Spring

Time for Sandy’s “Annual Wellness Exam.” She is so well that it took three of us --- Linda, the vet, Diane, the vet assistant and me to hold her still so Linda could cut Sandy’s toenails. “It was a lot easier when she was unconscious,” said Linda.

My parents went to Italy and sent Sandy a postcard from Pompeii. It’s a picture of the floor in The Tragic Poet’s House. It shows a dog on a chain and says “Cave Canem”. They signed the card “The Grand People.”

There’s a new walking trail not far from where we live. It’s two trails, mostly side by side. One is paved and the other is dirt and gravel. That one is closer to the water. The trails are about 1 km long. I saw them being constructed and landscaped, and waited for the “No Dogs Allowed” signs to go up. I was surprised when dog poop bag dispensers went up instead. Yes, the dogs are supposed to be on leash. But so far this is the only place where Eric and I can walk with Sandy.

So far it’s just been me and Sandy, though. Spring is on the way, but it’s been rainy, cold, and windy, and not great for pushing a wheelchair a couple of miles, so Eric’s stayed home. Sandy and I walked the trail yesterday. We had a pretty good time despite the fact that I wouldn’t let her go for a swim or even roll in anything. Afterwards I went to work out and Sandy was going to stay in the car and have a nap unless there was something to bark at.

The woman at the fitness place saw Sandy’s nose pressed against the car’s back window and told me to bring Sandy in; she could stay while I worked out. Once Sandy got over the dog in the big mirror along the back wall, everything was good. I don’t know what she thought I was doing. (This is just a circuit place, not a real gym.) I told her it was like dog agility but for people. Now I think she wants to try dog agility.

I know Spring is on the way because Sandy is really, really shedding. I brushed her the other day outside on the deck. We left the dog hair for birds to build nests. Now it’s like dog tv out there: Sandy watches as they pick up some hair and continue construction.

There is a product called Pet Therapy Instant Clean, which is a spray-on/wipe-off shampoo-in-a-mist for use between baths. It works pretty well on Sandy because she will let me spray this stuff on her in the first place. She won’t let me give her a real bath. As soon as she sees the cotton balls and the dog shampoo, she curls up in her crate and tries to look clean. But she has no problem with this stuff even though the directions contain this line: …Allow animal to stand for 3 to 5 minutes… There’s some solid advice.

Dream On

Earlier this week it snowed. It started snowing during the night and was still snowing early in the morning when Sandy woke up. This was exciting news from Sandy's point of view. She loves the snow, and it was such an important development that Sandy had to wake me up as soon as she noticed.


Snow Dog

The first day she woke me at 6:30am. She showed up at the bedroom door and whined the way Lassie does when Timmy is stuck in the well. Next day it was still dark, but snowing, when I awoke thinking I'd better go see about that well. It was still sometime in the 5's. I didn't get up right away, but I didn't get back to sleep, either.

That night I went to bed thinking how great it would be if it didn't snow and I could sleep until the alarm at 7:20. Although it didn't snow that night, I dreamed that Sandy woke me up. She was in the dream with me. I heard her voice, like a human voice in the dream. She said, "Wake up, Cate! It's snowing! We have to go out RIGHT NOW!"

I woke up, got up, looked outside. No snow. I looked at the bedroom door. No dog. I found her sleeping soundly in her crate, and she was startled awake when I showed up. She sighed and stretched and turned around and settled down again, closed her eyes and went back to sleep. Maybe she dreamed about snow.

Math And Science

In his new book, “How Dogs Think: Understanding the Canine Mind”, Stanley Coren spends a part of a chapter discussing The Mathematical Mind of Dogs. Dogs, that count, dogs that can distinguish which thing is larger than the other thing, and canine calculus.

That dogs know math comes as no surprise to me. Certainly Sandy is much better at math than I am. We walk parts of the Mission Creek Greenway three or four times a week. It's a public park, crescent-shaped, and it follows the creek. At irregular intervals there are trash cans where dog owners are expected to deposit our little bags full of dog poop.


Dogs easily find the farthest distance between two trashcans.

In this crude sketch, the X’s mark the most frequent spots (!!) for dogs to relieve themselves. How do they know it's the farthest point from the can ahead and the can behind? I don't know. But I see a lot of people carrying these little bags, not just me. Yesterday I heard a man call his dog "Hypotenuse."

Dogs know something about science, too. Our dog, while not a scientist, is a willing participant in scientific experiments. Think of her as a technician.

She waits hopefully by the stove and by the kitchen table, ready to alert The Authorities the moment the laws of gravity are repealed. She'll know because food will cease to fall to the floor where she can pick it up "before the germs get to it."

This has never happened, but she remains optimistic.