Animal Insting

This is a new breed of dog that was invented by a lady named Linda S. Spurlin back in the 1970s.  She wanted to make a dog that looked like a Siberian Husky, but that was smaller, so that it could be more of a companion dog.  So she bred Siberian and Alaskan Huskies with American Eskimo dogs and Schipperkes.  Then she named the breed the Alaskan Klee Kai.  In the native Athabaskan language, the phrase klee kai means "small dog."  Sometimes this breed is also called a Miniature Husky.






Alaskan Klee Kai look a lot like Siberians, but they also have some differences, such as a shorter snout, larger ears, and a higher tail set.  There are three sizes of Klee Kai:
      Toy size -- up to 13"
      Miniature size -- 13" to 15"
      Standard size -- 15" to 17"








The breed comes in four main colors:  black-and-white, gray-and-white, red-and-white, or shades of white.  The most important thing is that you have to be able to clearly see the facial mask.





Ms. Spurlin worked on breeding these dogs in private until 1988, and that is when she let the public know about them.  The American Rare Breed Association recognized the breed in 1995, and the United Kennel Club recognized it in 1997.  The AKC has not recognized the Klee Kai yet, but maybe they will someday. So far, there are still not a whole lot of Klee Kai in the country, but there are getting to be more of them.






These dogs are small enough to live in apartments, but they have a lot of energy, so a place with a yard is probably better.  Either that, or you should take them for long walks every day.  They also blow their coats twice a year, so while that is happening, they need regular brushing.

When Alaskan Klee Kai meet people they don't know, they are pretty cautious at first.  For this reason, they are really good watchdogs.  They don't like being poked or bullied by children, so they are not always good family pets.  But they are smart and they do well in obedience classes, and also in agility.

Sasha

Mom and I think that one of the dogs at the Humane Society, Sasha, is a Klee Kai.  It doesn't seem like a dog of this unusual breed would be in a shelter, but Sasha looks and acts like a Klee Kai.  Also she came from the home of a hoarder, so that person could have got this type of dog from someplace.  Anyway, that's our opinion about Sasha, and we're sticking to it!

The reason why Mom and Aunt Judy and Aunt Linda went to Oklahoma was so that they could be judges at the Central Oklahoma cactus club show.  Judges are very important people who get to say which plants look the best and which ones should get blue ribbons and red ribbons and so forth.  The Oklahoma show was very small, and the reasons why it was so small were (1) the club had not had a judged show for several years, and (2) three of the people who would have entered a lot of nice plants in the show were either out of town, in the hospital, or dead.

So the whole show fit on a few tables, and it didn't take long to judge it.  Which was good because after the judging, Mom and Aunt Linda and Aunt Judy had more time to shop for new plants to buy.


This is the plant that won the "Best Succulent" award.  It's called a Haworthia truncata, and it looks like its leaves got eaten off by a rabbit or something.  But they didn't get eaten off.  That's just the way the plant grows.


After lunch, the three judges got to go see where Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jim live.  Aunt Joyce has a great big, huge greenhouse with a ton of plants in it.  And she sells these plants, and that is how she makes money.  Sometimes she even comes to Kansas City to sell plants.  Uncle Jim does not sell plants.  He teaches in a university, and what he teaches is history, or at least Mom thinks that is what he teaches, but she can't remember for sure.


Here's the greenhouse behind the house where Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jim live.  They just moved there a few months ago, and they had this greenhouse built.  Also they had the fence built.


There are some funny signs on the fence.

Pumpkin, Pickle, and Sugar

But I think that the very best thing about Aunt Joyce's house is that she and Uncle Jim have three dogs.  Mom liked the dogs, and she took some pictures of them because she knew I would want to see them.  And she was right about that!

Pumpkin

Aunt Joyce said these dogs are pomapoos, which means they are part pomeranian and part poodle.

Pickle and Pumpkin

I think they look lots more like poodles than like pomeranians, but nobody asked my opinion.

Sugar in the greenhouse

All three dogs are girls, and they all live outdoors all the time.  I think this kind of sad, but nobody asked me about this, either.

Sugar

At least the dogs have a nice, new shed for a doghouse, and inside, it has dog beds for them.  Aunt Joyce said that there will be heat in the shed this winter, so that is good.

Pumpkin and Sugar

During the summer, the dogs have a shady spot where they can hang out under the tree, with a big dish of water.  Mom said it seemed pretty cool in the shade, even though the temperature was almost 100º, and it was really, really hot inside the greenhouse.

