"No Pictures, please!"

 Sometimes, Madge seems like the Greta Garbo of the canine world. On Sunday afternoon, she was romping around the living room with Kirby, looking totally flamboyant and wonderfully photogenic. The second that I picked up my iPhone to take a picture of them, she rushed to one of her hiding spots. Jeez, I don't think William Wegman ever had this problem--maybe I should email him for advice.

That evening, we also discovered that Madge seems to be a little worried about the ringer in the new $29.99  VTech phone-answering machine combo that Martha just brought home from Target. The first time it went off, she perked up her ears in alarm and started growling. Apparently it has several different ringtones, though, so I'm going to experiment and see if there's one that she can tolerate. Maybe I should write to VTech and suggest that they put the ring tones for various models up on their web site, so that I could test them out on my dog before I buy the phone. Of course, I could also just disconnect the ringer entirely. Other than fundraisers for animal rights groups, I think the only calls we get on the land line are from our neighbor Susan. Oddly, Madge is afraid of her too.

NY Mag story on the canine-human relationship

                        "I am not an animal! ...Well, okay, maybe I am."


This week's edition of New York magazine has an article entitled "The Rise of Dog Identity Politics," by John Homans, that delves into the peculiarities of the human-canine relationship and the deeper significance of dog owners' tendencies to take anthropomorphism to bizarre extremes. There's some interesting stuff in the piece--for example, according to Homans, the number of strays put down in shelters and pounds has decreased dramatically in recent years, thanks to spaying and neutering efforts and rescue adoptions. He also claims that northeastern urbanites increasingly have had to turn to the deep south as a source of rescue dogs, and that it's increasingly difficult to find shelter dogs who aren't pit bulls.  (Btw, that's an observation that I don't agree with at all--there's a shelter a couple of miles away from my house, the Washington Animal Rescue League, that continually has an ample supply of dogs from a range of breeds and mixes.)

One the most intriguing points that Homan raises is the question of whether there's a correlation between Americans' increasing alienation from one another--AKA the "Bowling Alone" phenomenon--and the increasingly intimate relationship that they have with their dogs:

If learned helplessness sounds like an urban condition, it may be because the dog is more and more an urban species. Even in the suburbs, the dog’s unleashed, unfenced, carefree outdoor life is largely at an end. The dogs are in the house, even in the bed. (The doghouse is now mostly for husbands.) There are no rules to this evolving, increasingly intimate arrangement, and it can give rise to a kind of canine identity crisis. Outside of its country context, the dog plays an ever more human role. Which can make things very confusing. “We’ve seen a linear explosion in pet populations in Western countries over the past 40 years,” Serpell tells me, and notes a correlation with the depressing statistics in Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone. “People are living more isolated lives, are having fewer children, their marriages aren’t lasting. All these things sort of break down a social network and happen to exactly coincide with the growth in pet populations. I think that what’s happening is simply that we’re allowing animals to fill the gap in our lives.”

Read more: The Rise of Dog Identity Politics -- New York Magazine http://nymag.com/news/features/63232/#ixzz0dsNJ1POf

 That's a convenient explanation, I suppose.  One problem with it, as social historian Katherine Grier details in her excellent 2006 book Pets in America, is that Americans' attitudes toward dogs--in particular, their reliance upon them as intimate companions and view of them as virtual family members--really developed and took hold in the late 1800s and early 1900s, long before the evils of postindustrial alienation. Beyond that, as anyone who's ever taken his or her dog for a walk through Takoma Park on a weekday evening knows, dogs actually give people an opportunity to connect with others. After all, I named this blog "So What Kind of Dog IS that?" because of all the complete strangers who've come up to me and struck up a conversation because they were fascinated by Madge's appearance. Conversely, I've talked to plenty of people that I've met in the park about their dogs. When I encounter another dog owner, we often have an instantaneous connection, because of our shared experiences.

That said, I still encourage you to read the article, and let me know your thoughts about it. As a bonus, it's got some great Richard Avedon-esque portraits of New York dogs, like this one (perhaps one of Madge's distant relatives).

Mooey and Joey, napping

They're grumpy if they get less than 16 hours a day. Madge awakened just in time to notice me snapping her photo, and give me a dirty look. Oddly, she's scared of my new iPhone, just as she was frightened by my old Motorola Razr.

Pre-dog walk chaos

Another portrait of Madge

Our 10-year-old son Minh used Photoshop to turn Madge's puppy photo into a painting, too. Pretty cool, huh?

