FABULOUS DOGS FOR YOU TO ADOPT!

All of these dogs are at the Humane Society of Greater Kansas City, where Mom volunteers.  You can find more pictures and information on the shelter's website.

WALTER

This friendly, handsome guy is a greyhound-hound mix.  He's 7 years old, and he was a stray.  He does fine with medium or large dogs, but should not have small dogs or cats in his new home.

MACI

The nice people who work at the Humane Society found Maci in the woods near the shelter.  Somebody must have abandoned her there, which is a very sad thing to happen to a dog.  Anyway, Maci is very sweet, but kind of shy at first.  She is a lab mix, about a year old, and she weighs 47 pounds.  She is good with other dogs and would probably like a home where she would have a doggy companion.

HEIDI

Heidi is only 6 months old, so she is still a puppy.  She will maybe weigh 50 pounds when she is full grown.  The website says that Heidi is a pointer-lab mix, but I think she is more of a pointer-greyhound mix.  Of course, as usual, nobody asked me!  Anyway, Heidi is really friendly and playful, and she likes to sit in your lap.  She was picked up as a stray.

LILLYBELLE

This is an older dog who was also a stray.  She looks like she is used to living inside a house, but nobody came to claim her and take her home.  Lillybelle is a shiba inu mix who is about 10 years old.  She weighs 44 pounds, and could probably stand to lose a little weight.  She is deaf and also has limited vision.  Lillybelle gets startled easily, so she would prefer a nice quiet home without noisy kids.  She gets along well with other dogs and with cats.

B.B.

B.B. is a lab-shepherd mix who is about 6 years old and weighs 66 pounds.  When he first came to the shelter, he had a very bad case of demodex mange, and most of his hair was missing.  But now he is doing much better, and lots of his hair grew back.  He still has kind of a bald rear end, but that will be all hairy soon, too.  B.B. is very sweet, and he loves people.  His ideal home would be one where there is somebody home a lot of the time.

BUSTER

This little guy is totally cute, not to mention being lots of fun, too.  Buster is a 4-year-old wire-haired terrier mix who weighs 30 pounds.  He was a stray, like most of these dogs were.  Buster loves playing with other dogs, and he would be a great pet for somebody.

SARAH BEAR

When Sarah Bear first came to the shelter, she was very, very shy, but she's not so scared now.  She is a pretty shepherd mix, and she weighs 48 pounds.  She is probably about 2 years old.

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MISINFORMATION

Mom bought a book the other day at an estate sale, and it is called The Dictionary of Misinformation.  The man who wrote this informative book is named Tom Burnam.  Mom said maybe I could put some of the information from this book in my blog, and that way we could all be less misinformed about some things.  So that's what I'm going to do.


Misinformation #1:  HEADCHEESE

A slice of headcheese

Some people think that headcheese must be a type of cheese, or at least that it must taste like cheese.  But if you think either of these things, you are wrong.  Headcheese is made out of the meat off the head of a pig or maybe some other animal such as a sheep or cow.  Sometimes the tongue, feet, and heart are also used, but not the brains, eyes, or ears.  The meat is simmered and seasoned, and there might be some gelatin added to make it all stick together.  When the stock cools, it is put in a cheese mold or loaf pan, and then you can slice it and eat it as a cold cut.  In the UK, headcheese is called brawn.  And if you pickle it with vinegar, it's called souse.

More headcheese.  Personally,
I think it looks quite yummy!

Meat jelly like this has been made by peasants ever since the Middle Ages.  Mom says that when she was a kid, her parents sometimes took her to the City Market in the fall, and Grandma Helen (Mom's mom) always liked to buy headcheese.  You could not get headcheese at the grocery store.  You had to go to the City Market to get it from a farmer who made it himself.  Mom thought headcheese looked gross and disgusting, so she never ate any.  Grandpa Claude didn't like it either, so Grandma Helen got to eat it all herself!






