Pyper Chronicles - Part 5

The Third Month: 1998 November-December

Twice a day, we take Pyper for a walk. Now that fall is here, the ground is often wet, but that doesn't keep Pyper down. By the end of the walk, his feet can be black with muck. To keep the dirt out of the house, I have started to wash Pyper's foot before entering the house. I do this by putting the dog directly in the backyard after his walk, filling small plastic basin with warm water, taking this basin out into the back, then dipping Pyper's feet into this basin. Pyper does not like this. When he sees the washing basin, he walks away. I have to basically grab him, lift up his front or back side, and plop him with two appendages landing in the water. After a dip and a little water massage, he is wiped dry, and is finally allowed to enter the house. One time, upon seeing the basin arrive, he lay down and, deliberately pitifully, started licking at his dirty feet while looking up at me, as if to say "that's okay, I can do this myself". This ploy did not work. He got his feet washed that morning too.

Pyper is usually friendly with other dogs. There is one major exception. When he is walked in the evenings, he is often not released from his leash, even though other dogs may be. When such dogs come around Pyper, he seems to become envious or maybe spiteful, and can growl and bark at these guys. Once he is released, he is back to normal, and will sniff the same dogs' butts without a whimper.

We took Pyper on a weekend trip to a cottage resort in the Algonquin Park area. He put up with the three hour drive just fine, even though he had to share the back seat with a fully grown human. He loved the outdoors. In the cottage we rented, he had a futon on which he could sleep, people onto whose beds he could barely climb up, and lots of trees outside to pee on. He was off leash most of the time.

During the same trip, we went hiking on a nearby trail. The weather was nice, and there were a few inches of snow on the ground. We were the only people around, and Pyper was off his leash for basically the whole trip. He loved this part of the trip too. He was amazed at the long trail, the snow, and that he could just run around and be goofy without restraint. Once we started walking, he took "point" and scouted for us 20-50 ft in front. Several times a minute, though, he would turn around, run back, visually check that all three people under his care were together, then run back ahead. At the beginning, he would dart around at top speed; at the end, he still had enough to walk quickly. Along the way, he tried to pry loose huge branches to carry. Some of these were several times his size, but he would not give up. When he succeeded pulling a bit loose, he usually carried it forward and backward to show everyone, then dropped it and ran ahead for the next victim. It was hilarious.

During the same trip, back at the cottage, we had a nice bonfire. Pyper was again loose to run around the site while the humans enjoyed some burned frankfurters and pita bread slices. Pyper behaved very well in the dark - he came running back when called, sat when told, and dutifully ate every piece of offered food. Contrary to his foot washing anti-fetish, Pyper wandered into the adjacent lake, almost to his belly, to drink the nice cold water.

Another memorable event during the Algonquin trip involved a tree. Our rented cottage building had only one bathroom, but three people. At a particularly inconvenient time the last night, one of the ladies in the cottage needed to "go" at the same time I did. It was an emergency, so I did as my boyhood training imprinted, and left the building to find a tree. Pyper went out too and was running around for a while. Then, I found a tree slightly out of the way of the cottage windows, so as to obscure my impending crime from its occupants. Just as my bladder pressure was starting to fall, Pyper ran over and took a look at what was going on. He did not want to be left out, so he whipped up his leg, and we shared an emotional co-peeing experience. The tree must have felt honored.

Unfortunately, some of the junk food ultimately got the poor dog sick. We should not have given him so much snack during the trip. It took about a week to get Pyper's tummy back to normal. We did not pamper him during the week of recuperation. We kept up our normal soccer-game schedule and intensity. One morning in fact, Pyper was unlucky enough to get wonked in the head several times, by the propelled ball or the propelled foot. I think he got a small concussion, for the next day he strangely threw up a little, and ended up delaying his digestive recovery a few more days. His diet is strictly back to standard kibble.

Full body wash jobs are now becoming routine for Pyper. His third was straightforward and quick. Again, Pyper had to be lifted into the big tub, but once there, he put up with getting wet, lathered, very wet, drying prematurely, wet again for rinsing, then allowed to escape with his life. He has a way of totally soaking the crummy plastic wallpaper in our bathroom. This will accelerate its decay and replacement. I suppose we should be grateful. Yes, Pyper was beautiful after being washed. It's becoming altogether regular now.

