This is an electronic but nonetheless heartfelt thanks to everyone who sent support and sympathy in many different forms following BeeBee’s death. During that difficult time, I had two advantages that sustained me. One was the rock-solid belief that I made the right decision, and the other was having such wonderful and caring friends.
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I didn’t manage the tear-control I’d hoped for when I participated in BeeBee’s euthanasia yesterday, but I survived.
Read more →I was thinking about my dad when I was digging BeeBee’s grave. He was a great nature lover, but he was the last person you’d want around if you found a chipmunk mangled by a cat or a bird with a broken wing. He’d get so overwhelmed by emotion that the animal would pass from critical condition to beyond hope before the objective part of his brain started to work again. Because the two of us were so much alike in many ways, I had to practice long and hard as a veterinary student not to let my emotions
Read more →Bee’s been having a rough time lately as she comes into full maturity. She thinks she should be in charge, but she can’t pull it off because of her multiple physical problems.
Read more →o much as been going on that I haven’t had much time to write about BeeBee, although a day doesn’t go by that I don’t think about her because she’s definitely made the shift to adulthood.
Read more →This week, changes in BeeBee’s physiology and behavior and pondering the answer to the question, “Would she hurt one of the other dogs or the cat?”
Read more →By the time I went downstairs after I’d written and posted my last message, Whit had eaten all the food in his dish. But then the next morning when I went down to the basement to clean his litterbox, I discovered that he’d vomited what looked like all he’d eaten. Because the food he’d vomited was the first I’d offered him that contained actual chunks of fish or meat (which I thought was a step up), I then made an emergency run to the store to pick up some more of the less expensive, store brand pudding stuff. I
Read more →This has been a week of ups and downs. Until noon today, I could have reported that Whit was doing well, showing sufficient enthusiasm for life that I felt encouraged. But then today he showed no interest in his lunch. It’s a miserable hot and humid day here and, had he skipped a meal when he was younger–or if any of the dogs skipped one now–it wouldn’t bother me. But now he’s OLD, and that changes everything. Part of me wants to race down to the basement and dig out the empty cat food cans from the recycling bucket
Read more →One of the wonderful things about working with companion animals is that I get an intimate view of how behaviors change as the animals mature. The puppy and kitten toddlers we get at 8-12 weeks give way to adolescents, young then mature adults, and then senior citizens, with each life stage adding its own unique spin to the basic canine or feline behavioral repertoire. It’s unfortunate that as our society has become more remote from animals as animals, we no longer recognize these changes as normal. Quite the contrary, when these occur, and sometimes they may occur as suddenly
Read more →Do you ever get the feeling that your dog or cat is trying to drive you crazy? I’m not referring to the way you feel when your dog rolls in maggot-infested dead animal guts 5 minutes before your boss arrives, or when the cat pees on your $75 French bra just because it’s new. I’m referring to more subtle behavior of the things-that-go-bump-in-the-night variety that makes you think neurons are leaking out of your brain when you’re not looking. Such has been my experience for the past week or so. At first I attributed it to the fact that
Read more →Human and animal perception, particularly as it relates to the same event, always fascinates me and last night’s events gave me a good example of this. It’s been extremely hot and humid, the kind of heat and humidity that has me leaving key pieces of clothing at strategic locations so I can grab them and put them on as I race between the office and the front door if someone arrives unexpectedly. Because the nights are also exceptionally hot and humid, I dragged the large fan out of the closet, aimed it right at the bed, and turned it
Read more →The Baby in this post is my 2-year-old granddaughter, but for alliterative purposes, I co-opted the name her cousin Lauren calls her, Baby Geneva. BeeBee and I stayed with Geneva last weekend while my son and his wife took some much needed time off and I saw a side of Bee I’d never seen before. Even more interesting, I didn’t realize its full meaning until after we were home again. When we first arrived, Geneva was still at daycare so I wasn’t paying as much attention to what was going on as I should have been. Consequently, I didn’t
