Biting the hand that feeds

After seven years of pet sitting, it finally happened – a dog nipped me.

He’s a border collie, like the dog in the picture, named Jack.  He and his owner participate in agility contests, and the owner trains dogs in this sport, as well.

Border collies, according to websites devoted to them, are among the most difficult dogs to keep as pets. Their energy level is off the chart. They’ve been bred to work hard as sheepherders, which involves a lot of running around and occasional nipping at slow moving or wandering sheep.

Unfortunately for Jack, he spends most of the weekday in a crate while his owner is at work. When I arrive, it’s not to walk him, but to let him and the owner’s four other dogs into their back yard for a bathroom break.

Jack already had a habit that expressed his discontent. Whenever I entered or left the room where he and another border collie were crated, he’d attack his dog bed in a frenzy of biting, ripping, shaking and snarling. When the crate door was opened, he’d explode out of it like a missile.

Our routine included a treat after he had returned to his crate. This time, after dashing into the crate, he immediately ran back out, turned to nip me on the knee and then dashed back in. He left one shallow puncture and several raw scrapes. Bruises appeared the next day.

Websites I looked at for insight into border collies suggested that nipping is hard-wired into them, as is their need for a tremendous amount of exercise daily. Jack’s owner has decided to find him another home. Since he now has a history of nipping, this will be a challenge. Here are some of the websites I consulted:

http://www.aspcabehavior.org/articles/43/Mouthing-Nipping-and-Play-Biting-in-Adult-Dogs.aspx

http://dogscouts.org/Aggression.html

http://www.yourpurebredpuppy.com/reviews/bordercollies.html

I still visit his home almost daily to let out the other four dogs. He remains in his crate, without even that brief mid-day break. His dog bed has been eviscerated, its stuffing strewn all around the outside of the crate. It’s very hard to leave him in there while he watches the other dogs go out. I don’t blame him (or his owner) for taking out his frustration on me, but can’t risk letting him do it again. Next time might be a bite instead of a nip.

The prisoner next door gets time in the yard

You may remember Storm, the dog I wrote about in “The prisoner next door,” who was confined by himself for two years in a fenced kennel in a far corner of his owner’s back yard. Last week, someone installed a very long tie-out for him and hooked him up to it. Storm is able to run from one corner of the yard to another and plays with the owner’s other dog (who lives in the house) when she lets him into the yard. Sometimes a neighbor walks over while working in his yard and gives Storm a little petting. While not an ideal situation, the tie-out is a huge improvement in the quality of Storm’s life. He’s finally getting some attention, affection and play time with another animal. He’s barking less often. And I have been able to stop cringing everytime he does bark, knowing that he is a much happier dog than he used to be.

Dog-food quest, part 4

Brownie enjoyed her two meals of Oma’s Pride raw pet food, in this case a mix of  turkey and vegetables. But instead of buying more of that, I bought five pounds of chicken thighs on sale for 99 cents a pound (because they were one day away from their freshness expiration date) some sweet potatoes and some green beans. I put the chicken thighs in a big pot and boiled them for an hour, then added the sweet potatoes. Half an hour after that, the green beans went in for the final 15 minutes. I drained the liquid (saving it, of course) and let everything cool down.

When cool, I removed the meat from the chicken, mixed it up with the potatoes and beans and spooned portions into freezable, microwave-safe containers. For dinner now, instead of throwing a cup of kibble into her bowl, I remove an already defrosted container of the chicken mix and warm it briefly in the microwave. Brownie loves it and continues licking her bowl long after the food is gone.

I know that cooking and microwaving the food eliminates some of the qualities that make raw food so healthy. But it’s still a very big improvement over the highly processed kibble. I stretch the portions by adding my own leftovers to them, from cottage cheese to cabbage slaw, a fried egg or a few strawberries. The whole process took very little time and is less costly than buying the commercial preparation.  In return, I get the pleasure of seeing how excited Brownie is about her dinners, and imagine her enjoyment of all those flavors, aromas and textures. So we’re at half-kibble, half-homemade food. It seems like a good balance.

Paracats join dogs of war

Paracats in training. Photo illustration by Holly Allen, photograph by Giuseppe Cacace/AFP/Getty Images

The headline, “Cats of War,” is a sure-fire attention-getter, and the photos

about this “top-secret” U.S. military program look terrific.  It seems immediately obvious now that the Slate article is a joke, but I didn’t get it until photo number 4.

 

I missed the clue in the first photo, whose caption claimed that “Studies show they can survive nine times as long as human soldiers.” It wasn’t until Photo #4, shown above, that I caught on after reading that cats don’t need parachutes because they always land on their feet.

 

 Training cats to follow orders – What was I thinking?

Dog-food quest, part 3

The never-ending saga of trying to find better but affordable food for Brownie continues.

The idea of a BARF diet – bones and raw food – has great appeal. With just a few exceptions, such as onions, grapes and chocolate, she could eat what I do. It wouldn’t require any special or time-consuming preparation beyond fixing portions a bit larger than usual.

The bones, however, are proving to be problematic.

I offered Brownie a fresh, uncooked turkey neck. She looked at it, sniffed it, looked up at me, then walked away. That was less of a response than to anything ever offered to her. Even with a food she isn’t familiar with, she’ll at least take it in her mouth and trot over to the living room carpet, where she can put it down and examine it carefully before deciding whether to eat it.  If she decides not to eat it, she can just leave it there instead of rejecting the offering to my face, which she might think would discourage me from offering any more unfamiliar goodies.

