Wednesday, December 19, 2007

ADVICE: Greenery and Gastronomic Catastrophe

Besides Christmas trees, there are other holiday greenery that can cause gastronomic catastrophes. I'm not quite sure why greenery suddenly becomes so important at this time of year. My secretary explained that in some places things become grimly brown and gray--no leaves, no grass and nothing but wet and something white like snow. Again we come upon this human obsession with color! Dog are blessed in this sensory situation since all the world is black, white and shades of gray. Green, it seems is not only a way of living in harmony with the world, it is also the color of plants although not all plants are green. If that makes any sense at all!

Living in California, I haven't had the opportunity to make the acquaintance of snow fairies or snow angels. My secretary tells me there is no smell to snow although since she is human and as all humans are olfactory-challenged, one can hardly take her word for that.

In any case, holidays bring out such greenery as lilies. These are not particularly harmful for the average canine although greens in great quantity are never in the best interest of carnivores. Rather, our friends the cat, also carnivores, can mistakenly give an absent-minded chew to lilies--tiger, Asian, Japanese show, stargazer and Casablanca--only to find the ER their next stop. Ingestion of lilies results in feline kidney failure.

Now there's also holly and mistletoe. For some odd reason, even though neither is commonly found in the Los Angeles area, the season finds humans making a mad rush to buy them. Something about kissing under the mistletoe? A dog might wonder why kissing should wait for a special occasion and why that occasion should necessitate the presence of some kind of plant although I'm told that a dozen long-stemmed roses, color red because humans seem to find color of the utmost importance, are a good reason for kissing. Seriously, I consider a good piece of bacon or a slice of pizza worthy of a kiss. What good is a rose when a pizza will hit the spot nicely?

In any case, holly causes nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and lethargy if eaten by a pet. Mistletoe, will cause gastrointestinal upset and cardiovascular problems. Sounds more like a reason for crying than kissing, but as always humans are often confused. Perhaps some distant ancestor kissed after thankfully surviving this gastrointestinal crisis giving rise to this strange custom.

Poinsettias, a favorite flower for this holiday season, was rumored to be poisonous to dogs. This is an exaggeration, probably started by some drama queen who got sick and milked the matter for hours, weeks or months. In reality, they will make the dog stomach queasy, might make one drool (although with some breeds this would be either hard to discern since they already do or greatly increase the size of the drool pools). I imagine in the case of a bull mastiff one could practice swimming. What will catch the attention of one's human companions would be the vomiting and diarrhea.

So what ever special greenery might pop up during this frantic season of irrationality in humans, do not nibble, do not chew up the scenery or you might find yourself on a quick trip to the doctor's. One can suggest plastic (as in fake flowers and not as in credit cards).

While this might be the only way one can get the attention of one's human companions during this season of madness, I do not recommend it. One should never resort to histrionics or other bad behavior such as self-harm, suicide and self-pitying whimpering even if one's companions are being quite impossible. Always, canines should act with class, hoping that one's human companions will follow suit.

Do not worry. The season does indeed pass and one's human companions shall regain their sanity and what little dogsense they may have.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

ADVICE: Boxes and Bafflement

During puppyhood (or kittenhood), one quickly learns that humans find it amusing when one plays with boxes or tackles paper bags. They even make smaller bags for dogs to be carried in. As especially beloved canine will often find odd little objects brought home in which one is encouraged to roll or toss it until some wonderful little treat falls out. Or there's that lovely rubbery thing that is often filled with peanut butter. You might even be invited to play a game of search, looking for an object filled with some taste tidbit.

So one could easily be misled at this time of year. For once the ceremonial tree is up, humans begin to pile up boxes on the floor under the tree.

Somtimes, they will put things that smell so lovely inside of boxes, wrapped in enormous amounts of a paper. From the smell of things and by the very fact these are placed on the floor where most dogs eat, where most dogs receive special treats after properly waiting for their signal, one might think these treats are just complicated puzzles for the dog to figure out and unravel and unwrap.

