I think a lot about a year of firsts for humans and animals. Last year was my and my animals first year living with all the changes surrounding my cancer diagnosis and treatment. 2022 is our first year in that nebulous physical and mental environment known as “cancer-free”.
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I’m only offering animal behavior and bond phone consultations at this time, thanks to COVID – 19. That’s not as bad as it may sound for several reasons:
Read more →Still some final tweaking to do, but today the new site replaced the old. Thanks to all who previewed and critiqued the site and those who provided pictures that have greatly enhanced the site. Last but definitely not least, a special thanks to my son Jeremy who has shown extreme patience during the past 6 months. Animal aggression and anal glands I can do. But Internet technology? That’s a different story.
Read more →I spent the weekend at a vet emergency and critical care seminar and, aside from happily learning that even at that level they’re advocating keeping the animal and environment calm for the sake of the dog instead of emergency doc-jock reactivity, I discovered that the speaker hates to see excited dogs (especially Labs and goldens) engaged in fetch and barking marathons in public parks. In their most benign form, these displays upset me because these animals are so obviously stressed in that environment and their owners so oblivious to this fact. These dogs aren’t frantically going after that ball
Read more →Every holiday season I tell myself I should decorate more than I do, which is minimal. This discussion invariably includes the more practical me listing all the reasons why I shouldn’t: a small house heated by wood tree-friendly; the cat will be alone for a few days over Christmas and any decorations might be too tempting to ignore. That sort of thing. Even so, the longing remains. This morning for some reason it hit me especially hard as I went out with the dogs. Apparently the Christmas spirit took notice of my mood because while the dogs were doing
Read more →I’ve known for years that I have bears wandering through if not actually living on my property. Once a young black bear veered off toward my place after loping down the road beside my car for a while as I was driving home from the dump. Other times, I watched them destroy bird feeders less than 15’ from the front and back doors of my house, effectively ending my bird-feeding days. And I’ve felt them watching me from the woods above the house. At first that used to bother me, but more because I had no idea what the
Read more →who has responded to these podcasts and blogs. Of all the net-related activities that get foiled by my dial-up, this one is especially slow. That’s saying a lot considering how slow everything else is! But I do want you all to know that I greatly appreciate your comments and read every one of them. and often feel greatly depressed when I can’t respond as I’d like to. Some day…
Read more →A few weeks ago I read an article in the local paper touting the value of home-grown food that incomprehensibly segued into a tirade about laws that prohibit the keeping of chickens and other farm animals in suburbia. That surprised me because keeping farm animals in more complex suburban and urban environments isn’t a good idea for multiple reasons. It’s not good for the farm animals and it’s not good for the area’s companion animals and wildlife, to say nothing of the people who live in those areas. But while the reasons for this seem pretty obvious to me
Read more →Apparently the cybergods think play is an important subject too, because this link just showed up in a veterinary news service I receive. Enjoy. Play. Smile. 🙂
Read more →I receive a fair number of video links, but living in the a dead zone with a dial-up connection prevents me from opening most of them. Either I can’t open a clip at all, or my connection crashes half-way through the download process. Because what others may consider a short clip can take me several hours to download, this is all very discouraging. But evidently the universe wanted me to see this one, because it survived its early morning download ordeal intact. The Poop Detective’s CSI spin made me laugh for 2 reasons. One is because I’ve felt the
Read more →First and foremost, thanks to everyone who asked about how I and the animals were doing. We’re doing very well having suffered no more than a small tree down, the worst of which I’ve already cleaned up, and a power outage of about 12 hours. What lingers is the awareness of what a huge difference a relatively small shift in the storm’s track made. Not that far to the west, the flooding and destruction in Vermont is heart-breaking. Ironically last week I was kidding one of my clients who lives in a hard-hit area about all the flocks of
Read more →Because I consider this site first and foremost an educational one, there’s a lot of text on it. And because of this, I’ve wanted to add a search engine to it for quite a while. Clients and others who visit the site also have assured me that this would be a welcomed addition. After some research, Google’s search engine fulfilled my needs the best. The only drawback is that it comes with ads, something I’ve tried to avoid for multiple reasons since I started the site. Aside from noting that their presence in no way signals my endorsement of
