Good news. Mostly. Will has recovered from his 5 + hour root canal, but I remain a tad tweaked about the definition of a "fully functional tooth." I choose the root canal for Will instead of an extraction because the vet specialist said it would leave Will with a full set of "fully functional teeth." After the 5 hours of anesthesia and $1,600, the same vet said "His tooth is dead, and thus will become more brittle and more easily broken, so be sure to never let him chew on anything hard, like bones or hard toys or raw hides." Uh, no bones? Not even relatively soft, raw knuckle bones, like the big beef bones that Lassie and Willie get several times a week? "Nope." The rest of our conversation, in which I was far more polite than I was feeling, included me asking "Have you ever seen a dog Read More
Lassie Self Handicaps with Willie
Here's a video of Self Handicapping that I took 3 years ago, when Will was a young pup and Lassie was the stronger of the two. It's a lovely illustration of appropriate dog play, showing how the stronger dog self handicaps to avoid overwhelming the weaker player. Lassie, even now, is capable of pulling with a great deal of strength, but in this video she clearly damps down both the power of her pull and intensity used when she shakes her head. She moves more slowly and with less power than she would when playing with me. There's another piece to this video that I just love: when Lassie decides she is done playing she gives Willie a very clear signal that play time is over. (Not long after she looks at me when I say "Jim! Turn the TV down" in the background!). She gives a second (more Read More
Gnus from Africa (sorry)
THIS WAS WRITTEN on August 11th, but not posted til now. So don't get confused, it's out of order! In transition, 10 minute to write. in nairobi between tent camp on edge of maasai mara in masai village and flights either to home or to So Africa for those of us going on to Botswana. Trip amazing, too much to process while it is happening. Picture: The ultimate 'hard eye' from a lioness 10 ft from YOU while she walks by your van with her cubs. A leopard getting beat out over a kill by a lion. Streams of wildebeest drawing lines across the vast and open mara, always led by zebra. Elegant and yet adorably cute Thompson's gazelles switching their tails in time to the bumps in the road. More dust in your hair than you can ever imagine getting out. Talking to young maasai warriors about Read More
Dogs and Kids
WRITTEN MID-JULY, POSTED WHILE I'M IN AFRICA: I recently spent three evenings with Jim's son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter Taylor, and so the issue of kids and dogs is near and dear to me right now. I also, in that serendipitous way of the world, just received a question about how to find help for a Boxer who growled at a grand child from the post Who Should Treat Behavioral Problems. Young children and dogs can be the best of friends, or the worst of enemies. There's just no way around it, to some dogs, kids can be unpredictable, rude, and/or frightening. And surely, to some kids, dogs can be unpredictable, rude and/or frightening. Given that, here's some generic advice, sprinkled with specifics from Will's encounters with Taylor. 1) Never live in the land of Read More
Leave Tomorrow!
Hard to imagine we're on our way to Africa tomorrow. Even though it's my fourth trip, going to Africa still seems like something I could only dream about, never really do. Of course, the only dreaming at this point is of things I might have forgotten, and worries about leaving the dogs and the sheep. It will be such a relief to finally be on the plane and let it all go. I think of trips like this as white water kayaking (not that I've ever done it!)... You prepare carefully and meticulously, then launch into the rapids and go with the flow. The most fun of the preparation has been reading up on the behavior of the animals we'll probably see. For example, I've been reading about the comparative social systems of Golden Jackals and Black-Backed Jackals (coyote-like canids, common in both Read More
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