Pyper has returned twice more to my Cygnus workplace office in the last little while. He behaved himself well overall. He found several rather cozy sleeping places in the office, including under my desk, in the middle of a decorative masking-tape outline of a dead man, and basically anywhere else in the way. He has become brave with the elevators, and charged into and out of the levitation cages with gusto. He had two amusing obsessions however: putting the giant nose attached to his head into garbage containers, and barking at the evening janitor lady (or perhaps at her cart). For the former, Pyper was reprimanded and tied to remain in my close proximity, and for the latter, Pyper was reprimanded and tied to remain in my close proximity. Such pedagogical innovation.

Pyper came into the world being a "Sable" collie. The quoted term refers to the stereotypical collie colour scheme: white chest, and orange/brown butt, with perhaps a touch of black here or there. It is clear that this was not explained to Pyper, for over the last few months, he has been metamorphosing into a "Tricolor" collie. This colour scheme still has a white chest, but a mostly black fur elsewhere, with a dab of brown on the face. (Once, I did not know that the "tricolor" type even existed.) Anyway, as the photographs show, he is more and more black, right down to his hair roots. No, he has not been to a cosmetics salon. The effect seems to be genuine and biological in origin. Tentative explanations are welcome.

Like many animals, Pyper has teeth in his mouth. His teeth are shaped really weird (compared to a human's own weird teeth), but they get pretty ordinarily dirty over time (just like a human's). So they should really get cleaned off once in a while. Some folks do this by feeding Fido some crunchy scratchy foods that are hoped to scrape off the yellow slime. Some take Poochie to a pet dentist, where the animal may be knocked out with total anasthesia, and processed in the tooth cleaner's assembly line. Some don't care enough, and let Rolf have terrible teeth and injured gums into middle age.

Not we. Pyper uses the trusted home treatment: the toothbrush. More precisely, his highness permits me to use a toothbrush on his teeth, when he is suitably relaxed and well fed. Why well fed? Because the toothpaste that is sold for dogs is flavoured in order to make it tolerable to the beast. For Pyper, "tolerable" is more accurately replaced by "irresistible". The moment some of this brown cream is in his mouth (initially smeared on a toothbrush), he starts licking at it, swallowing it, as if it was Halloween candy. He doesn't even leave his mouth open enough to let me get to many of his teeth before the cream is all gone. I think it is a conspiracy from pet supply companies. They want the dogs to eat up all the product, so good-intentioned pet owners will keep buying lots of the stuff, since "it must be good" - a substitute for "it must be working". I am not so sure. But I must go out and buy some, for Pyper has finished one tube already.

One Monday morning, during our walk, we have come across a stray dog in the nearby park. It was an old yet tiny dog, of the type that an old lady generally carries around. (It is as if the old ladies and tiny old dogs are in a contest to see who stays healthy longer.) I did not recognize the breed, since I am not an old lady, but did recognize the little guy as being alone, since I am not a blind guy. This little dog was running around, without a collar or a leash, running around Pyper, peeing on the same trees, then nervously darting away if we got too close. After a while, Juimiin suggested that we grab the stray and hand him over to the authorities. By the magic of electro-magnetic waves, I ascertained that in fact we had to deliver the dog ourselves to our nearby Humane Society location. After gentle persistence, we managed to get a leash (Pyper's small choke chain) around the dog's neck, and after a lot more not-so-gentle persistence, got the dog into our car. Pyper was concerned about how much attention we were giving to the little guy - neither was very happy. After a short drive, we dropped off the lost dog at the pound, signed a report, and learned the name of the breed of the dog. I've never heard the name before, and indeed I have now forgotten it. But at least the dog was in good hands. He will probably win the contest.

Pyper's bad habit of putting his big nose into trouble is not confined to my workplace office. No, at home he sometimes does the same thing. We have instituted a "zero tolerance" policy, and strictly police Pyper's nosing around. He suffered a setback in his reeducation as smelly, tasty, fried meat fragments found themselves in a tantalizingly ajar garbage container in our kitchen. Twice we caught him, twice we told him "no" (with a firm, steady voice), and yet he returned. The last time, he was more severely removed, locked up in the penalty box (the little room where he spent his first night), and left to languish for a few minutes. I suppose we could have just locked down the garbage container properly, but this way the experience left a mark. I got scratched on the way up the stairs. Pyper appears to have forgotten the whole incident.