Puppy Season

Puppy season is here. They are wriggling, fuzzy, bundles of puppy breath and pure joy. Everyone knows that. But, in true animal rescue advocate fashion, I'm here to give you a list of reasons why you should not get a puppy.

1. Puppies don't interview reliably. Seriously, unless you are an expert temperament tester or have a magic spell that translates genetic information into future personality tendencies, you really just have no idea what kind of dog you're going to get. How compatible will he be with your family and lifestyle? Sure, you're "raising him right" but do you really have any idea what that means? Adult dogs will tell you who they are -- shy, outgoing, energetic, loving, anxious, intelligent, whatever -- the grown-ups put those things out on the table. And physically, there are a lot of variables, too. Adult dogs will say, "Here I am. I shed a lot." That's good to know! Puppies even change color sometimes. Brown dog for 2 months then beige dog for 10 years. How many adult dogs have you seen and said, "Gosh, who would want such an unattractive dog?" Of course, they didn't know! All puppies are cute and sweet and wonderful. But it only lasts about a year. If you're going to live with a dog for the next decade or two, go pick out a dog you like. Or better yet, go pick out a senior dog. They have the same potty training issues as puppies but they don't chew stuff up.

2. There is a surplus. There are simply too many dogs. And unfortunately, most people making puppies these days are doing it for money. Well, maybe not most. I'm not sure. But the people making the most puppies are doing it for money, definitely. If we stop giving them money, maybe they stop making puppies. Maybe we don't have to kill so many "extra" dogs. It's a lot of extra dogs. Visit www.hsus.org and they'll tell you all about it. It's a lot of unnecessary death. And the lives preceeding the death are not so fabulous either. It's a waste and a shame and a tragedy. Don't support people who make puppies for money because, well... it can't be good karma. I'm just saying. And imagine if we started running out of dogs? Then people could breed them because people want them. Imagine what kind of world that would be... y'know, the kind where dogs are precious instead of products. What's up with buying and selling family members, anyway? And since modern dogs really don' t have any kind of job -- they don't guard the house or the flocks or chase bunny rabbits to earn their keep nowadays -- what else can they be other than family members? Think about it.

3. So much work! There's a reason puppies are so cute. It's so we forgive them for being such a hassle! Housebreaking, teething, training, oh my... They have small bladders and short attention spans. They yodel... all night long. They make big messes. Everywhere. Constantly. They have no manners. They sleep when you want to play and play when you want to sleep. Having a puppy is a full-time job. And it lasts for a year. Sometimes longer. Eventually you come to realize that they're past the point where you can use the puppy excuse to downplay their bad behavior and they're sure not as cute as they were back when... and then you realize that "raising him right" didn't actually happen as you planned. You worked hard enough at it, but where did this wild child come from? Why doesn't he like to play fetch? You bought so many toys and he destroys them all. What's going on here? If you had adopted an adult dog you could blame all of that bad behavior on someone else, on some other circumstance. You could take credit only for the good progress. You could pick out the dog who likes to play fetch or who sleeps a lot or who never jumps on people or who is perfectly housebroken or who is so beautiful you can't imagine life without him.

That dog may be at the shelter or the pound right now. It's worth a look.

Pet Profiles: Kirkegrim

In Norse mythology, the Kirkegrim guards churches and cemeteries against evil spirits. Commonly in the form of a black dog or a dark, child-sized man, our Kirkegrim takes the form of a little, wide-eyed black cat. He was a feral kitten, tricked and trapped out of his life in the parking lot and transported into a strange new world of people and other cats and a few dogs. He's lived in our house for about a year now and slowly, ever so slowly, is making himself at home.

He can frequently be found lurking at the top of the basement stairs or in the doorway of the spare bedroom. Both locations allow him quick and easy escape routes to safe places where nobody can get him. Before the base strips were in, he could often be spotted crawling out from under the kitchen cabinets, especially around meal times. He is uncomfortable under scrutiny and will tense to run any time anyone makes eye contact with him. Moving within five feet of him will usually send him scurrying. He will leap and scamper off at any noise in general.

And yet, he always seems to be nearby -- just at the edge of the family activity. When we are in the bedroom and all the dogs and cats and people are settled in to sleep, he's a dark shadow in the hallway, peeking. The other day, while we were watching a movie, he snuck up on the cat tree in the middle of the living room and snuggled up with one of the other cats. My husband noticed him and said, "Is that Grim?." When he noticed us looking at him, he quietly slipped down and away, into another room. When we are in the kitchen, he sits in the doorway at the top of the basement stairs, watching. If you move slowly, sometimes you can pet him then. At breakfast time he is in his usual spot, in the bedroom doorway, waiting for the food to come. While the dogs are distracted with their meal, he quietly, quickly makes his way across the kitchen and hops up to eat with the other cats. This is when he is most vulnerable to scritches and snuggles and, when needed, capture. He has a feral cat's appreciation for a free buffet and his tunnel vision for food makes him easy to lay hands on.