So I took the remaining turkey necks in the package to someone whose dogs thrive on the raw food diet. In exchange, she gave me a package of something called Oma’s Pride turkey and veggie mix. It’s part of a line of prepared raw foods for dogs and cats, made in Connecticut. The ingredients listed are turkey and bone, turkey neck, green beans, okra, yellow squash, turkey hearts, turkey gizzards and turkey liver. After it defrosts, I’ll offer some to Brownie.

Stay turned for dog-food quest part 4!

Animal cruelty task force needs your help

Pet owners and animal lovers in Lake County, Indiana will have a chance soon to help law enforcement fight animal cruelty and neglect in their communities.

Det. Michelle Weaver of the county Sheriff’s Office wants to form a civilian auxiliary to the sheriff’s Animal Cruelty Task Force. While the task force investigates and arrests animal abusers, civilians can undertake tasks that include providing foster homes, putting up posters for lost pets and passing out literature.

The help is desperately needed. So far, the task force consists solely of Weaver. She’s working to add other detectives, police officers and prosecutors to it.

 “We want at least one officer from every jurisdiction who could dedicate at least a portion of their time to this,” she said. “I’ve been the person who does it for our agency for the past eight years, but it’s a much bigger problem than one person can tackle.”

In north Lake County, dog fighting is rampant, she said. In south Lake County, cock fighting has burgeoned as more immigrants arrive from Mexico, where it’s legal.

The task force began March 4 with the case of Vicki Moon, 62, of Lowell, after officials entered her home and waded through animal feces more than a foot deep. They rescued 17 dogs and retrieved 18 dead dogs and three cats. Their bodies were found in a freezer. Horrible as that is, the case is not unusual.

“I could do 10 of these today, but we don’t have the resources,” said Weaver. “We just don’t have enough bodies.”

Her quest to add more people from law enforcement won’t be easy. “A lot of officers scoff at those crimes. There are people even in my profession who think, ‘Why are you wasting your time? It’s a dog.’”

But Weaver has seen the link between animal abuse and domestic violence. “Eighty percent of the time, if the dog was being beaten, the kids and mom were also,” she said.

Weaver is hoping that veterinarians, rescue groups and shelter organizations will be among those offering to help the auxiliary. When she announces the time and place for its first meeting, you’ll read about it here.

Meanwhile, there are two things you can do now. One is to call your local police department and tell the chief you want someone on the force to join Weaver’s animal cruelty task force. The other is to keep your eyes and ears open for signs of animal abuse and neglect, then report it to Weaver. She can be reached at 219-755-3346 or at mweaver@lakecountysheriff.org

On a different subject…GE’s tax triumph

The howls of outrage about General Electric’s avoidance of U.S. corporate taxes is likely to die down soon to whimpers about how unfair it is and shoulder-shrugging from people thinking, What can I do about it, anyway?

 We can organize.

 Millions of us have the time, being unemployed, as well as highly educated, experienced and motivated.

 We know the American middle class has been under assault for decades, an attack propelled by lies about the “burdens” on corporations, obfuscations about competitiveness and empty promises about job creation.

 It’s time to stop listening to people whose private club bills amount to more than the average annual income when they insist that paying living wages and decent benefits will hurt us.

 We have only to look to China to see what Big Business means by “competitiveness.” It means slaving 12 hours a day, six or seven days a week, for pitiful wages in dangerous conditions, a metal cot in a room shared with many others and meals of rice and broth.

 The Chinese government works hand-in-hand with Big Business to ensure that its people have no options. This allows Big Business to profit and the government to rule unchallenged. Do you know how they do it?

By not allowing people to protest or organize. At the first hint of any such activity, Chinese citizens are punished with job loss, beatings, arrest, imprisonment, involuntary commitment to police-run mental “hospitals,” disappearance and murder.

Think that can’t happen here, that such a notion is far-fetched hysteria or exaggeration? Look at our labor history. With the willing aid of government, Big Business repeatedly crushed workers all across this country who protested. You don’t need to take my word for it, nor should you. Find out for yourselves.

As individuals, we are helpless, caught by forces we can’t control and circumstances we didn’t create. But in organized groups, we can apply enough pressure to pry capitulation from the powers that be. Big Business understands that. Why do you think it has made such a sustained assault on unions?

It’s no accident that our golden age of economic security, when a single wage earner could support an entire family, coincided with the union-driven expansion of the middle class and higher taxes on corporations and wealth. Notice also that those higher taxes did not prevent American corporations from innovating and growing.

But greed knows no limits. When violence failed, Big Business turned to the tried-and-true tactic of the Big Lie. Paying higher wages will cost jobs. Paying taxes will cost jobs. Observing safety standards will cost jobs. Fairness in hiring will cost jobs.

In truth, paying exorbitant executive salaries, avoiding taxes and bowing to the dictates of Wall Street cost jobs.

After years of declining wages and unemployment, many of us are frightened and demoralized. It’s time to turn those feelings outward and use them as fuel for action against those who cause or abet these conditions. We could start by directing our outrage at two of the people who have responsibility for working conditions in our country: GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt, recently appointed jobs-creation czar, and President Barack Obama, whose choice of Immelt for that position is perverse.

Flood their offices with messages of protest. Bombard their websites with mass complaints. Mail them copies of your mortgage foreclosures, layoff notices and unemployment applications. Arrange flash mobs to arrive wherever they go. Show up outside their homes, their offices, their country clubs, their business meetings, their vacation getaways, their appointments, appearances and speeches with protest signs, street theater, demands and heckling.

Our Declaration of Independence tells us we have not just a right to rebel against tyranny and injustice, we have a duty to do so.

If we allow ourselves to give up, tell ourselves we haven’t got the time, the money or the nerve to raise righteous hell, we’ll continue to be shafted. And we’ll deserve it.

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