Pets

Her Holy Highness The Queen of the Universe has been more than usually imperious of late. She’s developed a limp, and because she desires not to walk around the Castle, she barks at the Slave to come to wherever she happens to be. Usually the command is to pick up a ball and toss it (gently) for her delectation. Sometimes, however, the desired behavior is unclear.

The Slave, a.k.a. the Human, a.k.a. the Queen of Sheba, undoubtedly communicated the wrong message to Her Holy Highness today, elevating her beyond the level of mere Queen of the Universe to Empress of All Time, Eternity, and Hyperspace.

Yesterday the Slave slow-cooked a mound of pork for Her Highness’s delectation. It was too hot to food-process into manageable choppings, and so it was spread out upon a dinner plate, covered, and set inside the fridge for future reference. This evening, having presented the last of the chicken to the Queen of the Universe in the morning, the Slave ran the chilled, exceptionally greasy meat (dogs Queens like grease. A lot!) through the food processor. This left a special treat: a lovely plate smeared in grease and meat leavings, something Her Highness regards as quite the delicacy.

So the Slave piled up Her Highness’s dinner on said plate, so as to present both the Royal Dinner and the Royal Delicacy in one fell swoop. A rather silly exchange ensued:

Slave: “Here’s your dinner, Cassie…”

Majesty: [wag!]

Slave: “You good dog, you!”

Majesty, internal monologue: “Now what brought that on? Must have been the imperious barking at the miserable, lazy creature. Interesting. It likes to be barked at. After this, lots more barking!”

{sigh}

The Slave has been eating like the Queen of Sheba, and so it deludes itself that it is the Q of S.

I picked up a pound of spectacular wild-caught salmon at Sprouts yesterday — four meals’ worth! — and this evening decided to grill a piece deliciously over the backyard BBQ. Dinner was simple: the magnificent salmon with a lush salad of crisp greens, crunchy carrot, lovely blueberries, zingy scallions, buttery avocado, and tasty walnuts. And it was marvelously luxurious in its simplicity.

Diet? What diet?

In all this disappearing of 25 pounds over the past few weeks, the Queen of Sheba has never gone hungry. And most of the time what I’ve had to eat has ranged from very nice to incredibly delicious. Tonight’s dinner fell into the latter category, thanks (I believe) to the “less meat but LOTS better meat” strategy.

Meanwhile, the Queen of the Universe and Empress of All Existence beckoned.

The Queen of Sheba Slave parked itself in front of the television to scarf down its chow in front of Antiques Roadshow, something it apparently favors because it itself is an antique.

Her Majesty deigned to carry Ball into the room, by way of getting the creature’s attention.

That’s when I noticed that for the second night in a row, Her Highness is limping badly.

Last night I thought she must have pulled a muscle chasing Charley the Golden Retriever around. Or trying to protect him: believe it or not, she FAKED A BITE at my son when he was hauling Charley into the pool.

Charley doesn’t exactly like going into the drink but he will try, unhappily, to climb onto the steps when the humans are in the pool. Also we discovered that the only time he’ll hold still to have his tail combed is when he’s petrified in the water.

While he and his human were camping, he managed to build a large mat in the beautiful flag-like fringe that is his tail fur. M’hijito didn’t know what else to do but take a pair of scissors and cut it out, thereby destroying some of Charley’s roguish beauty. The Slave, having been a young girl with long hair and a fierce mother sometime in her remote past, realized that the mat could probably be teased out with a hair pick and a comb, if the hound could be made to sit still long enough. Hence: the Hair Salon on the Pool Steps.

As M’hijito was lifting Charley into the pool for a second or third dip and he was trying to make himself heavy by way of resistance, Her Highness took a running whack at the offending human. That was a surprise!

It took about an hour to tease the tangles out, but eventually it worked. And it really, really, REALLY annoyed the Queen of the Universe. Mercifully, she didn’t break skin (only because she apparently didn’t intend to). But she certainly got the attention of the Slave and Charley’s Human.

At any rate, while Charley wasn’t being groomed in the pool, Her Highness was chasing him around the yard. Hence, I figured, a pulled muscle or strained ligament.

This evening, though, I found a big scrape hidden under the thick fur on her leg. it runs from below the “elbow” joint almost up to her shoulder.

Poor little Queen! No wonder she’s limping.

So now her leg is slathered in antibiotic ointment and wrapped in bandaging, presenting an amusing challenge to Her Highness: she’ll have all that off by morning.

Don’t like to see her hurting enough to limp (one critter in the house doing that is enough!), but am sorta glad it’s an actual injury, probably the result of skidding through the gravel in pursuit of Ball, and not arthritis or a dislocated joint. In a few days it will heal and then she’ll be back to normal. Hopefully a less barkifarious normal.

Never a dull moment here in the Queendom!