Pretty as a Picture

My son Minh made this picture frame at his friend Kellyn's birthday party. He keeps it on his desk.

Another basset hound-pit bull discovered, in Kentucky

Meet Reed, a two year old basset hound-pit bull who's being offered for adoption by the Bowling Green-Warren County Humane Society in Kentucky. They don't provide any other information about him, but he's got a Madge-like body and legs and a classic pit bull head. He's got her white paws, too.

How centuries of breeding altered dogs' DNA

          Joey apparently thinks Madge was bred to provide him with a pillow.



Sometimes when look at Madge, I start to wonder about what her parents looked like. (Which one was the pit bull, and which one was the basset hound?) But I also think about her odd mix of traits, and how those traits originally were developed. Somebody, somewhere in the distant past must have liked the idea of having a dog with a super-long body and stubby legs, and tried to breed to accentuate those characteristics. Similarly, someone in the past must have found brindle coloring attractive (even though Madge's original owners didn't, and actually abandoned her at the dog pound because of it).

Anyway, I was fascinated to see this Washington Post article about scientists' quest to unravel the genetic past of  400 different breeds of dogs. So far, they've identified 150 or so gene locations, containing more than 1,600 genes, that have been altered by human-orchestrated breeding. Variations in the genes IGF1 and FGF5, for example, influence dogs' size and limb length, respectively. Another interesting tidbit: while dogs have been bred domestically for 14,000 years, most dog breeds have only been around for 500 to 1,000 years at most. In terms of evolution, that's barely the wink of an eye. That makes it all the more fascinating that human tinkering with dog genes has managed to create a creature as unusual as Madge.

We'll have to bring Madge with us next time...

   I noticed this sign posted at the entrance to an alleyway, next to a restaurant in Baltimore's Fells Point neighborhood. I suspect Madge might be a little puzzled by a soft-shell crab sandwich, though--she's more of a meat-and-potatoes kind of girl. (Martha and I lived on Light Street in Federal Hill back in the day, just down the street from the Cross Street Market and the sadly now-defunct Herb's Bargain Center.) I'd almost forgotten how much I used to dig B-more (AKA Ballmer, Mobtown, and the Queen City), which is a wonderfully eccentric, free-spirited and unpretentiously hip metropolis. Our terrier Joey actually was found wandering the streets there, perhaps in search of a Natty Bo.

 BTW, my grade school pal Greg's scorchin' blues band, Nothin' But Trouble, plays a 4-8 p.m. gig at the fabulous Cats Eye Pub in Fells Point every month. Check them out sometime.

"A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog"

       Madge transformed into an oil painting, through the wonders of Photoshop. (Entitled with apologies to Dylan Thomas's book of the same name.)

Using a Harness

We use a harness to walk Madge, rather than attaching the leash to her collar. I know that a lot of big-deal dog trainers on TV like to hook to the collar, but that wouldn't work very well for Madge--partly because of her unusual proportions and low center of gravity, and partly because her neck is incredibly powerful. Besides, I just don't like the idea of yanking on Miss Moo's neck, as if she's Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes.

It is still possible to train a dog using a harness. Here's an excellent video from eHow with a few tips.


How to Use a Pull Harness on a Dog You're Training -- powered by eHow.com

Fear-based aggression in dogs

                           She doesn't look that scary, does she?

Madge usually growls at unfamiliar people who come to our front door, whether they are UPS carriers, guys distributing pizza coupons, or Mormon missionaries. I can imagine that when they look through the screen door and all they can see is a big old pit bull head and a set of prominent white teeth, it must be a bit frightening. But the truth is that Madge probably is more frightened of them than they are of her.

I'm perusing an excellent science-based book on dog behavior, Steven R. Lindsay's Handbook of Applied Dog Behavior and Training: Etiology and assessment of behavior problems. Lindsay explains the difference between dominance-based aggression and fear-based aggression, the goal of which is to escape or control stimuli that dogs perceive as threatening. A fear-aggressor has different body language than a dominance aggressor. The dog's ears will be back, the tail will be tucked under the body, and it will snarl and bark repetitively (pretty much the way that Madge behaves when she hears a noise on the porch.) The fear-aggressor doesn't want to bite, and most likely will do so only as a last resort, if the seemingly threatening person approaches quickly or if the dog's escape route is blocked. 


