The Poodle (and Dog) Blog

Orthodogs’ Silver Lining Foundation Fundraiser

My blogging friend Jill at Travels with Honey wrote to me about a fundraiser for Orthodogs' Silver Lining Foundation, an internet non-profit which she volunteers for.

Jill writes: It's an online "arts and literature" fundraiser where we are trying to get people to send us stories, pics, videos or links to blogs and websites about how dogs have inspired them. To contribute please email to oslforg@mac and it will go up on the blog in the next 24 - 48 hours. You can also put it in any comment on the blog and we will then make a posting on the blog, too.

Of course, we're hoping, while there, people will give a small donation, if possible (It's tax-deductible and, since we're all volunteer, all the funds go to the dogs). We are trying to raise $10K to help non-profit rescue, service and companion dogs in need get the orthosurgery they need (present cases found under Pets In Need).

I've attached a picture of one of our Success Stories. It's one of my favorite pictures - it's Shiloh/Molly - a Shar Pei rescue that was a victim of very cruel neglect so ended up having to have a leg amputated but...happy ending - lives with another Shar Pei very happily. This pic is after one of the founders sent her own care package of toys and a pig's ear.

Thanks for letting us know about this fine organization, Jill.

Hawgs for Dawgs expands to four locations

Bikers for Best Friends (also known as Hawgs for Dawgs) started last year in Washington, Utah, hosted by the Zion Harley-Davidson Shop. This year it has expanded to New Rochelle, N.Y., Scottsdale, Ariz., and Frederick, Colo.

Motorcyclists and Harley-Davidson dealerships worked together to raise more than $11,000 for local shelters and help place over 16 pets in new homes.

The story

Some days you're the dog, some days you're the hydrant

File this under “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

In Hillsboro, Oregon a new dog park opened in honor of Hondo, a police dog killed in the line of duty ten years ago. A flag painted hydrant was intended as a tribute to Hondo.

But dogs being dogs and hydrants, even ones painted as a flag, being hydrants, many complaints arose over the idea of dogs peeing on the flag and the memorial to Hondo.

The hydrant was on an 18 inch base with prickly barberry bushes around it to discourage its normal doggy function and no reports had been made of a dog actually marking his territory there.

But officials decided to remove it to dispel any perception of disrespect to the flag or to the fallen Hondo.

Probably a wise decision.

The story

Stupid newspaper columns about dogs

Pity the poor newspaper columnist who has to write provocative columns several times a week.

How else can you explain the stupid and predictable columns they write so often about dogs? The point (or pointlessness) of the stories is that somehow people care more about dogs than about people. And how terrible that is.

In the aftermath of the story of Tom Finley finding his dog, one Chicago newspaper columnist actually wrote:

You do realize, don't you, what would have happened were the dog taken out of the equation -- if Finley were searching, not for a dog, but for a hot meal? You realize that few would bother to help, few would care, and that their caring here is all about the dog and not about the man. We can harden our hearts to people. But dogs melt them, which is wonderful and awful in equal parts

Oh, please. Are we supposed to believe that Mr. Finley searched for years for a hot meal and never got one? That no one cared about him until he lost his dog? If people in downtown Chicago didn’t care about him, never helped him, would he continue to be one of many recognizable panhandlers in the area year after year?

People obviously cared about Mr. Finley AND his dog, which is wonderful and in no way “awful.”

Either the columnist missed the point of the story or he had to make a deadline and resorted to cynicism and stupidity. Or maybe he just wanted to feel superior to everyone else.

The second overdone stories rebuke the public for caring more about Michael Vick's dogs than women who have been abused by partners who are NFL players. The difference is that humans make life choices. Dogs don’t.

The third overdone stories point out how much we spend on dogs in a world where there are starving children. No mention is ever made of starving children when money is spent on plasma TV’s or home remodeling.

My evil twin Skippy thinks it would be fun to wear a T-shirt that says, “Buy your dog a toy, starve a child.” Or “Buy a plasma TV, starve your dog.”

Please excuse my evil twin Skippy; she has never had a marketable idea.

