Teen Agers

There is nothing I like better at sunset than running up and down the street in my stocking feet (it's so easy for me to run, you know!) chasing the damn dog.

I was sitting in the house, peacefully watching Jeopardy when the phone rang. It was Walt, who had just left the house about 3 minutes before. Rather than opening the front door to scream at me (as he did in the last video I posted), he had pulled his phone out to call and tell me that Spencer was loose.

The one good thing about Spencer, as he becomes a teenager, is that if nothing else, he will come when I call. Does he still bark and bark and bark and bark at the back fence? Yes, but if I call him he comes running in the house.

Has he gotten out before? Yes, but when I call him and invite him to run with me, he does, following me into the house for a treat.

Tonight he discovered the joy of freedom, and he wasn't about to join me in a romp or come when I called, not even for a promised treat. No, he preferred to run back and forth across the street in front of oncoming cars.

I know better than to try to catch a happy dog who is enjoying his freedom. Heck, our first dog, Ho Chi Mutt, made it his life's work to get out of the house and he knew how to stay just far enough away from me that he was tantalizingly close, but too far for me to touch. He was like a carnival midway game that looks like it should be easy to win, but in truth is almost impossible.

For a short period of time it looked like we might have him cornered, me and a woman across the street, but he got away from both of us. I finally sat down on her lawn and hoped he'd come to me. He did. He thought that was just the greatest thing to race at me full speed and leap over me.

I finally was able to grab him. Then, of course, I had to get UP off of the lawn, holding a puppy who wanted to play some more. I had to ask my neighbor to help give me a hand so I could get to my feet and I kept a strong hand on Spencer's collar as I took him home again, all the while telling him what a GOOD dog he was for coming to me and saying as sweetly as I possibly could all the terrible things I was going to do to him when we got home again.

Spencer, aka "the really good dog" the one who is going to "make somebody a wonderful pet" has become a teenager. If he were human, he'd have a couple of tattoos, several piercings and low-rider jeans.

Other than a couple of Jack Russell terriers we had for a couple of weeks, Spencer is the only dog who insists on standing on the kitchen table, searching for good things to eat. Tonight he polished off two little bowls of mayonnaise left over from the asparagus we had for dinner. It doesn't help to push the chairs up to the table, which foils most other would-be table snitches. He's so skinny that he can find ways around blockades.

He is teething on the big straw basket that I use to store large items in the family room. It was my one "decorating" accessory that I bought several years ago. Several puppies have teethed on it, but Spencer is more determined. Other puppies have been foiled when I cover the basket with a towel. Spencer just dives under it and continues to chew.

He is constantly challenging Sheila for top dog position. She doesn't usually mind foster dogs, especially ones who have been here a long time, but Spencer's on-again, off-again subtle challenges cause lots of loud wrestling around here. I don't think anybody's really serious, but they all respond to Spencer's mood.

He's still basically "a really good dog," but I sure hate the canine teen months. I remember when our beloved dog Toby was known as "the dog that ate Villanova Drive" (including a chair!). We go through it with all of them who are here at the right time--and stay long enough to feel that this is "home."

But I'm ready for Spencer to be someone else's problem!

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Tomorrow is Cousins Day again, so the next entry will be late. It's an overabundance of riches. We are having a crab feed for dinner tomorrow night. I can't wait!

I just hope that Walt doesn't have problems with Spencer while I'm gone.

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Be sure to check this video of my friend Jim Brochu's exciting day at NASDAQ. It is so cool!

Food Motivated

Polly and Spencer go off to training classes each week. A wonderfully giving woman named Cayce Wallace conducts these classes and young SPCA volunteers pick up the dogs (and up to a dozen other dogs who are being fostered around town) and take them in for class. The idea, of course, is that a dog who has some basic training is easier to adopt out than one who does not.

After each week's class, Ashley gets a report from the young trainers, with a copy to the foster parent.

A couple of weeks ago Spencer's "report card" included the following:

Cayce suggests that the foster should mess around with his paws, and mouth so he gets used to being handled since he has the potential to be slightly aggressive and nippy (so Bev if you could do that that would be great). Otherwise he's a sweet and very food motivated dog.

Food motivated, indeed! It would be funny if it weren't escalating.

I'm not sure what it takes for Lizzie to decide that it's time to Train the Puppy, but Spencer has made the grade and Lizzie has taken him under her wing. This means training him to discover that dishes loaded in the dishwasher sometimes come with things that taste good on them.

Spencer has taken this knowledge one step further. He now claims the dishwasher as his and his alone. He's so intent on getting as much out of the dishwasher as he can--all by himself--that he will stand by the dishwasher, waiting for me to open it, growling loudly, even if there are no other dogs around.

(This actually was funny one day last week when I had some leftovers on my dinner plate and was sneaking them to the dogs gathered around my chair [yeah, yeah, I know I'm not supposed to do it]. I had three dogs watching me intently waiting for a handout, while Spencer was in the kitchen growling frantically and waiting for me to open the dishwasher!)

