OUR NEW FOSTER KITTENS!

Boris

On Monday, Mom brought our new foster kitties home from the shelter.  I thought they were going to be BLUE, but they are really just gray, so I was disappointed.  Mom said that that shade of gray in a cat or dog is called "blue," and that these kittens are supposed to be Russian Blues.  Their names are Boris and Gregor, which are Russian names.  We did not get to name them because they already had names when Mom got them.

Gregor

Mom calls the kittens The Blue Boys, and she says all we need now is a Pinkie.  I have no idea what she is talking about, but it has something to do with some famous paintings or something.  Anyway, these kittens do not look anything like a painting, if you ask me.  Also, they sound mean, because they hiss and growl a lot.  Well, at least Gregor does.

There were two other kittens in the same litter with Boris and Gregor, and the other two were also boys.  But they looked way different.  They looked more like Siamese cats.  Mom met them at the shelter, too, and they were scared and hissy, just like Boris and Gregor.  Probably this is because the kittens aren't socialized and they are afraid of new places and new people, which is only natural, but I have to say I don't like being hissed at and growled at all the time.

Gregor

Anyway, you can tell Boris apart from Gregor because Boris has a white spot on his chest.  He has another white spot on his tummy, and there is also a teeny tiny white tip on his tail.  Gregor is all gray -- er, blue -- with no white spots.  Also Gregor is smaller than Boris, and he hisses more, like I said before.

So far, Mom has just kept the Blue Boys in the crate in the living room, except for when she took them in the back room to play for a while yesterday morning.  Last night when we were watching TV, Boris kept meowing, so I think he wanted to come out of the crate, but Mom didn't want to let him out.  She is afraid that if she lets the kittens out right now, especially Gregor, she will never find them again because they will hide under the sofa or someplace.

Boris

Okay, well, that's enough news about kittens.  I have some other news to report, which is that my last blood test showed that my cortisol levels are exactly right, and I can just stay on the same maintenance dose of that expensive chemo drug that I've been taking.  I only have to take one-fourth of a pill two times a week now, so it will last much longer, and Mom will not run out of money so fast.

Oh, and Nicky got his blood test results back, too, and all his liver values were normal instead of being really high.  So Dr. Griswold sent the results to Dr. Grigsby, the internist, and we are waiting to see what she wants to do next.  Because we still think Nicky has something wrong in his intestines, which means he will probably have to have an endoscopy.  And that won't be cheap, so I hope Mom still has money left over afterwards to buy dog food!

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OPRAH WINFREY'S DOGS

Oprah Winfrey is very famous, so that means most everybody has heard of her, and I don't have to explain who she is.  The way she got famous was by having a talk show on TV for a long time.  Also she has a magazine called O, and a television network called OWN.  What's even more important is that Ms. Winfrey is very rich, which is amazing, since she started out being really poor when she was a little girl.  But she got a job in radio and then later in television, and she was very good at doing talk shows and getting people to tell her interesting personal things about themselves.  So that's why her show got to be so popular, and why she made a bunch of money.

Ms. Winfrey with Sadie

Ms. Winfrey is ranked as the richest African-American of the 20th century, and for a while she was the only black billionaire in the whole world.  She is the greatest black philanthropist in American history, and some people have called her the most influential woman in the world.

Of course, the best thing about Oprah Winfrey is that she loves dogs.  The breeds of dogs that she seems to love most are cocker spaniels and golden retrievers.  I have tried to sort of put together the most recent history of Ms. Winfrey's dogs, but it's a little confusing, so I hope I got it right.

Sophie and Solomon

I will start in 2005, when Ms. Winfrey already owned two cocker spaniels named Sophie and Solomon.  Sophie was black, and Solomon was more of a chocolate color.  In that same year, Ms. Winfrey decided to adopt two golden retrievers.  She went to a breeder to get them, and she ended up bringing home three pups instead of just two.  These three were named Layla, Luke, and Gracie.

The 3 golden puppies

Then in May of 2007, a very sad thing happened when Gracie was out with her dog walker, and she got ahold of a small ball that belonged to Sophie.  Gracie started playing with this ball and then she swallowed it and it got stuck in her throat.  She choked to death, even though the dog walker and a security guard tried very hard to save her.

