Category Archives: Dogs

May 26, 2014 · 22:22

Coyote Close Encounter

I took Jessie out for her “evening constitutional” after the first period of tonight’s Kings game. (“Go, Kings! GO!!”) It turned out to be more exciting than I expected.

About 99% of the time we go out into the front yard, Jessie has to be on a lead. She’s old and creaky, but given something to chase, she’s a pup again and can get curious and/or territorial. Since we often have people walking their dogs, or just walking, it’s easier for everyone involved (and our homeowner’s insurance rates) if she’s on a lead until we can see what’s around.

Normally, if the sidewalks are clear, we’ll let her off the lead to sniff, check her “pee-mail”, leave her own, find a spot to poop, check to see if there are any squirrels in the date palm, any bunnies under the bushes, and so on. She won’t take off unless something provokes her, and even at that it hasn’t happened in years.

Tonight, as we hit the sidewalk, the coast was clear and she headed toward the driveway and mailbox to pee. I reached down to unsnap the lead — at which point a very mangy, skinny, and sickly looking coyote came out from behind the car, about seven or eight feet away. I think we were both surprised to see each other.

Needless to say, I left Jessie attached to the lead and locked it down so she couldn’t take off. She still had no idea that the coyote was there since she had her head down. But as soon as she looked up, as expected, she “poofed”, let out a growl, and started to move forward. I was ready for it and stopped her and the coyote didn’t wait around, crossing the street and standing on the sidewalk over there to watch us.

For the next five minutes or so, the Jessie and the coyote kept a very close eye on one another. Jessie didn’t try to go after her again, but neither of them ever let the other out of their sight.

We see coyotes around here every now and then, but this was unusual. You almost always see them at night, never in the day. They’re way too exposed and vulnerable during the day. In addition, this critter was emaciated, really, really thin. Finally, what I had thought were patches where its fur was patchy or mangy looked more like large, open sores on its sides.

I’ve never heard of a coyote attacking an adult. They’re opportunists and bandits, but they’re cautious to the point of cowardice. They have been known to attack small dogs in people’s yards, and given a chance they’ll take out a house cat, feral or otherwise. Bunnies make a great dinner for a coyote, as would a skunk or baby raccoon. (I think one of our adult racoons, one of which is running wind sprints on the roof as I type, would kick the butt of that scrawny coyote.) But mostly they like garbage and pet food left outdoors.

I wasn’t upset or scared at any point, but given the critter’s condition, apparent injuries, and unusual activities, I was concerned that it might not be normal, possibly diseased or even rabid. That’s a level of grief I could live without.

Finally a neighbor’s sprinklers turned on and the coyote slowly backed away down the block, always keeping an eye on Jessie. Once it got to the sprinklers it started to drink from the water on the sidewalk and in the gutter. That didn’t surprise me at all, given the severe drought we’ve got going and the lack of any kind of water up in the hills away from the houses.

I did take Jessie for a short walk down the block the other way, where there are neighbors who have small dogs and small children. While a normal coyote might not attack a human adult, I thought it conceivable that a starving, diseased coyote might try taking on a toddler.

Once again, the term “urban jungle” takes on a whole new meaning. Welcome to LA, don’t pet the coyotes!

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Filed under Critters, Dogs, Los Angeles

May 7, 2014 · 22:51

Dog Food

I was at the local branch of the national massive pet supply superstore the other day to get dog food. It turned out to be an exercise in frustration and a lesson in marketing.

Our dog can be a bit fussy when eating — she likes what she likes, and she doesn’t always like “new and improved” things. If they don’t have the exact kind of doggy bone treats that she likes, it can be an “adventure” trying to find a substitute that she does like. She prefers “chopped” canned food to the “stew” kind. (Of course, what she really prefers is our food, as in “people food,” but that’s another story.) And what she really likes and eats every day is the Pedigree brand of canned dog food.

I normally go to the national massive pet supply superstore and get 100+ cans at a time of four or six varieties, then mix them up so that she doesn’t get a month of beef, then a month of chicken, then a month of… You get the idea.

