2 and a half

Barry gets a word in edgewise

Sunglasses disaster

Note to self: Don't leave your sunglasses on the table on the back patio after doing yard work, knowing full well that your dog likes to hop up there on that table and lie around, and that if he does so he may find whatever is up there and chew it to shreds.

Witness the following diagram, which I have carefully laid out to illustrate the carnage that happened to me:

Shocking, isn't it? I might as well have set fire to two $100 bills. 

Imagine that you're walking through the yard, doing the job that every dog owner must do which is scooping up poop. You come across a brown object that looks like poop, but no - it's the pair of sunglasses that you lost two weeks ago. And they don't look like sunglasses any longer. They look like the picture above.

That was me, although I suspected Barry had gotten ahold of them but just couldn't come to terms with it until I knew for sure.

I might have to go with a pair of gas station sunglasses from now on.

Impaled

Barry had a bad day last Thursday. He was running around outside and, being the clumsy chap that he is, knocked a bronze statue over. It fell on him and punctured his rear leg.

It wasn't a large statue, but large enough. Forty to fifty pounds is enough to do damage to all but the largest dogs. He was lucky, in fact. It could have punctured his torso or some other body part.

This all happened during my commute home from work. I received a phone call from my wife and she informed me about what happened. She even texted me pics, and I would post them here but they are not all that pleasant to look at. There's some protruding muscle and some blood, and if you're like me that doesn't sit well.

An hour after the incident, the only 24-hour vet in town informed us that Barry had been "impaled" and would need surgery overnight. "Impaled?" I thought. The antler of an innocent-looking bronze statue of a deer had impaled our dog? It sounded so severe. But he had, indeed, been pierced by a heavy, pointed object.

Poor Barry.

We picked him up in the morning, complete with a partially shaved right hind leg, stitches, and a cone on his head. Why the cone? Because it prevents him from chewing on the injury, tearing out the stitches and otherwise infecting the wound. He looks like Bosco from One Crazy Summer.  It's really called an e-collar, although it's got nothing to do with the Internet.

If you've ever had a dog who has had to wear an e-collar, you know he's about a foot wider than he normally is when it's on. That would be fine, except he has no idea he's wearing it, which means the dog is generally causing havoc simply by walking around. Tables and and chairs get knocked over, walls get scratched, kids get taken down. That, plus the dog is handicapped. He cannot go up the stairs, for example, because the e-collar hangs too low and catches. He can't properly chew on a bone or a toy because he cannot hold it with his paws. And he often has to try several times to get through a doorway.

But, Barry can take solace in the fact that his cousin Sadie (my brother's red fox lab) currently wears an e-collar too. You'd think it's a back-to-school fad, but no. Sadie tore her ACL a few weeks back and has to wear one for the same reasons Barry does.

Everybody loves company, especially a dog. Here they are:

Have you had a dog who's had to wear an e-collar? What's been your experience?

 

Swim lessons

I've sometimes wondered how certain people manage to make it through childhood without learning how to swim. I was talking to someone today, for example, about how Audrey is taking two weeks of swim lessons starting Monday. He mentioned that his mother never learned how to swim. "So you could literally plop her in a lake and she'd drown?" I asked.

Ok, I didn't ask that, but I would assume it would be true. On the one hand I would think an adult human might be able to figure swimming out, just like a dog does. Dogs don't get swim lessons. Our dog Barry literally walked off the edge of a dock the first time he encountered water. He didn't understand that the ground would no longer be there. (It was fairly humorous.) He sunk at first, but his head popped back up soon enough. He looked shocked, but figured out how to dog paddle pretty quickly. Figuring out the direction to the shore was another issue but you can't expect to learn everything in a matter of seconds, can you?

On the other hand, I would think an adult who didn't know how to swim might not figure it out in real time because they would panic and flail around. Fear would take over. But the question is - how do you even get there in the first place? Swimming skills are easy to learn, widely taught, inexpensive and frankly, are essential. How, as a parent, do you manage to avoid finding a way to teach your children how to swim? How, as an adult, do you manage to avoid find a way to learn?

Admittedly I would like Audrey to have learned how to swim already because she's around water regularly. She had a breakthrough last week where she'll now enter deep water on her own and trust the floaties and/or life jacket to take over. It's a good step but she still couldn't swim on her own.

Once she learns it's a skill she'll use all her life and it will bring fun and pleasure and confidence to her. For my wife and I it will provide peace of mind (and make us proud to see our little girl swimming, too.) We may even get Grace going too - they start teaching around 1 and a half years old.

What do you think? Are swimming skills essential?

The diaper pail

Here's a million dollar idea: invent an odorless diaper pail. No, not one of those that you can go find on Amazon right now that claims to be odorless. One that, no matter what horrific-smelling diapers lie within, actually is. One that, when closed, has something akin to a hermetic seal.

Each Sunday night I take out the garbage and as part of that job I empty the diaper pail. We keep ours outside the back door because of the stench that would otherwise permeate the house. If we could keep it inside, conveniently next to the changing table, that would make life easier, even if only by a little bit.

