Animal Insting

Maybe you will remember that when I wrote about Pharaoh Hounds, I talked about mean old Hosni Mubarak, and how I wanted to just bite him on the butt.  Well, not long after that, he decided to quit being president of Egypt, so I think he heard about my threat and took it seriously!

But nowadays people aren't talking so much about Egypt.  Instead they are talking about Libya because it's the same sort of situation there, with a nasty ruler named Moammar Gadhafi, who is trying to stay in power by killing lots of people.  So I will repeat my threat.  If Mr. Gadhafi does not step down from office right away, I will be forced to go bite his butt.  So there!

Okay, that's enough talk about mean bullies.  Now I want to talk about nice dogs.  And the kind of dog I want to talk about today is the sloughi, which is pronounced SLOO-ghee.  This breed is very ancient, and it started out in North Africa, in the countries of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya.  Some people think sloughis are related to salukis, which come from Arabia and around there, but really these two breeds are different, even though they are both sighthounds and they have kind of similar names.  The sloughi is more closely related to the azawakh, which is a breed that lives further south, like in Mali, where the Tuareg people live.

Sloughis are the dogs of the Berber tribes, who have used them for many years to hunt ostriches, hyenas, jackals, hares, foxes, and gazelles.  Also the sloughis guarded their humans' homes and flocks.  The Berber people called the dogs Sloughi Moghrebi, which means "sighthound of the Maghreb."  The Maghreb is the name for the arid northwest coast of Africa.  Europeans called it the Barbary Coast.

Anyway, sloughis were very valuable dogs, so in the old days, only chiefs and kings could own them, and these people were very careful to keep the breed pure.  The sloughi is the national dog of Morocco, and Moroccan breeders established the international breed standard.  Sloughis are recognized by the Fédération Cynologique Internationale (FCI), and by kennel clubs in the UK, New Zealand, and Australia, but not yet by the AKC.  In 1989, the American Sloughi Association was founded, and in 1997, the sloughi was accepted by the AKC's Foundation Stock Service, which is a first step toward recognition.

Male sloughis weigh 55-65 pounds, and females weigh 35-50 pounds.  They have short hair and drooping ears.  Some people think sloughis look sad because of how their faces are, but I don't think they really are sad.  Sloughis have long, flat muscles, so they don't look brawny like greyhounds do.  Their coat colors are usually some shade of tan or red, and they can be brindled, but they are not supposed to have white markings.  Also they might have a black mantle, mask, or ears.

Sloughis are very gentle and intelligent.  They bond closely with their owners and like to hang out with them.  Indoors, sloughis like to sleep on cushy beds, sometimes on their backs with their feet sticking up, or in other funny positions. Outdoors, they like to run, but they should only be allowed to do this in safe areas where they will not get hit by cars.

The only genetic health problem that sloughis have is Progressive Retinal Atrophy, and sloughi people are trying to breed away from this problem to get rid of it.  The life expectancy for a sloughi is 10-15 years.

I think it would be nice if we had a sloughi of our very own, but I'm not even going to ask Mom because I know she will just say no.  That's what she always says.  Sigh.

I didn't know that dogs could get married, especially to humans, but that's what happened in a city called Toowoomba, which is located in Queensland, Australia.  Because a man there named Joe Guiso got married to his labrador retriever, Honey, in a special ceremony last November.

Mr. Guiso, who is 20 years old, adopted Honey when she was a puppy, and now she is 5 years old.  One day when they were walking in Laurel Bank Park, they saw a wedding taking place, and Mr. Guiso said to Honey, "That could be us."  Which was how he proposed to her, and she did not say no, so he went ahead and planned the ceremony.

The bride wore a white cape, and the groom wore a nice grey suit.  Thirty of their family members and friends came, some of whom were dogs.  In his vows, Mr. Guiso told Honey, "You're my best friend and you make every part of my day better."  Then he got down on one knee and gave Honey a kiss.

