Your Argument is Invalid

Has accomplished more in five years than many people ever will.

Photo courtesy Jennifer Kelley

Five years ago today, the great mass of 189 canine crime victims (plus those in utero) were forcibly removed from Dog Hell as envisioned by Hieronymus Bosch.

Previous victims of the same offender had been "rescued" by those guys who fuck up your day when you see their guilt-dunning commercials.

If by "rescued" one means "confiscated and summarily killed."

An awful lot of people figured that should have happened to the ONB dogs, too.  Said so. Sometimes in print.*

Nobody was saying that about my friend Mr. Barry White last week, as he held sofa-court at his owner's annual full-house-of-guests holiday party.

(Sorry about the crummy phone-photo. His throne room was candle-lit.)

Even the most jealous agility rival doesn't wish dead  the adopted dogs who beat them at the trials.

Sky can grab some of her namesake.

Photo courtesy of Rachel Roper

Blue. Not scared of you.

Photo courtesy of Jody Richwagen

The Ralph Lauren photo shoot personnel didn't wish it about their lovely ES model, Katydid. (Katy got her modeling gig based on wholesome good looks, charm, and solid training -- she didn't need any politically-correct special consideration as a "rescue dog.")

Get my good side. Ha ha. They're all good sides.

Photo Courtesy of Jane Connors

The farmers and ranchers whose ONB dogs slipped right into their birthrights to help with the cows and sheep, goats and chickens, generally do not think everyone would be better off if they were dead.

Skeeter put in an application for a farm or ranch position back in 2009.

Photo courtesy of Liz Dickinson.

Those who figured they were adopting pets are not sorry that their dogs have opened up new realms to them.

Libby, at lessons.

Photo courtesy of Rob McMillin

Contrary to popular perception, not all of them were English shepherds. No matter. We love them no less. Even when they eat rocks.

Jet and his boy.

Photo courtesy of Melinda King.

Absolutely nobody at the search this spring where Cole made his first find -- located our missing man's mortal remains where previous searchers had failed to do so -- suggested that the cheerful little black dog ought to have died for the convenience of his "rescuers," or for his own good, or to save the taxpayers money. Not the police, not the bereaved family, not the firefighters or the media or the other search teams, and especially not his teammates.

In the command post with his friends just before the very last task,
tired after days of searching, but game to do his duty.
Cole does not leave a man behind.

Photo courtesy of Jennifer Kelley

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* The op-ed to which I am replying in this letter-turned-op-ed does not show up when I search The Outpost's site. Not sure whether their archives don't go back that far or what. If anyone has a link to it, please send along.

Christmas Puppy

This Saturday, the last jolly crewmate launched on her own good ship. Miss Trudy has changed her identity to Pearl, and will be assisting Linda in life and dog training, herding a flock of derpdogs, and, I suspect, achieving a great deal else and forging some new paths in the lives of her people, starting out from her command post under the Christmas tree. Her long-anticipated permanent home is a gift to her new family and to her.

Ordering her minions.

Nobody should have to wait around for the show to start.* I'll let puppies go as early as eight weeks, but think there are some real advantages to hanging around a week or two longer for more littermate lessons and Mom time. Anyone who has to fly in a crate needs to grow out until he's eleven or twelve weeks old, well clear of any primary fear imprint window. Free-range farm-puppydom plus regular field trips build lifelong resilience.

After that point, there is no point. Puppy is just being obstructed from her mission. She needs to be connecting to her people, learning her work, adjusting to her reality and helping to create it.

We chose Charlotte for our reality when she was ten weeks old and volunteered for SAR duties. We ask a lot of our SAR partners beyond the full-time job of finding people and telling us about it.

Charlie will need to conduct herself in public in a way that brings credit to her team -- well-mannered and friendly, ready to take on PR and agency relations. She will help me with client dogs and foster dogs and present herself well to their owners. She'll have duties towards the livestock and poultry, both managing and protecting them. She'll live in a pack of strong personalities. She'll go on hikes and bike rides and skiing, host summer parties, and snuggle away the winter nights.

