The House of Black Dogs

God wants me to do it

2010-03-01T13:25:00.007-05:00

I can tell.

Yeah, I know I am an irresponsible blogger. I get on a roll, I feel motivated, I keep it going and then...I get distracted by one of life's little shiny objects and my jackdaw mind flies off somewhere else, letting the good old HOBD get overrun by zombie commenters trying to sell me Viagra (all set, thanks).

Well, those days are not at an end. I fully expect to fart out on you people again any day now. My creative mind looks like that famous aerial view of North Korea, where there are bright lights sometimes, and sometimes not, and in a few different places depending on what day it is.

But there have been several events that have prompted me to get off of the endless merry-go-round of avoidance and start ranting again. As if Somebody upstairs was throwing great globs of conversational fodder in my path: stuff I simply can't ignore.

So I guess you're all in for it again. If you're new here, please go back and read the archives to get an idea about what HOBD is all about. If you're a prodigal reader (who am I kidding, I'm the prodigal here), please do the same. Forgive the broken links, I've been trying to fix the ones I can, otherwise there will be a few dead ends.

Leave me some feedback, let me know what you think, just try to be coherent when you do. And stop trying to sell me Viagra.

"Oh, my dog could never live without me..."

2009-04-06T09:55:00.002-04:00

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090406/ts_afp/australiaanimaldogoffbeat_20090406082210

For all of you "pet parents" of your "fur babies" which are perfectly happy to roll in shit, eat garbage and hump your boss's wife but which you believe will somehow wilt away into emotionally devastated, hunger-striking waifs if not in your glowing, beneficient presence.

Right.

If your dog is worth a damn, it will fall off of your yacht, swim five miles to a deserted island and develop a healthy taste for cabra del bebe.

for Bill's Wife...

2009-04-06T09:16:00.002-04:00

Bill = Old acquaintance from the Boston days, frontman for bar band The Drinks, favorite memory thereof: Bill jupming around on the stage at the Midway screaming the singalong chorus of an absolutely excellent number called "Chemotherapy"....

Bill's Wife = A person I've never met, but who has displayed her awesome taste in reading materials by being a fan of this here blog.

How I Know This = At last week's memorial gathering for our friend, held at the Plough and Stars in Cambridge, I saw Bill (among dozens of other long lost friends) and he made sure that I knew that the Mrs. liked HOBD!

And so here it is again.

Because if I don't write bitter, unprofessional, sometimes distasteful diatribes against the ridiculous reality of the dog world, WHO WILL???

So thanks, Mrs. Bill, whoever you are. Consider yourself my stopgap Muse.

Please bring me to a place of karmic reckoning

2008-09-07T10:55:00.002-04:00

So that these pieces of garbage might suffer the same fate:
http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/20080906_Cops_looking_for_youngsters_who_burned_pit_bull_to_death.html

Philly, the City of Brotherly Love, where I spent SO many years of my life, has little frayed edges full of inbreds and multi-generational feral humans of every color and ethnicity.

My best friend from Philly, a 1st generation Korean-American, had relatives who set up the outposts of civilization one sees in the worst ghettoes: convenience stores, small textile factories, bars...And at one of these bars waaaaaayyyy up in North Philly, there was a guy named Two By Four. Two By Four was a human scab: the husk of what may have at once been an actual person with a conscience, with dignity and some sense of self-worth. But crack turned 2x4 into one of those modern day sideshow atttractions one can find if one spends enough time deep in the urban or rural extremes of any area. For $5 (as another friend said, as he purchased a perfectly functional and obviously stolen 36" color television for the same amount), you could buy anything. Because $5 was the entry level price for a cap of crack.
And for $5, a citizen could have the singular, primitive pleasure of hitting 2x4 with the piece of building material that gave him his name.

These scumbags that did this to the dog, well, who are they if not the product of the 2x4s and the pulverizers of same?

I say eye for an eye, torture for torture, and you can be damned sure I'd say the same if it was a human victim, unlike the pantywaists who only get themselves into a moral outrage if it's a widdle puppy or kitty but will give these same bastards a pass if they shoot a toddler.

And I love the commenter who actually blames George Bush.

how about this: BLAME THE PERP. Only the perp. Not the school system, not the gubmint, not the media. Blame and then appropriately punish the individual who MADE A CHOICE.

But it will never happen. The perps here will fade into the ooze of deep urban Philly and be indeterminate from the rest of the human plankton surrounding them.

Brotherly Love, indeed.

The Stooge in the Middle

2008-09-05T10:59:00.003-04:00

Listen.

I'm about to bitch and moan about how tired I am.

In the middle of the day, sometimes I am struck by an idea of OVERWHELMING GENIUS which warms my insides like the first stirrings of romantic love. And I say "I MUST WRITE THIS DOWN!"

And I don't, because I am submerged in the daily grind of circulating the Boarding student dogs, answering correspondence, working in lessons and training sessions, freaking out over my lack of available hours, each obligation hanging over my head like an individual Sword of Damocles.

Then I get home, do everything, and sit down with a plate of food at 11PM, just in time to watch Iron Chef re-runs ( I'm talking about the original IC: Iron Chef America is actually too over the top, even for me). By the time I finish my dinner, I am in a catatonic state during which the last traces of my Great Idea fade into the background, only to be replaced with soporific musings on mortality and an admission that the Sham-WOW! guy is actually sort of compelling.

Got the old phantom limb stirrings where my musician self used to be. Driving me crazy as one day melts into the next, all the same, the numbing routines of dogs, bills, errands, sleep, wake, again, again....little bright spots always originating from the dogs and the dogs alone. Keeping me somewhat sane and placated even as the basses and guitars stare down at me resentfully and dust-covered. Ya can't do both.

And you definitely can't write the Great American Novel too.

Can you at least keep up with a lousy blog?

Last night I dreamed that I met Larry Fine in the bar of a Chinese restaurant. He was the young Larry, his usually wild hair slicked back and he was wearing a very nice suit. I got my courage up and approached him, and whispered "You were always my favorite."

He was charmed and flattered and he bought me a crazy Polynesian drink. Then, as we stood close by the bar, he put his arm around me and told me I better get my shit together.

For those who don't know, Larry was a profligate gambler who made and lost a couple of fortunes, and was considered to be kind of a good-hearted wildman by his friends and peers. He wasn't exactly a model businessman or Mr. Responsible. But in my dream, he was in a position to tell me to get my shit together. Which leads me to believe the shit in question has very little to do with dog training.

I woke up sad that he's been dead for nearly 35 years. I'd love to call him and ask him what he suggests, and if he'd like to get together for a Fogcutter over at Chen's.

And if you think I'm gonna lay off the "Definitely Not Dog Friendly" stuff...

2008-06-14T00:15:00.003-04:00

...you would be wrong.

Cos stuff like this keeps happening. I'm just the messenger, kids.

Here we go again

2008-06-13T14:19:00.003-04:00

It's my personal New Year, it's the part of the downhill slide into oblivion where one really picks up momentum, it's my fortieth frigging birthday.

My thirties were spent in a confusion of misspent loyalties, frustrating career roadblocks and crises de coeur. I hardly even noticed them.

In the time since I abandoned the good ship HOBD, I joined MySpace, which was good for a lot of reasons (re-establishing contact with lots of old pals). But this is better. Just writing. You read it, great. You don't, who cares.

I briefly toyed with the idea of playing music again, but abandoned it in favor of throwing myself full time into this dog biz thing.

Got a column in a local/regional dog rag. The same edition of my debut, there was Gail Fisher, in her debut (a rerun of an older one, nice effort there, Gail) railing against Cesar Millan like a dog training bunny boiler who was out to ruin the concept of good training at any cost. I let it get to me: briefly, but it did.

Today, my fortieth, my tipping point where I know certain things are gone forever in my life, I am moving into my own place of business. So it's a good thing. A well-earned thing, and something I knew I would do eventually. That its beginning falls on this Friday the 13th is auspicious. All done answering to the half-assed, the incompetent, the uncommitted, the scarily complicated, and every other brand of boss. Even the ones I've really liked, it still wasn't my show. Now it is.

Or should I say, it's ours.
Because now I have an official partner: Drago, bully of my heart, my other half: he's the brains of the operation, I'm just the talent.

It will be an interesting year. And like New Years' day, it calls for reflection, celebration, and a few resolutions I'd better damn well keep. One of them is bringing HOBD back.
Like bringing sexy back.
Only funnier, and with more mention of dogshit.

Problem solved

2006-10-03T09:04:00.000-04:00

The other day I was talking with Sheela-Na-Gig, the kennel manager, about her job vs. my job.

When I am having a bad day, or if there are too many loud voices in the small space of the training room, I can be found out in the back kennels, herding turds and rinsing water buckets. I've always found a Zen-like satisfaction in mundane tasks. It's true, maybe my vocation is more rewarding in the Big Picture, but we both agreed that sometimes her job is more rewarding in an immediate sense.

Example:

Emotionally crippled pregnant woman and her mentally unbalanced giant breed with a multiple-bite history. Sobbing, begging us not to "hurt" her dog, actually, she characterizes the dog as her "child" (good luck to the baby that will emerge into his mother's twisted world in a few months). No, she won't prohibit the dog from sleeping in bed with her. No, she doesn't accept that the breed she chose to "rescue" has a natural, desirable sense of territorial behavior and is one of the best choices if you live in an isolated compound surrounded by hostile natives, but not so much if you live in a modern New England suburb. The dog must be bombproof around visitors, including children, and must be a wonderful, gentle companion to the new baby. And NO, of course she won't give the dog back to the fools at the shelter who placed it with her. After all, she doesn't believe in giving up on a dog. Wonder if she believes in plastic surgery and lengthy, debilitating personal injury lawsuits.
Problem? Unsolvable.

On the other hand:

There is some dogshit. Here is my pooper scooper. I pick it up.
Problem solved.

Let me spell it out for you (Whitman's sampler post explained EVEN MORE)

2006-10-01T20:43:00.000-04:00

Someone read that post and expressed concern.
Someone who is smart, sensible and not a knee-jerk hysteric.
Someone who owns what I refer to as a "power breed".
Seems that I am sounding dangerously close to a BSL type when I talk about the physical strength or the inherent protective/territorial tendencies of one breed vs. another. In other words, it is very provocative, and not in a good way, when I describe a Dobermann picking up a child by the head and shaking him, and asking if a Yorkie could do that. It is not cool to imply that perhaps the giant molosser type dogs should not be compared favorably or even neutrally to Golden Retrievers or Poodles when it comes to selection of a family pet. The most important thing for dog professionals to emphasize is that ALL dogs require responsible upbringing, training and management. Leave breeds out of it.

No. I won't leave breeds out of it.

Not until every breed apologist who dares to stand up at a public hearing and attribute to toy breeds the same potential for damage as the breeds in question sits down.

Not until every well-meaning dog person who trots out a story about how viciously they were mauled by a Cocker Spaniel shuts up and considers the pain and trauma suffered by the victim the current conversation is about.

Not until every Pollyanna Rescue Martyr and every gene salesman who advertises in the glossy back pages of Dog Fancy stops calling their working breeds "gentle family guardians who require no formal training to tell friend from foe" or "affectionate couch potatoes who will protect by instinct alone".

Not until every wannabe trainerette with a copy of "Calming Signals" and a CPDT after her name stops attributing temperament to training methods, and spends one solid year of apprenticeship with a real dog trainer learning protection work.

