Fade to black.

Supervising the National Laboratories

Whenever I begin to prepare his dinner, my dog Pongo is underfoot.

"He's making sure you stay focussed and get the job done on time," said my wife. "He's supervising you."

In other words, being in management does not guarantee that you are a higher order of being than the workers you supervise. The most talented managers realize this, and actively recruit people who have talents that they themselves may lack. This is because they are confident in their managerial talent, a constellation of abilities that involves intellect, psyche, and soul. There simply is no human activity more demanding and engrossing than managing well.

The rewards are more than monetary. The biggest reward is that you can change the world, at least for those people within your sphere of influence. And sometimes you can change the world, period.

If these statements about management are true of ordinary enterprises, they are much more true of the Research and Development (R&D) enterprises known as the US National Laboratories. But the National Laboratories are under pressure. Los Alamos and Livermore, once supervised by the University of California under contract to the US Department of Energy, are now run by Limited Liability Corporations (LANS, LLC. and LINS, LLC., respectively). The idea (traceable to David Lee Hobson, Republican Congressman from Ohio) was that the National Labs would operate more cost effectively and with fewer security problems if they were supervised by real businesses.

The National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA, a part of the US Department of Energy) was forced to put the contracts to manage the labs up for bid. I think the desire to minimize discontinuity and disruption to the labs and their workforce weighed in the NNSA's decisions to award the contracts to two consortia, both of which include major participation by the University of California.

The result: Since they are now run by private corporations, the National Labs incur about a half-billion dollars more in expenses that they did before - from additional taxes, costs of pension benefits, etc. It will take an awful lot of gains in efficiency to make up for that added burden. In particular, since the Labs are not getting any more funding than they did before (in fact their budgets are being cut), the labs have to make up for that shortfall by laying people off.

How many people? The lab budgets come from Congress by way of the Departments of Energy, Defense, and Homeland Security. Since Congress is always slow in passing a budget, the lab managers never know how much funding they are going to have until well past the beginning of the fiscal year. This means that when they have a shortfall, they have less time to make it up, and therefore the more extensive the layoffs.

I'd like to see Congress run like a business. Deliver a balanced budget, on time, every year. Maybe they need better supervision. Maybe I should sic Pongo on them.

Thanksgiving

Someone was shouting, "F--k you, bitch! F--k you!" The SUV weaved erratically through lanes of parked cars and whipped into a space. Two smiling teen-aged boys emerged. The taller one glared at me. "What are you lookin at?" he said. They passed me by and went into the grocery store, most probably on an errand for their mother. I had forgotten how precariously men balance on the edge of sanity through adolescence.

The miracle is that almost all of us come out of it as decent, intact human beings. Those who don't are rare enough that, when they act out, they make news — bad news — the stuff that gets reported, because the good news is too ordinary. Let us give thanks for that.

One of those who emerged from adolescence as a psychopath who threatens genocidal attacks with a mild demeanor and a smiling face, is Usama Bin Laden. If he had his way, he would erase Western Civilization from the globe. But Western Civilization cannot be conquered from without — if it falls, it will be by internal disintegration. Ultimately, Bin Laden's efforts will be futile. Let us give thanks for that.

What Bin Laden has succeeded in doing, is bringing America to the realization that it needs a Department of Homeland Security. I can't say I have an insider's view of the emerging organization, but everyone I talk to who is involved with it warns that we can't let it become another Gestapo. They are aware of the risk in what they themselves are doing. Let us give thanks for that, too.

Bin Laden, the recent shootings in the Washington, DC, area, the riots in Nigeria over a reporter's comments on the upcoming Miss World pageant, and all the other bad news make us forget the good news that normally saturates every part of our lives except the mass media.

I was scooping up my dogs' poop in my back yard today, and noticed the sun glinting through the steam rising from the most recent deposit. The steam curled into exquisite vortices, rising, expanding into diaphanous veils that vanished into the pale blue morning. I staggered to think that the photons that illuminated this vision burst into being in the thermonuclear hell of the sun's core, then took some 50 years to percolate to the sun's surface before racing the next 93 million miles in 8 minutes — to strike this shimmering ribbon of steam, and then bounce into my eyes that I might see this beauty.

Truly this a wonderful world. Wonder and beauty are all around and within us, even in the most mundane things. Let us give thanks for that.