Misinformation #2:  COFFEE BEANS

Coffee berries

Coffee beans are not really beans.  They are actually seeds from the fruit of the coffee plant.  The fruit looks sort of like cherries.  The pits of the fruit are what we call "beans," probably because they look kind of like beans.  But they are not beans, they are really coffee seeds.







Misinformation #3:  THE ORIGIN OF GOLF

Some old-time golfers

A lot of people think golf started out in Scotland, but this is not true.  Well, what is true is that the modern game of golf started in Scotland in the 15th century.  But there are several theories about where the ancient game first came from.  One idea is that it started in Holland with a game called kolven that was played on ice, beginning about 1297.  The Dutch word kolven sounds sort of like the English word golf, so maybe this theory is right.  Or at least partly right.

Another idea is that golf came from a game the ancient Romans played that was called paganica.  In this game, a leather ball stuffed with feathers was hit with a bent stick.  When the Romans conquered most of Europe, they might have brought this game with them.

Meanwhile, in China, there was a game called chuiwan, which means "striking the little ball."  This game was played from the 8th to the 14th centuries, and it was probably introduced into Europe during the Middle Ages.  There was also a game that was called cambuca in England and chambot in France.  Plus a game in Persia called chaugán.  Any one of these games might have been the real ancestor of golf.  Or maybe a bunch of people in a bunch of countries all came up with the idea of hitting a ball into a hole with a stick.  That's what I think might have happened, but I'm just a dog, so what do I know?

Anyway, getting back to Scotland, the first written record of golf there was in 1457, which is when King James II banned the game because he wanted everybody to spend their time learning archery instead.





Misinformation #4:  THE COLOSSUS OF RHODES

Maybe you have heard of this gigantic statue, and maybe you haven't.  It was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and it was about 107 feet tall.  A man named Chares of Lindos made it between 292 and 280 BCE for the Greek city of Rhodes, which is on the island of Rhodes.  The statue was of the Titan Helios, who represented the sun, and who was the patron of the city.

For many centuries, people thought the Colossus of Rhodes stood at the mouth of the harbor, with one foot on each side of the harbor, and ships sailed in and out between his legs.  But since there weren't any cameras in those days, no one could take a picture to prove that this was the way the statue was situated.  Then, after only 56 years, there was an earthquake, and the Colossus of Rhodes fell down.  Eventually, people carted off the remains of the statue so they could use them for other projects, and this made it even harder to know where the statue had been.

Nowadays, archeologists and engineers and other researchers all agree that there was no way such a huge statue could have straddled the harbor entrance.  They think the Colossus was maybe located at one side of the harbor or on top of a nearby hill.  This way it could be easily seen by anybody coming to Rhodes in a ship.  Which was basically the only way to get there, since it was an island.


Well, okay, that's all the misinformation I'm going to talk about today.  I hope you feel better informed now.  I know I do!

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DROUGHT

Here in Kansas City, where I live, we are officially having a drought.  And it's not just any drought.  It's a Severe Drought.  We used to have a Moderate Drought, but then that turned into a Severe Drought, because we kept not getting any rain.  And if things continue in the same way, we might end up with an Extreme Drought.  The very worst kind of drought to have is an Exceptional Drought, and I hope we don't end up with one of those because Mom told me that in an Exceptional Drought, our toes will get so dry that they will just curl up and fall off!

Droughts have been around pretty much since the beginning of time, and the way you get one is usually that you have to go without rain for a long time.  To be honest, I don't much like rain, so I find that drought conditions make it nice for me to go out and potty, since I don't have to worry about getting my feet wet.  But of course, Mom keeps on watering stuff, and then I don't want to go out and potty where she made everything all wet with the hose.

Here are some of the bad things that can happen if you have a drought:
1.  Crops don't grow, and there's not as much food to eat.
2.  Grass doesn't grow, so livestock doesn't have anything to eat either.
3.  The land gets eroded, so there are dust bowls and dust storms.
4.  Animals and fish lose their habitats.
5.  People die from hunger because there's nothing to eat.

