Robin (the) Hood

A couple of faves, Robin and Mortimer, just checked in for a week. Adopted when he was around five months old, Robin promptly put his mother into $3,000 debt when he  sampled a death cap mushroom.
Robin, in the middle of a yoga pose.
This trauma to his mom came right on the heels of an even worse one; her other little Chihuahua, Kermit,  was killed by another dog while she was walking him and Mortimer.

Poor Mortimer, pronounced as a very British MOR-teh-muh, was witness to both catastrophes and left traumatized for awhile but seems to have moved past it. If only we bipeds could get over tragedies so quickly.

MOR-teh-muh, beyond adorable.

Being a sucker for ancient, practically toothless Chihuahuas, I've been in love with Mortimer since the first time I saw him. He's somewhere around 90  in human years and his tongue hangs out the left side of his mouth like James Dean's cigarette. Mortimer is a lot cooler than J.D., however.

It Takes Two

We've been Nickie-less two weeks here, but it seems like much, much longer. Nickie is not only a good friend and tenant,  but has brought boatloads of valuable tips and ideas to Little Pup Lodge from her former dog-walking, dog-boarding business. In exchange for part of her rent, Nickie assists with the many chores and responsibilities demanded of a dog hotel.

Partied way too hard last night...

When winter comes, Nickie goes off to work as an environmental observer on one of the giant dredges anchored offshore from Texas, Florida, or some other southeast state for three weeks to a month at a time.

"Environmental Observer"  sounded really glamorous, really Greenpeace  until Nickie described it. The observer sits there for twelve hours at a time and counts how many sea turtles get Hoover'd up in the dredge's enormous sand-sucker.  It's cold. It's wet. And above all, it's boring. Imagine you're a security guard. Now imagine your job is to stare at a door for twelve hours to make sure no one enters. It's that boring.

 Nickie and sadly, a sucked-up sea turtle.

Help is on its way, however.  Carly Jeanne, my best friend Kimberly's daughter, will be staying at the Lodge a couple of weeks. Carly's more like a niece and is perhaps the most mature, low-maintenance 13-year-old to walk this earth.

 

Carly Jeanne with hotel guest Scout  

Perhaps it is because her father's heart blew out from too much crystal meth and her mom has lung cancer. Although I'm open to it, we do not discuss either of those topics. Instead, we go to the beach, talk politics, books and music, eat hot fudge sundaes. She and her mother have taught me more about living in the now than a lifetime of meditation ever could.

Bag Lady

When a new law takes effect in 2012, Santa Cruz County shoppers will no longer have  plastic bags as an option. If you don't have a reusable tote, you will be hauling groceries out in a paper bag or your two bare hands.
Plastic bags have a billion-year lifetime, suck up valuable resources to produce and  look butt-ugly scuttling across parking lots and beaches when the wind blows. On the other hand, when was the last time you poop-scooped with a paper bag? It may be the tiniest bit selfish to put my convenience ahead of  Mother Earth's future. But, I'm just saying.
Both my father and brother stockpiled food, guns and ammo for the imminent breakdown of society/government takeover/earthquake/what-have-you. Easy to mock until I realized I only have a year to build up a lifetime supply of poop bags for Little Pup Lodge. I saw this coming, but was in denial. The most I did to prepare was choose plastic over paper. (Yes, I felt guilty and yes, I'm sure others in line said really awful things about me as soon as my back was turned.) There may be a few of those bags out there in the ocean right now, sailing  to  the Pacific Trash Vortex. If so, rest assured there is cargo on board. Stinky cargo.
Most stores now have a barrel in front for customers to recycle their plastic bags. Like a good dumpster diver, I've figured out which stores have the best  barrels for my needs. Safeway barrels are okay, but I'm never quite sure if something besides clean, non-biodegradable bags will be in them. Target is out; those bags are much too big. Staples wins. Their barrel is inside by the check stand, which cuts down on the number of nitwits who mistake it for a trash can. Chances are slim that my hand will bump into something gooey or wet while it fishes around in there.
Someday they will develop biodegradable poop bags that don't dissolve in your hand, but that day is not here. In the meantime, my hotel guests and their peristaltic systems will make sure that many, many plastic bags will be recycled. Ed Begley, Jr. would be proud of us.
  Ed Begley, Jr: lean, mean and green.

Tag - You're It!

Another important resolution for 2011: Periodically check Oliver’s I.D. tag to make sure it’s still legible. We have this silly notion that if stainless steel has been engraved, then it’s, well, engraved. Which tends to mean forever.