Sugar

Mom does not like it when people leave their dogs outside all the time.  I told her she should have brought Pickle, Pumpkin, and Sugar home with her to be my sisters, but Mom said that was not a good idea because Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jim would miss them.  Also she said the dogs have a good life in Oklahoma, even if they don't get to go in the house.  And besides that, we already have our Legal Limit of Dogs (plus two cats).  And Mom also said that if she had to live with three dogs who were named after food, she would feel hungry all the time!

Mom had a lot of adventures in Oklahoma City, and she took a whole bunch of pictures, even though she was only there for part of two days.  And now she expects me to write about all the stuff she did, whether I want to or not.  So I guess I will do it because I like to make Mom happy, because that way she will remember to feed me!

But before I tell you about Mom's adventures, I will just say that my brothers and I survived our stay at Pooches' Paradise, and nothing very interesting went on while we were there.  But guess what happened when Mom came to take us home!  She found out that the people who work there thought I was a BOY!  So she picked me up and showed them my girl parts, and then they knew for sure that I wasn't a boy at all!  Sheesh!  How could anyone think that such a pretty, dainty dog such as myself was a boy?  Maybe I will have to start wearing one of those little pink tutus after all!

Okay, well, that's enough of that.  Now I will tell you that Mom went to Oklahoma City with Aunt Judy and Aunt Linda, who are both in the cactus club.  And after they got down there Friday afternoon, they checked in at the hotel, which it turns out was Pet Friendly, so I really think I should have got to go there, too.  Then after that, the three of them went to Bricktown, which is a part of the city where people like to hang out and have fun.


I don't know exactly why it is called Bricktown, but maybe they used to make bricks there.  Or maybe it's because there are a bunch of brick buildings, and some of them used to be warehouses.  Like for instance, this one is now the Spaghetti Warehouse, which is a restaurant, and not really a place where spaghetti is stored.  We don't know what happens in all those upstairs floors where the windows got bricked up.  It's sort of a mystery.


Here's another interesting brick building.  It was available for someone to buy and do something with it.  Mom thought it would make really good condos, because it's like a lot of the old brick buildings that got made into lofts and condos in Kansas City.  But maybe no one has thought of doing that yet.  Or maybe they can't afford to do it.


Anyway, here's what's really cool about Bricktown -- they have a whole herd of buffaloes right in the middle of town!


Wow, can you believe it?  How many cities do you know of that have buffaloes downtown?


Okay, I guess they're supposed to be called "bison," but no matter what you call them, they're pretty amazing.


And there's also a mural with teepees and Indian ponies and stuff like that, plus there's some nice grass for the buffaloes to graze on.  Not to mention that they are very colorful.


Oh, and here's a horse!  But the horse gets to stay indoors where it's nice and cool on a hot day, and not out in the pasture with the buffaloes.


There was also a canal, and you could go for a boat ride, but Mom and her friends didn't do that.


Some ducks were swimming around in the canal, and these kids were throwing bread crumbs for them to eat.


And besides the ducks, there was this American Coot, who has really big feet.  I thought he was sitting on a doughnut, but Mom said maybe it was a fountain with lights or something like that.


Here's a picture of a Model A Ford from 1930.  I know it is from 1930 because I read the license plate.  The car looks funny, but that's the way they used to make cars back in those days.


Okay, so after Mom and Aunt Linda and Aunt Judy walked around for a while and got really hot and sweaty because it was almost 100 degrees, they ate supper at a Mexican restaurant called Chelino's.  At this restaurant, the light fixtures are made out of strawberry jars with flowers painted on them.



Mom and Aunt Linda had fish tacos, which they thought were yummy.  And Aunt Judy ate tamales, which she also thought were yummy.  So everybody got all full of food and happy.

I wish I could have had fish tacos for supper Friday night, but all I got was some boring old dog food.  Which is what happens when your mom goes on a trip and doesn't take you along!

My brother Barry is in a lot of trouble with Mom because of some stuff he did.  And since I love to tell on my brothers, today's blog is going to be all about Barry and his silliness.

Well, as you might remember, Barry likes to eat paper, so Mom gives him some of her junk mail every day to eat.  And she gives some to me sometimes, too, because I like to tear it up, but I don't usually eat a whole lot of it.  But during all the time that Barry has lived here, he has been very good about waiting until Mom gives him the paper before he starts eating it.

Then a couple of weeks ago, Barry got the idea that he could just help himself to the mail on the table, before Mom even opened it.  And he ate up some stuff which Mom was hoping was not anything important such as a bill she was supposed to pay.  And one time Barry stole part of the newspaper off the table, even though Mom hadn't finished reading it, and he ate that up, too.

