Animal Insting

Jackson County Courthouse

Mom had to do something yesterday that is called "jury duty."  And what this meant was she had to go downtown to the Jackson County Courthouse and sit there all day to find out if they wanted her to be on a jury.  You will probably remember from your high school civics class, or else from watching a show like Boston Legal on TV, that a jury is a group of 12 people who listen to a trial and then decide who they think is right and who is wrong.  Juries are very important in the American Justice System, or at least that's what Mom told me.

Sadly, dogs are not allowed to be on juries.  I think it would be fun to spend several days hanging out with 11 other dogs and snoozing in a courtroom, but I guess I won't get the chance to do that.

Anyway, since Mom was eager to do her part for the justice system, she made us all get up early so she could go do jury duty.  And also she was required by law to show up, or else she would get a big fine and maybe have to go to jail or something bad like that.

Andrew Jackson riding a horse in front of the Courthouse

One other time, Mom had to do jury duty, but that time she didn't even get called for a panel, which is a group of people that they pick a jury out of.  She thought the same thing might happen again yesterday, but guess what!  She was wrong.  Not only did Mom get picked for a panel, but she actually ended up being one of the people picked for the jury!

This means that Mom will have to go back to the courthouse today and sit through the trial, and then she has to go again tomorrow and do something called "deliberations."  I hate it that she will be away from home so much, but she says it is only for three days, so we dogs can survive it.  Yesterday Nicky peed in his belly band and got it all soaking wet, and someone else peed in the back part of the kitchen.  Mom thinks it was me, but I plead the fifth amendment, which is something that people do sometimes when they are in a courtroom.  Today Mom is taking Nicky to doggy daycare, but the rest of us are staying here at home.



Mom is not supposed to talk about the court case that her jury will be hearing, so she wouldn't tell me anything much about it.  But she did say that it is a civil case, which means that no crime was committed, and nobody will be going to jail when the case is over.  But somebody might get some money from the other party if they win the case.  Also Mom said there are no dogs involved in the case, so I think this means it will be pretty boring.

Art Deco grill on front of Courthouse

Anyway, since I can't talk about the case, I will tell you a little bit about the courthouse instead.  Mom really likes the courthouse because it was built in 1934 in what is called an Art Deco style.  And Mom likes Art Deco quite a bit.  Mom didn't take her camera to jury duty today because she doesn't know if she would be allowed to bring a camera in the building.  So she doesn't have any pictures of the inside of the courthouse.  But I looked on the internet, and I found a few pictures of the outside of the building.

1936 photo of Courthouse and City Hall, which is also Art Deco style

Art Deco was invented in Paris in the 1920s, and it was kind of a mix of styles with a lot of geometric shapes that look elegant and stylish.  There are a whole bunch of historic styles mixed up together to make Art Deco, like for example Greco-Roman, Babylonian, Assyrian, Egyptian, African, and Aztec.

At the time the Jackson County Courthouse was built, Harry S Truman was the presiding judge of the Jackson County Court, and he had a lot to say about what the courthouse should look like.  He had an office in the building for most of the time he was a U.S. Senator, which was from 1935 to 1939.







Okay, well, that's all I'm going to say about Mom's jury duty now.  But I will also tell you that Mom was a good citizen yesterday because she paid her income taxes, which were due this year on the 18th instead of the 15th.  Usually Mom doesn't owe any money for taxes, but this year she did, so she had to pay.  Luckily, she will be making $6 a day as a juror, plus 7 cents per mile to drive downtown to the courthouse.  So I'm sure that will pretty much make up for what Mom had to pay in taxes!

I think it's time I told you about another kind of bunny, since it is the Year of the Rabbit, as you might remember.  So today I will talk about the snowshoe hare.  These animals like to live up north, where there's lots of snow in the winter.  And what's really neat about them is that they can change colors with the seasons.  So in the winter, they are white, like snow.  And in the summer, they are brown, like the ground and the tree trunks.

Here's a map of all the places where snowshoe hares live, and as you can see, they are all over the place, especially in Canada.  They are not endangered at all, and that is because there are tons of them.  And the way there got to be so many of them is that they multiply like bunnies!

The females can start breeding when they are about a year old.  It takes 35-40 days before the baby hares are born.  Did you know that baby hares are called leverets?  I didn't know this before, but now I know it.  Anyway, here is something really interesting.  A mama hare can get pregnant a second time before her first litter is even born!  And the reason she can do this is because female hares have two uteruses.  Wow!  Talk about having some buns in the oven!
Anyway, when the leverets are born, they already have all their fur.  Also their eyes are open, and they can move around.  This is one big difference between hares and rabbits, because rabbits are born hairless.  Hares live in nests that are made in shallow holes in the ground, like maybe under some shrubs, but rabbits live underground in burrows.  So that's another difference between them.  Also rabbits have been tamed to make house pets, but hares have not.