Read more →At the end of my last entry about BeeBee, I was sitting in my car sobbing, but I didn’t remain that way for long. For one thing, there were too many nice people coming to the clinic who would surely come over to ask me what was wrong. If they did, I knew I would immediately start blubbering along the lines of, “I just left my brain-damaged, deformed dog to be spayed and what if her too long upper jaw and too short and crooked lower one makes it impossible to pass the tube into her trachea and give
Read more →On the drive to the veterinary clinic, BeeBee looked out the window for while, or at least she faced it for a while, then shifted her focus to the air coming in the vents. She soon tired of that, too, and curled up on the passenger seat and went to sleep as if riding in the car was something she did every day. Because it wasn’t, I was impressed. When we got to the clinic, at first Bee wanted to take a closer look at the donkeys and the llama, but as we got closer to them she decided
Read more →Did you ever congratulate yourself for having all the bases covered only to watch everything go down the toilet in an instant? That’s what happened to me the last day of April. I got up that morning and made a note on my calendar to set up an appointment to get BeeBee spayed in May sometime after her first birthday. My thinking was that she’d be old enough that her growth plates should be well on their way toward closing if not already closed and her stitches would be out before I took her to my son’s to babysit
Read more →Once again I’m behind as spring clean-up and creating a new garden out of an area that consists mainly of sand and rocks takes up what little free time I have. Still, there have been some changes and BeeBee has been involved in most of them. Previously I wrote about putting a Gentle Leader on BeeBee in hopes of reducing the troubling edginess she displayed around the puppies. It worked well and I rarely saw her acting as if it bothered her in any way. Because of this, one evening when I was brushing her (dog grooming is a
Read more →Since my last post several weeks ago, a lot has happened to remind me how much the quality of our realities depends on how we process the sensory stimuli we receive from the world around us. It began when winter ended. I don’t mean “ended” as in “It gradually started to get warmer and the snow gradually melted.” I mean ended as in kaput, pffffttt! One day and it was winter and the next, the Big Thaw was on. Plow lines along the road, driveway, and front walk shrank so rapidly, I felt disoriented and even somewhat vulnerable. Until
Read more →Spring officially came last week and with it a lot of changes. Let me pause here to note that “spring” is a relative term. Last week that meant only one snow storm and one night with record-breaking low temperatures. However, in spite of the fact that the snow was very heavy and very wet, there was only about 3″ of it and I decided to let it melt rather than shovel it or have it plowed. Meanwhile, I’ve been trying to take the puppies out every day to get them used to the outdoors, to get some sun, and
Read more →This has been such a complex week that there’s been no time to write. It appears that the alien is a done deal because it has remained under the lip of the kitchen cabinets for a solid week now. I keep hoping it will redirect its energies into the art of French cooking (including cosmic shopping for same), but this has yet to happen. Rita told me she saw a really big alien pet toy, but just the thought of such a thing boggles the mind. The puppies are now 8 weeks old and will go in for exams,
Read more →On Saturday, March 4th, I was gone from before 8 until almost 5 celebrating my granddaughter’s second birthday. While I was gone, Rita came over and let the big dogs out, fed the puppies, and continued bonding with her new addition, The Puppy Formerly Known as Peanut Buttercup. I mention this to make it clear that I did not abandon them and that, if anything, what all the dogs experience when Rita is here is comparable to a blissful interval in Puppy Disneyland. Now to set the scene for what happened when I got home. Earlier this week I
