Dogged Blog

Heroes and Gurus, or Taking What You Like While Leaving the Rest

Last night, the author responsible for getting me started in holistic care of my dogs and cats over twenty years ago was a guest at a chat on a website I work for. I arranged and hosted the chat.

A good friend asked me privately what on earth we could learn from him, as she knew I did not follow his feeding plan any longer, and she never had. And indeed, in the chat, he said at least two things I take strong exception to. So what's up with that?

This is part of why I hate gurus so much. If you make someone into an infallible source of authority, you're trapped.  It's like fundamentalism: The bible says it, I believe it, and that's enough for me. You have to buy the whole thing lock, stock, and barrel, and if you disbelieve one tiny bit, it casts doubt on the whole thing.

But in reality as opposed to guru-land, no one is always right. People usually have vast areas of self-delusion and ignorance mixed in with substantial expertise and rationality. They get locked into certain beliefs and either fail to challenge them with new evidence from time to time, or actually start to deny anything that contradicts their established ideas. And even those of us who are free of those failings (yes, I'm joking, ok, don't yell at me!) do have areas we aren't knowledgeable about. I often get emails from people asking me questions about things I don't know anything about, who are flabbergasted when I respond by saying "I'm sorry, but I don't know anything about that." (Sometimes when I'm feeling mean and evil I add a suggestion that they try GOOGLING IT instead of asking me to dump the contents of my brain into their heads, but usually I leave it there.)

This is why I keep insisting (to the point that you're probably getting sick of it) that there is no one book, no bible,  you should read on canine nutrition or holistic animal care, but that we should read widely, try things out, and come to our own conclusions. "My way or the highway" is a surefire way to get good and lost pretty damn quickly, and it's the same with trying to turn an author, veterinarian, breeder, or I don't know, some blogger chick with a lot of opinions, into Your Own Personal Jesus.

In other words, take what you like and leave the rest. And then add your own chapter.

Is P!nk the New Pink?

I loved P!nk already, just for being the anti-Britney, for being tough and smart and cool without being a skank.

Then I loved her more more more when Stupid Girls came out, which is the kind of song I'd like to have playing subliminally in the bedroom of every teenaged girl in America but don't have to, because they listen to it on their own already and I HOPE they really, really are listening to it:

They travel in packs of two or three
With their itsy bitsy doggies and their teeny-weeny tees
Where, oh where, have the smart people gone?
Oh where, oh where could they be?

But I love her so much now it hurts. From "Dear Mr. President" on her forthcoming album "I'm Not Dead":

what kind of father would take his own daughter's rights away
and what kind of father might hate his own daughter if she were gay
i can only imagine what the first lady has to say
you've come a long way from whiskey and cocaine

Get P!nk. (Non-commercial link, no affiliate program, just total altruism on my part because, you know, I LOVE HER.)

Media God Lara Logan

Gina's been looking for more women to elevate to media god status. From Crooks and Liars via AmericaBLOG, CBS' Lara Logan gets there for me:

The media was assailed all week by the administration trying to pass the meme that the press is too negative. Instantly, the right wing pundits picked up the theme. Howard Kurtz, who told Wolf Blitzer that the coverage on Iraq is too negative also received an earful from Lara Logan.

Video here, it just gets better and better so watch it all.

He's Not a Feminist... but he's a mensch

Feminism has been described as the radical notion that women are people. But that is a bon mot, good for opening a few minds but not as a working definition of a philosophy or an ideology. Here is what I think feminism is: Feminism is a liberation movement. Though it takes multifarious forms, and there are probably more feminisms than there are feminists, that is what it comes down to, especially if you grant a broad definition of the word liberation. Feminism is the movement to free women from sexism, to free them from the oppression — whether murder, mutilation, or mere slight statistical lack of employment opportunity — visited on them by men… and by other women. -Chris Clarke, Creek Running North

OK, he loves his dog. That's the first thing.

He's an incandescent writer. That's the second thing.

And he is, as I'm far from the first to notice, a Guy Who Gets It.