Of software and Labrador puppies

So I’m trying to reprogram Outlook Express to be compatible with my new server and it’s giving me problems.

I’m getting *****SPAM****** in the subject line of email replies to messages I sent. Most annoying since it seems to be calling email I wrote and sent "Spam" when someone replies to it.

My daughter emailed me and said, “Outlook Express is like a Labrador Retriever. It's terribly friendly and eager, but it needs serious socializing before it is fit to live among humans.”

Now before you Labrador people get bent out of shape, this is probably why year after year the Labrador Retriever is the most popular dog in the country.

This is a versatile, low maintenance, eager to please dog, with a great disposition, suitable for many purposes.

Labs can become any kind of dog humans mold them into being—serious hunting dogs, exercise partners, watchdogs, babysitters, guide dogs, sniffer dogs, or just cheerful couch potatoes.

Or they can grow up to be big undisciplined puppies, dogs that want to be good dogs, but no one has ever taught them how.

None of this helps solve my problem with Outlook Express though.

Chicago panhandler reunited with his lost dog

He may not be high in the social order, but one Chicago man found out how people can rally to help someone who needs help.

Tom Finley, 69, a well known panhandler in the downtown Chicago area, lost his best friend, Reba, a 12-year-old blond husky/terrier mix, two weeks ago.

He had left her waiting outside a McDonalds and when he returned she was nowhere in sight.

For two weeks he wandered around heartbroken, unable to eat or sleep, carrying a picture of his lost friend asking if anyone had seen her.

Finley and Reba had been a familiar sight in the Chicago Loop, often pulling her in a carrier attached to his bicycle. They may have been at the bottom of the social order but very soon Finley wasn’t alone in his search. He received an outpouring of public support. Office workers printed up flyers and distributed them. One woman gave him a prepaid cell phone to take calls. A $500 reward quickly grew to an undisclosed amount.

Then Saturday an unidentified woman in tears turned Reba over to the Anti-Cruelty Society of Chicago, refusing the no-questions-asked reward money. The conjecture is that the woman had taken Reba because she thought Finley couldn’t take care of her.

Sometimes cruel acts can be committed for compassionate, if misguided, causes. That still doesn’t excuse a cruel act.

Finley, who has been homeless in the past, now lives in a studio apartment, but has not been able to afford health care for Reba. The Anti-Cruelty Society of Chicago will give Reba a lifetime of free veterinary care.

"I'd be lost without her,” Finley said. "She's the best thing that's ever happened to me."

The story

Oscar the trashcan puppy gets a great new home

In June the Portsmouth Virginia Animal Control officers pulled the bruised and broken body of a four-month-old Pit Bull puppy out of a trash can.

Veterinarians who examined him believe he may have been used as bait for dog fighting. He had wounds all over his body, blood in his eye and a broken leg.

Jaime Blair and her fiancé Chris Taylor followed the story of the puppy now called Oscar, appalled at the cruelty inflicted on such an innocent creature and determined to give him a better life.

Now all healed up except for a slight limp, Oscar is going to his new home with them and two older dog sisters, including “Shea,” a five-year-old Pit Bull.

“It’s gonna be a crowded house,” said Taylor. “Crowded bed, too. The dogs we have now, they sleep with us on the bed.”

“We don’t have kids,” added Blair. “We just have dogs, so I expect him to have a really good life.”

From trash can to king of the hill.

It was a mystery worthy of Sherlock Holmes.

Several years ago at a factory in Yugoslavia valuable rolls of copper went missing from a storeroom every night. There was no sign of forced entry and the security personnel had no indication of intruders. Even the security dog, Dreki, reported nothing.

Still night after night hundreds of dollars of copper rolls continued to turn up missing. Finally the owners installed security cameras inside the storeroom.

Then it all became clear.

While the security guards were focused on the perimeter of the factory and the outside of the storeroom, Dreki was sneaking into the storeroom through a small hole and pilfering the wire. Then she took it out to the yard and buried it.

