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Dogs Of Babble

02Sep

Dear Ask Dog Lady,
I had a haunting dream in which my basset hound, Sadie, spoke to me. She didn’t say much, but Sadie’s words formed a scrap of dog-speak I keep hearing in my head. In the dream, I had taken Sadie to a tot lot for dogs. I stood near the slide and waited for Sadie to come down. As my hound slid by me, our eyes locked and she said simply, “Hello, Mark.’’ Her tone was matter-of-fact, yet warm and familiar.

Dog Lady, I know you don’t claim to be a pet psychic or a Dr. Freud for fuzzy creatures, but how do you interpret this?
-Mark, Berkeley, Calif.

Mark, hark! Your dream opens the door for Dog Lady to opine about the verbal chasm between humans and their dogs. It is one of the great frustrations of dog owners that our dogs can’t talk to us in a language we can readily understand. We love these wordless creatures so, naturally, we want to get inside their heads to understand what they think and feel.

Thank you for acknowledging that Dog Lady is not a Fido Freudian. I venture to suggest you ache to know what Sadie would say to you if she could talk to you. You dreamt of your pet in a playground setting. Your dog is like a child to you. I’m surprised Sadie didn’t say “Hi, Dad” instead of “Hello, Mark.”

In your waking world, Sadie doesn’t banter in English, Urdu, French, or Swahili, but she does communicate with you. In body language, dogs speak volumes when their ears are up or flattened, when their tails wag or go limp, when their backs arch or relax, when they curl up in a hiding place or enthusiastically join the crowd.

Each yip, bark, squeal, growl, groan, or sigh, is part of Sadie’s language. You have to decode your dog’s dialect as best you can. Sensitive dog owners have an ear and eye to interpret what their dogs are saying to them. Usually, the best we can hope to understand is when our dogs demand: “Yo! Gotta go potty. Take me outside. Now!”

I ask you to imagine the psychological chaos if our dogs really could talk to us. We’d be forced into a relationship with them far different than the silent, unencumbered connection that exists now. Instead of getting vibes from our animals, we would be confronted by them. They would become as difficult and emotionally demanding as our human friends and family. We’d have to deal with our dogs on a far rougher emotional playing field.

It sounds, however, that if your Sadie could speak, she wouldn’t be too challenging. In your dream, when she spoke to you, she merely said “hello.” She didn’t chew your ear off

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…And Babel

02Sep

Dear Ask Dog Lady,
Read any good books lately? I’m looking for something juicy with a canine theme but not a simplistic go-to-the-dogs book.
-Ben, Rehoboth, MA

Ben, do you have a nodding acquaintance with Big Ben? Your question is timely. Yes, Dog Lady, read a remarkable book this summer with a meaty and complex canine theme. “The Dogs Of Babel” by Carolyn Parkhurst (Little, Brown, $21.95) is a well-written first novel that broke onto the bestseller lists. A dog’s inability to speak serves as the central metaphor for this story of human frailty, love and loss.

The tale concerns a widower, Paul Iverson, who’s bereft when his wife, Lexy, falls out of a tree in the backyard and dies. He was not at home at the time of her death. Only their pet, a Rhodesian Ridgeback named Lorelei, witnessed the cataclysm. And the dog can’t talk.

Paul is determined that he, a linguist, will somehow teach Lorelei to speak and he tirelessly tries training the dog to communicate in human terms. Alas, the language arts elude Lorelei.

Paul may be crazy with grief but he wisely understands the folly of trying to get an animal to talk about a specific incident. He imagines that even if he manages to coax words from his pet, Lorelei would have her own dog-centric discussion points:

“Maybe she wants to tell me about a single moment of summer grass, looking for something to chase, the feel of damp earth on bare paws. That may be what she has to tell me. The joy of muscle and bone working together to run as she chases a car. The wind blowing her ears as she sticks her head out a car window. The loneliness of the door closing, leaving her alone in the house. The patient waiting beneath the table, the smell of dinners not meant for her, the thrill of being in the right place at the right time when human fingers slip and a piece of meat falls to the floor. The drool-inducing terror of pulling up in front of the vet’s office. The sweet sadness of Lexy gone, the constant vigil for her return. Seeing things happen and not knowing why. The smells of other dogs. The softness of sofa cushions. The satisfying give as a pillow rips apart in her teeth. The hunt. The sun. Rolling in the dirt.’’

In this evocative paragraph of sentence fragments, author Parkhurst manages to capture the smallness and universality of a dog’s world. If dogs could talk, they might not want to discuss anything but smells, sensations and primal pleasures — all topics best savored in silence

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Partisan To Pooches, Not Parties

28Jun

Dear Ask Dog Lady,
I read around your website and I couldn’t believe the hateful things you say about Democrats, of which I am one. Please add a warning to your website that your political views are injected into the dog talk.
-Deanna, Millbury, MA

Deanna, don’t mistake Dog Lady for her dog. Thanks for reading the columns on askdoglady.com. However, you must be taking things too seriously. Dog Lady comes from a long line of Democrats, but, politically, she’s a mixed breed. My dog is the hard-nosed conservative in the family. He likes things to remain very much the same. Most dogs are like that, except for Golden Retrievers who are boundlessly liberal with their affections.