Some will say we should use cloth diapers instead and, voila, problem solved. We tried it - we bought a bunch of Fuzzi Bunz. My question for you is - have you ever used cloth diapers? Do you like the idea of human waste in your sink or in your washing machine? Do you know what a chore they really are? I recycle and respect the environment as much as the next person does, but cloth diapers are a tough sell.

Something tells me that a truly odorless diaper pail for the consumer will never be. But if you can come up with one it's a million dollar idea. While you're at it, figure out how do one for dog poop as well.

Goldendoodle

Some of my friends have been congratulating me on the new child puppy we got last week. Yes, I finally buckled under the pressure of two little girls (and a wife) who for some time have insisted on having a canine companion in our household. So now we have one - his name is Barry and he's a Goldendoodle.

For the unenlightened, Goldendoodles are mixes between Golden Retrievers and standard Poodles. But there's more to it than that - there are F1, F1b and F2 Goldendoodles. Barry is the first kind which means he's a direct cross between a Golden and a Poodle. The latter two kinds are a cross between a Goldendoodle and a Poodle, and between two Goldendoodles, respectively. Seems to me there ought to be a fourth, which is a cross between a Goldendoodle and a Golden. Maybe there's just not enough 'doodle' in that combo to make it work - I don't know.

I've found all kinds of stuff online about how Goldendoodles (and Labradoodles, too) are nothing but 'glorified mutts' - on the one hand that's fine with me because a mix has a healthier set of genes than a purebred does, but here's the truth - all purebred lines (with the exception of the Maltese) originated from a fairly narrow population of 'village dogs' who hung around towns in East Asia (or Northern Africa, depending on which pool of research you believe) years ago. Over time, people developed certain lines of dogs from this gene pool for a specific purpose, such as to do specific kinds of work. These lines then attained legitimacy by being 'recognized' by organizations like the American Kennel Club - but they were all mutts to begin with. Regardless, it's all just chromosomes, so long as you love your pup. 

So far Barry has lived up to the hype around the Goldendoodle - no shedding, smart, trainable, good with kids, pleasant to be around, and of course, cute and fuzzy. Oh - he also poops and pees on the floor of our house but, then, so do all puppies.

Even Barry's vet was surprised at how easy-going he is, especially for a young dog. Having had a high-strung Golden Retriever growing up, I'd say Barry's mellowness comes from the Poodle in him. But a neighbor who came by believes the opposite is true. In the end, mixed-breed dogs are like a box of chocolates - you never quite know what you're going to get. I, for one, think we got a bit lucky.

Audrey and Grace, of course, love him, and love to mess with him too. We're teaching Audrey not to use his tail as a leash and Grace not to lay across him while he naps, for example. Sometimes I wonder whether Barry, when he gets stalked by Grace with a big grin on her face, feels the same way pedestrians did when the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man threatened to squish them in Ghostbusters. But we're also teaching Barry not to eat Audrey's Cinderella shoes or try to snatch Grace's pacifier from her mouth.

Oh - and with two little girls helping out with the naming, you've got to expect something strange. His full name? Straw'Barry' Snorklin Duke. You can't make this stuff up.

Bye Sammy, and other news

Sammy the Elf has retired for the season, having wrapped up his tour of our home by hanging acrobatically from one of the cupboards in our kitchen. Consistent with Audrey's wishes he stayed around for an extra day or so after Christmas so that she could say her goodbyes. And even then, when he was gone on the morning of the 27th, she still felt she hadn't sufficiently said farewell.

But, out with the old, in with the new. Or the somewhat new, I suppose. Audrey's imaginary friend Cali is back, for the first time since last April, and again has been spending her time at the top of the big tree behind our house. As before, Cali still resides full time in Chicago (specifically Evanston, Audrey reminded me yesterday) and still shows up only around breakfast time. We're told she's only going to stick around for another day or two so we make sure to wave to her each morning.

Grace has no imaginary friends yet - at least none we know of - perhaps because she is too busy keeping up with her real friends. Namely her sister and her cousin Trever who have a tendency to steamroll her when they are playing together, as well as Tuaca, her second cousin's Boykin Spaniel who is currently visiting for a few days. 

Speaking of dogs, it's the first time the girls have been exposed to a live puppy in our home environment and, I must say, it's only making things worse for me, who has been resiting repeated requests for one. Not that I'm not a dog lover - I am - but it's always a lot more work than one thinks and we don't have a fully fenced yard. Oh - and there's the occasional dog that disappears because it gets eaten by a mountain lion, not that the Department of Wildlife would admit that.

It's not that dogs disappear often, but when you hear about an incident you don't tend to forget about it. In one instance that took place either early this year or sometime last year, a woman was walking her Yorkie at night and a mountain lion literally leaped over a fence, grabbed the dog from its leash and was gone, all in a split second. Imagine how terrifying that would be - the woman has probably been in therapy since. If she ever gets a new dog, perhaps a defenseless little Yorkie isn't the kind to get. 

As I said, out with the old, in with the new.