Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Midsommar in Sweden

I was surfing the web for anything TT related and I came across these beautiful photos. I just had to find who took them and where they came from and now I have four new friends. Marie, Malin, Milton and Devi from Sweden.

Suddie Hello!
Sending a holiday greeting from Sweden / Hällingsjö which is three mil outside Gothenburg. We have two Tibetan terriers named Milton and Devi. I and my daughter Malin who is 18 has had the privilege of living in the country with our two wonderful dogs. It is wonderful to be able to see the dogs to be free all day, when doors and windows open, so that they can go in and out of the house. We have a natural garden that is adjacent to a large forest and below us, we have a lake, where we can swim. The forest is surrounded by beautiful meadows and in summer it is wonderful to live in the country, where we have access to beautiful countryside, where we can walk with our dogs.


We are so lucky to own Tibetan Terrier. We had for years been at the Gothenburg big dog show in January and looked at different breeds and each time we got stuck in the ring in Tibetan Terrier and where we were stuck. Entranced by their elegance, smooth movement and great temperament, we were simply in love!
To become the owner of Milton and Devi is the best thing that happened to us.
Thank you for Suddie you liked my pictures and giving me the honor to show them on your fine blog. I have tried to find pictures in the sense of Swedish summer with the best we have!
Dear Greetings
Marie, Malin, Milton and Devi

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Dog Day Afternoon


So, now, we were back in Iowa. Which was great because I got to spend the entire weekend with Rufus and Elsa who, you know, now live in Iowa City. And, yes, Rufus was in another dog show and he took Best of Winners on both days. In fact, this was the third weekend in a row where Rufus took Best of Winners EVERYDAY.

But, really, the best part was that I got to spend lots of time with 4 of my fifteen pups. Rufus and Elsa and Angus and Roxie. They all got along incredibly well and learned to share the Nylabones.

On Sunday, after the show, we all suited up and headed off to Thornberry off-leash dog park in Iowa City. It has three separate areas: a large small-dog area, an agility training area, and a HUGE play park which contains a pond (which is fenced separately in case your folks don't want you to get wet or completely filthy). Well, we all ran around like nuts and then sat peacefully in the shade of a tree. It was a VERY HOT day.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Anuja of Austria


I have a new friend from Austria and his name is Anuja. Anuja of Austria. Sweet and shy. They say that opposites attract.

I received a letter of introduction from his mom Melanie.

Hi Suddie,
beautiful blog, love the video from the grooming!
Anuja is the boy from my first litter. He was the second pup, born in my hands. He was special, from his first minute. He can really speak with his voice and with his eyes. At the age of four weeks, he learned the trick "give five" with his paws. I think, that he is very very intelligent.....
But I never want a male at home, but he catched my eye every minute. He has two sisters and I really want to keep a female. So I was looking for a nice family for him. We had a lot of visitors in our house, who wants to see Anuja. BUT he don't want to see the people!! Every time, If he has heard the people knocking on the door, he is running away! He was the whole time at the last corner under my couch. Has done nothing, he was just quiet and has waited, that the people go home. After that, he comes with wagging tail to me, looked at me, like he is saying "Are you okay Mommy, I'm only your boy!". So It was very difficult to find a good home for him! No one wants him. He has a beautiful face, but his behavior was awful. We've tried everything, to show him, that other people are also okay, he was at the puppy school and so on. But he never has any friends there, he was always by my side, just happy, that he is with me. I decided after that all , that I don't keep a female, because Anuja is still there. So his sister called Avani, found a nice home and also the other sister, called Anokhi found a loving home. At the age of 12 weeks Anokhi has an car accident and died. My heart was broken, but Anuja was there and gave me so much love and hope. I need long time to realize that Anuja was made for me! He is beautiful and he is special. He don't is the "perfect" show dog, because of his behavior he is not good for that. If tried to show him one time in the Youngest Class, but he was not happy with all the foreign people, who want to look at him and touch him. It's so hard to discribe him with words, he is beautiful and he give me his full trust and love. But he never show his beautiful being to any others. That makes me a little bit sad, but my heart knows, how special and wonderful he is. As yet, he never goes for a walk with my mother or good friends, never. When he is seeing, that someone take the leash, he jumps again under my couch and is waiting until I come home! For example, he prefers to wait 8 or 10 hours without going for a walk, no, he wants to wait for me! This is my boy ;-) ....
So that's his story, and I hope that he is for a long long time in my life!
Bye Suddie, thanks for reading his story and sorry for my bad english!
Melanie

Friday, June 25, 2010

Desperately Seeking Sherpa


We first became aware of it when the envelope appeared at Sherpa's door. But who knows when it started. The envelope was filled with cheap reproductions of pictures of Sherpa and dad. All grainy and stamped PROOF. Proof of what Sherpa wondered. I have never ever done anything wrong. Has dad?

The scene of the pics was a dog show in Connecticut. But we didn't know anyone there and we certainly didn't notice anyone taking our pics. Were they perched in a tree with a telephoto lens. Or sitting in the shadows in a car nearby with the window down wearing sunglasses. Now that I think of it, I do think I saw someone in a trench coat and a funny looking moustache.

But what do they want from us? Could there be other, less flattering, photos yet to appear? Sherpa and dad and Kirstie Alley in a muumuu? All of them together in one big muumuu?

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Play It Again Suddie!


Do you remember the video of my dad grooming Angus? The one with the toilet in the background?

Well I received an email about it the other day.

Hi!
I love your instructions on grooming.
I have two Tibetans.
Can I purchase a dvd from you?
Enthusiastcally,
Alice from NH

HeHe! HoHo!

No. But here it is again. Part 1 of 3. Parts 1, 2 and 3 are available on youtube.com

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Paw Licker?