This time, I had to hunt all over the store to find the Pedigree dog food. All of a sudden, where it had always filled up thirty to forty feet of an aisle, six or eight shelves high, now it was maybe four feet of aisle, and only the bottom three or four shelves. Needless to say, the variety available and number of cans available was severely limited compared to before.

I was concerned (I don’t need the grief of trying to find a new primary canned dog food that the princess will tolerate), so I asked one of the store employees if there was a problem. Was Pedigree being discontinued or something?

Nope, they just have seriously downsized (as in reduced by over 90%!) the amount that they’re carrying, so that they can use the shelf space to bring me more varieties of other brands and more healthy options for me and my pet.

Guess what? I was skeptical of that justification. More to the point, I immediately felt that the BS level was knee deep and rising.

I took a look at all of those wonderful new options. Every one of them has some buzzword in the brand name, like “homestyle,” “natural,” “wholesome,” “organic,” or “wilderness.” They were all very proud of being made from prime rib, happy sheep, pure buffalo meat, Grade AAA llama meat, or free-range antibiotic-free conflict-free komodo dragon eyelids. A big selection of them weren’t even in cans, they were in a refrigerated section!

To absolutely no one’s surprise, all of these “new and improved” brands cost anywhere from twice as much to six or seven times as much as the “good old stuff” that Jessie’s been eating for years.

I don’t believe the national massive pet supply superstore did this for my benefit.

I don’t believe they did it out of concern for my dog’s health.

I don’t believe they did it because the food Jessie’s been eating her whole life has been bad for her.

Nope, call me crazy, but I think they did this because they’ve hired some “marketing experts” who believe they can screw the customer out of a lot of money.

By putting new, fancy, bright colored labels on dog food, they’re trying to convince everyone that we’re practically abusing our dogs by feeding them the same old food

By going off on all of these bizarre ingredients and so on, they want us to feel guilty if we’re not feeding them the latest, greatest, and trendiest.

Dear marketing experts, if you want to pay three or four times as much for dog food just because it’s got buzzwords printed on the label, knock yourselves out. But if you want to stop selling the brands I’ve been buying for decades just so (you think) I have no choice but to buy the new and improved dog food at the inflated prices, then you’re not very good “experts.”

You’re “one of” the national massive pet supply superstores, not “the only” one. That’s a critical distinction that you need to keep in mind.

Furthermore, I can still buy what I want to buy at places like the grocery store or the warehouse stores. I have been buying it from your store simply because your prices beat theirs by a few cents a can. However, if I used to buy at your store for $0.52/can instead of $0.58/can at the grocery store, but now the only choice you give me is to either buy Pedigree at $0.58/can at the grocery store or to buy Blue Harvest Organic Armadillo Meat at $1.50/can…

Dudes, it’s Economics 101, not rocket science.

Have these “marketing experts” ever heard of “The Law of Unintended Consequences?” Missed class that day, eh?

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Filed under Dogs

April 25, 2014 · 19:38

Odds & Sods For Friday, April 25th

Item The First: The following tweet from CNN is offered as proof that President Obama reads this blog:

2014-04-24 Proof That Obama Reads My BlogIt’s obvious. I post pictures about my visit to Gyeongbok Palace (here and here) and the next thing you know, Air Force One is in Seoul and the President’s getting a tour. Since coincidence = causation, ipso facto, the President reads this blog. (Mr. President, give me a call at your convenience, I’ve got a few thoughts on planetary exploration and the NASA budget that I would like to discuss.)

Item The Second: When I talked about the Hugo Award nominations a few days ago I mentioned that some of the nominees might require some effort to track down, being published in places I don’t normally read. I had forgotten that since 2006, many (if not most, or all) of the literary nominees are available in electronic form to all eligible voters.

Of course, this year the twist is the inclusion of “The Wheel Of Time” novels (all fourteen of them) as a Best Novel nominee. People were wondering how that would be handled, whether or not they would include one novel or just not include any. Instead Tor has decided to include all of them.

