Time To Make The…Bath

This sounds better than bathing at home.

No more sore backs, or wet dogs — half soaped up — running through the house.

Mark Narduzzi of Livonia takes his three dogs to the self-serve dog washing stations at Dunk N Dogs in Livonia.

“At home, I get as much of a bath as she does,” said Narduzzi, 42, while rinsing Molly, a 4-year-old black Lab-greyhound mix.

At the dog wash, he said, “the facilities are much easier to manage, instead of hunching over into the tub, the shower door getting in the way. And Molly likes to be around other dogs or go to any event that involves a car ride. Seeing other familiar faces here also helps.”

Dunk N Dogs was hatched by Sharon Lutz Robinet, a self-taught dog and cat behaviorist, certified obedience trainer and occasional groomer. Because of medical issues, she needed to cut back on the physical demands of grooming and came up with the idea to shift business direction while still working with animals.

Dunk N Dogs’ main service provides pet owners the opportunity to wash and dry their dogs in a controlled environment, inside standard bathroom tubs that are raised on platforms to keep the owner from bending over, complete with sprayers and a special hookup to keep the dog in place. The price per wash ranges between $8 and $20, depending on the weight of the dog. No-heat blow-drying is also available to avoid wet fur matting, plus owners can rent clippers to trim their dogs’ fur.

Persoanlly, I prefer the donut and coffee special at Dunkin’ Donuts over the Super Sudsy special at Dunk N Dogs any day.

Smells Like Teen Spirit

Chalk up another life saving act by a dog.

Emmett Hawley had just slipped into bed at about 11 p.m. when Sparkles, his 6-year-old schauzer-terrier mix, started barking furiously.

At first Hawley didn’t pay attention. But when he began to be nudged and scratched by Sparkles, Hawley knew something wasn’t right.

In my world, nudging and scratching just means I want a treat not that I want to save your life.

“I told her, `What’s wrong, girl? You sick?”’ the 84-year-old Augusta resident recalled. “I had no idea why she was acting that way. She’d never been like that before.”

So Hawley got out of bed, entered the living room and plopped down on the couch to see if Sparkles would calm down.

And that’s when he knew why she was acting so strange.

“I ain’t got as good a smeller as she does, but I did smell something funny,” Hawley said.

So he called Consumers Energy. When a worker arrived, he smelled it, too, went down to the basement and found a natural gas valve leaking.

“There’s something in their smellers that can smell things we can’t,” Hawley said of dogs. “If it wasn’t for (Sparkles), I might not have been here today.”

At 84, I’m thinking not only does Hawley not have as good a smeller as Sparkles, but he probably doesn’t have as good a bowel movement either.

Al Qaeda Tastes Like Chicken

Who better to serve in the War on Terrorism than us canines? This interesting article talks about the recruitment of flunky dogs and their journey to becoming dog heroes.

There are struggles in training canines to become great additions to society as noted here.

Many of the Labradors have been dismissed from guide-dog schools. “We have dogs that are bouncing off the wall, wild-horse dogs. If you have a handicapped person with him, it’s going [to] look like a chariot race,” Bohan says.

At the risk of sounding politically incorrect, that was a funny line. I know Ben Hur would have approved as would the British Wheelchair Racing Association.

Pucci [a prisoner] threw a party for “my baby girl” [Mary Jane] who was leaving to fight al-Qaida. “I may be a criminal, but I’m an American criminal,” he said. His voice caught. “A little piece of me goes out to fight for the American way - to keep the Yankee games going.”

When he was young, had Pucci made the right choice to become a Mets fan, he may have been president today.

Ricky Bobby and Mary Jane … thank you for your service.

Say Hello To iBiscuit

Gracie finds out that the iPhone doesn’t taste like an apple.

Tyler Hall left his iPhone on a table recently while he took a shower and it seems his dog mistook it for a Snausage.

Trust me, the dog did not mistake it for a snausage. We all know that an iPhone doesn’t smell anywhere as good as those treats.

Luckily, Tyler pried the phone away from Gracie before she could totally destroy it and the ringer/speaker seems to have sustained the most damage. The screen protector did its job and when Tyler removed it, there wasn’t a mark on the glass.

This explains why Gracie didn’t return my calls last night. Yo Grace…dial me up, buttercup…the Bo Dog wants to converse with you.

Titus Rules No More

Here’s a story to remind you to make sure you develop a wide skill set in your job. If you don’t want to lose your job you need to do that or you need to create broken processes, making you indispensable to your employer.

Titus will sniff no more in Sequim come 2008. He’s losing his job.

The 4-year-old German shepherd, who with officer Mike Hill makes up the Sequim Police Department’s K-9 unit, will be declared city surplus early next year.

Hold on a second. City surplus? Is that what they’re going to call Titus? He’s a dog with feelings for crying out loud. We must stop the labeling of our fellow canines in cold terms.

You say we can’t, I say we can. Was it over when the town laid off the garbage men? Was it over when the city laid off the maintenance crew? Was it over when the German Shepards bombed Pearl Harbor? No!

Titus is a drug dog who sniffs out narcotics. He had 240 hours of training at the K-9 academy on MacNeil Island, and he’s done well in his nearly three years at Hill’s side.