More on this later...I've got to take her and the boys for a walk.

Let sleeping dogs lie

Joey the terrier, Madge and Kirby enjoy an afternoon nap.  I know the rap on pit bull mixes is that they're aggressive toward other dogs, but you can see, Madge gets along quite well with the two smaller members of our pack.Madge's ungainly proportions are accentuated when she's stretched out on the couch.

Madge is scared of my cell phone

Madge is afraid of a lot of sounds--weed whackers, delivery trucks, blenders, sound effects from video games, you name it. Oddly, she's also apparently developed a fear of my Motorola Razr cell phone. I flipped it open to take a snapshot of her on Sunday afternoon, and she ran and hid behind a big chair in our living room, which is one of her customary refuges when anxiety takes over. Since I've taken a lot of cellphone pictures of her over the last couple of years, I figured that maybe I'd just moved too quickly. But when I carefully slipped it out of my pocket and slowly flipped it open this evening, she again fled and hid behind the chair.

I let her hide for few minutes to calm down, and then I grabbed the dogs' leashes and started rattling them and called out, "time for a walk!"When Joey and Kirby came running into the living room wagging their tails, she finally emerged and climbed up on the couch, which is where she sits so that I can put on her harness. This time, she put up with me snapping a few pictures of her. But even so, she seemed somber and apprehensive.

I'm not sure what to make of this new development. I tried Googling "canine fear of cell phones" but all I could find was this t-shirt from Cafe Press. Is it the shape of the phone, or did the object appear somehow menacing in my hand when I pointed it at her? Or perhaps, when I hear her roaming the house at night restlessly, is she actually browsing Wikipedia on  my laptop and reading about the effects of electromagnetic cellphone radiation?  After all, she's probably seen me using the speakerphone function and wondered what that was all about. In any case, If anybody out there has observed a similar phenomenon, please drop me a line.

Another basset hound-pit bull surfaces, in California

I just came across this Craigslist ad offering a handsome little 19 month-old basset hound-pit bull mix named Broc who is billed as "the friendliest dog you could ever meet." He's got Madge-like floppy ears and stubby legs.So if you're in the LA area, check him out. 

The anxious basset hound-pit bull

When my wife Martha took Madge to the vet recently, she was very frightened and cowered in the corner. Our vet suggested  that she might benefit from taking anti-anxiety medication.  This isn't a new idea. Back in the 1990s, dog owners have been giving their pets drugs psychotropic drugs originally developed for humans (a trend that satirist Tom McNichol parodied in his 1996 book Barking at Prozac). 

                                                   Madge and Joey take an afternoon snooze


But as a human who has actually taken psychotropic medications--Zoloft, for example--for years, however, I'm really against against the idea of giving them to our pets. We don't really understand how these drugs work in the human brain, let alone in an animal's. It's one thing for me to make an informed choice to experiment with my brain chemistry, but Madge isn't capable of giving her consent. And unlike me, she can't complain about the side effects of such a medication to her doctor, nor can she decide to wean herself off it, if those side effects seem to outweigh the benefits.  And besides, Madge's anxiety is a part of her unique personality. Dogs are like people--you have to accept them for who they are, not who you'd like them to be, or who you might be able to change them into. I think it's better to try to work with her to assuage her fears and help her to become better able to cope with the world.

Madge's first bath, finally

As you might remember, Madge is a very fearful dog--unfamiliar people, noises from weed wackers and blenders, thunderstorms, and sometimes sounds from the TV set or the computer will send her into a panic. But she's always seemed to be really, really afraid of water. The first time I took her and the other dogs to the fountain at our local park on a hot summer day, Joey the terrier and even Tippy the pug (our house guest at the time) happily climbed in to cool their paws. When I tried to lead Madge into the fountain  pool, she leaped over it and went into a defensive crouch. So ever since, we've let her stay away from water, and exempted her from the periodic baths that we give our other dogs.

Alas, today she got some awful poopy-smelling stuff on her during her walk, and we could barely stand to be around her. So we had no choice but to coax her into the tub for what probably was her first bathing experience ever. She seemed very afraid, but to our surprise, she sat quietly without resisting while we carefully rinsed her off with small cupfuls of water and lathered her with coconut shampoo.We rewarded her with plenty of praise and a treat afterward. I'm hoping the experience won't traumatize her too much. But now she smells nice, at least.

Another basset hound-pit bull discovered (and he's a great one!)

