What Comes First?

There’s an urban chicken-raising craze sweeping the nation. I know this to be true because so many of our neighbors have installed coops and chickens in their backyards, and there’s a “For Dummies” book on raising chickens. Once something has a “For Dummies” book dedicated to it, you know it’s gone mainstream.

When our friends Jason and Chris bought baby chicks back in February, I was happy to meet the girls. Rosie, Lily and Poppy were fluffy and cute, as baby chicks are. When Jason built them a chicken coop—the most elaborate coop you’ve ever seen with multiple doors and windows and a ladder to a loft area with cedar chips and hay for cozy nesting—I marveled at the quality of the construction. “It’s a chicken condo. No, a chicken penthouse!” I declared.

When Jason and Chris sold their house in April and found themselves moving into an apartment, I was happy to provide the chickens with a new home. After all, I had entertained the idea of getting chickens myself. How nice would it be to just step outside, into your own backyard, and grab an egg or two for breakfast? I may call myself a vegetarian, but I do love my eggs. Let’s sing together now:
“I love eggs
From my head down to my legs.”

Blame it on Michael Pollan, but after reading “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” I had high expectations for what an egg from a home-raised chicken would taste like. Michael said the yolk would be a rich, radiant sunny yellow, the likes of which I had never seen. And the taste? Well. It would bring me to my knees. “I’ve been eating eggs all my life but only now have I truly tasted what an egg can be!” I would declare, my fist raised to the heavens.

Visions of fluffy omelets laced with herbs and goat cheese, over-easy fried eggs oozing into hash browns, and delicately poached eggs quivering atop golden toasted English muffins danced in my head. This chicken raising business was going to be dee-licious.

But I failed to take into account a few things.

It took the strength of three men to move the chicken penthouse to our backyard. Once it was placed, the ladies were released and given a moment to stretch their legs and get acquainted with their new surroundings.

Then it was time for Leo to get acquainted with his new neighbors. Jason rounded up the ladies and secured them back in the coop. “Release the hound,” I said. Leo stepped out the door, did his usual all over body shake, making his tags clang and rattle as if to announce, “I’m here now,” and milled around a bit, sniffing. He sniffed his way over to the chicken coop and was momentarily a bit puzzled. Then he peered inside. Then all hell broke loose.

He turned into a stark raving mad dog. Biting and clawing at the screened windows and doors of the chicken penthouse, he barked his most menacing bark. When Lily, Rosie and Poppy rushed to the other side of the coop for protection, Leo followed, delivering his attack from a new angle. We all watched this for about a minute, and then my husband dragged Leo—who protested mightily—into the house by his collar.

Oy. Why didn’t I see this coming? “Being a Chow, Leo is very prey-driven,” I remembered one of the Oregon Humane Society staffers telling me when I adopted him. “He can’t live with cats,” she told me. Nor squirrels, I thought; he loves to chase them when we see them in the park. Nor bugs of any kind; he stalks them and eats them. Having the chicken penthouse in his backyard was like having a box of squealing cats or squirrels in his backyard. This was not going to work. Why had I failed to anticipate this?

My husband assured Jason and Chris that he would work with Leo and desensitize him and that everything would be fine. I didn’t see it that way. I threw a hissy fit and took Leo out for his evening walk.

Trouble was, Leo didn’t want to take a walk. Where he usually drags me around town for a half hour to a full hour, sniffing and peeing on everything in his path, this time I had to drag him away from our house. He peed around the block and then headed for home. Nothing could deter him from getting back to those chickens.

The week passed and Leo failed to become desensitized. Every time I let him out for our walks, he made a beeline to the chicken penthouse and resumed attack mode. I would wrestle him as he made one of his passes around the coop and drag him out of the yard for a meager two-minute walk around the block. No more afternoons spent lounging on the back deck for Leo; he was a shut-in now.

The chickens, meanwhile, had to be released from the penthouse every day for some exercise and grazing. I typically let them out while I was making dinner, keeping an eye out the window every now and then to see what they were up to. At first, they stuck close to the penthouse but with each passing day, they ventured farther afield.

Aside from Leo's reaction, I had failed to take into account a few other things before welcoming the ladies into my world. Blinded as I was with Michael’s promise of an egg beyond perfection, I had failed to remember that age-old riddle: What comes first, the chicken or the egg? In this case, the chicken.

And chickens, it turns out, shit a lot. On everything. They fluttered up on top of our garbage cans and shit on them. They shit on the back deck. They made their way to the front yard and shit on our front steps. They even shit on their own water jar and feed trough.

Chickens also root around like pigs. When I let them out for their exercise and grazing period, they uprooted the primroses my husband had just planted, tossed dirt onto the sidewalk, pecked my prized Bleeding Heart to a shriveled shadow of its former self and ate a Hosta down to the ground.

The chickens had to go.

One more week passed and Jason found a new home for the ladies. He took them away in box, leaving the chicken penthouse behind.

“Don’t let the door hit your little chicken asses on the way out,” I said under my breath.

As Jason’s car pulled away from the curb, I let Leo out to inspect the coop. He spent about an hour investigating the penthouse, sniffing every inch from every angle. I left the main entrance open so he could go inside and convince himself that they were really, really gone. He squeezed himself inside, looking rather comical: a large, black furry beast straining inside a too-small structure. The scale was all wrong, and I had to laugh. He swept his muzzle back and forth along the loft area, vacuuming up the chicken poops left behind among the feathers and cedar chips.

When he had his fill, he lay down inside the penthouse, as though it was his doghouse, and took a little nap.

With the chickens gone, life is back to normal. Leo is eager for his long walks again, and can lounge on the deck all day. A quick blast with the hose has washed away the chicken poops. The primroses are dead but hopefully the Bleeding Heart and the Hosta will recover and bloom again next year.