Read more →I’m writing this from Colorado, the home of some of the country’s most breath-taking mountain vistas. But while I’ll never forget the time we spent enjoying those views, I’ve fallen head over hills in love with a relatively flat open space about a 5-minute walk from my son’s home. Looks pretty nondescript doesn’t it? It’s not, though. It’s filled with wildflowers and birds, some familiar but many others unknown to me. But more than that, it has a prairie dog town beside one section of the path that rings the area. What can I say? I’m sucker for
Read more →There’s no podcast this week, but I wanted to share an animal-related mystery that I investigated at my son, Dan’s, townhouse when I went there with Frica and Ollie to celebrate Christmas. It’s not that this mystery is anything spectacular. It probably isn’t or wouldn’t be even if we managed to solve it. In the meantime, it’s a good example of the kinds of things animals do to which we would probably assign all kinds of higher brain function were a human to do them. But when a dog or cat does them, well, then it’s a mystery The
Read more →I got an email from my friend Pam telling me she had about 15,000 worms doing their magic at her house. I knew Pam was a multi-talented person—singer, drummer, great raconteur, and co-owner with her husband of the Sea Solar Store in Dover, New Hampshire. But I had no idea that worms were eating her garbage too. Pam also sent me a picture of the Can-O-Worms, a round version of my worm hotel, and told me it was one of several systems now available. I had no idea. Up until I got the hotel years ago, all the systems
Read more →One nice thing about not being a commercial success is that I can change my mind about things as I gain more knowledge and experience. I can say “Whoa, was I wrong about that! This makes ever so much more sense!” without losing sponsors or watching the value of my empire plummet. Nor do I have to worry about offending my groupies because a) I don’t have any and b) those independent thinkers who do follow my work know I often put a different spin on bond and behavior topics. For better or worse—depending on your view—that spin may
Read more →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 →Last night I woke up to what sounded like a howl-off between a coyote sitting in my front yard and one in the distance. Either that or the one in the yard was howling for the sheer joy of listening to his/her echo from across the valley below the house.This morning when I looked into the front yard from the office, I saw the most gorgeous doe who bounded away before I got anything but this fleeting picture of her. To say that both made my day is putting it mildly.
Read more →The nice folks at Veterinary Technicians Schools On-line recently published an article, Top 100 Websites for Pet Ownership Advice, that included my podcasts on the list. Because my approach to all things animal tends to be so different from that offered by other sources, such recognition always brightens my day.
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 →After several months thoughts of Whittington the cat become part of my memory mosaic with memories of the good times replacing the difficult ones at the end. Concurrently, the awareness that there was a cat-sized vacuum in this house increased and about a month ago I put out the word that I was looking for a new cat. My request was pretty specific. I wanted a short-haired mackerel tabby male with enough presence to tolerate dogs and kids. I also wanted a barn kitten or one from roots that would suggest good hunting potential because the basement of this
Read more →Thanks to the folks at Veterinary Technician Schools Online for naming my blog one of the top fifty blogs written by veterinarians. For those of you who are interested in a career in veterinary technology, this website explains online vet tech school options, degrees, programs, and salary, job, and career information. I think I’ll take the dogs out in the rain and then fix myself a cup of tea to celebrate.
Read more →Another audio book comes to an end and I can’t help reminiscing about events that occurred during its recording. And once I start doing that, my thoughts automatically wander to what other audio projects might lay ahead…
Read more →I finally got around to updating the references regarding the effects of spay and neuter and you can find these here. For those who don’t have access to some of these publications, you may be able to find at least abstracts of the articles by doing a search for the author’s name plus key words from the article’s title in Google Scholar or one of the other more academic search engines. Your local librarian or a college librarian also should be able to get copies for you.
Read more →It was pointed out by my friend Dave the surgeon that I neglected to mention suturing the alien’s leg back on. That’s because he–Dave, not the alien–is a famous human surgeon and that’s what he would obviously do for a human in similar conditions. However, he (hopefully) doesn’t have to worry about other humans in the household trying to rip the leg off his patient and consuming the sutures in the process. Thread, string, yarn, Mylar tinsel and packaging, and ribbon all can create serious problems for dogs and cats if the animals swallow them, far worse than rubber
Read more →The Animal Talk Naturally interview I did last week is available for your listening enjoyment here.