My friend La Maya and her partner favor wiener dogs: they had two miniature dachshunds for years and then, after the extreme elder of the two passed, they got a standard dachshund, which is not what you’d call a huge beast. Whatever its size, a dachshund, like a corgi or a greyhound, is a dog that causes veterinarians to do a little dance of joy, because the critters’ long pointy snouts predispose them to expensive teeth-cleaning bills. I would not even dare to ask La Maya to tote up the amount she’s spent on the pooches’ teeth: it might bring on cardiac arrest.

Cassie the Corgi, AKA the Queen of the Universe, passed the vet’s examination of her teeth the last time she visited those precincts. However, she’s given to dogitosis in the worst way: very, very stinky dawg breath.

As you may have noticed if you read this site much, I resist succumbing to Corporate Profit-Making Pet Products just about as vociferously as I resist Big Pharma. The Queen gets real food prepared in the kitchen, and interestingly, she never evinces an ailment that requires veterinary attention. That may have to do with her breed…maybe with raw luck…or maybe it’s a perquisite of reigning over an entire universe. Who knows?

Some time back, I was cleaning my own teeth with some baking soda — not because I’m interested in whitening them, but because it’s actually pretty good for your teeth and used once in a while does a nice job of beating back the Microbial Enemy. In the course of thinking about this, I came across a site that suggested you can use the stuff on Fang’s teeth, too. And lo! What should I find but advice from the august American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to the effect that a small amount of baking soda can be used to clean doggy teeth.

Hot diggety dog.

We’re told not to use human toothpaste on dogs — it ain’t good for them to swallow the stuff. And that’s self-evident. If a toddler swallows toothpaste, thinking it’s some sort of minty candy, it can make the little human very sick. Most dogs are smaller than toddlers, and size nothwithstanding, none of them ARE humans. But, being the crank that I am, I will be da^^ned if I’m going to go out and spend money on special doggy toothpaste. Soooo…. I decided to try this stuff on Her Majesty.

You understand: the Queen of the Universe can be pretty imperious. Baking soda, to my taste, is approximately the opposite of delicious. And so it was reasonable to expect some serious resistance, possibly even rage. The Queen’s fangs are intact. While she does not bite, she certainly could. And so the Human suspected this scheme amounted to taking its life in its hands. But there’s only so much stink even a lowly human can be expected to tolerate.

Here’s the strategy:

1. Get yourself a roll of gauze from the bandage department of your local drugstore or supermarket.

2. Cut off a small amount, about three inches’ worth.

3. Cut off another small amount, in a similar size.

4. Get one of these very wet with cool tap water. Set aside.

5. Wrap the other piece around the tip of your index finger.

6. Dampen this slightly and dip it in some baking soda.

7. Capture the dog.

8. Rub the baking-soda-laced, gauze-wrapped finger around the dog’s teeth, starting with the outside edges (the inside edges can use some attention, too, but good luck with that!). Scour as many edges of the animal’s teeth as you can get to before you are repulsed by the dog’s struggles (which will be pretty quickly).

9. Quickly grab the water-saturated gauze and resume the attack! Wipe off the teeth as best you can before you are again cast out.

The improvement can be amazing.

And weirdly, the dog doesn’t seem to mind the baking soda in its mouth. Cassie sort of smacked her lips a couple of times, but as soon as I wiped her mouth down with fresh water, she was fine.

First time I tried this with Her Majesty, the Eau de Stinko Dog Breath went completely away. This effect lasted for several days! And, IMHO, that is amazing.

Do not expect this to remove existing tartar stains. You’ll need a veterinarian’s professional cleaning to accomplish that. However, as a way to clean the dog’s teeth without having to buy expensive dog-treat-flavored canine “toothpaste,” this is mighty good to know about.

I would not inflict it on the Queen every day. About once every three days seems to suffice to suppress the dogitosis. Baking soda is very high in sodium; inevitably the dog will swallow some of it. Excess sodium is bad for you. So it’s probably safe to assume it’s just as bad or worse for your dog. But as an occasional thing, paired with an effort to rinse off as much as possible: why not?

Adjunct Strategies

Try to get Fang to chew on foods or treats that abrade the teeth a little without adding sugar, salt, or weird chemicals. Some dogs really love various kinds of raw veggies and will chew them up. I once had a golden retriever that thought hearts of cabbage and pieces of cauliflower were gourmet delicacies; in absolute doggy delight, he would chomp on them, scrubbing his teeth in the process. Cassie likes carrots — she’ll treat these like chew sticks, too. Choffing on something like this helps to scour the exposed surface of the teeth. Experiment around with things like raw cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, and apple slices to see if your dog can be tricked into a little self-cleaning activity.

Prefer these kinds of natural treats to commercial treats from the pet store or grocery store, which are akin to muffins or candy in terms of dog dental health.

The cleaner you can keep Fang’s teeth, the more you will save on vet bills. The veterinarian has to sedate your dog (expensively) before having at its teeth. If you’d like to be scared, VERY scared, visit this terrifying site on the subject.

Check out this treacly, sentimentalized report from one of the local Play-Nooz stations: A woman crashes her car. One of the two dogs she’s carting around is killed. She and a second dog — a puppy — fly through the windshield. The woman is crippled — still in a wheelchair to this day — and the terrified, presumably injured pup runs off into the desert.