As for me, I’ll leave the chicken-raising to the “For Dummies” crowd and buy my eggs at the farmer’s market. We’ll see if eggs from grass-fed, pastured hens are all that Michael says they are.

A New Pup

“I suck at being a woman,” I told my husband one day as we drove by the Richard Bloom Tot Park (otherwise known as the Tater Tot Park) near our house. The park was filled with its usual afternoon congregation of toddlers and moms—the Mom Club, I call it. The Mom Club is always there about the same time I take Leo out for a walk, and the moms either ignore me, or give me sidelong glances as Leo drags me down the street.

“You don’t suck at being a woman,” my husband responded.

“Yeah, I do. I’m not cheerful like women are suppose to be, or chit chatty. Instead I’m quiet and sullen most of the time. I hate small talk. And I don’t look feminine like other women do, in their little cropped yoga pants and bouncy ponytails. I look like shit every day. I look like a rural lesbian,” I said, gesturing to myself (hiking boots, knit hit and layers of thermal underwear; the damp Oregon climate doesn’t agree with me).

These were just the externals, though. What was really making me feel like a failure as a woman was my inability to get pregnant. I was 40 years old and unable to conceive. Month after month was a disappointment and a reminder that my female body—uniquely built to create life and give birth—wasn’t functioning properly. This, more than anything, made me feel like a lousy excuse for a woman.

And then, out of nowhere, when I had given up all hope of ever being a mom, I realized I was pregnant. “It can’t be,” I thought. “It won’t last,” I worried. “Something awful is going to happen,” I was convinced.

Instead of being filled with joy and excitement, like I imagine most women are when they discover they’re pregnant, and want to be pregnant, I was filled with worry and dread. But one week rolled into the next and I was still pregnant.

Then the nausea and exhaustion set in. I felt like I was on the verge of vomiting every minute of every day. When I felt hungry (which was every two hours), the nausea would get 10 times worse. So I ate every two hours. I couldn’t even sleep through the night without getting up to eat. Leo and I soon fell into an easy routine: at 3 or 4 a.m., I would get up for a bowl of cereal and Leo would join me in the kitchen for a dog biscuit.

I was constantly exhausted, constantly hungry and nauseous, and an emotional wreck. Everything made me cry. Watching the Canadian figure skater whose mom died a day or two before her Olympic performance made me cry like a baby. (Scott Hamilton and I should have been sharing tissues.) Hearing the song “Tin Man” by the band America in the grocery store (“Oz never did give nothin’ to the Tin Man, that he didn’t, didn’t already have”) also brought me to tears.

I thought of all the women over the years who had told me, “I loved being pregnant! I loved seeing how my body was changing week after week! I loved having this tiny creature alive inside of me!” I thought of the pregnancy “glow” that women are supposed to have and how beautiful pregnant women can be.

“I suck at being pregnant!” I told my husband. I was tired, nauseous, cranky and teary. He didn’t contradict me.

When we had our second ultrasound done, I showed the picture to Leo. “Look Leo,” I said. “I’m gonna have a pup… Or maybe it’s a bear cub; it’s hard to tell from this picture.”

But I'm pretty sure Leo already knew I was pregnant. One day I was standing in front of the full length mirror in our hallway, inspecting my growing belly, scratching it (it’s always itchy), wondering how things were going in there. I felt someone watching me and looked up to find Leo staring at me with the strangest, most intent look in his eyes.

"I know you're gonna be a mom," his look seemed to say. "Now don't suck at it!"

Leo Gets Another 15 Minutes

I wrote an update about Leo for the Oregon Humane Society magazine about a year ago, and finally got around to submitting it a couple of months ago. I enjoy writing about him so much; he inspires me, and makes me laugh.

The article came out nicely (though they made it more about me than I intended), and will make a nice addition to Leo's "portfolio." He already appears in a book ("Tails from Katrina") and I have a fat folder filled with the literature that was posted on his crate at the Humane Society when I adopted him, his grooming reports and his medical records. I guess you could call it his scrapbook. My scrapbook for him.

Yes, I truly am a crazy dog lady.

Archive of Leo’s Nicknames

Big Head Leo (courtesy of a volunteer at the Oregon Humane Society)
Boogie Bear
Leo Bear
Bubba (courtesy of his groomer)
Bear Dog
Bear Bear
Bear Man
Leo Mosquito (courtesy of my husband)
Leo Mosquito Burrito (sung to the tune of “Strawberry Fields Forever”)
Stinky Bear Face Bear Bear
Death Breath
Grouchy Old Man
Fat Head
Stubborn Bear
Musk Bear (courtesy of our friend, Kevin)
Leo Booty
Leo Boo-tay
Sweet Bear
Leo Butt
Leo Boots
Handsome Bear
Silly Bear
Stinker

Time to Trim the Whiskers

It's gotten downright embarrassing, this poor, neglected blog has. It hasn't been updated in a year (a casual reader pointed that out in an e-mail today). One year and one day, to be exact.

I used to have a manager, a stuffy English lady, who did lots of little things to annoy me but had one saying that stuck with me. Anytime something--some piece of marketing collateral--became sorely out of date she would say, in her stuffy English accent, "It's grown whiskas, I'm afraid."

Cha Cha Chow has indeed grown whiskers.

It's not like I didn't know it was out of date. The knowing that it was out of date made it harder to come back. Like a long-ago friend that you've lost contact with, it becomes ever more difficult to take the plunge and make that first contact.

"So," you might say to that friend, "how the hell have you been the last 20 years?"

So, how has the blogosphere been since I last wrote? Things are good here. Leo is still kicking. Sure, he's been up to some shenanigans over the past year. Made some quick trips to the vet. Been tossed out of the groomer's. Surprised me with some grand feats of athleticism and daring. Earned some new nicknames. Mostly though, he's still awesome, and he stinks.

I promise to bring the world up to date on his escapades--some other time.