A female snowshoe hare can have as many as four litters in a year.  Each litter usually has between three and eight leverets.  These baby hares can leave their nests within 24 hours of when they are born.  But it's a dangerous world out there, and many snowshoe hares don't make it past their first birthday.  Here's a list of all the animals and birds that like to eat them:  lynxes, bobcats, martens, weasels, minks, foxes, coyotes, mountain lions, owls, hawks, eagles, crows, ravens, black bears, wolves, and domestic dogs and cats.
Snowshoe hares run very fast.  They can go almost 30 miles an hour, and each bound is 10 feet long.  They have really big feet that act like snowshoes and help the hares run on top the snow.  So lots of times they can just outrun their predators.  Other times, they stay hidden because of their camouflage coat colors.  Their fur has three layers, and it is the outer layer that sheds twice a year so a new color can grow in.  It takes about 70 days for the color to change.
The places that snowshoe hares like to live are in young forests with lots of shrubby stuff for them to hide in.  Finding good places to live where it's easy to hide is even more important to them than finding places with lots of yummy food.

Mostly, the hares come out at night to eat.  During the day, they hang out in their shallow nests, which are called forms.  In the spring, they like to eat plants such as blueberry leaves, horsetail shoots, and fireweed.  In summer, they eat clover, grasses, and the leaves of willows, spruce, and birches.  When it's wintertime, they eat whatever twigs and tree branches and bark they can reach by walking on top the snow.  Sometimes they even eat meat that has been caught in traps.  Which is weird, because usually you think of rabbits and hares as being strict vegetarians.
I am sorry that snowshoe hares do not live in Missouri, because I think if I caught one, it would make a tasty meal.  But there are no snowshoe hares here, so I guess I will just have to be happy with cottontail rabbits -- if I can ever manage to catch one of them!

Some people have been asking my mom how I am doing, after my adventure with swallowing the blanket and then getting pneumonia, and I would like to thank everybody for being worried about me.  Also I would like to say that I am now back to my regular, perfect self.  I still have just a few antibiotics left to take, and then I have to get one more x-ray, just to make sure that all the bad stuff is gone out of my lungs.   But it feels to me like it is all gone, so I'm sure everything is fine.

Okay, well, here's something random I wanted to talk about.  Last week while Mom was out walking Mel and Barry, an old man in an old car stopped in the street by where they were walking, and he gave Mom a piece of paper with some words printed on it.  The man didn't say anything.  He just smiled and gave Mom the paper.  So she said "thank you," and went on walking.  And what the paper said was this:

Your Dog


He is your friend
Your partner, your defender,
Your dog -- you are his life,
his love, his leader.


He will be yours,
faithful and true
To the last beat of his heart.
You owe it to him to be
worthy of such devotion.

Then after Mom read the words on the paper, she remembered that a man had given her something like this once before when she was out walking dogs, and she thought it was probably the same man and the same message on the paper.  We don't know why this man doesn't say anything.  Maybe he can't talk, for some reason.  And we don't know if he has a dog of his own, but even if he doesn't, he must have had dogs before in his life because it is clear that he loves dogs.  Anyway, I think it's sweet that he goes around and gives people this important message about being worthy of their dogs.

And speaking of pieces of paper with messages on them, Nicky forgot to tell you that when he was at Barks in the Park last week, he got a doggy fortune cookie.  Mom broke it open for him and pulled out the fortune.  Nicky did not like the fortune cookie, so he didn't eat it and Mom gave it to one of the Humane Society dogs to eat.

But here's the fortune that was in the cookie:  Confucius say, dog who run behind car get exhausted.  Get it?  Exhausted?  Hahahaha!  I think this is a very funny fortune.

Okay, so here's one more random thing.  You know how when people are mad about something, they say, "That really gets my goat"?  Well, I started wondering what being angry has to do with goats.  So I researched this question, and what I learned was that, as usual, nobody knows absolutely for sure where the phrase came from.  But the best guess is that it's about how people sometimes use goats as buddies for race horses, because the horses are really high-strung and skittish, and goats are calm.

So if some mean person wanted to make some other person's horse less likely to win a race, he would steal the goat from the other person's horse.  Then the horse would be all upset and would not run well.  This seems like a pretty good way to explain the phrase, and at least it's an interesting story that mostly makes sense.

