Tag: can dogs eat

Can dogs eat…. your head?

The whole process whereby we got Clarence remains a little unclear to me. We had had three dogs for a while, and Duke died. Jim got in touch with a group that did mastiff rescue, and then had his heart stolen by Louis, so we had three dogs. And then the mastiff rescue people got in touch with us. They had a four-year old mastiff. And so we ended up with four dogs.

So, we took the pack—Ella, Louis, Marquis—up to a neutral place where they could all meet (basically a barn). And they all wandered around and sniffed each other and things, and Clarence came up and put his head in my lap, and, well, that was that. We would later find out this was odd—Clarence didn’t like strange dogs, and really didn’t want to be approached by them. He wasn’t always okay with strangers. But he was fine with this pack, and he was fine with us.

Having passed the adoption test (they have to be careful about people who are getting dogs because of dog fighting), Jim and I went up and got him.

Louis was dubious about Clarence, but Louis was pretty much dubious about everyone (and kind of the fun police). And Louis ended up getting along fine with Clarence, basically because Ella was actually in charge of the pack.

When we adopt a new dog, we set up a bed on the floor in some room in such a way that I and the pack are all sleeping together. For Clarence, we set that up in the living room, but it happened to be a night with a major thunderstorm, something that always agitates dogs. And that’s when I discovered that Clarence’s previous owner had, for reasons that remain obscure to me, decided it would be a great idea to teach a 160 lb. dog to jump on people and nom their arms. So, I found myself with a 160 lb. (or maybe 170 since he’s thinner now than he was then, and we’re pretty sure he’s now around 165) dog who was leaping around, especially leaping on me, and trying to hold my arm in his mouth.

I threw the other dogs out of the room and was, for the first time in my life, edging on intimidated by one of my dogs. But it was so clearly high spirits, and—and this continued to be the case—although he was grabbing my arm in his massive mouth and holding it tight, I didn’t feel any teeth. I still don’t know how he did that. He spent the first night across the room from me. The next night he was closer. The third night he was spooning with me.

The storm passed, in both senses.

I’m calling him Clarence, but we hadn’t decided on his name. We were considering various big guys, such as Charlie Mingus, but also guys with wrinkled faces, like Willie Nelson or Levon Helm. Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown was a small, wiry guy, so no resemblance, but Clarence felt like a Clarence (and I do love me some Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown). Also, Brown had, as far as I know, a good and long life, and we wished that for him. He came to us with the clear signs of having been fed the wrong food for four years, but no real signs of abuse (except for, in the backyard, a male carrying something).

He was a momma’s boy from the beginning. We discovered that it was cheaper to buy twin mattresses (he required two, on top of each other) than dog beds. We discovered that he got cold at night, so we took to putting a blanket over him when he went to bed. He often created a doggy burrito. It was hilarious.

We discovered that he got lonely at around 5 am, and wanted me to roll off my bed onto his. If he had a bad dream in the night, he would insist that I move over and give him room to get in bed with us. We have a ritual of waking up and cuddling with all the dogs and whatever cats choose to show up first thing in the morning. Clarence would wake us up, and then pretend to be asleep. He would, and I’m not kidding, fake snore.

We often joked, or perhaps it wasn’t entirely a joke, that he would wait till we were asleep, and then unzip his dog suit and emerge as a really empathic and mildly neurotic human.

He loved walks. He hated strange dogs approaching him. He loved stuffed animals, and would cuddle with them. He was intimidated by the cats. If a cat lay on his bed, he would come and get one of us and look sad. Or just lie on the floor and hope the cat would move. He would, if they wanted, let them boop him, but he was always at least a little worried that they would kick his ass.

In other words, he was intimidated by a being that weighed .06 of him. Our cats weigh less than his head. He could have eaten either of our cats in one gulp. But, instead, he was sad and hoped he could get his bed back.

The whole “no strange dogs” thing was fraught. It’s really common for dogs who are totally comfortable with other dogs off-leash to get freaky on-leash. The problem is: if you have a dog who weighs 165 lbs, who can swallow some dogs whole, you can’t risk that he’s got an on- or off-leash distinction. So, after someone lost control of their dog, and it charged Clarence, and he alpha rolled it, Clarence (and Jim and I) spent a day every week with a really good dog trainer, who got him to be okay with other dogs. As long as I wasn’t holding the leash.