Read more →Last night just as I was dozing off, something set BeeBee off and she started moving restlessly around the bed and acting like she wanted to jump off. I automatically tried to determine if anything had changed but that was useless. It was dark so we were both probably equally visually so I doubt anything I couldn’t see set her off. And because she’s deaf, that ruled out any unusual sounds triggering her display. Although it’s always possible that she could have smelled something I couldn’t given her enhanced sense of small, there’s no way I’d know that. Under
Read more →Sunday: Once again I got behind because of the weather, so I’m going to take this opportunity while I’m waiting for the plow guy to come, and all the snow to fall off the roof in front of the house so I can a) go out the front door without getting clobbered and b) and clean it up. The alien has pretty much been demoted to the status of toy, albeit a special one. There was one incident this week in which Fric went on a playing jag downstairs and then started to race upstairs with it. Unfortunately, she
Read more →BeeBee is now a young lady, or at least an older adolescent (more on that “lady” part later) as she experiences her first heat. With that has come a lot of changes. Her slender frame has filled out although her head remains more fine-boned and fragile looking than the rest of her thanks to her wonky jaw and muzzle conformation. Her left front quadrant (left side of face, left shoulder, and left leg) are the most compromised. She still revs her head up into a circular motion to get food out of her bowl, but she has learned to
Read more →Since the last time I wrote, a lot has happened which is why I haven’t had time to write, including that biggest time-consumer of all, more snow. I fear I destroyed the scientific validity of this study when I picked up the yellow alien and moved him. In my defense, I did this in self-defense. Fric went through a spell when the alien went out and came in almost every time she did. But when it started snowing in earnest on Friday, she left it on one of the little landings up to the front steps. Seeing it there
Read more →Sometime between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, the alien moved from the center of the yard to near the walk and there it sat until this morning. It was close enough that BeeBee could sniff it by putting her front feet up on the snow bank next to it. Fric observed this, but did nothing beyond peeing a discreet distance from the alien, presumably to mark it as hers. Then this morning we had a first in a long time. I took the dogs with me when I went down to put a letter in the mailbox, with Fric
Read more →I’m back to dating these again because I got way behind in posting the updates. Frica did the “Oh, my God, there’s the yellow alien!!!” routine yesterday morning, running toward the alien on the kitchen floor as if she’d been searching for it for years. She picked it up and started to take it upstairs, but the cat was on the back of the couch and took a swipe at her. When she opened her mouth to bark at the cat, she dropped the alien–isn’t there an Aesop’s fable about something like this?— and it bounced off the back
Read more →Since I last wrote, the yellow alien has confined its movements to the downstairs. The first move took it from by the front door to the part of the open concept area I use for a living room. Perhaps it was thinking about doing some entertaining. There it remained until I went to see clients yesterday morning. When I returned mid-afternoon, it was in the kitchen area, seeking a snack or a cup of tea perhaps. BeeBee was in her crate when I was gone so she was not responsible for this. Frica certainly could have been because she
Read more →When we last left the yellow alien, it was doing God-knows-what where while I was watching my driveway turn into a sheet of ice. Several hours later, it appeared in kitchen near the table, about 5′ from its previous location. At this point you might be tempted to think, “Um, OK. Bad weather, can’t go anywhere. Old bat living alone. Probably got into the cooking sherry.” Although I might have if I’d had some,all I have in the house are two half bottles of wine vinegar (one white, one red) and several bottles of Bach flower remedies that I
Read more →The snow has changed to rain and the ice is piling up on the trees so I’m going to try to get this off before I lose power. (How’s that for an optimistic view of my power company!?) Apparently Mars is not retrograde enough that it enhances alien communication because there have been some strange things going on around here the past 24 hours. The yellow alien remained downstairs and did not move overnight, but yesterday Fric carried a catnip mouse downstairs the same way she carried the alien. This, too, she treated as something other than a toy.
