This morning I discovered that Scalzi has a Daisy who looks a lot like my Daisy.
Doggity Bloggity
02/16/2011
02/15/2011
02/07/2011
A Tale of Three Dogs
I don’t remember where I originally heard the story. It might have been from a pastor. It might have been from one of those authors who made a crapload of money writing the same insipid “Christian Living” book every year, slapping a different title on it, and unloading it on the masses. It might have just been one of those things that made the rounds.
The story goes like this. The person telling it is having a hard time living up to the Christian ideal, by which, of course, is meant the generic Evangelical North American ideal. Then they get home and see their dog. The dog is just kind of happy, hanging out in the sun and being all carefree.
The person suddenly realizes, “Hey, my dog is the perfect Christian, not worrying about anything and just living in the moment.”
The take home is, “Why don’t we be more like dogs?” Because, of course, dogs are always happy and never have to worry about anything. The story makes a certain amount of sense. That is, it makes sense if you don’t know anything about god. Or people. Or dogs.
Let’s talk about dogs for a minute, specifically the three dogs nearest and dearest to my heart.
This is Oscar.
We (and by “we,” I mean, “my family”) adopted Oscar on Halloween. I want to say it was Halloween 2002. He was about a year old and came from the shelter, as had our previous dog, Mousse. Oscar was similar in size and appearance to Mousse,[1] so we made the assumption that having Oscar around would be the same as having Mousse around.
This was…to put it nicely…incorrect. Mousse was a few years old when he came in to our life and had been a lap dog. He was laid back and not prone to too much activity. Oscar was a handful. He was also easy enough to deal with since he’s small. Since my parents don’t really have the patience to train a dog once he got the basic rules of life in the house down he was left to his own devices.
My mother’s idea of training was to buy some books, talk about training Oscar, and then never do anything about it. My father’s idea of training was to assume the dog understood English, and then yell at him. This was then followed by getting extremely frustrated when Oscar didn’t respond. Weirdly, while they couldn’t be arsed to teach him how to follow basic commands, they did manage to teach him the names of his various toys. Priorities…
I actually taught him to sit. I think I tried to teach him some other things, too, but since there was absolutely no consistency in handling him very little was accomplished. Still, when I’m back home and I tell Oscar to sit he usually listens.
This is Butters.
My sister and brother-in-law adopted him out of a shelter four or five years ago. When they got him he was already probably four years old. He was also a holy terror. It’s pretty obvious that he was mistreated and neglected wherever he was before my sis and bro-in-law got him and he acted out.
After two or three rounds of obedience school he started to come around. As he’s gotten older he’s mellowed. But he’s still extremely territorial when my sis and bro-in-law are around and he’s pretty clingy. As such, I refer to him as “the neurotic schnauzer.”
Still, in general he’s a good dog and as sweet as can be. He’s also way easier to be around than he was when he first arrived due to the fact that rules were laid down and practiced consistently. When he started obedience school my sis and bro-in-law treated him the same way and told people who were going to be put in charge of him how to treat him.
My dad seems to think he can understand English, though. That makes it kind of tough.
This is Daisy.[2]
She was severely neglected by her first owner, then rescued. Quite frankly, I don’t understand how she ended up where she was for the first six months of her life. I don’t know who could possibly look at a puppy and think, “I’m going to take this thing, throw it out in to a pen in the yard, and occasionally feed it. Maybe it will die soon and I won’t have to give a shit any more.”
It’s unfathomable. Especially since Daisy is as sweet as a dog can be.
Still, she has some of the tendencies Oscar had when we first got him. She can be a bit mouthy when she gets excited.[3] She can get really excited and tear around without paying attention for no good reason. That’s the puppy in her.
She also has some of the tendencies that Butters had and still has. She obviously has separation anxiety and will follow me around. If I’ve been away she’ll jump all over me when I show up again. And “away” can be something as simple as, “Asleep while Daisy is in her crate in the corner of my bedroom.” If other dogs get too close she often moves to keep them away.[4] And she doesn’t really give me much privacy.[5]
Then, of course, she has her own idiosyncrasies. She will eat anything that looks even remotely like food. Part of that, I guess, is being a dog, especially a Pariah breed. Part of that, though, is probably the bit where she didn’t get enough food for the first half of her life. I imagine I’d eat anything I could any time I could find it if I were in that situation.