As I said, Clarence was a momma’s boy. So, for years, I was the one who held his leash. And, when we saw a strange dog, I got nervous because I was afraid that Clarence would get agitated, and then Clarence sensed my agitation, and he thought he needed to protect me. It was a nasty spiral of anxiety about the anxiety of each other. The solution was for Jim to hold the leash, but still, when things got twitchy, Clarence attached himself to me. So, for Clarence’s sake, I had to learn to manage my anxiety more effectively than the method on which I’d relied for 40+ years–pretending I wasn’t anxious. He needed me to recognize when I was anxious, even when I “thought” I wasn’t. I did that for Clarence, but it turns out that it applied in all sorts of other areas. Clarence demanded that I learn something about myself. Clarence made me a better person.

Clarence did that with Pearl too. She came to us a dog who didn’t like to eat, who didn’t like people, but who loved Clarence. And Pearl, on walks, checked in with Clarence (and Jim—she’s a daddy’s girl) in order to be a little bit more brave. And she is. Because of him.

Clarence tolerated Louis, but he loved Ella and Pearl. He was the gruff older brother who was sweetly grumpy about their getting up in his face. On walks, when Pearl was upset (by airsocks, people with yellow vests, really scary leaves, that asshole Labradoodle) she checked in with him, and he had this move that always gave me a catch in my throat. It was a kind of shoulder bump, and it calmed her down. We all need that shoulder bump. I miss that shoulder bump.

Clarence loved rolling in the grass, and his method made me laugh every time. His roll started from his nose. He rolled in various places along busy streets, and it was fun to watch drivers laugh. He had a few favorite spots—we really don’t know why. Sometimes he wouldn’t roll on a favorite spot, and we never figured out the criteria.

Clarence’s previous owner probably paid a lot of money for him (since he appeared to be a purebred bull mastiff, and they’re pricey) and then fed him the wrong food (as is clear from his paws), taught him to jump on people, nom arms, mistrust males holding things while in the yard, and yet gave him enough love that he came into our home expecting to be loved. So they did something very important very right.

Mastiffs have a lifespan of 8-10 years. Given that he had clear signs of having been fed the wrong food, we figured he’d be on the short side. About a month after we got him, I gave him a corncob (something we used to do—the dogs nom on it for a while, and then cheerfully lose interest). He swallowed it whole. It was an obstruction. We ended up at the emergency vet. They stapled down his stomach (thereby preventing bloat—what kills a lot of big dogs), so I’ll admit I had hopes that he might live longer. But last summer was hot and long.

We used to walk the dogs for two miles every day. And Clarence had three places that he stopped to roll. Near the coffee place, where he got a treat, in front of an auto repair place (where people driving by would laugh), and on a particular lawn (sometimes two). In summer, Jim would wear a pack that had water and water bowls, and we’d stop halfway through and give them water. But, even so, Clarence was panting way too much (we all were—it was a long summer), so we took to taking a one-mile walk with him—up to the coffee place, where he got a treat—and then back home where we dropped him off, and then took the girls for another mile. He was always thrilled, to his last day, to go on a walk, but also quite happy to be dropped off.

He was stoical. In the four years we had him, he never yelped. He once flinched (this last week, when I touched a sensitive spot). But, he stopped eating, and seemed to be holding himself as though he was in pain, and so we took him to the vet, discovered he had cancer that had metastasized, and we were in the realm of palliative care. So we were. And we got lots of great advice from friends who had been through the same thing, some very recently, even the same time (take lots of photos and videos, offer scrambled eggs, indulge). We gave him lots of pain meds, and were getting up twice during the night in order to ensure he was always medicated. And then it was time. Pearl and Ella saw him after he died, but we put them away while they took his body away, and I watched them track the path of his body.

And so, here we are, without him, but blessed and better because of him.

Winston and Louis

cat and dog cuddling

[I posted this originally in January of 2018, but took it down when it became part of a book. Since the book has been out a while, I’m putting it back up.]

Today we lost a 14 year old cat and a 2 year old dog.

