13 posts tagged “dogs”

We are encased in ice. All that is mineral or vegetable is covered on every surface with a gorgeous, glittering, deadly coat of ice. The kind of ice that causes cars to crash and people and horses to slip and break bones. The kind of ice that seals doors and gates shut so you can't get where you need to go. The kind of ice that glues buckets to the ground and lurks under a thin disguise of snow so that you slip, etc.

So far the only casualty on our land has been the bottom branches of the perfectly shaped baby apple tree that I planted in the fall. It will bear the scars of its childhood accident for the rest of its life.

Yesterday, however, I thought there would be a more serious casualty of the weather—my sanity. It's strange how something that can feel so good at one point—staying inside as the storm gets going—can be so crazy-making at another—staying inside when the storm is over.

After a snow storm the duty to shovel, if not the desire to make tracks on that virgin whiteness, calls you outside. But after an ice storm there is nothing to shovel, no tracks to make. Disaster awaits on your porch steps. So you stand by the open door and flick salt onto the steps and hope nobody comes by. Then you go inside and wait for the temperature to rise.

That's what I did yesterday, only the temperature didn't rise. That's fine, I thought. I'll just stay in (my chickens' living quarters are attached to our attached garage) and sit by the fire and read and write. This is what winter in Vermont is all about, delving inward, cocooning.

One hour after the sun had gone down (the middle of the afternoon in some latitudes), I was having an existential crisis. Nothing felt right. I couldn't concentrate. I didn't want to write. I didn't even want to read.

The dogs kept giving me meaningful looks: “Well? What amusements have you planned for us today?”

“Amusements? “ I replied testily. “Why should I provide amusements? You're dogs-- think doggy thoughts, chew a bone, meditate, but stop looking at me that way!”

I went to bed feeling unsettled and dissatisfied, like I was wearing an itchy sweater next to my skin (which in fact I was). And as I lay in the dark I realized that I was experiencing the first assault of the 2008-2009 cabin fever season.

I'll have to learn to hibernate all over again. I have made myself a solemn promise to go outside every day, no matter what the weather. I have arranged with a friend to hold monthly salons. But the fact remains that this is going to be mostly an indoor time, a solitary time.

I was an only child, often lonely amidst adult company, and when I complained of being bored my father would say “How can you be bored? Intelligent people are never bored. Think!”

O.k., I'll think. Thinking has been, after all, humankind's principal resource in bad weather until recently. Surely I can recapture that capacity. Surely spring will come early .

Winter Cat

The weatherman today announced the first real snow storm of the season. Five inches, plus ice and anticipated power outages. The indoors time is upon us.

I took the dogs out into the field for their exercise while the flakes were still sparse, and they seemed to feel the coming hoopla, running at each other and play-growling and leaping about. When I got everyone back inside I laid a fire in the stove and prepared to enjoy that snowbound feeling that is so delicious in December and so maddening in March.

And then I realized that I was out of books to read. In a house with seven bookcases, there was not a single page I either hadn't read before or had no interest in reading.

I got in the car and drove to the next village, the snow falling thickly. I didn't go to the grocery store for bread or milk or coffee. I didn't go to the feed store for laying mash or kibble. I went to the library.

There I wandered through the stacks unable to recall the name of a single author or the title of a single book I wanted to read. This always happens to me. I walk into a library and my mind goes blank. George Eliot? Who's that? And it doesn't help that 85% of the books in the local libraries are mysteries.

Eventually, I found two books by Margaret Drabble. One sounded wonderful, but upon opening it it rang a vaguely familiar bell. So I checked out the other one, which may well ring a bell later. Then I remembered hearing a wonderful review on NPR of John Crowley's Little, Big. But the library didn't have that one, so I checked out something by the same author called Lord Byron's Novel—The Evening Land. This had better be good, as I'm not as a rule fond of historical fiction.

I also got a book by Tana French, The Likeness, because the NY Times Book Review referred to the “lyrical ferocity” of her first novel, In The Woods. We'll see how lyrically ferocious The Likeness is. Also decided to give Kim Edwards's The Memory Keeper's Daughter a try, though I'm suspicious of the title: there seem to be a lot of novels with “somebody's daughter” in the title of late. And finally I took something called None Of Your Business, by Valerie Block, that I've already decided was a mistake. I read 25 pages and found it annoying.