Muzzle it

Last Tuesday, Leo and I were out for our early morning walk. It was a beautiful morning with mild temperatures and a bit of pink sun peeking out from the clouds. We were in the home stretch: He had pooped and we were heading for home.

Thoroughly relaxed and content, I was contemplating what I would have for breakfast (Cereal or bagel? Coffee or tea?) when Leo lunged for a black plastic bag in the grass. I gave him a quick yank but it was too late: The bag was firmly clenched in his mouth, bits of unidentifiable meat poking out, wriggling maggots falling to the ground.

I watched in horror as he chomped and swallowed, chomped and swallowed, unable to summon the bravery to try and grab the bag from his mouth. Those foreboding teeth, that growl, those writhing maggots….no, no, no. All I could do was yell and scream and demand that he drop the bag, to no avail.

Judging by the maggots, and the stench, I knew the meat was well beyond rotten. But that wasn’t what worried me: The plastic bag, about the size of a doggie bag (ironically enough), had been knotted closed. I worried that the bag might get stuck in his intestine somewhere along the line. This was bad, very bad.

I hoped that maybe if I walked him a bit more, maybe he would just vomit the whole mess up. Maybe.

We walked. And walked. He appeared perfectly unfazed by the garbage that must be roiling in his belly. When we got home, he assumed his usual position in the kitchen, by the counter, waiting for me to serve his breakfast.

What to do? What to do? I fretted. And fretted. Should I feed him? No. Would he just throw up all over the rug eventually? Maybe. Should I take him to the vet? Probably.

But I had so much work to do and it would cost so much money and I’d have to drive him in my pickup truck, which was always a disaster (he insists on either lying in my lap, blocking my vision; or sitting up on the passenger seat and flying into the windshield whenever I make a stop). Urg. What to do?

I finally decided to call the vet, explain the situation and ask for their advice. They suggested I bring him in immediately.

“Please don’t cost $400 like last time,” I silently pleaded. (Last time being when he gobbled down some roadkill and pierced the inside of his mouth with a bone, which then formed a huge infected abscess and had to be drained, under anesthesia. Very pricey procedure, that one.)

So I sent a crazy-dog-lady frantic e-mail to work (“Dog emergency! Back later!”), loaded Leo into the truck (who, though excited to be going for a ride, was quite miffed that I had neglected to feed him his breakfast) and sped off.

After a short wait, the vet came in, heard my sad story, and took Leo into the examination room. He came back a few minutes later and led me into the exam room, explaining that he had given Leo some morphine to calm him (Where’s mine?) and an injection that would make him very nauseous.

It was almost comical back there: Dogs were flopped everywhere. To my left, a Husky was on an exam table, under anesthesia, having its teeth cleaned. To Leo’s immediate left, there was a Great Dane passed out on an exam table, a person in scrubs hunched over it.

And there was Leo on the floor, chained to the Great Dane’s exam table, his head hanging over a bowl with a vet tech encouraging him to “Let it up, Leo.” Visions of myself in high school, having had too much to drink, my head hanging over a toilet bowl, came floating back.

“Ewwww,” I said, and returned to sit quietly in the waiting room.

A few more minutes passed and then, bursting forth from the exam room, a chorus of “Oh! Gross! What is it? Gross!” I came back in just in time to see the vet tech hand the bowl to the vet. He shoved it in my direction. “Look familiar?”

The stench was staggering. In the bowl was a slab of gray mystery meat and a very slimy pile of black plastic.

“Yep, that’s it. Bag and all.”

They ushered Leo to a cage so they could keep an eye on him throughout the day, and I rushed home to work. Later that evening, I came back to pick him up. He was fine, his usual wiggle butt self. The bill was $158, not so bad after all. We drove home without incident. I fed him his dinner and put in a couple more hours of work.

Oh, and I bought a muzzle. Leo isn't gonna like this.

Need Holiday Gift Ideas? Consider Canine Reads

Here’s a little push for a book I read recently called “The Dogs Who Found Me: What I’ve Learned From the Pets Who Were Left Behind” by Ken Foster.

I stumbled on the book while browsing around on the Powell’s Books Web site and had to have it. The author shares his stories of dog adoptions, from New York City to a Mississippi truck stop, and details the way that dogs tend to choose us more than we may choose them.

That wasn’t the case with me and Leo. I fell in love with his photo online and mooned over him for months before I made the trek to the Oregon Humane Society to adopt him. I had decided he would be mine before I even met him, and it never even occurred to me that he might not like me.

As it turned out, our first meeting was rather anticlimactic. He was sleeping, as I detailed in an earlier post, and when we retired to the playroom to get to know each other better, he seemed more interested in playing with my neighbor, who had driven me to the shelter.

It wasn’t until we got home, to my little two-room apartment, that he really acknowledged me. He first made a thorough inspection of the premises, sniffing along the floors and walls. He refused to eat or drink anything, but made a great show of scratching the floor near his dishes, as though to mark the area as his own.

I sat on the couch, watching him intently. When his inspection was complete, he came over to the couch and launched himself into my lap. There he whimpered and lathered my face with kisses, as though to thank me for giving him a place to live.

Months later, I discovered this book online, “Tails From Katrina.” It’s a collection of photos of the cats and dogs that were rescued by the Oregon Humane Society and brought back to the OHS shelter in Portland. I made a beeline to Powell’s and found the book.

There, on page 15, was Leo.

Leo's 15 minutes of fame in that book is one of my greatest treasures. Either of these books would make great holiday gift ideas for the crazy dog lady in your life.

Trick or Treat

We survived another Halloween—this year with a surplus of candy. (Treat!) In past years, there’s been a mad rush at the door and we’ve had to ration candy toward the end of the night. (Trick.) Not so this year. (Treat!) It was fairly quiet and with friends over to visit (our summer houseguest Ripple’s people) who helped man the door, it was more fun: I had time to sit back, sip on wine, and toss down candy. (Treat!) Unfortunately, wine and too much candy made for a nasty stomach situation later on. (Trick.)