Read more →Frica moved the alien out of the bedroom this morning and left it on the top step. There it remained until mid-morning when she took it downstairs where it now lies next to another yellow toy. I think I’ve discovered why she’s been so bitchy toward Bee: Bee is obviously in heat. Can’t believe I missed all the early signs. This is the first time I’d had a tailless dog in heat and it’s not easy keeping her pants on without a tail to anchor them. I have to rethink this… I don’t blame Fric for not wanting the
Read more →I have no idea what a retrograding Mars looks like apparently that’s what Mars is doing now, which might explain why the yellow alien is on the move again. When I went to bed last night, it was still on the floor downstairs. When I woke up this morning it was on the rug at the foot of my bed. Fric had to go out twice last night and she could have grabbed it after she came in and I never would have noticed because I don’t turn on any lights. Given that I was half asleep both times
Read more →Sometimes I think the animals in my life wait for me to make assumptions or come to conclusions just so they can refute them. No doubt part of their strategy to keep me humble. Saturday I was in the bedroom for some reason, Fric followed me in, jumped on the bed, grabbed the yellow alien and moved it back into the office again. This occurred after we had company, including one of the pups from her first litter. She dropped the alien near the top of the stairs where it remained until late afternoon. Shortly after she brought it
Read more →Someone once defined a specialist as a person who knows more and more about less and less. I think I can legitimately call myself an alien specialist because the only alien who is moving is the yellow one and it’s not moving very much. I think Frica moved it a few inches on the bed so it was next to her when she slept, but after hauling wood and shoveling ice and snow for a good chunk of the day, I can honestly say I don’t remember much after my head hit the pillow. This morning I moved the
Read more →Perhaps after the cat scored such a decisive victory in the on-going Who’s the Smartest: Bi- or Quadrupeds? games, things have been very quiet on the animal front. Or rather everyone seems to be acting pretty normal for once. The yellow alien is still on my bed and the two purple ones are still in their respective places on the floor. Just as I wrote this, I realized that the furry ring is gone, but I’ve been so alien-focused I can’t say when it disappeared or where it went. With each passing day, Fric is becoming more playful, both
Read more →Yesterday I heard some noise in the back of the downstairs closet and immediately thought Frica was in there. Because she was usually done doing whatever it was she was doing before I got there, this time I decided to sneak up quietly so I would not disturb her. (Why I thought this would work I have no idea, but it seemed like something Jane Goodall would do.) I crept slowly up to the door with my eyes focused on the far corner of the floor where the nest of under-the-rug thingys is. Call me anthropomorphic, but you will
Read more →As northern New England continues what appears to be a move in the northern rainforest direction, we’ve had several snows that ended with sleet and freezing rain. The result is a hard crust on the snow capable of supporting all of the dogs, but not me. In the past, this hasn’t been an issue because the bulk of the plowed snow from the driveway and parking area forms a natural barrier in the front of the house, keeping the dogs away from the yard and slope beyond. Until yesterday. We’re currently having warm spell (in addition to the usual
Read more →Today Frica has shown minimal interest in the yellow alien with the most being to rush into the bedroom when I stepped it and it let out a loud squeak. It was outside Watson’s bed on the floor and I didn’t see it when I was making my bed. Scared me half to death! Once she saw what it was, she turned around and left and has shown no desire to get in the room since. So, something has changed, but what? Were I a better scientist, I would have attempted to control the environment to narrow the possibilities,
Read more →The yellow alien was once again/still in Watson’s bed when I got up this morning. Later, when Fric came into the bedroom, she went over to his bed and dug at the bed around its perimeter thereby again creating a nest with the alien in the middle of it. Then she left the room and has shown no interest in it since. It makes me think yet again of phantom fetuses: Do some animals (or even people for that matter) have a mind or spirit awareness of their unborn young that may persist even if the physical fetus is
Read more →Later yesterday I had to go into the bedroom for something and when Fric followed me in, I decided to show her the alien in the dogged to see what she’d do. As soon as I picked it up, she became very alert and jumped up on the bed, I assume to get closer to it. When I put it back in the dogbed, she immediate jumped into the dogbed with it and dug the bed up in a circle around it, then jumped out of the bed and went back to the office. To me, this means that