Anyway, to wrap up all my random thoughts, I hope you will remember that if you have a nervous horse, you should get a goat to calm it down.  And if you chase a car, you'll get exhausted.  And if you have a dog, you should do everything you can to be worthy of his trust and devotion.  Oh, and if you get pneumonia, be sure to take all your antibiotics!

First let me explain that when I say "cats," I mostly mean "Chloe."  And when I say "out of control," I mean "being naughty and getting into lots of trouble with Mom."

Anyway, you would think that since there are 2 dogs to every 1 cat in this house, we dogs would have the upper paw and could keep all kitty behavior submissive and nice, like it is supposed to be.  But somehow things haven't worked out that way.  In my opinion, life with cats is best when the cats just stay in their own room most of the time and don't come out to bother us dogs or mom.  That's the way things were when Charlie and Chloe first came here last May, but over the past year, they have got to be Very Bold, so they are out roaming around the house a lot of the time, and they show up in all sorts of places.

For example, Chloe likes to go in the bathroom when Mom is in there, and she sits on the sink while Mom is trying to brush her teeth or wash her face.  And sometimes Chloe tries to play with Mom's toothbrush while Mom is brushing her teeth.  And other times Chloe nips at Mom's hand when Mom is turning on the faucet, which Mom really, really doesn't like.

Personally, I never go in the bathroom because I know that it is a place where dogs sometimes get BATHS, which makes it a very dangerous place.  I have told Mom that she just needs to give Chloe a bath, and that will convince Chloe to stay out of the bathroom.  But so far, Mom has not taken my advice.

Charlie is getting braver, too.  Sometimes he jumps onto Mom's bed in the daytime, and then if Barry gets up there, Charlie doesn't even jump down again.  Also sometimes Charlie sleeps on the dog beds in Mom's office, even if Barry is sleeping there.  And lately, Charlie has started sitting on Mom's computer desk while she is doing email and stuff.


Chloe prefers to sit on Mom's lap when Mom is on the computer, and Chloe usually makes a pest out of herself while she is there.  For one thing, she drools, and then she gets the drool all over the keyboard and the thing Mom puts her wrists on, not to mention on Mom's hands.  And if Mom doesn't pet Chloe enough, which Mom usually doesn't when she is using both hands to type, Chloe will sometimes butt Mom's hand, which makes Mom type the wrong letters.  Or else Chloe will nip Mom's hand, and if she does that, Mom dumps her on the floor.





And if Chloe isn't on Mom's lap, she is walking around and around the computer, and she stands in front of the screen so that Mom can't see it, especially if Chloe thinks it is time for supper.  And Chloe also likes to play with stuff on the computer desk and knock it on the floor and chew on pencils and pens.

Another favorite activity of Chloe is looking at squirrels and birds out the window.  And when she does this, she gets really excited and makes this funny chattering sort of noise. Mom thinks this is cute, but we dogs mostly just ignore it.

When Mom opens the door for us to go outside and potty, Chloe sometimes sneaks outside, too, even though she's not supposed to go outside, ever, because that's what it says on her adoption contract.  And when she gets outside, she eats a few bites of grass, and then she runs back in the house.

Except one night last week, Chloe went outside, and Mom didn't know she was there, so when all of us dogs came in, Mom closed the door.  But then Chloe came to the door and started meowing really loud, and right away Mom noticed that Chloe was still outside.  So she opened the door and let her in.  This was actually not the first time this ever happened, but this time was different because when we looked out on the patio where Chloe had been, we were shocked to see a little black kitty!  We don't know where this kitty came from or where it went after Mom closed the door.  And mostly we don't know why it was dumb enough to come into our yard when there had just been a bunch of dogs out there!

Oh, and here's another thing Charlie and Chloe do.  Sometimes after the rest of us get in bed and are trying to sleep, they start playing and romping loudly up and down the stairs.  And a couple of times, they got into a big catfight right in the cat room next door to Mom's bedroom.  We don't know how the fights got started, but Mom had to get up and go in there and tell them to knock it off.  Which they did.

One thing Chloe does that I really like is she jumps up on the kitchen counter and gets interesting stuff that Mom has left lying around up there, such as empty catfood cans or plastic bottle lids.  Then after Chloe snags these things, Barry or I take them away from her so that we can chew on them, which is lots of fun.  And sometimes Chloe opens the door to the place where the trash can lives, and then she climbs into the trash and drags some good stuff out that way.

Chloe also likes to open the cabinet where the dog treats are, even though it is a high-up cabinet.  But she can reach it by jumping on the counter first and then pawing the cabinet door open.  So now Mom puts the treats into a big plastic container that Chloe can't pull down out of the cabinet, or else Mom puts the treats on a higher shelf.