That may or may not have any bearing on whether or not other works are included (it’s at the discretion of the author and publisher) but it instantly guarantees a new record for the number of Supporting Memberships for a Worldcon.

It works like this — you get the package of e-books and stories if you’re eligible to vote for the Hugo Awards. You’re eligible to vote if you’re either an Attending Member or a Supporting Member of the convention. Anyone can join. An Attending Membership is currently $205 (and the price will increase in July) and lets you attend pretty much anything at the five-day convention. (We won’t be going unless we win the lottery or something, a fact which displeases me. I really love going to Worldcon!) So if you’re going to be or can be in London in August, get an Attending Membership and have the time of your life!

If you can’t go, you can get a Supporting Membership for $40 (which will also increase in July) and while it doesn’t let you get into the convention, it does let you:

  • get a copy of the program book and other publications
  • vote on where Worldcon will be in 2016 (currently Kansas City and Beijing are competing for the bid)
  • vote on the Hugo Awards, which in turn means that you…
  • …get the books & stories in the voter’s packet.

Let’s do some quick math. The fourteen “Wheel Of Time” books currently are available in the Apple store for a total of $94.86. (For the sake of argument I’m leaving out the one prequel novel, but for all I know Tor might be including it as well.) “Ancillary Justice” is $8.99, “Neptune’s Brood” is $10.99, “Parasite” is $9.99, and “Warbound: Book III of the Grimnoir Chronicles” is $9.99. That’s the potential for $134.82 worth of novels for $40, plus (potentially) many of the best novellas, novelettes, and short stories of 2013, plus voting rights for the Hugos and 2016 site selection, plus the convention program book and other publications.

Now do we see why they’re going to be flooded with $40 supporting memberships?

Item The Third: This is what I have snoring on my left most of the day when I’m at my desk in my home office:

Joey_smallWhen the hummingbirds start hovering outside she gets a bit agitated.

Item The Fourth: The Beijing vs. Kansas City vote for the 2016 Worldcon Site Selection will be a tough one for me. I had an extremely good time on my one visit to China (Shanhai) and would love to go back to see Beijing. (If at all possible we never just go into town for the convention and then boogie back out. We always try to spend at least a few days to visit and see the sights.)

On the other hand, I grew up in Kansas City, Kansas (my elementary school years) and still have many things that I love about the city. (Chiefs! Chiefs! Chiefs!) It will certainly be a lot cheaper to get to KC than Beijing. That could decide it for a majority of US voters — but China’s a really great visit, so don’t rule it out, guys!

Then for the 2017 site selection, there are already bids for Japan, Montreal, Helsinki, and Washington, DC. Tough choice!  I also had a fantastic time on my visit to Kyoto, Japan (we’ll get to those pictures after the Korean pictures) and would love to see the country again. I’ve never been to Scandinavia, so Helsinki would be incredible. Washington, DC is one of my favorite cities on the planet, and I haven’t been there in over thirty years. As for Montreal, it’s okay, but we’ve been there, gotten robbed there, been there again.

Item The Fifth: This is what I have farting on my right most of the day when I’m at my desk in my home office:

jessie_smallShe loves her “desk cave”, but the semi-enclosed area tends to trap the odors. I’ve thought about putting in a fan and a venting system to the outside, but I fear that the neighbors over on that side would (justifiably) demand an Environmental Impact Report, which we would probably fail. Look at all the problems the Sriracha factory is having in Irwindale.

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Filed under Cats, Critters, Dogs, Fandom, KC Chiefs, Odds & Sods, Photography, Science Fiction, Travel

April 7, 2014 · 20:30

No Day So Lousy That…

In Colonel Chris Hadfield’s wonderful TED talk last month (see it! see it! see it!) he says that astronauts know that in space “there is no problem so bad that you can’t make it worse.”

Sounds coming from the other side of the desk are telling me that there’s no day so lousy that it can’t be made worse by…

…hearing the cat making that “gnnuuuurrchh”, “gnuuurchhaaa”, “gghhhaaaaurch”, “splat” sound.