When Gracie died, Ms. Winfrey was very, very sad, and she cried a lot.  She said, "I do not believe in accidents.  I know for sure that everything that happens in life helps us to stay alive."  She also said that Gracie did more living in the two years of her life than most dogs do during a much longer life.  "Every moment of her life Gracie lived as if it was the last moment," Ms. Winfrey said in her magazine.  "Her life became a gift for me."

Do some people really look like their dogs?

About a year after that, in March 2008, Sophie the cocker spaniel died.  She was 13, and she had kidney failure.  Ms. Winfrey devoted a whole TV show to the memory of her dog.  "Sophie gave me 13 years of unconditional love.  She was the true love in my life."   And then in November of that same year, Solomon also died.  He was 14 years old, which is pretty old for a cocker spaniel, I think.

Sadie

The next dogs that Oprah Winfrey adopted were two cocker spaniel puppies from the PAWS animal shelter in Chicago.  These puppies were named Ivan and Sadie.  But sadly, they got sick right away with parvovirus.  Ms. Winfrey took them to the vet, who tried very hard to save them, and Sadie lived, but Ivan didn't.

A couple of years ago Ms. Winfrey decided that she wanted a couple of springer spaniels, and some springer puppies showed up at PAWS, so she adopted them.  Their names are Sunny and Lauren, and they are sisters.  And as far as I could figure out, those were the most recent dogs that joined the Winfrey family.

Sunny and Lauren

But here's something that really shocked me:  Oprah Winfrey has announced that she will leave $30 million for her dogs in a trust fund so that they will be taken care of after she dies.  All of her dogs are fed by a special chef, have their own nannies, and also have their own websites.  If the dogs don't use up all the $30 million before they die, I wonder what will happen to the rest of it.  Maybe I should write to Ms. Winfrey and ask her if I can have it!

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HALLIE IS GETTING ADOPTED!

Well, guess what!  My little foster sister Hallie got adopted yesterday, except she hasn't gone to her new house yet, and she's still here with us.  Mom took her to PetSmart again, and there were fewer people there than last week, but one cat got adopted right away.

Some people came by, and they looked at Hallie and said she was cute, but everybody was mostly playing with a couple of black kittens.  They used Hallie's toy to play with the black kittens, which didn't seem fair, but that's the way it happened.

Then Aunt Tania got a phone call from a couple who were already going to adopt a black kitten named Maverick.  This kitten is at Aunt Tania's house, or some such place, so Mom has never met him.  And neither has Hallie.  Anyway, this couple wanted a second kitten so that the kittens could be buddies and play together and not get lonely.  So Aunt Tania told them that they might like Hallie, and it just so happened that they had already been looking at Hallie online.  Then Aunt Tania said that Hallie was at PetSmart, and they should come and meet her.  So they did.

Mom said that Hallie seemed to like these people, and she didn't squirm or growl or anything, like she did with some people who held her earlier.  Hallie just sat in the man's arms like it was where she belonged.  And then she sat in the woman's arms in the same way.  So the man and woman said "We like her."  And they signed the contract and paid a deposit, but they did not take Hallie home with them.

And the reason they didn't was because they are about to go on a trip to Nicaragua for a week or so, and they don't want to take their kittens home and then run off and leave them.  So that is why Hallie is staying with us until about the first of February, which is when she will go to her new home.

Mom took this photo of Hallie with her new mom and dad, but she took it with her cell phone, and she says that her cell phone takes bad pictures.  I think it is probably the fault of the photographer that the picture is bad, but Mom doesn't agree.  Anyway, she will use a real camera to take a picture when Hallie actually goes away.

And here's some other exciting kitty news:  tomorrow we will get two brand new foster kittens!  They are both boys, and they are Russian Blue kitties.  Yesterday they got neutered, but they are staying at the Humane Society until Mom goes there tomorrow.  We don't know if they already have names or if we will get to name them.  I think the kitten population may be sort of getting out of control here, but sadly, nobody pays any attention to what I think.

The reason we are getting these two new foster kittens is because there was a woman who had a bunch of cats, and then the cats had kittens, and so she ended up with 15 kittens.  Aunt Tania's group, Divapets Rescue, is taking the 15 kittens, and also helping the woman get her adult cats fixed.  So Mom is getting two of the kittens, but we don't know much about them yet, like I told you before.  Aunt Tania says that lots of people like to adopt Russian Blue kitties, so she thinks they will get adopted fast.  Anyway, they can already go to PetSmart next Saturday because they are now fixed, so that's good.