Drought in India

6.  If people don't actually die, they at least get weak and dehydrated and sick.
7.  People leave the dry land where they can't farm anymore, and they end up being refugees.
8.  Less electricity is produced because there is less water to go through the dams.
9.  People are unhappy with the situation, and they might even start wars over food and water.
10.  Lots of wildfires get started, and sometimes they burn up important stuff such as houses.



Anyway, in Kansas City, the amount of precipitation from April 1 to July 11 was 5.4 inches.  The normal amount is 15.9.  This means we only got about one-third of the rain we were supposed to get.  I don't know where the rest of our rain went, but I suspect that somebody stole it, and when I find out who did this, I will personally bite them on the leg!

Since it has been so dry, Mom has to water her plants every second or third day.  Also she waters the lawn once a week.  But even with all that watering, the plants aren't really growing, and the grass is just barely staying sort of green.  The good part is that Mom doesn't have to mow the grass, but she does have to keep watering, and the water bills are expensive.  Mom says that she is tired of paying them, and she is also tired of watering.  Personally, I think she just likes having something to complain about.

Some very thirsty corn

The people who are the very most unhappy about the drought are the farmers, and this is because their crops aren't growing.  Well, the wheat farmers did pretty well because they got to plant their wheat early and harvest it early, too.  So they had the wheat all taken care of before the worst part of the drought came.

But the corn is a different story because it is just sitting in the fields looking all short and pathetic and dried up.  And besides that, it's making sad little ears that nobody would really want to eat.  So some farmers have already decided that their corn is not going to amount to anything.  And they are just cutting the corn down and making it into silage that they can feed to their cattle next winter.

The soy beans are doing a little better than the corn because they tolerate drought better.  But some of them still look kind of sickly, and if we don't get rain pretty soon, they will probably get plowed under.

A farmer cutting down his corn.
Photo by Seth Perlman

Okay, well, that's my report on drought.  I wrote it last night while Mom was busy watering the very dry grass.  Then before I could post the entry on my blog this morning, guess what!  We got some rain!  It rained really hard for at least 5 minutes, and I thought maybe the drought was all over with.  But Mom said it would have to rain a whole bunch, in a nice, steady way for a couple of days or more to end the drought.  So I guess I can go ahead and post this anyway.  But I just want to say that even though drought is not a nice thing to have around, if I had a choice, I would  much rather have drought than floods.

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SERVICE DOGS FOR AUTISTIC KIDS

As I have told you many times before, dogs can be trained to do all kinds of useful and wonderful things because of their fabulous doggy abilities.  And one thing dogs can be trained to do is to be therapy or service dogs for kids who have autism.

Nobody knows what causes autism, but it might be some mix of genetics and environment.  There's a whole range of types of autism, going from severe to mild.  Children who are born with autism see the world in a different way than most people do, and this causes them not to act like regular people do.  Autistic children don't have very good social or communication skills.  Also if they go into public places, they might hear and see and smell so many things around them that they get really scared.  They can't tune out the stuff that's not important, so they feel overwhelmed.  Sometimes they even bolt and run away.  Which is something I have been known to do myself when I was scared.

In the U.S., one out of every 110 children has what's called an autism spectrum disorder.  Boys are four times more likely to be autistic than girls.  There is no cure for autism.  You just have to live with it for your whole life.

Anyway, what service dogs can do for autistic kids is they can be like a bridge from the kid's private world to the world that most everybody else lives in.  Dogs can help kids calm down and feel less stressed.  Studies of  autistic kids who have service dogs show that the kids have less anger and don't act as aggressively as they did before they got the dog.

In many cases, children are actually tethered to their dogs, and this is like having an anchor to keep them from going into their own emotional world or else running away physically.  And if an autistic child does run away, the dog can track him and find him much faster than humans can.

Families are able to take their autistic kids out in public more if there is a dog for the kid to be attached to.  The kid can walk with the dog and not always have to hold the hand of a parent.  Also, since many people like dogs and want to ask questions about them, it gives autistic kids something to talk about with strangers, and they end up learning more social skills.