Some animal rights people didn't like the idea of a man marrying his dog, but Mr. Guiso told all the people at the wedding that "it's platonic."  Which means that they will not be trying to make any puppies together -- not that that would work very well anyway.  Mr. Guiso also said that the wedding was a chance for all his friends to dress up and get together and celebrate.  "You can't actually marry a dog," he told the press because I guess maybe they didn't know this.


Sadly, the honeymoon did not go very well.  Mr. Guiso reported that "I think [Honey's] a bit angry about all the publicity; she's been giving me the silent treatment."  Well, I don't blame her.  First her groom had a nice wedding ceremony with vows and everything, and after that he said, "You can't actually marry a dog."  What kind of mixed message is that?


So anyway, there are a couple of things we can learn from this story, and one is that you shouldn't just marry anybody who asks you, even if you've already been living together for 5 years.


And the other thing we can learn is that Toowoomba is a really strange name for a city, but it's kind of fun to say.  I really wanted to know what the name Toowoomba means, so I did a little research, and I found out that no one knows absolutely for sure, but they think it's sort of an attempt at pronouncing an Aboriginal word for "The Swamp."  Which mostly only describes one part of the town that used to be sort of swampy.

Toowoomba has a population of 90,000, and a really nice climate, because it almost never snows there, and the average high temperature is 81º F.  It is called "The Garden City" because its 150 parks are full of flowers.  Also they have trees there that turn pretty colors in the fall and lose their leaves, which doesn't happen in very much of Australia.  Oh, and in 2008, Toowoomba was named Australia's Tidiest Town.

But getting back to the subject of the man who married his dog, I asked Mom if she would ever want to marry any of her dogs, and she said no, not really.  She said she'd much rather be able to claim us all as dependents on her tax return, so she could deduct all our vet bills!

Let's fire up the way-back machine and visit another treasure of my youth for this list: Wacky Packages. Wacky Packages (or "Wacky Packs") were satires of famous products made into trading cards and stickers. Wacky Packs were pretty popular in the late 60's and early 70's, and even had a bit of a comebacks in later years. Which of these do you remember?

I am so confused about what season it is these days.  The calendar says it is spring, and for a while we had some nice, warm sunny days that made a dog want to go out and roll in the grass.  But now it's cold and icky, which is not how spring is supposed to be, at least in my opinion.  Yesterday, for example, the weatherman said we would get snow.  Not a lot of snow, but a little snow.  But we didn't get snow.  Well, we got some snowflakes that fell down from the sky, but as soon as they hit the ground, they turned into wet spots.  So that was not what I would call real snow.  But my point is that we should not get any kind of snow in the spring, real snow or unreal snow.

Also we were supposed to get rain yesterday, but we didn't get that either.  And it's been cold and cloudy, which is not very springlike at all.  Whenever I go outside, I just do my stuff and come back in the house right away because it's much warmer and nicer in the house.
The flowers are trying to bloom and do the things that they do in the spring, but it is hard for them.  Our weeping cherry tree is sort of blooming, but it "lacks enthusiasm," as Mom says.
And our star magnolia opened a few flowers, and then it stopped and is waiting for more warm weather.  But if the temperature gets below freezing, the magnolia flowers will turn brown and fall off.  This has happened sometimes in other years, and it's very ugly and sad.
Our very first daffodil opened yesterday, but it does not look very happy.
The temperature never even got over 40 all day yesterday, and that is just wrong.
The tulips that Mom planted a few weeks ago are coming up, and so are the day lilies.  Yes, Mom knows that you are supposed to plant tulips in the fall, not the spring, but she got a whole bunch of bulbs for free, so she went ahead and planted them.  And now they are coming up, but we don't know if they will really bloom or not.
Nicky got in trouble the other day because he was out in the yard, eating Mom's day lilies.  And he dug a  hole that's about a foot deep, which also made Mom grumpy.

