Animal Insting

Martha Stewart is a very nice lady who knows how to make everything in your house look really pretty and also how to make all your food taste very yummy.  And the reason I can be sure that she is very nice, even though I never met her personally, is because she loves animals.  She has several dogs, and she has a bunch of cats who were all named for composers, and she lives on a farm where there are chickens and geese and sheep and donkeys and horses.












A few weeks ago, Ms. Stewart was in the news because she had a little accident with one of her French bulldogs, Francesca, and she had to get 10 stitches in her upper lip.  At first, some people thought that Francesca bit her mom, but that was not what happened.  What happened was that Ms. Stewart was getting ready to leave for a little trip, and she went to say goodbye to Francesca, who was enjoying a very nice nap at the time.  So when Ms. Stewart bent down to kiss Francesca goodbye, Francesca was startled awake, and she sat up very suddenly and hit her mom right in the mouth!  Which just goes to show that the old saying, "Let sleeping dogs lie" is true, and you should always follow it unless you want to get some stitches.




Anyway, besides Francesca, who is a black Frenchie, Martha Stewart also has a white Frenchie named Sharkey.  These two girls have their very own blog, just like I do, except theirs has lots more photos than mine.  And the photos are of their farm and house and stuff.  You can read the blog here: http://dailywag.marthastewart.com/   And if you read the blog and look at the pictures, you can meet the donkeys, whose names are Clive, Rufus, and Billie.












Another kind of dog breed that Ms. Stewart likes is the Chow Chow.  These dogs have LOTS of hair, like so much hair that you might have trouble seeing certain parts of them such as their ears or butts.  Some of Ms. Stewart's chows have been show dogs.  One that she had for many years and loved very much was named Kublai Khan Paw Paw.  Sadly, Paw Paw died in 2008 when he was 12 years old.







Then in March of 2009, a really horrible thing happened when Ms. Stewart was boarding her 5-month-old puppy, Ghenghis Khan (a grandson of Paw Paw), at a kennel.  A propane truck exploded there, and the whole kennel caught on fire.    Ghenghis Khan and 16 other dogs died in the fire.








Now Ms. Stewart has another puppy named Ghenghis Khan.  He is called G.K. by Sharkey and Francesca in their blog.  G.K. is the great-grandson of Paw Paw, and his father is a famous show dog named Maddox.














All of Martha Stewart's cats seem to be the long-haired kind with smushy faces, like Persians or Himalayans.  I think they all look kind of like kitty versions of Chow Chows.  Which is fine if you like hairy dogs and cats, but Mom and I mostly prefer short-haired animals.















Anyway, Ms. Stewart likes to dress her pets up in little costumes and outfits.  Also she designs stuff like dog necklaces.  I guess she does this because she is a person who likes to dress everything up to make it look prettier.  Personally, I would not put up with that kind of thing, but maybe if you are Martha Stewart's dog or cat, you don't really get a choice.

But what I would really like is to live on a farm, the way Sharkey and Francesca and G.K. do, with donkeys and chickens and all kinds of interesting animals.  I asked Mom if we could move to a farm, but she said she couldn't afford to buy us one.  Also she couldn't afford to pay all the people that you have to have to take care of a farm.  I was surprised, because I thought Martha Stewart did everything herself, but Mom said if I thought that, I was nuts!

Most people think that penguins live in cold places like Antarctica, and not in warm places like Peru.  And they think that was especially true back millions and millions of years ago, when the whole earth was lots warmer than it is now, and the air-conditioner hadn't been invented yet.  So that is why scientists were shocked in 2005 when they found some fossils of really, really tall penguins who used to live in the warm water near the equator.

Icadyptes salasi

The tallest penguin we have nowadays is the Emperor penguin, and it is 4.3 feet tall.  But one of these fossil penguins was 5 feet tall and had a beak that was 7 inches long.  This penguin is called Icadyptes salasi, and it lived about 36 million years ago.  First it probably started out living near New Zealand, and then it sort of migrated north to the ocean near southern Peru.

A picture of Perudyptes that shows where the fossil bones fit.

The other penguin fossil that the scientists found in Peru was even older, like 42 million years old.  In dog years, this would be 2 billion, 94 million years!  Anyway, this penguin was called Perudyptes devriesi, and it was between 2.5 and 3 feet tall, which is about the same size as a King penguin is today.  It may have started out living near Antarctica before it moved north.

Perudyptes, Humbolt, Icadyptes

Until these fossils were found, people had thought that penguins lived where it was pretty cold, at least until the earth cooled off to be the temperature it is now.  Today you can find the Humbolt penguin living along the coasts of Peru, Ecuador, and Chile, but it is lots smaller than the two fossil penguins.  Also there is a penguin called the Galapagos penguin, and it lives right on the equator.  It is the only penguin that ever crosses over into the Northern Hemisphere, but only by a few hundred yards.

Okay, so what do we know about these extinct giant penguins besides the fact that they were really tall?  Well, for one thing, we know they were probably really good swimmers, which is also true of penguins today.  But the extinct penguins had flippers that still looked a little more like wings than the flippers of modern penguins do.  And this is because they were still busy changing over from being regular birds that fly to being penguins that only waddle and swim.