Today he says he's not a feminist just because he supports feminism, any more than he's a Chicana because he supports Latina rights. He says that feminism is a liberation movement. He notices that he has "middle-aged vanilla hetboy bias and privilege."

I am a sympathizer. I am a fellow traveler. At my best, I am an ally. But I am a member of the class against which feminism is aimed. I can do my best to be a traitor to that class. More and more men do, and I think no one would deny that the material support we can provide is crucial, whether talking to other men, offering political and financial and emotional support to feminist activists, or just doing the damn dishes half the time.

Yeah. Sigh. As the aunt of three nephews, I gotta hope this kind of thing catches on.

Is Easy a Good Thing?

Gina already identified "natural" as being one of the big marketing themes at Global Pet Expo, but  every time I turned around, someone was advertising some product designed to make owning a dog, cat, fish, snake, lizard, or tarantula "easier." Magical fish tank cleaning devices, little packages of crickets designed so the soccer moms never have to deal with their kids' lizards' food, self-cleaning litter boxes, and every slicer, dicer, and ginzu knifeset imaginable to remove the fuss from caring for pets.

Now, if this means you have more time to take your dogs to the beach, I'm all for it. But I'm afraid a lot of this innovation just means that people who don't actually have the time for a dog, cat, or other highly social animal will decide that they do. And while I don't think most dogs and cats really get the kind of care they deserve and would thrive with, that goes quintuple for more exotic pets, such as many kinds of lizard. (I'm willing to concede snakes and fish probably don't care too much.)

The elimination of elimination as a chore worries me, too. I hate cleaning litter boxes and pooper scooping as much as the next person, but the pee and poop patrol can actually alert you to a lot of possible health problems. I'm not quite sure I want a system that means I don't ever have to think about my dog or cat's output again.

So by all means, spend your former litter-box-cleaning-hours playing laser pointer tag with your cat. But please, please, don't just stay later at the office or use the time updating your iPod playlists. And if the pet's diet grosses you out, maybe don't get that pet in the first place. Just a suggestion.

More on the Glamorous Dog Writer Lifestyle

I really like this new system I have, where I just write a few words and send you over to Gina's blog to read about what I've been up to. And this time she not only doesn't overlook me, she actually says incredibly nice things about me, making me blush and say oh, gosh, no, Gina, I'm not all that.

Yeahright. "Humble" is not a word that springs to mind when people try to describe me, let's just face it.

I will add, though, that as much as Gina may like working with me and admire MY writing, she is and has always been a better writer than I am. And working with Gina is actually not at all like working, it's like having fun. And I'm not just saying that because of the snorting-soda-out-the-nose good time we had in San Diego. I'm saying it because there's nothing better than working with someone smart and articulate who is insanely passionate about animals.

As for Travis, let's just say that I grabbed his arm while trying to make a point in conversation, and nearly fainted dead away at the MUSCLES that boy has. He flexed for the camera, but it remains to be seen if he'll give us permission to post THOSE photos. I anticipate greatly increased blog traffic if he does.

And speaking of cameras, Gina's photographer Morgan is the best traveling companion two dog writers ever had, and the last of the real gentlemen. And he took some pictures of my shoes, too.

SHOES! Me and Kim Thornton Kim Thornton (don't ask) of MSNBC.com bonded deeply over shoes. I brought five pairs for a two day trip, and Gina thought that was excessive. Kim and I, on the other hand, spent much of Thursday night exchanging notes on the best places to buy shoes and our favorite shoes and even a few naughty stories I had from my misspent youth in the 80s about shoe designer Patrick Cox.

Oh yeah, and we went to the pet expo. But you'll have to check out Gina's blog to read about that. Me, it's all about shoes and muscles.

The Glamorous Lives of Dog Writers

Just a quick note before we head over to Day 2 of the continent's largest pet expo - Gina has a report on the show and a photo of us with two of our fellow dog writers, Dr. Marty Becker and Steve Dale, over on Dogma.