…getting your tax returns from your accountant and seeing all of those zeros in the amount you owe in eight days.

…hearing the thirteen-year-old, arthritic, lame dog in the back yard suddenly tearing around at 100 MPH, going “OOOOWWW, WOOOOW, WOOOOW, WOOOOOOOOW” in the dark as she turns into White Fang, Dog of the North — and then you smell the skunk.

…reading the comments on any Internet news story.

…hearing your computer hard disk make that “click” sound, followed by a rhythmic “click-click-CLICK-click-pause” over and over, while on your screen you get some error message that you’re now too panicked to read.

…kidney stones.

…getting the “Thank you for applying, but after careful consideration of your resume” generic email on a job you really, really wanted.

…a phone call checking up on a deadline that you completely, 100%, totally forgot about.

…hearing “your” numbers called as the lottery winners, only to realize that after having tickets with those numbers every draw for the last ten years, you forgot to get a ticket for tonight.

…getting a call from the IRS about the aforementioned tax returns.

…NOT hearing the cat making that “gnnuuuurrchh”, “gnuuurchhaaa”, “gghhhaaaaurch”, “splat” sound, and then finding the “splat” part in your bare feet.

The good news is that the sun will rise tomorrow, and it’s got to be better than today.

Right?

Please say, “right.” Please?

(For the record, only one of these things happened today. But two others have already happened this month. I’m hoping none of the others do.)

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Filed under Cats, Computers, Dogs, Health, Job Hunt

March 25, 2014 · 22:37

Odds & Sods For Tuesday, March 25th

Item The First: On the second episode of the new “Cosmos” series, Neil deGrasse Tyson opened the lesson on evolution by talking about how humans had artificially bred dogs from wolves. In talking about this, he pointed out that we have bred for cuteness in addition to breeding for utility. When The Long-Suffering Dog sits in “The Desk Cave” (she loves it under there when I’m working), I’m wondering if we can breed for dogs that fart less? And can we please do it quickly?

Item The Second: Again we’ve gotten so blase about manned spaceflight. I tuned in on NASA-TV tonight at 19:25 expecting a show to start at 19:30 with live coverage of the Expedition 39/40 crew docking with the International Space Station. Instead I saw that they were already live and a lot of folks were huddled in groups around Mission Control. This is never good.

As we now thing we know, there was just a problem with the third delta-V burn needed to match orbits with ISS, so the burn was cancelled and that meant an abort of the “express” six-hour rendezvous flight plan. The failure scenario o the six-hour flight plan is the old, tired-and-true two-day flight plan. Everyone’s fine, the launch was flawless, there’s no indication that it’s anything other than some sort of software error.

But it was startling how quickly my brain went into “Apollo 1,” “Apollo 13,” “Challenger,” “Columbia” mode.

Item The Third: My Twitter feed is full of comments tonight from planetary scientists and the like (@elakdawalla, @PlanetDr, @Alex_Parker, @RonBaalke) about a news article that’s been released early. I guess there’s a major announcement coming out tomorrow from ESO. I’m assuming they’re talking about the European Southern Observatory instead of the Elder Scrolls Online, but I might be wrong.

Anyway, a couple of media places have released the embargoed story early. A part of the response, a new Twitter hashtag has been born, and it’s pretty funny. Check out #ESOrumors to see what I’m talking about. For example, @mcnees said “Hey no biggie, and totally just out of curiosity, but exactly how many nuclear missiles do we have?” @danielg1905 suggested, “Stronomers: ‘We’re not saying it was aliens . . . but it was aliens.”