But Grim's true kryptonite is the butt scritch. As suspicious and flighty as he is, Kirkegrim cannot control his elevator butt. Touching him anywhere on his back will generally send his front half downward and his rear end up. A few scratches or strokes and he falls right over, begging for a belly rub. He purrs and squirms with wild abandon as his feral, frightened brain takes a break and his happy-snuggly-kitty side comes roaring to the forefront. Basically, he's a sucker for snuggles. If you can get close enough to touch him and there are no big, noisy, scary distractions, he just melts like butter. It takes a bit of patience and good timing to win those precious moments with him but, boy, are they worth the effort. It's a wonderful feeling, to touch another being, and to watch their anxiety transform into pure joy.

A Bulldog in the Basement

This past Sunday, my husband came home, found me in the living room and said, "Honey, there's a dog in the street. Should we go get him?"

I grabbed a leash and headed out there to see what was going on.

What I found was an SUV stopped in the middle of the street, the couple who owned the SUV standing off the street in someone's driveway, and an American Bulldog begging for a scratch or a scrap. The woman from the SUV told us that he'd just wandered in front of their vehicle and, when they stopped, started sniffing around their tires. They had called the local dog warden already and we let them know that we would take over and let them be on their way.

I put a leash on the dog and my husband went into the house to get him a plateful of dog food. He was not a well-kept animal -- his skeleton was clearly defined, he was not neutered, he had some old scars on his legs as well as other suspicious bald spots, callouses on his hip bones from sitting on hard surfaces, a cloudy infected possibly blind eye, and a tongue that threatened to fall right out of the left side of his face. He smelled like old urine. He ate like a starving hippopotamus. But he was otherwise polite and attentive, good-natured and charming.

We waited out in the cold for a good 20 minutes without any sign of the warden, before we decided to bed him down in a kennel in the basement for the night and decide what to do with him the next day. He was a perfect houseguest, obviously familiar and comfortable with a kennel, quiet, relaxed. Obviously well-socialized at some point, he was simply a really good dog.

The danger in having a really good dog in the house is pretty obvious. At one point I said to him, as he snorted gleefully at me, "It's a good thing you're so ugly, or I'd be in trouble here." Of course, "ugly" is a relative term -- my personal ideal version of canine beauty comes in the shape of a German Shepherd Dog. Compared to that standard, the stocky, overmuscled body, the big round, rock head, the flat faced, snorting, wrinkled, alien-baby face of a bulldog is ugly indeed. For someone who really enjoys taking care of a large number of animals, picking favorite and least favorite breeds is a good way of developing personal boundaries and limitations. No bulldogs! No pugs! No labs! No goldens! No huskies! But it never really matters. The world throws a bulldog in your basement and you can't help but think of how he would fit into the household.

And then discount that option because enough is enough, the inn is full, and this dog is a good dog. And good dogs (especially with alien-baby faces) are easy to place, even with blind eyes and scars and tongues that don't stay inside. I found a nearby vet clinic with an available appointment and off we went for an exam and deworming and the other things a stray needs before they're allowed to fraternize with the rest of the household. I was thinking of options for him -- who do I know that is in the market for a new dog with an alien-baby face? As it turned out, the receptionist at the veterinary hospital was.

"He needs a home? Really?" she said. "My husband would love him!"

And so the deal was done. With a promise of good (and probably discounted) vet care and a home with animal people who think snoring, snorting, and drooling are cute, I handed him over to her. Because of my long history with structured, responsible animal rescue and adoption procedures, I have to say I felt a bit irresponsible handing him over like that. I did not conduct a proper background check. I didn't hold him for 72 hours and run an ad in the paper to give someone the chance to claim him as their lost, beloved pet. I didn't even ask if she intended to have him neutered, let alone ask her to sign a contract promising to give him even a basic level of care.

Basically, I just assumed that this veterinary receptionist, a perfect stranger to me, was agreeing, without us even discussing it, to take over all of the responsibilities that I had not taken care of. It's not like me to make those kinds of assumptions or to be so trusting! But it felt good and right and so easy to say, "He's all yours. Congratulations!" More than that, I felt like I was being let off the hook. I escaped an awful, embarrassing fate -- to tell the world that I, the one who teases, mercilessly, the flat-nose-breed fan club members about their poorly put-together, inelegant, snuffling, snarfling, silly, bossy, bug-eyed, wrinkly "not real dogs," that I had fallen in love with one.