The times when Chloe most likes to thump around with cabinet doors are either when Mom is trying to eat or when we are all in the living room watching TV or else when we are all upstairs in the bedroom trying to go to sleep.  I don't know if Chloe is just wanting extra attention or if she feels extra active and playful at those times.

Anyway, the cats do actually sleep most of the night, and the place where they sleep is usually with Mom, since none of us dogs sleep with her.  Chloe sleeps on Mom's right side, and Charlie sleeps on the left side.  Except if Mom is sleeping on her side, then both cats want to be on her front side.  This sometimes make the cats hiss and growl at each other a tiny bit, but then they settle down and everyone goes back to sleep.

So that's how our life with the cats is going.  Mom says she loves Chloe and Charlie, even though they make her grumpy sometimes.  I think it must be pretty hard for Mom to love such naughty kitties, but somehow she does.

It's been a whole month since the big, horrible earthquake and tsunami in Japan, but things are a long way from being back to normal in that country.  So as long as we are thinking about Japan, I decided I would tell you about the most popular Japanese dog breed, which is the Shiba Inu.

Some basenji people say that shibas are pretty much like basenjis, except with more hair.  But I kind of doubt that shiba people would say this, even though it's true that there are some things the two breeds share.  Like for instance, both breeds are really ancient.  Scientists who have looked at the DNA of shibas say that this breed goes all the way back to the 3rd century B.C.


What happened in the beginning was that dogs were brought to Japan from China, and these dogs were probably chow chows.  Then, during about two thousand years, six different breeds of Japanese dogs were created from these first dogs.  The shiba inu is the smallest of these.  They were bred to hunt and flush birds and small game, and they are really good at climbing on steep hills and rough mountain slopes.

In Japanese, the word inu means "dog."  Shiba means "brushwood," and especially one type of shrub that turns red in the fall.  No one is sure why "brushwood" is part of this dog's name, but maybe it was because the dogs hunted in these types of bushes.  Or maybe it was because the dogs can be a red color, like the leaves.  And also the word shiba means "small" in the Nagano dialect.  So a Shiba Inu is a "Little Brushwood Dog."


Shibas can be any color, but the most common colors are red or black-and-cream.  The male shibas weigh about 23 pounds, and the females weigh about 17.  They have a thick, double coat, and a tail that curls over their backs.  Shibas live to be about 12 or 15 years old.  They sometimes have genetic health issues such as hip dysplasia, luxating patellas, allergies, glaucoma, or progressive retinal atrophy.

If shibas are really unhappy or annoyed, they do something called the "shiba scream."  This scream is very high-pitched and loud.  Basenjis can shriek or scream, too, so this may be the same sort of sound that shibas make.  Mom says this sound is "unnerving," but I like to think of it as "expressive" if you are trying to get your point across.  Personally, I'm a very good shrieker, and this talent comes in handy from time to time.  But getting back to shibas, they sometimes also scream when they are happy, like when their human comes home after being gone for a long time.


Another way that basenjis and shibas are similar is that we both like to keep ourselves clean and tidy by licking ourselves, sort of like cats do.  But unlike basenjis, shibas like to swim and they also play in mud puddles.  This seems like totally bizarre behavior to me, so don't ask me to explain it.

Shiba inus are alert, intelligent and very independent, so it can be harder to teach them all that obedience-type stuff.  Also shibas are sometimes dog-aggressive, especially with a dog of the same sex.  So shiba owners have to be careful when their dogs are around other dogs.  But if shibas are socialized a whole bunch starting from when they are puppies, there won't be so many problems of this type.


During World War II, shibas almost became extinct because a lot of them were killed in bombing raids, and then there was a distemper epidemic after the war.  Over the centuries, shibas got bred to other types of dogs, but the breed stayed mostly pure in rural parts of the country.  So eventually, three surviving bloodlines were used to make one strong breed again.

The first Japanese breed standard for the shiba was published in 1934.  And in 1936, the dog was declared a National Treasure of Japan.  Then in 1954, an Army service family brought the first shiba to the United States.  The AKC recognized the shiba inu in 1992 and added the breed to the Non-Sporting Group in 1993.  Nowadays, the shiba isn't used for hunting.  It's just kept as a pet in Japan and other countries.


We sometimes see shiba inus around here, like right in our own neighborhood.  And yesterday, Mom was surprised to see one in the clinic waiting room at the shelter.  She even went and asked the dog's mom if it was a shiba, just to make sure.

So you never know where a shiba inu will show up, just like you never know where a basenji will show up.  We cute little ancient breeds really get around!