But crime trends in Sequim call for a dog with different skills, Hill said, and Titus is probably only a few years from retirement.
Violent crime and the department’s overall call load have leapt up in recent years, he added.

Sure that’s the official word, but unsaid in the article were the rumors swirling around the K9 community that not all marijuana confiscated by Titus made it’s way back to the police station. How else to explain Titus’ laid back demeanor and penchant for snacks?

Of All The Gin Joints In All The World She Walks Into Mine

Here’s my adoption story (and an excerpt from my upcoming book). Please feel free to share your adoption story or thoughts in the comments section.

We met back in the early 90’s, December of ‘92 to be exact. I just had a major blowout with my first, somewhat dysfunctional family and decided that it was best for all if I just left. My foster dad gave me a ride to nowhere that ended up at a boarding house in Albany, NY. The place was great, warm with plenty of company, and their cheesy poof biscuits were to die for. On the downside, it was loud and smelly, not unlike me.

Even a lowly pug could smell her coming from miles away. It was Monday, as I recall, and the bells on the door jingled to announce her arrival. She was a beautiful blonde with a quick smile and a big heart. We’d seen this type before; they usually left with one of the pure bred puppies, but something was different about this one. My instincts told me that any canine would be darn lucky to go home with a dame like her, so I made it my top priority to be that hound.

She wandered back to where we lived. Frankly, I was a bit embarrassed about the condition of the place. Some of my cage mates were not very clean and some even took to pooping where they ate. My next cage neighbor’s lack of etiquette was particularly noteworthy as he took to eating kitty snickers (that’s slang for cat poo in the big house) openly. Sure they taste good, but you’re not getting adopted if you’re seen eating one.

As she came closer to my humble accommodations, I tried everything I could to grab her attention. When she finally got to me I made direct eye contact with her, angled my head at a 45 degree tilt and gave her my trademark BoPaw’ reach. As a bonus, my head as a pup was fully-grown, although my body wasn’t. While it would have been abnormal on any other dog, my oversized cranium actually made me cuter.

With the paw in the air and the bobble head turned just so, I stared into her eyes. I could see instantly she wanted me. Needed me. Had to have me. Hey who wouldn’t?

With her finely manicured nails, she reached out and petted me. She was clearly enjoying our encounter. How easy these humans are to manipulate, I thought. Her hands were refreshingly cool and her smell put me in a state of delight. I was in love. I could tell she loved me too.

After a few gushing, “He’s so cute!” comments, she took her hand out of my cage, gave me one last look and proceeded to move on to Pumpkin’s cage.

What?? Move on?! Hey, we just made a connection. You can’t move on. But that’s exactly what she did.

Realizing I was still sitting there with a half-cocked head and a paw in the air, I felt my muzzle glow red hot under my furry face as the other dogs chuckled with delight. After a few minutes I got my bearings back, but by then she had moved through the room, out the door and out of my life.

My hope for a better life was gone as quickly as it had come. A depression enveloped me. The brief glimpse of a superior existence with a loving, caring humanoid was replaced with the stark reality that I may spend the rest of my life at this boarding house. What was once a fun and refreshing place became a dark and daunting cave. Read more

Looking For Trouble

I’m looking for Trouble and willing to marry it. Why you ask? Well you see, Trouble is a maltese and the beneficiary of a $12MM inheritance from The Queen of Mean, Leona Helmsley.

Leona Helmsley’s decision to leave $12 million to her dog so it could live out its life in luxury proved once and for all that she was not one of the little people.

Personally, leaving a large sum of money is the least a dog owner could do. Let’s face it, they wouldn’t have gotten as far in this world if it wasn’t for us supporting them while they moved up the company/social ladder.

The story goes on to say:

Helmsley, a hotel and real estate magnate who died Aug. 20 at age 87, decreed that the vast bulk of her multibillion-dollar estate would go to charity, not to her family, although she made individual gifts of $5 million to $10 million to several relatives.

She also expressly stiffed two grandchildren with whom she had feuded, saying in her will that they would get nothing, “for reasons that are known to them.”

Although not stated in the article, or the will, the main reason the grandkids received nothing was that they refused to fetch sticks when Leona threw them.

Three Sides Live

Here’s a great article on how three labradors help out on rescue missions. I guess specialization isn’t only happening in the medical field.

“We had limited amount of room to manoeuvre[sic] down there. So the first dog, Flash, a brown golden retriever, goes in and searches and we send another dog, Fancy, a yellow Lab, to back it up to make sure if the first dog finds anything, it’s correct. It’s really to get a reassurance by the next dog. That’s how we do all our searches,” she explained.

The third dog Spirit, another yellow Lab, has a different speciality. It is in human remains.

The following line struck me as bothersome…

The three dogs Fancy, Flash and Spirit, who were lowered into the hell hole at Arch Cot Terrace, Brittons X Road, St Michael, as part of the rescue mission early Monday morning, are not your ordinary dogs.

Lowered into a hell hole? Holy crap, I didn’t even think the portal was open. I better start behaving a little better and keep my eye out for heaven’s gate.

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