Dog Analysis For Beginners

pablo with borders 2 web

People are curious about their dogs.  Sure, dogs exhibit some pretty serious curiosity themselves, especially when they become magnetically attracted to someone’s crotch or emotionally invested in a pile of dessicated poop in the park; when they enthusiastically knock over the trash can to get to a tampon or a rotten chicken bone; when they treat the kitty litter as their own personal buffet.  We people outdo them, though, because OUR curiosity goes beyond simple instinct.

Here’s an example. My sister was curious about the genetic mix of the dog she adopted from the shelter.  And who wouldn’t be?  Is there maybe 2% of Sheltie in her paws?  Does her nose look 4% Lab?  It was keeping Maria up at night, probably, and so she decided to get a genetic test to find out exactly WHAT her dog was made up of.  Here’s what she found out, and keep in mind that you can do this for your dog, too, and amaze all of your Facebook friends with the results.  I’m planning to do this for my dachshund, because I suspiciously suspect that he’s not 100% PURE dachshund, no matter what the teenager at the run-down pet shop told me!  It’s not like it matters, but — I’m curious. And the technology exists!

So, here is Foxy:foxy

And here is what Maria reported on Facebook a while back:

“The results for Foxy are in!

According to the Wisdom Panel 2.0 DNA test, she is a true mutt. She is a Labrador Retriever, Rottweiler, Cocker Spaniel (lol!) mix with lots of of other mixed breeds that could not be detected with accuracy. One of her parents was Cocker Spaniel and Labrador Retriever mixed with other breeds. The other was a Rottweiler mix. We totally guessed the Rotweiler part, mostly because of her coloring.

This was really fun! If you have a mutt, I recommend it. Not sure about the accuracy of it all, but the entertainment value is up there.”

Maybe you think that is too much to learn about your dog. You’d be wrong, though, because there is a LOT more you can glean from careful, scientific observation of your dog’s behavior.  For example, what is your dog’s favorite food?  Maybe you THINK it would be steak, or chicken, or pizza. But how can you be SURE?  This was keeping me and Amado up at night, so we — with Isabel’s help — devised the following very unscientifically accurate experiment to determine it more precisely.

We had ordered pizza last week and Pablo was whining and begging frantically, as he always does when pizza comes, and suddenly one of us asked, “So, is pizza his favorite food? Or does he like steak better?”

Isabel said, “I think pizza is his favorite!”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “He really loves steak, and chicken, too.  And sausage. And salami.”

“But he must have ONE total favorite,” Isabel insisted.  “I wish we could ask him.”

“Maybe…we can!” I suggested.  “Let’s do a Food Line-Up to see.”

“What’s a food line-up, Mama?”  Isabel was intrigued.

“Well, let’s see! How about we put all of these things down on the floor and see what he goes to first.  Pizza, salami, chicken wing meat, stuff like that.”

Amado said, “Yes, but we’ll have to let him see them all first, so he doesn’t just go to the first thing he sees. That way he’ll KNOW what’s there, and he can choose his favorite first.”

I agreed. “Yes, they’ll all have to be equidistant from him, and about the same size, so he doesn’t go to the biggest one just because it’s larger.”

We thought.  “Well, to be statistically significant, we’d have to repeat the experiment many times, ” I said.  “And we’d have to control for food location by varying which food was in which spot.  And we’d have to do it at different times of day.  Amado, how many times would we have to do it for 5 foods?”

Amado thought.  “Let’s just do it once,” he said.  (Our curiosity knows SOME bounds, even if it means sacrificing statistical accuracy.)

“It will be like the Olympics!” I said eagerly.  “One time, one winner. No statistics.”

Amado put Pablo on his leash while Isabel and I arranged small piles of food onto squares  of white paper. Our selections were:  BBQ chicken wing meat, pizza, salami, unsalted almonds, and his dog biscuits.

pablo experiment 2 To keep it interesting (as if it wasn’t thrilling already), we decided to rank the foods in the order we thought he’d choose.  Here’s how it looked:

pablo meat lineup2It was getting intense, because we each thought he’d choose a different food first!  After Isabel carefully lined up the foods on the floor, Amado lead Pablo over on his leash and let him sniff at the offerings.

pablo experiment 1pablo experiment 3Pablo strained mightily against his leash, whining in anticipation, his tail wagging so fast it was just a blur of energy. And finally the big moment came. The leash was released, and Pablo ran!  And the winner is:

The Pizza!