This was brought home to me the other day when a friend called to say she’d picked up a dog that had been wandering the streets. Did he have tags? I asked. Yes, indeed, but it would take a Navajo code-talker to make out what was once written on the red metal heart.  That meant the lost Labrador had to spend at least one night in the animal pokey and his folks would probably have to fork over a couple hundred bucks to get him sprung.

I mean, who looks at their own dog's tags? It was just by chance that I saw Oliver's a few months ago.  Half the phone number had been rubbed to a shiny, perfectly flat surface. And, the elements had shortened his name to Olive. We got in line at PetSmart's instant-tag machine the next day.

At Long Lash We Meet

Back in the '80s  I had the opportunity to meet Jaqueline "Jackie" Stallone, you-know-whose mother. The occasion may have been a fundraiser, just-say-no-to-drugs rally or supermarket opening; the specifics have escaped along with millions of other memory cells. But one detail of that day managed to hang on -- Ms. Stallone's yard-long, rhinestone-studded fake eyelashes. The celebrity mom kicked up a minor windstorm every time she batted those monstrous fans.





That image resurfaced when Nava, a Shi Tzu-Lhasa Apso, checked in. What I originally thought were dark tufts of fur near her eyebrows turned out to be, on closer inspection, four-inch-long eyelashes.



It is a sad day when one envies a dog for their stunning good looks,  but I'm down to about four lashes per eyeball. A decade-old tube of mascara, lonely shut-in that it is,  still rolls around the bathroom drawer.




There are beauticians (sorry, estheticians), licensed and certified to apply eyelash extensions.  In the grand scheme of things, I would prefer to die with nearly bald eyelids than an Andy Rooney brow ridge. If I die with both, go with the closed-casket option, okay?

Don We Now Our Gay Apparel

For the humans, winter in California means we don our long-sleeve t-shirts. (Who is Don, by the way?)  Sometimes we even have to swap out shorts for jeans. For the dogs, however, it's a veritable catwalk of chic coats and must-have sweaters. Stealing a page from Vogue, this year's canine cover-ups feature

faux-fur–lions and tigers and leopards, oh my.

Unfortunately, my beloved Oliver would dog-paddle across the English Channel before allowing anyone to dress him in cute little outfits.
Fortunately, the mom of my hotel guest Harvey wanted to refresh her Chihuahua's wardrobe. She doesn't drive so I took her to Ross and we settled into the pet-accessories aisle. Remember that scene in "Pretty Woman," where Richard Gere takes Julia Roberts to that upscale boutique and the sales clerks scramble to bring one outfit after another for their approval? Harvey got to play Roberts as the hooker, Margaret had Gere's role of obscenely wealthy john and I, I was the scrambler.

Harvey patiently endured the robing and disrobing until we settled on eight new jackets, sweaters and t-shirts. Frankly, Harvey looked more like a pimp than a hooker in those fake-fur coats. All he needed was a lavender bowler hat with an ostrich feather sticking out the side.

Culture Clash

Skimming through The Bark, I found an article that  suggested reading, "The Culture Clash," which I ordered from half.com. It offers yet another view of why dogs behave like they do. To author Jean Donaldson, it all boils down to  B.F. Skinner's theory of operant conditioning–you put a rat in a maize and he'll figure out how to find the cheese in the center. Dogs are just like big, furry rats that way.   They aren't trying to please, anger or embarrass us, they merely respond to positive or negative reinforcement.

Ms. Donaldson is not real big on tolerance and acceptance of alternate training philosophies. In fact, she has a rather major 'tude about anybody else's but her own. The author thinks the whole dominance/pack theory is a bunch of hooey, treats are a must for training and for God's sake, quit treating dogs like Lassie. They really don't know--or care, for that matter-- that Timmy's trapped in the mine.



Jean Donaldson offers some good ideas about how to make our dogs act like we want them to. But then, so do the Monks of New Skete, The Dog Whisperer, and dominatrix/trainer Victoria Stilwell. Ten or 20 years from now these competing theories will probably be as obsolete as teaching your dog not to pee in the house by rubbing its nose in it. It's sort of like child rearing; In the early 20th century, mothers were instructed to not pick up their babies when they cried. By the mid-20th century,  Dr. Spock was instructing to pick up their screaming babies and comfort them. It's easy to come up with different points of view regarding  the right way and the wrong way– neither dogs nor babies can tell us.





The "My way is the only way" thread (more like anchor rope) that runs through "The Culture Clash" sounds a lot like the potholes that slow our journey towards finding Jesus, Allah, nirvana, enlightenment; whatever that Big Purpose is we continue to search for. As a timely bumper sticker reminds us: "God Wants Spiritual Fruits, not Religious Nuts."