Above: Lexie looking quite fetching in her summer cut.

Do you remember Lexie? The sweet six-year-old Tibetan Terrier who lived in a B&B? Remember I helped her find her a new home and wrote about it in my post Playing With Matches a Girl Can Get Burned?

Well, I received an email and some pics from Lexie's new mom asking for some advice.

Hi Suddie,
I hope you and all your kids are doing well!
We continue to enjoy Lexie, she's a great dog! But I have a question and don't know who to ask.
I just noticed that 3 of the pads on her back paw and one in the front are pink. I've noticed that she licks her paws, but I can't imagine she licked them enough to turn them pink! Is that normal for a TT ?
Thanks for your help!
Carole

PS. Lexie got a summer cut (not a very good one)!

I replied.

My Dearest Carole,
The color on their paws can vary. It's a pigment thing.
Did the color change to pink or has it always been pink? It is possible that she has allergies and is licking her paw(s) due to the allergy. Watch her and make sure she isn't licking. Allergies can be caused by variety of things. Grass allergies are not that unusual. Could also be a grain allergy. That is quite common and can lead to foot licking. We feed grain-free Wellness Core. If you switch Lexie's food, do so gradually as to not upset her stomach. If the redness is caused by some type of irritation, your vet can prescribe an ointment or spray.
Lexie could have also stepped on a rock or stick or something that irritated her foot. Keep an eye on it and see if it looks irritated or inflamed. If you have any worries, consult with her vet.
Suds

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

But Baby It's Hot Outside

Darn Hot. Especially for those of us wearing fur coats.

So I told dad that it was time to get the heck out of Dodge. Dodge? Dodge City, Kansas? Well Rufus lives in Iowa City and that is close enough. So we picked up Rufus, got in our stage coach and got the heck out of Dodge. But where were we going? Not to another stupid dog show. I sure hope not.

Well we traveled way up north where it is SUPPOSED to be cool. But it wasn't. To a little town called Sutton's Bay where Mario Batali has a summer house with a pizza oven in the backyard and Madonna's dad has a vineyard that produces undrinkable wine. It was still quite hot so we went a little bit further north and just a bit west to Leland where we dined al fresco and drank lots of water from one of those styrofoam carryout containers. Tres Chic. Well we splashed about as best we could in that little styrofoam container while our dad ate something called asparagus guacamole and downed several cold ones. And just when we were sloppy wet and covered in asparagus guacamole, this nice woman strolled in looking cool as a cucumber. Well this was Chris Converse who has a place just around the corner. We were to learn that Chris has two Tibetan Terriers of her very own. She loves them. We love her.

When we returned to our hotel, Rufus and Roxie curled up together in a big brown chair. Dad took a pic. If you squint, it looks just like the work of one of the old masters.

Guess what? There was a dog show involved in this excursion. There always seems to be. This was a gig put on by the Grand Traverse Kennel Club. Little Rufus took third in the non-sporting group puppy competition even though he was the cutest by far. But third is pretty good considering it was all the non-sporting group pups. But who wants to lose to an ugly French Bulldog? Angus took Grand Champion Select, but did not enjoy himself at all. He spit up a wee bit after his time in the ring. And yet this lovely little girl named Sophie fell in love with him and that is always nice.

We also got to meet Dash, a darling TT. Do you remember when I yammered on about Junior Handlers and shared the article about the young girl from Michigan who did so well in the junior handler competition at Westminster last year? Well Dash is her TT. Dash was rescued from some rich old Park Avenue fart who was letting his assistant care for Dash. When the breeder found out that Dash weighed only 10 pounds at 1 year of age an intervention occurred and Dash eventually safely landed in Michigan. He is a solid young man now with a very sweet disposition. A pleasure to meet you Dash! I'm free to play any time. Toby and I have what some might call an open relationship.

We were darn glad to get in the car and head to Grammy Jill's where we tootled out to the middle of her lake in a pontoon boat and took turns jumping off the side to join dad in the lake. FINALLY, we were COOL. It was Rufus' first time and he was a great little swimmer and Angus was the most enthusiastic, if least talented. His butt always seems to sink and dad has to right him with one of his hands. But back on the boat he would sing until dad would let him take yet another plunge. Enthusiasm is invigorating! You go Angus! Sadie was the best at learning to climb the steep ladder that led back to the boat from the water. Quite proficient that girl is.

We returned to be hosed off, lathered up in Pantene Pro-V, and rinsed off in Grammy's driveway. Now we were ALMOST COLD and quite charged up.

It was a perfect summer day.

Friday, June 18, 2010

TT HOT TIP: Poor Heather and Jones

Above: Jones

These two TTs near Chicago, Illinois need good homes. Some kindly dobermans have taken them in temporarily. The following info is provided by the dobies.

Jones and Heather are both purebred red/sable colored Tibetan Terriers. The lucky pair were rescued/released from a commercial breeder who apparently decided they weren't making enough money for them. It's most likely due to the fact that this breed is relatively uncommon to the general public. They are both young adults; the male named Jones is 20 pounds and will turn 2 years old in August. The female named Heather who is on the smaller side only weighing 10 pounds, (and should weigh closer to 15 pounds)--just celebrated her birthday turning 3 years old this past June 4th. Being that the two haven't lived a normal life--coming from a kennel they should only go to a home that is patient and willing to give them time to settle in. Although they already have made great progress and seem to relish the attention & care they are now receiving.
We are NOT requiring that they be placed together as they will feed off each other's fears, but do prefer that they go into a home with an existing dog--as it makes it easier for them to follow the lead of an established dog within the household.
Below is a little bit more information on the breed characteristics:
Despite its name, the Tibetan Terrier is not a true terrier, only terrier in size. They were bred and raised in monasteries by lamas almost 2,000 years ago. As the "Holy Dogs of Tibet," the breed was treasured by the lamas, who kept them as companions, good luck charms, mascots and watchdogs. They were also used for some herding and to retrieve articles that fell down the mountains.
Right Breed for You?
Highly intelligent and somewhat mischievous, the Tibetan Terrier loves his family, and his sensitivity to the moods of his owners makes him an excellent companion (although he may be reserved around strangers). An independent and active breed, the Tibetan Terrier responds best to positive, patient training and regular exercise. His profuse, thick coat requires weekly maintenance.
Currently these two are clipped down, but this is a breed that will require regular professional grooming. If interested, please email Pam at orphandobe@ameritech.net

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

The Rise of Dog Identity Politics

The author's dog, Stella (who does eat meat).

