A bone not to pick?

There is a brand of dog toy called Playology. Their slogan is "Toys That Make Scents to Dogs."

Science! 

The Web site explains it this way: 

Dog noses are 10,000x more powerful than a human’s. But they have 80% fewer taste buds. A dog’s brain craves scent.

Scent processing through a dog’s nasal passage is detected by 220 million scent receptors.

In a dog’s brain the olfactory bulb is three times the size of a human’s.

Dog noses are stereoscopic, with one nostril identifying a smell, and one locating it.

Armed with these facts, these smell boffins of Gardena, California, invented their Encapsiscent Technology: 

Because we embed the scents directly into the material of each toy, your pooch will enjoy chewing and sniffing over and over again.

And as it says on the package, dogs play with scented toys 7X longer than with unscented toys.

I'd seen their products in the PetSmart in the leadup to the holidays, but resisted temptation -- the bone for heavy chewers cost twenty bucks, which is a hell of a lot for a chew toy, science or no science. But in the post-Christmas sales it was up on deep discount, so what the heck -- I bought one.

Our main chewer these days is youthful dog Nipper, Old Man Tralfaz having turned seven and now much too sophisticated for chew toys, except when he's not. Nipper loves a toy he can chew, and especially one he can destroy. Often in the mornings when we can't go for a walk I will sneak a toy out to the yard and get him revved up on it -- a half hour of chasing, stealing, and chew chew chew will usually make him a happy pup.

So I brought the Playology bone outside, showed it to him, and threw it into the yard. Nipper tore after it like a greyhound. He sniffed it, tasted it, and proceeded to roll around on it. This is a good sign, as it is his way of claiming a toy and getting his scent on it. So I was pretty impressed by the scientists. 

That lasted about two minutes. Then he completely ignored the thing. I could not get him reengaged on it.

The next time we were in the yard I picked it up. He leaped at it as if to take it from me, so I threw it. Again he charged after the toy, but as he neared it he veered away and went somewhere else. He has not touched it since. 

I brought the Playology toy inside, thinking its turkey scent might work better there. Maybe Tralfaz would try it. But it has been lying on the same spot on the rug for three days, untouched, unloved.

It is true that my dogs, for whatever reason, always preferred toys they could rip to shreds, something I've discussed in this space in so many posts I can't even link to them all. (Okay, just one.) And tough toys that resist destruction are of lesser interest to them. Still, they usually give it a shot. They just don't care about this Playology bone. Neither dog has any more interest in this bone than they would if I left a wrench on the rug. It's like it's not even there. Even if they didn't like the turkey scent I would expect some reaction from them.

I might have been warned by the one review on the PetSmart site: "My dog did NOT like at all, it smelled like rubber." One star.

Maybe Playology has other customers whose dogs love the toy. Surely they didn't spend all this money to develop a sciencey! dog toy without testing it on dogs, right? Otherwise it would be that old shaggy dog joke about the company that designs the perfect dog food campaign.

All I can say is that there are limits to science, and even more limits to things that are marketed with the look and appeal of science but are just a hunk of malarkey. Or, maybe my dogs are weird.

More Christmas.

Sunday was a crazy day -- I made cookies! I had a church meeting! I set up the small tree in my wife's office! I walked dogs! I was going to go to the supermarket but we have a possible blizzard on the way this week and I didn't want to be trampled. The rush for toilet paper has been bad enough this year.

Anyway, I'm afraid all I have for you is some more sights of the season. Usually these are things I've seen while walking the dogs, but we have some extras here.

When reindeer go camping. They look like they're having fun, don't they? But if this is their camp, why is Santa's hat hanging on the tent? Do they have to sleep outside even when they're camping? Maybe I'm overthinking this.

Hi! And there's a happy snowman and... I guess that's a penguin. He looks a little skinny. Maybe he's been sitting on the eggs too long. I don't know. I forget all my penguin stuff. It's been years since March of the Penguins. 

I was in PetSmart and found this squeaky toy -- Santa stuck in a chimney. I'm still not sure what to think about it. Santa's rear end in a chimney as a dog toy. Hmm. I feel like I'm missing something. My wife thought it was hilarious. 