Yes, Pablo snatched the pizza and took it away to eat it in private. He wolfed it down in a few seconds, and we were eager to see what he’d choose next, but then he surprised us all.  Instead of actually choosing, he just ran to the closest one after the pizza, ate it, and worked his way down the line one by one.

pablo experiment 6

We were intrigued and disappointed, but you see, we’d also LEARNED SOMETHING ABOUT OUR DOG, something we had not heretofore understood:  After he satisfied his cravings with the completely irresistible pizza, he reverted to a “as much as possible in shortest time” mentality and just gobbled things down as quickly as possible with minimal movement. Fascinating!  Yes! What a great experiment!

Maybe you think that is too much good human food to sacrifice to a dog’s belly just to learn about his eating behavior. Once again you’d be wrong, because sometimes you need to donate an ENTIRE PIZZA to the cause. And here’s an example of how it works:

My parents had a dog named Baby (full name was Ice Ice Baby Stutson Bread, compliments of my sister Erica), and Baby loved pizza.  Like, she really REALLY loved it – so much, that one time, after my parents walked a friend to the door after a lovely shared meal of pizza, they came back 45 seconds later to find the dining table completely devoid of left-overs, and Baby guiltily licking her mouth in the corner in a very satisfied way. This dog had somehow gotten onto the dining table, eaten the equivalent of a large pizza, and had then gotten back down — all in complete silence, and all in under a minute.

This was a perplexing mystery!  How did she do it!?  Did she get onto a chair and from there put her paws onto the table, or did she just sort of launch her body up and grab the pizza cardboard?  Did she eat the sausage side first, or the pepperoni?  Did she look around before grabbing it, or did she just eat?

These were serious questions that we needed answered, and so – to satisfy our curiosity – Mom and I set up an experiment in the kitchen with her Camcorder and an entire Tombstone Pizza, fresh from the oven.  We were giddy with excitement. We were laughing and dancing around and I couldn’t stop giggling.

“Let’s put the whole pizza here,” Mom suggested.  “Then we’ll start the recorder and leave the room. We’ll give her plenty of private time to eat the pizza, and then we’ll watch to see what she did.”

“Baby!” we called. She was suspicious, sort of. She came in and gave us a LOOK. “Hi, Girl!” I said happily, and petted her.  “Ok, we’ll see you later!”

We snuck out of the kitchen, leaving Baby in there with the ENTIRE pizza, and easy access. We even closed the door to give her MORE privacy and time. We waited, hardly able to control our curiosity.

“I want to peek!” I whispered to Mom.

“No, don’t!” she said. “Give her time. Let her feel comfortable in there.”

We waited…and waited…and waited. Finally, unable to wait another minute, we peeked in. Baby was sitting calmly on the floor. The pizza was untouched. Baby gave us a look.

We were dumbfounded. What was going on? Why did she not eat the pizza? We were so confused. We left the room to give her more time.

After another few minutes, we rechecked. Baby was now scratching lazily, and the pizza was still pristine. She trotted past us to the living room without a second glance.

“Did she….KNOW we were recording her? And she didn’t want that?” I asked incredulously.

This dog — who once stole an ENTIRE TURKEY from this same kitchen table and took it into the backyard when Papa turned his back for one second to get the salt — this same dog had ignored our pizza experiment!  She wasn’t sick. She wasn’t full. She just….apparently….didn’t want to play our game.

And so we never got to learn how Baby stole pizza. That was her secret, and her secret it stayed.  And from this experiment we learned something new about the dog — she was very clever, and she was not oblivious to silly human antics. She had her pride. And possibly, she was a pizza snob (after all, it was Tombstone.)

Anyway, as you can clearly see, any experiment with your dog is guaranteed to deliver unexpected and eye-opening results. And it’s a fun way to have quality Family Time too!   I highly recommend that you indulge your own curiosity and analyze something about your own dog, starting today.

P.S. – Because of a certain old aphorism, I can’t guarantee that such curiosity-satisfying experimentation is safe for felines, so proceed on that path at your own risk.

 

 

 

 

Don’t Rain On My Meat Parade

shopping list web

“Mama,” said Isabel eagerly, “Tell another one. Make up a story where Ramona – real Ramona – is pretending to be Joey King, who is pretending to be Ramona for the movie, and how real Ramona gets to do the scenes instead of Joey King.”

“Sure,” I said, weary from telling many, many versions of made-up Ramona and Beezus stories to Isabel, most of them about Ramona trying to sneak onto the movie set and play herself instead of letting child actress Joey King do it.  “On our way to Whole Foods!”