After all, humans don't normally leave a plate full of cheese on the floor. One rarely sees them eating from the floor and even then they don't know how to do it properly as a dog would, licking up every trace so the ants and other pests won't come around. Yet during this season of madness (the holiday season my secretary informs me it is called), they will place boxes of salami, cheese, candies, beef jerky, smoked salmon and cookies on the floor as if a thin box and a few layers of paper could easily disguise the smell.

One must recall that humans are singularly olfactory-challenged. This is the PC term to describe their inability to smell most things unless the air is simply laden with the odor. Smells and aromas must be strong because their senses are quite weak. So they think we can't smell it if they can't and thus must not know it is there.

Still this hardly excuses the placing of temptation within a dog's reach, on the floor where any dog would expect to find treats. One might want to assume that those sweet smelling treasures are meant for the dog of the house, but this would be dog logic and not human logic. If the humans had any sense at all, they would not leave a dog alone with food on the floor in any form and expect to leave the dog alone with it and not eat it. Not all humans have dog sense and my secretary tells me that common sense isn't that common at all.

Another peculiar thing they might do is they sometimes they might even hang up socks.

If one's companion is a logical and well-mannered human, one will know that socks are not for us to pull or tear into. Some of the sillier specimens of the human sort will encourage that in a young pup, only to become bitterly angry when the pup carries on the same habit into doghood. T'is a puzzlement.

So, of course, most well-mannered dogs will not pull down socks and yet silly humans will often put food in these socks and hang them up. What's worse, they might even fill them with food obviously meant for dogs and leave them there, hanging, within easy reach of one's snout or maybe just a slight hop above nose level. What ARE they thinking?

This is part of the madness of the so-called holiday season. There have been suggestions that it's the cold weather that makes humans somewhat mentally disturbed during this time period every year. My secretary states it is part folk custom and part religious, and yet how often does one find that customs are used to explain away natural occurrences such as covering one's mouth when one yawns?

Further research on biorhythms and the seasons as well as the effects of natural light should be carried out. Perhaps the answers lie there in.

Sunday, December 9, 2007

ADVICE: The Christmas Tree

As a dog of good manners, I find humans are often hard to comprehend. I know from the very smell of things that they mostly do have indoor plumbing and yet, they vehemently object to their very faithful companions having indoor plumbing.

To make matters worse, at a certain time of year, even the most black-thumbed (a term that my secretary assures me refers to those who cannot care for a living plant) of humans will go out and bring in shrubbery. I do not mean the usual small to medium sized plant in a pot, but a rather large tree.

Wonderfully smelling for the most part, these trees are treated with almost inappropriate awe by humans, particularly their pups and cause much consternation to both humans and dogs. If I and most dogs were to encounter such a tree outside, our human companions would be perfectly content to stand by while one lifted a leg. Yet this tree is not for the sake of indoor plumbing for dogs, no matter how much at this time of year our human companions may curse and howl at having to take us out into the cold to relieve ourselves.

Nor is this tree meant to be a scratch post for our friend the cat. It is not meant at an exercise contraption for the family feline either.

Rather, the humans mean to hang fragile things rather precariously from the branches. A dog, no matter how well-mannered might knock these shiny things down, causing much disruption in the usual flow of good human-dog relations. Too often, humans forget that we, unlike they, do have tails and do not generally wear shoes.

Indeed, there is quite a danger of breaking these silly objects and stepping on them, causing a bloody howling mess and perhaps even banishment of the dog and not the foolish human who created the situation.

Another odd practice is the placing of edible object such as popcorn in strings, or deliciously sweet candy canes or even cookies on the branches. Talk about tempting fate! Do humans believe that we have steelier consciences and resolve than they? They often even further confuse us by placing poisonous stuff (tinsel is what my secretary calls that shiny things) that can easily get entangled in our hair and then, during grooming our intestines if we swallow.

So be careful my friends, both furry friends and humans alike. The so-called Christmas tree can be the cause of a crisis, a breakdown in communication between dogs (and cats) and their humans and even, at worst, a critical injury scenario. Oddly enough, after a few weeks, humans will toss this tree onto the curb and, at that time, not particularly care if you use it as a matter of outdoor plumbing.