A young dog’s fancy

The long covid winter is over, and with spring comes the promise of people, places and activities long banned and forgotten! Maybe, for me, it’s also time for blogging again!

Louis, the puppy we so rashly acquired around Christmas, proved such an inescapable drain on my time, brain- and blog-power that I couldn’t get it together enough to write. Our grandchildren are now adults, mostly, and I had completely forgotten the exhausting and sometimes heart-wrenching 24-hour attention one needed to keep babies (of any species) from inadvertently harming themselves or others.

But now, finally, two things have happened to change that: (1) Kathleen, Louis and I have all gotten our species-appropriate vaccinations, so at last we can leave the house and interact with the outside world, and (2) Louis is starting to grow up.

The relationship of dog-years to people-years has been extensively covered in this Almanack [here], but those discussions were all about physiological years. We haven’t discussed psychological dog years.

Louis is six months old, which we at the Almanack are told makes him the psychological equivalent of a “rotten teenager”. Our job has now morphed into watching him 24 hours a day to keep him from intentionally harming himself or others. Just as exhausting, but not as heart-wrenching because he’s a rotten teenager so we don’t care as much.

And Louis is a boy rotten teenager, which means he’s only concerned with two things: eating, and you know.

We’ve lost, or nearly lost, to his bottomless omniverous appetite: several dog beds, human chairs, stuffed toys, hard toys, all our throw rugs, a couple of remotes and my cell phone.

He’s also made “special friends” with all the legs in the house (chair, table, and human) as well as his stuffed animals and dog bed.

We talked to the vet about his manic incessant humping, but she allowed that this isn’t a medical issue—it’s a “lifestyle choice”. Then she gave us more bad news. We had been holding on to our sanity (barely) with the knowledge that when Louis reached six months, it would be time to get him fixed. But the vet said she’d just been to a vet seminar on the topic, and the new current wisdom is that it’s better to wait until he’s ten months, to give his bones time to grow right.

“How much does Louis really need bones?” we pleaded, but she would not be moved. Then she twisted the knife further with the observation that his humping is a learned behavior, which he would probably continue even after he’d been de-oystered. In fact the longer he does it before the cut, she said, the harder and harder the habit will be to break. (HA HA I said “harder”.) (I’m so tired.)

Louis’s favorite paramour is a big, boneless, shag-covered dog bed that makes him feel just right. I should have known better when I bought the thing—in hindsight, it’s so obvious that the product title, “Cozy Calming Bed” is just a thinly-disguised euphemism, like the “happy ending” offered at a certain kind of massage.

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New Dog Products

“COZY” “CALMING” BED

Pamper your pet with our self-warming and “soothing” bed that is finished with a luxurious faux “shag” fur! Paired with deep crevices that allow your pet to “burrow”, your fury kids will have full, restful “sleep” for improved “behavior” and better “health”.

3D PRINTED STEAK

The world’s first slaughter-free ribeye steak has been produced using 3D bioprinting and real cells from a cow. Israeli company Aleph Farms has teamed up with the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology to cultivate a lab-grown ribeye intended to have the qualities, textures and taste of a real steak without killing an animal. “It incorporates muscle and fat similar to its slaughtered counterpart and boasts the same organoleptic attributes of a delicious tender, juicy ribeye steak you’d buy from the butcher,” Aleph Farms said in a statement.

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Dog Walk Botany
with Professor T. Quarantino, BsD.

POPCORN BUSH. On a walk with Louis I came across what I think must be known as a movie popcorn bush, because that is what its smallish yellow-white blossoms most resemble. God, how I miss movie popcorn! We tried to make our own with some extra fine salt I bought on a quarantine ordering spree and that yellow powder in the Kraft Mac ‘n’ Cheese Box. It was pretty good, but it was more like convenience store popcorn than movie popcorn. (I also haven’t had convenience store popcorn during the Time of Covid, but I don’t miss it as much.)

MAY APPLE. Thanks to eminent biologist and faithful reader Leon Cammen for identifying last week’s mystery plant, a picturesque ubiquitous ground cover boasting up to 9 radially-symmetrical leaves, as the May Apple. Dr Cammen points out that 4-leaf May Apple DNA possess about 40% as much luck as 4-leaf clover, and since a May Apple is much larger than a clover, finding a single 4-leaf May Apple about as lucky as scoring a small handful of 4-leaf clovers! I have yet to see a 4-leaf May Apple on our dog-walks, but my search continues.

GRASS CAKES. If your walk takes you by a newly mowed lawn, you may be lucky enough to see some of these little patties that were ejected by the mower, made up of thoroughly chopped and matted together grass and leaves mixed with a healthy portion of rich loamy soil, and a bit of lawn mower oil to hold it all together. Dogs love these tasty treats.

Grass cakes also enjoyed a period of human vogue when I was young back in the age of Aquarius, providing the basis for the original veggie burgers in the seventies. The ingredient humus is often mistranscribed in modern recipe books as hummus.

Happy Spring all! Louis has been repeatedly been rescuing Kathleen and me from the twin evils of sloth, boredom, and sleep, and with our (and others’) new immune powers we are looking forward to emerging from our covid hibernation and maybe reconnecting with the outside world again. No more cowering-in-place for us, until the next catastrophe. See you then!

Thanks,
Dorn
2-25 April 2021