I had a list, and I leaned my elbows onto the back of a chair and stretched my calves while I tried to memorize it.

“Mama, what are you DOING?” asked Isabel.

“I’m trying to remember everything on this list,” I explained.

“But why, Mama?” Isabel thought this was silly. “Why don’t you just bring the list with, and read it to see what you need?”

“Just to see if I can.  To improve my memory.  OK, Listen.  I’m going to make up a story about all of these things to see if I can lock them into my mind. I”m going to imagine this happening like a little movie. Here we go.”

I thoughtfully paused, then said, “OK!  Imagine some  hot dogs with legs. They are walking, all straight and tall, with thin little arms and legs. They are wearing gym shoes. OK? And they’re pulling…..sleds…made of bacon. Yes, bacon sleds! And riding on the sleds are turkeys who are going ‘GOBBLE BOGGLE’ and juggling purple cauliflowers and broccolis.”

“Mama, that’s silly,” interjected Isabel.

“Yes, I know,” I agreed happily. “That will make me remember it better.”

“Ok. So NOW, the hotdogs arrive at the swimming pool. Only it’s made of tortillas, and it’s filled with raw eggs instead of water. The hot dogs don’t want to get a sunburn, so they oil up with coconut oil and Go-Go Squeeze.  They’re really lathering in into their skin, getting all oily. Got that?

“Now, some friends come. I’m calling them the ‘Four Tall-ees” because they’re tall. Celery, cucumbers, zucchinis, and carrots. There’s 4 of them, so they’re dancing in, in a square shape. Like this.” I demonstrated a cha-cha like move.

“And NOW, they are going to go bowling, and each of them has a round thing.  They are using tomatoes, apples, beets, and avocados.  And they’re wearing strawberry hats on their heads!  And then they hop around in little hoppers made of bell peppers.

“And some little limes and lemons come in on tiny yellow legs, singing.  They are wearing shawls made of lettuce so they can fly. Super-LEMON! Whoo hoo! And then they jump on trampolines made of bread, and put on underpants made of pepperoni.

“Oh, and I can’t forget the hummus. On the way, the hot dogs pull the bacon sleds through a HUGE puddle of hummus, but it look like poop. Mud poop. BRRRRTTTTT.” (I made a fart sound.)

“Mama! That’s GROSS!” exclaimed Isabel, giggling, because who doesn’t giggle at poops and farts?

“I know!” I said, grinning back with pleasure. “It’s easier to remember when it’s gross. But just think, I can just say this little story to myself in the store, and that way I will remember EVERY thing on that list.”

Isabel was very quiet for a moment, then she spoke carefully.  “Mama, I don’t think you should say that story out loud in the store at all, ok?  I really don’t want you to.”

“All right,” I was  agreeable.  “I’ll just whisper it to you.”

“No, Mama. I don’t want you to say it ALL.”

“Why?” I asked innocently. “Do you think it might be…embarrassing?” ( She’s only 6 and she’s already asking me to change? Yikes.)

“No, not really,” she said. “But I just…don’t want you to say it at all, ever, ever again. Ok?”

In the car, I was forced to tell yet ANOTHER story about Ramona. Although I love the Ramona books, it gets tiring to be sort of on-call to make up Ramona stories at the drop of a hat every time your daughter wants one. VERY tiring.  Sometimes I said I couldn’t tell the story because I was focusing on driving.  Other times I said that I didn’t have story yet; my brain was still growing one slowly, like an apple maturing on a tree, or a chrysalis turning into a butterfly. Isabel asked many times  if the apple was ready yet. I said no, not yet, but soon.

When we got to the store, I was eager to test my memory story.  I headed right for produce. “The 4 Tallees,” I told Isabel, “bowling!” and we picked out all the right fruits and veggies. We remembered lemons and limes.

At the meat counter, I spoke out loud to Isabel.  “Hot dogs pulling bacon sleds with turkey on top. And don’t forget the pepperoni underpants. “It’s a Meat Parade!” I said in a song-ish way.  I was happy with my memory thus far.

Isabel giggled. A lady next to me, a tall elegant lady with white curls and a pearl necklace, made a sort of frown and muttered something to herself. It sounded like, “Oh My Lord. Seriously?”

Apparently she was not the type to appreciate a Meat Parade, or edible garlic-scented undergarments.  But the man behind the counter approved. “Now that sounds like a sweet setup,” he commented.