I came across this article the other day while trying to find what I thought was a Tibetan Terrier on the cover of Country Living or some such magazine. I somehow ended up at New York Magazine reading this article. It's long, but it's good. It's always interesting to see what humans think about us and what is going on in our minds.

Dogs are increasingly rootless souls, country bumpkins in city apartments. But is a vegan pup still an animal?
By John Homans

If Stella is aware of the forces sweeping her world, she shows no sign. My dog is on the floor in front of the couch, ignoring the kittens we adopted recently, partly to entertain her while we’re at work. Her big brown soulful eyes are tilted up at me in constant implicit question.

Stella is an elegant creature, with a high-gloss black coat and the runway model’s trick of looking simultaneously gorgeous and ridiculous. She is not, as a friend says, an intellectual, though I hasten to add, as any parent would, that she’s of above-average intelligence, having learned the basic commands in the space of a week. Not that, as an excitable animal in seemingly perpetual puppyhood, she always follows them. While highly vocal, with a booming baritone bark and a complex secret language of whines and growls, she’s not notably articulate. There’s usually a thought-bubble hovering over her, sometimes describing an unambiguous desire—“Want chicken!”—but often containing murkier information. The closed captioning doesn’t really work very well. Is she depressed? Angry at us for taking her back from the country? Jealous of the fact that the cats get to climb on the furniture? She’s staring at me, waiting for me to figure it out.

Stella is mostly a Labrador—certainly in her goofball ways—but her splotchy purple tongue, curling scimitar tail, and brownish undercoat suggest Chow blood, and sometimes I think there’s a hint of Staffordshire terrier (the dread pit bull) in her face. She’s a mutt, though that’s a word that’s used much less now than it used to be. Stella is also the nexus of several imaginative vectors. She was a birthday present and little sister for our son, Charles; an echo of my childhood dog, also a Lab and mother of many mutt puppies who happily slept outside and hardly knew a leash; and a signifier of my occasional aspiration for a country life. From my point of view, she lives in a haze of nostalgia.

Stella gets enough time in the country to want more, and sometimes, despite the walks and runs and trips to the Tompkins Square dog run, I feel that she’s just passing time till she gets back there. Guilt, along with plastic bags of dog poop, is pretty much a constant in an urban canine-human relationship. Is this any kind of life for a dog? It is a vicarious, low-level existential crisis—what does she need, what is she?—that her imploring eyes seem designed to produce.

The dog’s eyes were designed to induce human concern, of course. A dog’s attentiveness to humans is one of the central differences between a dog and a wolf, probably the determinative one. “Dogs look at people,” says James Serpell, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “You can boil it down to something as simple as gaze patterns. With a hand-bred wolf, there are issues getting their attention. Whereas a dog is constantly monitoring the owner for clues on how to behave and what to do.” A dog develops attachments to specific humans, in ways that wolves won’t. Whereas a wolf will try to solve a difficult problem itself (they are, apparently, brilliant at unlocking gates), a dog will quickly give up and look to its human to figure things out.

Serpell, a soft-spoken, sandy-haired Britisher in blue jeans, works in a slightly rickety Victorian on the outskirts of the UPenn campus in Philadelphia. He’s head of the Center for the Interaction of Animals and Society, which is underfunded in the current economic climate. The center has looked into how it might tap the Leona Helmsley fortune but without luck so far. Serpell’s current work involves guide dogs. A small percentage of trained seeing-eye dogs lose their motivation to work after a year or so—“They develop a kind of learned helplessness,” Serpell says. He’s trying to understand whether it’s some breakdown in the interaction between dog and owner or something intrinsic in the dogs themselves.

If learned helplessness sounds like an urban condition, it may be because the dog is more and more an urban species. Even in the suburbs, the dog’s unleashed, unfenced, carefree outdoor life is largely at an end. The dogs are in the house, even in the bed. (The doghouse is now mostly for husbands.) There are no rules to this evolving, increasingly intimate arrangement, and it can give rise to a kind of canine identity crisis. Outside of its country context, the dog plays an ever more human role. Which can make things very confusing. “We’ve seen a linear explosion in pet populations in Western countries over the past 40 years,” Serpell tells me, and notes a correlation with the depressing statistics in Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone. “People are living more isolated lives, are having fewer children, their marriages aren’t lasting. All these things sort of break down a social network and happen to exactly coincide with the growth in pet populations. I think that what’s happening is simply that we’re allowing animals to fill the gap in our lives.”

There is a long and fascinating thread of research about the health benefits of dogs. It turns out that the dog is a kind of wonder drug, an all-around stress reducer. Pet owners recover at a substantially faster rate from heart problems than do non–dog owners. There are other kinds of benefits, too. A child raised with a pet is more empathetic than one who isn’t. The dog—no secret here—is an excellent wingman. A 2008 study found that a man with a dog had a much better chance of getting a woman’s phone number than one without. And the dog can even tell you whether or not you’re a good person. A 1999 study found that people who strongly dislike dogs score significantly higher on the measure of anal character and lower on the empathy scale of the California Psychological Inventory, indicating “that people who liked dogs have less difficulty relating to people.”