I like these wood cut-outs a lot. They can be a fun project with the kids. I don't think this one was because it was very well painted. Not sure why Santa's hat is in the chimney. Or is that his butt? Santa better be more careful going forward. Never mind. The nice thing about these decorations is that they're fun to see in daylight and can be floodlit at night. It gives the property a Christmassy look during the day. A lot of houses -- including mine -- don't show much holiday gladness in daylight but look good at night. These can look good all the time. 

Bear at the church. Two bucks for this well-dressed chap. I'm sure he'll find a home soon.

Do they make the pickup that's towing this camper? Otherwise that tree is going to fall apart before it gets into water. And how did it get decorated before it got strapped on top? And is it strapped on top? Why am I bothering you with these questions?

This was my favorite thing this week, at the Home Depot. Gives the kids something to do while Dad tries to guess what size screws he needed that he should have measured before leaving the house. Many's the time my father dragged to the hardware store and the only fun thing to do was try not to get killed by sharp objects hanging around. This is a great way to get the kids excited about Home Depot, and give a job to a stupid elf on the shelf. The little apron kills me. 

So that's what I've been looking at; how about you?

Apostro-phooey.

If you live in a city and you know a copy editor, you may wonder why her eye twitches and her jaw clenches like she's striving mightily to avoid picking a fight with oxygen. What is making her crazy is not the omnipresent and necessary element, but something almost as common in an American urban environment: Bad apostrophes. 

Of all the bits of punctuation, apostrophes may be abused the most. The little dance between parentheses and period at the end of a sentence are often screwed up as badly (as in this very sentence.) (This one too). But apostrophes are more common. 

This example demonstrates the way in which the poor apostrophe is most abused, dragged into service where he does not belong:

Heroes is of course the plural of hero; hero's is a contraction of hero is or is used to indicate heroic ownership ("the hero's hamster"). But you see this exact error on any Manhattan shop that sells big sandwiches. Something like "Our Hero's Are #1!" If you are using an apostrophe to indicate a plural, stop it. There's a perfectly fine plural version of each noun, and none I think requires an apostrophe.

A more subtle error was shared by a friend of mine -- less obviously wrong, but more egregious because it was found not in some mom & pop shop owned by non-English-speaking immigrants, but on official signage in the mighty box store PetSmart:

The friend who sent it to me A) knows I shop often at PetSmart and B) hates me and wants to see me furious. I am of course referring to the single open quote being used as an apostrophe. I see this error constantly these days, after having not seen it my entire life. I blame texting. 

When them is contracted to ’em, the apostrophe is used just as when do not becomes don’t -- it curls to the right. These are special characters and don't show up well online, but in a nutshell:

ʼem = correct

ʻem = wrong

Think of Dom DeLuise in Blazing Saddles yelling at you with a megaphone if you're ever tempted to use the latter. 

How many blinkered boneheads at PetSmart HQ approved that damned sign?

This last one -- well, it's so wrong that I hardly know where to start. 

It's from a bakery box, a box of cookies that were delicious. But their punctuation and capitalization are not. I'll leave the capitalization aside and just talk about the olé.

The bakery in question is Italian, not Mexican, so clearly they are not looking for the same olé! taste. They meant to say same old, just shortened to the familiar and cozy ol’. They actually had to go to some effort to screw this up -- it's tougher in most typefaces to add an accent to a letter than to use a plain ol' apostrophe, and the much-maligned Comic Sans font shown is no different. But the cookies are terrific*, so I don't want to expose them to ridicule. If they see this post, they'll know who they are, and can mend their ways the next time they review their box design.

Anyway, those are three egregious uses or lack of uses for apostrophes. Let's all try to do better in the future, for the sake of the many high-strung copy editors roaming our streets. Dom DeLuise is watching.

---------

*I know, it's hard to believe -- Italian cookies that aren't dry or all taste like anise. Mind = blown.

Outrage of the day?

An ad popped up for me from Chewy, fine Internet provider of pet stuff. We order from Chewy all the time, because I'd rather have the UPS man deal with 40-pound sacks of dog food than do it myself. And even being purchased by PetSmart last year has not ruined Chewy's outstanding customer service.