Sometimes autistic children start doing some behavior over and over again, and their service dog can nudge them and break the pattern, which makes them stop the behavior.  And kids often sleep better if they have a dog to sleep with.  This is important because people with autism are likely to have insomnia, and they don't get enough sleep (which is a bad thing).

Both therapy dogs and service dogs are used to help kids with autism.  The difference between these two is that a therapy dog works with kids at a school or a therapist's office.  A service dog is actually owned by a family and just works with one kid.

These dogs have to have lots of training, starting when they are about 8 weeks old.  First they learn a bunch of basic commands and are exposed to many different people and places.  Then the pups go live with a Puppy Raiser for 12 to 18 months, where they get more training and more experiences.  After that, they go back to the service dog organization for advanced training.

In order to be a service dog for an autistic child, the dog has to be calm and friendly in all sorts of situations.  They can't jump up on people or sniff people or growl and bark at them.  Not every dog makes it all the way through the training, but the ones that do are matched with children and their families.  The family has to pay for the dog, which might cost as much as $13,000.  If the family doesn't have the money, they usually get it by doing a bunch of fundraising stuff.

Having a service dog is not the answer for every autistic child, but it really seems to help some of them. I don't think I would want to be a service dog because I wouldn't want to do all that training.  And besides that, a lot of strangers seem very scary to me.  Not to mention that I wouldn't want to be around when a kid had a temper tantrum!

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WAVERLY, WYATT, WILLIS, AND WALDO

Our newest crop of foster kittens all have names that start with "W."  I'm not sure why.  I just know that Mom gave them these names, maybe because she thought the kittens were Wonderful or Winsome or Wild.  Anyway, three of the kittens are dilute tabbies, which means they look like gray tabbies that got all washed out and faded.  Of course, they're still very cute, as far as I can tell.  Not that any of us except for Mom has got to see much of the kittens anyway.

Waverly is the only girl in the litter

And the reason we have haven't got to see them is because they have been sick.  We don't know what was wrong with them, but they started acting like they felt crappy, and they stopped playing and eating.  Also, they were having diarrhea.  This was all happening last week, and Mom took some of Willis's poop to the clinic at the Humane Society (because Willis was the puniest and smallest kitten, and his poop was very watery).  But the lab said that nothing was wrong with the poop.

Willis

Then Mom took all four kittens to the Humane Society on Thursday so that Dr. Regan could see them, and she was surprised to find out that Mom had a whole new "4-pack" of kittens, which is what she called them.  Dr. Regan thought Mom still had Binty and Akeela, but they already got adopted.  So Dr. Regan examined the W kittens, and she tested them for FIV and feline leukemia, which luckily, they didn't have.  Then Dr. Regan said that the kittens needed fluids twice a day because they were really dehydrated.  Mom had tried to give them fluids, and she sort of did okay with Waverly and Willis, but Wyatt said "No way!" when Mom tried to give him fluids, and she couldn't even keep the needle in him long enough to squirt any of the fluid under his skin.

Wyatt, who is a darker color and easy to tell apart
from the other kittens

Anyway, Dr. Regan understood that Mom could not really do the fluids by herself without somebody to help her, so Dr. Regan said she thought the kittens should stay at the Humane Society and get taken care of there.  Except that there wasn't any space for them because of all the kittens and cats that were already there.  But Aunt Tania moved a bunch of cats around, and she managed to make a cage empty for the kittens.  So Mom left them there to get expert nursing care, and yesterday Mom brought them back home again.

Waldo

Now the kittens are very perky and happy, and they like eating and playing again.  They spent most of the afternoon playing.  Mom had to figure out all over again which kitten belongs to which name, and Mom put some colored elastic ponytail things around the kittens' necks so that she can tell them apart easier.

Wyatt

We think the kittens probably aren't contagious anymore, so Mom might let them come out of their room to meet the rest of us.  Personally, I am mainly interested in eating any food that they might leave in their dish.  Also I would like to dig around in their litter box and see if there is anything yummy in there.

