My Page: Kathryn Socie
The Dog Blog with Kathryn Socie
Contemplating Greening Up
Forgive me Missoula for I have sinned. It was one of those terrible mornings when you wake up a few minutes late and then suddenly it dawns on you that you have an early meeting. I started the coffee, got an egg going and jumped in the shower. Then, consumed said runny egg on a burnt piece of toast in the kitchen dressed in a towel. I managed to shave but one leg, ruling out the skirt I had planned to wear—sure wish I could go granola and skip shaving altogether, but there are remnants of my glamour eighties hair days I just can’t shake. I then had to come to terms with my serious need to do laundry and finally settled on a lightly soiled pair of pants considered clean if you ignored the grease streaks on the cuffs from my bike chain.
Having extreme fidelity to meeting the exercise needs of my two mega-energy dogs, I had to squeeze in our morning stroll. On second thought, since the bike grease was already there, I went with the faster option of a bike ride, dogs sprinting alongside. We headed up a trail and the dogs were running at top speed, tongues hanging out next to me when my mind wandered off. Focused on the things I needed to make sure I had with me for the day, the items on the agenda I needed to remember for the impending once forgotten meeting, it took me a good minute to realize that blue dog wasn’t keeping up.
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The Dog Blog with Kathryn Socie
Living with the Bickersons
I like things in twos and follow a rather strict companion animal binomial system. Any more than that and I get overwhelmed any less and my house feels empty. The cats have each other to groom, hiss at, complain to, generally laze around and team up with for extreme nuisance making. They've been together since they were kittens and after 12 years have managed to develop a ridiculously warm and fuzzy relationship that would make Hallmark proud—the kind of stuff featured on those hideously cutesy posters pre-teen girls are rather fond of. My dogs have a different thing going altogether.
Part squabbling siblings, part old married couple and part just plain dog-ness, their dynamic is wholly perplexing to me some days and down right befuddling to most outsiders. In the morning once my feet hit the floor they begin furiously tap dancing for the lead up to the door, as soon as it opens they launch out, racing each other to the fence line where they come to a screeching halt and get into what looks like a dog fight, sounds a lot like one too, but it is far from it-- they just bicker.
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The Dog Blog with Kathryn Socie
Attack of the Killer Weed
If you’ve stepped outside at all lately you are probably painfully aware of that pesky, pokey, hideously ugly, low-lying grass coating most of Missoula’s Open Space (a good chunk of the West in general, really). You know, the stuff that lodges into any and all footwear rendering it borderline trash-worthy. Yep, cheat grass. This obnoxious (I move to upgrade the term from noxious on behalf of cheat-loathers everywhere, who’s with me?), impossible to beat, fire-loving weed does more than ruin a good pair of socks. Cheat grass kills.
I first caught wind of the cheat-grass-as-instrument-of-death concept at a potluck while listening to some dog-crazed woman go on about the many evils in the world threatening the life of her beloved four-legger. She regaled us with stories of the usuals: chocolate, chicken bones, anti-freeze, raisins, xylitol (an artificial sweetener), and, finally, cheat grass. I had never heard of this particular plant killer. It makes sense that a dog can die from ingesting something toxic, even if that thing seems rather benign. But cheat grass has an entirely different means of taking its victim.
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Sometimes things go awry and you’re left wallowing in the pit of despair, drowning your sorrows in some dive bar. Sometimes you really do get ripped off. And then one day, mystically, magically your ceramic lawn dog returns home after a long absence. Just when a Portland, OR woman had given up hope of ever seeing hers again, she started receiving post cards from across the country signed “lucky dog.” Finally, last Sunday she looked out her window and found her missing dog had returned home, complete with two new ceramic pups.
She wasn’t robbed, her ceramic dog went on vacation and, apparently, procreated somewhere in route. After visiting Disney World, Graceland and New Orleans, among other destinations, the dog arrived safely back home with a photo album documenting its adventures. Talk about luck. Talk about genius.
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The Dog Blog with Kathryn Socie
Something’s Missing
With Obama in Butte, flipping burgers in celebration of the Fourth of July last week, I couldn't help but wonder if my candidate of choice might still, somehow, have a little something missing. It's not necessarily a requirement for my vote, but I think the White House would feel just a little more homey if there was a dog for the Prez to come home to after a long day on Capital Hill. Before the Obama family starts loading up the moving van for parts east, it seems perhaps the perfect time to put a little thought into the first dog.
Picking the right dog is definitely challenging. Not just any dog can handle the job. What with all the parties, the press conferences, the celebrity dinners, the White House is pure limelight for a dog; limelight some don't handle well. After Abe Lincoln discovered his mutt Fido, who "loved attention and would spend countless minutes chasing his own tail" (hello, Abe, early signs of wackiness), had grown stressed and anxious from cannons and church bells and the constant stream of strangers, Abe shipped him back to Springfield to stay with friends to live a quieter life. Teddy Roosevelt's Pete, a bull terrier, took a chunk out of a few cabinet members, nipped a navel officer and ripped the pants of French ambassador Jules Jusserand before he got the boot.
