Pyper travels by car relatively frequently. He always takes the back seat, and usually its entirity. He's used to lying down, sitting up, or lying against the seat back with his chin resting on the top. But when we stop, and (rarely, never in hot weather, etc.) leave him behind in the car, the back seat is just not comfy enough. Pyper climbs between the front seats, and perches on either the driver's or navigator's seat. He sits up tall, and looks around with definite self-satisfaction. When we return, he grudgingly returns to his own spot.
Almost every night, we give Pyper a last walk of the day. This involves a quick orbit around an area block - about 15 minutes tops. On several of the customary paths, there is other wildlife worth Pyper's attention. I don't just mean plants to pee on. Racoons, squirrels, skunks, people, all get a piece of his eye. But cats are special. Pyper grew up with some cats in his house, but we have no cats here. (Our two ex-cats, "Cat with Dot" and "Cat without Dot", separately suffered city cats' deaths in early 1998.)
Anyway, Pyper misses licking and playing with cats. Whenever he sees one on the street, sitting on a porch, or doing anything at all, he wants to go visit. His tail goes into hyperwag, and he stands taut, waiting for the cat to approach. But, calamity, most of the cats in this neighbourhood are afraid of dogs! (There are only two which are not, but even they are not friendly.) So on one side, there is Pyper staring at cat, making quite a breeze with his hind side. On the other side, there is a cat staring at Pyper, frozen in fear, or hissing or growling in warning. Neither animal moves! I try to resolve the stalemate by getting down to the cat, and scratching the soft little creature to relax it, but no go. When Pyper comes a little nearer, the cat tenses up. Pyper has learned that he has to give up eventually, and he returns to his walk with a last longing look.
Like most mammals, and indeed most animals, Pyper produces prodigious waste materials. Some of this comes out in solid form. Being a conscientious dog walker, I've gotten used to carrying an assortment of plastic bags to clean up (as far as is possible), so the waste materials end up in proper locations. But, for those of you not so familiar with this caring activity, here is a primer on the rating system I've invented for dog poop.
| score | description |
|---|---|
| 5 | hard, firm; bounces or rolls off ground; easy cleanup |
| 4 | semi-squishy, form; easy cleanup though may leave traces |
| 3 | squishy; scraping needed; leaves mess anyway |
| 2 | mostly wet; impossible to scrape off ground completely |
| 1 | wet & gassy; cleanup hopeless; time to wash dog butt |
During one of the last winter days, I found a great new pair of dog games. The first involves the temporary fences that city staff install on the sports fields during winter. These plastic fences prevent people and dogs from running on vulnerable soggy grass, I suppose. The staff installs a dozen-odd sections, some around 30 feet long, in weird and creative geometric patterns. The posts holding these fences up become prime pee spots for the canines. Anyway, the taunt game works as follows. Somehow, get your dog onto the other side of a fence. This may require throwing a prop onto that side. Then call dog over. Since the average dog is a creature of not too much brain, it will race straight toward you, and will be stopped by the fence. It has been ensnared in the game - now, it's time to taunt. Make a noise, or call the dog again. Eventually, its neurons fire, and it figures out that it should run around the fence to get to you. Aha! When canine runs in one direction, dart in the other! Confused canine, unless deaf or inattentive, will notice that you are suddenly farther, and will change direction. Before long, you'll be back in the starting position, perhaps with some momentum. So do it again, and again, and again. After four or five aborted trips around the fence, Pyper gets frustrated enough to engage in some playful barking at me, through the fence. Great fun.
Another related game works best on working dogs such as a Collie. They want to herd, which is why they chase after people, cut them off, and offer a little disciplining nip. A collie is comfortable when the herd is in one place, where he left them. What better game than to mess up this sense of comfort! The game goes thusly: play with dog. Stop and stand. Eventually dog will wonder off. When dog faces away, leave, so as to surprise him by your sudden change of position. To do this, you have to sneak quietly but quickly, and act perfectly innocent at your new perch. Dog will glance back, realize that something is wrong, and worriedly dash around looking for you. Then stand around, and do it all again. With Pyper, with even little 10 meter movements during his unfocused periods, the effect of his noticing the change was wonderful. He wasn't sure whether there was a game on, or whether he must have been mistaken.