I didn’t bother to dress Leo in his Elvis costume, or even put the jack-o-lantern handkerchief on him (the one that the groomer sent him home in a few weeks ago). Why bother? We had to shut Leo and Ripple (who got along just fine this time) in the kitchen because every time a trick-or-treater knocked on the door, both dogs went berserk and barked up a storm.

Could Leo read my facial expression and tell that I was annoyed when he barked at our little candy-seeking visitors? Though a study cited in this article on findingDulcinea might suggest yes, I would probably say no.

He does respond to my emotions—that I really do believe—but I think he picks up on auditory cues. When he hears my husband and me arguing, he’ll come and sit by my side, as though to guard me. To fully understand the significance of this, you have to understand that Leo doesn’t budge from his couch and fuzzy blanket and pillow but for two things: the suggestion of a walk or a morsel to eat. The fact that a verbal argument inspires him to leave the comfort of his fuzzy nest and seek me out is remarkable.

Still, his guarding me is probably more about protecting the source of his walks and meals and fuzzy blanket and pillow--that would be me--and less about being in tune with my emotional needs.

He is a male dog, after all. (!)

Leos in the News

My friend Stan sent me this story over the summer: it’s about a pit bull named Leo who was rescued from Michael Vick’s dog fighting ring and rehabilitated to serve as a therapy dog to cancer patients.

Though I’ve always been a bit intimidated by pit bulls and swore that I would never have one, reading about this Leo made me reexamine my attitudes. Here’s a pit bull that was trained to be a fighter and yet he’s now a silly love bug in a clown collar making friends wherever he goes.

Chows have a bad reputation, too, yet my Leo is a sweetie pie—once you’ve earned his trust and gotten acquainted with his personal quirks, that is. So maybe I can’t write off all pit bulls, either.

And speaking of Michael Vick, my dear mother-in-law sent my Leo a Michael Vick chew toy. Gotta love her sense of humor! Fortunately for this chew toy, Leo isn’t much of a chewer (unless it’s edible, or something that belongs to a baby).

On the other end of the doggie spectrum is this Leo, a tiny terrier mix no bigger than a cat, who stood guard over a litter of kittens during a house fire in Australia. This little guy had to be revived with oxygen and a heart massage after guarding the kittens in thick smoke. He’s now back at home and hailed as a hero. Awwwww….

Little lap dogs usually annoy me—they all seem to suffer from the Napoleon Syndrome and can be so yappy and nippy. But I’d make an exception for this little Leo any day.

A Dog Eat Dog Waste World

Aren’t my titles just awful?

Awhile back, findingDulcinea did a story on the strange and wondrous things that dogs eat, entitled, “Vet Removes 13 Golf Balls from Dog’s Stomach.”

Of course the story caught my attention. Leo doesn’t eat golf balls, nor does he make a habit of eating non-food items (a practice that I learned from this article is called “pica.”)

Well, if you consider road kill and the feces of other animals to be “non-food items” (I do) then he does engage in the practice of pica. But there’s another term—a far uglier word—to more accurately describe what Leo engages in: coprophagy. Coprophagy, as I learned in the findingDulcinea article, describes the practice of a dog eating his own or another dog’s waste. I wonder if this applies to the practice of eating cat waste? Because cat waste is Leo’s all-time favorite.

I vowed to make him wear a muzzle after the fiasco this summer when he punctured the inside of his mouth with a bone from something dead that he ate. But the first muzzle seemed to big; with a little effort, he was able to get stuff in his mouth. So I exchanged that muzzle for a smaller size. The smaller one made it impossible for him to open his mouth at all, and made him wheeze as though it were suffocating him. Harrumpf.

So I haven’t been making him wear the muzzle—which made him look scary in a Hannibal Lecter sort of way. Wait a minute! This could be his Halloween costume this year, though it would be hard to compete with the little guy in this photo, eh?

Last year, Leo was Elvis for Halloween. I bought the costume online and was sorely disappointed when it arrived: the spangled leggings were far too long for his stubby legs, and the sparkled cape was cheaply made from some horrible material. All in all, he looked like a shabby Elvis impersonator.

Any suggestions for Leo's costume this year are heartily welcomed. Send 'em my way!

Losing Whiskers

Oh dear. Cha Cha Chow hasn’t been updated in over a month. As one of my old managers (a stern English woman) used to say in reference to something that was sadly in need of update, Cha Cha Chow “has grown whiskers.”

What can I say? Leo hasn’t been involved in any major calamities recently. The fur that was shaved off the side of his face has started to fill in, giving him some five o’clock shadow. He did have a bout of the itchies at the beginning of September, resulting in a few areas that were shaved clean, including the base of his tail. As a result, he looks rather mangy right now; random bald spots are not his best look.

And as for growing whiskers, Leo’s Salvador Dali whisker is gone! This isn’t the first time it’s made a mysterious disappearance. It seems to fall out after a month or so, only to grow back in. Grow in, fall out, repeat. If I had the time, I could write an entire entry on “The Mystery of the Salvador Dali Whisker.” But I don’t, and I won’t.

Instead, I’ll plug a few findingDulcinea stories that I really liked today. First there was “When Couples Split, Who Gets the Pets?” further proof that our pets have become, for better or worse, our children (in the absence of real children, that is).

Site Spotlight turned me on to DailyLit, a great place to get inspired to do a little reading of the literary kind.

And who knew that Buster Keaton had such beautiful eyes? With all that falling off stage and straddling moving trains and general slapsticking that he did, I never noticed his eyes before. Nice peepers, Buster.

Leo’s Mama/Sister/Daughter?