Serpell is most excited about new studies on oxytocin and dog ownership. Oxytocin is the most important social-bonding hormone, present notably between mother and child but also in just about any interaction involving pair bonding, social affiliation, and trust. More specifically, it’s involved with the gaze between infants and mothers. Researchers at Azabu University in Japan found last year that the dog’s gaze at its owner increases the owner’s oxytocin level.

No one believes, in his conscious mind, that the dog is a person. But that may not matter. The oxytocin study, while providing the key to understanding the myriad health benefits of dog ownership—oxytocin is a serious stress reducer—also makes scientifically clear what’s obvious anecdotally: The dog is an honorary human, accorded many of the same considerations. It can be a surrogate child, brother in arms, solace of otherwise lonely urban lives. Serpell’s central insight is that these kinds of social functions are at the center of the relationship of dogs and people. “Selection of dogs for the performance of specific working tasks is certainly an important part of their evolution,” he says. “But the fundamental work of dogs that has been in the background throughout has been providing people with companionship or social support.”

As the relationship developed, specific canine qualities—the dog’s gaze, its unending adolescence, its uncanny responsiveness to human cues—evolved, a process that Serpell calls “anthropomorphic selection.” What was created was not, precisely, a human child, but it certainly was able to push some of the same buttons. According to one study, 84 percent of dog owners consider their animals akin to children—not a surprise, given all the baby talk. The British evolutionary psychologist John Archer has written, in critiquing Serpell’s work, that the dog’s ability to suck up human caregiving that could be going to human children while providing no evolutionary advantage makes them a social parasite. But possibly the stress-reduction effects, more than theoretical camp-guarding and hunting benefits, may have earned the dog’s keep. And anyway, are you calling my dog a parasite?

The social-bonding brain chemistry leads to special treatment of many different kinds. These obsessive canine diet and training regimens are precise analogs of the little dictatorships that parents enforce over their children. One of the dogs in our circle gets fed raw chicken, which is currently the most fashionable canine diet; uncooked, the bones don’t splinter. Another gets cooked chicken—often of a quality that would make a fine sandwich.

We are permissive parents. Stella gets dog food but also as many leftovers as she manages to beg. Strictly speaking, she’s not allowed to eat chicken bones off the street, but there’s a particularly good hunting ground on lower First Avenue where she often gets walked, and if she manages to snatch one, I’m much less inclined to stick my hand down her throat than I used to be. I know this is wrong.

These differences resemble nothing so much as the fierce little tempests over, say, Ferberizing, or co-sleeping, or bedtimes, though of course there’s another dimension. Along with the concern for the dog’s welfare, there also can be a kind of concern that maybe this relationship with the dog has gone a little far. It’s a minor vice, like watching too much television, the kind of not-that-there’s-anything-wrong-with-that workaday weirdnesses that are part of the modern urban experience. In the big city, you can do whatever you want.

When the dog was in the yard, it was easier to give the dog any old thing, treat the dog any old way. The dog could find a dead animal, or bury a bone, or chase a squirrel, do its dog things. In the apartment, Stella will dig fiercely at the carpet, making no progress, though at some point we will have to get a new carpet. The apartment is a far from perfect place for the dog. Still, they’re camp followers of our microtribes, the only beings that fully understand the customs. And unlike children, they’ll never reject them.

The dog is also associated with human damage, people who are lonely, people with trust issues, misanthropes (Hitler was a dog lover), people with lots of money who think, possibly accurately, that that’s the only reason people could love them. Helmsley’s little dog Trouble, the richest dog in the world, in her Florida redoubt, with her bodyguards, is the obvious example here. The only charitable cause specifically mentioned in Helmsley’s will—her fortune has been estimated at $5 billion at the low end—was to “provide for the care of dogs.” The document is testament to a moral impoverishment of mythic dimensions—the last bird the queen flipped at the little people. She outsourced the work of distributing the money to her trustees, who have so far not seen fit to bestow very much of it on canine causes.

As in Helmsley’s case, a dog can be a last refuge for lost people. But everyone knows people for whom a dog is a chosen escape. In Caroline Knapp’s remarkably honest book Pack of Two, she writes about her dog as a salve to her damage, more satisfactory than any person in giving her the kind of unqualified love she craves. She’s open about her inner wounds—she’d written a previous, moving memoir about her alcoholism—and her dog, besides being a dog, is a tool for addressing such problems. There’s a kind of therapeutic solipsism at work in this type of relationship, needs met and unmet. The dog fits perfectly into this sort of calculus because its needs are so simple—and of course, it doesn’t know you’re a narcissist. Ultimately, Knapp breaks up with a boyfriend about whom she’d always been ambivalent partly over issues surrounding her dog, which of course she is permitted to do, and she’s a lovely writer, and no doubt the boy had many, many drawbacks, but … really? Are those really the right human priorities?

It can be hard to remember, when the dog is in the house, staring at you with those eyes, that the dog is the dog. The phenomenon has lately reached a critical mass, partly because of cultural changes and partly because—surprise—it makes people money. Nowadays, there’s a vast industry, trainers and books and TV shows, devoted to addressing this interspecial neurotic interchange. There’s a great deal of dispute, however, about what the dog is. A trainer like Cesar Millan, the self-mythologized Dog Whisperer, has created an elaborate fantasy of the dog as pack animal, a creature that wants to know who’s boss. His message is that the owner ought to act like the alpha dog of his imaginings: Be the pack leader. Though Millan is clearly a gifted communicator, in many mediums, ethologists like Patricia McConnell find this a simplistic view, and the dog is a very long way from the wolf pack.