While we are on the subject of bodily functions, let's ponder that miracle of physics: a male dog peeing. As you know, the typical male dog gesture is the lifting of one rear leg, and explusion of a certain unspeakable material. Think about it - if you removed one leg of your four-legged chair, how well could you sit on it? Exactly: it's unstable. Pyper shows us a full range of natural instability and personal clumsiness during this tricky operation. A full enumeration would require a taxonomy. These are among the degrees of freedom:
| degree of freedom |
|---|
| distance of each foot above ground |
| ground topography under each foot |
| angular acceleration of dog torso |
| set of external objects providing off-ground foot support |
Pyper has suffered a second seizure. This time, there was no excuse I could make to rationalize away the event: no loud noise, no sudden contact, nothing. Pyper just tried to climb onto a futon beside me, stopped halfway, and froze. He came out of the seizure about a minute later, suffering just an extra dose of drool on his long chin. We took him to his dog doctor the next day. Some tests indicated that there is nothing wrong with his blood chemistry, so this eliminated several alternative explanations. He has suffered no huge head trauma, so that eliminated a few more. That left the rest: a generic unexplained epilepsy. Pyper has gone on a barbituate medication (30 mg phenolbarbital), and will probably be on it for the rest of his life. At least he doesn't mind the two little yellow pills each day.
At my workplace, we have two doors to the outside world. The "side" door is meant to be an exit only, but since it is closest to the washrooms, people are used to skipping out and back in through that door. The reason it matters is because it is an opaque door, and it opens inward. If anyone is parked behind the door on the inside, that person will get whacked upon reentry. I've known this, and therefore try to keep Pyper from lounging around there. Whenever I need to visit the relief center, I make a habit of locking the door behind me, so when Pyper waits for me there, he can't get whacked. Well, after all these good intentions, one time I forgot to lock the door, and sure enough, I came back in through it. When I opened the door, I saw pyper in a flash, and tried to slow down the door's rotation, but too late. It made contact with Pyper's front paws, rubbing/crushing them slightly. He made a cry, limped around a bit, and I spent a few minutes messaging and comforting the poor canine. All this happened, despite my preparations and best intentions.
Later that day, we headed homeward. The office elevators were not working properly that day, so I thought we'd walk down the seven flights of stairs to the basement where the car was waiting. Pyper has gotten used to elevators after all that initial paranoia. Yet, Pyper acted like a big chicken again. Granted, the stairwell is steep and narrow, and would drive a claustrophobe insane. Still, it took twenty minutes of coaxing, pulling, encouraging, rewarding, and repeating, to get him to walk down with me. He paced nervously at every turn, stepping down then back up several times. Finally, after lots of soft cooing (from me), he'd plunge in, walk briskly down till the next break, then stop again. He needs more practice.
During spring, Juimiin and I took Pyper down to the Ashbridge's Bay beaches every couple of weekend mornings. While there was snow on the ground, only fellow dogs and their people-slaves were around. With the snow gone, dogless people have started to appear, and so has Lake Ontario. Ever since he's been with us, Pyper has preferred to avoid water - an attitude that I would love to cure him of. One beach-walking morning, an opportunity arose. We walked right the edge of the water, I took off my shoes, and walked knee-deep into the water (about 5m). Then Juimiin and I alternated throwing the floppy frisbee into and out of the water. Pyper eventually got the idea that this is a game that he could participate in. He cautiously tip-toed into the water, but only so deep as to get his chest minimally wet. To lift the floppy frisbee out of the water, he had to use even more care. He would never immerse his big long nose in the water, so he opened his mouth, hooked the rim of the floating frisbee with his lower jaw only, then pulled it up. After a few minutes, Pyper was relatively carefree in running around in the shallow water, and we had gathered quite an audience. I was guffawing happily throughout the ten-minute ordeal, despite my feet having frozen somewhat from the cold water.