We got Winston Churchill and Emma Goldman on the same day around 14 or 15 years ago because someone in the Cedar Park neighborhood we were then living in (big mistake) was influenced by the “Secret Life of Dogs” (I assume) and so let his dogs out at night. They killed little dogs and cats, among them a neighbor’s dog two cats of ours. One of many reasons I’m glad we moved out of Cedar Park.

We got the two kittens from different rescue groups, and they bonded instantly. Winston was (we found out quickly) ill, but before we figured that out, he was waking us up around 4 am to harangue us, so we named him Winston Churchill (who was famous for the same behavior). It turns out Winston had a virus, which he passed to Emma Goldman (named that because she was clearly a total anarchist), and so I had to pill him multiple times a day. One of my secret superpowers is pilling animals (I also include fixing wonky toilets, getting total strangers to tell me their life stories, and losing things), so I was pilling this poor kitten all the effing time. I can do it, but I can’t do it in a way that animals like.

Yet, he forgave me.

We took to calling him Winston, and not Winston Churchill, because in many ways he was closer to Winston Smith. He disappeared whenever strangers appeared (there are people who’ve been over to our house many times who’ve never seen him), and we had to start working with an in-home vet because if we got out the cat carrier, he simply evaporated.

On the other hand, he could be incredibly brave. When we got him, we had a Great Dane and two mutts. Winston loved Emma, but he loved the dogs more. He spent his whole life sincerely believing he was a dog. He had complicated medical issues—he couldn’t eat fish, or eat anything from plastic. Because the Marquis de Lafayette was his best bud, he ate from the Marquis dish, and so the Marquis had to eat out of non-plastic containers and we couldn’t add fish to Marquis’ bowl. And Winston, at all of 12 pounds at most, snuggled with Hubert (120 lbs) and Duke (100 lbs).

For cats, head-rubbing is submission. Cats are not pack animals, and so normally the whole pack configuration isn’t really something to which it’s worth paying attention when you’re talking about cats. But it was interesting with Winston. Winston, after a while, took to beating up on Emma, so she dumped him, but he was entirely submissive to the dogs—to all the dogs. Most of the dogs tolerated him, but Hubert, George, Marquis, and Louis were actively sweet with him and allowed him to rub heads (which doesn’t mean the same thing in dog language).

After a while, the three cats each claimed domains, and Winston claimed the bedroom. He always slept with us on the bed, exerting the cat gravity power so that a 12 pound cat is actually an immovable force. He was probably the single most affection-loving cat I’ve ever had. For a while, he allowed Emma to sleep in the bedroom, but at some point that ended, and he allowed Sapphira to come in and get morning snuggles (Louis put an end to that, oddly enough). So, morning snuggles was Winston and the dogs. When we fed the dogs, he would head into the study, and eat out of Marquis’ bowl. Winston LOVED dogs. He especially loved licking their faces and ears. Hubert and Duke kind of liked it, and Ella and Clarence barely tolerated it, but Louis loved Winston. When we knew we were putting Winston down, I worried about how Louis would react.

Winston was always an indoor cat (with the exception of the catio), and he was until recently a beefy guy (and ended up being kind of a bully with Emma). The last year has been vexed in that we knew he was losing weight and something was going on, but he remained his dog-loving cuddle all night self. When definitive tests were done, he had major intestinal tumors and cancer that had metastasized to his paws. And so, today, we had an appointment with a vet to come and put him down. He was still, even with the damn cone on his head, cuddling with the dogs, and sleeping with us at night, but he was clearly unhappy. And he died, in the lap of someone who loves him, purring. He died about 90 minutes after Louis.

Louis was really sweet with Winston. Winston had a cancer that metastasized quickly, and gave him bloody tumors in his paws. He continued to sleep on the bed, and Louis (who always slept on the bed) accommodated him endlessly.

When Duke (a 100 lb Great Dane) died, we put in for rescuing a Mastiff. We’re good with big dogs, and they’re often hard to place. That mastiff rescue process wasn’t working well, and Jim knew I was a wreck about having lost Duke, and one day he said we should look at dogs. I assumed Jim was being sweet with me. We went to where APA was showing a few dogs, including what they said was a rottie mix (they marked him as large or extra large). I thought he was adorable, but I also thought Jim was looking at dogs for my sake, and so I took his enthusiasm for that dog as being supportive of my grief. I said we needed to look other places, and we did. And he kept saying, what about that rottie-mix, and I kept thinking he was just being kind to me, and so, when, after having looked at dogs at various other places, I said, “Yeah, I think that rottie mix is the best choice,” he rushed me to the car and drove like a maniac back to the place we’d seen him. He actually jumped a curb. That was the dog that would be named Louis.