We dog people are to blame. Before you point the finger at the media, at criminals and thugs, at stupid owners, at mean or incompetent trainers, turn it around on yourself. Admit what you have: a big dog with a strong instinct to defend property/persons/himself from people/predators/dogs (mix and match accordingly). A dog who may take a little extra work, and a little extra management. A dog whom you shouldn't expect people to welcome with open arms, based on his size and his intimidating appearance. If you can educate people past that because your dog is so well-trained that he is a pleasure to be around, more power to you. But remember that he is not an ambassador for the breed as it is, whichever breed it is. He is an ambassador for what it should be.

What's that? Your dog is "no different" than a Golden Retriever or a Poodle?

If your breed is no different than a Golden Retriever or a Poodle, then why didn't you get a Golden Retriever or a Poodle? The appearance?
Wait a minute, I thought that people who bought (or "adopted") dogs based on their appearance were shallow and not worthy of being granted ownership. What does that make you?
Oh, I see. Your breed is more intelligent/more devoted/more protective than another breed. So, there are only differences in the positive? No negatives? Not even one? That "protective" thing: that never goes the wrong way, does it? Only if you "abuse" the dog, right?

Right.

At the rescue where I trained, the worst hand-wringers and social judges tended to be lots of whiny, perimenopausal women who loved to condemn those big, mean men who kept Dobermanns so they would "look tough". I enjoyed pointing out to my colleagues that nothing spoke more loudly and pathetically of psychic penis envy than the attachment these weak, sad broads had for their large, male power breeds. "See, I'm a poor victim of life but this big, strong DOG represents my SOUL (or my HEART or my COURAGE etc)". No, actually, he represents your DICK, ladies, and the fact that you let him growl your husband out of bed tells me everything I need to know about the state of your mind.

My answer to my dog friends is this: get out of denial. Admit that what we own and love is not the same as what most civilians think of as a simple family pet. And they never should think of them as a simple family pet. One of my favorite dog books is "Eminent Dogs, Dangerous Men" by Donald McCaig. It is an incredibly moving, honest account of working Border Collie life and Mr. McCaig's adventures as he tries to acquire a new dog in Scotland. At the end of this worshipful study of his favored breed, Mr. McCaig does something wonderful: he tells his readers to NOT get a Border Collie as a pet.

You dogpeople are right: when it comes to BSL, we are looking at a people problem, not a dog problem. But the people at the root of the problem are the people who look just like us. Clean your own house, ladies and gentlemen, or Uncle Sam is gonna come in and do it for you.

A Whitman's Sampler of Ignorance

2006-09-25T13:20:00.000-04:00

A Whitman's Sampler of Ignorance

No matter how you slice it, no matter how you parse it as a dog lover, as a breed apologist, as a dog hater, as a breed banner, as a parent, as a business owner, whatever, no matter what, this is just horrific. An excerpt:

It happened in the living quarters of the Rocket pub in Stephenson Drive, in the New Parks area of Leicester, on Saturday afternoon.
The dogs, which were trained to act as guard dogs, were later put down.
It is thought the little girl's parents were looking after the pub - and the animals - when the attack happened.
Neighbours named the landlords as Wayne and Lesley Glaze, and said they left the pub with Mrs Glaze's son, Lee Burchell, and his girlfriend Amy while they went on holiday.
Police have not named the baby, but neighbours said she was Caydee-Lee, the young couple's daughter. Reports said the dogs, Bess and Bruno, were owned by Mr and Mrs Glaze.
The attack was reportedly witnessed by horrified passers-by, who alerted the emergency services. Emotional neighbours spoke of their horror at the baby's death, describing the animals as "vicious".
One woman, who would not be named, said: "They went for her face, completely ripped her apart. It doesn't bear thinking about. Apparently they dragged her on to the roof."

The U.K. already has some questionable laws about dogs, and in its Dangerous Dog Act, practices BSL against Filas, Tosas and Dogos as well as "pit bull terrier types". I've heard conflicting reports about the climate for British dogs and dog people over the past few years, from the glowing first-hand reports of visitors to the Battersea Dogs' and Cats' Home to the disgust of a police dog sergeant who, in his correspondence with me a few years ago, lamented the dumbing-down of state-accepted training methods and therefore, the reliability of the police service dogs.

Well, the Brits may drive on the wrong side of the road and close their pubs too early for American tastes, but after reading the article about the death of Caydee-Lee and the endless string of reader comments, I see that their Great Unwashed sounds an awful lot like ours when it comes to dog attacks.

Of the 74 comments, one can narrow down the sentiment about muscle dogs to 3 basic belief systems:

1. Rottweilers and other power breeds are naturally very kind, "soppy" dogs who can only be made aggressive through training, otherwise they are just like any other type. Also, any dog can be "trained" to attack.
Examples:

Rottweilers are not naturally aggresive dogs, they are naturally very soppy, kind, loyal and loving. These dogs were trained to be the way they were, just as any dog could be trained that way, just as humans can be trained that way. 99.9% of Rotties are very gentle. It is terrible what has happened to this child though and my heart goes out to the family.
- Andy, Essex, England

If "any breed" can be trained "that way", then why don't we see more police departments, security companies and military outfits using Labs or Pointers? After all, they are not as beset by health issues as the working/protection breeds. They tend to have longer working lives and they aren't as threatening in appearance to the law-abiding public.

Rottweilers are NOT dangerous dogs in themselves anymore than a Labrador or a Poodle is, any dog can turn and owners and adults have a responsibility to control situations around children with all dogs, I have a lovely soppy Rottie who I trust inches from my face but I would still NEVER EVER leave him with my kids alone and certainly not with a baby of any age - in fact we delayed getting a Rottie until my kids were over 6 years old.- Carmen, UK

Carmen, would you have delayed getting a Lab or a Poodle?

I was mauled by a Golden Retriever as a child! I have since owned 2 rotties, and my parents also owned 2. They are lovely dogs with nice natures. It is owners that create beasts. Rotties are not bred to be vicious like pit bulls. Thugs choose them for their strength. You can train ANY dog to attack. And a child should never be left in the same room as any dog - thats common sense. Rest in peace baby girl.- Anglea, Somerset, England

Angela's a dog expert. She knows that Rotts were not "bred to be vicious like pit bulls". Actually, Rottweilers were bred to have a strong territorial guarding instinct, and to be intolerant of human trespassers. In Germany, the country of origin, the breed wardens require that those who keep Rottweilers confine them behind steel bars embedded in concrete. Chain link or stockade fences are not acceptable. I don't think Rottweilers are "vicious", either, but their national custodians seems to have a deep respect for what they are capable of doing should they be left at large and to their own devices.
On the other hand, "pit bulls" were bred to have an intense fighting instinct around other dogs, and to tolerate their handlers' physical proximity and intervention even when in the midst of a dogfight. Man-aggressive pit dogs were destroyed as being undesirable.

Dogs are not generally violent unless it they are trained to be. My family had Staffordshire Bull Terriers for years and they were the gentlest dogs you could ever meet.Don't tar all dogs with the same brush - a yorkshire terrier could harm a small baby as much as a larger dog.- Jill, Gateshead, UK

Actually, dogs are generally very violent, as far as human skin and human laws are concerned. And since this person wants to make the "Yorkie" argument, I'd like to ask her which one of the two types of dogs could crush or maim an infant in a single strike, which one could pick a child up by the head and shake him (as a Dobermann whose delusional owner called me did to the one year old boy in the house; the owner refused to euthanize the dog and wanted me to side with him against his wife and their now-brain-damaged son), and which one she would leave her own child with, unattended, should her ganja dealer call while the phone is in the next room. By saying a Yorkie and a Rottweiler are equal, she is tarring all dogs with the same brush.

2. Dogs cannot tell the difference between a toy and a child, or a criminal and a child, or a prey animal and a child.
Examples:

We have owned two rottweilers and we know that with responsibble ownership they are the finest dog you can own.The dogs are being wrongly blamed, they cannot distinguish between a toy and a child.The owners are to blame,sadly a child and two dogs have died.- Nigel Slater, Manchester England

Its a shame these dogs have been killed, its not their fault.This country is so hypocritical, many people cheer hunting dogs on when they rip a fox to pieces, these dogs do not know the difference between a child, animal or a toy to play with.- Audrey, Manchester England

Of course, this is why you hear about all of those greyhound maulings, and those Beagle attacks, and of course, the thousands of Deerhound incidents that put so many children in the hospital. because prey is prey, and unless you painstakingly explain this to any dog, your street is soon to be littered with little human corpses.

3. All power breeds should be neutered and should only appear in public muzzled. They are death machines owned by thugs for the sole purpose of intimidation. If you choose to own a muscle dog, you are advertising your own ignorance and social shortcomings.
Examples:

Let's get real. It's irrelevant whether it was any person's fault in this particular tragedy. Dog-owners don't kill people. Dogs do. Stop this ridiculous argument by the doggy-people that the dog's size is immaterial. Thugs don't walk around with a poodle on a lead - no, it must be something big and fiecre to instill fear. The answer is - stop breeding big dangerous dogs, castrate the lot of them. Muzzle the rest and keep them on a lead in public. Punish owners who don't comply. And please don't blame parents for not being able to keep an eye on their children for 100% of the time. Why should they have to protect their children from vicious dogs at any time of the day or night? And if you think that training for dog-owners is the answer, just what world are you living in? Owners of such monsters are quite happy if people are afraid of them. And even with training, it's irresponsible, as trained dogs can turn vicious. And then it's too late for tears and teddy-bears.- Alan, cologne, germany

Alan and I agree on a couple of points, but his solution is so extreme that it negates any sense he makes. If the neuter-by-law concept was working, then there wouldn't be stories like this in England. Every time you crack down on one breed, another will be found. And for every thug or ignoramus who gets one of these dogs for his wrong reasons, there will be a dozen bleeding heart breed aplogists who get one or more for their wrong reason: to prove that Tosa Inus, or Neopolitan Mastiffs, or Caucasian Ovcharkas are no different than Yorkies or Golden Retrievers.

So if a burglar had broken into the pub and been attacked, that would have been acceptable? These animals are dangerous, end of story. No animal should be trained to attack anything or anybody and these naturally aggressive dogs should be banned.- Sarah, France

Figures this broad lives in France. Yes, you cheese-eating surrender monkey, if a burglar had broken into the pub of fucking course it would have been acceptable for the dog to attack him! How do you say "Duh" in French?

Reply to '- Alan, cologne, germany'. You have expressed my sentiments exactly. I think all of these nasty dogs should be neutered and then within twelve years or so there wouldn't be any. And by the way pitbulls are still around in the UK, the thugs who have them have bred them back slightly and now call them Staffordshire terriers which they most certainly are not, a true Staffordshire is quite a small stocky thing with a certain appeal where a pitbull/staffordshire is an ugly brute of a thing (that's the dog I'm talking about not just the owner).As soon as anyone expresses a desire for any of these dogs they should automatically be banned from keeping them for life.- Ian, Lincoln

While Ian doesn't sound like a bloke who would characterize himself as an "animal person", he should definitely think about joining PETA, as his worldview about the breeding and banning of dogs matches theirs almost exactly.

