The Skunkinator

(Originally posted on Sunday, March 5, 2006 by Tim)

Each of our dogs has his own distinct personality. TY is our smartest dog. You can give TY a new set of commands and he can often figure out what you want from context. He?s also quite good at knowing when resistance is futile. As an example, you can tell TY to ?Get in the bathtub? for a bath, point to the bathtub, and he will do it. He is also very good at communicating what he wants. Examples here are staring attentively for hours at the object of interest, general wining, and barking incessantly at the door when he wants to come in. While the title often gets passed around, this can often make TY our most annoying dog.

TY has recently found a new activity to earn him ?Top Dog? on the annoying list. Last Summer, the dogs got sprayed by a skunk in the back yard. TY and Modi took the big hits while Sam was ?relatively? skunk free. Through the process of multiple baths and lots of swearing, we learned that the following recipe works best for getting the skunk out of the dog.

Skunk-away Shampoo
1 liter 3% peroxide (the peroxide you buy at the store)
3 tablespoons baby shampoo
3 tablespoons baking soda

Mix all ingredients together. Wet the dog down in the shower and apply the shampoo mix liberally with a washcloth. Be careful to avoid the dog?s eyes (and yours too) as the peroxide will sting. We?ve found that this works best if you wash the dog right after skunking has occurred. What you get out of this process is a dog that smells not half bad. The drawback is that you can?t adequately get their face so the back end of the dog smells better than the front end of the dog for a change.

So dogs got skunked for the first time last summer. This isn?t too bad when you consider we had been here a year at that point. Maybe the skunk wandered into the yard, the dogs surprised it, and it and they both learned their lessons. Yeah right.

Dogs got skunked again about three weeks ago. This time, Sam and Modi got hit hard and TY escaped relatively unscathed. We thought, ?TY is the smartest dog. Maybe he learned to avoid the skunk last time.? Ahhh, it was not to be.

Last week, TY comes into the house with something in his mouth. This has happened before. The grossest thing we had seen so far was the night (he always brings this stuff in at night) he brought in a rotting mouse carcass heavy on the maggots. Well, this time he comes in and clearly has an object in his mouth. He knows we don?t like him to bring in anything that isn?t a toy, so he usually has some guilty body language about him. Cat notices that he?s got something and the ?DROP IT? subroutine kicks in. After a couple ?drop its?, he drops a roundish, black and white furry object on the floor. Have you guessed yet? A skunk head! What a great toy mom! Can I keep it?

Needless to say, TY hasn?t had a glorious week of us throwing the skunk head for him in the backyard. It was very quickly bagged and filed (circularly).

The next day, however, TY came in and smelled a bit skunky. Thinking that he had been sprayed again, we sniffed around him to try and figure out where he had been hit. The process went something like this?

Sniff, sniff, back of the dog OK.
Sniff, sniff, middle of the dog OK.
Sniff, sniff, head of dog a little skunky, did he get hit in the eyes?
Sniff, sniff, OH, IT?S HIS BREATH!

After this process, I definitively explained to TY that he would not be allowed to sleep on my pillow that evening! (It?s Modi?s spot anyway)

The following day, I managed to get home from work while it was still light out. I went out back to throw the ball for TY and look for skunk parts. About 10 feet from our lawnmower shed, I found a skunk tail with some glands attached. Now this smelled so bad, that after I bagged it and put it in the trash can out front, the whole front yard started to smell of skunk. Thank God we have tolerant trash men.

It?s warm today. I can?t put it off any longer. I?m going to have to do a thorough search of the back yard for the rest of the skunk. We?ve found the front and the back, but the middle is still missing. Thankfully, TY hasn?t come in smelling of skunk since I disposed of the tail. I just wonder, how much of the middle of the skunk is in TY?

Things you don't want to hear from your dogsitter.

(Originally posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2005 by Tim)

So I've neglected to mention one detail of Cat's adventure to graduation on Friday morning, the call from the dog sitter. Cat got the call when we were speeding down Fair Oaks street (roughly 3 miles from Caltech). I didn't hear the conversation, but it did involve the phrase, "an impressive amount of diarrhea."

This is not a phrase you ever want to hear from your dog sitter. We have a great service that does the dog sitting. Besides the being great with the dogs, they also have a steam cleaner if you catch my meaning.