The giant penguins probably ate lots of yummy fish, because it would be easy for them to catch and swallow fish with their big, long beaks.  We don't know what color these penguins were, but I like to think they were black-and-white, like me.

I don't think I would like to meet either Icadyptes or Perudyptes because those big beaks make them look kind of fierce and scary, especially Icadyptes.  And also their names are hard to spell.  I hope that doesn't mean I am a bad little dog for saying that, but I am just being honest about how I feel!

Well, first of all, we had a ton of snow, and by "a ton" I mean about 7 inches, which is pretty tall snow to walk around in if you are a petite little dog like me.  And if you are a girl dog, you have to put your tushie all the way down into the very cold snow just so you can pee.  But it's still better than peeing in the rain, at least in my opinion.  Here's a picture of me running in the snow.

Anyway, it snowed all of Wednesday afternoon and all of Wednesday night, and then it stopped.  And after it stopped on Thursday, the sun came out, so it was very pretty, but it was still really cold, so I mostly stayed inside.  But my dumb brothers kept going outside, and the reason Mel and Barry kept going outside was so they could eat poop.  And the reason Nicky went outside was to chase squirrels and just run around in a goofy sort of way, like greyhounds do.


Nicky went to see Dr. Patricia on Tuesday, and she said he was very cute and also very nice.  Nicky has really stinky breath and dirty teeth, so he is going to get his teeth cleaned by the veterinarian that REGAP uses because REGAP is going to pay for it.  But Dr. Patricia checked Nicky out all over, and she was a little worried because he was having soft poop, so she put him on some metronidazole, which Mel takes all the time and Gabe used to also take it because it is supposed to get rid of the bad stuff in your gut.


Well, on Tuesday night, after Nick started taking the pills, he had to get up twice in the night to go out and poop, which did not make Mom happy.  And then on Wednesday, he had to have diarrhea some more.  But finally Mom remembered that she had some Imodium that she could give him, and also she cooked rice for his supper, and he ate it, even though it was boring.  And Wednesday night he did not have to go out and poop at all.

But then this other thing happened to Nicky, which is that he hurt his leg Wednesday night, and it was bleeding and stuff, and we don't know how he did it exactly.  Mom thinks he probably cut it when he was out running around in the snow after supper, because even though there was all this soft, new snow, there was some hard, sharp, frozen snow under that.  So maybe that is how Nicky cut his leg.  Or maybe he did it when he fell down the stairs on his way to eat Supper of Dogs.  Personally, I think he's kind of a klutz, and that may be the real reason why he didn't become a famous race dog.


So after Mom had figured out that Nicky cut his leg, she bandaged it up with some gauze and purple vet wrap.  Mom knew how to do this because when we were fostering greyhounds before, they were always hurting themselves and Mom was always having to bandage them.  Greyhounds have, like, really thin skin, and if you just barely scratch it, it starts bleeding.  Or at least that's what it seems like to me.


Anyway, Mom thought Nicky's leg would heal up okay, and she wouldn't have to take him to the vet, but then yesterday morning, when he was out running around in the snow, chasing squirrels, he came in and one of his toenails was all bloody and stuff, so Mom decided she had maybe better take him to see Dr. Patricia because Mom does not know how to bandage an entire foot.  Plus maybe Nicky needed some antibiotics.  But one good thing is that Nicky doesn't try to chew his bandage off, the way I do, so he doesn't have to wear The Cone of Shame.


Mom called Dr. Patricia's office and made an appointment for Nicky to go there yesterday afternoon.  Then she had to call the neighbors and get their kids to come over and shovel her driveway because it had a lot of snow in it, just like the back yard did.  But Mom shoveled the patio herself, or at least part of it.  She says she is getting old and it hurts her back to shovel snow, and that is why she will pay somebody else to do it.


So anyway, when Mom took Nicholas to see Dr. Patricia, she said he had a deep abrasion and that Mom needed to keep it bandaged for a while until it healed up and also so that Nicky wouldn't lick it.  And Dr.  Patricia also put some stuff on the wounds to kind of clean them up and kill the nasty bacteria.  We are just going to wait and see what happens with the diarrhea and if it gets better or what.  And if it doesn't, Dr. Patricia will probably think of something expensive to do to make it go away.

Oh, and I almost forgot to tell you that we found out why the people who first adopted Nick gave him to REGAP, and the reason is that they had some little kids who were always playing with Nick and his sister Nadine in kind of a mean way.  So Nicky started being afraid of the kids, and he would mostly hide in his crate all the time.  And Nadine got kind of growly with the kids, so the people decided they should find a new home for the dogs, which was a good thing to decide, if you ask me, because I wouldn't want some annoying kids picking on me all the time either.

Okay, well, The other important thing I should have told you was that Wednesday was MEL'S BIRTHDAY!!  And he was 11 years old!  We didn't really do anything special to celebrate.  We were going to maybe have an egg for supper, but then Nicky was having all that diarrhea and stuff, and Mom had to cook some rice for him, so she did not want to bother with cooking an egg, too.  She says maybe she will do it another day.  Here's a picture of Mel when he just came in from outside with snow on his head.