My friend Elissa recently ran into a dog that looked a lot like Leo. She sent me an email with a photo she took of the dog:

“The pic didn't turn out very good. The doggy was in the shade because she was hot ;)

I wanted to get another one but I think the guy thought I was hitting on him. He kept bringing up his wife. This dog--her name was Bear!--looked just like Leo. She was 12 and even had his little funny stiff walk and his grey hair (and eye boogers!) This guy said they are smooth chows and have much better personalities than other chows. Their bodies are also built differently. Maybe it is Leo's mama? Or his sister? The guy got her from a flea market--he didn't say where--and he wasn't sure where she was originally from.”

First, the detail about the wife cracked me up. Second, it blew me away how much this dog Bear really does look like Leo! The shape of her muzzle, her nose, her purple tongue and her eyes are all similar to Leo’s. She’s even graying in the same areas as Leo (though Leo is admittedly more gray).

I wish the guy knew where Bear originally hailed from. Could it really be a long-lost relative of Leo’s? Maybe. I was told at the Humane Society that Leo is at least nine years old, though probably older (they said it was hard to determine how much wear and tear was the result of age vs. surviving a hurricane). If Bear really is 12 years old, I’m thinking Leo must be at least her age (eeek). Maybe she’s Leo’s sister, or Leo’s daughter. Only genetic testing could tell for sure. I’ll have to settle with curious speculation.

A Face Only a Mother Could Love

Ripple has gone home to her people and life has returned to normal for Leo. Normal, except for that hole in the side of his face.

One morning I was walking both doggies when Leo snatched up something dead lying beneath a giant tree. I didn’t get a chance to see what it was; all I could see were dangling appendages hanging out the sides of his mouth that slightly resembled a plucked chicken.

I yanked on his leash and ordered him to drop it. Nothing doing. He rabidly chewed and swallowed, the sound of crunching, cracking bones turning my stomach. And then suddenly he collapsed on his side.

“My God the chicken corpse is killing him!” I thought as I gasped. Then just as quickly he hopped back up and went about sniffing around for more. The walk was officially over in my mind, and we headed homeward.

When I told my husband about Leo’s snack and subsequent collapse, he laughed. “Maybe he was overcome with pleasure?” he suggested. I wasn’t buying it.

The next morning, my husband and I were getting ready for our four-day road trip to Vancouver, B.C. It was to be our “real” honeymoon trip (as opposed to the practice one we’d had immediately after the wedding). We had a rental car to pick up and hotel reservations already made.

I was about to take the doggies out for a quick last walk before hitting the road when my husband asked, “What’s this on Leo’s face?”

I ran my hand over his muzzle to find a giant lump, the size of a baseball, protruding from the right side. How didn’t I notice this before? And when did it first appear?

We loaded him in the car and drove to the vet. I told the receptionist the chicken corpse story, relating the crunching of the bones and Leo’s sudden collapse. They were busy that day, she said, and would hold him until a doctor had a moment to examine him. That was at 10:00 a.m.

We drove home and fretted over whether to delay the rental car or cancel it altogether. At 1:30 p.m., the vet called. The bump was an abscess, she said, and she’d have to anesthetize Leo to examine him further and see where it originated—inside or outside of his mouth—and then drain it. He would probably be ready for pick around 6:30 p.m.

And so our road trip to Vancouver quickly became a foolish endeavor. Leave the next day to drive all day, spend one day in Vancouver, then drive back? I cancelled the hotel reservation; they charged me a $97 cancellation fee. Meanwhile, my husband had a disappointment meltdown and stormed out of the house.

At 6:30 we arrived to pick him up. Turns out, he had punctured the inside of his mouth with a bone from the mysterious chicken corpse and it had gotten infected and formed the abscess. The vet tech brought him in with a drainage tube sticking out of the side and bottom of his face; she instructed me to flush it twice a day (fat chance of Leo holding still for that, I thought). He was still very groggy from the anesthesia and insisted on collapsing into a deep sleep rather than walk, so my husband carried him out to the car, and then into the house once we arrived at home. (Oh, and they charged me $400; this was turning out to be a very expensive non-vacation experience for me.)

The next morning, I put the dreaded cone on him so he couldn’t scratch the tube out of place. He was up and around as usual, growling at Ripple to back off. By the end of the day, the inside of the cone was already reeking of rotten flesh; I was eager to take him back to the vet to have the drainage tube removed.

And the following day, off came the cone and out came the tube. Leo will be on antibiotics for two weeks or more. And the fur on the right side of his face will take awhile to fill in again.

He’ll also be wearing a muzzle for our walks from now on. No more dining on cat poop, road kill or mysterious chicken corpses for him.

A Houseguest

We have a houseguest this week: she’s a nine-year-old blue heeler/pit bull mix named Ripple. Her people are on the East Coast for a wedding, so Ripple is staying with us for awhile.

Leo and Ripple met two years ago on a camping trip. Their introduction took place with little fanfare—some sniffing in various areas, some circling. Then they pretty much ignored each other for the rest of the trip.

Leo has been to Ripple’s house a couple of times, and Ripple has visited us on several occasions. For the most part, they have continued to ignore each other.

Until this time, that is. Once it became clear to Leo that Ripple wasn’t here for just a visit--that she was actually going to sleep over and eat her meals here and join him on his walks--then things abruptly changed. He became hyper-aware of Ripple’s every move, and of the brand-new, 15-pound bag of dog food that accompanied her.

On her first morning with us, I put Leo out back and busted open Ripple’s bag of dog food. Rather than pounce on the small bowl of food that I placed on the floor (as Leo would have done), Ripple made a cautious approach to the bowl. She sniffed the food and with her nose, ever so daintily rearranged the nuggets in the bowl. Then she nudged the bowl around, here and there, pausing to survey her progress, as though trying for a more aesthetically pleasing placement. My husband’s flip flops were nearby, and she nudged those around as well, finally arranging them in an L shape around the bowl. Then she deserted the whole project and went to the living room.

I stood back and watched in amazement. Leo would have emptied the bowl instantly.