Aunt Tania brushing a big, furry cat named Johnnie

Of course, we still have Hamlet here, but he can't be adopted yet because he is still taking antibiotics to cure his urinary tract infection.  After he finishes the medicine, then he has to wait a week, and after that, he will get a urinalysis.  If his urine looks okay, he can get adopted.  But he might have crystals in his urine, or he might have been born with something wrong inside him, and in that case he will probably get put to sleep because the rescue group can't afford expensive surgery, and nobody will want to adopt a kitten who may always have urinary problems.  So we are hoping that the antibiotics will make him all better, and that he won't ever have any trouble again.

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CAPTAIN WERNER VON BACHELLE'S DOG

Captain von Bachelle joined the 6th Wisconsin Infantry in April 1861, which was almost as soon as the Civil War started.  He was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in Company F, then was promoted to 1st Lieutenant in December, and to Captain in May, 1862.  It is likely that Captain von Bachelle was born in Germany and grew up there.  He served as an officer in the French army for a while before he immigrated to America.

The regiment that Captain von Bachelle was in was called the "Black Hat" Brigade.  This was because they liked to wear black hats, as you can see in the painting.  At first they mostly guarded stuff around Washington, D.C., but after about a year, they got into their first battle at Second Bull Run.   They fought so bravely that soon they were known as "The Iron Brigade of the West."

One day a Newfoundland dog wandered into the soldiers' camp.  Everyone knew that Captain von Bachelle liked animals, so the dog was given to him.  We don't have any pictures of this dog, and we don't even know his name, but we do know that the captain loved him very much and taught him to do military salutes and other tricks.  The two of them were the very best of buddies, and they stayed together all the time.

On September 17, 1862, Company F of the 6th Wisconsin fought at the Battle of Antietam.  This turned out to be the bloodiest single-day battle in all of U.S. history, with 3,600 people killed and 17,000 wounded.  Captain von Bachelle led his men bravely forward into a cornfield, where lots of people were getting shot.  Later a Union soldier described it like this:  "Every stalk of corn in the northern and greater part of the field was cut as closely as could have been with a knife, and the slain lay in rows precisely as they stood in their ranks a few minutes before."

The captain and his men kept on fighting, and then Captain von Bachelle got hit by several bullets and died right there where he fell.  His men soon began to retreat, and they called the newfoundland to come with them, but he would not leave his master's side.  Major Rufus Dawes later wrote that the dog "was found upon the morning of the 19th of September lying dead upon [von Bachelle's] body.  We buried him with his master.  So far as we know, no family or friends mourned poor Bachelle, and it is probable that he was joined in death by his most devoted friend on earth."

You can see the gravestone for Captain von Bachelle in the officers' section of Antietam National Cemetery.  The stone doesn't say anything about the captain's brave and faithful dog, but we know that they are very happy together, wherever they are now.

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MOM GOES TO THE ART GALLERY, Part 2

When I first heard that Mom was going to the art gallery, I told her that she should take pictures of as many dogs as she could find in the artwork.  And since Mom has gone to lots of obedience classes, she sometimes actually does what she is told to do!

Mom and Aunt LaDene were really only planning to see the two exhibits that I already told you about in my last entry, but then they got distracted and went in the room that has all the ceramics in it, which is one of Mom's favorite rooms.  And after that, Aunt LaDene said she wanted to see the cloister, and in order to get to it, they had to walk past a bunch of other artwork.  A lot of this artwork was religious, but sometimes there are dogs even in religious paintings, maybe because God made dogs, the same as he made people.

Anyway, here is a really big boy dog that is by the entrance to the ceramics room.  He is on one side of the door, and there is a girl dog on the other side.  I guess they have to be kept apart so they don't make puppies.  Each of these dogs is 19 inches tall, and they have big holes in their backs, like maybe you are supposed to plant geraniums inside them.  Except they don't really have any geraniums in them right now.

The two dogs have a date of 1724, and it's written right on their collars, which is how we know what year they were made.  But we don't know if they came from Germany or from England.

