The Poodle (and Dog) Blog

February Golden Poodle awards

New feature. Inspired by the Academy Awards I am going to be awarding a Golden Poodle each month to the Noteworthy Dog and Noteworthy Human for each month.

The recipients could be worthy of note in a good way or in a bad way. No acceptance speeches will be allowed.

The noteworthy Dog for February is Beatha Lee, a Wheaton Terrier who was elected president of a homeowners’ association in Virginia. Perhaps she will modify some bad human behavior.

Then president, Mark Richards, could not run again because of term limits. When none of the residents would accept this volunteer position because they were “too busy,” he put his dog up as the only candidate. Without realizing she was a dog, the residents elected her and then went on to the important business of eating ice cream and watching the entertainment.

Hopefully the residents will be embarrassed enough to accept civic responsibility in the future. Beatha Lee meanwhile is carrying on her duties by delegating responsibilities as good executives should do.

The Noteworthy Human for February has to be Stacey Champion. Not because she tried to mail her dog from Minnesota to Georgia and not because she lied about what was in the box, but because after she was caught, she continued to put herself in the news for the next many days by—

• wanting her postage back
• wanting her dog back 
• wanting her box back
• wanting a small amount of money attached to the dog's collar back

Sometimes it is better to let sleeping dogs lie, as they say.

Metal detector finds ring in puppy’s tummy

When Karen Woolley’s 100-year-old family heirloom diamond ring suddenly went missing, she suspected Barney, her 6-month-old Cocker Spaniel mix puppy, might have something to do with it.

She happened to have an old metal detector handy and when she swept it across his chest, she got a bleep. A few minutes later she got a reading from his stomach. She rushed him to the vet where an x-ray showed the perfect outline of a diamond ring.

After emergency surgery Barney is doing well.

Only a few months ago Prince William’s fiancée, Kate Middleton, had a pair of antique earrings eaten by her dog Otto. They had been an expensive birthday gift from the Prince.

The Princess-to-be ended up searching through Otto’s “business” to find the earrings, as the spokesman so elegantly put it.

Dogs love anything that has the scent of their human, even to the extent of swallowing it if it is small enough.

Englsh speling is dificult and unlogical

 
Random thoughts on English spelling

I am convinced that the ability to spell is genetic. If I had been born with a math gene instead of a spelling gene, my life would have been much different.

Calculators and spell check are great, but unless you know the process, calculators are useless. And spell check isn’t the be all and end all for correct spelling. It is no help with many of the most common misspellings in the language.

For example, spell check accepts as correct these sentences: 

• Our fervent wish is that they our safe. 
• Their were to many problems to count.
• There convinced that there house was locked when they left there.
• We will except every offer accept the one made by the judges.

(However my spell check does insist you make a choice between “my” and “our” in the sentence: “Unions our my cup of tea.” It can’t be both.)

People tend to judge poor spellers harshly (and unfairly). When I taught college freshman composition, I often did this experiment.

I would take a superior composition and run off copies for each student. Students on the right would get the original composition, and students on the left would get the same one with many misspellings.

I then asked them to evaluate on the basis of concept and development. Students on the right quickly gave it high marks. Students on the left always had a problem looking beyond the errors.

Even students who were themselves poor spellers wanted to talk about the lack of intelligence and character of the writer, instead of the content.

You can blame our ancestors for the problems in English spelling. They made the rules. There are many historical reasons for our spelling problems.

For one thing English has tended to borrow words from other languages and retain the spelling while we anglicize the pronunciation. “Lieutenant,” “chaplain,” and “beautiful” are among many words borrowed from French. At least 25% of the words in English were borrowed from French.

The Greek goddess, Psyche, is responsible for a lot of words that are not spelled as pronounced.

From the German are Dachshund and Doberman Pinscher.

“Colonel” is borrowed from both French and Italian. We borrowed the pronunciation from French “coronel” and the spelling from Italian “colonnello.”

It’s possible that rules for English spelling were formulated by those who were drinking heavily at the time, but that’s just a theory.

I will leave you with this 15 second video. Thanks to Dan

A sign from the Wisconsin teachers’ protest rally

We're guessing it isn't spelling...

Dolphins credited with helping save a drowning dog

On Marco Island, Florida, Turbo, an 11-year-old Doberman went missing after the gate was left open. His owner, Cindy Burnett, searched frantically for the aging dog not knowing he had fallen into a canal.

Meanwhile splashing dolphins in the canal got the attention of her neighbors who saw the plight of Turbo. One neighbor called 9-1-1 and then dived in to pull the dog to safety after he had been missing for 15 hours.

"The dolphins were with him," she said.

I'm thinking Disney film.

From NBC News Florida

"Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."

This quotation from the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz has become part of the American lexicon, meaning “None of this is familiar. We are way out of our comfort zone.”

Dorothy and her little dog Toto have been blown from Kansas into the land of Oz and must find their way home. Along the way they meet the Tin Man who is seeking a heart, the scarecrow who is seeking a brain and the Lion who is seeking courage. Together they go on a quest to find the Mighty Wizard who is all powerful.

Toto is played by a Cairn Terrier originally named Terry.

Terry’s early life gave no indication that she would become a famous movie star. Her first owners gave up on her, considering her to be untrainable. Then she was adopted by Carl Spitz, a well-known Hollywood dog trainer.

After her early experiences with people, it took her a while to stop hiding under the bed, but eventually she gained confidence. Terry was just a year old when she landed her first roles, first in Ready for Love and then as Shirley Temple’s dog in the classic Bright Eyes. All together she appeared in 13 movies.