If she acquits herself well at all of the above, and she enjoys good health, she'll be the mother of the next generation.

Like I said, a lot.

And much of it wasn't happening.

Charlie was progressing well with her SAR training. She's the second pup who we've started as a trailing dog, and this is going well, as it did for her mother. Despite being a generally goofy, dorky puppy-puppy, she brings a shockingly mature professionalism and focus to each task.

It was also clear that she really, really enjoyed being the baby on training days, the only puppy among the big dogs and the Special Snowflake.

Like her sister, she was pig-ignorant about obedience as such. She came when called, though not as consistently or with the commitment that I'd like. Knew how to sit for her dinner and when asked, had just learned to down, could walk on a leash, and was mostly ignorant of any concept of "stay." Unlike her sister, she showed zero interest in the hoofstock, had excessive caution of the electric fences, and hung back during chores. She thought Trudy had it covered.

We were still using the gates meant to control baby puppies and foster heathens to manage the two of them for housebreaking and mischief. This impeded our own movements through the house, prevented them from mastering the art of the dog door, and tended to isolate Crazy Uncle Moe from the rest of the family. Since Moe cannot handle being cornered by baby dogs who are still exercising their puppy licenses, and reliably intercepting two heedless monsters is beyond my powers,  he was not integrated with the pests except on walks. So pests they remained.

In the four days since she became an only puppy, all of Charlie's latent oursness has emerged at once.

The gates are open. She is truly free-range. Uncle Moe is fine with it.

On Sunday I sold eight wethers, requiring the most stock handling we've done in her lifetime. Charlie marched into the shed and tried to help us load them.

She has stopped torturing our overly-indulgent cat.

She has taken her place in the Big Bed.

I call, and I get a puppy. Right away. With imperfectly-engineered brakes, so it's best to be prepared before calling.

She is remarkably adept at distinguishing dog toys from the general clutter.

When it's quiet, she is not up to no good. She's usually following the family tradition of slipping in silently behind me.

Fact is, we got a puppy for Christmas.


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*Beats a really crappy show that starts on time, though. Like maybe a double feature of Twilight and Eraserhead. Yeah, I'll just wait.

Situation Wanted: Farmer's Little Helper

Gertrude Imogene Stubbs was meant to go to a farm home as a potential future dog mom.

I later decided that Trudy is not a great prospect for carrying on the family. Not because she isn't healthy, vigorous and robust. And there's nothing wrong with her personality, either. She's friendly, affectionate, likes people, and is a naturally polite and rather dainty creature.

But Trudy has the tiniest overbite (she seems to be outgrowing this) had a tiny overbite, but is now scissor-tooth Gertrude, and is a little bit light-boned and fiddle-fronted. It's not the structure I was going for in this breeding. She may outgrow it, but she may not. (Yeah, so she has just about outgrown this, too. A bit of transient puppy-fugly.)

So after sticking around for a few weeks of further interviews she's looking for another position.

Ideally,* at a farm.

Helping with things.

She already really likes helping with things. Chickens. Turkeys. She's thinking about goats and sheep and her role in their management. Last week she genuinely helped Perfesser Chaos catch a loose wether

Do you by any chance need help with things? Do you have some dog experience and a light hand with animals?

She's fourteen weeks old as of yesterday, and ready to be your right-hand dog.

Her pedigree and information about her parents is here.

Email me for more information and an application.

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*I could be convinced of another placement, but you'd have to make a good case.

Yo Ho Ho

Sunday was the four-week birthday of the Jolly Crew.

Red Sonja. She is seal, not black. You are gonna have to trust me on this.

Gertrude Imogene Stubbs. Daddy's girl. Really. She looks like her  papa Jet with lipstick.

Dread Pirate Roberts. We call him Bob.