Item The Fourth: Speaking of “Cosmos,” it has upset a number of fundamentalist groups that claim that Fox owes them “equal time” to talk about “intelligent design” if “Cosmos” is going to give a “one-sided” view of the arguments on evolution. A few thoughts:

  • This isn’t a political campaign, you have no right to “equal time.”
  • Hypothetically and parenthetically, if you were to win “equal time,” would you in turn be forced to give “equal time” to scientists and rational thinkers as part of every television program put on by some megachurch evangelist (i.e., blackmailing for dollars)?
  • Get over the “evolution is just a theory” argument! All it does is prove that you have no idea what the definition of “theory” means in a scientific discussion. Evolution is a “theory” the same way that gravity is and radioactive decay is. If you still don’t believe or understand, go jump off of a tall cooling tower into the core of a nuclear power plant. Enlightenment will await.
  • Not only are you not entitled to “equal time,” neither are the Flat Earth Society, the Ptolemaic fundamentalists who still believe in epicycles, the Mayan fundamentalists who believe that human sacrifice appeases the sun gods, or the Hindu fundamentalists who think that the Earth is carried around the sun on the back of a giant turtle. It doesn’t matter how big of a turtle they find. (Although, to be fair, if they could find a turtle the size of Saturn or Jupiter, I would be happy to accept at least the possibility that their theory was relevant. But can you imagine how much lettuce that turtle would eat?)

Item The Fifth: It’s so neat that our space program has taught all of us space cadets how to spell “r-e-n-d-e-z-v-o-u-s”. Is that a great spinoff, or what?

Item The Sixth: Someone the other day wanted to draw me into a political argument, and it was an argument, not a discussion. I wasn’t taking the bait, but after being pressed a bit I put it this way: “I hate all politicians these days. I don’t trust a single one of them, either party, local, county, state, or federal. On a scale of one to ten, I hate the Democrats about a twelve. You just think I’m a ‘liberal’ because I hate the Republicans about a thirteen.”

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Filed under Astronomy, Dogs, Odds & Sods, Politics, Space

February 12, 2014 · 09:12

Thirty-Seconds Of Comedic Horror

About 3:20 AM, I wake up because I’ve gotta pee. Leave the lights off so I don’t wake up The Long-Suffering Wife, there’s just enough light coming from the window and the various digital clocks to see where I’m going. Carefully step into the bathroom where the dog is lying on the floor next to the toilet. She is not going to move or get up (this is not news) so I contort myself to find a way to stand over her and hover over the bowl, leaning against the far wall for support with one hand while “taking care of business” with the other. There’s a little more light in here.

Just after liquids start to flow, something is seen out of the corner of my eye, moving between me and the window. It’s dropping slowly, straight down. Before I have time to react or move, the spider lands on my shoulder.

Chaos ensues.

The sleep-addled brain fragments and freaks out with multiple conflicting and simultaneous goals. Get the spider off of me! Don’t pee on the dog! Stand up so that support arm can be used to battle the spider! Don’t step on the dog! Turn on the light so I can see the spider! Can’t do that, not enough arms! Don’t pee on the wall!

As my head jerks, it hits the web the spider was descending with, draping the single strand across my face, futher invoking reflexive flipping out by my out-of-control meat-sack body. Of course, all of this also alerts the spider to the fact that “Bad Things Are Happening!” so it starts scurrying down my naked body looking for an escape route.

This doesn’t help.

Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! Don’t kick the dog! Spider! Spider! Spider! Don’t pee on the floor! Doing the spider dance while it runs down my back, but don’t move! Don’t fall down and break an arm, leg, skull, or anything else! Jeez louise, how much pee is there?! Where’s the spider, how huge is it, is it going to bite me? Pee, pee, pee! Dance, dance, dance! Twitch, twitch, twitch! Spider, spider, spider!

The spider now drops down onto the back of my leg, just below the knee. The leg muscles, already stressed from the awkward stance needed to lean over the dog to get over the toilet, now twitch involuntarily and go into a full-blown “charlie horse” cramp.

PAIN! Aaaaaaaahhhhh!!! Straighten the leg, stretch it out! But don’t move! Don’t scream! Don’t step on the dog! Don’t spray pee all over the room! Damn, that really hurts! Don’t you dare let the other the other leg cramp up too! Pain, pain, pain!

After a near eternity (ten to fifteen seconds, but all in super spider slo-mo) of panic, confusion, adrenaline, pain, and toilet training nightmares come to life, the flow of pee stops and the spider has fled. I can stand up, flip on the light, work out the leg cramp, and look for my long-gone arachnid archenemy.