We had had a dog, Duke Ellington, who was a wonderful dog, but a little bit staid. And then we got a puppy who adored him (and whom he adored) and who made him a little bit more playful, so we named her Ella Fitzgerald. And Duke died.

And then this rottie mix (he wasn’t) came home and bonded so thoroughly with Ella Fitzgerald that he was obviously Louis Armstrong.

And he was the most hilarious dog we have ever had. Austin is so good at getting dogs adopted that Austin now takes dogs from the shelters of other cities (and even counties), and Louis came from Bastrop. He had abrasions on his leg and neck suggesting he’d been thrown from a car (which is what people around here do to get rid of unwanted puppies—don’t get me started), and they thought he was going to get to be a large or extra-large dog. He thought he did. He got to be fifty pounds.

He was hilarious.

He hated mornings. He loved morning walks, but he never wanted to get up. He was the most talkative dog I’ve ever had. We’ve had dogs with strong opinions (Marquis is very clear that he thinks we should build a fire, nap, give him Dasequin, rearrange the dog beds), but Louis gave six-part Greek orations. We’ve had dogs with whom you could have conversations, but never a dog, but he had a lot to say. You could have a long conversation with him. Even I thought he could out-argue me.

We took him through all the Petsmart training, and he was a gem. My plan was, when I retired, that he and Ella would be our nursing home dogs.

He would have been great. He worried about other beings. If I sneezed, he would put his paws on me. He worried about Winston (especially once Winston got sick), and he worried about whether Clarence was going to get upset at seeing another dog (he sometimes does), and he worried about whether Ella was going to jump on me (she shouldn’t, and she does).

And he ate everything. He was the “can dogs eat…” dog. He ate the bark off our firewood, and he once ate a large part of an organic firestarting log. He ate arugula, watercress, lettuce, and all the things no other dog (even Clarence, who wouldn’t eat arugula) would eat.

And he cuddled. I have a high tolerance for sleeping surfaces, so our practice is that, when we get a new dog or cat, I sleep on some dog beds on the floor with them, and then we transition into the bedroom, and then into their finding their own space. The first night with Louis, he slept across my neck. Literally. The next night he slept across my chest, then legs, and then we were in the bedroom. And every night after that he slept cuddled in either my arms or Jim’s. And the night before he died, he crawled under the blankets, and had to be rescued because he got so hot he was panting. He was, without a doubt, the single most affection-loving dog I’ve ever had.

He and Ella were terrors—they were total siblings (although not littermates), with a hilarious game. Louis would dig a little bit in the ground, and this his job was to keep Ella from taking that little spot, and the two of them were tear around the yard with him keeping her from home. They jumped on each other at certain marked point on the morning walk (why those points, neither Jim nor I ever figured out).

We really worried about Louis because, although he was terrified of tires, he had NO sense about traffic. And he had a tendency to slip out behind someone who opened the front door. And we live somewhere that, if it’s raining or not, the front door might or might not entirely close. More than once we realized he had slipped out and we had to chase him down. It was our nightmare that he would get out and get into traffic. And our nightmare came true. He ran half a mile in order to get on a fucking freeway.
We had come to the difficult decision that we would put down Winston today, and therefore would spending all our time cuddling with him, and thinking about him. Louis slipped out, and we didn’t notice. This breaks my heart.

And, for reasons we don’t understand, he ended up half a mile away on a major freeway. A vet saw him just after he’d gotten hit, and tried to save him. And that vet (whose name we never got) took him to an emergency vet, but Louis was DOA. And someone called Jim, and he called me, and so the vet, Jim, and I all stood in a room and sobbed together over this hilarious dog who was now dead.

And so, today, we sent along their way a hilarious and young dog and the old cat he loved. I don’t believe in Hell (the scriptural basis for it is weak), but I believe in heaven, and I believe that these two are frolicking together. And the grief is for those of us who are left to mourn for them.