Dogs are far more complex than we usually think they are. This is especially true for those dogs that have been rescued from bad conditions. They don’t know why they’ve been where they were. They don’t know that they won’t be going back to those places. Since they can’t think in the abstract they always carry the scars.
When it dropped down to below 20 and ice choked Dallas for four days last week I thought about what would have happened to Daisy if she had never been rescued but somehow managed to survive the remainder of the Texas summer without enough food or water. Would the people who had her have just left her out to freeze to death? Would her short and miserable life have ended unceremoniously, shivering and terrified in a Texas ice storm?
All I could do when I thought about that was to sit down on the floor with her, wrap my arms around her neck, and say, “As long as you’re with me you’ll always be warm and well-fed.” She didn’t understand, but I wasn’t really saying it for her.
I bought Daisy a stuffed cow. She loves her Cowie and her favorite game is to grab it by the ear and shake it back and forth as fast as she can. Last night I realized that the ear was starting to come off so I took Cowie from her and stuck it in a place where she could see it but couldn’t reach it. She would walk past it occasionally and look at it.
I’m assuming she thought I was punishing her. But what I was doing was waiting for Cowie’s ear to dry. When I got home from work today I was tired and hungry and wanted to sit down and have a beer. Before I ate I walked Daisy. Before I could have a beer I sat down and sewed Cowie’s ear back together.[6]
All of this brought to mind that notion that a dog is the perfect Christian. It’s an idea that doesn’t hold water when exposed to reality. All that idea really does is reveal the teller of that particular tale’s unexamined privilege.
We have three basic ideas of “god” from the three dogs I know best. There is me with Daisy and my sis and bro-in-law with Butters who care about our dogs and make sure that they’re properly disciplined. There are my parents with Oscar, who care about their dog but don’t really do anything beyond setting really basic boundaries.[7] Then there’s whoever had Butters and Daisy first.
Presumably the person drawing comparisons between their dog and the proper Christian attitude (and, it should be noted, between themselves and god) cared for their dog. If the dog had the luxury to lie around in the sun all day and run out to greet his owner that probably meant he was probably being cared for and his owner wasn’t beating him. The dog probably wasn’t scrounging around for scraps of food, either. The dog was probably, in short, happy and well cared for.
That, too, meant that the teller of that particular tale had the luxury of having and properly caring for a dog. That probably meant that the person in question had a house and enough money to put food on the table and in the dog dish. In short, the story is one that indicates an overall happy, privileged life. They were probably the sort of person who made shallow prayers about god helping them to find their keys or come up with enough money to afford the mortgage payment and that vacation and maybe a few bucks left over to donate to charity.
There’s nothing really wrong with living happily and comfortably. I wish everyone could. The problem comes when the happy and comfortable person decides that it’s the default mode in which everyone lives.
The fact is, right now Daisy is warm, fed, healthy, and resting contendedly on my couch. In an alternate universe, however, she lived a short, sad, neglected life. Right now there are countless dogs living in Daisy’s alternate universe.
Right now there are millions of children living in Daisy’s alternate universe. Somewhere there are children dying without food and water. Somewhere there are children freezing to death. And they’re not just in some part of the world where that sort of thing happens. They’re in Dallas and Chicago and wherever that person who so smugly decided that Christians should be more like dogs lives.
What does that say about how a typical generic Evangelical Christian should live? What does it say about the god that the generic Evangelical Christian worships?
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[1]Mousse was a Pekingese-Shih Tzu mix. Oscar is a Lhasa Apsa-poodle mix. Probably.