No spider in sight, but definitely a web strand across my face. I wasn’t imagining it. Miraculously, no pee on the dog, on the floor, on the wall, on my foot, or on the ceiling.

The dog, of course, has slept through the whole ordeal, blissfully oblivious to the imminent catastrophe just inches away.

Once my leg stops cramping, I limp back to bed in the dark and crawl in. The Long-Suffering Wife stirs enough to mumble, “Everything okay?”

In the interest of brevity and the need to get back to sleep, let’s go with “Yes.” She can read this in the morning.

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Filed under Dogs, Farce, Paul

February 7, 2014 · 21:55

A Canine’s Lament

Jessie here. Hello! I’m a dog!

The Male Food Provider is busy ravaging and pillaging the work that I’ve slaved over all week. Again. He has become the Destroyer of Worlds. Again. Since he feels obligated to steal what’s precious to me, I’ll do the same to him. Today his blog is mine!

Let’s talk about this horror, this abomination, this callous injustice.

It happens a couple of times a week. Once again I have it rubbed into my face that my efforts to create art and try to find a meaning to my canine existence are considered to be futile and worthless. You all think that it’s just sleep, eat, sleep, eat, lick my but, sleep, and eat. You couldn’t be more wrong.

I spend all week carefully putting poop all over the yard in just the right places. I judge the ever changing feng shui of the yard, then carefully find just the right location, making allowances for volume, odor, texture, and color. Let’s see you try to deal with the pressures associated with that kind of responsibility. It’s exhausting! That’s why I need so much sleep, obviously.

Moreover, I have to perform under incredible time pressures, with an audience. “Come on, find a spot!” he says. “It’s not getting any warmer out here!” he shouts. “Leave that skunk alone!” Okay, that last one probably is good advice, but as for the rest of it? How can I be expected to do my best work without a thorough examination of the yard first? Squirrel??!! Oh, and what’s up with the staring and chaperoning? Has he got some kind of sick fetish that we need to talk about? Do I watch you when you poop? Of course not. So why can’t I get the same courtesy?

Then the ultimate insult. Just when I’m starting to make some progress and the yard isn’t the laughingstock of the neighborhood, out comes the shovel and the little plastic bag. In just minutes, days of work can be wiped out.

I don’t know what to do about this. I’ve tried and tried to communicate, but apparently the Male Food Provider is deaf as a post, and not too bright to boot. How can I get it across to him that the poop needs to stay right where I put it? How can he be made to understand that his efforts at “cleaning” are nothing more than sadly misguided vandalism, the equivalent of the burning of the Library of Alexandria?

Good thing that he has that whole closet full of food. Otherwise he would have no known purpose at all. I don’t see how the Wonderful Woman Food Provider puts up with him.

The cat poops in his shoes. Maybe I should try that.

Any suggestions?

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Filed under Dogs, Farce

January 27, 2014 · 21:28

Mephitidae

They dig up the yard looking for grubs. I can live with that.

They apparently live in the bushes in back of our neighbor’s yard, although we see them now and then. Not a huge problem in and of itself.

Carnivora Caniformia. It’s all Greek to me. (Well, okay, Latin…)

In colder climes they get dormant in the winter. Here they don’t recognize our January weather as actually fitting the standard definition of “winter”, so they stay active year ’round.

Sometimes they’ll get into someone’s trash. We keep our trash can lids closed tight.

You can call the city or county until the cows come home, they won’t or can’t do anything about them. Some exterminators will trap them if they’re living under your house, but they’re required by law to let them go within a short distance of where they were trapped.

Some folks domesticate them. Some folks need to have their freakin’ heads examined.

The dog is completely freaked by them, and vice versa. We share in paying the price for that.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Their odor can be detected by humans well over a mile away. I don’t know how many there are living within a mile of here, but I think it’s a sucker bet that you can’t count them on one hand, and you might need your toes.

They’re a little bit blind so they get run over and everything stinks for a week. We hate it when that happens. (Sing along with me!)

