My Life is Shit

These two produce an inordinate amount of poop.

When we decided to get our second dog, Tony, I did not think of how I was going to have double the dog shit in our tiny yard, nor did I think house-training him would be a big deal.

Where we are with the house training: I am inordinately proud of myself for teaching Tony to ring the bells I hung on the doors when he wants to go out.

Honestly, though, that was easy, took about a day for him to get it.

The hard part: convincing Tony that, yes, it is important to never pee or poop in the house.

Also, he abuses those bells, sometimes ringing them every few minutes, and for a wide variety of reasons, such as he’d like to lay out in the sun.

Which is fine, except we have discovered that it is impossible to make our driveway gate “Tony-proof.” He can get under it when it’s closed. However, we can’t make that gap any smaller or it won’t open.

(Contemplating an “invisible fence,” if you’ve got any advice about that.)

So, for weeks, I have been at the other end of the leash, poop bag in hand, every time Tony (and Lola, who always comes along) has pooped or peed.

There are times in life when biology is much more front and center than usual. 

I told this to my husband, a gastroenterologist. “Yeah, tell me about it,” he said.

I am reminded of bringing home new babies with all that entails, from spitting up (etc.) for the baby to let-down (etc.) for the mom.

Working on getting Tony's and Lola's biology back to humming along without quite so much of my involvement.

A Two-Dog Day

Travelling in the car is a bit
more of a production, too.

I’m just getting used to having two dogs, but here’s what I’ve discovered so far. 

I’m trying to house-train our newest, Tony, so he is either in his crate or I am on him like white on rice, going on frequent bathroom trips in addition to being ever-ready to scoop him up and run for the door, trailing pee and yelling “No, no, no! No pee in the house!”

The vet, who I am beginning to realize was being a wee bit disingenuous, said, “It’s easy. As soon as he’s gone without an accident in the house for a week, you’re done.”

Well, let’s just say, we’ve had to reset that clock a few times. (It’s like “Groundhog Day” around here but with pee and poop involved.)

Technically, Tony and I should be connected by a short leash at all times. When my husband asked me why we were not, I pointed out that my sanity is worth something too.

I amuse myself on our frequent outings by pretending to be the grandfather from “Moonstruck,” muttering, “Ciao, bella! Andiamo! Bella luna!” The dogs don’t seem to mind, though the neighbors are probably wondering.

And those neighbors also probably hear my heartfelt cheers several times a day – “Good boy! Yay! So smart!” – when Tony does his business outside. I’ve even started to cheer 9-year-old Lola since she seems to think it’s unfair – those sad eyes – when I cheer for Tony but not for her.

I’ve discovered we’ve got a bit of work to do on walks outside our yard. Lola pulls on her leash like she’s running the Iditarod and likes to argue with me on street corners about which way we should go. Tony, meanwhile, loses his mind every time he sees another dog.

We are a work in progress.

Dog Stars, Or What Have I Done?

Lola and Tony

Tony was left in a motel lobby, by someone hoping some suckers nice people would take him in. 

I thought, no big deal. After all, we already have a dog.

Is Lola, our 9-year-old standard poodle, perfectly behaved? No. She jumps on visitors, particularly ones that don’t want to be jumped on. She dumps over the garbage.

But she is now the reasonable one, next to Tony.

That’s not really true. He is a cute, sweet boy.

But he is so different from Lola.

Lola was a distinct choice. We read up on poodles. They are famous for being smart and high-energy. (Actually, after Lola outsmarted me a few times, I began to wonder whether a dumb, low-energy dog might not have its own advantages.) Poodles are very social; they make eye contact with people. They walk with a spring in their step that’s called “the poodle prance.” I read that I shouldn’t be surprised if my poodle does not ever want to be out in the yard by herself. Meet Lola. Lola (“poodle” comes from the German for “puddle”) strides through every puddle she comes across.

I’ve now been reading about Tony, who appears to be mostly dachshund

Ut oh.

Dachshunds are notoriously difficult to housebreak. Bred to go after badgers, they are brave to the point of foolhardiness. Tony has appointed himself guard dog already. As hounds, dachshunds are obsessed with food. Tony’s strategy is “eat first, decide if it’s food later.” He eats leaves, twigs, dirt, wood chips. And they hate getting their feet wet. The first rainy day, Tony peeked out the door, then turned tail to run back inside. Forced to come out, he ran to the dry ground under our eaves – and refused to pee.