There is much to say about personal responsibility, about realism, about proper care and custody of powerful animals, about parenting, about politics, and about the role of uninformed public opinion when it comes to creating law. Any law. But at the end of the story, a child is still dead. And there are no real answers for that.

The enemy of my enemy...

2006-09-23T13:20:00.000-04:00

Morons helping morons who are trying to hurt morons.

God is providing me with yet another "enemy of my enemy" scenario, almost as juicy as the pig-dancer vs. PETA episode.

An alleged drunken motorist who brandished a pool cue while driving at a group of motorcyclists was hit by his own car after he attempted to approach the bikers on foot, authorities said.
Richard Brooks, 50, of Concord, was pulled to safety by the motorcyclists after his car _ which he left in reverse _ knocked him into the highway on Thursday, said Officer Scott Yox of the California Highway Patrol.
Brooks, who was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and driving under the influence, told authorities he was offended by skeletons some of the riders wore on their leather Harley-Davidson jackets and what he perceived as their attempts to appear tough.
"It was his impression that they thought they were better than him," Yox said. "They were irritating to him and he felt he needed to do something about it."
Yox said authorities had no evidence the riders instigated the incident. "Instead of mocking him for going after them, they perhaps set their own safety aside to reach over and rescue him from a position of danger," he said.
Brooks, who was treated at a hospital for cuts and scrapes, remained jailed Friday in lieu of $30,000 bail.

Let's face it, there are plenty of people in cars who are assholes to motorcyclists.
Riding up to Bike Week this year, I was sentenced to get stuck behind a truly dangerous individual who wove in front of me every time I tried to pass, slammed on his brakes after faking a turn, and when I finally squeaked to safety around him, screamed at me, brandishing a middle finger. Swear to God, I NEVER tailgate (it's suicidal), and I always nod or wave "thanks" to slow drivers who yield to me. I didn't ask for it. To add insult to insult (thankfully, there was no injury to which to add insult), this entire thing happened at a rate of speed that even your grandma would think was reasonable. The guy was just pissed off at the world, his wife, his debts, his boss, maybe he hated motorcyclists, whatever. I was the whipping girl for whatever his issues were, and I am lucky to have gotten away from him without a problem. So, there is a legitimate precedent to the "evil cager" mentality.

But...
Let's also accept that there are plenty of swaggering, lame-ass wannabes on two wheels who block traffic, crawl into intersections, and consider it their God-given right as Harley-Americans to intercept, tailgate or most commonly, hold up other drivers. When you're trying to get somewhere in a timely fashion and get stuck behind some fat slob wearing a made in Pakistan Bad-AssTM leather jacket with a dragon-wizard-skull-flames motif, going ten below the speed limit, the left turn signal of his overpriced, obnoxiously jetted moto-RV blinking pointlessly for the last three miles, you will understand.

Lucky for the driver in this story that his assumption was right: these were not the real bad guys, as the car-driving assailant would now be interviewed from his hospital bed, or posthumously through his widow. And they were awfully nice to save this guy from his own car. After all, he was a drunk behind the wheel, and I wonder if I would have been as charitable in the same situation.

But I get his point. A certain Motor Company sells "image" with much more enthusiasm than its product line should merit. Somehow, according to its True Believers, riding this Brand makes one a bona-fide tuff guy. As if donning a cheaply made leather jacket with an orange-and-black logo confers instant street-gravitas and spending half of your salary on a machine that is good looking but merely average in performance makes you an expert in "cool".

Doesn't mean you should be meting out justice to guys whose main offense is looking kinda goofy. But, wannabe tuff guys, be aware that somewhere along the line some disgruntled real tough guy, or maybe just an unbalanced, inebriated freak with a self-control issue, may call you out and ask your ass to cash the check you keep writing with your store-bought image and your alleged life-saving loud pipes. Obviously, not everyone is willing to live and "let live-to-ride".

Definitely not pig friendly...or is it?

2006-09-19T09:26:00.000-04:00

For your reading pleasure, two of my least favorite types of subhumans, performance artists and animal rights activists, brought together in an orgy of self-indulgent extremism, all centered around my vote for most overrated domesticated animal, the pig.

Let me get the pig thing out of the way first.
Everyone keeps telling me how intelligent pigs are. They are allegedly much smarter and more trainable than dogs. This is, of course, why there are so many Seeing Eye pigs, Explosive Detector pigs, Military Service pigs, Search and Rescue pigs, and trained pig acts at every circus and on every Las Vegas stage.
My ex-boss had a pet sow that weighed about 700 pounds last I knew of it. It bit, it was filthy, it had a startling lack of generosity to its owner, who "saved" it from slaughter (picture her and a few unlucky helpers trying to load the thing at a svelter 200 pounds into the back of a minivan on the side of a busy road, each mindless squeal of the pig's being echoed with a sympathetic one from its hysterical rescuer), and I never once saw it do anything that displayed intelligence. When I pressed my ex-boss for empirical proof of the beast's overwhelming mental superiority to say, my then Dobermann protection dog who had a 50 command vocabulary, she would answer with a breathless, "Well, you just look at her and you know." I guess to someone with this type of intellectual acuity, that thar sow was a real thinker.

Anyway: If you've been paying attention since the beginning of this blog, you know that I'm an ex-musician. Based on my eclectic outlook, with its feet in the punk-rock DIY movement and its head in the appreciation of the weird and outre, I'm pretty open-minded. But when confronted with the concept of "performance art", the door of my aesthetic tolerance slams shut like Karen Finley's sphincter at an NEA funding review hearing.

Having been forced to sit through many "conceptual art happenings" as a young urban bohemian, I've got a pretty fair grasp of the genre. In my experience, the majority of performance artists are people who don't act well enough to be part of a serious troupe; who don't play/compose music well enough to be part of a band or to perform or sell their songs as a solo act; who don't write well enough to express themselves in a way that keeps a reader; and who don't paint/draw/sculpt well enough to get their art seen except by a few sympathetic friends. OK, so I liked Blue Man Group, but the "serious" art crowd spits on them as being way too bourgeois and obvious. Call me Miss Middle America, then. At least they could play drums.

Here's how I think it goes: "Man, I'm so full of IDEAS!!! They're SO WORTH SHARING!!! But everyone keeps walking away from me at parties when I approach...how can I get them to listen??? Wait! I know: I'll smear myself with wet cement and I'll act out the life cycle of the damselfly with a backing soundtrack of a South Pacific circumcision ceremony...and I'll hand everyone in the audience a dried up piece of horse manure to MAKE THEM ACCOUNTABLE! I'll look them right in the eye when I do it, too! God, I hate George W. Bush!"

A naked performance artist who says she experienced fantasies of "interspecies metamorphoses" while working with dead pigs has angered British animal rights activists.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals criticized an exhibition where artist Kira O'Reilly sits naked for hours with a dead pig, planned for Friday evening at the Newlyn Art Gallery in Penzance, southwest England.

"Interspecies metamorphoses". Meaning she suddenly feels herself becoming a pale, scavenging, unwashed creature that gets fat off of other peoples' garbage and only lives long if it captures the sympathy of a bleeding heart? Wait a minute, I thought "metamorphising" meant change...

"As Miss O'Reilly seems to have to depend on the shock value of using a murdered pig as a prop, perhaps lacking the talent to make it as a proper artist, may we suggest she take up a day job instead to pay the bills?" PETA said Friday in a statement. "Cruelty is not entertainment."

Oh my God, stop the presses, PETA and I actually agree on something! Of course, you can't be cruel to something that's already dead, so I'm assuming that the cruelty in question is that of performer toward audience.

"Clearly, the piece is controversial in many respects; in part it is intentionally so," {gallery director James} Green said.

"In part"? Wait a sec, what part of "naked woman grinding with a hog corpse" wasn't meant to be controversial?

"The work left me with an undercurrent of pigginess, unexpected fantasies of mergence and interspecies metamorphoses began to flicker into my consciousness," she said.

Let me get out my Crazy-to-English dictionary...let's see...oh, ok. The above translates as "Mum and Dad, please send on a bit more money. The therapy isn't working."

Crikey!

2006-09-04T09:19:00.000-04:00

Steve Irwin has apparently harassed one too many exotic animals.

I only watched him a couple of times. And, all kidding aside, I liked the wonder he brought to his exploration of the critters that compelled him. I always got the feeling that he really did give a damn about them in a macro sense, but that he had leaned way too much on that little-boy drive to poke stuff with a stick. Lucky for him that we are a nation of little boys who want to poke things with sticks, so he found himself a great gig.

RIP, Croc Hunter.

I'm in love with my bike

2006-09-03T12:34:00.000-04:00

It's sorta a belated birthday present.

Drago and I, watching countless MotoGP races, Drago taking on a harsh Brit accent and becoming the color commentator, attributing my identity to a particularly ballsy or unlucky rider "And it's McDonough on the Yamaha, hanging it out...can you BELIEVE it!" or "A spectacular highside for McDonough, risking it all on the Yamaha...is she OK? That's got to hurt!"
Giggle-producing silliness. But how I envy all of those riders: their control, the virtuosity of their risk-taking, the sheer beauty and power of their machines.

Drago, in the earlier days of my riding: "You should ride the FZR". The FZR being the '92 Yamaha FZR 1000 which came back here with him from the West Coast, a veteran carver of the storied roads in northern Cal, a big white, red and black middle finger in the face of cops, lazy drivers and wannabe bikers. Riding the FZR was as realistic to me as piloting the Space Shuttle.

A couple of years later, a sportbike is becoming more appealing to me: the more inappropriate my age, the more I want to give it a shot. Most of my riding friends are either hardcore sportbike guys or actual old school bikers (not the Milwaukee Army of pathetic weekend warriors) and they have taught me through example the respect one should have for a machine capable of going from zero to DOA in ten seconds. It's as much of a skill thing as a thrill thing.

So, finally, a month or so ago, I threw my leg over the FZR in an empty parking lot. My first road ride was nothing outrageous, but the grin on my face didn't fade for a week. Not even after the next day, when I unceremoniously dropped the thing (I suffered some minor damage, not the bike, thank God) at a stop.

A few days ago, for the price of some very minor repairs, I officially registered the FZR in my name.

The other afternoon, I climbed aboard and rode out alone on 107, past the fairgrounds and to a beautiful, open, mildly winding piece of pristine tar we simply call "Don's road" after Drago's drummer, who lives there. On Don's road I wait for a bit of broken yellow and pass the car in front of me. I ease open the throttle and sail into the triple digits, the trees and houses streaming by in a blur, the conflicting late-summer smells of woodstove and barbecue like olfactory islands in the sensory ocean that speed provides.

Out onto 4, I get behind someone on a cruiser. He's going slow, and I am restless. When he turns onto my intended route, I simply go straight. 4 is wide open and empty. A yellow sign warns me that Moose might be Crossing. Slow down? Screw that, speed up and get out of Alces alces Alley before they come meandering out.

I realize now that I am cold. The sun is setting and autumn is definitely in the air. I wear only my t-shirt beneath my leather jacket; I was in too much of a hurry to add any layers. I accelerate more: the FZR gratefully purrs into the high 90s and I instinctively lower myself onto its tank and behind the flyscreen. I smile when I feel the warmth emanating from it. I am hugging it, it embraces me back.

On 125, we pass cars as if we are parting the Red Sea. The FZR and I are definitely a "we" now.
I stop at a red light and stretch a bit. The driver of the car next to me looks over, sees that I'm a chick, and gives me a thumbs up.