[2]I’m actually kinda-sorta mocking her in this picture. When she was first rescued, Daisy was severely malnourished. She was then fostered for a few months in a house with two other dogs. So she usually can’t eat her food fast enough. That seemed to be a good place for me to start her training when I brought her home. When I put her food dish down I tell her to wait. She’s then not allowed to start eating until I say, “Okay.” At first I had to say, “Wait,” about every three seconds. Now it’s at the point where I don’t even have to say it. But while she’s waiting for me to let her eat she’ll look down at the food, then back up at me with this baleful expression. In this case I was making her wait long enough for me to take a picture, which was kind of mean.
[3]Thankfully, not nearly as mouthy as Oscar was. He has a small mouth and fairly small teeth. When I played with him I’d often walk away with red marks all over my arms and hands. If Daisy was like that I’d be walking away with bloody teeth marks. Fortunately she only goes mouthy after a while and she registers strong negative reactions pretty quickly, so the moment she starts all I have to do is say, “No,” very loudly and sternly and she backs off. It’s nice.
[4]This can be a problem, but for the most part it’s pretty, “Meh.” However, today I walked past a very attractive redhead walking her dog and realized, “You know, there are some situations when this might really get in the way.” There’s that whole bit where women dig guys with dogs and, quite frankly, Daisy is adorable and friendly where people, especially women, are concerned. But I’m pretty sure that goes out the window if she’s trying to eat said woman’s Pomeranian.
Of course, Pomeranians are annoying, yappy little things, so…hey…
[5]Seriously.
Fortunately, she seems to enjoy blogging. And, no, I will not be one of those people who sets up a blog specifically for his dog. Seriously. That sort of thing is complete bullshit.
Also, apropos of nothing, Daisy is not my kid. She’s my dog. I’ve come to the conclusion that people who refer to their dogs as children need help. And if I run in to a woman who calls her pets “furbabies,” I take that as an immediate red flag.
[6]If you’re sitting there thinking, “You know, I can’t see Geds as a person with a lot of skill and experience when it comes to sewing,” you’d be right. I took Home Ec in junior high because everyone had to. I learned how to sew a button. The next time I used those skills was about six months ago, when I sewed a button back on to a pair of pants.
[7]Which ends up being a constant argument if my parents are in a position to watch Butters. They cannot be convinced that they need to treat Butters differently than they treat Oscar, so when my sister tells them, “We need you to do [whatever],” this is an unreasonable demand. They then decide that my sis and bro-in-law need to back off. Somehow I often get pulled in to the middle of it, even from a thousand miles away.
Over the years I’ve come to increasingly realize that my sis and bro-in-law weren’t being unreasonable, but I also decided there were certain things that they did with Butters that I wouldn’t have done. Often that just came down to things like reward structure and whatnot, so it was more of a disagreement over style than substance. And Butters doesn’t act the same way around me as he does them, since he’s not overly protective of me. I’m his buddy, but that’s about it.
In the end, though, I’m glad that I watched what happened with Butters and participated in some of it. Training and consistency is deeply important when dealing with a 40-pound puppy, after all. It certainly beats the crap out of just kinda getting some basic guidelines across and hoping for the best. Again, though, it’s a margin of error thing. There is only so much damage Oscar can or wants to do. Butters and Daisy can do a lot more.
01/26/2011
Wednesday Dog Blogging
As it turns out, I’m a sucker for a hard-luck story. Give me a good sympathetic tale with a poorly-treated character and I’m all over it. I think that one’s human nature. We want to root for the underdog, we want to imagine that we can make a move and change the world for the better.
Sometimes it’s all about making a small change that costs us something, but makes the world better for someone else.
This is Daisy on Sunday, also known as Day 2:
It fascinates me how quickly she got to this point. The first six months of her life, after all, were no picnic. At the very least she was neglected and not properly fed. I would say that abuse wasn’t out of the question, either, judging by the way she reacts when confronted by surprising situations. When surprised she’ll drop straight to the ground, then try to back away from whatever it is that surprised her or she’ll growl and back away even if no threat has been offered.
In a way, that makes how she reacted to me all the crazier. My friends have been fostering her for the last couple of months, so I went over to their house to meet her. At the door I was greeted by a blue heeler, a dachshund, and Daisy. Daisy immediately came over to me, spent the next couple hours mostly trying to keep my attention, and listened when I gave her commands.