So Mom started hiding all her important papers under a big book on the table, and that mostly kept Barry from eating them.

But then last week on Wednesday, Mom went to the Humane Society board meeting, and when she came home, she brought a bunch of papers and reports and a notebook that she took notes in because she is the secretary of the board.  And Mom put all this stuff on a table by our front door, so that she could remember to take it all upstairs later to where the computer is, and write up the minutes of the meeting.  Mom has left her board meeting stuff on this same table many times in the past, and nothing bad ever happened to it before.

Well, guess what!  On Thursday afternoon, Mom went to the blood center and gave blood, and when she came home, she found out that Barry had been very, very naughty.  He got most of the papers off the table, and he ate the financial report, the president's report, the development report, and the top half of the shelter and clinic reports.  Also he ate the staples that were in some of these reports.  What he didn't eat was Mom's notebook, and he didn't eat a page with a proposed budget for the capital campaign.  (I'm not sure what all these things are, but I know that Mom thought they were important.)

So Mom had to send an email to some people at the shelter to say, "Help!  My dog ate my homework!" and ask for new copies of the reports that Barry ate.

Anyway, the only good part about this was that Mom had a great excuse for not writing up the minutes over the weekend, and in fact, she still hasn't written them.

So after that, you may think that Mom had learned her lesson and would never leave anything ever again where Barry could eat it.  But I am sad to say that Mom is a slow learner, so here's what else Barry did that was naughty.

Mom made a nice flyer about the cactus club, and she went to Kinko's on Friday and got 150 copies of it made.  Then she took these flyers to a sale that the cactus club had on Saturday at the River Market, and she brought home the flyers that were left over, which was at least 100 of them.  These flyers were in one of those boxes that they give you at Kinko's, and the box is made out of cardboard that's kind of like the cardboard that is in the middle of a roll of toilet paper.  This kind of cardboard is nice and chewy and fairly tasty, if I do say so myself.

So Mom put the box of leftover flyers on the table by the front door, and she thought about whether Barry would eat it, but since the papers were in a box, she decided he wouldn't bother it.  Well, of course, she was WRONG about that!  And Tuesday evening when Mom went to a meeting of another group she's in, Barry started looking for trouble again.  He found the box and he pulled it down off the table, and he started eating the box.  There were pretty, green flyers all over the floor, and they looked kind of fun, so I might have chewed on a few of them myself, but I am not going to tell you for sure whether I did or I didn't.

Anyway, when Mom came home, she was really mad because Barry ate the whole box lid and about half of the bottom of the box.  And a bunch of flyers were kind of chewed up, but some didn't look all that bad.  So Mom picked them up and found quite a few she could save, and really, I don't know why she was so upset.  But I will just say that now Mom is keeping a big, heavy dictionary on the table by the door, and if she wants to put any papers there, she puts them under the dictionary.

And that's the story of why Barry is in so much trouble.  Mom was worried that the box he ate might get stuck inside him, like that blanket thing got stuck inside me, but it seems to have gone right on through without a problem.  And that's a good thing.

But anyway, here's the other thing I have to tell you today, which is that MOM IS GOING AWAY AND LEAVING US!  I hate it when she does that!  I just really, really hate it!  This morning she will be taking us over to Pooches' Paradise, and she plans to abandon us there for two whole nights while she goes to Oklahoma City.  Well, I've been to Oklahoma City before with Mom, so I think I should get to go there with her again!  But Mom says she is going with some people from the cactus club, and they are going to judge a cactus show in Oklahoma.  And there will be 3 people in one car, and then 3 people in one motel room, and there will not be room for a dog, too.  I think that since I am such a little dog, I could fit in the car and in the room, but Mom said she will not discuss the matter any further.  So I have to go to Pooches' Paradise, and I won't be able to write my blog for a couple of days, and it's all a very sad situation, but there's nothing I can do about it.

You probably heard about the humongous, horrible tornado that hit Joplin, MO on May 22, and about how a lot of people got killed because their houses fell on top of them.  But not everybody got killed.  Some people just got trapped in their houses, and they couldn't get out.  It has taken about a week and a half to find all the people and bodies, and it wasn't easy work because the places where the tornado went were smashed to smithereens.

Luckily, in situations like the one in Joplin, people are smart enough to bring in lots of search-and-rescue dogs to sniff everything and find people who are still alive, as well as people who aren't.  This is very important work, and humans can't do it nearly as well as dogs can, since dogs have a much better sense of smell.  Which is something I have mentioned to you several times before.  So now I will tell you about some of the dogs who have been working in Joplin to find the tornado victims.