Charlotte de Berry. Yes, that eye is blue.

Sadie Ferrell, aka Sadie the Goat. Yes, she is eating in public, but she is still a supermodel.

Belit. She and Red Sonja are hard to tell apart, but she is black and has a little spit-splash of white on her head.

In the dirge-like service of the empirical application of the most current ethological-behavioral research  (Clinique calls that burning) we hosted the first of our closely-engineered and highly technical puppy socialization optimization sessions.

Also, there were burgers, watermelon, corn from the garden, and beer. And we hoisted the Jolly Roger.  Because SCIENCE.

The Crew were handled by 17 people, of whom 12 were entirely new to them, and three were below the age of reason.  They hung out on the back deck, front porch, and two places in the front yard.

They ate their first solid food -- two meals of satin balls, one ounce of meat each at each meal, provided by a helpful volunteer who titrated access to cut down on the nom nom nom choke factor.

Uncle Cole stepped up to his role and began playing with them for the first time.

Their mother also began playing with them, swallowing their heads, and delivering love-nibbles.

And they got assigned use names for the next month or so.

Famous pirates, of course.

Without too much persnickety attention to the factual basis of any names or narratives. Because why spoil the fun?

Photos have been delayed by rolling technology failures, and the best ones are currently not retrievable. You got a problem with that, come to my house and fix all the computers and cameras and media cards.

Snapshot Saturday: Fall

The wild cherries ripen, black and fat,
Paradisal fruits that taste of no man’s sweat.

Reach up, pull down the laden branch, and eat;
When you have learned their bitterness, they taste sweet.

 -- Wendell Berry

The Beast Wants What the Beast Wants

Moved the Jolly Crew into larger and more secure day digs today, and then plopped down in there with them.

A little girl crawled into my lap and seemed entirely content as Rosie settled in to feed the rest of the swabbies.

I put her into the scrum so she wouldn't miss a meal. She left the pigpile, crawled around her mother, and hoisted herself back into my lap.

This puppy has spent plenty of time being cuddled in her twenty days on the planet, but has never crawled into a lap under her own power before.

Just give her the lap and you will be okay.

Lesson delivered: even if one is not yet three weeks old, food is not love. Food is not better than love. And food is not what we should offer to someone who wants and seeks something more substantial out of life.

Trainers and dog owners, cogitate as is.*

Parents, educators, employers, political leaders, you may, as appropriate, substitute "money" for "food" and adjust accordingly.

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*Yes, I am ashamed of myself. Thanks for asking.

Surface Tensions

Once you get right in there, you're gonna find the dirt.

Surfaces can be sterile or colonized in abundant life. Porous or inpenetrable. Transparent or opaque. Flat or polished to a reflective gloss. Rough or slick. Thing about all of them is that there is stuff underneath, behind, within. If what you are interested in is the whole thing -- is that ring gold or electroplate, does that lawn cover bedrock or landfill, what horrors lie beyond the dread drop ceiling? -- you'd best take out a proverbial pocketknife and do some digging.

A colleague in dogs sends me a venting rant about a local (to her) puppy producer.

By the checklist, on the surface, they would seem to be the kind of breeders that I'd send a buyer to. Parents seem to have the breed-appropriate working titles and health checks. A lot of thought and expertise and expense obviously went into designing the puppy-raising facility. The kennel employs a young woman to care for the pups.

All that thought and expertise is engineered towards the end of producing marketable puppies in the most uniform and efficient, lowest-risk, touch-free, labor-saving manner.

Do they cut corners on feed and vaccines and bleach? Apparently not.

Are they religious about rubber boots and foot baths and non-porous surfaces, and perhaps airlocks and hermetically-sealed bubbles?  Apparently so.

Do they have the AKC's Good Dogbreeding Seal of Approval, achieved by, among other things, promising to make their buyers register all the puppeez? They do.