Of course, Wednesday would have been Gabe's birthday, too, but that is sad, so I'm not going to talk about it very much.  Gabe would have been 13 years old.  The nice people at Mission MedVet called to say that Gabe's ashes are there, and Mom can pick them up, so maybe she will do that today.

Well, that's pretty much all that's happening here at our house right now.  Oh, except that Mom found a picture of the dog she maybe should have adopted instead of Nicky because this dog have some very special skills!

The AKC picked three dog breeds again this year to recognize so that they could be in dog shows and do agility and stuff like that.  One of these breeds was the Xolo, which I already told you about, and another one is the Norwegian Lundehund, which I am going to tell you about today.

The lundehund is a very old breed, and it comes from Norway, which you maybe already figured out from its name.  The lunde part of the name is from the Norwegian word lundefugl, which means "puffin."  So the lundehund is called a "puffin dog" because they were used for hunting puffins.





Puffins are these kind of funny-looking birds that like to live in the high, steep cliffs by the sea.  They go there every summer and make big puffin colonies where they lay eggs and raise baby puffins.  And the places where they most like to lay their eggs are in holes and narrow places in the cliffs because it's safer there.  Then about the end of August, they start getting ready to leave for wherever they go during the winter, which is probably a nice spa or sunny resort in the south.

Anyway, the baby puffins haven't learned to fly yet, so the adult puffins push them -- or "puff" them -- off the edge of the mountain cliffs, which is kind of mean of them, if you ask me.  And some of the baby puffins figure out how to fly, but others just kind of go splat on the rocks.  And this is where the lundehunds come in, because they can climb up there and retrieve the dead puffins and maybe some live ones, too, and bring them back down to their humans.


Lundehunds are made in a special way that makes them really good at climbing the cliffs and getting the puffins.  For one thing, they have extra toes on all their feet.  This is called being polydactyl.  So instead of just having 4 toes, like most dogs do, lundehunds have 6 toes on each foot.  And the extra toes are not just floppy, dewclaw things.  No, these are real toes with muscles and bones and everything they need to make them work properly.








Another thing that makes lundehunds good puffin dogs is that their joints move in all sorts of weird directions.  For example, lundehunds can bend their heads back really far without even breaking their necks, and they can also stick their front legs straight out to the side, like people can do with their arms.  And another thing they can do is close up their ears to keep out water and dirt and any commands that they don't want to obey.








So all of these special skills make lundehunds able to climb up the cliffs and squeeze themselves into very small spaces where the puffins are.  And after they get in there, they can usually get back out again, which is also important.











Anyway, people in Norway were already using these little dogs to hunt puffins at least as long ago as 1600, and they kept using them until the 1850s, which is when people started using nets to catch puffins.  Also there was a dog tax, and people didn't want to pay it.  So by 1900, the only place you could really find any lundehunds was in a village called Måstad, on the island of Værøy.  And the reason the people in Måstad still had dogs was because they were so out of touch that they didn't know about the new ways to hunt puffins.

Værøy Island

Mostly the people in Måstad and other villages on the coast made their living by fishing and farming, but they also relied on puffins, especially in years when the fishing and farming weren't very good.  And what they did with the puffins was they salted them and put them in barrels, and then during the winter they ate them, like in soup or whatever.  Also they used the down from the puffin, because it was soft and nice, like eider down.  And they could sell the down and make money that way.


But there got to be fewer and fewer lundehunds, and then a bunch of dogs died because of distemper in the 1940s and again in 1963.  And after that, there were only 6 lundehunds left anywhere.  One of these was on Værøy Island, and the other five, who all had the same mother, were in southern Norway.  So people started breeding these lundehunds again, with a lot of rules about how to do it, and now there are probably between 1500 and 2000 lundehunds in the world.  About 1100 of these are in Norway and 350 in the U.S.






Lundehunds are about the same size as basenjis, or maybe a little smaller, but they have a lot more hair.  They are usually 13-15 inches tall and weigh between 12 and 20 pounds.  They are smart and stubborn, which is probably because they are a primitive breed, just like basenjis!  Lundehunds like to check out everything around them, and they can easily climb on stuff and go all sorts of places that maybe you don't want them to go.  They also like to hide their food in secret locations, like for instance under the sofa cushion, so they can come back and eat it later.




These dogs have lots of energy, so they need lots of exercise or else they will get bored and get into trouble.  They also bark a lot, and this is how they protect their home and their people.  They like digging, playing with toys, and carrying things around in their mouths.

All lundehunds have the genes for a  disease called "lundehund gastroenteropathy," and what this disease does is it makes you have a whole bunch of bacteria in your guts.  And then with all those bacteria, it's hard to get all the good nutrient stuff out of your food.  Dogs who have a really bad case of this disease can actually starve to death, even though they are eating lots of food!  But not all lundehunds get sick from this disease, and even if they do, they can take pills to make them feel better.

So anyway, that's some basic information about lundehunds, and if you want to see one,  there might be one at a dog show near you, or you can watch the Westminster show on TV.