Wish me luck.

P.S. Here’s what EB White had to say about his dachshund, Fred: “Being the owner of dachshunds, to me a book on dog discipline becomes a volume of inspired humor. Every sentence is a riot … I would rather train a striped zebra to balance an Indian club than induce a dachshund to heed my slightest command … Of all the dogs whom I have served I’ve never known one who understood so much of what I say or held it in such deep contempt. When I address Fred I never have to raise either my voice or my hopes. He even disobeys me when I instruct him in something that he wants to do.” 

My Morning Routine

I used to think of myself as a morning person.

But my husband reminded me that, when we both had to be at work early, I used to ask him grumpily, “Must you bound out of bed like a damn gazelle?”

I guess it depends on what you mean by “awake.”

If you mean curled up, in pajamas, reading and writing, yes, I can be happily awake early.

If you mean bounding out of bed, turning on the lights, jumping in the shower, no.

In recent years, however, I have had be up at 5 am and out by 5:30, to get my son to swim practice.

The only way I can drag myself out of bed that early is to know that Lola the Dog and I are going to pad down the hall and climb into my son’s bed. After a moment, my son will groan, “OK, guys, we really have to get up.” If he didn’t, Lola and I would happily go back to sleep.

It helps that I'm throwing on clothes I find on the floor.

I move toward coffee. If they are doing a “land” practice at their school, I get to stop at the coffee bar on the corner, where, let’s just say, they know me.

Driving to their old pool, I saw a Starbucks under construction. When it finally opened, I was at the drive-through at 5:45. I was alone. By the second day, however, there was a line and even people sitting out on its patio, in the dark.

Scary, how addictive Starbucks can be.

Now, the swim team is using a different pool – and I can find no lattes on the route.

I’m back to making my own.

Theoretically, I could do a 6:30 yoga class.

Yeah … no.

The Scoop on Picking Up Poop

© Diana Thomson

OK, so most of us know, even if we don’t like and even if we don’t do it, that dog owners are supposed to pick up after their animals.

And for those who don’t, some places are looking into ways to catch them, like by testing the DNA of poops and tracing them back to the dogs’owners.

However simple the concept of cleaning up after your dog seems, some people don’t get it. Take, for instance, one of my mother’s neighbors. He carries bags, brightly colored ones, no less, he deposits his dog’s poops in them, but then he ties up the bag and leaves it on whoever’s lawn the dog pooped on. See? That misses the whole point. You’d think this didn’t have to be spelled out, but apparently it does: No one else should have to deal with your dog’s poops.

In my own neighborhood, via Nextdoor, which I think of as the “Nosy Neighbor Network,” even as I use it myself, there was a long-running debate about whether it was OK to toss your dog’s poop in your neighbor’s garbage can while you are out walking. The majority opinion was no, though I enjoyed one opposition post: “Oh, the horror, to have your garbage can smell like … garbage!”

My husband and I differ in how we handle the poop bag once it is, err, filled. I wrap the bag up into a small package and hold it, hidden, in my hand. One drawback: yup, your hand might smell more like poop if you do it this way. My husband, in contrast, holds the bag by the handles and even swings it as he walks and talks to people. I think, no one wants to see that.

And that’s all the scoop I have on that.

Walking with Lola the Dog

Did somebody say "walk"?
 

Lola loves walks, grabbing her leash and running to the gate when it’s time.

They are her walks, I figure, so I let her choose where we go. (OK, if I didn’t, we’d have embarrassing arguments at street corners, arguments I often lose.)

In Inside A Dog, Alexandra Horowitz explains, unlike us, dogs’ primary sense is smell, not sight. Sometimes, Lola will smell something in the ground that makes her normally upright tail fall limp; she will even refuse to walk past the spot. Creepy. Are bodies buried there?

Lola keeps up her end of the doggy smell conversation, carefully placing her pee and poop, the latter sadly an exercise in futility since I pick it up. Lola also loves an audience. That’s why, when we walk past restaurants with outdoor dining, I have to pull her along, hissing, “Don’t you dare, Lola!” ‘Cause she totally would.

