Dogged Blog

Bite Me

Wouldn't it be great if you could get your dog or cat's teeth cleaned without anesthesia?

Yes,  it would be. We're all scared of anesthetizing our pets. And there are some people out there taking advantage of that fear to offer a service that's not safe, and probably not legal, either. I'm talking about so-called "anesthesia-free dental cleanings."

I blogged about this today over on Pet Connection:

The type of tooth scraping that can be done on a dog or cat without anesthesia is cosmetic only; it might make the owner happy, but it does nothing at all to detect or prevent or treat dental disease in pets.

It also runs the substantial risk of infecting the bloodstream with oral bacteria, which can lead to kidney, heart, and other infections and disease — something that no groomer or “pet dental hygienist” can diagnose or treat. And most critically, debris from the mouth can be inhaled, causing pneumonia and other respiratory complications — something that can only be avoided if the pet is intubated during the procedure.

There's lots more and yeah, okay, I may rant a little.

Just a little.

Okay,  a lot.

Friday iPod Challenge, Happy New Year's Edition

Hmmm, last week I forgot to do this, and this Friday I'm doing it in lieu of genuine blogging. I did blog at Pet Connection Thursday, if you are dying to read a small rant about people who let their dogs run off leash.

The iPod challenge does not, actually, involve an iPod even if you have one. It's just a little thing where I tell you the first ten songs that come up on my iTunes playlist when I hit the "shuffle" button on my entire music library. You can do the same, with iTunes or whatever program you use to manage your music files. This is a non-denominational non-contest.

JeffB stole the idea from me and turned it into a real contest where you can actually win an iPod. Play with him after you've played with me.

I'm not mad at Jeff for stealing it because I stole it from Roxanne in the first place. She's doing a 70s theme today, because she's much cooler and harder working than I am.

Here is my random ten for today:

1. In My Arms - Erasure
2. Suzanne - Peter Gabriel
3. Long-Forgotten Fairytale - The Magnetic Fields
4. Seen And Not Seen - Talking Heads
5. When Love Comes To Town - U2
6. Should I Stay or Should I Go - The Clash
7. To the One I Love - R.E.M.
8. You Look So Fine - Garbage
9. Malaria - Shriekback
10. The Price I Pay - Billy Bragg

I showed you mine, now show me yours! Happy New Year!

What part of ' voice control ' do you not understand?

So, for about the four hundredth time since I moved back to the city, my dogs were innocently walking with me, leashed and quiet, when out of nowhere, two border collies and a lab mix came racing up, off-leash, owner nowhere in sight.When I say "racing up" I don't mean they came within ten feet of my dogs and stopped, wagging their tails. Nor do I mean they attacked my dogs. No, they ran up to them, tails indeed wagging - right up to their faces. My dogs, one of whom was actually pooping when this happened, reacted with alarm, and the result was tangled leashes, everyone stepping in or rolling in dog poop, and my very real concern that the lab mix, whose hackles were up, wasn't particularly friendly.



I grasp that city dogs have different body language, a different idea of what "good manners" are, than country dogs. My dogs have until now lived their lives in the country and going to dog shows, and learned a completely different set of rules for dog/dog interaction. I accept that as strangers in a strange land, it's up to them to learn the local customs. That's not the problem.



No, the problem is me and my inability to comprehend how someone whose dog completely ignores their verbal commands would ever allow that dog off-leash outside of a fenced dog park.



Let me explain something, not in my capacity as a dog trainer, which I am not, nor even a dog owner, but rather as a writer and editor: "Voice control" means you can control your dog with your voice.



I had a dog like that once. She would do anything I said, instantly. I could call her, and no matter what she was doing, she'd turn on a dime and race back to me. Then she'd gild the lily by sitting in front of me, looking up with the canine equivalent of a smile on her face. So I really do understand that all those people with dogs genuinely under voice control will deeply resent my attitude.



All six of you.