Now, someone or someone’s dog (not ours, this time) has spooked one of them three times in the past five nights. It’s to to be happening someplace close because the odor’s so strong it’s eye-watering.

We would like to adopt a “live and let live” attitude, but living with skunks in the neighborhood is a pain!

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Filed under Critters, Dogs

January 22, 2014 · 21:45

What’s Gotten Into Jessie?

Besides a lot of cat food, that is.

Jessie the puppy and Joey the kitten came into the household at about the same time about thirteen years ago. We already had an older dog (Lucky) and an older cat (Oreo), and while Oreo and Joey simply tolerated each other, Lucky and Jessie were tight. Lucky became Jessie’s surrogate mom.

The Lucky Puppy was a hoot, a great dog. We got her as a rescue soon after the kids and I started doing the one-parent household thing. She was red-tagged at the pound, meaning that it was her last day if she didn’t get picked by someone. She was a big, lovable galoot of a black lab. She immediately figured out what was going on in the house and decided that she would be the kids’ protector. No one was ever going to give “her kids” any grief, even if it was me just goofing off or playing around.

The Lucky Puppy was a fool for getting into the trash and swiping food wherever she could get it. We would find her with her head in the trash, again, and she knew that she was in trouble, she knew that she shouldn’t be doing it, she just didn’t know how to stop herself.

That was never a habit Jessie picked up from Lucky. Jessie’s always been very good about staying out of the trash and not taking food off of a plate or table if it got left behind.

Mind you, Jessie will sit there and look at you while you eat with an expression that tells you that she’s at death’s door from starvation, but she just wants you to be happy eating all of that food while she watches and hopes and prays for the smallest morsel that might keep her from fainting dead away. It’s safe to say that this has worked for her only on days that end in “Y” – she might be the most spoiled dog on the planet when it comes to food, a fact that The Long-Suffering Wife is quite proud of.

In the last year or so we’ve caught Jessie eating Joey’s dry cat food a few times. We keep two types of dry food out for Joey. Jessie won’t touch one of them, but the other one she loves and will wolf it down and clean the bowl if given the chance. We try to remember to put Joey’s dish up on the table or counter if we’re leaving Jessie in the house for a while, since the cat food is much too rich for her and does nasty things to her GI tract.

Now a new behavior from Jessie has been discovered.

Joey gets her “wet” food in the evening, and she’ll normally eat a third of it or so, then eat more a couple of hours later, then nibble on it as she wants, so that by the next morning it’s about 90% gone and by noon or so the next day it’s about 99% gone. All of a sudden in the last couple of weeks, almost every morning her dish is spotless, not even a trace of fumes left in it. I (foolishly) figured that she was really liking the current kind of cat food she was getting. I should have recognized the signs, but I didn’t.

Until last night, when I heard a slurping sound that I thought was Jessie “grooming herself” ,i.e., licking her ass. That’s not unusual, but what was unusual was Joey (who was on my lap) getting very upset by the sound. I looked around to see where Jessie was, and found her at Joey’s bowl, frantically licking the bowl clean and eating the remaining 2/3 or so of Joey’s dinner. Of course, as soon as she saw me she took off with her tail between her legs to go sit at The Long-Suffering Wife’s feet. She thinks I won’t scold her there.

I kept telling her to come with me back into the other room, but she knew that she was in trouble and she wasn’t moving. When I brought the cat food bowl in to put down in front of her, she did the classic ears-back-tail-between-the-legs-belly-on-the-floor shuffle off into the corner, where she sat with her back to me because if she couldn’t see me than I couldn’t see her.

Tonight, now aware of the issue, I kept an eye on her as we watched “Jeopardy”. Sure enough, as soon as we were distracted, she quietly and discreetly started moseying toward the other room where Joey’s dish was. When I hollered at her, she came back into the living room, but only just barely, and as soon as she thought I wasn’t looking, she was headed that way again.

Again I yelled for her to stop, so this time she went off to somewhere I couldn’t see her, waiting for her chance to move again.