So, five books. One by a man. My usual stack is all women. I'm still trying to make up for my grad school reading lists in French Lit, which included only two (17^th century) women writers.

The best part of this trip to the library was an encounter with the new Library Cat, a gorgeous long-haired calico who found me in the stacks and made overtures, then followed me to the table where I sat down and jumped into my lap and purred imperiously. So what could I do? I sat there and petted her until the snow got really thick, and then I got up, picked up my books, and went home.

I have in my garage the dog equivalent of crack cocaine.

My dog drug is in the form of a basketball-size red ball made of hard, heavy plastic, and I have to keep it hidden so that my two addicts, Wolfie and Lexi, won't steal it. The BIGBALL, as Wolfie and Lexi know it, is so powerful that I cannot let them play with it together. They, who have never had a fight, would battle seriously over the BIGBALL.

We first got it for Lexi when she was in her prime, and it took her about a minute and a half to figure out that she could “herd” the ball in whatever direction she chose by pushing it with her nose, like a seal. She would get the ball going and gallop after it at top speed, making great arcs around the lawn, her head down to the ground, retrieving it from under bushes and out of flower beds, pushing it on one side and then the other to get it where she wanted it to go.

She also loved to hunker over the ball, embracing it with her front legs, to keep me from getting it. I would try to kick it out from under her, and she would growl (all in fun—I could take the ball away whenever I wanted) and hang on for dear life. Eventually, she would wear out. But the minute she saw me even look in the direction of the house she would set off after the ball again. She would rather die of exhaustion than stop playing with the BIGBALL.

Now that she's ten and slowing down, I have to restrict the doses of BIGBALL so she won't damage herself. After just a few minutes of play she's panting loudly, her ribcage heaving. She looks up at me with a haggard smile and circles under her eyes, pleading More! Don't stop now! Throw it again!

In the fullness of time, Wolfie became obsessed with the ball as well. Is it the breed? Is it the ball? Did Lexi somehow transmit her addiction to him when he was a puppy? He can be at the bottom of the field sniffing the spots where the deer have been, and all I have to say is BIGBALL and he takes off like a shot, careening uphill all the way to the garage, to where the coveted object is hidden behind some old cardboard boxes.

His style, however, is different from Lexi's. Since his mouth is huge, he can actually bite the thing. In fact the ball is all rough and pitted on one side, where he's tried to conquer it by gnawing on it. And because he thinks the ball is meant to be bitten, he doesn't have nearly the fine control over it that Lexi has achieved. But he has all her rage and fixation, and more.

BIGBALL sessions with Wolfie are a challenge. His stride is so long and he's so fast that in a few seconds he can have the ball out of the field and into the woods. Calling him is useless--I believe that he truly cannot hear me. The only thing that works is for me to get to within a few yards of him and shout “Down!” And miraculously, he does go down, panting, trembling, his eyes glazed, the ball between his paws, his teeth making a horrible noise as he tries to kill it.

“Leave it!” I say, and the jaws close, the paws release, and the ball is mine. “Good boy!” I say. I offer him a piece of cheese as a reward, but it's like offering a cigarette to a heroin addict while holding a loaded syringe in the other hand--he doesn't even see it. He trots beside me as we head back to the house, his eyes, his nose, his ears, his very soul glued to that ball.

“We'll play with it again tomorrow,” I say, dropping the ball behind the barricade of cardboard boxes. And slowly, with a look like that of someone coming out of anesthesia, Wolfie returns to reality, and to me,

I throw him a piece of cheese, which he snaps up in the air, and we go inside.

That's me growling, not my dogs. But I'm growling at my dogs, or rather at the mysteries and ironies of training dogs, living with dogs, trying to figure out dogs.

Last week, when our housekeeper, Vanessa, arrived to help keep household chaos at bay, not only had I made the bed and straightened up the kitchen in advance, but I had the dogs on stay, ready to enact our visitor-greeting ritual (see my November 18 post).