This is a tankard, which is something you can drink ale out of.  Dogs usually like to drink out of something wider and more shallow, but a tankard is designed for humans to use, and not for dogs.  This one is from England, like maybe in the 17th century, and it shows a bunch of hounds chasing a fox.  Or at least they are probably chasing a fox, because that's what hounds usually chase.  You can't really see what they are chasing because that is around on the other side.

Mom did not write down any notes about the stuff she took pictures of, and this was partly because she did not have a pencil and paper with her.  And also she was too lazy to take notes.  Some of the artwork is in Mom's book about the gallery's collection, but some of it isn't.  So sometimes I can tell you more about stuff than other times.  This is totally Mom's fault, so don't blame me!

This little dog is not in the book.  He's only about 4" or 5" tall.  His mouth is kind of funny-looking, but he has intersting designs all over him.  He's from England, like a lot of other stuff in the ceramics room.

Here's another little dog and a great big rabbit.  If I were that dog, I think I would be afraid that the rabbit  would kill me and eat me to get revenge for all the times that dogs have killed and eaten rabbits!

This box is supposed to be for sticking flowers in it to make sort of an arrangement or bouquet.  But the most important thing about the box is that the man on it is going for a nice ride on his horse, with his faithful dog trotting along in front.

Mom found two paintings that had dogs in them, so she took pictures of them.  The first painting is called The Knighting of Saint Martin by the Emperor Constantine, and the man who painted it was Bernard van Orley.  He was Flemish.  Saint Martin is wearing something that looks like a dress, and he has hair that is very curly, so at first Mom thought he was a woman.

Anyway, the best part of the painting is the two dogs in the lower left-hand corner. They look like they are probably greyhounds.  My brother Nicky thinks every painting should have a greyhound in it!


Okay, then there is this very strange painting that we don't even know who painted it.  Mom started looking at it because she liked all the bright, fun colors.  The other paintings in that gallery were very dark and religious-looking, but not this one.  So when Mom looked at it, she was shocked to learn that it was really a picture of a saint being roasted to death over some coals.    We don't know for sure which saint it was because Mom didn't take notes, like I told you before.  But I did some research, and I learned that there was a St. Lawrence who got killed in this nasty way.  So maybe it's him.  Or not maybe not.

Anyway, in the picture that Mom took, you can just barely see the saint's hands, and you can also see the hot fire under him.  And on the lower left of the painting, there is a little dog.  But the amazing thing about this dog is that you can see right through him.  This is called being translucent.  It's strange that the painter made the dog in this way, because you can't see through any of the people or anything else in the picture.  It's like the artist couldn't decide if he should include the dog or not, and so he painted it in lightly, just to see if he really wanted a dog in the picture.  Then he never went back and finished the dog.  At least that's my theory.

I think there would be some good things about being a translucent dog, like for instance, you wouldn't have to get x-rays if something was wrong inside you.  Mom thinks this would save her some money by not paying for x-rays, but she's not sure she would want to look at all of her dogs' insides all the time.

Okay, well, that's enough about artwork for right now. Mom took a few more pictures that I might talk about, but they don't have dogs in them, so they will have to wait until the next entry.

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MOM GOES TO THE ART GALLERY, Part 1

Yesterday, Mom and Aunt LaDene went to the art gallery.  First they ate lunch in the Roselle Courtyard, where Mom says the food tastes very good, but I wouldn't know about that because Mom has never brought any food home for me.

After lunch, Mom and Aunt LaDene saw two exhibits, and it was the last day for those exhibits, so they just barely saw them in time.  One exhibit was work by an artist named Romare Bearden.  He was born in 1911, which is the exact same year that my Grandpa Claude was born.  Mr. Bearden grew up in the south, and he liked to make pictures of people living there, like this one, for example:

Some of his pictures were painted with oil paints, and others were collages.  And he liked to make prints in lots of different ways.

Later on, he moved to New York, and he made a lot of pictures of jazz musicians.  This probably means that he enjoyed listening to jazz.  Also I think he liked bright, bold colors, because he put a lot of them in his artwork.

Some of his pictures are very complicated, and it's hard to figure out what is going on.

Other pictures are easier, like this one, which is called The Fall of Troy.  It is part of a whole series of paintings that Mr. Bearden did that showed some of the stories from the Illiad and the Odyssey.

Romare Bearden died in March of 1988, of complications from bone cancer.  Here's a picture of him.  I guess he had at least one cat, but I don't know if he ever had any dogs.  I think he should have had a basenji, but nobody asked my opinion on this subject.