We roll onto 101 for the last leg home. Riding west, and the sun is almost gone, but the light is still there. The long strings of cirrus are an uncanny shade of bright pink against the deep blue August evening sky, the road is open, and my human dream of flight is realized.

I don't ride anywhere near as masterfully as Drago, or as aggressively as Spike, or as fast as Tommy Tradeup. I hear and acknowledge crap about my chicken stripes and about getting on the gas and about accelerating through corners not just out of them. But it's a beautiful night, and the speedo registers 110 when I glance down, and my worries outside of the immediate present of balance and vision and control disappear like the headlights in my mirrors.

It's ManBearPig!

2006-08-17T22:17:00.000-04:00

No, actually, it's some kind of chow-like mutant. Wonder what that awful keening, howling noise is at night? It's this.

Here's the scoop.

From the state that brought you Stephen King, the Beans, and The Stains, comes a wacky, long-lived, hyena-looking freak that allegedley killed a Rottweiler and a Dobermann! Not at the same time of course, but still.

Don't be surprised if you see these things show up as a "rare breed" in the back of Dog Fancy. "Spirited, independent and plucky, the Androscoggin Pigdog is still very affectionate with his family although not very tolerant of other animals." I'll probably have one as a client by Christmas.

Are there more of them? Where did they come from? Are they predators or just scavengers who fight back? wait...did you hear something? What's that noise? Honey, have you seen the cat around? Honey???

Definitely not bear friendly, Part 1

2006-08-03T23:33:00.000-04:00

http://video.msn.com/v/us/v.htm?g=b5a87332-09cf-42a2-b944-ee76dbf1dcb8&f=msn-l&fg=email

The British suck at the working dogs.
Look at their history: animal rights, Barbara Woodhouse and anti-crop-and-dock fanaticism can all trace their roots to the U.K.
Yeah, I know, staid low-rider Labs and all sorts of mutant spaniels, plus the plethora of tweedy sheepdoggers are certainly a strong point. But look at what they did to the GSD and the Dobe.
And only a Limey would think that leaving a Dobermann in charge of a frigging priceless stuffed animal display made sense.
Dude, this dog killed Elvis's fucking teddy bear!
That's practically a terrorist strike where I come from.

http://news.aol.com/entertainment/music/articles/_a/dog-destroys-elvis-teddy-bear-at-museum/20060802160609990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001

It's not the heat, it's the stupidity

2006-08-02T11:40:00.000-04:00

So it's like 100 degrees right now.

It's so hot, I saw one of my dogs chasing a squirrel and they were both walking.

We decided to halt regular ops at the kennel today, so I find myself with an unexpected day to myself. As usual, I considered going for a motorcycle ride. Then I decided against it: simply too hot.

As much as I love the warmth, when it's this oppressive I don't enjoy it and my temper can flare with the temperature. Makes me particularly lower-threshold around dumbasses, and if you wanna find dumbasses outside of the dog world, just throw one leg over a motorcycle and prepare to be stunned by the individual and collective moronica of your fellow man.

And just as my least favorite people in the dog world tend to be other dog professionals, my least favorite people in the two-wheeled world tend to be other motorcyclists.

You know, the doo-rag-wearin' dentists going two-under the speed limit on their $25,000 land yachts as they do their weekly Dunkin Donuts run, pointedly refusing to acknowledge anyone on a non-"American" bike ( a position made even more ironic by their cheesy, made-in-Pakistan, logo-encrusted riding uniforms). And the local sportbike squid population, bouncing off the rev limiter at every red light; riding shirtless with flip flops and a tube-top-clad hottie perched precariously on the passenger pad, helmets helpfully slung over their arms to protect the tiny vestigal brains located near their elbows.

The other night, Drago and I were in the truck, returning from the supermarket on Rte. 101. I've enjoyed 101 on my bike dozens of times, and it's one of the few places where I've experienced hitting the triple digit mark on the speedo. It's a beautiful highway divided by a generous grass median with two lanes in each direction. There is no reason to ride like an old, blind person on Rte. 101. Even a relative rookie like me can handle it at speed.
We came up behind two obvious OC-Choppers addicts on their Harleys. They were doing about the speed limit, and got into the left lane to pass a slower car. OK, so far, so good. But then, they didn't move over, even as we closed in on them. To make matters worse, they then split ranks so that one was in each lane of the highway, blocking all progress as they putted along, probably lost in the endless loop of "And I'm not gonna let 'em catch me, no, not gonna let 'em catch the Midnight Ri-i-i-ider..." echoing in their empty heads.

Um, boys? A little attention to the road, please? Do you know how frigging lucky you are that the man behind the wheel of our vehicle wasn't drunk, a biker-hater or even just a little more pissed off than you made him? Do the words "passing lane" mean anything to you?

Let me guess: if something happened to one of these dopes, you can bet all you would hear from their survivors would be about how crazy or stupid people in "cages" are...how a helmet wouldn't have saved good ol' Carl; how a particular mass-marketed and wildly overpriced brand of motorcycle represented Carl's rugged individualism (and his apparently unique, rebellious ability to procure a credit card and walk into a fern-bar dealership); how Carl was a very "experienced" rider (because he rides major highways to swap meets and poker runs and trailers his bike to the rally) and in no way was he responsible for his sudden and violent demise on the road.

I love riding more than pretty much anything else. And I like when passing riders give me the wave, and occasionally a thumbs-up, and in one case, an old crusty dude on an ancient Harley did something very close to a "sig heil" when he saw my awesome Vanson Bones jacket cresting the horizon. It's a bike thing. I dig it. Most of the people I've met on bikes have been cool. But on a day like today, when my temper-trigger is a little more on edge, I know that God will put idiots in my path.

Go back in time again

2006-08-02T00:26:00.000-04:00

yeah, I did it again.

I started an epic post about some crap that has become pretty stale by now, and only finished tonight, over a week after its inspired beginnings.

If you care, go to the entry called "Definitely Not Dog Friendly, Part 3", I think it's marked July 22.

And no, I don't know how to change the dates on this thing yet.

Definitely not dog friendly, Part 3

2006-07-22T13:25:00.000-04:00

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/pbccentral/content/local_news/epaper/2006/07/19/s1b_deaddog_0719.html

Before I begin heartlessly dissecting this whole thing, let me make the disclaimer that I do actually feel a great deal of sympathy for owner, dog and I suppose, on a much lesser level even the "trainer". The entire event is a sort of parable about the state of the industry and of our total remove from reality as "animal lovers". But there's an awful lot of ugly to go around here, so get out your spoons and hold your noses...

In some ways, this just goes to show you that old thing about fools and their money. On a lot of levels. First:

A year ago Lisa Bernstein rescued Ringo, an 8-week-old German shepherd pup, from the Tri-County Humane Society. The high-spirited dog became her teenage son's best friend, though the pooch didn't much like others.

So, you spent an "adoption fee" on a dog that doesn't like people.

The owner is no different than any other well-meaning dog lover being suckered into thinking that by "rescuing" something she is buying good pet-owning karma. Any time someone says they "rescued" an animal, I must ask them from what: drowning? burning? Peter Singer? The choice of words (rescue vs. adoption vs. purchase) says a lot about the state of mind of citizen dog owners. There was once a time when "rescue dog" meant a SAR canine. Now if you are an actual SAR handler and you say "rescue dog" when referring to your stalwart canine partner, your audience is almost guaranteed to breathlessly ask you what kind of abuse the poor thing was rescued from.

So. You purchased an 8 week old puppy from a shelter. Not like 8 week old puppies are on the short list for the purple juice at animal shelters, although all of the wild-eyed "Speuter Everything" zealots would have you believe that. Actually, it's adult dogs that get 86'd the most, especially when well-meaning but illogical humane groups import litters of pups and cuter, smaller dogs from other regions to fill the local demand.

Let's say you "Adopted" him, OK? But you didn't "rescue" anything.

"The woman came into my house with a dog that was in perfect health. She sat on my dog for one hour and killed him," Bernstein said, weeping.

One hour? As in sixty minutes?
Leave it to me to blame the victim, I guess. However, after a few minutes, I think most of us would have said, "Hey, Boss, this doesn't seem to be doing the trick. And Ringo is panting like a priest at a Cub Scout meeting. Let him get up."
But you know what? A lot of the women (and it is women) in my client base have such a helpless, built-in victim mentality that they practically live like hostages to their dogs. Then they finally seek help from a treat-slinging trainerette and allow all sorts of expensive ridiculousness to go on for another few months or years as they continue to follow the outrageously impractical and ineffective recommendations of the "no consequences" dogma. Then they let the Big Bux Behaviorist down at the Fancy Skool gork the dog out on whatever Farnam is pushing this season. So why wouldn't this poor lady hesitate to question the "trainer" in this case, because after all:
She's been on national talk shows displaying her ability to bark like 200 breeds of dogs.

Wonder if the "trainer" knows how to say "HELP ME! I'M SUFFOCATING!" in Shepherdese?

Let's let poor Mrs. Bernstein be.
Instead, let's turn our attention to Jill Deringer, who allegedley
used what some trainers call a questionable technique, muzzling the dog and holding him down to show him who's the boss.
"I do an alpha role. Many trainers do this. I hold it down to prevent myself from being bitten," Deringer said.

OK. I confess. I use corrections. And if someone saw what I did without understanding the context, or if they were one of the Omnipresent Wincers who bite their trembling lower lips when reading the words "pinch collar", they might think I was up to no good.

But:

The "alpha roll" (I pray that "role" was a typo and not this "trainer"'s understanding of the term) is not something "many" trainers use. And Ms. Deringer seems to be confused...did she do this to "show the dog who's boss"? Or, as she said in the interview, did she do it to prevent herself from getting bitten? Let's just say that if it's the former, she's a typical wannabe who read too many Monks of New Skete books and sits in glassy-eyed adulation during episodes of The Dog Whisperer (and hey, I think he's cool, too, but some of his moves are...um...not so cool for most people to try). But if it's the latter, she's very lucky worse things haven't happened. Someone who claims to have worked with lots of "aggressive" dogs and yet uses this as their first defense against mauling must be talking lots of shit. And if he was trying to bite, how did she put the muzzle on? And if he had a muzzle on, why was she worried about getting bitten in the first place? I mean, muzzle strikes hurt, but they aren't going to put you away. But then she says:
she was simply holding the dog — kneeling over him, but not applying her full weight — to prevent him from kicking her. Despite those efforts, she said, "He struck me over 100 times. I have the scratches to prove it."
You know how to keep a dog from kicking you? Don't hold him prone on the floor.

When Ringo finally calmed, Deringer took off the muzzle but he just sat there panting. That had never happened before, she said.

Well, Jesus Christ, what usually happens when you let up a dog you have successfully "alpha roled" to (a) show him who's boss, (b) keep him from biting you and (c) keep him from kicking you? Does he stand up on two legs, shake your hand and say, "Thanks, lady, I needed that." ?

Deringer said the whole situation is "sad and emotional."

No shit it's sad and emotional!

A spokesman for Petco, where Deringer worked, said company officials were aware of the situation and were looking into it.
"This is unfortunate all around. What this person did is something she is responsible for, and we are investigating it fully and will take appropriate actions," said Don Cowan from the company's corporate office in San Diego, Calif.
Cowan said their trainers go through a certification program that includes classroom training and some on-the-job training with other trainers.