Two of these dogs, Huck and Jagger, were rescued from shelters in California back in 2007, and then they were trained by the National Disaster Search Dog Foundation in Ojai.  Now they and their handlers work for the Fire Department in Oklahoma City, which is just a few hours' drive from Joplin.  So they were able to get to the disaster site pretty quickly.

Huck is a 4-year old chocolate lab who came from the East Bay SPCA in San Francisco.  While he was there, he was called Huckleberry Hound, and he was very possessive of his toys.  So the shelter called a woman who trains dogs for Drug and Explosive Detection, and she tested Huck.  He passed the test, so he was accepted for training.  Soon Huck's trainers found out that he could do all sorts of clever things like open gates, undo latches, and climb fences.  In August, 2009, Huck finished his training and was certified for search and rescue work.

Huck and his handler, Brent Koeninger

Jagger is a male yellow lab who is 5 years old.  He was rescued from Haven Humane Society, near Redding, CA.  Jagger was a stray, and he was very thin and sick when he first got to the shelter.  But even though he didn't feel too great, Jagger was really excited about balls and about chasing them.  While he was in training, Jagger got all healthy again.  He earned his official state certification in August, 2009, the same as Huck did.

Jagger and handler, Jason Smith

Huck and Jagger, along with their handlers, arrived in Joplin about 2:00 a.m. the morning after the tornado.  They went right to work and searched about 40 buildings during their first work shift.  They alternated working shifts with two teams from Tulsa.  Search-and-rescue dogs, like Huck and Jagger, just look for people who are still alive.  There is another kind of dog called a "cadaver dog," who looks for dead people.


Here's a picture of Goose, a border collie who is trained to do both search-and-rescue and cadaver work.  Goose and his (or her) handler, Robin Houston, are from the Kansas City Police Department K-9 unit.


Jewel, who is a weimaraner, is also trained to look for both living and dead victims.  Jewel's handler is Carrie Grove, who is with the Missouri Search and Rescue K-9 of Kansas City, MO.

Joliet, IL also sent a dog and two handlers to Joplin.  The dog's name is Zeus, and he's a 5-year-old German shepherd.  I don't have a picture of Zeus, but it shouldn't be too hard for you to imagine a German Shepherd Dog sniffing around in the ruins.


Here's another dog and handler, and they are looking in the ruins of a church to see if they can find any bodies.

This dog is named Treaker, and his handler is Rich Enochs, of Mid-America K-9 Search and Rescue.  They were looking for a 16-month-old boy who got blown out of his mother's arms.  Later on, the boy's body was found in a morgue, so that was very sad.


One day while a search-and-rescue dog was sniffing around, he alerted his handler to tell him that there was someone alive under the rubble.  The people got all excited and began digging.  Soon they heard a groan, and then they pulled out a dog!  The dog seemed very happy to be out of the place where it was trapped.  I hope it has got back to its people by now.  Here's a picture of the happy, rescued dog.

And here's a picture of a dog who is just waiting for her humans to come back home and give her some supper.


A lot of pets were rescued and taken to a big warehouse sort of place that was filled with cages and dog crates.  A veterinarian and two vet techs from the Kansas City Humane Society went to Joplin last week for a few days to help with the animals.  A lot of them had broken bones and also wounds that had to be stitched up because of getting hurt in the tornado.  People who had lost their dogs or cats came to the rescue place, and a bunch of them found their animals, so that made everybody happy.

Anyway, yesterday the list of missing people finally got all the way down to zero.  The total right now of people killed is 134, but it's possible a few more people will die from their injuries.  The search-and-rescue dogs and their handlers went over the area at least 6 times where the tornado destroyed everything, and that adds up to a whole lot of sniffing!

Well, since I was talking about the Civil War yesterday, and about how Decoration Day got invented right after that war, Mom started thinking about her great-grandfather, William Lee.  Mom actually had at least three great-grandfathers who fought in the Civil War, all on the Confederate side.  But Mom knows the most about her great-grandfather Lee.  Also she has a photo of him and some of his war buddies, which was taken sometime after the war, when they all got together for a reunion.

William Lee is in the back row, 2nd from the right. James Lee is in the back row, 2nd from the left.

William Lee grew up in the northwest corner of Arkansas, in Benton County.  Anyway, in October of 1861, when William was 17, he and his older brother James went to Bentonville and enlisted.  They were in Company F of the 15th NW Arkansas Regiment.  They fought in several battles, including Corinth, Elkhorn, Hatchie Bridge, and maybe Shiloh.  But we don't know all the details because Mom only got as far as getting the muster rolls from the National Archives.