Do they think that if some vaccination is good, then asstons of vaccination is best of all? Ayuh. Best and most current scientifical vaccination protocols that 1975 has to offer.

Are the puppies they sell aware that human beings have legs? This is unclear.

Unlike the agribusiness-compliant plastic whelping boxes under the red heatlamps, there are a lot of nooks and crannies just below the surface where nasty things can lurk with a puppy-producer.

After a minute or so of bopping around the efficient, non-porous website, something seemed eerily familiar here, something about the attitude towards the dogs, their puppies, and the people to whom they sell them.

Oh. Right.

Yep, our old friends the puppy-rafflers. The Jesus will sort them out approach to buyer screening. What's one $1600 puppy to an outfit that has to be grossing around $170K in puppy sales alone? Great advertising and PR for the price, that's what it is. If you are producing @100 puppies a year, you gotta keep 'em moving.

We produce somewhat fewer puppies of a very different sort, but also prioritize keeping them moving.

At 2 1/2 weeks, the Jolly Crew has crawled on towels, fleece blankets, carpet remnant, an old sleeping bag, the canvas cover of the futon dog bed, the flannel duvet cover on the big bed, and most recently grass, and dirt. They've climbed each other, their mother, human legs, laps, chests, rolled up flannel obstacles in their nest, the pillows meant to barricade them onto the big bed, grass tussocks, and the daunting slope in the front yard. Pretty soon they are going to start climbing their containment system, and then the games begin.

The one surface type they have not experienced has been a slick, non-porous one. Easily-sanitized loses out to good traction. Puppy joints are forming, and they should not be formed as the puppy splays out scrabbling for a grip on a plastic substrate as newspaper scraps fly by. When a pup has gained the strength and will to stand, she should fight only gravity, not a omnipresent banana peel of a floor. They can learn to negotiate these when they've got their sea legs. The other surface type that they have not and never will experience is the efficient wire kind where pee just magically disappears and puppy craps get extruded through like Play-Doh in a Fun Factory. Theoretically.

Because they are puppies, not broiler chicks.  (Also, my broiler chicks aren't raised on wire either. They are out scratching around in a stall that I didn't even sanitize before moving them in.)

Now, I understand the reason that CAFOs and puppy mass-production facilities go with the jet-cleaning and foot-baths, the chronic antibiotic use and the inoculation schedule that makes Jenny McCarthy sound like Jonas Salk. Their goal is to get as many animals as possible through an unnaturally crowded system alive in a matter of weeks or months.

If the eight-month-old pig is alive when he steps onto the truck and the six-week-old puppy has not croaked of parvo when his new owner forks over eighteen benjamins and plucks him off the grating, win! The state of the former's feet or the latter's immune system is of no concern. One is meant to be bacon, and the other -- checks clear very fast these days.

It helps if one offers a "health guarantee" that is not only half the duration required under the California Puppy Lemon Law for initial disease and defect, but includes what the black wit of Carol Gravestock has dubbed the "dead dog clause" for the breed's enzootic genetic defects, which also must, per the contract, be diagnosed prior to the normal age of evaluation, oops Catch-22, customer loses.* Enjoy that blind dysplastic dog.

And you control the calendar. The longer those critters hang around, the more opportunities they have to croak. Get the super-fast broiler chickens that are ready to butcher at seven weeks; if they are puppies, charge your buyers a steep storage fee if they don't show up with the money in their teeth and a cat carrier in their hand when the puppy is six weeks old.** Don't worry about tiny details like socialization and canine developmental stages -- I've always told people that if a puppy is in a bad situation, it can be better to get him out of there rather than leave him to languish for another several weeks for the sake of time with Mother and littermates.† And in any event, Mother was demoted to twice-daily milk bar cameos weeks ago, so it's not as if she's doing any, you know, mothering. Temperament testing or other measures are moot anyway. The trainer says so:

Picking an individual pup from the litter is the least important part of the whole purchase process. There has been much written on extensive, complicated testing procedures to determine the "pick of the litter"! I personally haven't found a puppy's reactions and behavior at six or seven weeks of age, to be of much significance in predicting future behavior.

