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hopefully by the stove and by the kitchen table, ready to alert The Authorities the moment the laws of gravity are repealed.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.

Winter

Winter approaches and with it comes snow. It snowed just a little bit last night --- enough to stick but not enough to cover the green stuff completely.

Sandy loves the snow. She couldn't wait for my alarm; she had to get me up at 6:30 this morning (Saturday) to let me know about the snow outside. If you were to ask her about it, I'm sure she'd tell you it took me way too long to get ready to go out.

We headed to the Enterprise off-leash area where there was a little more snow accumulated than in our back yard, and where the pond had a mist hovering about a metre above it. Can dogs see that? Sandy just plunged into the pond, stood there looking stunned for a minute, and then tried to act casual as she headed back for the shore. "I KNEW it was going to be that cold," she said. "No worries."

We played with a stick. We don't really play "Fetch." We play another game, which as far as I can tell is called "It's MY stick now!" Sandy doesn't mind chasing a stick, but bringing it back to me must seem like a pretty bad idea. "You're just going to THROW it again! Where's THAT at?" So I throw the stick, Sandy chases after it, picks it up, shakes it to make sure it is, in fact, dead, and then takes it far away and guards the hell out of it. It's a pretty good game. Sometimes we play it with a Frisbee.

Today she grabbed the stick, ran with it, dropped it in the snow and then rolled on it. She stood up and watched me. I could see her breath. She was beautiful and happy. She tossed the stick up in the air and caught it. She galloped around with it. In the end, she brought it back to me and when I threw it again, she sighed and went after it. It was a great morning.

The Road To Recovery

The road to recovery was fairly short this time. I picked Sandy up at the vet, brought her home, and opened the liftgate on the van. Stoned on morphine and general anesthesia, Sandy tumbled out. So now she had a fat lip, but that didn’t deter her from having a pretty good bark and a lunge at the neighbor’s cat.

“Well," said Eric,” she’ll be fine, then."

The vet wrote a prescription for Tylenol + codeine. I gave Sandy half a Tylenol + codeine, and an antibiotic twice a day. Apparently Sandy will take anything if it's coated in peanut butter. She didn't mind taking the pills, but she hated the effects of the codeine. She staggered around for a day and a half until I discontinued those pills. She didn't seem fazed by the pain. When the antibiotics had run their course, I think she missed her twice-daily peanut butter treats.

Sandy had a drain in for about five days. It didn't really bother her until about four days. Once the vet took it out Sandy was a lot more comfortable and was ready for some exercise. Unfortunately, she still has stitches in, and the vet said not to take her to the dog park or let her get the stitches wet. Those don't come out till Tuesday, and in the meantime Sandy is ready to explode.

We've taken several long walks, all of them on leash. At first she stayed close by, which was fine with me. As she started to feel better she wanted to pull. This was a great opportunity to work on “heel.” At least I thought it was. Now, all she wants to know is “When does the running start?”

It might start Tuesday afternoon, after we've left the vet. I might bring her over to Enterprise for little play. I hope I'm up to it.