Lola always wants to walk on a nearby shopping street, not on quiet residential streets. Her favorite spot is a frozen-yogurt shop because she gets lots of attention from little people covered in yogurt who don’t mind getting licked. And, operating under the theory of “If I act like I know what I’m doing, people will think it’s OK,” she will try to duck into other businesses. One store owner actually asked us if we’d come in and hang out, since the charismatic Lola often attracts a crowd.

We have to deal with cats who come out to play mind games on Lola, whom they absolutely know is on a leash.

And yesterday, we had to get close, but not too close, to one of those arm-wavy inflatable things (called an AirDancer, by the way) and watch it for a long time.

Then Lola went home for a nap.

Dog Poop

© Diana Thomson

Someday, archeologists are going to excavate our landfills and find millions of little plastic bags,
each one containing a single dog shit. (Also, millions of disposable diapers, each containing a single baby shit.)

What are they going to think?

If they surmise that we were fascinated by shit, they wouldn’t be entirely wrong, at least about some of us.

Three generations of my family play a game that could be called “Make the other person look at the pooping dog.” You are out somewhere with a companion. You see a dog shitting. You figure out a way to fool your companion into looking at the pooping dog. (“What kind of flower is that?” you might ask, pointing.) The goal is to get the other person to look in a way they can’t deny: they stopped and turned around, for instance.

My mother is the reigning champ at this game. One memorable day, she cried, “Look! A mother deer with two fawns!” My sister and I ran to the window … only to see our dog taking a dump in the yard.

This game is not easy. It takes a dog only seconds to shit; you’ve got to act fast. (And it is much less easy once people have learned that you are a weirdo who will do something like this.)

But we are not alone. Here, from a professional photographer, are “Dramatic Portraits of Dogs Pooping.” And here’s where you can order your 2014 “pooping dog” calendar. And this news story is about a researcher who recorded thousands of dog shits, to show that dogs – when they are fussing around with where to place their shits – may be trying to line them up with the magnetic forces of the earth. (Thanks, Yoram and Melissa.)

Dog Years

If you put a hat (or a tiara) on Lola's head and tell her she's pretty,
she will wear it -- even though she has her doubts.

The other day, Lola the dog started behaving: she didn’t tip over the garbage, didn’t steal food, didn’t
jump on visitors, didn’t pull on her leash like she was hauling a sledge.

I brought her to the vet.

She didn’t leap out of the car and drag me to the vet’s door. (She loves the vet.) I had to coax her. She didn’t jump up to see the receptionist over the counter, and because she didn’t do that, she didn’t see the bowl of treats up there and try to stick her face into it.

If you saw her, though, you wouldn’t think she was sick. Her tail waved. She climbed onto the examining table because she knew that’s what happened next. She licked the vet’s cheek as the vet listened to her heart.

You would think she was a calm, well-behaved dog.

“This isn’t like her,” I explained.

Turns out Lola was ill, mildly so. She felt better a few hours after taking her first dose of antibiotics.

“Thank God!” my high-school daughter texted me. She had been texting me all day, to find out what the vet had said. “I thought Lola was going to die.”

Me too.

Your mind goes that way with dogs, doesn’t it? You are always aware that they aren’t going to live as long as you are. They go from puppy to full-size in two years. Lola, a black standard poodle, started to experience “fade,” gray hairs interspersed in the inky black, by the time she was three. At six, her chin is all gray.

Happy to report that Lola’s her old, bouncy self. She just went outside to dig in the flowerbeds.

What's Up With Lola?

For some reason, our dog Lola has decided that the thing to do, when someone throws a blanket over her head, is to stay stock still until that someone removes it. We don’t know why.

How well humans and dogs get along and understand each other is, when you think about it, kind of miraculous. According to the scientists who study such things, dogs are the only other animals who understand what we mean when we point. Also, unlike other animals, dogs watch our faces for clues about what we are saying and doing. And dogs can understand a surprising number of our words.

But do we understand as much about them?

For instance, Lola is generally very intent on following me everywhere … until she isn’t. At some point during the day, she evidently thinks, “Enough of this crap” and stays asleep where she is.

Lola doesn't bark when someone comes

to our door. She just looks at them

through the sidelight.

And why does she always want to go on all car trips? Most such trips, such as when I go back and forth with to my kids’ schools, must be pretty boring for her, not to mention that sometimes she ends up at the groomer. Still, she always wants to go.