Anyway, after a while, what happened was that the part of the Confederate Army that William and James were in, which was commanded by Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton, ended up in Jackson, Mississippi.  But then Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's Army of the Tennessee came in and fought them and captured the city of Jackson.  So the rebels started backing up toward Vicksburg.  Or maybe you're supposed to say "falling back" instead of "backing up."  I don't know a whole lot of military terms.

General Pemberton

While they were going towards Vicksburg, they fought a couple of big battles, and one was called Champion's Hill.  The Confederates were outnumbered there, and they lost the battle, so they went on to the Big Black River, where they used a bridge and a boat to cross the river.  Then when they all got across, they burned the bridge and the boat.  Which was supposed to make it harder for the Union soldiers to get over the river.

But the Union soldiers still caught up with them, and a lot of rebel troops died, either because they got shot or because they drowned.  Besides which, 1,700 soldiers were captured, including my mom's great-great uncle, James Lee, who was a 2nd lieutenant.  So after that, Lt. James Lee spent the rest of the war as a prisoner, first at Johnson's Island, Ohio, and later at Ft. Delaware.



Meanwhile, Mom's great-grandfather, Pvt. William Lee, went with the rest of General Pemberton's army to Vicksburg.  You may already know that Vicksburg is right on the Mississippi River, and one reason you may know this is because Vicksburg got flooded recently, and so did a bunch of other cities along the Mississippi.  And back in Civil War days, Vicksburg was very important to the South because they wanted to keep control of the river.  But of course, the North also wanted to control the river, and that's what General Grant was up to with this whole campaign.  He  was trying to win Vicksburg so that the North could say which boats got to go up and down the Mississippi.


Since Vicksburg was such an important city, it already had lots of forts and trenches and all kinds of stuff that was needed to defend it.  So the rebels went right in and got busy with the defending.  General Grant thought he could beat them anyway, but he tried twice, and he couldn't do it because too many of his men got killed.  So he decided to make a siege instead.  Which meant he put soldiers all around the city so that nobody could go in or come out.  And no supplies or food could get in either.  Plus out in the river, there were these boats with iron sides and big cannons on them.


The siege started on May 18, 1863, and all the soldiers who were defending Vicksburg, including Mom's great-grandfather, and all the people who lived in Vicksburg, were just kind of stuck there.  And besides the soldiers, it was mostly women and children and old people who were there because all the men were off someplace fighting in other battles.

The Union troops and the Union battleships were all the time shooting bombshells at the town, and people were afraid that their houses would get hit and fall down on them and kill them.  So they started digging caves into the hillsides of the town, with a lot of help from their slaves, and they lived in the caves where it was safer.  Some of these caves had several rooms, and they had all the nice furniture from the people's real homes.

Living in a cave at Vicksburg

But after a while, there was no more food to eat.  And people ate whatever animals they had there, including rats.  I don't know if they ate dogs or not, but sadly, I think they might have.  Then finally, everyone got so hungry, and the situation got so bad that General Pemberton told General Grant that he would surrender, which he did on July 4, 1863.

When the Union won Vicksburg, that was pretty much a turning point in the war, especially since it happened just one day after the Union won at Gettysburg.  The South got kind of cut in half because they couldn't get troops or supplies or anything across the Mississippi anymore between the east and the west parts of the Confederacy.

Currier and Ives print

The terms of the Vicksburg surrender made all the rebel soldiers be "on parole," and each soldier had to sign a paper that said he would never, ever fight against the U.S. Army again.  General Grant decided to do things this way instead of taking all the Confederates prisoner, because having so many prisoners to deal with would be a big pain in the butt and would slow his army down.

Mom has a copy of the parole paper that her great-grandfather signed, but she was too lazy to dig it out.

So all the soldiers signed a paper, and then they got to leave Vicksburg.  A lot of them joined another unit later and did some more fighting.  But we think that  Pvt. William Lee must have gone home to Arkansas and stayed there because there is no record of him fighting anymore.  Then when the war ended in 1865, James Lee also went home to Arkansas.

William Lee got married to a woman named Sarah, and they had seven children.  They named the oldest one Robert Edward Lee.  It's pretty easy to guess how they came up with this name for their son!  Mom likes to tell people that she is related to Robert E. Lee, which she is, but it's not the Robert E. Lee.

The fourth child of William and Sarah Lee was Mom's grandmother, Nancy Idella Lee.  But everybody called her Della.  She died before Mom was born, so Mom never got to meet her, but at least she has some pictures of her.



So that's your history lesson for today.  Just remember that if you want to avoid having to eat rats, you should stay out of any towns that are under siege!