The Gina and Travis Pet Expo

Gina really needs to rethink her priorities. She posted on her blog that she was off to the Global Pet Expo in San Diego, and didn't even MENTION that I'm going with her and that we're meeting up with Travis. Honestly. I'm so not used to being an afterthought.

I will have my laptop but who knows if I'll be able to blog or not. Or have anything to say. Yeahright. I'm going to the pet industry's most dazzling pet expo and I won't have anything to say. Like that's gonna happen.

Did I mention I'll be there with Gina and Travis?

The Second Hundred Pounds Are Slow

I get a lot of traffic to my posts about weight loss, especially one I did entitled "The First Hundred Pounds Are Easy." And yeah, the first hundred pounds were easy. The second hundred, not so much.

When I say that losing weight has become difficult, most people think I mean that eating and working out in a way that sustains ongoing weight loss is difficult. That's not the case at all. I have no problem with eating (I know that makes a lot of people hate me, but it's true), and I love to work out, although I don't do it as much as I wish because my gym is an hour away, part of the price I pay for living in the boonies, aka paradise.

There are two difficult things about losing that second hundred pounds, which I'm a little more than halfway through now. The first is practical, and is something shared by people who lose weight with diet and exercise, with surgery, or under medically supervised weight loss programs: As you get closer and closer to your goal weight, the weight comes off slower and slower. You can't speed it up, and you can't control it. Our bodies really don't want to give up that weight, for whatever reason. Losing weight isn't for control freaks, and requires enormous amounts of patience and a sort of zen serenity - which you'd think would rule me out on both counts.

The second hard thing about getting close to your goal weight is emotional. We live in a society that ostensibly hates fat. Fat people are scorned, ridiculed, and discriminated against. There's no room in that world view for being sad or scared at losing weight, but I've talked to dozens of people who share my grief and fear as the pounds drop off. I've sat on the floor of my room holding clothes that are too big for me and cried, and I doubt those tears are really about my clothes.

I've invested most of my adulthood in telling the world to get its judgements off my body, making being bigger than life part of my identity. And I did it successfully, too. I might have made the decision to lose weight, and thus gone over to the Dark Side in the minds of my friends in the fat acceptance movement, but I still resist the universal demonization of body fat and have no patience with anti-fat propaganda. If it's not your body, it's not your business ... and that goes for me and my decision to lose weight, too.

But letting that identity change is painful. I'm still well outside society's ideal of the perfect body, but I'm in the normal zone now, and it's transformed how people relate to me.  And it's transformed how I relate to people too. Think that's not scary? Think it doesn't freak you right out of your mind? Then you think wrong.

By not acknowledging that weight loss is a LOSS, and can be experienced as a loss of self, of identity, those of us trying to do it, especially those of us who are trying to do it in a big way, are setting ourselves up for failure. For every smile at another pound gone, there's a tear. That's natural and normal and not something to hide or deny. It's reality.

SXSW XX, or Why I Hate my Boss

Normally I love my boss, Jeff Barringer of kingsnake.com. He's a great guy, flexible, enthusiastic, quick to notice and praise innovation and hard work, and always understanding about family and animals coming first.

But he lives in Austin and is a techno-geek from way back, and he went to South by Southwest, and I'm absolutely  never, ever speaking to him again. It wasn't so bad the first few days, when he was at the interactive component, where I gather blogging was the big topic. I was sorry I wasn't there, but I could live with it. But then the music component started, and every night he called me on his cell phone on his way home from listening to all these great bands, and I began to feel little twinges of envy and think maybe I'd misjudged him all this time and he really was a jerk after all.

And then he sat in the front row at the Pretenders concert and sent me photos while it was happening. Technological wired wonderfulness aside, I think that's just mean.

Anyway, the GOOD thing that came out of this is that Jeff finally got motivated to start blogging. Over the years I've worked for him, I've told him he should blog, but it took SXSW for him to bite down on it. He has some interesting things to say about the pet industry and reptiles and I hope he writes on those topics in the future, but so far he's recounted some great stories from SXSW, including some pet related stuff and those damn photos of Chrissie Hynde. Check it out.