Chew bones and tasty snacks are nice, but here is what I think our dogs really want for Christmas:1. CLARITY: Our dogs are living with aliens--us. They may love us deeply, but they still spend much of their life confused. After all, dogs are living in a world in which we yell at them for eating poop, and then pick it up and hoard it ourselves. We have five synonyms for one command, change the rules day by day, and say one thing with our voices and something different with our bodies. The best gift you can give your dog is to spend some time during the holidays and ask yourself: How can I make life more clear, and thus easier, for my dogs? No matter how brilliant we are with our dogs, surely every one of us could pick one potential source of confusion and clear it up for 2014.2. OUR Read More
Archives for December 2013
Why Doggie, What Beautiful Teeth You Have!
Last week I wrote about my desire to have a tail and all of its functions. (Don't miss reader's submissions of "If I Only Had a Brain" re-written with lyrics about a tail. It'll make your day.) This week I'm going to focus on teeth, prompted by research supported by the Human-Animal Interaction research projects of Waltham, regarding a child's interpretation of a canine tooth display.Unlike tails, teeth are a body part that we all share with dogs, but we don't always use them in similar ways. Generally, we humans show our teeth while smiling, and generally we are usually smiling when we are happy. This, of course, is not always true... think of the strained, cold-eyed smile that we've all seen on occasion (I call it the "What a nice dress" smile, said dripping with sarcasm). There is Read More
If I Only Had a Tail…
This is the time of year that I regret not having a tail. If I had one, I could curl it around my nose as did Nellie and Polly this morning, the thermometer descending toward single digits. Better yet, I could use it to wag from the shoulders back, like Willie does when Jim comes home. Or perhaps I could toss it up into the air, stiff and straight, and leave a committee meeting in a huff, my tail rising up like a standard held high in medieval England. I'm not sure where that image comes from, given that I've never left a committee meeting in a huff in my life. But then, it doesn't mean I haven't wanted to, and if I did, wouldn't a raised tail make it that much more effective?The fact is, tails are amazing things. Just look at all the functions that tails provide: BALANCE (see Willie Read More