Over this past weekend we delivered Dinah and Crispin to their favorite dog hotel and hit the road for points west to visit First Child at his college’s family weekend. It was a beautiful drive  (albeit a long one–Pennsylvania gets longer and longer every time we make the trip), so much so that I finally told the Pack Leader that I was getting foliage fatigue from all the spectacular fall leaves and the astonishingly rich colors.

On Saturday we headed to the school’s football game.  I am in it for the band, in which First Child plays the trombone; you would laugh every year to hear the Pack Leader trying to get me to understand football. I finally decided it’s like listening to a zen talk: “dark to the eye, but radiant to the heart.”  I try to just flow with things.

As we approached the stadium, which sits in a beautiful green bowl ringed around with golden maple trees (made more radiant this weekend by the lowering dark clouds that threatened, but never quite delivered rain), I spotted a familiar shape sitting at the top of the rise around the bowl.

First Child had told us that since he started attending college, he regularly sees a woman walking an airedale up and down the paths of the school. He has talked to her several times about our airedales, and gets his little fix by petting and talking with her dog.  So we went over and introduced ourselves, and sure enough, this was Rollie with his owner, Wendy.

Rollie was delightful–though his eyesight isn’t what it once was  (at the tender airedale age of 13), he was a perfect gentleman and permitted himself not only to be stroked and scritched, but to be photographed. As the picture shows, there’s no question about Rollie’s football loyalty:

Want to see what Rollie saw (or heard) next? Okay, this is last year’s show, but you get the picture, and so did Rollie.

Shortly after I put up my last post, I ran across this article from the Tehama County, Califorina Daily News about how to keep your pet safe on holidays in general, and July 4 in particular.

The article quotes Tehama County Animal Care Center Shelter Manager Scott Alsteen as noting that the number of lost pet reports that they get on a daily basis–typically two or three–rises to as many as 15 a day during weeks like this one.

Animals are spooked by fireworks, as our Dinah was, says Alsteen, and they run away, get lost, get hit by cars, or, even if confined inside, injure themselves out of anxiety and fear (like our canine friend Tris, who hurts his mouth chewing and pulling at the baseboard heaters in their home when there are fireworks or thunder).

Alsteen has several recommendations:

• Stay near your pets during these noisy times.
  
• If you must be away, be sure your animals are confined in a safe place away from things that could hurt them (or, I’d like to add, that they could hurt)
• If you can’t be with them, supply them with calming and distracting background noise by turning up a radio or television set near them.
• If your vet suggests a tranquilizer or other calming medication, administer it before your cat or dog (or wildebeest–whatever you’ve got) becomes anxious. A dog-loving friend of mine, though, reminded us recently that your animals can probably hear the rockets or thunder long before you can.
• Finally, just in case, make sure your critters wear identification tags (we call these Dinah’s and Crispin’s jewelry) at all times.

After all, it was Dinah’s clearly marked tags that helped us to reunite with her so quickly after her scary lost episode.

Once you’ve taken care of all these things, enjoy your celebration. I’m off to make strawberry shortcake. Think I’ll slip the critters a treat or two on my way.  Happy 4th.

Photo by BL1961 at http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkadog

Amazing. Jess the dog is astonishing, but his young owner impresses me even more–she’s got a great career ahead of her as a trainer.

Apparently an oldie, but I just came across this story today.  It’s by Alan Guthrie, and comes from the Telegraph in the UK.

It seems that the famous  ethnographer and adventurer Thor Heyerdahl had participated in a television broadcast, and was waiting for a cab that had been called to take him home afterward.

Before too long a cab pulled up and the driver came inside, looked around, and sat down on a bench.

Heyerdahl approached the driver and said that he was the one for whom the cab had been ordered.

“Nope,” said the driver. “I was sent to pick up four airedales.”

Crispin has figured out how to open the refrigerator.

Can’t you just hear the heavenly voices as he gazes in awe upon the source of All Good Things?

We are so in trouble.

After an extra-long break this year that expanded to accommodate at least one illness for everyone in the family, it’s back to work time.

To mark this important day, a little workplace safety video:

If we could just get Dinah and Crispin a pair of saxaphones, we might not need to have jobs around here.