Lola is particularly stupid about cars. She is smart enough to know that there are people in cars. She can even tell when a car is a Prius, which is the kind of car my husband drives, getting visibly excited when she sees one. Unfortunately, she will purposely step in front of a moving car – so that the people will get out and pay attention to her or invite her along for the ride, I think. Which is, of course, the worst thing she could do – and I have no idea how to communicate that to her.

The Poodle Press

Our dog Lola likes to lie on the laundry. If there’s a pile of laundry anywhere – and there often is, she

Lola on the job.

will climb to the top of the teetering mound and lie on it.

The laundry I leave piled up is clean. (Honest.) Here’s my thinking: it’s clean so it’s done. You can just pull out what you need.

My husband is not entirely comfortable with this approach. So, I tell him that Lola provides an extra step in the laundry process, “the poodle press.” It’s why we look as crisp and pressed as we do, I say, plus it gives Lola a sense of purpose. He remains skeptical.

I HATE folding laundry. It is a tedious, thankless, pointless, never-ending task. Everyone has chores they hate, right? My husband hates to unload the dishwasher. My sister hates to look through her mail. I hate to fold the freaking laundry.

And ironing? Ha! Among the many things my mother will not let me forget is the time we got our young daughter a doll house for Christmas and she held up a little plastic iron attached by a string to a little plastic ironing board. “What’s this?” she wanted to know.

But, hey, we don’t need an iron to press our clothes. We have Lola.

On Being A Dog Person

I don’t trust people who don’t like dogs.

I also don’t trust people whom dogs don’t like.

Of course, my dog loves, loves, LOVES everybody.

So, she’s no help.

If you were to break into my house, the only risk you’d run is getting licked on, or preferably in, the mouth.

When a guy came recently to fix something, he had to get down on the floor and crawl into a cabinet to get to some wiring. I walked in to find Lola, our dog, in there with him, tail wagging. She was licking his face.

When I called her away, apologizing, he said it was OK. He actually sounded like he meant it. Which is when I knew he was a nice guy, Lola’s breath in there must have been fierce.

I often think of Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials trilogy. Because Lola acts an awful lot like my daemon. In Pullman’s story, every character has a daemon, a creature who is always with them, who is actually part of them, somehow.

Lola follows me everywhere. She is, right now, in fact, lying a few feet from me, steadily watching my face. Not sure why she finds my doings so interesting. Not sure what she makes of my doings at all.

And if you look at having a dog, in a bean-counter kind of way, it makes no sense. They don’t serve a purpose. And they can be a pain in the ass. Stealing the food off the table. Getting into the garbage. Needing to be walked. Needing to be picked up after. Going to the vet, the groomer, to be boarded when you’re away. Some shed fiercely. Others drool.

Still … I am so happy to have her around.

On Naming A Dog

Someone in the dog park once told me that a dog’s name should be two syllables, ending with a vowel, but it shouldn’t contain the “o” sound because that sounds like “no.” Then, he took a look at Lola, my nut-ball standard poodle, bounding around with her tongue hanging out, and said that, for her, that last part probably didn’t matter.

I’d add that it has to be something easy to call: “Lola! Lola! Lola!” as opposed to “Forsythia! Forsythia! Forsythia!” And it’s nice if it’s something you’re not embarrassed to shout out. I am reminded of a cat I once knew, named Shit Face.

As with children, don’t pick something people don’t understand when they hear it.



Don't name them something stupid. They'll know.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

There just should be something light-hearted about a dog’s name. That’s why familiar, and maybe slightly silly, human names are so popular: Ruby, Molly, Lily, Sally. For boys, Rufus, Reggie, Sam, Dale, Tex, Toby.

Adults, unlike children, have a tendency to try too hard. Sometimes, they do too cute -- I am reminded of two Chihuahua siblings named Poochie and Pooter and also of a dignified Great Dane named Flopsie.  And sometimes, they try for profound/poetic, naming a dog Indigo, for instance, or Midnight. (How do you even call those last two names?)

I have met dogs named after rock stars and after obscure figures in the Bible. I am not generally a big fan of naming dogs like this, though I did once meet a pit-bull puppy named Bukowski, after the writer Charles Bukowski. Nickname: Boo. This fit.

My favorite dog name belonged to a sweet, feathery-coated black retriever: Glory.

... Though, of course, I am pretty partial to Lola.