Kids, can we discuss this?
I am absolutely no fan of the alleged "training programs" offered by the Cosmodemonic Pet Supply Companies, and would no sooner trust one of their in-house "certified" "trainers" to help me with my dog any more than I would trust the acne-scarred cashier at the CVS to give me medical advice.
Oh, I know, there are plenty of solid trainers who work at the 'Co and the 'Mart to supplement their income. But the ones who are indoctrinated by the corporations themselves are woefully unprepared to do much more than teach puppy manners to semi-retarded Golden Retrievers.
Believe me, I have all of the "training materials" that one of the corps uses to teach its instructors (thanks to a mole who used to work there) and it is scary. All of their emphasis on the "pet parent" mentality makes me wonder if its more astute consumers would do a more literal comparison and ask themselves if they'd entrust the education of their human child to the senior waitron at Chuck E. Cheese.
Here's your first assignment, HOBD readers: go to your local Big Box Store Pet Supply Warehouse and observe an obedience class. Then get back to me about whether you actually saw any training taking place, or if it was mostly cleancut Miller Youth towing rambunctious dogs around on head halters and flat collars, all the while giving them "requests" in a tone that Julie Andrews would find offensively saccharine and force feeding them corporation-approved treats at a rate that makes you wonder if there is a secret market for canine foie gras.

The suits at the 'Co must be shitting their pants right now...this person, in her own time, has actually killed a client's dog. It literally has NOTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH THEM. But now their name is attached to it, and frankly, I feel sorry for them. Up until now, their rather impotent approach to training and behavior modification has probably not cost any dogs their lives. I mean, even the cheapest bastard among us would have to think twice before giving up their dog as incorrigible after taking a $99-for-life obedience course in the dry food aisle of a retail store, right? But now their name is attached to an alleged dog-killer. Does this mean that they'll stop hiring all outside trainers with real experience, choosing to limit their liability to their own homegrown "educators"? If they knew that Deringer used techniques that fall well outside of their so-called "dog friendly" standards, why would they reco her to anyone? What if they didn't know? Why didn't they? How do they screen people who say they "know how to train dogs"?

You know, the most incomeptent trainer I ever knew talked a good game. Her husband was a real trainer, balanced, humane, results-oriented. But she was a wannabe; an ex-groomer who spent lots of time on the internet and who couldn't train her own dog if you pointed a gun at her head. But she could talk the talk, in her annoying, Roseanne Barr-like voice, and that was enough to get her appointed Head Trainer at a major rescue group. My moles there used to regale me with stories of her dangerous, clownish behavior and her total lack of even the most basic handling knowledge. Her "methods" changed with whatever she read on the Internet that week, leaning mostly toward "dog friendly" stuff. She could get a paralyzed double amputee bitten by a 12-year-old blind Therapy Lab: she was that unsafe. Last I heard, one of the big Corps hired her. Be afraid.

It's unclear what training techniques Deringer used while at Petco, but Stephen Zawistowski, a certified applied animal behaviorist with the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in New York, said the "alpha dog" method is based on concepts that are 20 to 30 years old.

No, Stephen, you egghead, it's based on poorly interpreted but totally valid concepts that are about 10-20,000 years old. You know, the ones where canids live in structured hierarchies and routinely maintain pack order through ritualistic displays of dominance and submission? Oh, that's right, B. F. Skinner trained rats to release pellets using the concepts of operant conditioning, and if you can get those famously frustrated captive sea mammals to stop fucking each other, you might make them jump through hoops for a piece of chum with the same methods, so the way that dog-like things communicate with each other is now totally incorrect and irrelevant. Got it.

"Theoretically, beating kids with a strap used to keep them behaved, but we don't do that any more," Zawistowski said

Speak for yourself, you geek.

"Our concept is that humane training does not inflict unnecessary distress or discomfort."

And you're right. But who gets to decide what's "unnecessary"? And who gets to decide what "distress" and "discomfort" are? What if the dog owner thinks it's necessary to give his dog a quarter-second electronic stimulation to keep him from running out into the street and being hit by a truck? What if the young, well-adjusted Siberian Husky I'm training right now thinks that a Level 5 on a TriTronics Classic 70 isn't all that uncomfortable? Am I allowed to go to 6? Or is that inhumane? Or should I tell his owner to simply keep him in a crate all of the time to "manage" him rather than to correct him when he starts to eat a stray sock, remote control, or piece of drywall?

On Tuesday, Bernstein got a call from Jeannette Christos of the Tri-County Humane Society that another German shepherd, one the same age as Ringo, was available for adoption. Her family had moved to Costa Rica and couldn't keep her.

Uh-oh, I know where this is going...

It was a "beshert," Yiddish for "meant to be," said Bernstein. "This dog needed us and we needed her. She is going to help us heal."

Yes, but are you going to help her heel? Or are you now permanently damaged when it comes to hiring a trainer due to your unfortunate experience with the last one you met? And who could blame you?

How do you say "I don't foresee a happy ending" in Yiddish?

Getting in over your head with canids

2006-07-18T20:49:00.000-04:00

That was what happened with this poor woman:

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribunereview/news/westmoreland/s_462296.html

Listen, I'm gonna steer clear of the whole wolf hybrid controversy. I'm starting one as a student this weekend, I've already met him, his people didn't intend to get a hybrid but ended up with one, and they're going to do the right thing and train him. A couple of good friends are pretty much wolf and hybrid experts . They're not dummies, and they aren't delusional. But this lady in the story...man, I gotta problem with this:

"She loved those wolves just like pets. She told me she was part American Indian, and she told me it was part of her ethnic background," said Brian Gallagher, a longtime friend who has a theory about what happened.

Someone enlighten me: I get that Native Americans had to live in harmony with wolves. They respected them, they attributed a level of sacredness to them.

But did they keep half dozens of them in packs in fenced in enclosures? That's a bit of a stretch. Kevin Costner was called "Dances With Wolves", not "Breeds Wolves to German Shepherds and Malamutes and Sells Them to Delusional Suburbanites With 'Back to Nature' Complexes".

"They were all one pack ... including Sandra, who was considered the leader of the pack. I think one of them may have wanted to take over as leader of the pack," Gallagher said.

Gee, ya think?

"And how is your busy day going?"

2006-07-04T22:37:00.000-04:00

That's how Cap Haggerty used to answer the phone: a brilliant pre-emptive strike against anyone calling him to bitch about how bad they had it, in the guise of a polite concern that left you feeling that no matter how hectic and scrambled your schedule was, you were about to find time to speak with Cap in a leisurely, civilized manner.

There was a time when I spoke with Cap almost every week. But lately, I didn't find time to speak with Cap often enough, especially in the last few months, during his battle with cancer. My "busy days" got in my way. At the beginning of his illness, I tried to reach him a few times, but kept getting endless ringing. Then I gave up trying to call. I sent him something for Father's Day. But it would have been infinitely better to hear his voice.

I was a chicken. I didn't know what to say to him. I didn't like knowing that it would be a last or second-to-last conversation. I was too weak to speak to a dying man.

We lost him last night, an hour before it became July 4th.

Cap was a classic raconteur, a Renaissance man, a "magnificent curmudgeon" as a colleague stated it so well. I remember dozens of conversations with him, on the phone or in person, where he would riff on something using the most colorful and politically incorrect terms or react to a dropped name with a dismissive "He sucks." and I would be grinning like an idiot to listen to the stern music of his speech. Cap was down with it. No pretense, no false modesty, no mistaking himself for a hero (even though he was one to all sorts of trainers like me). He made me feel at home in the upper echelons of the dog training world.

I only knew him for a few years, but I have many rich, smile-provoking memories of the times we spent together and the sprawling phone conversations that covered everything two perversely opinionated Irish-American dog trainers, one young, one old, could come up with.

Somewhere in my office is a framed picture of Cap and me when he came to NH a few years ago. He is a giant of a man, and he dwarfs me in the shot. I remember the weight of his arm around my shoulder, and how proud I was to stand next to him, and how I could practically feel the lifetime of experiences travelling between us like an electrical current. He was a part of history even when he was alive.

Godspeed, my Captain. My busy days will be a bit more empty now.

Totally off topic

2006-07-01T09:29:00.000-04:00

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyid=2006-06-29T173915Z_01_SP130276_RTRUKOC_0_US-PAKISTAN-BULB.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-R1-MostViewed-3

"Hey, Mahmoud, where's that 40 watt bulb that was lying around here?"

"If it was up your ass you'd know it."

It's official

2006-06-23T09:54:00.000-04:00

According to a quiz I took (in order to kill time and avoid going out into my kennels in the rain), I got a gentleman's C in badness. It's actually the 2nd time I took the quiz, since the first time I took it, I felt slightly less evil than I do today. But I got the same result both times.

***You Are 70% Evil***
You are very evil. And you're too evil to care.Those who love you probably also fear you. A lot.
How Evil Are You?http://www.blogthings.com/howevilareyouquiz/

Frankly, I'm sort of disappointed. Thought I'd do better. I was hoping for at least an 80.

Of course, it doesn't have real indicators of evil like:

"You have tried to enlist your friends in a multi-level marketing program."
or
"You have thrown your own engagement/wedding/baby shower and insisted that everyone you've ever met attends with a gift."

definitely not dog friendly, Part 2

2006-06-22T15:43:00.000-04:00

http://www.tcpalm.com/tcp/local_news/article/0,2545,TCP_16736_4788632,00.html

Let's see: it's interspecial, same-sex, and the victim was underage.

Does that make it sadohomopedobestiality?

Check out the photo of the sick bastid that did this >>>
and immediately comprehend why he couldn't find a consenting adult human partner. Or even an adult dog.

I hope that Junio Trenta reaps the rewards in prison for being el amante de pequenos perritos.
If not, maybe during his stay he can become "close" to some of those crazy Department of Corrections Malinois, although I understand they prefer to be on top.

Another "friend of animals" exposed/order the lobsta

2006-06-16T08:55:00.000-04:00

http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-7/1150352797188700.xml&coll=1

So, the guy weighs 500 pounds, lives with his parents, and makes his living off of "Only You Can Help Abused Animals" collection canisters all over NJ. His punishment should be to replace each one of the thousands of canisters with one that has a photo of him awash in his own fat, reclining on his mom's couch, watching Animal Planet and eating Haagen Dazs, with a caption that says "Only You Can Help Me Kill Myself...Donate Here So I Can Afford More TastyKake Products".

But more importantly, pretentious Whole Foods Market has decided to stop the sale of live lobsters and crabs, due to the inherent cruelty of their capture, shipment, storage, and of course, the Jacuzzi of Death that awaits them once they go home.

"The ways that lobsters are treated would warrant felony cruelty to animals charges if they were dogs or cats," said Bruce Friedrich, a spokesman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

But Bruce, you mentally ill person, lobsters are NOT dogs and cats. They're...you know...sea bugs.

In making its decision, Whole Foods pointed to a November report from the European Food Safety Authority Animal Health and Welfare panel that it said concluded all decapod crustaceans, including lobsters and crabs, appear to have some degree of awareness, feel pain and can learn.

The European Food Safety blah blah blah? Listen, the Europeans can't even figure out the wants, needs and behavioral potential of their Moroccans. How the hell can they pretend to know about crustaceans?