When I have toast for breakfast, I usually save bits of the crust and give each dog a piece of crust [yeah, yeah, I know I'm not supposed to do it]. Polly and Spencer are right in there and have learned the food hierarchy--Sheila first, then Lizzie, then Spencer, then Polly. They are pretty good about waiting their turn. Today, I ate my toast at my desk, not at the table, and Sheila didn't realize it. When it was time to hand out the crust, I looked for her and she wasn't there, so I divided the crusts among the three dogs, not the four. Suddenly, there was Sheila, and me with no crust to give her. ("What? You forgot ME???") But the plate it had been on had some crumbs, so I held Spencer back and let Sheila lick the plate. When she finished, Spencer attacked her. Teeth bared and everything. How DARE she take a crumb away from him!

A few nights ago we had lamb chops. It's the only kind of dog bone we give the dogs, and we don't give it to foster dogs. Lizzie and Sheila eat the greasy bones outside. Since the little dogs were there, we gave them teeny pieces of lamb meat so they wouldn't feel left out. But when Walt went to give the bones to Lizzie and Sheila, you'd have thought he was the devil incarnate, the way Spencer snarled and snapped and leaped at the back door. Those other dogs were getting something he wasn't.

I think I wrote recently about how I had finally solved the problem of dinnertime and that by getting the dogs trained to eat in one spot, they were actually doing it. This was done with the help of a tiny bit of canned dog food added to their food for several weeks, but now I don't even have to use the canned food. I just use the dry and they all eat just fine.

To keep the other dogs from scaring her and stealing her food, I feed Polly in the cage. She does this cute little whirling dervish dance all the way from the kitchen to the cage, hopping inside and then poking her head out to see if I'm coming with her dish. Militantly adorable. I used to sit and wait for her to finish and then let her out, but she discovered one day that I hadn't actually locked the cage and she could push it open by herself. This has worked just fine for a long time, but suddenly Spencer discovered that he can nose the door to the cage open and get in to take Polly's food from her.

Yesterday I started locking the cage so he couldn't get in and Polly could eat in peace. At first Spencer was frustrated.

But then he discovered that he could put his paw in Polly's bowl and either flip or scoop some of her food out onto the floor.

At least Polly was able to eat all she wanted. But as she was finished and waiting for me to let her out again, the other dogs wandered by and Spencer attacked both of them because nobody was going to get in that cage and check for leftovers but Spencer!

I'm glad that being "food motivated" makes him easier to work with, but it sure is starting to make him difficult to live with!

Crazy World

Many thoughts have been swirling around in my head today as I have watched the news and read news reports on the internet.

While the situation in Haiti is unimaginable and horrific, there is part of me which is almost enjoying the reports, if not because of the catastrophic event or the monumental human tragedy which necessitated it, but because of the emphasis on a worldwide effort to help people in one of the poorest countries in the world. Everyone suddenly cares about the people of Haiti and everyone is flying in to help out.

The text messages to the cell phone number 90999 with the message "Haiti," each of which donated $10 to help, raised over $5 million dollars in a day alone. That's more than five hundred thousand people who each contributed $10 in one day to help the people of Haiti, and who knows how much has been donated by the dozens of help groups, religious and secular, that have said they are going to Haiti to bring relief.

These are people (myself included) who haven't done a heck of a lot to help the people of Haiti before yesterday. The United States, which is mobilizing its crisis teams and leading the relief effort would turn back a boatload of desperate refugees--men, women and children--who had braved the open ocean ocean in flimsy boats in order to achieve some sort of a better life in this country, because they were illegal aliens.

It's a crazy world.

But I can't help but think, over and over again, if countries of the world can work together so effectively to help people who are suffering the effects of a catastrophic attack of nature in lands far from their shores, why can't we mobilize to improve the plight of people everywhere instead of fighting each other?

As I write this, I am reminded of the World War II story of the hostilities which ceased on Christmas Eve while German and American soldiers slowly came together to share food, sing songs, and celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace, then returned to their foxholes to shoot at each other the next day.

As I said, it's a crazy world.

This morning I read a horrific story of a dog who was abducted and then dragged to death in the snow behind a pickup truck, by a man who had threatened to kill the dog. The man was confused about why in the world he would be arrested. A petition was being circulated expressing our ire at the cruelty toward this poor animal. I signed, of course. But as I signed, it saddened me to know that some people, on most days, are more prone to leap to the defense of helpless animals than helpless people.

But not when natural disasters occurs. Natural disasters seem to bring out the best in most of us. Maybe natural disasters are God's way of reminding us of our responsibility to care for those less well off than we are. Maybe if we remembered that every day, not just in the wake of a disaster, He'd stop sending earthquakes and fires and floods.

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Spencer has turned out to be the best foster dog addition we've had. Not that he's the best dog in the world (though if I get to know him better, he might well be), but because he has caused a difference of night and day with Polly. Polly, who has been afraid of her shadow ever since Sheila scared her last week, the day before she had to go to the vet to be spayed, has suddenly become a playful little dog again. She looks happy. They don't play together a lot, though they do sometimes chase each other, but they both sleep in my lap and it seems that just having Spencer here has made the world OK for Polly again.