But for the rest: If your dog is not under your voice control, either train him until he is, or keep him on a leash outside of fenced dog parks. If your dog listens to you in the family room when you have a cookie in your hand, but completely ignores you when she's flying at top speed towards two leashed giant breed dogs half a mile from you, she is not under voice control. She's just smart.



Yes, this means you, Mr. Nature Lover, who finally came and retrieved your poop-smeared dogs, and glared at me for not laughing it off and agreeing that dogs will be dogs. I guess I should just be glad your dogs found my dogs interesting enough to stop their headlong flight up the path, at the end of which was the road, and that instead of dealing with a dog hit by car, all you had to cope with was your border collies' snow-white feathering being liberally coated in Scottish Deerhound poop.

Gratuitous Holiday (Repeat) Puppy Photo Blogging

That ' s a mighty tall tree

Doughal was only four months old when he got a load of his first Christmas tree, still outside and undecorated.



Later in life, when he reached his full height - and he was tall even for a Scottish Deerhound - he wondered why it was that the trees got shorter.



I took Kyrie and Rebel out for a Christmas morning walk today, all decorated in their pretty holiday collars, but we didn't see another living soul. It was like having an entire private park in the heart of the city.



Happy Holidays!

The Ways In Which I Suck

Could I be more shallow?

I watched The Devil Wears Prada. I adored it. This movie is ABOUT NOTHING. It's fabulous.

Then, I went to iTunes and listened to samples of the soundtrack from the Dreamgirls movie, and discovered that I like the sell-out disco version of "One Night Only" better than the soulful slow version by Jennifer Hudson. Having seen the stage version of Dreamgirls when it first came out, I know that means I am a bad person.

Why, Moviemakers, Why?

I'd been meaning to see Must Love Dogs since it came out two years ago, and it finally made its way to the top of my Netflix queue. I put it on this morning and ummm, first of all: Not about dogs.

Second of all: Extremely boring.

Third of all: One really good line. When the female lead explains to her sister that she cannot date the male lead because he is the father of one of her third-grade students, the sister replies, "He's got a PhD and a great ass. Let's not get bogged down in ethics."

There. Now you've heard that line, no need to watch the movie which is, as I may have mentioned, not about dogs.

Mini-review of Low Carb Stuff I Tried

Food and body image and taking care of ourselves are all big issues around the holidays. It's sort of the trifecta of societal obsession around the body beautiful, if you think about it.

Since I gave up on the idea of "food as a form of entertainment," I really haven't cared that much about special holiday foods. I have actually eaten enough stuffing, pumpkin pie, and bouche de Noel to last me the rest of my life, and also have, as I bore my friends to tears by saying all the time, learned that I like being this weight more than I like having a mouth party.

But I do from time to time try out various low carb recipes or products, just out of curiosity or interest or because my mom picked it up for me at the market.

Recently she picked up MiniCarb brownie mix, and this evening I made it. Let me be blunt: These things really suck. They suck like the last sucking thing on earth, and considering they're chocolate, for me to say they suck means they genuinely suck.

She also got me some Nestle CarbSelect hot chocolate mix, which was extremely delicious. The ingredient list is a disaster, proving that Savage Garden was right when they sang, "I believe that junk food tastes so good because it's bad for you."

I also bought some Oroweat low carb bread to try to make stuffing with it at my sister in law's request, and it has more carbs and less fiber than their "lite" bread. I ask you, does that make sense?

A Solstikwanzanukkamas Eve Puppy Pic Extravaganza

So, my good friend Terri went boldly where no deerhound owner has gone before, and got herself two Silken Windhound (or, as my dogs call them, "Shrunken Deerhound") puppies from my friend, breeder Joyce Chin of Talisman Hounds.

And in the way of puppies everywhere they are too unbearably adorable to be real. So adorable she even sent me an email rhapsodizing about how they only peed on the CORNER of her heirloom Persian carpet, and had only destroyed TWO costly soft collapsible crates, and isn't it cute how they have so far managed to escape from every crate or pen she's put them in?

So, how cute ARE her puppies?

Pretty bloody cute.

Happy Solstikwanzanukkamas!