From now on, Whole Foods will only sell frozen raw and cooked lobster products at its more than 180 stores in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, said Margaret Wittenberg, vice president of quality standards. And the chain will only deal with suppliers meeting their standards for humane treatment, handling and processing.

What exactly is "humane treatment" when it comes to offing a lobster? Lethal injection? Wouldn't that affect the flavor? Do they smother them with little pillows while they sleep? I hear that death by drowning isn't that bad, and all of those people who get rescued from icy mountaintops right before they expire report that death by freezing is quite peaceful. But lobsters live in the ocean, and tend to do well in very cold water, so I guess those are out. Do they give them little lobster cardiac arrests by getting everybody at the pier to jump out from behind the traps and trailers with noisemakers, yelling "SURPRISE!" That doesn't sound very efficient. Jesus, how much is the "approved" lobster meat going to cost?

Somebody help me out here.

Go back in time

2006-06-15T10:31:00.000-04:00

to the entry marked June 7th.

I can't figure out how to change the dates on this thing. And no, please don't write to me and tell me how, just accept the fact that I am practically a Luddite and it is a miracle that I have even come this far in my computer literacy.

Definitely not dog friendly

2006-06-10T17:32:00.000-04:00

Hey, I've been working on this EPIC entry about the innumerable hypocrisies of the "positive only"/animal rights/furkids coalition. It's wicked long and if you already like my way of thinking, you'll probably want to send me money (which you can do at my website, on the articles page). You may even want me to move in with you and teach your children how to survive in a world full of parasites and moralistic douchebags.

And if you already don't like my way of thinking, you will probably want to firebomb my house.

But it'll be worth the wait.

In the meantime, chew on this:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13205576/fromET/

Come on!

animal rights?

2006-06-07T10:07:00.000-04:00

This is one of the nicest little summations of everything that is wrong with the way we relate to animals.

For years I've been reworking articles about all of the inconsistencies of the "animal lovers" and wannabe social engineers who have invaded my field under the conflicting banners of cold science and squishy emotionalism. The articles have been titled "Positively Misleading", "Who Decides 'Dog Friendly'?", and "The Slippery Slope of Guardianship". They are never finished, because, as you will see, I cannot keep a cool head when I write about this stuff. Ms. Mortensen's brief description of the animals-are-little-people phenomenon does a better job than anything I've put together so far, and she addresses the problem in the context of wildlife vs. Homo Suburbus. If you didn't already, go click on that link and check it out.

Right now there is a firestorm of controversy in the dog behavior world because of Cesar Milan, better known as The Dog Whisperer. I don't necessarily buy into every single thing he's selling, but this guy has brought the most common sense into the average pet dog owner's home than anyone else has in the past twenty years. And of course, the academics and the Skinnerian utopians are FREAKING OUT! Movements to ban training equipment, take over (by force, ironically) the designation "dog friendly" and tryhard pushes to answer back Cesar's obvious popularity among dog owners via "Hey, trainerettes, let's put on a show! We'll show mean ol' Cesar Milan what we gals can do!" rallying.

When I was a kid, some old hayseed told me that the only time a rabbit makes a noise is when it's being killed. Supposedly, it shrieks like a baby. I don't know if that's true or not, but it's a great analogy for what's happening in the La-La Land of wishful thinking "trainers". The powerful talons of Common Sense have just hammered down on the trembling bunny of the holier-than-thou school of dog work. The bunny is making the loudest and most unpleasant noise it has in its whole life. But that's cos it's in its DEATH THROES.

Now, using quotes from their website, let's take a look at what these folks have to say, and we'll find a few gaping holes in their "logic". First, let's check out their definition of "dog friendly":

The following dog trainers are committed to "Dog-Friendly" training. “Dog-Friendly” training means they teach their clients to encourage desired behaviors with frequent and high value rewards

OK, that's cool, so do lots of balanced trainers I know. But, ever run into one of those dogs who just doesn't want to take a treat, regardless of how allegedly delicious it is? Maybe the dog is so stressed that he simply can't eat. Here's what their answer is: "Don't stress the dog".
Oh.
What if it's one of those poor bastards whose genetic nerve threshold is so fragile that the act of
walking from one point to the next is a virtual Bataan Death March? Waking up in the morning is stressful to some dogs. What if getting the hell away from you is the most profound reward there is?
I'm training a dog like this right now: practically feral in his shyness. Won't even think about taking a treat. And physical praise? He hates to be touched, and has only recently started to allow his handler to pet him. If he was my dog, I guess I would put him down. But the fellow who has him is the director of a rescue, is very open-minded, and feels as though he owes the dog one last chance, since he knew him as a young, untroubled pup. He's also seen decent improvement in the dog, and my prognoisis has gotten a bit better. If things don't go well, he will do the right thing and euthanize the dog. In the meantime, I've been charged with helping the dog adapt to life, in order to save the only life he has.
On the other end of the spectrum, I've trained many dogs who were so frenzied in their determination to attack other dogs or in some cases, people, that breaking through to them was nearly impossible. Whenever I bring up this type of case to a hardcore R+ (shorthand for "positive reinforcement") trainerette, I am greeted with disbelief, as if dogs like this simply don't exist, and that I am posing some kind of a trick question on the APDT multiple choice certification exam, and am advised to "try a better treat".
Sometimes negative reinforcement (R-) or positive punishment (P+) is the only way to break through to these dogs. Applying slight pressure and relieving it when the dog succeeds. Once the dog learns that he can control the relief of the pressure, it usually opens up the floodgates and he gains enough confidence to accept a reward that was previously meaningless. And this isn't theory, or something I saw on a Powerpoint presentation at a seminar. It's something that I have personally accomplished hundreds of times with lasting, happy results. But according to the soi-dissant "Dog Friendly" jihadists, this is unacceptable. Inhumane.

and to either prevent or ignore behavior that is not liked.

Prevention: OK, sure, use a crate when you can't watch the dog sometimes. Or have him on leash so that you can direct his actions better. But tethering the dog to an object so that you don't have to actually teach him but you can feel good that you aren't crating him is, like most of these peoples' theories, intellectually dishonest if not downright morally bankrupt. Hey, wait a minute...isn't this the crowd that wants to ban tethering of dogs altogher? Oh, that's right. If regular people want to tie out their dog, even with the necessities of water, shade and shelter and only for a few hours a day, that's neglect. But if an enlightened R+ Kool-Aid drinker wants to pay ten bucks for a "special" tether and use it to restrict her dog's movement in the house so that she doesn't actually have to correct him, that's dog-friendly.

Ignoring: If I'm reading and Cora decides that she MUST HAVE MY ATTENTION for no real reason, I cross my legs, fold my arms, avert my eyes and tell her "BACK". And she leaves me alone. That's pretty effective ignoring.
But if Cain the Boerboel Mastiff is climbing the leash to attack me because I dared to touch his foot with my own as I walked him out of the kennel, I'm gonna say that ignoring him may not be an option. The R+ answer to this, by the way, is: "reward him when he isn't mauling you".

Actually, the real R+ answer to this when the question isn't strictly hypothetical and is instead embodied by a living, breathing animal and a desperate owner, is: "Kill the dog". VERY dog friendly.

They do NOT use or recommend any methods or tools that work on the principal of intimidation or coercion or that have been designed to cause the dog physical, mental or emotional pain.

What does the dictionary say about "coercion"? co·erce ( P ) Pronunciation Key (k-ûrs)tr.v. co·erced, co·erc·ing, co·erc·es
To force to act or think in a certain way by use of pressure, threats, or intimidation; compel.

OK, so let's look at what equipment they allow and come back to this definition.

That means they NEVER use or recommend shock collars, choke collars, prong collars, squirt bottles, scruff shakes, alpha rollovers and other inhumane tools and techniques.

Hmmm....OK, fellow travelers, notice anything missing from this laundry list of the Tools of The Inquisition? Something that can be seen on the desperate faces of dogs at every Rally, agility, or shelter event? Something like...HEAD HALTERS???

The disclaimer: they have their place, they can be very handy in helping small or frail people get fast control of a big unruly dog, and anyone who trains should be well-versed in how to use them. Also, some of my best friends are black .

BUT

If you've ever read the propaganda (and I have), you will see a bunch of breathless wonderment about how the collar puts gentle pressure on the poll and muzzle, "calming" points just like a dominant dog would apply to the head and neck of an underling. The poll...isn't that right around the scruff? Now, granted, a quarter of a century spent around dogs, training, handling, observing as a student, may not be much. But in that time I have rarely seen one dog grab the muzzle and poll of another. Anyway, if you're using words like "dominant" in the context of dog behavior, you must be talking pack theory. I thought that all of this "pack theory" stuff is way outdated and only practiced by cavemen. At least, that's what the Doc Who Drugged Too Much says about Milan's techniques. If that's the case, Herr Doktor, why is it that when I sat across from you in your office on a co-consult a few years ago, you had a head halter model displayed prominently behind your desk? Isn't that, by definition, a dominating tool? I thought people who used any type of domination were abusive. Which is it?

Right.

There are many excellent, well-thought out critiques of the head halter, including this one , and even better, this one. So I'll let you read what's already been said. My main beef is that of all of the training tools out there, not one of them uses as much force or coercion (see above definition) as the halter. And yet, these silly people who want to define dog friendly are unmoved by the blatantly obvious discomfort and restraint to which they subject their dogs. I refuse to call it a "Gentle Leader" since it isn't gentle and it doesn't lead. Actually, until these creeps stop saying "shock collar", I'm gonna refer to it as a "face forcer". Much more accurate.

Not much pisses me off more than hypocrisy. I used to yell at my mother that if the Catholic Church cared so much about the poor, why the fuck does the Pope live in a palace? I love news stories about philandering evangelists and SUV-driving Green-leaning celebrities. But I have never, in 38 years of my life, seen more outright pot-calling-kettle-black, people-in-glass-houses-throwing-stones, reaching-for-the-speck-in-your-neighbor's-eye-while-ignoring-the-2x4-in-your-own behavior than that of these sad, dishonest FRAUDS who are trying to tell me, you and the rest of the world that they are "dog friendly". And just like the Protestants who rose up and demanded to know why they couldn't communicate directly with their Maker without the intervention of a priest, we should be asking why we can't determine what is humane and dog friendly without the blessing of these self-proclaimed experts. Quick, someone nail the introduction to the KMODT Novice Book to the APDT's door!

I've heard them referred to as "pozzie-Nazis" by people in the middle. I won't call them that because it's an insult to anyone affected by the Holocaust, and the Nazis had WAY better outfits.

Really, they are much more akin to the apparatchiks of Big Brother. They even have their own Ministries of Love (the shelters where haggard martyrs-for-the-animals pinch lips, squeeze toes and poke strange dogs' faces with plastic hands until they get a reaction, then wring their hands as they 86 the dog and curse their lot as one of Sue Sternberg's avenging angels), and their Ministries of Truth (picture the editing desks at The Whole Dog Journal, where facts about dog behavior are distorted until they perfectly reflect the "dog friendly" philosophy of their Training Editor).