The ad featured doggie Halloween (sorry, Howl-oween) costumes, which PetSmart's stores have been pushing since July. As I've noted before, PetSmart gets the Halloween stuff out even before my notoriously early supermarket does. Here was the costume that caught my eye:

Yes, indeed, the Holy Hound Pope Dog Costume by California Costumes. Cute, huh? But shouldn't that be Howly Hound?

So. As a Catholic, I look at this and think: I should probably be offended. I'm not one of those dog owners who thinks Dogs = People, let alone Dogs > People. I do think dogs are great and useful and lots of fun, and if we weren't in charge of the joint then I'd hope the dogs would get a shot. I do not, however, think that a dog would make a good pope.

I feel like I should take offense, as if this were mocking the pope. Then again, I have to admit they did a really good job with the chasuble and miter, but I think the papal stole is not worn with the miter because the latter is used when celebrating Mass, and during Mass the pope wears the zucchetto (skullcap). I could be wrong; the pope wears about 8,782 articles of clothing with choir dress and it's hard for a non-cradle Catholic like me to remember it all. Anyway, it's a good likeness and you'd know what the dog was supposed to be immediately. And I am glad that, while some design elements were changed for paws, the Cross remains, albeit made of bones. (Also glad that that other universal symbol of doghood, the fire hydrant, was not used.)

My offense builds, though, when the auto-offense generators in my mind kick in: This is the kind of thing that is bought for the dogs of Catholic haters. It is not done out of respect. I'll bet you'll see some of these in the Greenwich Village parade. They'd never, EVER sell an imam costume. And so on.

On the other hand, I think it's cute. I wish the Holy Father could inspire as much love as people have for their dogs. I think Francis would probably find it amusing. He's not a Franciscan (he's a Jesuit), but by taking the name of St. Francis you have to think he is devoted to the great saint, famous for his love of all God's creatures.

And on the third hand -- or paw -- I can decide not to take offense, laugh at the humor of it, and not care. I don't think every damn thing has to result in a world war anymore. We need to laugh stuff off, and with a kindly laugh, not an irritated HA! or clapter or any of the other things that pass for a real laugh these days.

On the final paw: I wouldn't buy it for my dogs, because they are too huge and they hate hats. They'd make bad popes.

Hot time in the old town.

I keep thinking of March, when we were so buried in snow that junior dog Nipper and I were almost killed by a snowplow.

But it's not helping.

The hot, wet blanket that has slapped down on us the last couple of days reminds me of when we first brought Nipper home, in 2016. The nation was withering under the heat dome (remember that?) just when we had gotten this sweet little furball that had to go outside to pee 983 times a day. The weather, as I recall, stayed miserably hot unto the start of the Rio Olympics, about the time huge dog Tralfaz got an ear infection and DID NOT (!!!!!) (!!!!!) like the ear drops prescribed by the vet, which we had to administer twice a day.

Fun summer.

There's one similarity between a hot summer and a hard winter, at least in these air conditioned times: You feel a bit trapped inside. You know the moment you go out, you'll wince.

In the so-called dog days you want to run to the car, crank the A/C, run from wherever the car gets you to, to go inside somewhere where you hope the A/C is also cranking.

🌞hi

😥blarg

The main difference to me now between summer and winter is that winter very nearly cannot be too cold for my hairy dogs. These guys are built for the cold. The summer can really kill 'em, though, so we have to be careful. Tralfaz is at an age where he mostly avoids the heat, but Nipper is always game for outdoors fun. When the weather is really hot we wind up with bored, under-exercised dogs, who can be as annoying as bored children. As I write this my wife is running them through some training exercises, which is always useful but also wears them out.

Yesterday after work I took Nipper in the car (A/C crankin') to PetSmart, to get some supplies. Mainly I wanted to give him someplace cool to go. They all love him there, or at least they pretend convincingly -- and really, he's a smiley, cheerful fellow, so why wouldn't they? -- which makes for a fun trip for him. I even ran into a couple of folks I know, so he got extra love. Then he came home and crashed in the hall. Score one for Daddy!

🐶blarg

When I was kid we had no central air, and we couldn't use the window units except at night. Energy was exceedingly pricey at the time; you fellow fogies know what I mean. Dad's rules were ironclad on that. So when it was brutally hot we just died all day, or went into the cellar.