Read more →Big news! Well, OK, big news if you don’t have a life: the puppies eyes are starting to open. I turned around to look in the box while the laptop was booting up and saw one little puppy eye squinting at me for a split second before it shut again. In the realm of on-going sagas, all the focus is now on the yellow alien with everyone else apparently forgotten, no longer needed, or placed where they need to be to do whatever they’re supposed to be doing so there’s no reason to move them. Yesterday afternoon at around
Read more →There was no activity in Alien Land yesterday until I opened my bedroom door in the late afternoon. After that, I noticed that Frica had moved the yellow alien to the rug in front of the pen. However, it was back in bed with me when I woke up around 11 because the little female pup was crying. I finally gave up trying to figure out what was bothering her and got up, at which point she went to sleep and remained quiet until I left for a veterinary meeting at about 7:15. When I came upstairs to do
Read more →Just for the heck of it, yesterday afternoon I decided to look in the downstairs closet for the yellow alien, even though its being there would have meant that Fric brought it down and put it there shortly after she took it up stairs because that was the only time I was gone. Sure enough, when I moved the dog food container and peered into the corner, I discovered she had tipped over the bag I put that sticky under-the-rug stuff in, and made a little nest from which peered a pair of alien eyes. The alien remained there
Read more →This past week BeeBee passed another milestone in that she’s able to jump off the bed, or rather from the bed to the old bench at the foot of it, to the floor. The steps are still beyond her and it never might happen. However, when I lift her right rear leg now, she automatically puts her right front paw on the next step and then pushes off my hand. If I were willing to do that every step, I wouldn’t have to carry her up any more. Coming down is a different story. She can get down the
Read more →I want to preface this discussion with a few comments about non-alien-related (at least I think so) events. The core of my house was built in the early to mid 1700s and includes an unusual stone structure in the basement that almost certainly predates the house. There has been a ghost dog living here since I moved in in ’88, but I’ve not been aware of his or her presence in the last 10 years. Last Sunday when Fric was just starting to experience contractions, I heard the distinct bark of a dog from the corner of the office.
Read more →Fric has made no attempt to reunite the pointy-headed alien on my bed with the other two. However, either by accidentally moving them when she’s nursing or deliberately repositioning them, the other two are now back in the corners in the box. The puppies are getting more vocal. Hope the aliens aren’t teaching them bad habits… Unless there’s food around, BeeBee has no desire to get too close and face the Wrath of Frica.
Read more →Staggered out of bed while it was still dark and took the dogs out. Thought I heard a soft squeaking noise from Fric but was too tired to care. Came back upstairs and went to make my bed while the computer booted up. Yellow alien and a piece of fleece from an old slipper that I gave the dogs years ago was on my bed. No aliens in with puppies who were sleep and looking chubby. Twice Fric came downstairs while I was doing morning chores and tried to get into the cupboard. Son Dan emailed me that I
Read more →This morning I removed the two aliens from her box to see what Fric would do. After she had nursed her pups and they were sleeping, she got out of the box and retrieved the first of these, giving a strange cry when she did this that I’d never heard her use before. At some point when I was working, she retrieved the second without a sound. Because I haven’t gotten much sleep since the pups were born and I had a consultation scheduled for this evening, I decided to take a nap on the couch. The other two
Read more →OK, so I lied. This morning, it was still fairly dark when I looked into the maternity suite and saw the two aliens. At that time I assumed it was the grungy yellow one Fric took up yesterday and the purple one I saw her heaving up the stairs this morning When it got lighter and I checked the box again looked again, I saw that there were actually two purple aliens, both tucked in a corner as if watching over the pups. So, sometime during the night she removed the yellow alien–whom I have yet to find–and replaced
Read more →Last night somehow Frica dragged BeeBee’s stuffed porcupine toy up the stairs, but rightly decided it was way too big to fit in the box with her pups. This morning she dragged a grungy purple alien up and it’s now in the box with the grungy yellow one. May need to get a bigger box…
Read more →The following posts are from a series of emails I’ve been sharing with friends regarding the fascinating behavior displayed by my shitzu-terrier mix, Frica, following the birth of her pups. I’m also including this in the BeeBee Chronicles because, aside from Frica being 2 years older, Bee’s presence is the only thing that has changed since she had her first litter. At that time, I did have another dog, but she was an adult female, not a pup like BeeBee. The original emails included pictures, but the quality of them when uploaded to the blog was so poor that