“Ok, Ripple,” I announced as I grabbed her dish and put it on the counter. “We’ll try this again after our walk.”

Walking the two dogs together was a challenge, to say the least. Ripple is quick and limber and focused on getting ahead; Leo pokes along, stopping to sniff and/or pee on every tree/bush/garbage can/object that cries out to be peed on that we pass. The worst is when they decide to go in different directions and I find myself tangled in crisscrossing leashes, or when they both lunge for a nearby cat. But with Ripple at the helm, encouraging progress and efficiency, Leo was inspired to try and keep up, and we covered our usual distance in half the time.


When we returned, it was time to try breakfast with both dogs. I shut Ripple in the living room with her bowl of previously arranged food, and fed Leo at his usual spot in the kitchen. At first, he was distracted—mesmerized, even--by the now opened bag of dog food standing nearby. After inhaling his raw chicken patty, he returned his attention to the dog food bag, gazing lovingly at it.

I went to check on Ripple. Her bowl was empty save for five nuggets. “Good job, Ripple!” I grabbed her bowl and put it on the dining room table. With the door now open, Leo came rushing in and sniffed around the table. He could smell those five remaining nuggets and it was driving him mad. When Ripple came by to see what all the sniffing was about, Leo lunged and snarled at her, telling her to back off.

I scolded him and he returned to his vigil by the dog food bag in the kitchen. At last glance, he was sitting and staring at the bag. I went outside to trim my roses and came back in to find Leo’s head buried deep inside the dog food bag, a muffled sound of inhalation and snorting and crunching taking place inside.

I grabbed him by the collar and dragged him out. Ripple quietly made her way into the kitchen and watched with a forlorn expression as I scolded him.

I put the bag of food on the kitchen table and went about making my breakfast. Leo stood watch nearby and when Ripple came by for some affection, Leo warned her again to back off by pouncing on her with some prehistoric barks and snarls.

Is this what it’s like to have kids who fight constantly?

Hair Limbo

As luck would have it, after I completed The Itchies Trilogy, Leo had a flare-up of hotspots and scratching. I thought that maybe a bath in his special soothing shampoo might offer him some relief, and decided that a haircut would make it easier for me to keep the fur out of the hotspots—and keep them clean. So I made an appointment at the groomers.

I instructed the gal to give him a brush cut, thinking that if the fur wasn’t shaved down to the skin that it would be less irritating, and that Leo wouldn’t feel so defiled afterwards. I was wrong (at least about the Leo feeling defiled part).

When I picked him up from the groomers, he gave me nary a glance as he hustled out the door. Where was the usual tail wagging, head bobbing, “Am I glad to see you!” greeting? Once outside, he took a long, self-satisfied pee on the side of the building and then hopped in the back seat for the ride home.

I offered him a bowl of water; he wasn’t interested. I petted him and told him he looked very handsome (this was a lie; with the fur so close to his body, his large head is accentuated and his ears stick out, making him look like a fruit bat). He ignored me and looked out the window, his nose pressed between the window glass and the door casing, fervently sniffing, sniffing, sniffing.

We rode home like this; me occasionally shooting glances in the rearview mirror and cooing at him, him ignoring me, the wind of the moving car making his protruding nose run all over the glass (my husband wouldn’t be happy about this; I was driving his car and the window looked like a dozen first graders had sneezed on it, then taken up a finger painting project).

When we got home, he made a beeline for the house. It was like he was a teenager who had just gotten a bad haircut and didn’t want any of his buddies to see him (a teenager who would wear a baseball hat until his hair grew out again).

I can feel Leo’s pain. I’m in hair limbo myself. My hair is coming in gray—no, white, actually—and I’m tired of trying to hide it. My hair first started going white when I was in my mid-20s. Everyone in my mom’s side of the family grays early; I have two male cousins just one year older than me who have heads full of shocking gray/white hair.

So what to do? Continue coloring it? Or let it go? At the moment I have about an inch of white on top of my head, followed by an auburn color that fades into an orangey red at the ends. It’s truly awful. I wear a hat whenever I leave the house.

Should I give in and color those roots again? Or should I color it all a lighter shade (blonde?) to blend with the white? Or should I get a buzz cut like Leo and just let it go au natural?

While I languish in hair coloring purgatory, wondering what to do, Leo and I will suffer our bad hair days together.

The Itchies, Part III

So where is all this talk of itchiness and skin allergies and cones leading to? It was meant to provide a bit of history on Leo’s chronic condition and bring you up to date on his current state of itchiness.

Last year, Leo was itchy well into November. I was beginning to worry that maybe his seasonal allergies were going to become a year-round state of affairs. I did tons of research online and kept coming across glowing recommendations for a product called Solid Gold Seameal (read the reviews on Petco if you don’t believe me).

I decided to give it a last-ditch try and started him on the Seameal in December. It took about a month before I saw a difference in his coat but there it was: the bald patches filled in and his coat was shiny and silky overall.

And how is Leo doing this summer, you ask? Drum roll, please: Here we are in August and Leo has only been to the vet once this summer.

This is a huge improvement over the past two summers, and I believe this miracle of skin and coat improvement is due to the Solid Gold Seameal. Forgive me while I perform a little product endorsement here (you can be damn sure I wouldn’t do this if it didn’t work, and no—I’m not getting kickbacks from the company that manufactures it) but I had tried other supplements and shampoos recommended by pet store owners and vets, to no avail.

The Seameal looks and smells like seaweed that has been dried and pulverized into a powder. At first, I had my doubts that Leo would even eat it. Sure, he eats the poop of other dogs and cats without discernment but when it comes to the stuff I put in his bowl, he can be a bit finicky.

Like when I started adding salmon oil tabs to his meals: at first I cut open the tab and squirted the salmon oil on his food. He gave it a sniff and refused to eat. Then I tried mixing the whole tab in with his raw meat; he would eat every last drop, save for the lonely salmon tab at the bottom of the bowl. Somewhere along the line, though, he decided the tabs weren’t so awful; now his bowl is always empty.