Then yesterday morning, Nicky was in the flower bed, eating the leaves of the coral bells.  After that, he came in the house and puked them up.  I know why he did this.  It's because his tummy felt icky and he needed to puke and make it all better.  Sometimes I feel that way, too.  But I usually just eat grass instead of eating Mom's flowers.
Okay, well, here's the last picture Mom took yesterday.  This happens all the time out in our yard.  When Nicky is getting ready to poop, Barry follows him all around until Nicky finally starts pooping, and then Barry sticks his head in there to get the nice, fresh poop.  After which, Mom gets annoyed with Barry because he comes in the house with poop all over his ears and head and neck and collar, and she has to clean him off.

I've started eating Nicky's poop too sometimes, and in this photo, you can see my cute little rear end while I'm waiting for my chance to do that.  I don't stick my head under Nicky's butt because Barry is usually there first, and Barry might bite me.  That's the kind of evil big brother he is!

Anyway, that's all for today.  I think I will go curl up in a blanket now and wait for it to really be spring!

You'll never believe what happened in a neighborhood association in Annandale, Virginia:  they elected a DOG as their president!  And they didn't even know they were electing a dog.  Ha!  I think this is hilarious, and it serves them right because none of the humans in the group wanted to run for office.

Okay, so what happened was that this man named Mark Crawford had already been elected the president of the Hillbrook-Tall Oaks neighborhood three times, and the rules said he could not be elected again.  So he went around and asked lots of people if they would please run for president because somebody needed to be president.  But nobody would do it because they all said they were way too busy.

So finally Mr. Crawford got frustrated and told the nominating committee that his dog would run for the office.  His dog was a soft-coated wheaten terrier named Beatha Lee.  And her first name is pronounced bee-ah-tah.  So the committee checked the bylaws, and they found out that Beatha Lee had the right qualifications, which were (1) she lived in the neighborhood, and (2) she was a legal adult in age, which she was in dog years.  The bylaws did not say that officers had to be humans.

Anyway, the committee decided to nominate Beatha Lee for president, and when people came to the meeting to vote, they learned that the nominee was a fairly new resident, that she was interested in neighborhood activities and the outdoors, and that she had experience in Maine overseeing an estate of 26 acres.

Everybody was glad to have a volunteer running for president, so they all voted for her.  Then they ate some ice cream, watched a karate demonstration, and went home.  A few weeks later, they read in the association's newsletter that their new president promised to "govern with an even paw."  There was a photo of Beatha Lee, and the headling said "Dog Rules, Humans Apathetic (Pathetic)."  Well, some people were really mad because they had been tricked into electing a dog, and other people were embarrassed, and some just thought it was funny.


Beatha Lee has quite a few duties now that she is president, including running meetings, appointing committee members, co-signing checks, and speaking at public meetings.  But she manages these things by delegating them to her vice-president, who is her dad, Mark Crawford.  Sometimes she attends board meetings, which are held at her house, and she sits under the table and listens.  Then if she gets bored, she asks to be let out.

The people in the neighborhood have sort of accepted their doggy president now, and the board members hope that more people will run for office in the future.  Or maybe Beatha Lee will run again.  One woman was asked if she would vote for the dog again, and she said, "No... I'd vote for my cat though."

On Tuesday, Mom took me to see the doggy dentist, and when I say "doggy dentist," I don't mean a dog who is a dentist.  I mean a veterinarian who specializes in dental care for dogs and cats.  Usually when Mom takes one of us to see a specialist, she takes us to Mission MedVet because that is closer, and lots of people know her there now because she is always bringing some animal and spending lots of money to get the animal cured.  Well, except for Gabe, who couldn't be cured the last time he was there.

But there is no dental specialist at Mission MedVet, so we had to go to a place called VSEC, which stands for Veterinary Specialty and Emergency Care.  Except that recently they changed their name to Blue Pearl Veterinary Specialty and Emergency Care.  Mom and I think that "Blue Pearl" is a strange name for a veterinary hospital, but that's just our opinion.  We don't even know if there is such a thing as a blue pearl, although we have heard of white pearls, black pearls, and pink pearls.  So maybe there are blue pearls, too.