I spent a lot of summer days in cool cellars when I was a kid. That's why I'm the salt of the earth. (Yes, a British joke, and a very old one, thank you.) I think my time in cool cellars, ours and my friends', is the only reason I am not one huge melanoma at this age, because when I did go out in the sun I tended to burn like diner bacon. But I didn't smell as good.

Every season has its issues, its joys, but I wish we had more spring and fall and less of the weather that actually can murder us, and our little dogs too. If the Miser Brothers had had a couple of other brothers, the year might be more pleasant, wherever you lived. Spring Miser? Pleasant Warmth Miser? Leaf Miser? Cool Miser? That would be nice.

Back to obedience school time.

Oh, come on, PetSmart.

First of all, it is July 15, and as you may know I am very much against premature back-to-schoolism. I understand that there are multiple issues at play here. In many places students have been running amok since May. But in New York the kids were slogging it out until two weeks ago. Do we really have to start rubbing it their faces now?

For national companies like PetSmart, Walmart, and even those that cover large regions like Shoprite, somewhere within their bailiwick students are going back in about a month, so let's get Mom and Dad thinking about the school supply specials. Which is still, to the child within me, mean. I don't care if you start school August 8; you should be allowed a carefree July. It will not happen again for most of us until we're too old to enjoy it anyway.

But as I say, in New York the kids just got out, and won't be going back for a month and a half. Is it too much to ask to wait two more weeks to roll out the back-to-school things?

And yet that too is only part of the issue here, because this is PetSmart. The things in the photo are dog toys. Are the dogs going back to school? I do not think so. Not unless obedience class happens to start soon, or the dog is an assistance dog accompanying a human student to school.

Dogs and cats don't know that it's (soon to be) back-to-school time. I know that they don't know that it's Christmas or Halloween or any of the other events for which companies supply seasonal toys for them either, but we get them these things as a way for them to have fun along with us at holidays. "Everybody gets a treat at Halloween, even Sophie McMophie!" Are we really so desperate to pretend to our kids that returning to education is fun that we have to make the pets into unindicted co-conspirators? Are we so bored that we have to turn the buying of crayons and notebooks into a national holiday, a holiday whose date we can't even agree to?

It's all pretty stupid, and I will not be part of it. Although when a bunch of these toys turn up in the discount bin when the Halloween stuff arrives I will be willing to buy them cheap for Destructo Pup, who still treats his toys cavalierly to say the least. He doesn't care if they're out of season, even though they won't be, because PetSmart celebrates Halloween in July. Seriously, it's the only store I know that has seasonal clearances before the actual holiday occurs.

Objet d'arf.

The little pup is doing better today following Sunday night's diarrhea panorama, thanks for the kind thoughts and notes. The vet didn't find anything too awful, nothing that had to be removed except some more money from my wallet, nothing that a good puppy antibiotic wouldn't eventually help. So our little guy is getting better, but it's taking longer than I might have hoped. He did sleep through Monday night, which was a minor miracle.

When your beloved woofy needs something, you immediately think of the vet or the store. Since he was really sick, the vet was the only choice; you lose a lot of options when the patient can't tell you what hurts where and when it started.

Our local PetSmart has a couple of aisles of stuff that can be used for you to play home vet. When Tralfaz was a puppy he really enjoyed eating his own poop, which I wanted to discourage as quickly as possible. For a brief time he was on a mission of coprophagia; if some of his product had not been picked up yet from the previous visit, it was Snack City! So I tried a chewable tablet that was supposed to discourage that behavior.

It worked brilliantly. Too much so, in fact. He would bolt from his own feces after that, taking off like a rocket when it was deposited, and it appeared that that caused him to stop expressing himself. If your dog has done this, you know how unpleasant it is. When I stopped giving him the tablets, he rediscovered self-expression. Fortunately he had pretty much outgrown the poop cuisine by then.

Dog products are always hit-and-miss, often because of your particular circumstance. We got one of those superlong training leashes for the big guy at one point, and when we weren't using it anymore for training we left it tied to the porch for those times he would be out there on his own. One day, in fact, I left the big galoot out there for a few minutes while I tended to a quick errand up the block. When he saw me coming down the driveway, he bolted off the porch with excitement. Then this happened:

When the clip snapped like that and half of it went flying---the rest of it has never been found---we both just stopped and looked at each other, like "Whuuuuuuh?" So I was able to corral him.