So I’ll keep giving him ½ teaspoon of the Seameal with each meal (though I’ve learned to buy it on Amazon; there are better deals on it there) and keep feeding him the expensive raw meat diet (I rotate between lamb, venison and turkey/chicken patties by Nature’s Variety, and keep taking him to the groomer for therapeutic baths. And I’ll keep my fingers crossed that he remains cone-free for the rest of the summer.

And that concludes "The Itchies Trilogy" (I swear).

The Itchies, Part II

Leo’s first summer in Portland was a disaster. After lots of scratching and licking resulted in a visit to the vet, I found out that he had numerous infections. The vet prescribed antibiotics for the infections and steroids for the itching, and so began Leo’s new health regimen.

I squirted cleaner in his ears (though admittedly, most of it just trickled down the side of his furry face, making a mess of his fur, because I was too squeamish to really get down inside his ears). I switched him to a pricey raw meat diet, hoping that real food with no fillers might do the trick. And I dutifully took him to the vet to have his anal sacs regularly expressed. Anal sacs express themselves? This was new to me (and technically, they don’t express themselves—they require someone else to express them).

Eventually the ear infection went away, and so did the staph and anal sac infections. But the overall itching and hot spots proved more stubborn. Several different vets gave me their opinions yet all remained stumped. I spent a fortune on Leo that summer, and still he had little relief from the itching and irritation.

Finally we were referred to a veterinary allergy and dermatology specialist. She remarked that Leo looked very dignified with his gray eyebrows, and took him into a separate exam room. A few moments later they returned.

Her diagnosis? He was most likely allergic to northwest pollens, just like the rest of the population that had moved here from another part of the country (namely, me). “Duh,” I thought. For another $1,000, she could do allergy testing to determine the exact cause of his allergies. I would then be required to give him injections that would, over the course of a year, desensitize him to the allergen(s). And cost lots more money.

I told her I had to think it over, and ushered Leo out the door and into the car where I promptly burst into tears. How could I possibly afford this allergy treatment stuff? And how could I possibly give him regular injections when I had a hard enough time cleaning his ears? Clearly I was a rotten dog owner. Words like “unfit,” “negligent” and “cheap” bounced around in my head as I drove home.

Eventually summer faded into fall and miraculously, Leo’s allergic reactions faded away, too. The itching stopped and his coat became bright and shiny once more—until the following summer, when he exploded with hot spots again. By now I had found a new vet, and this one not only gave him steroids for the itching but also put him in the cone.

Ah, the dreaded cone. Once again, people on the street would point and laugh. At home, we made the requisite jokes (“Son, you’ve got a lampshade on your head.”) Leo wasn’t happy about this new contraption; the cone made it difficult for him to perform everyday tasks. When he tried to hop up onto his couch, the cone would deflect off the couch, sending him back to the floor. Rounding corners took repeated efforts and even smelling flowers was a challenge.
Taking care of Leo in the cone was no treat, either. It was like taking care of a special needs person: after every meal, the inside of his cone was filled with raw meat splatter that I would carefully wipe clean.

Despite my lifelong love of summer and sunshine, I found myself pining for rainy days that would wash away the evil pollens. There had to be a better way!

The Itchies, Part I

I adopted Leo in January 2006. That year, summer arrived early in Portland. It was hot in May—really hot. And with his thick shag of black fur, Leo wasn’t digging it. To make matters worse, I lived in a tiny apartment with only three windows and a ceiling fan to stir the dead air around. On a hot day, we were both miserable in our (oven) den.

So I thought I was doing Leo a favor when I had him shaved. What I didn’t realize was the emotional impact that shaving would have on him. He came home from the groomers looking—how shall I put it?—diminished. Underneath all that gloriously thick fur was the scrawny, wrinkly body of an old man—a scrawny, wrinkly body with a bushy tail and a furry bobble head attached. He looked ridiculous.

I wasn’t the only one who thought so. People on the street would point and laugh when I took him for a walk. He looked ridiculous, and he knew it. Accuse me of anthropomorphizing him, but robbed as he was of his thick, showy fur, he was depressed. I could see it in his eyes and in his body language. In an attempt to cheer him up, I bought him a very macho studded collar. It did little to console him.

And then a cold spell descended on Portland and we were plunged back into rainy winter days. I worried that he would catch cold and scoured the city to find a raincoat. I bought two and returned two; they wouldn’t fit over his giant head. On the chilliest of nights, I swaddled him in an old flannel shirt.

“You look great in flannel!” I told him. “The grunge look really suits you.”
The look in his eyes said, “Bite me.”

As May rolled into June, his fur began to grow back and his spirits lifted. But by July, he was itching like mad. At first I thought it was just the fur growing in, irritating his skin. But the itching persisted. I wondered if he had contracted some strange skin condition from the filthy flood waters in New Orleans that was only now manifesting itself.

Then the licking and chewing began in earnest, mostly in his groin area. I worried that he had the canine equivalent of jock itch. It was disgusting to hear him licking and snorkeling (like a pug, a breed of dog I’m not fond of) until he was literally out of breath and had to come up for air, panting like mad.

My husband (then just a mere boyfriend) said I worried about Leo too much. He said Leo was just doing what dogs do—itch and lick and snorkel.

I ignored him and promptly took Leo to the vet and got a not-so-definitive diagnosis: Leo was allergic to….something. Something in his food? An environmental irritant? My friend Heather was allergic to grass of all things. Was Leo allergic to grass? Whatever it was, it had resulted in an ear infection, an anal sac infection, hot spots (areas where he had chewed away the fur to reveal a bald and bloody spot on his skin) and a staph infection. My poor Leo was a mess!