In 1938, when she was 4 years old, she landed the role as Toto. Before filming she spent two weeks living with Judy Garland so the two could bond. They bonded so well that Judy offered to buy her, but Spitz refused the offer.

Dogs in movies today are played by multiple dogs, but Terry was the only Toto. Terry was paid $125 a week for her work, which was actually more than many humans made in movies at the time.

Not only was she in most of the scenes, she was also essential in moving the plot along. When Dorothy was kidnapped by the Wicked Witch, Toto escaped to get help from the Tin Man, the Lion, and the Scarecrow.

While the others were awed in the presence of the Wizard, Toto tore the curtain aside, revealing the wizard to be a just a feeble, shrunken old man pulling levers.

Although the wizard was a fraud, the quest is successful. What we seek is often within ourselves.

“Oz never did give nothin' to the Tin Man,
which he didn't, didn't already have.”

Hollywood gossip circulated that the munchkins displayed some shocking behavior during the making of the film, but Terry was never associated with any of this.

Following the premiere of the movie, Spitz changed Terry’s name officially to Toto. After making a few more movies, she retired at the age of 8 to become a cherished family pet and make celebrity appearances at dog shows and state fairs.

Years later writer Willard Carroll found a scrapbook kept by Spitz of Toto’s life and work. In 2001 he published a book “written” by Toto called I, Toto: The Autobiography of Terry, the Dog Who Was Toto. (See sidebar)

Other famous movie dogs:

Strongheart       Rin Tin Tin        Lassie

Can cats see into another dimension?

We have showed you irrefutable evidence that dogs can detect evil forces hiding in ordinary household items. But what about cats?

I have more questions than answers on this subject. Although I am fluent in dog, I don’t speak cat or understand cats.

I have written before about the juvenile calico that came up to me in my front yard a few years ago and chose me.

“I don’t want you. I have four dogs and I don’t want a cat.”

“Irrelevant.”

“I will feed you, then you must leave.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s how it works.”

For a while I tried to make her attractive to an adopter. My methods included:

• Putting up FREE CAT signs with a poetic description
• Having her vaccinated and wormed
• Socializing her with my dogs (They’re basically friendly wimps so it took about 20 minutes and one paw swipe on a nose)
• Buying a litter box and litter
• Having her spayed
• Fnally giving her a permanent name.

(Someone had written on my FREE CAT sign at work: “Makes good taco meat,” so she was called Taco Meat for several weeks. When I took her in to be spayed, they did not see the humor, so I shortened it to Taki.)

Finally I accepted what everyone else knew. I did not want to give the cat away. It was a good decision. She has been a joy.

For a little street smart cat she could not be more affectionate. Taki will crawl into my lap when I am watching TV and purr softly while I caress her.

But then…here’s the thing that totally freaks me out. Sometimes she will suddenly raise her head up and look over my shoulder with an expression of total horror on her face.

What?

If I turn around what will be there? The Grim Reaper? A zombie? A vampire? A dust mote?

Does she see something evil in an alternate universe?

Or is she just messing with me?

High fashion and the Poodle

I will confess that I have always been somewhat of a clothes horse, classic and comfortable ones. But the high fashion runway scene has always been a mystery.

To me the clothes are ugly, unflattering, insulting and all the other pejorative adjectives I can think of. Even the high fashion models often look frumpy or bony.  Who buys this over priced crap merchandise?

Recently Jerry sent me some runway shots of a show by a designer whose name I didn’t bother to remember. Apparently in an attempt to set his show apart, he included dyed-to-match (or clash) Poodles.

Don’t Poodles have enough of an image problem without being made to look like clowns?

The models all have a Poodle poof on their heads which might be cute and jaunty on a Poodle head or tail, but as a human hairdo it looks like one large Mickey Mouse ear.

Are the ridiculously adorned Poodles supposed to pull our eyes away from the ridulously attired models?

 

 

  Contrast these with the classic 1950's photo of Audrey Hepburn.

Lovely lady, lovely gown, lovely dogs

Missing dog found 720 miles from home 2 days later

Bear, a two-year-old Patterdale Terrier, and his owner, Bryan Rapoza, went every place together.

Bear had been at work with Rapoza on Tuesday the day he disappeared from a suburb of Sacramento. On Thursday Rapoza got a call from the Humane Society in Tacoma that Bear had been found wandering the streets.

Although Bear’s collar and identifying tags had been removed, he was immediately identified by the microchip. Rapozo happily made the 13 hour drive from California to Washington to retrieve his lost friend.

Yet another real life commercial for the microchip.

Wheaton Terrier elected president of homeowners association

And when the people found out their leader was a dog, some were amused, some were embarrassed, and some were very upset, according a story in the Washington Post.

Mark Crawford had served three consecutive terms as president of the Hillbroom-Tall Oaks Civic Association and could not run again according to the bi-laws. For weeks he begged neighbors to run for the post, but everyone was too busy.

A check of the bi-laws showed that nowhere did it stipulate that the president had to be human. In dog years she had reached the age of majority. So Crawford's dog, Ms. Beatha Lee’s name was presented as the only candidate running for office.

A crowd of 50, assuming this was a civic minded newcomer, voted for her and then got on with the important business of eating ice cream and watching a karate demonstration.

Unknown to the voters at that time, Ms. Beatha Lee is a shaggy Wheaten Terrier.

According to Crawford they wanted to send a message to the community members to get involved, that they can't count on the same people to do the job year after year.

It’s too early to tell if this will encourage people to get more involved in their community, but meanwhile Beatha seems to be getting the job done with the help of her committee.

How has she managed?

"Well, she delegates a lot," Crawford said. "That's what executives are supposed to do - delegate." Complete story