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The Dog Blog with Kathryn Socie
Honoring the Elderly
I noticed it again the other night. Maybe it’s the evening light or maybe it’s just that time of day when things are moving slowly and I pay closer attention. As I settled in on the couch and the dogs crawled up beside me, I saw it in both of them. Foggy eyes. You’re probably familiar with it, the natural lens change that occurs in dogs at about 7 years old, that tell-tale sign of maturity. I caught it the first time in Walker over a year ago and was stunned. He is so lithe, muscular, wild spirited, playful and, somehow, older? Though I revel every time someone tells me what a cute puppy he is, the realization that he is not a pup, but in fact moving toward the other side of adulthood is a jarring reminder of the shortness of the canine life span, my absolute least favorite dog trait.
Walker and Weez are textbook healthy. Still, as eight year olds, anything can happen. Though they do everything at mock ten, go anywhere, run like maniacs without so much as a stiff rise as they get up each day to do it all over again (and perhaps longer, faster, harder), I know what being eight means. Rather, I know too well that dogs truly are short-lived animals. My dogs are seemingly in their prime, but that can change suddenly, rapidly. Not to mention the fact that if they max out their life span, which I am SO rooting for, we have ONLY ten years left. What a rip-off. I want so much more.
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The Dog Blog with Kathryn Socie
Go Ahead Ask, and Take Toto Too
Are you single and living in Missoula? Got a dog? Chances are you’ve been on the safe date. When someone says to you, “Hey, want to get the dogs out on Water Works sometime this week?” odds are you’re being hit on. It seems benign, rather just-friendly even, but it’s probably a date. In a town where 75% of the single population is dogged, it is the perfect way to launch love, or at least explore the potential. And how ideal? No pressure to find a topic of conversation (hello, dogs!), no worrying about who picks up the check, and if it feels a little awkward it’s over rather quickly and your dog had a good romp, so all is not lost.
By safe I don’t mean it in the weeding out Ted Bundy sort of way. Rather, if things go nowhere, egos emerge from a shared dog-walk unscathed, very unlike sharing a meal for whatever reason. Perhaps all survive because there’s no money involved, or perhaps because the asker can hide behind the rather transparent guise of it not really being a date.
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The Dog Blog with Kathryn Socie
A Case of Somethin-itis
It starts the same every time.
“Maybe you can answer this question…”
Once I got tagged as an obsessive-compulsive information starved geek with a coupla years of veterinary experience, I became the go-to for copious amounts of garden variety critter information. You know, avoid the veterinary bill ask the dog-crazed freak. The panic stricken call at the oddest hours and I find myself engaged in entirely too many discussions, too often, using the complete suite of adjectives available to describe poop. There is something wholly satisfying about sharing my pedestrian wisdom, however. Like, in my most recent session, when a friend traveling through town started in with:
"Before it happens again and we totally freak and fork over $500 to the emergency vet, should we worry when…”
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The Dog Blog with Kathryn Socie
Civility? Nah!
As I walked through the door into a room filled predominantly with strangers, I was immediately struck by the sense that something was wrong. Terribly wrong. I was greeted by the hostess, a distant friend of a friend who had just the day before insisted that I attend her party. So I did. And, wow, was I in foreign terrain. Her house was impeccable, immaculate, something out of a catalog, nay a museum. A China cabinet stood against the back wall with actual China in it, neatly, perfectly displayed. She had a matching red, velvet couch and love seat, sitting on perfectly plush, white carpet buffered by teak wood end tables. The walls were the color of a fresh latte and a set of themed, framed prints were hung throughout a never-ending expanse of a house. It was beautiful in an Edward Scissorhands sort of way; uncomfortably tidy with a dash of eery. Still, she created a show place that would make Martha Stewart proud.
My sheer out-of-placeness there left me totally stunned. For starters, the hostess asked guests, very politely, to remove their shoes. Had I been planning for a shoes-off occasion, I would have strategized my footwear. As per usual, I had run the dogs on dusty, dirt trails in my Chacos before leaving for the event only to throw my filthy feet into a pair of dressier clogs. Imagine my horror as I stood in this woman’s foyer about to step gross, grimy, dirt-covered foot in her utterly well-kempt home. Already embarrassed, I was soon catapulted into mortification.
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The Dog Blog with Kathryn Socie
Dog as Placeholder
If you have a dog, chances are you've heard it. It comes out in a dozen different ways, but the meaning is always the same. In fact, the other night I passed a couple on the trail who, after my dogs politely moved out of the way and sat to allow them to pass, one of them exclaimed: "You are so ready to raise children after raising those two angels.” While I recognize the sentiment is meant to compliment my subtly displayed maternal nature, I'm not so sure my dog caretaking skills are a direct reflection on my ability to parent.
I can’t imagine these people are implying that it’s acceptable for me to put my kid out in the backyard at night when he's got diarrhea while I head back to bed, or that sticking a child in a crate during the day after a walk and bowl of kibble is totally kosher, or that taking my kid for regular runs next to my bike at top speed so she sleeps better is swell in their book. Seems any of these “parenting” actions should prompt a phone call to child protective services, making my case; the leap from dog to kid is a large, scary, expanse.
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