The event got me to thinking about what other things you wouldn't want to hear from the dogsitter.

Dogsitter top 10
10. "Did you have two or three plush chairs in the living room?"
9. "Wow, normally dogs get over that around age two."
8. "some dogs are just diggers"
7. "I think he made your vet's day"
6. "maybe you can call us back when he get's a little older"
5. "where did you leave that blank check again?"
4. "the officer left his card on the door"
3. any sentence that contains both the words "barf" and "wallpaper"
2. "Well, the dining room still looks OK..."

and, of course

1. "an impressive amount of diarrhea"

enjoy your dinner :)

Renaming Dogs

(Originally posted on Tuesday, August 10, 2004 by Tim)

I have decided that we need to rename dogs. I think that Modi, TY, and Sam are not descriptive enough names. They need something more along the lines of American Indian names. They need names that tell us something about them.

Actually, I know nothing about American Indian names beyond what I have seen in popular culture. Did American Indians generally have names like, ?He who always steps in bear poop in the woods? or ?He who is a couple arrows short of a quiver?? Being an academic and a liberal, I feel a little bad just assuming that this is how traditional American Indian names work without doing a little research. This whole stereotype could have started with one smart ass Indian joking around with the pilgrims at the first Thanksgiving.

Indian: (well, they?re not going to be able to pronounce my name anyway) ?Hi, I am ?Guy who always brings the store bought potato salad? and this is my friend ?Eats only protein and fat.?

If I had a better internet connection (DSL at the end of the week we hope), I?d research this stereotype, but for now I?ll just have to console myself by saying, ?Hey, I?m mostly vegetarian so there must be enough good karma in that to balance out.?

Regardless of where the naming convention comes from, dogs need more descriptive names. With these names, anyone who meets them will instantly receive insight into their personalities.

Chicken Dog: Sam earned this name when he began refusing to go outside after dark without a chaperone. This behavior actually began when we were still in the Seattle area. When he first did it, I was worried that there might be coyotes behind the house somewhere (I had seen one once). When it began to happen night after night, I realized that we had something else going on. Keep in mind that this dog, who refuses to go out before bed, gets us up at 7am by pacing and wining because he needs to go out.



Money Pit: Modi has been earning this one for quite some time, but it stuck with his second trip to the vet this month. It seems that we had a small thorn bush/branch on the fence line where Modi likes to run up and down barking at the dogs next door. It would slow him down to run around it, so he came in with a reasonably torn up nose yesterday. Add to this his ACL surgery and his eating the carpet, the moulding, the kitchen cabinets, and thus my damage deposit in my Bay Area apartment and he is by far the most expensive dog of the three.



When I feel like it: There were lots of nominations for TY. He used to be ?Mr. Fat Pad? due his being a bit overweight, but all of our dogs have slimmed way down with the big yard. We?ve actually had to substantially increase rations. Another possibility was ?He who barks at the neighbors in their house hoping that they will come out and throw the ball.? Can you spell bark collar? There was a stint in Seattle when ?Mr. Poopy Paws? was appropriate, but I won?t go into that one. In the end, ?When I feel like it? has always fit TY reasonably well. Currently, the main manifestation is trying to get TY to come in from the yard. If you yell for him and you can see him, he does come in, but very slowly. It?s not like he doesn?t know how to run, you should see him dash for the house when he knows breakfast is waiting. You can?t even get a fast walk out of him if there isn?t food in the house.


And there you are. Much more descriptive. I bet you feel as if you know the dogs much better now. By they way, did you want one of them? I can make you a really good deal.

Sam uses tools

(Originally posted on Saturday, July 31, 2004 by Cathy)

For anyone wondering about the screwdriver thing, that's a jab at my dad (who isn't actually elderly - that's another joke, Dad), who left it somewhere in the basement while he was up here helping with the house, and has been complaining that we haven't found it ever since. I'm working on teaching Sam to help with the house, and he's taken a real liking to this screwdriver, so I'm not sure if we'll be able to return it any time soon...

A poem

(Originally posted on Friday, January 16, 2004 by Modi)

Dog food is yummy
When you have it in your tummy,
But when Sam steals your food
It's no good.