And there’s an even bigger industry trying to confuse the issue, because a dog that’s partly a person gets a better—and more expensive—brand of dog food than one that isn’t. In New York, there are dog bakeries, and haberdashers, and luxury kennels, everything that the marketing mind can dream up, a vast and ever-growing junkyard full of kitsch, with names (“paw-tisserie,” etc.) that are more annoying than the products themselves, if that’s even possible. Again, there’s nothing wrong with buying your dog all this stuff—it’s nothing more dire than a game of dress-up—though it’s probably prudent to ask whom you’re buying it for. Your dog doesn’t care if it’s wearing a funny hat, or traveling in a sequined dog purse—no one loses anything but their dignity. Treating your dog as a person is nothing more or less than an aesthetic error—one that is becoming ever more common. Dressed up, doted on as much as any infant, the dog has never had it so good. And the personhood of the dog—this chemical confusion in the brain—is a large part of what is driving the politics of dog.

Stella is what is known now as a rescue dog—definitely the most fashionable breed in downtown Manhattan nowadays. She may well have been on death row in some fetid cage in Tennessee. But our moral heroism is not of the highest order, by a long shot. She’s not a middle-aged pit bull with a mean streak, or a retired greyhound, or a dog whose elderly owner had died, or any of the hard-luck stories that become SPCA statistics if not for the intervention of some saintly person. She was a beautiful 12-week-old puppy at the North Shore Animal League America, the largest no-kill animal shelter in the world and one of the only places around where you can reliably find a puppy that’s not a pit bull. In fact, our decision was hastened because another family was eyeing her. She’s a rescue dog that anyone—except maybe one of those anal compulsives—would have rescued.

Dogs used to be a part of the farmyard ethic. The lucky ones got to grow up, and got all the love, and the others were dispatched with as little sense of tragedy as possible, though the suppression of empathy isn’t easy work. Seamus Heaney’s bitter coming-of-age poem, “The Early Purges,” gets at this sense: “And now, when shrill pups are prodded to drown /  I just shrug, ‘Bloody pups’. It makes sense: / ‘Prevention of cruelty’ talk cuts ice in town / Where they consider death unnatural / But on well-run farms pests have to be kept down.”

But we, or most of us, are a long way from the farm these days. What, though, should a dog’s rights be? Not to suffer is the basic one on which pretty much everyone is in agreement, and where dogs are concerned, the last four decades are mostly a story of enormous progress. Canine suffering has been criminalized across the board. The vivisection cases that gave PETA its powerful boost a couple of decades ago are rarer now, partly because dogs are less desirable as research subjects. In many labs, they’ve been replaced with a breed of South American pig that is as docile and controllable as a dog, and shares more, anatomically—skin, heart valves, etc.—with people. A much better arrangement, except for the pig.

As often happens, the success in moving toward some of the movement’s most basic goals has only increased the doctrinal conflict among various groups. They’re empathy enemies, at each other’s throats like so many packs of wolves. The rescue people don’t agree with the animal-welfare people, and both can’t stand the animal-rights people, as traditional dog regimes like the American Kennel Club try to hold on to their privileged positions. It’s a struggle for the Future of Dog— a little like Russia in 1917, with weakened conservatives and radicals of many stripes, all trying desperately to invent a future.

The hospital takes your credit card in advance, possibly because, after a dog’s death, questions of its worth arise: What was it? Why did I love it so much?

Famously, the touchstone of the animal-rights movement is Peter Singer’s 1975 book Animal Liberation. The book’s title seems evocative of some future peaceable kingdom, as if suddenly all the cattle and sheep and pigs and rats are going to be set free from their jails, wandering the streets like cows in India, grazing happily where they please, forever free from harm. On reflection, this doesn’t seem likely. But if the animals are liberated, where will they go? Well, the strongest possibility seems to be that they’ll go to the country … to that same happy farm where parents have always told children unwanted animals go. The guiding idea of Singer’s book, and of the animal-rights movement in general, is to lessen animal suffering—that’s an animal’s overriding interest, according to Singer. And one way of lessening canine suffering is to lessen the number of dogs. Ingrid Newkirk, PETA’s leader, seems to dream of a world in which pets have been abolished, and she is a particularly reviled figure among many dog people. Although PETA’s mission statement includes language suggesting that each animal life is intrinsically valuable, the organization’s actions describe a more nuanced picture. PETA kills a surprising number of the animals it takes in. In the decade beginning with 1998, PETA euthanized 17,000 animals—85 percent of those it rescued.

Dog-rescue people oppose PETA and its ilk bitterly. They see numbers like this and think mass murder. Nathan Winograd, the leading no-kill advocate, is a particularly fierce critic of Newkirk’s. His aim is to reform the shelter system, and he points to successes in San Francisco; Tompkins County, New York; and Nevada as evidence that it’s possible to increase adoption rates, to find a home for every healthy pet. At bottom, he’s accusing Newkirk of the same kind of fecklessness and waste and lack of responsibility that she sees in, say, factory farming. He’s also, essentially, an optimist, believing that people are capable of being responsible for their animals.

Regarding human nature, Newkirk is a pessimist. In her view, we’ve botched this whole dominion thing, creating an Island of Dr. Moreau of animal horrors. So the best thing to do is to end our agency over animals, to disengage, build a wall around nature and stay on our side. The dog, in particular, is polluted by human influence. The animal-rights movement can seem as much about keeping humans free of guilt as keeping animals free of suffering, which is another kind of solipsism. (The rules are different on the philosophic frontier: For Singer, and for Newkirk, bestiality is not, in all circumstances, prohibited. “If it isn’t exploitation and abuse, it may not be wrong,” she has said.)