Listen, there's a lot more. But it's taken me forever to produce this gleaming gob of vitriol, so that's it for tonight. Just remember that the more someone trots out the phrase "dog friendly", the more they want to take away the rights of dogs' true friends to determine what is humane and effective in training. Don't let 'em take the language.

best pick up line this month, so far

2006-06-06T20:43:00.000-04:00

So, the other night, Drago had a gig in the vital, heaving heart of the urban beast we call Manchester.
In a sombrero-and-Ultram-based altered state, I managed to get myself locked out of the club (this was after closing, so don't go gettin' all "Oh, no you dinnn'nnnt" on me, yo) and had to walk the extra dozen yards or so across the parking lot to the car, where the band was having their post gig confab.
During that brief, all-business stroll to the vehicle, my path was diagonally intercepted by a man who was walking with the determined stride of someone who is either on a mission, or trying to leave a crime scene without actually breaking into a run. He was wearing shorts and a sweatshirt, and was generally cleancut.

Man: (without breaking his stride) Hey, how ya doin'?
JV: (no eye contact but no nervousness) Great, thanks.
Man: You wanna go get some coffee? Maybe smoke a little crack or something?
JV: (astonished eye contact but still calm)All set, thanks.

OK. Dude asked me if I wanted to smoke crack with him.

So, apparently this guy thinks that it's a cool way to meet chicks. Drago says that hey, maybe it's worked for him in the past.

What if I said yes? Would I find myself over at the Red Arrow, tweaking over a steaming mug of Joe after hittin' the pipe out in the parking lot? Then what? Back to his place at The Cadillac Motel ("Rooms for a Night or a Lifetime") so we can chill and listen to his Eddie Money records?

I will just add this encounter to the great storehouse of sweet regrets and candy-colored might-have-beens in my memory.

proof that God doesn't exist

2006-06-02T19:06:00.000-04:00

Pat Robertson's plane crashed and he wasn't even on it.

He must have been hanging out at home, practicing those one-ton leg presses.

so much for self-discipline

2006-06-01T11:58:00.000-04:00

For months now I have been making a bargain with myself.
I promised myself that this week I will get back on the bandwagon.
I will rise, fully rested and totally energized, and proceed to Kick the Ass of The World.

Oh, the brilliant words I'll commit to history: my articles, my training website, this here blog, goddammit, I'm even gonna start playin' music again! And the things I will accomplish with my dogs!

But each day melts into the next, and I replace all of these things with the daily distractions of mundanity: work, the house, correspondence with clients, ritualistic dinner-in-front-of-the-teevee and subsequent passing out on the couch, my last conscious thoughts a lame continuation of the Procrastinators' Creed: "TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY".

But, see, it isn't. Just now I went looking for traces of my musical career online. My band, The Magdalenes, had a modest but devoted following and recognition from critics and fans, we played real clubs, put out a well-received single and CD, and attracted some of the most decent and reputable Boston musicians to play with us. But there isn't a scrap of evidence that we even existed, let alone that we actually rocked. Go ahead, search for "The Magdalenes" and you'll find all sorts of stuff about the religious order and the original MM (I named the band after the concept in "The Last Temptation" that Mary's name came from her village, which was basically like a Biblical version of Reno...if you saw some guy walking around in a drunken stupor with his dick in his hand, waving a fistful of coins with his other hand as he called out for a prostitute, you could assume he was a Magdalene.) And of course, with all of the newfound fascination with that execrable New Age Hardy Boys mystery, "The DaVinci Code", there's a million other "Magdalene" connections, none of which have to do with my band.

Yeah, I know, blah blah blah.

Who cares.

Well, keep checking in as I shovel against the tide of my own mortality and anonymity. That Special Day when my schedule opens up enough to allow time in front of the keyboard has arrived, I guess.

The dog world is full of idiots

2006-01-19T10:41:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I said it.

And before you think I'm talking about the stereotypical knuckle-draggers whose dogs bear the brunt of their lack of control over anything else in their lives, think again. Those guys are a dying breed, thank God. I'm talking about some other ones that I find even more offensive.

*The sobsister humaniac for whom every blink of her dog's eye symbolizes evidence of horrific abuse by an evil man (usually an evil man with a beard and a baseball hat...Johnny Damon, I knew I hated you before you left the Red Sox, you frigging sadist!).

*The Munchausen-by-proxy owner who shows up at the boarding kennel with hundreds of individually wrapped baggies of each day's rations of yak's milk/mysterymeat/flaxseed/baby's blood and a Wonka-esque variety of shiny pills and serums because Nookums, an emaciated creature who previously was capable of living well off of Ol' Roy and bacon grease, has been deemed ALLERGIC and must live on the most specialized of diets.

*The chronic complainer who has absolutely nothing to talk about unless it's a fault-finding diatribe about the fascinating problems presented by her dog, and how she's "tried everything", and who greets any suggestions about actual solutions (which inevitably involve her getting off of her privileged ass and training the dog) with a series of "Yes, but..." objections.

*The star-struck, slack-jawed disciples of the gurus of the moment, who have turned their moderately successful idols into virtual doggy rock stars, unquestioningly accepting the increasingly bizarre and irresponsible theories of Spanish-Inquisition-style temperament tests, "Feisty Fido" classes, and "purely positive" training methods as irrefutable fact, and defending the dogma with the tenacity of a Crusader.

* Anyone who reads the Whole Dog Journal as anything more serious than the Weekly World News for the canine set.

Why? Why am I on a tear?

Because this morning one of my first received emails was from some nitwit in NY who adopted a dog that was trying to bite people in her house, and who contacted me last year about helping her. I told her what I could, with the disclaimer that it was only advice and that without looking at the dog and handling him, I couldn't do as much for her as she needed. The only trainers in her area were the same ineffective cookie-pushing morons who gave her such gems as "throw a water balloon at him when he tries to bite someone", and "feed him a treat everytime he doesn't aggress". I offered to see her FREE OF CHARGE if she made the trip to NH, just to help her out, give her dog some hands-on attention, teach her a few necessary skills. Never heard from her again until this morning. Ten months later. She had to return the dog. And it was my fault for not helping her.
OK.

Like the hand-wringing martyrs who work at animal shelters solely to trumpet their own moral superiority in the act of euthanasia ("Humanity failed this poor creature, but I will save it by killing it!") and the pathetic wannabes who cringe at a collar correction and instead of maybe becoming ficus owners decide that they will improve how the rest of us treat dogs by mandating that we instead treat them like dolphins, lab rats or "fur children", this is a person who should never be allowed around a dog but who will now surround herself with them as evidence that she is somehow superior to those of us who actually succeed on our own terms with the canine species.

I wish her luck, and I weep for her next dog.

so much for consistency

2006-01-17T08:57:00.000-05:00

So I'm fickle. Easy to distract.
Somewhere between January 1st and today I must have been thrown off course by the sight of a shiny object or something.

When you lose touch with someone (something at which I excel on an Olympic level) and then catch up with them, the conversation can go a couple of different ways. If you meant to connect with them, you might discuss relevant, sensible things such as "So what have you been up to?" or "Are you still seeing that jerk?" or "Hey, any chance you can return my James White and the Blacks album?"

But if it's awkward you may sink into that cliche about the weather.

I didn't actually expect to write this morning, so let's talk about the weather.

The other night the temperature was up to nearly 60. I was driving through the southern New Hampshire landscape in the dusk, listening to "Bad Indian" by the Gun Club and all around me the earth was giving up the ghost of its snow in the form of fog and steam, the weak light of the setting sun faintly illuminating the remaining patches of white. False spring, and with it all of the nameless yearnings and temptations that usually accompany the real thing in April.

Then, yesterday, the thermometer in the single digits, the sun bright and harsh and arrogant in spite of its utter uselessness in the face of such bitter cold, I sat bracing myself in the truck, heat on full blast, postponing the inevitable entry into the stinging air. I spent the whole day wearing my Carharrt indoors, shivering to the point of nausea, cursing the weak will which keeps me living here in New England every winter when I would so obviously be better off somewhere like Texas.

Last night the temperature came back up into the 20's but I never recovered my warmth. Regardless of layers of flannel and wool, in front of a huge fire I feel the cold in my liver, my stomach, my lungs, as if it was poison that I had inhaled. I force myself up and out of the tartan blanket to let the dogs out for their last potty break. Opening the slider to the big backyard, I watch as Cora, Kindi and Lex barrel out of sight, up to the fence line for their midnight patrol. The freezing air seems to amplify every noise from the vast woods beyond the fence: twigs snapping, a random leaf or bit of pine needle breaking off and hitting the frozen ground, a car door slamming half a mile away. Shivering and desperate for the comfort of my bed, I still linger at the door and let the dogs play for a few extra minutes. I hate that the winter is so beautiful. If I could only lose myself in the beauty of the moment, I could ignore the physical intolerance for cold that leaves me weakened and miserable in anything less than 45 degree weather. And on the occasions when I have been able to link moments like this together, I can forget the reality of the cold for longer periods of time, I can become its admirer, a better native New Englander instead of this complaining, wannabe Texan.

The night has a particularly luminous quality to it. For a moment I feel privileged, as if I am the only one allowed to see this pristine snapshot of the woods in its privacy. In the distance, a bit of inky blackness peels itself away from the greater darkness behind it. It is Lex, and despite his thin Doberman coat and his advancing age, he is perfectly happy to run through the snow. I watch him in admiration as he gallops along the fence, through the wizened apple trees and down the hill toward the house. If he can do it, I tell myself, then I can find pleasure in the winter. I can stand up to the cold and find it bracing rather than debilitating. Lex represents a higher consciousness, a Zen-like perfection of finding the sublime in the everyday.

As I open the door to let him back in, he pauses for a moment at the threshold, and drops a frozen dog turd he has been carrying at my feet.

Well, there you go.

One more colorful thread in in the rich tapestry of exurban NH humanity

2006-01-01T19:05:00.000-05:00

www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0712051brack1.html

I seem to have missed this story when it happened 6 months ago, but this dude sums up that carefree NH attitude that makes me proud to be a part of this great state. You know, shirtless drunk driving and that spunky je ne sais pas that turns a mugshot into a Justin Timberlake poster.

Him and the guy dressed as Santa who dropped his pants at the mall. That guy was from MA, as we don't tolerate homebred perverts up here ever since the Citgo Sicko incident (see below). But he knew where to export his whimsical brand of seasonal not-quite-pedophilia.

The town where I used to work up here is tiny, rural, and so rife with bizarrities that I refer to it as Mayberry LSD. We have the town drunk, a Bible thumping woman who phoned in death threats to the police department when she found out there was a gay officer on the force. We had the "Citgo Sicko" caught red-handed just up the road, an enterprising service station operator who would trade tanks of petrol and cases of beer in exchange for oral pleasure from local teens (obviously suffering from last summer's crushing gas prices, shame on you, Big Oil!). Add in the guy who kept a few eatin' pigs in large schoolbuses on his property, and his nemesis, the non-meat-eating-but-leather-furniture-having Animal Control Officer who is deathly, scream-at-the-top-of-her-lungs-and-actually-run-away terrified of snakes, frogs and toads, and you can see how much fun there is to be had for the casual observer.

We may not have the Naked Cowboy like they do in NYC, but we're doin' ok.

so this "positive only" trainer walks into a bar...

