Ah, Spring! I was ambling about with my friend’s Walker the other day. (No, I’m not that old. I meant Ben’s Walker Hound, Sophie.) We were strolling Solano Avenue on a bright April day and, as usual in those parts, it was slow going.
Not as slow as during the official Solano Stroll in September, when there’s a different live band on every block, a parade of scantily-clad Brazilian dancers and outrageous art cars, and 100,000 people milling about – just the typical progress-retarding carnival of distractions.
On the occasion in question, every outdoor café was spilling its denizens onto the sidewalks and they all wanted to give Sophie a kind word and a scratch behind the ear. Then, of course, there were the usual great window shopping opportunities, including Tibetan, Oaxacan, and Japanese gift shops and that institution of odd natural artifacts called The Bone Room that’s always got a dinosaur skull or cat skeleton in the window. Something for Sophie to enjoy.
Have you read Teach your Dog to Read by Bonnie Bergin? Yes, apparently dogs can recognize printed words. Her dog knows twenty of them. Better get your mutt’s reading scores up or he’ll never be accepted into the better obedience schools. Good Dog, Carl, now considered a children’s classic, may soon be considered pulp fiction by every Lab with a fab vocab, since it only contains about eight words. The War and Peace of doggie litter-ature will be See Spot Run with its twenty-six different words!
Don’t be surprised if you start seeing articles in the dog magazines like “How Rin Tin Tin Triumphed Over Doggie Dyslexia” or “Why Rex Can’t Read” (I guess “cuz he’s a dog” doesn’t cut it anymore). Something tells me the animal psychologists are going to start prescribing a lot more Ritilin in the near future.
Maybe every state should follow Connecticut’s lead and outlaw teaching dogs to read. Dogs just wanna have fun. Leave the data addiction to us text-messaging masochists.
In these strange times of fear and loathing, even Dachsunds can appear on security watch lists. Bill Stockton of www.satirium.com says he’s received a number of National Security Letters from the FBI concerning his five miniature long-haired Dachsunds. (And you thought terriers were terrorists.) The NSLs inquired about the dogs’ “access to explosive materials, knowledge of bomb construction techniques, and access to canine backpacks.” A second wave of letters required Stockton to provide “all records of subject canines’ activities outside the confines of their yard… If with backpack, what were the contents, what did it weigh, did it make ticking sounds, etc.” Apparently, he says, the FBI thought it had uncovered a plot to use miniature Dachsunds as suicide bombers.
Stockton’s reaction: “Blow up my little dogs? Are you crazy?” But maybe the FBI knows more than Stockton is telling. Maybe he’s a loony who has convinced his dogs that if they blow themselves up they will immediately fly off to some heavenly kennel to be bred with forty virgin wiener dogs for the rest of eternity.
Stockton claims he was threatened with “pain of prison” if he refused to cooperate. When they haul him away, he’ll need some extended dog-sitting help. But be forewarned, volunteers, you too may get an NSL for stockpiling IEDs (improvised explosive Dachsunds).
It’s starting to be a very scary Gary Larson world out there.
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