Interesting that the fabric and the stitching proved tougher than the metal.

Another item we got because of the dogs was this:

The Dog Gone Smart runner is designed to soak up water from your soggy doggy and protect your floors. It is the most incredible product I have ever seen at soaking up moisture. It works exactly as advertised.

However, in its standard usage it gets really dirty, even more so when someone in the house who shall remain nameless (Nipper) has a massive case of diarrhea and lets it fly on the mat while on the way to the front door. The runner is machine washable---although in case of poop you're gonna want to hose it off first---and the problem is all that water it soaks up. It claims to absorb up to 15 times its own weight in water, and I believe it. It weighs four pounds dry. After it gets through the washing machine it is about 60 sopping pounds---the spin cycle does nothing to get the water out, or very close to nothing, and even our heavy-duty washer goes wobbly with that kind of weight in it. You have to hang it to dry; you couldn't put it in the dryer in this shape anyway, even if your dryer can handle a load that heavy. And it does not lose all that moisture quickly. A simple clothesline may not be strong enough. And it's been raining a lot here.

The runner does exactly as it is said to do, but it is not easy to clean in my experience.

So these are some things we have found that are effective, but not without comical drawbacks. Poor puppies! How do they survive our attempts to help?!

Why won't they LISTEN?

Long night.

I'm not sure when it started, but my wife woke me around one to tell me she'd been up with the big dog for an hour, and he was crazy.

Tralfaz is a lot of weird things, but not generally crazy.

I mean, yes, sometimes I call him Dinky Dau Doggie, but that's in an affectionate, playful, culturally appropriational way.

Last night he was just freaking nuts.

When I joined the story, already in progress, Mrs. Key had had him upstairs, downstairs, outside, inside, all around the town, and yet he was making his nerve-racking near-human vocalizations, the kind he makes when we got to the vet (or, to be fair, the PetSmart), the kind that say, "This is terrifying! Help!"

But there was nothing there.

His panic was centered on the central part of the house, around the staircase, mainly upstairs. That's where the little dog, Nipper, sleeps in his crate, when he's not alerting us that 3:30 a.m. would be a very good time to pee. Tralfaz has displayed protective instincts toward the little squirt, so that may be why his focus was there. Still, I led him from room to room, all over the house, even rooms he's not normally allowed in, so he could point out what the HELL was freaking him out. Bugs? Mouse? Bird? Bat?

This is the part in the movie where we tell Fido, "Yo, dog, shut up, man, there's nothing there." Then we shove him in the closet and laugh, while the dog goes berserk, yelping in dog lingo, "You fools! The monster is IN THE HOUSE! Why won't you LISTEN?"

And then heads start to roll.

Of course, all this ran through my mind, thanks to my stupid imagination, which should have made me rich by now for all the terror and trouble it has caused me since I was a child. And of course, having checked every normal room in the house, that left....

THE ATTIC.

I could almost hear the phantom audience yelling at me, "Don't go up there!"

So I did not go up there.

I'd whipped up a spicy recipe for Sunday dinner. Maybe the dog knew we were being haunted... by ghost peppers!

ooooOOOOooooOOOOOOOOO

It all seems pretty stupid in the light of morning, but it was getting freaky in the dark of night. My wife finally got the dog to cut the crap and settle down, and we all went to sleep, but it took a very long time. Now we're facing Monday morning, exhausted. Hooray. Why did we get dogs, again?

Anyway, I have not yet had the time to check the attic, to see if there are any bats, birds, bees, severed heads, ax murderers, demons, or ghosts around. There are screens on the attic vents, which usually keeps out the bats, but I can't vouch for the other things. If you don't hear from me Tuesday, you know that I was foolish in disobeying the advice of the phantom audience.

Updates on the week that is.

You know how, just on Monday, I was kvetching that there was candy corn in the dollar store advertised as Halloween candy, right? And in July, more than three months before the actual holiday of Halloween?

One of the objections I anticipated was that dollar stores are notorious for selling whatever they have whenever they have it, and I can't expect seasonality there.

Well: Tuesday, at PetSmart:

Really, PetSmart? Really?

Look, I understand that pet shops can't quite get into the Back-to-School swing that every other store is; after all, obedience school is every day (or for many dogs, never). But do we have to jump all the way over a quarter of the year to start with the orange and black? Please.

