My Page: Kathryn Socie
The Dog Blog with Kathryn Socie
All Puppies are Cute
A hearty welcome back to all the students recently landing in the lovely Missoula valley with the aim of expanding their minds and opportunities in life (hats off to you). A true believer in free will, I completely allow for people to make their own choices and mistakes uninfluenced by any amount of rather meager wisdom I might have to offer, but for some reason I need to make one brief exception to my normal rule and share a bit of my thirty-something-life-long-doggedness.
I know it's tempting, but please, I beg of thee, don't get a dog or, at the very least, seriously think long and hard before you do. Yes, I know the recreational possibilities con canine are plentiful in these parts. Yes, I know you grew up with a dog, totally dig them and feel you absolutely "need" one. Yes, your current landlord will let you have one with an extra couple-hundred dollar pet deposit, which your folks are willing to help you out with. Yes, you found the perfect puppy in the paper. I've heard you sharing with your buddies all the places you'll go with your new dog in tow. I've also heard plenty of folks remind you that a dog is a huge responsibility and I've watched you roll your eyes at them.
Responsibility is the wrong word. Take a moment to envision your future.
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The Dog Blog with Kathryn Socie
Fall Fashion Must-Have
If you live with a dog you are, no doubt, plagued by mounds of hair nestled in every nook and cranny of your life, traveling like tumble-weed across hard surfaces. You’ve suffered it, wrestled with managing it and probably given in. Reducing hair-load, for me anyway, is a daily task, but recently the thought of recycling and re-using it has begun to pass through my wee brain. It’s a little hard to even think about pulling out cold weather clothing in August, but cooler temps are just ‘round the corner and for the dogged you can never get out the rug brush and start collecting too soon. Really. I mean it. [more]
The Dog Blog with Kathryn Socie
Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid
Science is super cool and capable of AMAZING things, but are we really going to use it to catapult us into freak-ville? I mean really, cloning humans is a frightening concept and puts just about everybody’s panties in some kind of a bunch (OK, mine sure are), but spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to be “Best Friends Again” as in have a mad scientist make an exact replica of your beloved dog after it’s passed away, strikes me as a little more than disturbing. But BioArts, a bioengineering company in California, disagrees and is offering this very special service to dog owners round the globe. It’s true and SOOO much stranger than you think. [more]
The Dog Blog with Kathryn Socie
When Co-dependence Works
Would it be too weird to show up at a twelve-step program for codependence with my dog? Not that I would even think of getting help. We’re so mired, the dog and I, in deep co-dependent bliss, that I absolutely don’t want what we have to change. Ever. We are, however, both miserably unhappy without our “other” around and preferably within close proximity. I need to be needed and he needs to be needy. Our relationship is, by all accounts, perfect in this way, however dysfunctional.
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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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