Read more →I’ve gotten way behind thanks to the holidays and weather, but did want to update everyone on what BeeBee’s been up to. She continues to grow longer and remains very svelte. When I carry her up and down the stairs, sometimes she drapes over my arm like Feron, the cat belonging to the Little Red-Haired Girl (I think) in the “Peanuts” comic strip. In a way, it’s easier to carry her that way than when she’s more upright and liable to swing her head around at any time. Carrying such a dog multiple times a day is also a good
Read more →As I discovered when we had our first major snowstorm, something quite unintended. To be sure, BeeBee loved romping in the snow once I’d cleared an area for her and Frica to play in. I also enjoyed the fact that the snow was deep enough that I didn’t have to worry about them going anywhere but where I’d shoveled because the deep snow acted like a natural fence. But above and beyond that, BeeBee enhanced my snow-shoveling experience for a quite unrelated reason: carrying her up and down the stairs for the past three months has increased my arm
Read more →Since I got BeeBee, I’ve been looking for something that would enable me to readily see her in limited light or darkness. There were two BeeBee-related challenges to this project. The first is that she’s so low to the ground that it couldn’t be anything of any size that dangled from her collar. The second is that she’s now getting a corgi ruff that could hide a smaller light source. As luck would have it, someone sent me an email about some dog-related event. The event didn’t particularly interest me, but I immediately zeroed in on a notice about
Read more →In addition to allowing her to compensate splendidly for her deafness and visual difference, BeeBee also uses her nose like a 5th appendage. Because of her pronounced overbite, she can stick her nose into narrower places than a dog of similar size and conformation with a normal jaw. This enables her, for example, to get her nose into the tiny space between the wood rack and wall. But much to her consternation, that’s all that fits there. I can always tell when her nose locates something tantalizing that she can’t grab or lick up with her lower jaw or
Read more →In the last BeeBee blog I talked about the real possibility that, thanks to her various impairments, BeeBee’s brain works differently. I use the word “impairment” for convenience, fully aware of the fact that whatever she experiences is normal for her. It’s conceivable that she looks at me and the other pets and thinks how lucky she is to possess the wherewithal to live with those suffering from so many limitations. Relative to perceptual ability, I’m sure even the average normal dog and cat thinks that about any humans they live with every day. Just as humans born lacking a particular
Read more →If you have a medical background like I do, you can’t help but wonder what goes on in BeeBee’s brain. To begin with, I’ve given up thinking that there is just one lesion or abnormality that will explain the whole shebang. That’s the left side of my brain talking there. My right brain still clings to the hope that there’s one, reversible condition that would explain it all and that said condition will magically right itself when Mars is in the 7th house of Pluto or some such thing. Realistically, it seems that her symptomatic hodge-podge involves both her
Read more →I swear, every day BeeBee gets longer and sometimes it takes a heroic effort not to worry about what that means for both of us. When she’s standing still, anyone with a basic knowledge of physics would recognize that the span between her front and back legs is too great. Were she an bridge, a engineer would immediately shout, “For heaven’s sake, put a support in the middle before the whole thing collapses!” And, indeed, I’ve had fleeting thoughts of strapping a roller-skate to her mid-section as a preventive measure. Realistically, though, that’s not an option, any more than
Read more →It’s been rightfully, albeit jokingly, pointed out to me by my best bud in whole world, Ann Firestone, that I did not acknowledge her role in bringing BeeBee into my life. It was Ann who immediately thought of me when she and Mary Taylor saw the pup and Ann who broached the subject of me taking her. In spite of my vow never to get another corgi after Violet the Wonderdog died, Ann intuitively knew BeeBee and I would be a match. How did I forget Ann in the commentary? It’s simple. Ann is like air, such an important part
Read more →BeeBee has taken to barking–a loud, shrill bark–for no apparent reason that I can discern. When hearing dogs do this, I assume they’re reacting to some sound I can’t hear. This raises the question: what is she barking at? Accepting that I have no idea and that the bark is very annoying, including to the other pets, I’ve devised a hand and body language signal that means “quiet.” The instant I used it the first time, though, a funny thing happened. It hit me that BeeBee had created a koan for me. Surely expecting a deaf dog to obey