But Newkirk is certainly correct that pets complicate the animal-rights picture. If you want to disentangle humans from their carnivorous legacy, the dog’s leash is going to get caught in the knot. The dog world is as red in tooth and claw as ever—but the red is mostly in the same industrial slaughterhouses where we get our meat. The vast dog-food industry is based on “meat by-products,” that alarming euphemism. Of course, Winograd and a growing number of no-kill people have found a way to square this circle: vegan dogs.


In the animal-rescue world, each individual animal is sacred, each dog deserves its sunny day, and euthanasia, while perhaps safe and legal, should be extremely rare. These people are believers in the Universal Rights of Dog, extrapolated from the near-human status of their own pets. In another way, the animal-rescue movement is an offshoot of the civil-rights struggles of the sixties, a final frontier for universalist ideals. Animal rescue is also one of the opportunities of ordinary Americans for real heroism—and more and more, they’ve taken it. The dog’s innocence amplifies empathy, because there’s no ethical static, no human otherness to contend with. It’s less complicated to love a pet than a person. The risk and conflict and cloak-and-dagger swagger that some of these missions entail can give lives a life-in-wartime meaning they otherwise wouldn’t have. There’s selflessness here, but just as in wartime, there’s also addiction, the oxytocin mixing with adrenaline.

Some of the most vivid images in the aftermath of Katrina were of dogs—on roofs, in the water—awaiting rescue or struggling to survive. After the catastrophe, Barack Obama spoke of an “empathy deficit,” but there was no deficit when it came to the animals. An army of animal rescuers descended on the city, and their work is legend in the animal-rescue community. But among some locals, their intervention was further proof, if more was needed, that not enough value had been placed on human residents.

The rescuers have done their work remarkably well. Twenty-five years ago, some 12 million dogs and cats were euthanized, according to the ASPCA. Now the figure is between 3 and 4 million, about half of them dogs. Partly thanks to public education about rescuing dogs, a much lower percentage of dogs taken into the shelter system are eventually euthanized. And both because of the effectiveness of spay-neuter programs and the fact that dogs seldom are permitted to run loose, there are many fewer adoptable dogs. In many places on the East Coast, the demand for rescue dogs exceeds the supply—which means that, one way or another, the red states are supplying more and more of our dogs. A flood of dog refugees like Stella are coming from points south and west and places like Puerto Rico, where there are more-traditional dog cultures.

What the blue states are exporting to the red states is, often, ideology. It’s the same town-country conflict Seamus Heaney wrote about, on a gigantic scale. Newkirk, along with Wayne Pacelle of the Humane Society of the United States, advocates strict, mandatory spay-neuter laws across the country, along with much stricter regulation of breeding. Pacelle is the silky pony of the animal-rights world, a Yale graduate who looks tremendous in a suit. The Humane Society of the United States is blessed with a great name, and partly because of its well-publicized raids on puppy mills, it has a massive fund-raising footprint and $125 million to spend, which can buy a good number of small-state lobbyists (the HSUS too has been trying to get its share of the Helmsley fortune). But Pacelle drives many dog people nuts because they see him as an enemy of traditional dog cultures, possibly an animal-rights ally of PETA masquerading as a friend of the dog: a wolf in sheep’s clothing. “The biggest problem with HSUS,” says Janeen McMurtrie, a Minnesota dog trainer who has a widely read blog called Smartdog’s Weblog, “is that they hide their goals so well. I have clients who are avid dove hunters and they’ve given them money.”

Here, too, there is a sense that the ground is shifting, that the World of Dog may be on the verge of irrevocable change. The spay-neuter laws that Pacelle and Newkirk advocate, while no doubt reducing the numbers of dogs that have to be put down every year, have the potential to change the dog itself. “The thing about mandatory spay-neuter,” says James Serpell, “is that those who are most willing to have their dogs spayed or neutered tend to be responsible people. And often, their dogs also happen to be nice animals in temperament. So what you’re doing essentially is taking those dogs out of the breeding population.” McMurtrie echoes Serpell’s concern. “It’s hasn’t gotten widespread enough yet,” she says. “But if it did, it could be catastrophic.”

The ancien régime is also having its troubles. On an October weekend, the American Kennel Club held a “Meet the Breeds” event at the Javits Center. There were some 160 breeds represented, along with booths for every conceivable dog accessory and dietary regimen: organic behavior aids, chewable dog toothpaste. The idea is to connect breeds with their ancestral homelands. Behind the Cavalier King Charles spaniels is an oversize photograph of a castle surrounded by woods. The borzois lounge on pillows in a tented area, long and elegant but probably not the brightest bulbs, like the czars who bred them. A man in a tartan kilt holding a shepherd’s crook stands with a small pack of Shetland sheepdogs, alert, confident creatures, like little collies. The dogs don’t herd sheep so much anymore, the man tells me, though sometimes they’re used to herd geese on golf courses.

At the Javits Center, the canine past is a fantasy of upper-class country life, akin in some ways to the nostalgic penumbra that exists around my own dog. The antic shapes of many of these dogs correspond to some specific Victorian-era task. Ratters, herders, wolfhounds, guard dogs—a Swiss Army knife of countryside work. But the dogs don’t do the work they supposedly did in the past. They’ve drifted, following the vagaries of fashion rather than usefulness. The AKC’s breed rules are strictly visual—an aristocratic ethic, as if what was outside corresponded to what was inside.

