Walks with Dogs

The dog world is being overrefined. And I don’t like it.

Case in point: Beverly Hills Chihuahua which in fact I thoroughly enjoyed. But that’s because despite the typical puerile Disney plot, the action was well paced with spectacular special effects. And most of the jokes worked. My favorite scene: a cloud of dust approaches as Delgado, Chloe’s guardian German Shepherd, stands outnumbered against a pack of wolves. Closer, closer the great cloud. It is…a pack of Chihuahuas, all barking their brains out. The wolves flee.

But it’s no joke when real life  merges into an animated fantasy.

Consider the dog as he really is. He is a running, jumping, digging, and dodging hunting machine. He was not made to spend his life in a dog park or on a leash or in a Rodeo Drive handbag. I took  a Chesapeake Bay Retriever/Irish Setter on a grueling cross-country trip in the early 1970’s. She chased the truck at 20mph for an hour, but that is another story, and not necessarily a happy one. Watch Border Collies herding sheep. Watch, as Mike and I did on our Bermuda honeymoon, a working unit of four or five German Shepherds with no humans in sight, herding sheep, then running down to the shore for a quick swim and tumble, then back up to the job.

Consider the qualities of the wolf, ancestor to the dog.  From:

 
http://www.wolfhaven.org/physiology.php
Wolf Haven International
Wolves are superbly constructed and adapted for their particular role in an ecosystem - predators that pursue a large and small prey over different kinds of terrain: open plains, dense forest, deep snow, steep slopes and into the water if need be. Wolves have developed lean, muscular bodies set on long, powerful legs to be able to pursue prey. Wolves are built for endurance and running; they can average around 25 miles per hour for several miles and 35 to 40 miles per hour for short bursts. The wolf’s expert hunting ability comes from a combination of speed, stamina and strategy. Because wolves have narrow chests and outward – splayed forelegs, their hind legs can move in the same track as their front legs – an advantage in covering ground efficiently. Wolves’ large, well-padded feet help to spread their weight over snow and allows them to efficiently grip irregular surfaces like rocks and logs.

The sagittal crest (the bone on the top of the skull) on a wolf is where the jaw muscles are attached. This is well defined on the wolf because of their very powerful jaw. Wolves’ jaws produce immense power - a crushing pressure of about 1,500 pounds per square inch (psi), compared with 750 pounds for average large dogs such as German Shepherds. Wolves have 42 teeth specialized for stabbing, shearing and crushing bones. The first four teeth, front and bottom are called incisors and are used for nipping and gnawing meat from the bone. Wolves use their canine teeth, which can grow to be 2 inches in length, for gripping and holding itself to the prey animal. The premolars are used for slicing and grinding. The specialized molars, called carnassials are used for slicing and tearing. The last molars are used for pulverizing and grinding food.

Even more extraordinary is a wolf’s sense of smell - up to 100,000 times greater than human beings’. Under the right conditions a wolf can smell something up to 300 yards to 1 mile away. Their hearing is excellent also. Under certain conditions, wolves can hear a howl as far as six miles away in the forest and ten miles away on the open tundra.

In summary, the model upon which all canids are built:

• predators
• superbly constructed
• built for endurance and running
• speed, stamina and strategy
• jaws with immense crushing power
• teeth for nipping and gnawing and gripping the prey animal
• sense of smell up to 100,000 times greater than humans’
• Excellent hearing

So we take an animal with claws and fangs, a deep chest, a tucked belly, long springy legs and an indomitable will. Then what? We attempt in so many ways to remove him from the very nature for which he was designed. We make a mockery of God’s magnificent creations.

Apartments:

Where better to witness the pathetic degeneration of the species than Manhattan, where I spent many years, most recently the summer of 2006.  The rule in big city co-ops is no dog over 25 pounds. Co-op boards vote you in or out in New York, and they can be tough. Case in point: my aunt’s building, The Edgewater, overlooking the East River, voted the legendary Frank Sinatra out because of his wild parties. Some bozo had dropped a whiskey bottle from the penthouse terrace to the street way below. Fortunately no pedestrians died, but Old Blue Eyes  had to do it his way someplace else.

They are just as relentless with dogs. A realtor friend told me she had a client with a pug, but it was a fat pug weighing at least 35. Knowing if the pug made a personal appearance, her client would be rejected, she got the board to agree to make their decision based upon a picture of the dog.

All the clients’ pictures showed a clearly overweight, underfit beast. So the realtor went to Google and came up with some ideal weight pug pictures. She had to find the right color. Then she had to rumple the picture so it looked long possessed and loved. She spilled a little coffee on it, for further veracity. Then she had to buy an appropriate frame. Steely though they were, the board was satisfied, and the client and his obese animal moved in. This is how silly it gets.