Read more →I’m a big fan of Oliver Sacks and when I was watching Fric and BeeBee tear around the yard, I couldn’t help but think of his book, A Leg to Stand On. In it he describes how people who have lost function of a limb may use it normally if placed in conditions that cause them to forget that they can’t do so. When BeeBee walks slowly her gait is half-way between the come-hither woozy swing of an inebriated street-walker and a dog who really has to go but doesn’t want to go just yet. There’s no doubt she
Read more →Although a certain lip-service is paid to health and temperament, for a fair number of people an animal’s looks are the primary concern. If a breed, such as a corgi, is known for its erect ears, then these become the immediate focus of attention. Such people would look BeeBee’s drooping right ear and think that her left side was her “good” side and hope that her right ear gets with the program so it doesn’t spoil her looks. In reality, the left side of BeeBee’s face is the side that’s compromised. That eye doesn’t blink and her vision from
Read more →A friend stopped in unannounced yesterday and was taken aback to the point of appalled that I’d taken on a dog like BeeBee. His comments’ effect on me surprised me for two quite opposite reasons. My immediate response was to lash out at him for his anti-canine comments because Bee and her problems have become such a normal part of my life I’ve already forgotten that others might not see her the same way I do. Fortunately, I realized that this was my problem not his and didn’t say anything I’d later regret. Whew! But after he left (after offering Bee
Read more →Previously I mentioned that BeeBee appears to have learned to bark in a “normal” way from observing my other two dogs. In addition to using this bark when she joins in greeting visitors, she also uses it when she greets and wants to play with other dogs. Unfortunately, the latter yields less successful results than the former because the average human has no idea what she’s saying to them but it doesn’t matter, especially with cute puppies. On the other hand, it does matter to the average dog and, judging from other dogs’ responses to her, whatever she’s saying
Read more →This morning as part of my morning ritual I draped myself upside down on my exercise ball on my yoga mat next to the woodstove with my head touching the floor and my eyes closed. Frica and BeeBee were doing their usual post-breakfast carousing while Watson napped on the dog couch and Whitman, the cat, tried to convince me to let him out. Normally I would have let Whit out before I started my yoga routine, but it’s cold and rainy and I knew what would happen when I opened the door for him. He would stand there peering
Read more →Actually, I doubt she has. Or rather, she may have, but her skills at reading body language are probably much better. Like other dogs born deaf, she has a distinct vocalization which in her case is half-way between a low bark and a moan. But since she’s been here, she has also develop a bark that is indistinguishable (to me) from that of a dog who can hear. That animals, including humans, learn by mimicry is well-known, and one day several weeks ago I saw what I can only describe as a conscious attempt on Bee’s part to mimic my other dogs in
Read more →BeeBee has less control over the left side of her face. That plus her much shorter lower jaw causes saliva sometimes to collect on her down side when she sleeps. There’s never been much of it so I forgot all about it. But yesterday I looked down at her sleeping under my desk and noticed a distinct pink color around her lips and immediately thought, “Oh, my God, what’s happened to her!” Ridiculous visions of that as yet unidentified damaged part of her brain leaking out through the roof of her mouth vied with those of some unacknowledged infirmity
Read more →House-training BeeBee has caused me to realize that there’s room for yet another dog-training book even with the gazillions already out there. I came to this conclusion when BeeBee started giving me her, “I have to go” look. The problem was that we were in my upstairs office and, call it sympathy pains or post-menopausal bladder, I suddenly realized that I really had to go, too. I immediately picked her up and carried her downstairs, fully intending to take her outside immediately. Unfortunately, my bladder had other ideas. Even more unfortunately, I couldn’t recall a single training book that
Read more →It’s been almost exactly one month since BeeBee joined my household and, during that time, defining her and our relationship seemed like a particularly pressing task. I say this, not because I felt any pressing need to do this, but because others did. And I admit, there is something comforting about assigning such labels. Somehow doing so implies a certain amount of control. One common view is that BeeBee is broken and everything that can be done should be done to fix her. Another sees her as impaired and in need of some sort of environmental and bond bubble to protect her from the real world at all
Read more →Stop by the website in October and meet my new addition, BeeBee, and get the inside scoop on why I decided to give her her own category. Then watch this space as the saga unfolds.
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