Miraculously, heart-warmingly, and swathed in goopy emotion, the dog is found — trapped, actually — after two months of wandering around in 110- to 115-degree heat.

Isn’t that sweet?

Hm.

The driver goes through the windshield: no seatbelt. The dog goes through the windshield: not crated. The other dog is killed…not crated?

All very touching, but WTF? If the driver had been driving safely — wearing her seatbelt and seeing to it that the animals were secured safely inside the vehicle — she likely would not be in a wheelchair. The puppy would not have been thrown out into the desert to survive on its own. And the other dog probably would still be alive.

Sorry to throw iced acid on another sugary Hallmark Moment, but from the curmudgeon’s point of view, this is not an uplifting story. It’s a tale of raw stupidity.

Just sayin’…

I’m guilty of driving my dogs around uncrated, too, though I’m at least bright enough to figure out how to use the seatbelt on myself. After reading between the lines here, you can be sure I’m getting a car crate for the Queen of the  Universe. Today.

Some pet crates are pretty pricey — like all pet-related gear, much exploitation of people’s sentimentality goes on. However, at Amazon prices are as low as $22. Since some crates can be pretty flimsy, I personally would pick one from Target (also flimsy, in my experience) or a pet store, where I can actually see and handle the things. But it’s useful to check Amazon for the consumer reviews — especially for reports like these, which show one brand of portable kennel falling apart repeatedly. Paying a little more to secure the animal, considering how much you’ve already spent on the beast(!!), is worth the extra security.

Soon as the stores open this morning, it’s off to the nearest Petsmart for me and the hound.

How about you? Do you keep your pets safe in the car, as well as yourself?

Jestjack’s comment on last Saturday’s post, about the vet who opined that the wide-ranging pisser of a cat had “anger issues” (heeee!), reminded me of Anna the German Shepherd, a dog for whom “trainability” was an alien term.

Actually, Anna was highly trainable. But she was a working dog with a capital W and a capital D, and she had so much drive that she really needed a full-time doggy job to run off her bottomless reserves of energy. This was an animal that needed to herd sheep. Or cattle. Or camels. She was so strong that for many months I faced quite the challenge keeping her under control.

A woman who trained search dogs and drug dogs for the police had been the most successful of a largely unsuccessful lot of dog-and-human trainers. By the time Anna was about 18 months old, she was marginally leash-trained, despite daily efforts on my part. This police dog trainer favored a vicious pinch collar, something that just made me cringe…but I couldn’t afford to have the dog drag me into the traffic, or to have to let her go as she charged in front of an oncoming vehicle. Since she craved to bring cars and trucks down by their oil-pans, suicide by car was a likely end for Anna. The pinch collar at least put a damper on that activity. To a degree. A low degree.

One day I mentioned this to Jerry Jenkins, a now-retired veterinarian who over the years had become a friend. He said he knew a “dog behavioralist” that maybe I should try. Silently thinking “holeee mackerel, what next?” I took the guy’s phone number. In a moment of desperation, after having been dragged around the neighborhood again, I called him.

Now, you should bear in mind that another friend of mine, at the time, was a lady who claimed to believe in astrology and who was in the act of hanging out her shingle as a pet astrologist and mind-reader. No. Yes. She was serious. I think. Who can tell?

At any rate, you can imagine the eye-rolling over the “dog behavioralist.”

So I call the guy up, and it turns out that under the silly psycho-babble veneer, what he really does is teach owners (not dogs) how to behave. Abhorred by the stainless-steel pinch collar, the first thing he did was demonstrate how to get Anna to heel using nothing more than a leather leash and her ordinary everyday rolled leather collar. It wasn’t very difficult. The trick was, you had to do it several times a day. Didn’t matter whether you did it in the house, did it in the backyard, did it on a sidewalk, or did it in the park. You just had to do it for a short period, over and over, every day.

Here’s how to do it:

Get a rolled leather collar (it’s better for long-haired dogs and it will work better for your purposes). Get a sturdy leather leash (not nylon). Place the collar on the dog and hook the leash to the collar. Have the dog sit next to you. Step forward with the dog at your left side. Each time the dog surges ahead of your knees, say “HUP!” and give the leash a sharp jerk. Always precede the jerk with the “HUP!” sound. Never jerk the leash and then say “HUP.” Walk steadily and confidently forward. Never let the dog get past your knees without going “HUP” and giving it a jerk.

This won’t hurt the dog, but it will get its attention. Reward the dog with friendly noises for heeling correctly over brief periods. You may heel and sit, heel and sit, heel and sit if that’s necessary to underscore the idea that the human walks the dog, not the other way around. Do not fail to do this for a few minutes at least three times a day — five or ten minutes per session will suffice.

After awhile, the dog will start to expect a jerk whenever you say “HUP!” You can then use the word “HUP” to mean, approximately, “heel.”

It works.