The biggest dog I saw in the vicinity of East 72 Street was a little border collie. “You poor suckers” I thought, stepping my way through droves of pugs and Shih Tzus straining at their leashes, peeking out from their velvet handbags, “you poor little suckers.”

Audience with His Holiness, the XIV Dalai Lama. Yours truly to his left, holding his hand. He has a firm clasp. Taken January, 2000 in Bodhgaya, India.

Atlanta, GA, USA, 22 October 2007 - By Salvador Rizzo, The Emory Wheel - Thick, looming fog and the threat of rain couldn’t keep thousands of people from attending the Dalai Lama’s free public address ar Centennial Olympic Park…  

Here are some of his words transcribed verbatim:

“According to my own little experience, what I learned, when we have difficulties, most reliable friend is our own inner feelings,” he said.  “Peaceful society must come from genuine inner peace.”

Reducing anger and jealousy on an individual level - what he termed ‘inner disarmament’ leads to ‘external disarmament’ on a wider level, he said.

“Last century, millions of people killed - not much benefit,” he said.  “The concept of war is outdated, it’s very clear.  This century, 21st century, should be century of dialogue.”

He posited that humans, unlike some other species such as turtles, naturally tend toward compassion, and he encouraged the audience to nurture their children and take to heart the lessons gleaned from family life.

“The seed of compassion, from birth, we already have. Very nature, we come from our mother - our entire life depends on others’ care,” he said, adding that his affection for all people comes not from Buddhism, but from his own mother.

“My mother was very warm-hearted.  Never angry,” he said.  “My compassion, I learned from her.”

And this instruction for children, he said, should also take place in classrooms. “I raise question whether modern education system effective,” he said.  “Adequate at brain development, not adequate at developing warm-heartedness.”

“Please give your children maximum affection, maximum care,” he advised the audience, adding, playfully, “Of course, I am monk so I have no responsibility.”

Embryona Satanicus

This was an eventful walk. I’ll get to the potato bug soon, but first I need to talk about signs & signals from what my Mom used to call The Great Beyond.

Naturally it’s about Roger. (See Post Roger’s Ghost) My friend Betty recently lost her gentle yellow wolf, Tonka, and we were talking about visitations from the other side. She told me two things that gave me chills. First, that her daughter had dreamed of Tonka after his passing, but he was with dogs from other times in their lives. This corresponded to my Roger tawny dream. Then Betty told me Tonka had extra rear dewclaws which I had never noticed, and all of a sudden she’s seeing dogs with these claws all over the place.

The very next day I’m volunteering for the Humane Society, displaying adoptable pets at PetSmart. They assign me a dog so painfully like Roger: a German Shepherd/GoldenRetriever cross and he has extra rear dewclaws!!!

So this combines my visitations with Betty’s proving the universality of us all, and goes into the file of speculation that there might be something happening out there beyond our ken, in the space my ex and I always called the Z-band.

Now get this! The very next day after that, Sunday,  I take Sadie out for her romp. Somebody has parked an old rusting pickup truck where I usually park, in the cul de sac by the new elementary school. I climb the hill and see a man about my advanced age with a dog who looks just like Roger!!! Sadie runs up and starts hunting with him just as she did with Roger, probably assuming it is Roger, no questions asked.

The Good Old Days. Sadie and Roger have a critter in the pipe. They worked it ceaselessly till I left. I came back to find them lying around. As soon as they saw me, they quickly got back to work.

“Is this your dog?” I ask the man who has already gone to his truck. He says yes in a way that sounds suspicious as though I’ll accuse him of something. But he is good enough to let his dog and Sadie and me have our moment. The animals are digging into mouse holes side by side with no apparent sentiment, while I watch them streaming hot tears, tears that surprise me because these days the emotions are buried so deep.

The dog ambles to me after a while. He’s fatter than Roger was, his face is smaller and pointier, his hair is shorter and coarser. Still the resemblance is remarkable. I give him a desultory shoulder rub and send him to his silently waiting Dad. One last coincidence…this dog stands at the truck door as Roger used to do until the owner lifts his hindquarters into the cab.

They loved this chair and near it (not pictured) a black and white striped gaudy couch, incongruous in the desert.

Alone now with Sadie, I am dismal for the first quarter mile or so, missing the Big Guy, as I used to call Roger, but brighten up as the sun floods us. It’s now sweatshirts in the morning until about 10AM…perfect weather. And then I encounter the potato bug pictured above, a creature I’ve seen elsewhere, but never so close to my subdivision. Good news: A. I got a good shot of it B. some information in case anyone wants to keep one as a pet. It’s scientific name is  Embryona Satanicus which might especially appeal to teen-agers.

All categories lead back to dogs or other animals one way or another. Start anyplace.