The second exhibit that Mom and Aunt LaDene saw was called "To Make a World:  George Ault and 1940s America."  There were several artists in this exhibit, but Mr. Ault probably had the most pieces.  Mr. Ault liked to paint what he saw around him, and he mostly painted in a flat, realistic style.  This is a picture of his studio, which I think should have included a dog sleeping in front of the heater, but once again, nobody asked for my opinion.

Mr. Ault kept painting this one particular place called Russell's Corners, which seemed to be just sort of a wide spot in the road, and not a real town or anything like that.  One time he painted it in daylight.

But mostly he painted it at nighttime.

Also, he painted this barn in the moonlight, which is a little spooky, but also kind of interesting because of the shapes and colors and stuff.  Looking at all these snowy pictures makes me feel cold, though, and then I want to curl up in a ball and make sure my feet stay nice and warm.

Mr. Ault was sort of a sad, depressed man, and that may be why he painted so many dark-looking pictures.  He died in 1948 from drowning, and it's likely that his drowning was not an accident.  Here's an icy-looking waterfall that he painted.

Anyway, I am sorry that Mr. Ault drowned himself.  I like his paintings because when you look at them, you can understand right away what is happening, which is not true with some people's paintings.

Mom took a bunch of other pictures at the gallery, and in my next entry, I will show you some of them.

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PORTUGUESE PODENGOS

This is a dog breed that comes from Portugal, as you can probably guess from the name.  And these dogs are very, very cute, mainly because the short-haired ones look a lot like basenjis, except with shorter legs and straighter tails.  There are also wire-haired podengos, also very cute, but they do not look nearly so much like basenjis.

Portuguese podengos come in three different sizes:  pequeno (small), medio (medium), and grande (large).  Then in each size group, you can have either smooth or wire coats.  Colors can include yellow, fawn, red, or black with white markings.  So if you want a podengo, you have lots of choices you need to make.

In Portugal, this breed is very popular, and it has been around for a long, long time.  Podengos first got to the Iberian Peninsula about 2,000 years ago.  They came with the Phoenicians from Asia Minor.  You can see carvings of podengos on 11th century Portuguese churches, and they first show up in literature in the 14th century.  Portuguese sailors used to take podengos with them to keep mice and rats from eating the food stored on their ships.

Podengo Grande

Podengos are very good hunting dogs.  They use both scent and sight to hunt, just like basenjis do.  Usually the dogs go out ahead of the human hunters, and when they find game, they either kill it and bring it back to the humans, or else they wait for the hunters to catch up and shoot the game.  The pequeno podengos are used to hunt rabbits, the medios for rabbits and wild boar, and the grandes for wild boar and deer.

Podengo Medio

The podengo pequeno is about 8" to 12" tall and weighs 9-13 pounds.  The medio is 16" to 22" tall and weighs 35 to 44 pounds.  The grande is 22" to 28" tall and weighs between 44 and 66 pounds.  In the U.S., 75% of the purebred podengos are the pequeno size, and 85% of these have wire coats.  The breed has very few inherited health problems because people haven't messed with the podengo's breeding as much as they have with some other breeds.

In general, the podengo is an intelligent, brave, and affectionate dog.  It is a good watchdog and a good companion.  Podengos can compete in lure coursing, flyball, agilty, tracking, rally, and obedience.  In Europe, the breed has been recognized for registration by several groups.  In the U.S., the AKC made the Portuguese Podengo Pequeno eligible to compete in the Miscellaneous class starting January 1, 2011.  Dogs' wins can be recorded, but registration is not open yet for the breed.

Organizations that recognize all sizes of the podengo in the U.S. are the United Kennel Club, American Rare Breed Association, the North American Kennel Club, and the American Sighthound Field Association.

One of Mom's friends, my Aunt Erica, who lives in Oregon, adopted a dog named Spencer from a shelter a few weeks ago.  She thought she was adopting a basenji mix, because Spencer was smaller than a basenji and had a straight tail kind of like a fox tail.  But then somebody told Aunt Erica that maybe Spencer was a Portuguese podengo, and now we all pretty much think that is what he is.  Anyway, I would like to thank Spencer for giving me the idea for this blog entry, because I'm not sure if I had ever even heard of Portuguese podengos before he came along!

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