There are an abundance of pure-breed horror stories. Bulldogs have terrible breathing problems (I heard one make the characteristic throat-clearing grunt as he was being led around the hall), and most have to be born by Caesarean. Several breeds—the German shepherd, for instance—are prone to crippling hip dysplasia, partly the result of a stylistic preference for a lowriding profile. Breeders say few AKC shepherds are suitable for police work. The Cane Corso has a head as big and square as a good-size TV. The dignity of a dog beneath its madcap form is the elemental canine joke, seemingly an unspoken dog-breeding tenet. Once the unshakable empire of the dog world, the AKC has been shrinking over the past couple of decades, partly because of competing registrations and partly because this Victorian fantasy—these working dogs that haven’t worked in decades—seems increasingly distant from the modern world.

There are still dogs in the world that work, and their owners are the ones who have the most contempt for the AKC’s dog dreamworld. Working-dog people tend to describe their own dogs in terms of sometimes heroic anecdotes, supernatural feats of tracking, an intuitive comprehension of human aims. I talked to a sheep farmer at the farmer’s market who described an incident where one of her Border Collies listened to a conversation she was having with one of her employees on a walkie-talkie, discerned instantly where the flock had escaped, and ran half a mile to cut them off.

But in the city, where can all those remarkable energies go? Here the dog is a bumpkin, pursuing its questionable aims (chicken bones, butt-sniffing) with earnest zeal. Who is Marley, of Marley & Me, but Jethro from The Beverly Hillbillies, cheerfully blundering through life, not realizing his country ways don’t make sense. But outdoors, it’s a different matter. Off the leash, finding the high ground to survey the landscape, paw cocked, or blasting through deep snow in a way people (or too many dogs, for that matter) can’t manage, Stella is profound.

Working-dog people also look with contempt on the pampered lives of city dogs. There’s no suffering, sure—but what else is there? No sheep to herd or birds to hunt or sleds to pull. Nothing to manifest the excellence of their character. In an ethic based on avoidance of suffering, nobility (which used to be a rather important concept in the dog world) isn’t possible. On the other hand, these people can seem like Civil War reenactors, clinging to a relationship to nature that makes less and less sense. The dog wants to take us back—but for the most part, there’s not a way to get there.

In a footnote to one of his poems about the deaths of his dogs, John Updike wrote, “Sometimes it seems the whole purpose of pets is to bring death into the house,” a sensationally cruel observation because there’s truth in it. The dog’s mortality is never far from an owner’s mind—it’s the central flaw in this best-friend business. No one is ready for their dog to go. And the dog doesn’t know where it’s going—the dog joke turned into a tragedy.

At the Animal Medical Center, on East 62nd Street at the river, these issues often come to a head. Susan Phillips Cohen, the director of counseling at the center, helps people make sense of this bad bargain. A small, cheerful, white-haired woman (she’s a cat person, actually), Cohen goes person to person in the hospital’s waiting room, gauging the emotional distress of the pet owners who come in. “We don’t consider old age a disease here,” she says. “We wanted to be the place that didn’t say, ‘It’s a 10-year-old dog, there’s nothing we can do.’ ”

The Animal Medical Center is right on hospital row by design. “They wanted it to be on equal footing,” says Robert Liberman, the chairman of the board, whom I ran into in the lobby. He tells me about studies undertaken in collaboration with Sloan-Kettering. On a plaque in the lobby, there’s an A-list of donors—Fanjuls, Kissingers—but pride of place goes to the Vincent Astor Foundation. (The neglect of Mrs. Astor’s own dogs in her senility was one of the drivers of the case that led to the conviction of her son for taking advantage of her condition. Though one can’t help but wonder whether, if some of the love the dogs received had been diverted to Tony, things wouldn’t have gotten quite so out of hand.) Liberman has so far failed to extract any of the vast Helmsley bequest. “It has not been easy,” he says.

Upstairs, in the rehabilitation center, there’s a working animal, a yellow Lab, being treated by two young technicians. The dog, maybe 9, has nerve damage from an infection in her back. One of the women has a pair of electrodes pressed to the dog’s haunch, stimulating the muscles. The other is massaging its chest—“Reiki,” she says. They’re all lying on a heap on a mat, and the dog seems as happy as a dog can be. Across the room, a black Lab named Radar with a mysterious muscle condition has just finished a workout on a treadmill in a water tank. Outside, their owners wait on a bench.

“It really is family,” says Cohen. “It’s not exactly that they think they’re human, but the choices they’re going to make, the protection they’re going to give, the nurturing they feel they owe, is the same as for a family member.”

What Cohen tries to do is clarify the issues in people’s minds, which is not easy, given the confused place of the dog in many urban people’s lives. It brings up all their stuff. “They realize at this moment how many of their eggs they’ve put in this basket,” she says. “How did I get here? Why didn’t I have children? I hate my job. Because you had someone to come home to who appreciated you just the way you are.”

The hospital’s position is “to be as accurate and honest as we can be about what we can do,” she says. The impossible calculus of dog years and human dollars is left up to you—and the possibility is always there that you could max out your credit cards over a weekend and still walk home with a bag of ashes. A friend recently took a 10-year-old dog with bleeding in its intestines to the NYC Veterinary Specialists, an animal hospital on 55th Street. The doctors told him that removing the tumor they’d discovered would give the dog a 90 percent chance of survival. And thus they were trapped in a cascade of escalating medical decisions—five days and several procedures later, the dog was euthanized. The bill was over $14,000. They’re heartsick over the loss of the dog, of course, and the money too—and furious at the hospital. But at what point, once you start, can you turn back with your dog? One lesson: A hospital that makes money on procedures may not be the best one to tell you when it’s time to pull the plug.

The Animal Medical Center, too, takes your credit-card number in advance, possibly because, in the aftermath of a dog’s death, questions of its worth arise: What was it? Why did I love it so much?