Dog Lady takes no stand politically except to stereotype: Dog Democrats dote on the big breeds — enthusiastic Labs and Goldens. Republicans tend to keep more cerebral spaniels and terriers.

President George W. Bush has two dogs: Barney, a Scottie and Spotty, a Springer Spaniel. Spotty is the mellow patrician of the pair (perfect for public television) while Barney is the firebrand (the Fox News Channel guy) who’s usually up to his shaggy eyebrows in mischief. If you haven’t checked out the White House’s amusing “Barneycam,” you simply must indulge in this non-partisan Dog Lady delight.

Vice President Dick Cheney keeps two Labs. And Homeland Security czar Tom Ridge has three blonde Labs, which renders Dog Lady’s political theories meaningless, considering Cheney and Ridge should be a Democrats by the dogs they own. Ridge didn’t name any of his handsome trio “Ashcroft” or “Rummy” or “Condi” but we can assume the newest Cabinet Secretary is a right hand man in the GOP, although his impressive dog trinity must keep him centered during orange alerts.

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Ben Herd

03Jun

Dear Ask Dog Lady,
I see dog walkers on the street who look like chariot racers in “Ben Hur’’ as they hold leashes of five or six powerfully pacing Labs and Retrievers. When there are smaller dogs in the group, the small fry cruise low to the ground in a thicket of limbs and tails. How many dogs do you believe a dog walker can walk and still be safe?
-Dennis, Albany, N.Y

Dennis, are you a dentist? Dog Lady’s teeth ache imagining the scenario you describe. That’s why Dog Lady is a lady and not a dog walker. Thank goodness the “Ben Hur’’ extra wasn’t yakking on the cell phone while holding all those leashes.

Dog walkers don’t do it entirely for the puppy love. They want to make money. The more dogs a walker can walk, the more money a walker can make. However, the price for carelessness is great.

Dog Lady declines to throw out a number of dogs a walker can handle. It depends on the walker’s judgment, strength, and confidence, which reminds me: What is the wrangler doing with all those dogs while picking up one and dropping off another? It’s dangerous to tie up a bunch of dogs and leave them unattended.

The smart walkers figure out a pricing formula based on individualized attention. Many dog owners would pay more to secure a longer solo outing. Some walkers also divide the dogs into packs of small, medium and large. Sorting by size, however, is tricky because there are small dogs (Dog Lady’s darling, for instance) that require as much exercise as their bigger brethren.

Care of your dog is in the details. Before you hire a walker, discuss all this.

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Animal Affliction

21May

Dear Ask Dog Lady,
I read and watched with shock and disgust all the stories about a woman whom the Boston media dubbed “The Cat Lady.” She crammed cats into a couple of apartments on Boston’s Beacon Hill and in Watertown. Cat Lady seems like a genuine loony tune. I mean, who else but a crazy person could live amongst cat feces, corpses, and kitty-sicles in the freezer? Maybe the media made too much of this story about the Cat Lady. But aren’t you embarrassed to call yourself Dog Lady, considering the nutty connotation?
-Frank, Boston, Mass.

Frankly, Frank, Dog Lady was a tad ashamed when the Cat Lady kicked up so much media dirt. Not that Dog Lady has anything to hide, but when stories about animal abuse hit the headlines — and the alleged offender is sneered at as a eccentric “Lady” then it vicariously sickens anyone who is pet friendly — to dogs, cats, birds, iguanas, pot-bellied pigs, whatever.

Dog Lady and Cat Lady are two different animals. Dog Lady has one beloved dog that doesn’t stink up the house. Dog Lady also has a sense of joy and whimsy about her pet. Cat Lady has her dark issues. For her, pet ownership is not about health and happiness. She is sick and deserves our human understanding, although Cat Lady stretched the limits of tolerance.

There is a mental illness, which experts refer to as “animal hoarding” — a condition that causes compulsives to collect animals (http://www.wisconsinhrs.org/Articles/hoarding.html). The woman hoarded cats — live ones, sick ones, and dead ones. She did have a dog, a Great Dane, who was near death when police raided her place. She called herself a “breeder.” But she seems to be seriously deluded. In one court appearance, she snarled at the judge so inappropriately that she looked grossly out of touch with reality. Call her Femme Feral. Cat Lady, alas, is not a lady.

Anyone who keeps too many animals in too small a space is harming the animals. Any reasonable person understands this. Yet, always, there are stories of deranged people who go too far, who keep too many cats or dogs — many of them dead or undernourished. Media outlets jump on these twisted tales of tails.
Cats and dogs sell newspapers and provide great incentive to tune in at 11.
Cat and dog stories are visceral — tragic, triumphant, cuddly, or inspirational.

Remember the recent saga of Dosha, the dog in New York who was run over by a car, shot in the head by a police officer, and taken to the animal morgue? Dosha astounded everyone — especially the morgue workers — by sitting up and surviving her ordeal. The odyssey of the dog that wouldn’t die made headlines around the world.

Frank, Dog Lady cringes at the gross irresponsibility and neglect by people who mistreat animals. Dog Lady can barely watch “Animal Precinct” or “Animal Cops” on the Animal Planet cable channel, even though many of the stories of animal abuse end happily as the wounded creature is healed and adopted into a happier home.

Dog Lady can only hope the animals in Cat Lady’s surviving mangy menagerie end up in sane, loving homes.

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