Wolfie and Lexi are wildly fond of Vanessa, so it is especially important to me to keep them in check when she comes. When Vanessa came in, I put her on stand-stay by the door, then released Lexi to say hello. By the time I told Lexi to stop the love-fest and leave the room, Wolfie was whining with excitement. I called him to me, but while I was doing that, Lexi went back to steal more kisses from Vanessa. This made Wolfie upset—I could not blame him—and while I was correcting Lexi, he rushed over to Vanessa, without permission. I scolded Lexi, retrieved Wolfie, and made him walk calmly (this took three tries) and sit in front of Vanessa to be petted.

As the dogs finally left the room Vanessa said, “Gosh, this is so much easier when you aren't here.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You know, when you're gone, and your husband lets me in.”

“Yes?” I said, my voice rising. “What happens then?”

“He just puts the dogs on stay, and then releases them.”

“And they mob you, right? Smash into your kneecaps, knock you over?”

“Not at all. They just come and say hello and then they go away.”

“On their own? They go away on their own?”

“Sure. It's over in a minute. It's a lot easier than what you're doing.”

I am aghast. I have been training dogs, our dogs, since 1980. Every dog we've had since then I've taken to obedience classes—some of them, like Lexi, for a full two years. I have sat at the feet of eight different trainers. I have read every dog training book, watched every dog training TV program and video I could lay my hands on. I have done everything I could to bond with my dogs: fed them, groomed them, played with them, worked and exercised them. I have dedicated major areas of my brain and my life to them.

And now it turns out that my husband—who tolerates dogs only for my sake, who doesn't feed or exercise or otherwise interact with them unless I specifically ask him to—is more successful in implementing the visitor-greeting ritual than I am.

What's going on? I can't bear the thought that he has some innate gift, some pheromone-related thing that causes dogs to pay attention to him and not to me. There has to be an intelligible reason behind this, something I can grasp, and emulate.

After days of mulling this over, here is all I can come up with: when someone comes to the door, my husband's main concern is with who it is, whereas mine is with how the dogs will behave. The dogs, bless their hearts, feel this intense focus of mine, and that makes them excited, and they do the very things I don't want them to.

I guess I just care too much, am too invested in their behavior. I am convinced that people will judge who I am by how my dogs act. Strangely, I never felt this way about my children, and they, in consequence, never let me down. From an early age, I trusted them to do the right thing.

Maybe it's time for me simply to trust my dogs.

O.k., that's it. I'm throwing in the towel, crying uncle, waving the white flag, giving up, capitulating. I'm not cooking dog food anymore.

Those of you who read my October 25 and October 30 posts know that I've been cooking my dogs' food for almost a month. And I've come to the conclusion that it's insane to keep doing it. Here's why:

1. Our freezer isn't big enough to store food for both dogs for even a single week, and ideally, to save time and labor, I'd like to fix two weeks' worth of food at a time.

2. To get around the freezer space problem, I decided to cook the meat and vegetables part of the meals separately from the rice. That way I could freeze the meat and veg, and cook the rice as needed. But that meant cooking rice every day and a half or so, and meat and veg every week, and remembering to defrost the next day's meat every morning, and keeping track of how the rice was holding up for each meal. Plus, since the dogs are different sizes, I had to remember how much rice and how much meat and veg each needed to eat at every meal. Should we ever go on a trip, I realized, I could never explain all this to the dog-sitter.

3. Ever since I started cooking for them, the dogs have been ravenously, constantly hungry. I've re-checked their protein intake and increased their rations to no effect. Two hours after a meal, they're famished, like me after dinner in a Chinese restaurant. And watching them patrol the kitchen for the smallest crumb, or inhale the seed hulls at the bottom of the bird feeder, or hearing them whine piteously when I start preparing their food has an unwholesome effect on my nerves. It makes me feel worried, unsettled and dispirited..

But I'm not going wholly back to kibble. I'll be supplementing it with vegetables, eggs, meat, powdered milk, canned fish—whatever comes to hand and seems healthy.

I'll be happier, and so will Lexi and Wolfie, for dog does not live by bread alone, but also by the feeling of easy communion with a non-frazzled mistress.