My daughter came running to tell me on Sunday, “Mom, Mom! There’s an airedale on tv!” and though I missed it then, I finally saw it yesterday. It’s an ad for our state’s lottery, featuring a man and a woman sitting in a car. She has obviously been doing her holiday shopping, and starts pulling from her shopping bag the presents she’s bought “for everyone!”–all, of course, are lottery tickets–”One for mom, and one for your sister and one for . . .” and so on until she holds up the last one teasingly, saying, “And one for . . . “

At which point a large and lovely airedale pokes its head up over the back of the front seat and steals the card. Very funny. Very airedale. Very scary–the notion of an airedale with disposable income.

I'd buy mom a new tinfoil hat!

A whole case of Kongs, so Mom can always find one when we need it!

What would your dogs buy if they won the lottery?

Love the dog in this:

There’s a wonderful little dog animation by Jeff Scher on the New York Times’s web site that perfectly captures the feel of these dog days. Go see!

Maybe it’s the recent death of Spinner the cat that’s gotten to me, and maybe it’s that my dratted dog person gene has recently become activated, but it’s getting so I can’t see anything to do with dogs without reaching for the kleenex.

Last night I wandered into the den while the kids were watching Futurama. Specifically, the Jurassic Bark episode, in which Fry attempts to clone his 20th century beloved dog Seymour after discovering that the petrified pup is on display in a museum as part of an exhibit of an “Old New York” pizza parlor. I was just fine until the ending, at which point (spoiler warning to the three of you out there who have never seen this episode) Fry shrugs and assumes that Seymour just forgot about him after Fry was accidentally frozen.

Ah, but no. Dogs don’t do this, now, do they? No, instead–as the show’s closing footage demonstrates, Seymour does wait, forever. Frame after frame of the brokenhearted critter soldiering bravely on, reliving his moments with Fry, training his sad puppy eyes on the places they went together, the people they knew, the pizza parlor where they had their good times. As if that’s not enough, the pathos is sharply underscored by the music–”I Will Wait for You.”*

I’m telling you, I’ve seen this show half a dozen times before, but that was when I was a cat person. Now all it takes is a cheesy cartoon dog, and, to quote Salinger, I’m a goddamn puddle of tears.

See? See?

Then this morning I find this story among the other cheerful morning news. For six weeks after its owner’s suicide out in the grasslands north of Denver, Cash, a loyal German Shepherd (actually, “loyal German Shepherd” may be redundant) stood guard over her master’s body, surviving, apparently, on mice and rabbits. You’ll be relieved to hear that she has been reunited with the man’s family, including a 2-year old who is devoted to the dog. But . . . oy. I love my cat truly madly deeply, but would Nemo do this for one of us? Huh. Maybe until dinnertime.

There are many tales like this one. Scotland has its revered Greyfriar’s Bobby, who spent 14 years sleeping, in all kinds of weather (which says a lot, given that this was Scotland), on the grave of his deceased owner in Greyfriar’s churchyard. Bobby not only has his own web site, but is also the subject of a 1961 film. More recently, but no less intrepidly, Heidi carried on her countrydogs’ tradition when her owner died after a fall during a hike.

Japan has its own loyal dog, Hachiko, an akita who turned up every evening outside of Shibuya station to meet his owner when he came home from work. The owner died in 1925, but Hachiko continued to show up at the station every night at precisely the same time until his own death in 1935. Here’s Hachiko (copyright, Wikimedia Commons):

And here’s a rather macabre memorial to him, the dog himself, stuffed and displayed at the National Museum of Nature and Science, in Ueno, Japan.

But here’s his most famous memorial, a statue erected in Shibuya as a tribute to the faithful dog.

I rather like the statue better, and I love that it’s now a famous landmark and gathering place for people who are meeting in the busy area. When I finally get to visit Japan (one of these days), I’ll make a pilgrimage to Hachiko’s statue.

And I’ll bring my kleenex.

—

*Note to the YouTube commenter who wondered whether the folks who make Futurama had written that great song just for this episode . . . um. No. Check out brilliant versions by Lena Horne and Astrud Gilberto. This guy (you may have heard of him?) also manages to muddle his way through it.