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.

Scary Movie Time

There’s nothing I like better than to turn off the lights and curl up on the couch with snacks at hand to watch a movie. Halloween is no exception, only the movies have to be scary.

I recently wrote a feature on findingDulcinea recommending “Five Scary Movies for Halloween.” Writing about the movies made me think about them again and, in the case of “The Haunting,” inspired me to rent the movie for the first time.

Be assured: I think all of the movies in the article are scary. But by far the scariest movie on the list has to be “The Shining.”

I first saw “The Shining” when I was in college. My school, Bard College, had a Friday and a Sunday night tradition of showing films in what we called the old gym. It was an old gymnasium—the school’s original, I’m sure—with a stage and a screen and ratty old couches and easy chairs strewn about.

Bard was pretty lawless then, and we were allowed to bring in our own food and booze and smoke to our heart’s (lung’s?) content. I arrived to see “The Shining” feeling rather tipsy and armed with a paper grocery bag full of popcorn. How many batches did I pop up in my dorm room? A LOT.

Being young and foolish and wanting to seem mature and sophisticated, my drink of choice back then was gin and tonic. I had mixed myself a generous portion and then transferred the supersized cocktail into the half liter bottle that the tonic came in, thinking it would not only last the duration of the movie, but make for easy slugging straight from the bottle.

I was right.

Alas, much of the movie was a blur. But I do remember laughing out loud, trying to focus my blurred vision, and stumbling out of the movie drunkenly declaring, “That wasn’t scary!” Seems booze and scary movies don’t mix.

Years later, I decided to give “The Shining” another chance. I rented it and watched it at home—alone. It scared the bejeezus out of me! I was a puddle quivering under a blanket on the couch. I had to pause the movie several times in order to get a grip on myself.

Just writing about the movie for the findingDulcinea article creeped me right out. Sitting at my computer in my office, all alone in the house, remembering scenes from the movie…it made me uneasy.

So I had to rent the movie yet again. It arrived from Netflix today. I can’t wait to watch it tonight, with my husband—without gin and tonic.

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?