November 18, 2008

When Wolfie was seven months old, one day a bunch of people came to the house for a meeting followed by dinner. I put him and nine-year-old Lexi on down-stays in the living room, and they lay like statues until, at the end of the evening, the guests begged to pay their respects to them. My dogs, they exclaimed, were the best trained they'd ever seen.

Those were the good old days.

Wolfie's second birthday is less than two weeks away, and I'm sorry to say that, in the matter of greeting guests politely, he's acting like a two-month old puppy who happens to weigh 90+ pounds.

Here's how things are supposed to work: somebody knocks on the door. The dogs rush to see who it is, making an impressive noise. Since they're both German Shepherds, the noise is quite impressive, and they know it. I put them on down-stays several yards from the door, then let the person in. I put the person on stand-stay by the door. I go to Lexi (rank hath its privileges) and say, in a calm, almost indifferent tone, “Would you like to say hello?” Lexi walks over with her ears back and her tail wagging and gets petted by the guest. When I say “Enough!” she goes away and takes a nap, or whatever.

Then it's Wolfie's turn. I call him to me and have him walk quietly and serenely by my side until we reach the guest, whereupon Wolfie sits and gets a bit of petting. Again, I say “Enough!” and he goes off to do his thing, leaving us humans alone.

For weeks we practiced this ritual whenever anybody showed up at our door, and had it pretty well in hand. And then last week various people showed up three days in a row and, out of the blue, the dogs' behavior was abysmal.

The trouble started at the point where Wolfie was supposed to walk calmly and serenely towards the guest. Instead, he would plunge forward, mobbing the person and saying, to all effects, Where, oh where have you been all my life? Pet me, touch me, take me away with you forever!

While I was correcting Wolfie and hauling him back so we could start the guest approach again, Lexi, who wasn't born yesterday, would circle back and sneak in some extra petting from the guest, who so far hadn't been released from his stand-stay at the front door. This petting bonus would of course strike Wolfie as grossly unfair, making him all the more determined to reach the guest before the supply of affection ran out. It was chaotic, and, for me, humiliating. My two dogs were out of control. When the last set of people showed up, I shamefully abdicated: I shut the dogs away, and answered the door.

What's with my dogs? German Shepherds are supposed to be one-(wo)man dogs, polite but aloof with strangers. Yet Lexi and Wolfie have never met a person they haven't adored. We used to blame this on Lexi's unknown ancestry (she was a pound puppy), but Wolfie's father came straight from Germany, and there are serious Schutzhund dogs all over Wolfie's pedigree. The only good thing I can say about Wolfie and Lexi on this subject is that they have never jumped up on anyone.

Since the dogs are so friendly, why not, you ask, just let them have their way with guests? That might work if they were, say, Pugs. But two big specimens of what Cesar Millan calls a“powerful breed” bounding forward with the chummiest intentions can be alarming, even to dog lovers. I've got to get the guest-greeting ritual under control.

As a good (former) Catholic, before considering the situation I did an examination of conscience. And all became clear. Over the last several months, Wolfie, once a callow adolescent, has become unbelievably charming. He's big, he's sweet, he (finally!) clearly loves me. He minds beautifully inside the house, and pretty much outdoors. He lays his big head on my knee and looks into my eyes. He sighs, and throws himself at my feet. Who could resist? He's so tall that I can, without bending, pet him whenever he's at my side, which means that he gets a lot of “unearned” petting. Which, according to some schools of thought, makes him think that he can get away with anything. That he is, heaven help us, the boss.

I recall reading something about a last spurt of rebelliousness as a dog reaches the age of two. But that's just an average, and German Shepherds don't reach true maturity until they're at least three. Is there no end to this? Can't I just relax and “Let go, let Dog”? Is eternal vigilance the price of dog ownership?

I'm afraid it is. Otherwise, it wouldn't be so interesting.