Eventually we all decided to go to lunch. My friends put Daisy in their car, then I got in to my car and we went over to Fuzzy’s Tacos. I got out of my car, walked past my friends’ car, and apparently Daisy decided I was leaving for good because she watched me walk past and started whimpering.
She was super excited when I came back. From this I had assumed that she was friendly and would have no problems getting along with people. Turns out that with not-me her first reaction is far less likely to be one of happy acceptance. It’s not universal, but I’ve seen it enough that I’m pretty sure that her original owners mistreated her in more ways than simple neglect.
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My friends who were fostering her were nice enough to do a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of training. She already knew “sit,” “stay,” “wait,” and “okay.” I’ve had long-term contact with three shelter dogs before, two of which were twenty pound fluffballs and one that I like to refer to as a “neurotic schnauzer, but he’s my sister and bro-in-law’s dog, so I didn’t have to do a lot of day in and day out care. Still, I know that they can come with baggage and behavioral problems, especially if they're not properly trained or socialized.
The point is, I’ve never really had to train a dog that would be a big problem if said dog were an undisciplined head case. Daisy is a totally different ballpark from what I'm used to. Since Daisy already had basic commands down and understands the concept of listening for me it’s all about being consistent. Basically, I feel like I won some sort of dog lottery. If Daisy were prone to misbehavior I’d be in trouble. She’s also not particularly loud, which helps immensely.
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Meanwhile, all evidence points to her being a rather strange dog breed. She’s probably a purebred Carolina Dog, which no one has ever heard of. I had to look them up and whenever I tell people that she’s probably one the response is, “What is that?” Basically, Carolina Dogs are a wild breed similar to dingoes that were only discovered in the 1970s and domesticated more-or-less wholesale in the ‘80s. In fact, they’re alternately known as the “American Dingo” or the “Dixie Dingo.”
When I was a kid I wanted a pet wolf. I find certain breeds of fox adorable (mostly it’s the desert foxes with their little pointy snouts and their huge ears (seriously, do a Google Image search for fennec foxes. They look like gremlins. Adorabubble). I also have a certain fondness for Coyote, what with the storytelling thing and whatnot. So to basically have a dingo sleeping on my couch is awesome. It makes me all giddy and whatnot.
Again, I feel like I won some sort of dog lottery here. She seems happy, too.
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Also, I now totally understand why people feel the need to put pictures of their cat on the internet. I also understand why people talk endlessly about how awesome their kid/pet/whatever is when it’s totally uninteresting to other people. I will try to avoid doing that too much. Now that I’m beginning to adjust to Daisy and she’s beginning to adjust to me I suspect I’ll figure out how to get some writing in again. I’ll try to make sure I don’t become a doggie blogger, though.
Still, like I said, I get it. See, she’s apparently never had to deal with stairs before she moved in. I live on the 3rd floor and my stairs are out in an outside breezeway, so in order to allow proper airflow they’re basically floating concrete slabs with empty space between them. This totally freaked Daisy out, which took me by surprise since, y’know, I’d never thought about life from a dog’s-eye view before.
Saturday I basically had to carry her up the stairs. I spent all day Sunday attempting to bribe and cajole her up the stairs to somewhat minimal success. I resigned myself to a long and difficult struggle.
Then on Monday she did one flight in one shot, got a little hung up on the next flight, but zoomed up the third. I was immensely proud of her. Words can’t describe it. Tuesday she shot up the stairs like she’d been doing it her whole life. Now I’m worried when she hits the stairs because she goes up them faster than I can.
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I mentioned in the comments on my original post that the weak point in my dog proofing was my precariously perched left speaker. This is how it was set up when Daisy got here:
This is how it’s set up now:
It’s not the most elegant solution in the world. But it turns out that finding 23” tall fixtures that can hold massive bookshelf speakers is really hard on short notice. I rather like the piece, but I’m not sure that I like it where it is too much. If I can find something I like better I’ll probably move that piece to my second bedroom and turn it in to a nightstand or something.
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