Anyway, on the VSEC website, it explains why they have this new Pearl name, and the reason has something to do with some other veterinary hospitals in other parts of the country that are also called Blue Pearl, and they are all related somehow.  But it was too much information for me to want to read, so I didn't.

The main point is that Mom took me to this clinic, and the doctor we saw was named Dr. Modrcin.  He came out to the lobby to meet us, and he said I was a handsome boy and very nice, so I immediately knew that he would be a good doctor.  Then we went in the examination room, and he listened to my heart and looked in my mouth at my teeth.  And he noticed what nobody else has noticed when they examined me, which is that my front teeth really hurt if somebody touches them, so I don't like people to touch them.

Dr. Modrcin told Mom that the fact that my canine teeth are kind of brownish and stained-looking means that they are abscessed.  An abscess is an infection that happens when bacteria get down inside your tooth, like through a crack or a hole or because you broke your tooth off.  I only have 3 canine teeth instead of the usual 4 because one of them was extracted in the past.  I don't remember exactly why this happened or when.  It's the kind of thing a guy just prefers to forget about, so I did.

Anyway, Dr. Modrcin said my other canines that I still have left are abscessed, and that's why they hurt if somebody or something touches them.  Mom asked the doctor whether he would just pull the teeth, but he said he didn't want to do that because they have really long roots, and if you extract the teeth, you lose some of the bone, too.  Dr. Modrcin said it would be much easier and faster to do root canals on the teeth.

Mom has had a root canal herself, so she knows about them.  What happens is that all the inflamed pulpy stuff gets drilled out of the tooth, and then the space is filled back up with some other stuff.  But you can only do a root canal if you have enough bone and tooth root left to hold the filler that is put in.  If not, you might have to extract the tooth.

Since Dr. Modrcin didn't have any x-rays of my front teeth, he couldn't tell what condition the roots and bones are in.  So he is going to send Mom an estimate of how much it would cost to do root canals on my teeth or how much it would cost if some teeth had to be extracted.  Also there is the matter of my incisors, which are those little bitty teeth in the front, between the canines.  Some of those teeth might have abscesses, too.

The good news is that I don't have CUPS, which is that stomatitis thing that Piper mentioned before.  And the other good news is that although my 4th premolar on each side is chipped, neither one of those teeth is abscessed.  Still, it's worrisome to think about all the dental work I will have to have done, especially if it is painful.  Mom is not looking forward to paying whatever it will cost because she is sure it will cost a lot.  I do have to admit, though, that it would be nice to have teeth that don't hurt whenever I bite into something.

In the meantime, before I have to go get my dental work done, Mom is supposed to brush my teeth every single day.  Of course, she is just going to brush the ones in the back.  They don't hurt like the ones in the front, but the gums hurt back there because I have gingivitis.  Dr. Modrcin told us that gingivitis is the first stage of periodontal disease.  You can cure gingivitis, but you can't cure periodontal disease, which makes your gums recede from your teeth and then the bone is exposed.  Mom has periodontal disease, but it is not too terrible as long as she keeps her teeth clean and goes to the dentist or the periodontist every 4 months.

Dr. Modrcin told Mom not to bother with doggy toothpaste.  He said she could use beef bouillon, so she's been using that for the last couple of nights, and I thought it was quite yummy.  First she is just taking her finger and rubbing my teeth with it so that I get used to having something in my mouth, and later she will start using a toothbrush.  The main thing that cleans the teeth is the brush rubbing the bacteria off.  The toothpaste doesn't really do anything, so that's why Dr. Modrcin said we could just use bouillon.  Chicken bouillon is okay, too.

So that's the story of my visit to the doggy dentist.  I wish that greyhounds didn't have such lousy teeth, but most of us do.  I guess I'm just lucky to have a mom who is willing to go into debt to get my teeth fixed!

There is something about pigs that is just adorable. C'mon, you know you want one of these little oinkers