The two of them are so funny. They allow me to work at my desk for just so long and then one or the other of them starts whimpering. They want me to sit in my chair and let them cuddle. Polly settles in on one side, Spencer on the other, they east lay their heads across my chest and they lick each other. Very cute

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NOTE: I am going to Ventura tomorrow to be there for my friend Lynn's 60th birthday party on Saturday. Walt is staying home and dog-sitting. I will be back Sunday night (hopefully in time for the Golden Globes broadcast at 5:30 p.m.!) Anyway, I don't know when entries for the next 3 days will be published. Just a FYI.

...and In the News

I woke up this morning to news of the 7.0 quake in Haiti. My heart dropped. I had only just received information on my sponsored child, Briana and I feared for her life. I spent the next half hour looking for any information I could get anywhere and finally found her center at Cape Hatien, which is about as far from the epicenter as you can get, so I'm sure she is safe, if shaken (a news reporter who was in Cape Hatien described the sensation of the shock, even as far away are they are, but says that now it's "business as usual" in that city). Still this is a disaster of monumental proportions in a country which can ill afford it.

Fortunately, many organizations have immediately stepped up to help. Here are some ways to donate:

One way to help Haiti Earthquake Relief efforts is Yele, an organization set up by musician and native Haitian Wyclef Jean. Unfortunately, Yele is being hammered right now by those wanting to give, and the site is extremely slow. Once you get through, you can give to Haiti Earthquake Relief here.

Doctors Without Borders is a way to give Haiti Earthquake Relief people may forget. The organization has been on-site in Haiti for years. They themselves need help in this emergency, as well, as it has been reported that their facilities have been badly damaged by the quake.

Operation Blessing International has Haiti Earthquake disaster relief teams on the way. They are accepting donations as well.

Catholic Relief Services is another way to give to Haiti Earthquake Relief. Don't forget the plea by Pope Benedict XVI to give generously to Haiti.

Save the Children has set up a "Support the Haiti Earthquake Children in Emergency Fund." It is accepting Haiti Earthquake Relief funds, and has a printable form if for some reason you don't want to donate via their website.

Compassion's Disaster relief page is here and you can make a one-time donation without committing to anything further.

Someone from The Lamplighters highly recommends Missionary Flights and assures everyone that money will be used for disaster relief and that flights to Haiti are beginning from Florida today.

UNICEF is another location you can go to for Haiti Earthquake Relief donations. UNICEF says the following on its donation page: "Children are always the most vulnerable population in any natural disaster, and UNICEF is there for them."

Of course, the American Red Cross is accepting donations, though it's listed last because, for Americans, it's probably the first place they think of. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is also available for Haiti Earthquake Relief.

Quite possibly the easiest way to give to Haiti Earthquake Relief involves that ubiquitous device, the cell phone. You can text "Haiti" to 90999 to donate $10 to the American Red Cross. Or, if you text Yele to 501 501 to donate $5 to Yele.

Whatever your preferred organization, the important thing is that Haiti is going to need an incredible amount of help. Give whatever you can, even if it's only $5. Give up a coffee at Starbucks to help save a life.

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Since not everyone is connected to web sites which are discussing the ramifications of California's Prop 8, there is a case before the California Supreme Court right now challenging the legality of the proposition on behalf of two legally married same sex couples.

Amazingly, former Bush Solicitor General, Ted Olson, is one of the attorneys arguing the case for the gay couples. His statement about why a staunch conservative would take up the cause of gay marriage is eloquent, moving and brilliant. Please read it here.

In part, he says, My involvement in this case has generated a certain degree of consternation among conservatives. How could a politically active, lifelong Republican, a veteran of the Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush administrations, challenge the "traditional" definition of marriage and press for an "activist" interpretation of the Constitution to create another "new" constitutional right?...

...same-sex unions promote the values conservatives prize. Marriage is one of the basic building blocks of our neighborhoods and our nation. At its best, it is a stable bond between two individuals who work to create a loving household and a social and economic partnership. We encourage couples to marry because the commitments they make to one another provide benefits not only to themselves but also to their families and communities. Marriage requires thinking beyond one's own needs. It transforms two individuals into a union based on shared aspirations, and in doing so establishes a formal investment in the well-being of society. The fact that individuals who happen to be gay want to share in this vital social institution is evidence that conservative ideals enjoy widespread acceptance. Conservatives should celebrate this, rather than lament it.

There is much, much more and it deserves a read especially by those who oppose gay marriage.

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And then there is the Tonight Show dust-up. Not that anybody cares about my opinion, but it's time for Leno to go home and take care of his cars. While I occasionally watch his Headlines segment, I long ago lost my enjoyment of him. His humor is often at the expense of others and I hate humor like that. I thought it was a terrible disservice to Conan O'Brien (whom I don't watch either...I've switched the Letterman) to put Leno on at 10 p.m. Moving him back to his old slot as a "Tonight Show Lite" sort of program is sour grapes on the part of Leno and he should just go off and do his personal appearances and leave NBC to his successor. Johnny Carson left with class. Leno should do the same, not leave a bitter taste in so many people's mouths by fighting to take back what he gave up 7 months ago.

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And finally, a personal note. We have new foster dog.

He sheds.

(someone pointed out I've gone from hairless to overabundance of hair!)