Here's another basset hound-pit bull named Sgt. Pepper that I found at Mid America Bully Breed Rescue.  (He's been adopted since they posted him, I'm glad to report.) His profile has this description:

Don't ask us how it happened - we have no idea, either. But it seems that a pit bull and a basset hound 'got together', resulting in this extremely adorable and head-turning little guy. Better not tell the greedy puppymillers or next thing you know, we'll be seeing designer "basset-bulls" everywhere!

  BTW, if you've got a basset hound-pit bull, please post a comment and a link to a picture. I'd love to see him or her.

Basset hound-pit bulls: Rare, but cute

"Designer dogs" created by mixing two very dissimilar breeds seem to be increasingly popular.



But while there are plenty of puggles, labradoodles, snorkies, and even a few pithuahuas,  you don't see too many Basset hound pit bulls, alas. The closest that that the International Designer Dog Registry comes to is a hybrid called the bully Basset, a dog that is part Basset and part bulldog (it doesn't specify French, English, etc.)
My guess is that Basset hound-pit bulls are more of an accidental result of canine lasciviousness than a deliberate hybrid.  Here's a cute little puppy named Paul that I found offered for adoption on a pit bull rescue web site, and Chloe, another puppy who was found wandering the streets of LA. (The listings are a couple of years old, so we can only imagine what they look like now.) On MySpace, I also found this handsome fellow named Sterling , who bears a striking facial resemblance to our Madge.  Here's another basset hound-pit bull from Flickr, whose features are somewhat more pit bull-ish.

Minh and Madge. She's gone from being terrified to cuddly with us, though she's still a little fearful of strangers.

Here's a camera phone pic that I took of Madge in November 2007. You can see the mix of Basset hound and pit bull features.

 Here she is recently, taking a nap while Kirby the puggle uses her as a cushion.

Here's Madge going for a walk with our son Minh.

 

Like I said, she has some pretty unusual proportions.

Happy New Year 2010

After our Cairn terrier Bob went to Canine Nirvana in July 2007, I searched Petfinder in hopes of finding another cute little Toto-like dog to join our family. Alas, all of the cute little Toto-like dogs either were taken, or the rescue organizations wanted to subject us to a background check akin to a Senate confirmation hearing. I got pretty bummed about this, until one day, I saw an ad for a really strange-looking little dog named Madge, who supposedly was part Basset hound and part fox terrier. The woman who had rescued Madge from a kill shelter in Virginia was really, really eager to place her, and wrote me a long email about what a wonderful, cute, affectionate little doggie she was. When we drove up to Harpers Ferry, WVA to meet Madge, we were a little shocked. She was not little, and she was put together like an accordion bus, with a body that was about a foot too long for her little stubby legs. She had a muscular neck, a gigantic head and muzzle and a big set of teeth that didn't much resemble a Fox terrier. In addition to her odd appearance, she seemed absolutely terrified of us.

We decided to take her home with us anyway. But unlike our easygoing little Bob, Madge had a very difficult time adjusting to our household. She hid from us for the first few weeks, seemed to have no idea how to walk on a leash, wouldn't eat, and totally forgot her house training. When we took her to the vet, she took one look at Madge's head and her brindle coat and immediately deduced that she was no fox terrier mix, but rather part Basset hound and pit bull. Pit bull? All we knew about pit bulls was their frightening reputation. How could we keep a pit bull in peaceful, hippy-dippy Takoma Park? But we couldn't bring ourselves to return her to the rescue group. So we did our best to work with Madge and try to figure out her strange behavior and win her trust.

It took quite a few months, but eventually, it worked. Today, Madge is totally comfortable with us, so much that it's hard not to imagine that she's always been part of our family. Since then, we actually did manage to get ourselves a cute (though high-strung and neurotic) little Toto-like dog named Joey as well, and also an ungainly, easily confused puggle named Kirby with a Gene Simmons-like tongue that he can't completely fit in his mouth. Okay, we're a bit dog crazy. Our little two-bedroom bungalow is continually in commotion, with mutts running around and barking and jumping on each other, when they're not jumping on our laps.

Madge, though, is the dog that arouses the most curiosity when I walk her. I've lost count of how many times people have come up to me on the street, or even stopped their cars and got out, and asked, "Excuse me...so what kind of dog IS that?" Ergo, this blog, in which we'll be writing about our eccentric, canine-centric household and its inhabitants, both human and animal.