And yet, I was in a supermarket yesterday and also saw Halloween candy. I would have taken another picture but I was too depressed. IT IS STILL JULY, PEOPLE.

On another topic, I fear I owe a minor apology to C. Howard and Company, makers of this stuff:

On Sunday, I said that Choward's Scented Gum was "very strong ... if someone [is] indulging in the gum or candy you can smell him coming. I have no evidence to prove this, but my anecdotal experience says that in the greater New York area in the 1970s, sales of Howard's violet candies shot up as marijuana use became more common." Well, I happened to be in a tobacconist's on Tuesday that sold the gum, so I bought a pack. 

I was chewing a piece last night not five feet from my wife, and she did not catch the scent. The dog did, but he's got a superhuman nose---or he just saw me chewing something and wanted to know what it was. (His current life goal is to lick the inside of my mouth while I'm eating, something about which we do not see eye-to-eye.) Furthermore, I found the flavor quite enjoyable, much less perfumey than I remembered. Either the gum is smaller or less potent than I recall, or the air quality much different from the days when I would be knocked back by a guy chewing it. I can believe that my taste has expanded to include floral (violet-flavored) candies, as opposed to just mint or fruit flavors. 

So there is my update: Halloween co-conspirators with the dollar store and an apology to Choward's. At Vitamin Fred we don't wait more than 40 years to disavow errors, unlike some lesser news outlets. 

PetDumb?

I love PetSmart. My wife loves PetSmart. My dog loves PetSmart. It's fun to shop there. We've done grooming there. We've done training there. The staff is very friendly. They somehow keep the place clean. They have most of the stuff we need, and some stuff we didn't know we needed until we saw it there, which is good retailing. Yes, I love PetSmart.

But I hate this:

and this:

He's my DOG. I'm his OWNER. He is NOT MY CHILD. He is wonderful and I dote on him and I blog about him way too much, but I am his MASTER. When I am not, and he gets away with things, we both wind up unhappy. I am NOT A PET PARENT. He is an ANIMAL. Yes, as a human, I am technically an animal too, but it takes a sentimental sap or an evolutionary biologist to be foolish enough to think there's no difference.

I used to say that people were very weird about sex, death, and money. I still believe that. But I think I may have to add animals to the list.

On the one hand, we have the ooey-gooeys, the ones PetSmart thinks they are marketing to, who have confused a domesticated creature with the children they did not have or do not get affection from. On the other, you have the evolutionary biologist, surely the most cynical creature in the world. who talks about the means by which our dogs learn to "simulate affection" (as one noted on TV the other night; did not catch the name of the show).

Presumably the biologist simulates affection himself on Mother's Day. After all, he thinks humans are just Animals 2.0.

Somewhere in the middle is the rest of us. And the Catholic Church:

The very essence of the moral law is that we respect and obey the order established by the Creator. Now, the animal is a nobler manifestation of His power and goodness than the lower forms of material existence. In imparting to the brute creation a sentient nature capable of suffering — a nature which the animal shares in common with ourselves — God placed on our dominion over them a restriction which does not exist with regard to our dominion over the non-sentient world. We are bound to act towards them in a manner conformable to their nature. We may lawfully use them for our reasonable wants and welfare, even though such employment of them necessarily inflicts pain upon them. But the wanton infliction of pain is not the satisfaction of any reasonable need, and, being an outrage against the Divinely established order, is therefore sinful.

So there's that.

We've probably all seen too many talking animal movies and books and TV shows. It's hard not to project human behaviors onto animals whether it's appropriate or not. Tralfaz looks very thoughtful sometimes, laying on the floor, eyes open, I can ponder what he's thinking, because I would be thinking about something while laying down and not sleeping. But he's not thinking. He's just there. He may be processing bits of information my senses can't even detect, but he's not thinking about people and events of the past or plans for the future. He's just there. But it's easy for me to imagine all kinds of thoughts in his animal head, and think of him as a little fuzzy person, and then go eat hamburgers. (And feed him meat.)

I'll say this: At least people who project human thoughts and feelings on pets and think of them as children, and are vegetarians or vegans, are consistent. Then again, you might say the same for an evolutionary biologist cannibal.