Read more →After disappearing months ago, the yellow alien made a surprise appearance during my New Dog Dawning Seminar here last weekend. I had taken the big puffy dog bed from upstairs down to the living room and placed it on the floor beside the chair where I would be sitting. Rather than get into the gory details here, Ollie and Bee were NOT on their good behavior which we know can be marginally good at best. And benign neglect periodically lost out to the cute factor or, when it wore thin, the pain-in-the-butt one. Anyhow, somewhere along the line, we
Read more →Last Tuesday Whit had his staples removed and I’m pleased to report that he did very well. In fact, his behavior was fantastic. For him, that is. As you recall, being anywhere outside his home turf appeals to Whit about as much as being put on a rack and tortured. When a diabolical poltergeist knocked his crate off the end of the exam table on which I was holding him and it hit with a crash that caused anyone of any species within earshot to jump, all he did was shoot out of my arms like a cannonball and
Read more →Have you ever taken your pet to the veterinary clinic for some problem and gotten the feeling that your veterinarian just wasn’t listening to you? Or you got the impression that the vet had already made up his or her mind regarding the cause and proper treatment of the problem before getting what you considered a complete history or thoroughly examining your animal? At that time, you might have thought that the veterinarian simply didn’t care about your animal or you. But more often than not, these people really do care. It’s the way they’ve been trained that creates
Read more →Originally I was going to post this after a related podcast, but some phone and other challenges really messed up my schedule so the two are out of order. It doesn’t matter contentwise, except that I make a reference in the podcast to posting more details about Whit at some later date. Yeah, I know: more evidence of how anal I am! Having once again proven that, let me begin by saying that Whit had his surgery last week and did extremely well. Even though neither picture is that great, the pre-opt Whit on the left and the post-op
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 →Wednesday I saw a client at the clinic and while I was there I decided to make an appointment to take Whit in. My thinking was that I wanted the first appointment in the morning when we’d be less likely to have to wait and the waiting and exam rooms fresh and clean and about as free of possibly threatening other animal scents as a veterinary clinic possibly could be. Because the practice is a busy one, I also thought it could be several weeks before such an opening would be available. Wrong. As it turned out, a quirk
Read more →Whit and I are more or less in a holding pattern. I continue to leave Ollie’s crate out and open for him–Whit–to use in hopes of getting him more accustomed to it. He’s been using it more as the evenings get cooler so I plan to get him to the clinic with minimum trauma for some bloodwork soon. His appetite blows hot and cold, but when he’s not interested in eating his canned food, he wants to go out. And when he goes out, he hunts and eats most of the rodent he catches. I think I could make
Read more →In my last entry I mistakenly referred to BeeBee as Violet. Violet the Wonderdog was my first corgi. These are the only pictures I have of her on this computer, obviously taken when she was a puppy. It’s weird, isn’t it? You think the past is gone and then you make a subconscious typo and it all comes back. Fortunately, I have a lot of great memories and other furballs to keep me from getting maudlin.
Read more →The stars in my technological house have never been particularly spectacular, but lately they’ve apparently either been on strike or on vacation. It began a while back when my camera bit the dust and was followed with an upgrade on the blog software than messed up the player for the podcast, followed by another upgrade in the blog software. I’ve started recording the first mystery for free download and then my son, Dan, gave me his old camera which is hardly old. Toss in multiple storm-related power outages, and the result has been METO, i.e. Matron Electronic Technological Overload.
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 →Yesterday I picked up an assortment of canned cat foods for Whit when I went grocery shopping. He’s always eaten dried food and was such an excellent rodent-hunter that I tended to think of what I offered him more as supplemental feeding. Even so, I always provided him with what I considered the best, although I admit that I’ve made adjustments several times over the years when new data about feline physiology made it clear a particular era’s best wasn’t as great as we thought it was. But when I went shopping yesterday, the cardinal rule of nutrition was
Read more →This post inaugurates a new blog category, the Whittington Journal. Ironically, in March of this year, I wrote In Praise of Whittington, a commentary that described my feline companion of almost 14 years. At the time, I did this because he was doing very well for his age and I didn’t want to wait until he was gone to write about him. I say “ironically” because two weeks after that commentary was posted, I had to euthanize my old dog, Watson, a loss I’ve yet to put into words. Wats and Whit were so much like an old married
Read more →Below are links to the show I did with Drs Kim Bloomer and Jeannie Thomason on June 17th about human emotions as they affect animal health and behavior. But as always happens with these two great folks, the conversation strayed to other areas, too. For the written/streaming version, click here. For the mp3/download, click here.