Love & Marriage

Why is June considered the classic wedding month? Though I got married in June, I’m hardly what comes to mind as a fresh-faced (read: young) “June Bride.” As a first-time bride at the age of 38, I was more of a Geriatric Bride. Maybe I should have gotten married in October (a month that suggests decay) or December (a month that suggests age, as in “May/December romance”).

Be that as it may, wedding season is upon us. If you needed further proof of that, just take a look at this story that recently ran on findingDulcinea: “More Dog Owners Performing ‘Holy Muttrimony’”

Wow. Dogs are getting married but homosexual human couples cannot. I wonder if gay canine couples are allowed to get married? I’m sure the whole canine marriage movement was probably started by a dog clothing/accessories company trying to increase sales. So many things in our soulless, capitalist culture seem to be, at the core, all about the act of making money. (Even a gay friend, when talking about gay marriage, recognized the economic boost that would occur as a result of legalizing gay marriage. “Just think of all those gay couples registering at Crate+Barrel,” he said.)

Though the Wedding Industrial Complex may be unstoppable, I don’t see marriage in Leo’s future. Sure, I wanted him to be a part of our wedding ceremony as our ring bearer. I pictured him wearing a snappy bowtie with the rings nestled under a little hat on top of his head, like those that bellhops wear in old movies. But there was no way I would stress him out with a flight to the East Coast, so he stayed home with our roommate.

Then I tried to incorporate him into my vows: when I talked about the reasons I loved my husband-to-be, I said, “And I love you because you love my dog, Leo.” After the rehearsal, my future husband said, with arched eyebrow, “Do you really have to mention Leo in our wedding?” So I took that line out. Begrudgingly.

Alas, Leo was not part of our wedding. And I’m pretty sure he’s a confirmed bachelor. Until he was rescued and brought to Portland, he was “fully intact.” We like to joke that he has puppy offspring all over the South—that he was a ramblin’ man who spread his seed far and wide.

When “Dark Water Rising” (a documentary on the animal rescues of Hurricane Katrina) was released, I had to see it, if only to see if Leo made a cameo appearance. He didn’t, thankfully—given the awful conditions those poor animals were found in.

One animal rescuer in the film commented on the large number of pit bulls that were rescued, and the number of dogs showing evidence of dog fighting, and the alarming number of dogs that weren’t spayed or neutered. “I’ve never seen so many balls!” she declared.

Yep, Leo was one of those dogs. But now he has no balls, and no desire to fraternize with other dogs, and is stubborn and headstrong with little in the way of communication skills—not exactly the makings of a Good Husband.

Sorry, Leo. You’ll never know the joys of registering at Crate+Barrel.

Leo Flies the Coop

Leo escaped from our backyard a couple of weeks ago. It wasn’t a preconceived escape plan, like that depicted in “Escape from Alcatraz” (a movie I loved when I saw it at the age of eleven, though my fiancé asserts that “Papillon” is far superior). No, Leo didn’t have a file buried in his fur, or a shank hidden under his collar. It was all rather sudden and reactive on his part, and downright startling on mine.

Our backyard is mostly fenced except for the entry leading to the deck. In order to keep Leo confined and out of trouble, I’ve been using one of our large planter boxes as a barricade there. It’s easily two feet high and I assured myself that there was no way he could jump over it. After all, hip dysplasia and arthritis in his spine have rendered his back legs pretty much useless. And, I reasoned, he has a hard enough time hoisting himself up on his couch.

So I often leave him out back unattended. He likes to stare down the neighbor’s cat as she basks in the sun on the other side of the fence, or nibble on my fiance’s favorite plants or just lounge on the welcome mat in the shade.

On this particular night, I had just gotten out of the shower and threw on my bathrobe and flip flops. My face was a neon red from some new facial astringent that apparently was burning off my epidermis. It was almost 9 p.m. but still light out, and I decided it was time to bring in Leo.

Leaning out the back door, I called for him to come in. He ignored me but he always ignores me (unless there’s the scent of food emanating from my hand). He was staring intently at something, every muscle flexed and on edge, ready to fire. I turned my head to see what he was seeing and caught a flash of movement. Then I turned back to Leo, just in time to see him leap over the planter in a single bound and tear across the side yard and the street in mad pursuit of….something.

I wouldn’t fare well in combat. In crisis situations, I tend to freak out a little bit. This was a crisis situation. First I screamed to the fiancé, who couldn’t hear me. Then I flung open the gate and began my own mad pursuit of Leo, who by now was tearing across the neighbor’s lawn.

Flip flops a flippin’ and bathrobe a flappin’, I ran across the street, not even thinking to look both ways, my eyes trained on Leo (a ball of black fur gathering speed and momentum), my stomach a rotten pit of fear and remorse. There was another street in his path, a busier street with fast-moving traffic. I was terrified I would hear the screech of tires, terrified I would hear his yelp of pain, sick in my guts at the imagined sight of him lying in the street.

But there he was. Running circles around a big old tree in the neighbor’s yard, his eyes fixed on something way up high in the branches. As he veered my way, I dug in my flip flops (how pitifully weak one feels in flip flops) and made a grab for the thick fur on his back, prepared to wrestle him to the ground.

Adrenaline must have fortified me because with a little work, we both came to stop, my hand buried deep in his fur. I thought he might snap at me, or try to pull free. But he only gave me the usual indignant whining I get when we’re walking and I drag him away from something he desperately wants.

My limbs were still trembling from fear as I took hold of his collar and led him home. He trotted along, occasionally shooting glances over his shoulder back to the tree.

We came inside and found the fiancé on the couch, where I’d left him. He’d missed all the excitement. Breathless and still trembling, I told him what had happened, how I’d screamed to him, how scared I was that Leo would be hit by a car, how I’d grabbed hold of his fur. It all sounded so melodramatic, so silly, so commonplace.

The next morning, I fortified the barricade. A three foot high piece of plywood on top of the planter box should do the trick. Leo will need a file or a shank to escape now.