Do dogs get senile? She’s not being starved to death by any means and she’s never displayed this behavior before. Is this the equivalent of the 80-year-old who starts robbing banks just because he’s bored and needs attention?

What’s gotten into her?

More importantly, how do we stop it? I don’t want to be the household pet food police for the next few years.

Wacky dog!

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January 19, 2014 · 21:18

Nothing Remarkable Happened Today

It was just a normal Sunday at Castle Willett. We slept in, went out to breakfast, did our grocery shopping. A friend from high school had a birthday. (Hi, Diane!) I took down the rest of the Christmas lights, I didn’t fall off of any ladders or drop any hammers on my head, we watched some football. My son called from Germany, my daughter called from Sacramento, I wrote a little bit. The cat broke something, the dog was a good girl when other dogs came by our yard. No one died, no one went to the hospital, it was not in any way a red-letter day for any of us.

That was my initial perspective, and it is 100% valid and accurate.

Then I started thinking about what my grandfather, when he was the same age as I am now, might think of everything I did today. (We’re talking mid 1940’s on a farm in South Dakota.) About the only thing he would recognize would be the bacon and eggs, the cat, and the dog.

The digital alarm clock? His probably got wound up by hand.

The HD flatscreen television? I’ll bet that he didn’t have a television in the 1940’s, and the big thing in the 1960’s when he died was color TV.

The iPhone and iPad on my bed stand? I doubt that he had a phone in the 1940’s. I’m not 100% sure they had electricity by that point. Even if he did, then you’ve got that whole comparison of a 1940’s  rotary dial phone with a world-class computer that just also happens to convey phone calls.

Our car, the convertible with the big engine? OK, so the 1940’s Indy cars might or might not have had more horsepower (pole position was won with a speed of 126mph and I’m pretty sure our car could do that on a track), but any car my grandfather ever drove in his life most certainly didn’t. His tractor didn’t have a roof other than his hat, does that count as a convertible?

The 737’s going over our house into Burbank and the 747’s and 777’s going over our house out of LAX toward Asia? Sixteen hours non-stop is a long haul from LAX to Tokyo (been there, done that), but compare that to sixteen hours (with three refueling stops) to get from Los Angeles to New York on a DC-3. As for how commonplace air travel is today, I’m not sure my grandfather ever flew in a plane, ever.

The computers that I’ve used all day to write, do accounting, surf the Internet, read online newspapers? They weren’t even a theoretical dream to anyone on the planet in the mid 1940’s.

If we went to see a movie today, it would be wall-to-wall digital effects to make anything utterly believable, as well as on a huge screen, with flawless projection and eight-channel high quality sound. In the 1940’s, the big, new technological breakthroughs in film were color and stereo.

The ISS went overhead today with six men on board, a vessel that has allowed us to have a continuous human presence off-planet for over thirteen years. The moon’s just rising now, and there are six manned landing sites and twelve sets of boot prints in the dust. We’re driving two separate vehicles on Mars (one of them over ten years old), we have spacecraft currently orbiting Mercury, Mars, and Saturn, we’ve done long duration missions to Jupiter, we’ve swung by Neptune and Uranus, we’re currently on the way to Pluto, and we have spacecraft that have left the freaking solar system and are now in interplanetary space. In the mid 1940’s, only Wernher von Braun and a few of his friends that that his would ever happen.

I’m listening to music from satellite radio and watching live tennis from the Australian Open. Our car radio has dozens of AM stations (all talk and news), several dozen FM stations, or we could plug in our iPods or iPhones. He had a radio the size of my desk with maybe three or four stations he could get during the day, maybe a couple dozen at night. It would have been a big deal to hear something live such as a presidential speech from Washington or war news from Europe.

That was my more introspective perspective, and it also is 100% valid and accurate.

It’s all a matter of perspective, which we forget all too often. “Nothing remarkable happened today” — when you compare today to yesterday. “Mind blown, gobsmacked, and miracles everywhere” — when you compare today to just fifty or sixty years ago, well within a normal lifespan.

Maybe something remarkable did happen today.

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