All our stuff, indeed. On our way downstairs, we passed a room where I’d had a previous dog euthanized. It’s actually, if such a thing exists, a fabulous place to have a dog put down, at least for the human—the dog, no doubt, would rather stay at home. There’s a view out over the dark swirling waters of the East River and, on the other side, a sward of green, dog paradise.

Scout was a West Highland terrier, Angela’s dog when we met, an exuberant, somewhat cantankerous creature, beloved companion of our New York youth, unwitting enabler of our prolonged adolescence. He was 14 and tired when we had to bring him there, after a tumor and a torn ligament and a winter of rather expensive medical wrestling with a stubborn breathing problem, all this along with taking care of our young son, who’d displaced him in his princely status, poor thing. I put a rubberized smock over my lap—one is never quite free of a dog’s elimination needs—and told him about his happy afterlife on that lawn across the water, which I didn’t believe a word of and he at any rate couldn’t understand—that same human gurgling he’d heard his whole life. The vet gave him an injection to put him to sleep, another to stop his heart. And that was Scout, whoever he was.

Before we took him in, a vet asked, with wide caring eyes, “Is there anything else you want to do?” We did, of course—the hospital’s high-tech armamentarium, its MRIs and minimally invasive techniques, a hospital they’d be happy to have in Darfur—but we didn’t.

How much is your dog worth to you? It’s a hard question to answer.

Right, Stella?

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Ooo Wah, Ooo Wah C'mon Kitty

Tell us about the boy from Iowa City

First of all, I'm not a kitty. Or a monkey for that matter. But my boy Rufus, he is from Iowa City.


He's really fine
And he's neat
And oh so sweet
And just the way he looked at me
He swept me off my feet
Ooo wee, you ought to come and see
How he walks
And how he talks



You see Rufus traveled with us to Chicago this past weekend and he was not only Winners Dog but also Best of Winners on two consecutive days. I was so proud of him. The president of the hosting kennel club even came over to talk to us. We also got to meet some well known breeders from the Chicago area, Barnstorm and Cedar Creek, who were also showing their TTs.



On the first day my dad wore a seersucker jacket and so did the judge. The judge commented, "Nice jacket," but I don't think that is why little Rufus won. You see, Rufus is just adorable with a perfect little shape and attitude. At least I tend to think so. On the second day, I could tell the judge just loved him. It's so nice to spend some time with Rufus. Roxie and Angus seem to love their little brother too.

I also just received official pics of Rufus' wins at the Tibetan Terrier National Specialty Show last month.

Above: Deep Acres Fields of Gold, Best Puppy in Show, Tibetan Terrier National Specialty Show

Above: Deep Acres Fields of Gold, First in Class, Tibetan Terrier National Specialty Show


Monday, June 14, 2010

Karin and Kee Ci and Math So from Holland

Above: Kee Ci of Holland

I received a very nice email from Karin from Holland. You see Karin saw my dad's instructional TT grooming videos at www.youtube.com.

Dear people and dogs (I added DOGS) of Deep Acres Farm,
What a beautifull dogs you've got! I saw your grooming film at Youtube and saw Angus and later on Roxie...They are really gorgeous! Especially the coat (I learned from your films). I have two TT myself. One dog 15 months and the other is 3 months old. I am in love with the TT's...
So I thought I would like to know where those dogs com from and I found your website...

Kindly regards,
Karin from Holland (Europe)

Well, I really appreciated Karin's note and her kind words about Angus and Roxie and my dad's grooming video. Not ONE WORD about me!

Karin followed up with another nice note (and some photos) and my self-esteem has been restored. I'm not just baby machine you know.

Hi,
The blog is also very nice... Suddie is adorable too! Do you have three TT's?
Hereby, I send you some foto's of me and my dog's. My first TT is Math So. He is 16 months old now and my biggest sweetheart! He is not from a breeder, but from a family that just had one litter. He has, as you can probely see, a difficult coat. But I use your tip (water with conditioner) and I give him sinse one week salmonoil in his food. And that really helps!
The puppy is Kee Ci (pronounce KC). She is 15 weeks old now and very very cute! She is doing very well...She comes from a breeder here.
I hope you like them!
Big hug for your dog's!!!
and kindly regards,
Karin
Above: Math So of Holland

Friday, June 11, 2010

Wooly

Above: That's me rendered in wool!

I think you know my dad loves Angus and Roxie and me a lot. Well sometimes love makes men do crazy things. I think that explains these fine felted pillows. You see dad somehow found this artist that makes purses and such. Sometimes they are in the likeness of dogs- very fine felting indeed. In fact, I think he saw a purse she created in the likeness of a Tibetan Terrier. Yes. That is a Tibetan Terrier.


Now my dad doesn't carry a purse so he thought perhaps pillows felted with Roxie's, Angus' and my faces were just what we need. So he contacted this fine artist and chatted and sent her pics of each one of us. The artist sent a few pics of pillows she had felted of other dogs (not TTs) and we all thought they were marvy-poo.

A few weeks ago we received an email with pics of our pillows. Now dad thought they were very cool though he doesn't know exactly what he is going to do with them. I think the ones of Roxie and me are quite good. They seem to capture something of our aura, our mystique. A certain je ne sais quoi. Well, I'm not certain about the one of Angus. And, you see, dad is very picky and he wasn't sure he like how Angus' and Roxie's tongues were rendered.


Dad wrote to the artist and gently told her so. She made some adjustments using a lighter colored wool and sent pics of the adjusted pillows. Now dad is not sure that he didn't like her first try better. Though he didn't tell her this, he did email back that he wished the tongues looked more "tongue-like." What do you think?


The artist is also working on a fourth pillow that includes all seven pups from my last litter. I can't wait to see this one, but I am a bit worried cause in the pic dad sent to the artist one of my pups is sticking out her tongue. Don't worry. I'll keep you posted.