2005-12-28T19:51:00.000-05:00

...but because her dog is pulling on the leash and she has to keep stopping until the dog ceases pulling so that she can positively reinforce him, it takes her approximately seventeen months to traverse the twenty feet from the curb to the entryway, during which time the bar changes owners and becomes kinda seedy and right when she finally achieves a loose leash as she passes over the threshold, new proprietor and ex-con Mean Uncle Leroy fires a shot from his .44 at deadbeat regular "Short Eyes" Flanagan, who, in an uncharacteristic display of catlike reflexes, ducks, and the errant bullet passes through the wall, into the hidden back room, and hits the fully functional but highly flammable meth lab, causing a devastating explosion and resulting in the grisly deaths of all patrons. The dog trainer then goes to her version of Hell, where Vicki Hearne, Bill Koehler and Hans Tosutti spend eternity kicking her ass (of course, they are in Heaven).

But seriously, folks.

I train dogs at a VERY good facility, under the direction of a guy who has more hardcore, world-tested and successful experience in his little finger than (insert the name of the current flavor-of-the-month seminar giver who "specializes" in aggression and yet doesn't allow actual dogs at her seminars) and ten of her clones have in their whole bodies. I will refer to him as My Captain. Now, he isn't the Captain most of you dog trainers are thinking of, but he's of the same quality, although of a slightly more recent vintage.
Today, My Captain was checking out his mail when he found an invitation to subscribe to "Your Dog" magazine, a publication of Tufts University. Among the teasers in the invitation was something along the lines of "A quick, kind way to get your dog to stop pulling on the leash!" What was spelled out was the infamous "be a tree" method, in which the handler has the dog on a flat collar and leash, and when the dog pulls, the handler stops moving until the dog stops pulling. The dog eventually learns that he cannot move forward unless he doesn't pull.

Ri-i-i-i-i-i-ght.

So, you are one of my typical clients, who has a JOB, a LIFE, KIDS and, oh yeah, A BIG DOG. You have exactly 20 minutes to give Fido his morning exercise before your obligations to the human members of your family and the greater world of paying the bills must be honored. You are going to spend that 20 minutes "being a tree" while your dog strains at his collar, and eventually turns his untamed frustrations on you, jumping up on you impatiently. And you are going to do this EVERY DAY until he stops pulling.

Ri-i-i-i-i-i-ght.

My Captain and I had a very good laugh at that one, as did our two apprentices, Darryl and Darryl. We instantly came up with dozens of impossible subjects for this: the wealthy anorexic with the 130# Mastiff, the elderly man with a prosthetic leg and his hunting Lab, the skinny engineer with the dog aggressive Dobermann, the list went on and on. But it really isn't funny. Because, like most of the radical "purely positive" philosophy, it drives good, well-intentioned dog owners away from success and happiness with their companion dogs and sometimes it costs those dogs their homes and lives.

You'll hear this a lot on this blog when it comes to training philosophies: All of you "more humane-than-thou" talkers and wishful thinkers who take money from a gullible and needy dog owning public and yet who can't get a dog to stop pulling on the leash in FIVE MINUTES should be ASHAMED OF YOURSELVES.

And if you'd pry your noses out of your behavior textbooks you might look around and see what dogs usually do to trees.

RIP Frederickson

2005-12-27T08:26:00.000-05:00

If you haven't heard already, the world has lost one of its most familiar character actors. Vincent Schiavelli passed away yesterday at age 57. He's one of those guys whose name may not mean anything to you, but whose face is instantly recognizable. Some people simply look like cartoons (I consider myself one of them), but most of us don't get a chance to exploit it. He did, in about a zillion movies and TV appearances, playing everything from high school teachers (Mr. Vargas in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High") to mental patients (Frederickson in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest") to aliens (John O'Connor in "Buckaroo Banzai", one of my favorites) and all sorts of assorted creeps, losers and eerily appealing regular guys. Go to the IMDB to see how many times you probably saw him over the past 25 years.

cool things for Christmas

2005-12-26T18:47:00.000-05:00

I don't hate Christmas.
There. I said it.

I dig the lights and the smell of the tree in the house; the way that most of the people I run into really don't seem to be forcing their good will but actually intending it. I love going through the ornament box and finding the sentimental baubles from a long ago childhood and the memorabilia acquired over the travelling years, when I rarely had a tree at all but knew that someday I would.
And you know what? I like buying gifts for my friends. Sure, it shouldn't take a pre-packaged and ultra-commercialized holiday to generate a little material thoughtfulness, but it's good incentive. And what better time is there to make someone say, "Wow, this is cool! Thank you!" than during the darkest days of miserable winter? Do I sound like a sellout, plasticized Care Bear for saying that? Screw you, you're gettin' nothin' next year, either, ya faux-commie tryhard. Go cry into your overpriced coffee beverage about how materialistic and false everyone is, and if someone makes the mistake of giving you a copy of "Steal This Book", then "Sneak It Back Into the Store". 'K?

It's at least as good to receive things as it is to give 'em, and I made out really well this year. Observe:

I got this bass ^

It's an Epiphone Allen Woody Rumble Kat and it is just gorgeous in every way. And no, it's not a Woody Allen bass. Jesus, what would that sound like?

Then:

I got this amp.

Ampeg B-115 solid state. Normally I prefer a tube amp, but now they're hard to find and all sorts of clammy-palmed gearheads are buying them up and making them unaffordable for us regular human beings. This thing sounds GREAT. Almost impossible to tell it's not tubes. And LOUD.

Then:

I lost fifteen pounds, dyed my hair blonde and hooked up with this tall skinny dude...

No, actually, this is a picture of two members of the band Luna. The pretty blue sparkly bass being held by Britta Phillips is now hanging on my wall, after being made available to me in exchange for a few boxes of dog food by the man who purchased it from her via EBay, of all things. As he is also the source of the Allen Woody, he gets my vote for 2005 Man of the Year. The company that makes the bass is Dipinto. Their shop is literally right around the corner from one of the places I used to live in Philadelphia. I would like somehow to take credit for that. Like, on a metaphysical level.

And get a load of this:

That's right, Jack. That there is the Bones jacket by Vanson, best goddamned leather jacket source anywhere in the world EVER. I've got a little problem with collecting leather jackets, especially Vansons. There are a lot of things that I just don't really need, and another frigging crazy leather jacket is probably at the top of the list. BUT COME ON!

And if you think I'm waiting until motorcycle season rolls around again to wear this bad boy then you would be dead wrong. I wanna go to CHURCH in this motherfucker. I wanna apply for a job as a GUIDANCE COUNSELOR wearing this. I wanna MEET YOUR MAMA AT YOUR GRANDMA'S WAKE with this over my tasteful Chanel suit. I mean, COME ON!

This was a gift from me to myself, although there were some loan transactions to make the necessary customizations affordable at the time of purchase. BUT STILL: it feels like a Christmas present to me.

So Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, etc. I know it's not about material goods, but, um...yeah, this year it actually is.

my suspicions are correct...

2005-12-24T10:04:00.000-05:00

At least, this set of suspicions is. I am suspicious of nearly everything anyway, which makes me great fun in social settings and at critical-decision-making time.

Anyway.

From high school onward, I have always been way ahead of the curve as far as the whole fashion/music/Zeitgeist thing and have suffered greatly for it. A particulary vivid and sour memory involves my decision to wear ripped jeans (ripped naturally through honest use, not artificially laddered with an Exacto blade) and pointy-toed shoes to school back in the mid-80s and being peppered with ridicule by my Day-Glo and Barracuda-jacket-sporting "peers". Within a year, every half-assed teenage MTV zombie was doing the same, buying pre-ripped Vanderbilts and mass-produced off-shoulder t-shirts imprinted with phrases so banal that my memory has mercifully freed me from their brainless grasp. Of course, by then I had moved on to combat boots and a black trenchcoat, perhaps prescient in my unexpressed feelings toward my peers, as later losers would tragically prove to the world.

These days, I feel even more, um, whatever-it-is whenever a new documentary about tattoos comes on the TV, or I hear about the Johnny Cash action figure (man, I could've used one of these back in about 1987: I would have prayed to the frigging thing!) or I discover that you can't walk into even a Payless shoe store without stumbling over a pair of cowboy boots.

So I put together my profile for this blog, and I used a lot of apparently unique generalizations. For instance, if you search for other bloggers who have as their interests "motorcycles that are NOT Harley-Davidsons", "that whole Irish punk thing" or "shit with playing cards on it" you'll find that I am alone in my proclivities. (And for the record, NO I don't have as much vehemence against HD and real riders as I do impatience for its modern Kool-Aid drinking haters of MY BIKES so save the hate mail and NO I don't play cards, not even bridge. Not even Go Fish.)

But if you look under stuff like "cowboy boots", "Christopher Walken" or "Fear" I am mostly in the company of people almost young enough to be my children. OK, cool, the kids have taste. But still. Makes me wonder if some odd stuff that floats my proverbial boat today will become a rising cultural tide lifting the proverbial boats of the kids tomorrow. So I'm narrowing down my new obsessions to stuff like alternative toilet paper cozies . Damned if it hasn't become hard to be an individual in this world.

Is this thing on?

2005-12-23T08:29:00.000-05:00

I've come to realize that the dog publishing world has little use for an undereducated, politically incorrect, pragmatic contrarian. This dovetails nicely with my realization that the music world has even less use for a past-her-prime, irreverent non-scenester with a beat-up bass and a vendetta against sensitive, doe-eyed little songwritery girls.

So, like everyone everywhere, I turn to the Great Equalizer of the Internet. Shoulder to shoulder with the unwashed masses, I take my place on the Infinite CyberSoapbox to rant into the void about life-and-death issues such as the politics of dog training, the prevalence of bad drivers, the inherent mental illness underlying the behavior of everyone who isn't me, and the evil of the endless run-on sentence.

If you're here from the dog world, plan to weed through stuff about rock and roll, tattoos, my motorcycles, and some Rated R language. In other words, plan on hanging out with me as if we're sitting in a pub somewhere, and I've had a couple, and I'm acting just this side of inappropriate. You want to talk a little bit about the forced retrieve, but I'm waxing poetic about The Celibate Rifles and how the song "Oceanshore" makes me think that maybe sitting around doing heroin for the rest of my life might not be such a bad idea.

THE REAL TEST will be to see if I keep this up for more than, oh, I dunno... a few days.

The House of Black Dogs

God wants me to do it

"Oh, my dog could never live without me..."

for Bill's Wife...

Please bring me to a place of karmic reckoning

The Stooge in the Middle

And if you think I'm gonna lay off the "Definitely Not Dog Friendly" stuff...

Here we go again

Problem solved

Let me spell it out for you (Whitman's sampler post explained EVEN MORE)

A Whitman's Sampler of Ignorance

The enemy of my enemy...

Definitely not pig friendly...or is it?

Crikey!

I'm in love with my bike

It's ManBearPig!

Definitely not bear friendly, Part 1

It's not the heat, it's the stupidity

Go back in time again

more off topic fun

Definitely not dog friendly, Part 3

Getting in over your head with canids

"And how is your busy day going?"

Totally off topic

It's official

definitely not dog friendly, Part 2

Another "friend of animals" exposed/order the lobsta

Go back in time

Definitely not dog friendly

animal rights?

best pick up line this month, so far

proof that God doesn't exist

so much for self-discipline

The dog world is full of idiots

so much for consistency

One more colorful thread in in the rich tapestry of exurban NH humanity

so this "positive only" trainer walks into a bar...

RIP Frederickson

cool things for Christmas

my suspicions are correct...

Is this thing on?