Read more →It’s that time of year again in New England when the fireflies flash their distinctive calls as they court members of their own kind. On clear, moonless nights, they look like low-lying twinkling stars. On foggy ones, the tiny points of light become fuzzy golden globes zipping around the yard and garden. Although we humans with our complex relationships might find their simple on/off form of communication simplistic (or even enviable!), when it comes to courting, it’s not without its unique twists. Each firefly species has its own distinct flash pattern to avoid breakdowns in communication, but as we
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 →A friend recently sent me the following lovely poem by poet extraordinaire Mary Oliver. Because it was about a dog, I automatically compared that animal’s experiences with those of my puppy, Ollie. Once I did that, I could not resist the temptation to portray Ollie’s alternate reality poetically, too. Below are both poems, the exquisite original and the parody. Luke, by Mary Oliver from Red Birds I had a dog who loved flowers Briskly she went through the fields. yet paused for the honeysuckle or the rose, her dark head and her wet nose touching the face of
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 →Here is a link to a toy my son Dan got his animal-loving daughter for her birthday. But when Lauren started playing with it, he realized what it was about when she yanked on the dog’s tail and poop came out. (All he saw was Barbie and dog and thought, “Perfect gift.” That’s my boy!) As he was coping with his shock regarding this surprising turn of events, the obvious question occurred to him: “Where does the poop come from?” Then he discovered that the poop also serves as the treats that Barbie feeds the dog. Hmmmmm….. Being the
Read more →Although I always hope I’ll be able to take those professional-looking pet portraits, the reality is that little puppies are remarkably fast. Add that the battery in my camera crapped out and I was reduced to plugging my camera into a wall socket which greatly limited my puppy-chasing mobility, and I had no choice but to resort to what my son did under similar circumstances to keep Cori still long enough to photograph her: I popped them into a decorator wastebasket. The only disadvantage of this is that, as you can see, they did not see this as a
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 →From Monday evening to Tuesday afternoon, the alien was quite active. Somewhere along the line, it moved from the rug in the living room by the couch to an area rug by the aquarium. The next time I noticed it, it was on another area rug by the chaise where Watson and the cat spend a lot of time. I never saw any of the pets near it so I have no idea how it got from one place to another. However, when I returned home mid-afternoon today, Fric grabbed it and took it outside. And there it still
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 →I found the furry ring in the toy box so I assume Fric took it downstairs at some point and I just picked it up along with all the other toys and didn’t even notice. Had a “Be still my heart” moment this morning when I looked into the pen first thing and all four of the pups rushed (OK, waddled at quadrupedal rather than larval speed) to the edge of the box to greet me. Tomorrow I plan to dismantle the pen and put up the playpen so they’ll have more room to stagger around.
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 →a.k.a. It’s not over yet. Last night when I was doing the nightly pillow-moving routine before going to bed, Frica came in and did a little digging at the part of Watson’s bed under my bed. Then she noticed the yellow alien that was now on the floor next to purple one close to Watson’s bed. By then I had the two pillows on the bench at the end of my bed. She picked up the yellow alien and jumped onto the bench with it, stomped a few circles on the pillows to make a nest for herself, and
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 →To my knowledge there was zero alien movement since my last report. Perhaps this has something to do with the puppies eyes opening. It could also be because whatever the hormonal changes were that were fueling it have declined along with Frica’s vaginal discharge. Or it could be that she found the ultimate location for the yellow alien in Watson’s bed because he slept on it last night. Even if she wanted to move it, there’s no way she couldn’t have gotten him to move off it until he was good and ready. It’s rare that this happens until
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 →…pretty quiet. Only the yellow one has moved in the past 18 hours. Frica brought it down when I came downstairs yesterday around noon to get ready to go see a client, and it was still on the rug when I got home at 4:30. As the puppies have fallen into a routine that requires less of her time, maybe her interest in it is waning. She did check out the closet both yesterday and again this morning, by-passing the food container both times in favor of the pile of sticky stuff in the corner, but I didn’t hear
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 →Last night when I came up to bed, the yellow alien was in the box with the puppies and the short purple one was still on the rug in front of the pen. This morning, the furry ring, the yellow alien, and the short purple one were all in bed with me. The pointy head purple one was under the bed, but Fric had moved it closer to Watson’s bed. When we went out first thing, Fric took the yellow alien with her and dropped it on the walk again. I brought it in and later she brought it
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 →After a week with little or no sleep, I got home from a consultation yesterday, vaguely recall feeding the pets and myself and doing other chores, went to bed, and remember nothing else until I awoke 8 blessed hours later. As soon as I did, I knew that poor Fric certainly had to go out during that time and that I hadn’t heard her or responded to her attempts to awaken me as usual. So I got up knowing that I had a cleaning job ahead and that it was my own fault, but feeling sufficiently refreshed that I
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 →It’s that time again, time to do an ethological analysis of the American political process to see how we measure up to lower life forms. Alas, so far and once again, not so good. In animals, the goal is to produce viable young, and ensure their survival. This is a two-step process. First males and females compete among themselves to prove who has the best competitive skills. The second part is that those who proved their superiority among their respective peers must then prove that they’re sufficiently compatible and qualified to mate, produce viable offspring, and successfully raise them.
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