November 17, 2008

Last winter was an especially cold and icy one in Vermont, and a plague of cabin fever raged across the land. “Never again!” my yoga teacher/herbalist/painter/gardener friend and I swore when it was over. (My friend's name is Dona Friedman, and you can see her work at artistseyestudio.com)

When the days started getting shorter this fall we began casting about for ways to keep ourselves and our friends lively and amused in the dark days ahead. We wanted something easy, basically an excuse to get together with people we like on a regular basis and with a minimum of fuss.

Just about everyone who moves to Vermont—or is born here and decides to stay—has an interesting story. People around here invent their lives and themselves in the best existentialist sense of the word. They blow glass, raise sheep, dry herbs, give massages, run for office...and there's never enough time to hear their stories when you meet them at a party or the post office.

Why not, my friend and I said, ask one of these interesting friends and neighbors to talk informally about his or her life and passions, and invite other friends and neighbors to drop in and listen? In a word, why not have a Salon?

So we did. Yesterday, Sunday, was the first one. There were nine people in all. Joanne Smith told us of her transformation from knitting aficionada in Connecticut to serious shepherd in Vermont. She was eloquent and witty, and told us amazing and intimate things about sheep. She let us feel the soft, lustrous yarns spun from the prize-winning wool of her Romneys. She spread out a sheepskin that would have made Jason and the Argonauts set sail for Vermont. She told us about Toby, her sheepdog, more of a friend and colleague than a dog. (You can see Joanne's farm, her sheep, and Toby at bearmountainfarm.com)

Joanne's Wool

We drank wine, ate cheese, asked Joanne questions and talked about whatever came into our heads. There was a fire going in the stove, and our little living room rang with talk and laughter.

It was way more fun than a movie, or a play, or a cocktail party. It was a salon, i.e., people turning to each other for stimulation, companionship, and that mysterious something that humans have been getting, since time immemorial, from sitting around a fire, talking.

November 9, 2008

A working couple with two daughters, a new job and a major relocation has decided to get a dog. What were they thinking? But promises are promises, so to ease the integration of the First Dog into the First Family, I offer the following:

--Appoint a Dog Nanny. You can't just entrust the puppy to some aide who's running around putting out fires and calculating her next step up the political ladder. Dogs love routine, and life in the White House is anything but (that's probably what finally got to Barney). The girls will give the pup fun and affection, but it is a rare child under voting age who can be relied on to fulfill a dog's needs on a daily basis. A Dog Nanny is the answer.

--Move the residence to the first floor. This might make the Secret Service nervous, but with a puppy, you have to have quick access to the outdoors. When he gets that worried look in his face and starts walking in circles, you should be able to sweep it up in your arms, run to the back door and deposit it on the grass in a matter of seconds. Not only does this avoid a spot on your rug, it gives the pup a chance to succeed and get some well deserved praise—an important component of training. You don't want to be rushing down the corridors of power with a leaking puppy at 2 a.m.

--Get a smallish dog. Big dogs are murder on floors. No matter how disciplined you are about trimming their nails, they still manage to score the floors, giving them that rustic, distressed look. A small dog doesn't weigh enough to do any damage, even if you occasionally forget to cut his nails. Also a large, young, enthusiastic dog is bound to jump up on an occasional guest before it is fully trained. You don't want your Rottweiler jumping up on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Little dogs jump up too, of course, but they are not likely to create an international incident in the process.

--If you get one of those hypoallergenic breeds—a poodle or poodle-mix—make sure that the dog can see you. These dogs have adorable curly fringes hanging down over their eyes, but remember, if you can't see the dog's eyes, the dog can't see you. A good dog learns to read her people like an open book, mostly by interpreting their body language, but she can't do this if her vision is obscured by a curtain of hair.

--Get a really good trainer (this may or may not be the same person as the dog nanny) and have him or her work with the dog AND the President every day. Impossible, you say? Not if you want to avoid the spectacle of the President running after a dog who would rather chase a squirrel than obey the Commander in Chief. If the First Dog does not acknowledge the President as alpha, the opposition leaders may start getting ideas. So don't skimp on the training: the entire planet is watching, and so are its dogs.

Who's the Alpha?

November 1, 2008 

I can “hear” Wolfie and Lexi saying it all day long. But I'm starting to grow inured to their pleas. I'm feeding them four and a half pounds of food every day, for crying out loud. How can they still be hungry?