“Damn straight!” commented another customer, who was very hip and cool. I could tell he was hip and cool because:

  1.  He was wearing the shoes that have a compartment for each toe
  2. He had earrings in his ears that were as big as  silver dollars
  3. He and his partner were wearing matching bracelets

“Oh, thanks!” I blushed.  I was so excited to receive such lovely feedback.  “It’s a new memory technique,” I explained.  “New to me, anyway.  You make up a story about all the things you need to remember, and that way you don’t need to write it down.”

Partner murmured to toe-shoes, “I’d like to see YOU in some pepperoni underpants, Honey,” and then something quieter that I couldn’t quite hear (even though I tried), and then they both giggled  before wandering over to Cheese.

Isabel whispered to me, “Did he say a bad word, Mama? You know, DAMN?”

“Oh, no,” I said quickly. “He probably meant, like, a beaver dam. He was thinking about beavers, and how they could probably build an awesome, totally straight dam made of meat. Like a dam to block water, you know?”

To illustrate, I made some noises that seemed beaverish: ‘Raaaahhh!  Arrrgarrgarrgarr. Eeeekkkkjurkurkurkur.  Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreep.” And to seem further beaverish, I waved my arms behind me like a tail splashing the water, and hopped up and down.  I put a lot of effort into the beaver routine.

The pearl lady  grimaced and pointedly moved a few steps further from me. Clearly she was as unimpressed with my Beaver Impression as she was with my Meat Parade. Maybe she thought I was rabid.

Her loss, I thought darkly, and in my food movie, made the hotdogs push her into the egg pool and then take her pearl necklace and act out a scene from Fifty Shades of Gray where the boy hotdog takes the pearls over to the girl hotdog and – and no, never mind, because although the memory book said that the more explicit or gross a memory is, the stickier it is, I REALLY didn’t want to see her pearls doing that, and OH NO. Too late!  The pearls were locked into my memory in a most memorable way, and they were not even on my list of things to buy! Shit!

Isabel was tugging at my hand. “Mama, did we get hot dogs yet?”

Pearl necklace. Hot dogs. “Not yet, Sweetie,” I said, and we walked over to get them.

Later on, we tried some salami samples at the meat counter. They were really gross, and Isabel whined for water (honesty, I felt like barfing too), and then I was trying to run through the story in my head, but it was hard with a small girl complaining and tugging.

“Just let me grab the poop hummus!” I called to Isabel, and I grabbed my favorite flavor, buffalo, from the rack.

And of course, Pearl Lady was RIGHT THERE hearing me call it poop hummus.  I had to work hard to keep from laughing. The look on her snooty face was priceless, so I innocently repeated it loudly as I walked past her:  “Poop hummus! Poop hummus!” It felt great to say it loudly like that. “Poop hummus!” I repeated, and then said it again.

“Poop Hummus!”    I practically screamed at her. This time she moved away very quickly indeed.  I made another noise, just for fun, a noise that might be uttered by a rabid beaver. “RRRRRRRik -ik -ik ik ik ik ik ik!”

Why was she even AT Whole Foods? I wondered to myself.  She seemed like she needed a butler to shop for her, or something. Oh My Lord.

As we paid for the food, I checked the list to see how I’d done.  Yes, everything! I’d gotten…oh, no. I forgot the coconut oil. How could I have forgotten THAT? I’d really visualized the hot dogs greasing up when I first created the story. And I did remember the apple sauce, their other suntain lotion.

I decided:

  1. Too much beaver dam and pearl necklace; not enough running through the actual story while shopping
  2. Having Isabel gagging and crying about nasty salami didn’t help
  3. Of course, a person with a super strong memory could easily summon up “coconut oil” even if they had TEN screaming kids and TEN mean Pearl Necklace Ladies distracting them
  4. So obviously I need more practice
  5. But still, a pretty good first attempt!
  6.  I’m proud of the bacon sled! Seriously, a bacon sled! Cool, right?

Unfortunately, even though I forgot the coconut oil, I still can remember Claudia Schiffer in the cottage cheese. (Confused? Read my earlier story on memory here.) Maybe next time I’ll have to imagine Ms. S. rubbing the coconut oil all over herself, or better yet,  I’ll imagine Mr. Christian Gray rubbing coconut oil on himself.

And if I encounter Mean Pearl Lady again, I won’t shout “Poop Hummus!” at her. Instead,  I’ll just  be forthright and tell her, “Hey! Don’t you rain on my Meat Parade!”