I have even had people ask me to teach them how to pick the best pup out of a litter. The truth is, I haven't figured out a reliable way to do it, and probably never will! I once kept a bitch pup for myself because a bird feather drifted by her kennel gate and she barked and carried on to get it. I sold her litter mate, who slept through all her carrying on. The bitch was completely untrainable and her docile litter mate turned out to be a Field Champion. I get many letters telling me how well the last pick puppy turned out.

So just pick the one you like after the guys who paid a deposit first pick theirs and its all the same. It's probably God's duty to sort the pups out, too.

But wait, we digress. This is about dirt. The stuff of which my Granny said every kid needed to eat a peck. We didn't all have asthma back then, and peanuts didn't kill us on sight.

Now you want to avoid filth at all costs. Filth is the wages of crowding, it comes from not cleaning, it accumulates as shit mashes into the little squares on the wire floor, as diarrhea runs down the leg of a steer who is standing hock-deep in more of the same, eating corn instead of grass while his liver dies, as parasites and smaller cooties hop and crawl and aerosolize from host to stressed-out host and find puny immune systems cowering in the corner with their eyes closed.

In order to prevent filth when you are okay with porosity, or dogforbid making use of dirt, you have to be vigilant about cleaning and changing surfaces (though whelping boxes do not, contrary to the video, require much if any cleaning for at least three weeks after changing the actual whelping bedding). You have to be involved. And you have to provide space -- enough physical space for all the critters, mental and social space, temporal space between batches of babies.

Physical space -- with, guess what, variation in the surfaces -- allows the noobs to learn to poop over there, play and sleep over here. It's the best barrier to pathogens and parasites. Or, if they are chickens, just keeps the poop spread out enough so it isn't a problem.

Mental and social crowding stress a Momma or a baby out. Everybody needs a little mental health break, the ability to get away from anyone who is bullying or irritating you, the freedom to move around and get jiggy, or to choose not to, the opportunity to not interact. Another aspect of social crowding is stability; if your pack is stable and there are roles that all understand within it, then it's not up in your grill demanding your psychic energy to sort things out.

One of the things that broke my heart at the start of Operation New Beginnings was the chain-link runs where the Momma dogs were housed. They were housed there because it was the only place that could be heated, and it was January in Montana. But each mother was constantly and keenly aware of the dam on her left and the dam on her right and the dam who was pitching a fit three runs down. Fishbowl.

Time between litters not only allows the puppy play-yard to defunk, if necessary, but it is a refractory phase for the humans involved, during which they can ask themselves how that went, whether that breeding was a good idea, how are the puppies turning out as they grow in their new homes, how will we do things differently or the same next time?

It lets you dig down under the surface, past the facade of an always flawlessly cute fat puppy, a perhaps deceptively shiny puppy, and sift out what holds it up.





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* Here's how the Dead Dog Clause in a "health guarantee" works.

In order to get a refund or, better yet, a "replacement pup" you either prove that you killed the defective one yourself or give him back to the breeder, who has made it clear with option A that she is going to kill him upon receipt. Otherwise, no refund.

Your beloved pet/working partner, who you have raised for the past year or two, and who is now hurting. Not hurting enough that life is not worth living, but he needs help, he needs the vet, he needs you.

Are you a sociopath?

See how that works?

** How's that go, exactly? How is that legal? My guess is that there's one o' them flexible-type vets on retainer who signs the form for every puppy, every time, on their six-week birthdays. California, you cannot be trusted to write sensible animal welfare laws. You screw it up every time. Just. Stop.

† I do not, however, advocate paying ransom for the privilege of rescuing a puppy from the shitty socialization regimen of his own breeder. You are just encouraging them, dammit.