This afternoon I took them out, one at a time, to work and exercise them, but first I let them watch me fill the treat pouch with pieces of mozzarella and tie it around my waist. Wolfie did some nice stays and recalls and was delighted with the cheese rewards. Then I brought out the ball thrower, which he is addicted to, and made him stay while I waved the thrower around. He was o.k. with that. I ratcheted up the challenge by actually throwing the ball past him, and he held his stay. But when I tried to reward his self control with a bit of cheese, all he cared about was the BALL! He wanted to CHASE THE BALL!!! That's why he'd done all that silly stuff I'd asked of him, so he COULD CHASE THE BALL!!!! It was clear that even the ripest Camembert would not have distracted him, so I put the cheese away and let him have a rip-roaring session of chasing THE BALL!!

(As I threw balls for him with all my might, I remembered, two years ago, with the snow deep outside, locking myself in our guest room with eight-week-old Wolfie and a little ball. I would throw the ball and he would toddle after it, but would get distracted by the fringe on the rug. Eventually he'd remember the ball, start to bring it to me, drop it, go after the fringe again, find the ball, chew on it a while...tempus fugit.)

Then it was Lexi's turn to work. This is a dog who's been through years of obedience training, and has all her commands down pat. But she was so focused on cheese, the presence of cheese, the possibility of cheese, that when I put her on sit/stay and walked away in order to do a recall, she kept getting up and following me. It was as if there were a string from her nose to the cheese, and she couldn't not follow it. It took a few tries, but eventually she recalled what recalls were all about, and ran to me to snatch her reward, almost taking off my fingers as she did so.

The dogs have just had their dinner, and are lying down, momentarily sated. In half an hour, though, they'll be thinking about food again, like this:

Wolfie and Lexi 30 minutes after a meal

October 30, 2008

That's what my dogs are. Ever since I fed them their first home-cooked dinner, Wolfie and Lexi have had nothing but food on their minds. With two intense German Shepherds following my every move day and night, I'm starting to feel like my Cro-Magnon ancestors when they heard the howling come closer, and saw pairs of glowing eyes staring at them just beyond the firelight.

I don't know how to interpret this new food fixation. Does it mean they adore my cooking (and it does smell good, if I say so myself), or are they truly hungry? Lexi's veterinary chiropractor/acupuncturist (one of Lexi's favorite people in the whole world; see doctorstephanie.com) did warn me that feeding a home-cooked diet would require a larger volume of food than feeding commercial kibble. But I wasn't prepared for how much larger.

In the good-old kibble days, Lexi would get two cups and Wolfie four cups of kibble every day, for a total of six cups. Bearing in mind Dr. Stephanie's advice, I increased the amount to eight cups a day for both dogs. I made up my first big vat of rice and chicken livers and sardines and kale and apportioned it neatly into seven freezer bags, each containing eight cups.

I laugh a bitter laugh at my naivete. Those bags are leaving the freezer at a much faster rate than one a day. For the moment, feeding TEN cups a day is barely sufficient to keep my toes from being chewed off. I've been told to watch my dogs' weight to judge how much to feed them. That's easier said than done. Day-to-day, my dogs look pretty much the same to me. That is how last winter Lexi somehow put on ten pounds, which we've been struggling ever since to get off her.

As I write, there's another, bigger vat of dog food cooking on the stove. I'm going out of town next week, and my husband is not into canine—or any kind—of cooking (I'll freeze some bags of human food for him as well). I'm also leaving some emergency kibble in the pantry (for the dogs).

But I'm into this cooking-of-dog-food for the long run, I hope, and I have to find a way to do it efficiently. Over the decades, I have mastered the art of producing a decent, nourishing dinner (though not one that would earn Michelin stars) for my husband and me in thirty minutes max (twenty is preferable). With that in mind, how big a deal should I make of my dogs' meals?

Is life too short to cook for dogs? Would the cooking time be better spent playing with Lexi and Wolfie? Keeping up with friends? Cooking for my husband? Doing yoga? Life on earth is a zero-sum game. What matters most?

What do you think?

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