Week 16 – Cedar

Category: Week 16

Though the Guts of a Beggar

December 4, 2021 / Tom McKenna / 0 Comments

HAMLET […] we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table; that’s the end.
CLAUDIUS Alas, alas.
HAMLET A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.
CLAUDIUS What dost thou mean by this?
HAMLET Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar.
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

While it wasn’t a king that made it through the guts of my little beggar, it might have been a relic from someone’s formal dinner.

I have been mulling a post about food, wondering if I’m raising my first food-obsessed Lab, who can inhale her meals faster than I can go to the bathroom unsupervised (a rare treat these days). This isn’t exactly the post I had been thinking about.

On Thursday during a walk, Cedar bolted over to the neighbor’s house and gave me one of her periodic, “NO WAY”s when I tried to recall her. I didn’t have my contacts in, so this was all a bit vague, but I saw her do a now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t with what looked like a dirty sock. By the time I corralled her, I had convinced myself that I had made up her sleight-of-mouth.

Forward to Thursday night wake-up to a whining Cedar… diarrhea in her pen, followed by a long frustrating and unsuccessful attempt to poo, followed by a later vomit wakeup, followed by most of the day Friday with no passing, and a bit of listlessness.

We have a multi-layered vet crisis in Juneau. One layer is that we don’t have enough vets and staff to have night or weekend triage. (Another layer is that we have awful people like this, in a position of power, to refuse service to those whose values don’t align with theirs.) Cedar has a super nice vet, with an absolutely unhelpful phone answerer.

Me: When would this become an emergency?
Seeming-12-year-old: Well, if it gets really bad.
Me: Yeah....okay. 
S-12: Do you want me to Google it?
Me: Ah... no. What can I do if it gets "really bad" over the weekend? 
S-12: You can call Southeast Veterinary Animal Hospital (owned by one of the knuckleheads from the link above).
Me: I thought they weren't taking anyone not a patient. 
S-12: Oh, yeah, you're right. I probably shouldn't tell anyone that, huh?

So I knew I’d be on my own for the weekend and I was stressed. I wasn’t entirely sure I wouldn’t be fishing with Cedar-worms in the near future.

After a long morning of many walks, exercise, lots of fluids, soft watery food, some organic pumpkin, and a sort of panicked call to a vet school grad friend, I decided to go for a ski, feeling a bit self-indulgent but needing a break.

Upon return, I opened the front door and knew we had…um…a change of status.

I present to you one formerly formal dinner napkin that somehow made it through my beggar’s guts. Perfectly bile-dyed, and quite fully scented, it gave ample clues to its course out of Cedar and into her pen.

Tempted as I am to accept my fate along the lines of “dumb Lab,” I will concede, as my vet-school-grad-friend pointed out, that she did not re-eat it.

Good dog?

Debbie

December 2, 2021 / Tom McKenna / 0 Comments

Almost everything is changing fast in Cedar-ville. But there’s one constant: her tattered stuffed pup gift from Katrina, now called Debbie (a perversion of her formal name, Dead Brown Puppy).

Debbie, once pretty much Cedar’s size, is a very forgiving companion. I have to say, whoever designed her was thinking: How about a cute pup with no mouth? Winner.

Well Debbie’s seen and taken a lot over these two months. Once Cedar’s sleeping companion/pillow, she’s now her play parter / crash test dummy. Their relationship doesn’t do much for my faith in Cedar’s empathy, but Debbie…doth not protest too much.

And about those mouths. The monks made them into a troublesome verb in a section of The Art of Raising a Puppy, called “Mouthing”. Among their recommendations, after putting my index finger down her throat, and using some judo moves to restrain her body and muzzle, is to give her a squirt of concentrated lemon juice, first straight in the mouth, then via my hands.

So I begin this day armed to take on the “mouthing” but relieved to know I have some abiding support from dear Debbie, who takes a licking and keeps on…being dead. Good enough.

Stink Eye

December 1, 2021 / Tom McKenna / 0 Comments

“We draw inspiration from the example of the alpha wolf, who regularly maintains pack order through a threatening growl and stare.”
The Monks

Well if the monks can growl like wolves I can use my teacher stink eye.

Cedar and I just had a standoff in the back yard where she decided not to come, from about 20 feet away. I made her sit and stay and had to circle her with a stop sign hand while she spun on her butt watching me until I nabbed her —she fought!—and dragged her in.

Cedar has been both clingy-restless, and a bit obstinate since Katrina left. Maybe she’s grieving a bit. Or maybe she’s just testing me.

The monks recommended lots of eye contact early on and now I’m seeing the point. The old stink eye is supposed to work as part of necessary discipline. (Yup, aversives.) I’ll keep you posted, but when her nose takes over her brain, I’m not sure even the 30-year-veteran-teacher-stink-eye can reach her.

Crazy how a little pup can be so complex. One minute she’s scared of the neighbor’s fake deer, and the next minute she’s willing to risk her entire being for a nose full of crap.

As I typed the above paragraph, Cedar came trotting by with my favorite mask—ruined.

Next post: Mouthing.

Looks like the stink eye needs a little tune-up.

Seems simple enough...

Winter Blunderland

November 29, 2021 / Tom McKenna / 0 Comments

If only I could give and take my own WAIT command. Winter is here, however temporarily. We’ve had snow every day for what seems like a week. Somehow I can’t just leave her when I go skate skiing, my winter passion.

I knew there would be chaos. But that didn’t keep it from being chaos.

First, Cedar alternated biting my skis and poles in rapid enough succession that I couldn’t get my skis on before she wrapped the leash around my legs a couple of times. I laughed, and got us untangled and underway, with her leashed and off to my left. And then it was mad ski tip biting. I used the poles for some gentle and not so gentle “aversives” and we actually got underway. Until… another dog.

Ears off, leash tangled, pups flying in circles, and eventually one or both hit me hard enough from behind that my pole would have impaled an overflying bird. I didn’t laugh so much that time.

Ran into friend Merry who suggested I unleash her. There was hardly anyone on the trail. We had a good two minutes of YES!, unfettered striding by me, happy galloping with only a few attempted ski bites by Cedar. Cut to tiny dog on leash, Cedar’s ears in lockdown mode, and a long five minutes to restrain Cedar against a railroad tie with my poles, while the nice man gave me palliatives like “Well, she’s young” and “She sure is a good looking girl, at least.”

So, my young, good-looking ski companion and I have a lot to learn. Any successful teacher will tell you the secret to their success is learning how to learn from their students. Although I may let my “good teacher” aspirations expire with my teaching certificate, I think I could do well to match Cedar’s growth curve with waiting.

It makes all the sense in the world to wait until she can heel on command, and until she physically matures before we make skiing a regular thing.

Would you look at that snow, though?

Checks the ski trail report…