Dreki seemed to think…No, let me stop there. I’m convinced totally that dogs think. But dog-think and human-think are not the same. Why she stole the wire will remain a mystery.

For reasons known only to Dreki, the smell of the wire or the protective coating must have had some doggie appeal and she took them out and buried them perhaps for a rainy day. Dogs in the wild didn’t always have a steady source of food and the instinct for saving remains.

Sometimes dogs will bury objects that are too hard to chew and dig them up later after the ground has softened them.

Now that they knew where to look, with the help of metal detectors, they were able to locate thousands of dollars of the missing copper rolls.

The owners decided not to prosecute and allowed Dreki to keep her job. But holes in the storeroom were sealed off to make it totally dog-proof.

Size does matter

Duane has emailed me twice complaining that I am not being fair to big dogs. However his main argument is to insult little dogs and their owners.

My problem is not with big dogs. I love big dogs. My problem is with people who think it would be neat to own a really big dog and then they go out and get a large breed with no realistic idea of what they are getting into.

It’s kind of like buying the biggest muscle car except a car doesn’t need to be exercised regularly or taught to be a good citizen.

Any responsible breeder or owner of a large dog breed would agree with me. They don’t want a dog to be bought by someone who would give their breed a bad reputation.

I’m not sure what your problem is, Duane. Personally, when I see a man walking a small dog, I think “Confident, sexy, secure, not trying to compensate or impress.”

Choosing a dog. A dog should not be chosen to impress other people. One of the greatest things about choosing a dog is that we can research and select from a wide variety of sizes, intelligence, breeds, temperaments, and genetics to fit our personalities and lifestyles.

When the children were young, we had an Old English Sheepdog named Schopenhauer. We did a lot of hiking and exploring then. Many hunting dogs would have been off on their own little adventures, but the herding instincts of the OES meant that Schopi circled her flock on the trail to protect us and keep us together.

If one of us got ahead of the others, she would perform an illegal block to the back of the knees to slow us down. A judicious and well-aimed goose to the rear with her nose kept children from trailing behind.

At this point of my life I find it easier to maintain my alpha dogdom when I can physically pick up a dog (or loom over it) at the time of transgression, look it in the eyes and explain in logical terms why that behavior pattern is not acceptable (I do prefer dogs with strong verbal skills). Since I weigh 110 pounds (almost) I’m kind of limited in the size of dogs I can actually pick up (or loom over).

And since most of us have little need to hunt lions or defend our dwelling from conquering hoards of barbarians, we may not need a dog that has been bred to do these things.

Size does matter. More to people than to dogs. Many small dogs picture themselves as fearless guard dogs and many big dogs see themselves as cuddly lap dogs.

Could we survive without Nanny state warnings?

So I gathered up the heavy comforters and quilts to take to the laundromat to use the triple load machines. As I was putting a load into the dryer, I noticed this sign, which was part of the coin slot of each dryer.

It said, and I am not making this up:

”Check to make sure that there are no children, pets or foreign objects in the dryer before loading.”
Being a good citizen, I did check. However, I would have checked anyway to make sure I didn’t put my soggy wet comforters on someone’s clean dry clothes. Or that someone hadn’t accidentally left an open bottle of ink inside.

But I started wondering if small creatures hanging out in dryers is a big worldwide problem that I didn’t know about.

Is it really necessary for the dryer maker to put a sign on each dryer at a laundromat to tell customers to check for wayward children and furry (or scaly) pets before putting clothes in?

Or is this just a California thing?

In California businesses must post warnings if they sell products “known to cause cancer, birth defects or any other reproductive harm” –for example, products such as newspapers which use ink.

We have signs telling us to use the handrail when climbing stairs.

Movable freeway signs tell us to drive carefully when construction is ahead.

Our city issue garbage cans tell us not to put hot coals in them.

We have reminders to watch our step getting off escalators.

Our stepladders tell us not to stand on the very top.

And signs tell us to wash our hands after going potty.

Toasters warn us not to plug them into a defective outlet and stick a fork in the slots while standing in a bucket of water. Scissors warn us not to run with them.

OK, now I’m just being pissy.