Willis

Now that the kittens are eating again, they will start putting on weight, and pretty soon they will be big enough for spaying and neutering.  They have to weigh 2 pounds before that can happen, and then after that, they can get adopted.

Waldo

Meanwhile, we still have Latifa here, and her milk finally dried up, so she has an appointment to be spayed on Tuesday of next week.  At first we thought Latifa was only about 10 months old, but one vet at the shelter said Latifa was at least a year old.  And when Mom took Latifa to see Dr. Vodraska, she said that Latifa might be 3 years old.  Latifa is just a tiny little cat who only weighs 5.5 pounds, so that's why we thought she was so young.

Latifa

Anyway, if you know of anybody who wants to adopt any kittens or cats, just let us know, because Aunt Tania's rescue group, which is called DivaPets, has any age, color, size, or shape of cat you could ever want, and they all need homes!

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SMOKEY BEAR

Right now there are a bunch of nasty forest fires happening in Colorado and other states out west.  I told Mom that I could smell the smoke from these fires, but she says she doesn't believe me, even though she knows that dogs have really good noses.  So okay, maybe I exaggerated a little bit, but I think there are lots of dogs and cats and even people who really can smell the smoke.  They probably live closer to the fires, though.

Anyway, there's this bear named Smokey, and his whole job is to teach people about putting out their campfires and not throwing cigarettes out their car window or doing anything else that might start a forest fire.  Smokey is what you call the mascot of the United States Forest Service, and he is very famous.  In fact, 95% of adults and 77% of children know who he is.  You might have heard him called Smokey the Bear, but this is not his correct name.  Smokey does not have "the" as a middle name.  He is just Smokey Bear.

Well, you may be wondering how Smokey got his start, and I will tell you.  Back in 1944, during World War II, the Forest Service was worried that the Japanese might try to start fires in the Northwest U.S. as a way of attacking our country.  If a whole bunch of fires got started, this could be a problem because lots of the men who would normally fight the fires were busy being soldiers overseas.  So the government wanted ordinary people to be on the lookout for wildfires and put them out as soon as they got started.  Or better yet, people should keep the fires from starting at all.

A Fire Balloon

The Japanese really did try to get some fires started because they thought this would be a fine way to fight the Americans.  In 1942, they tried to set the forests of the Oregon coast on fire by dropping incendiary bombs.  Later on, they launched a bunch of fire balloons into the jet stream, hoping the bombs would float over the ocean and land in the U.S.  Between 1944 and 1945, something like 9,000 fire balloons got sent off from Japan, but only about 900 of them actually got here.  Sadly, in May of 1945, a teacher and five children in Oregon found one of these bombs, and while they were checking it out, it exploded and killed them.  But nobody else got killed by the fire bombs, and the few fires that started were put out right away.

In August of 1942, Walt Disney's movie Bambi came out.  As you may remember, this movie has a very scary forest fire in it.  Mr. Disney let the Bambi character be used in public service campaigns for a year, but after that, the government needed to get themselves a new symbol.

Since Bambi had been very popular in the fire-prevention campaign, the Forest Service decided they should have another animal, and they picked a bear.  The bear's name came from "Smokey" Joe Martin, who was a NYC Fire Department hero.  Smokey's first poster was designed by Albert Staehle, and the message was "Smokey says -- Care will prevent 9 out of 10 forest fires!"  In 1947, the slogan was changed to "Remember ... only YOU can prevent forest fires."  Then in 2001, "forest fires" got changed to "wildfires" because not all fires are in forests.

So that's how Smokey the fictional bear was invented.  But then in 1950, there was a big fire in New Mexico that was called the Capitan Gap Fire.  And some firefighters there rescued a little bear cub who had climbed up a tree to try to get away from the fire.  The cub got burned in several places, including on his feet, so he was named Hotfoot Teddy.  But later somebody thought he should be called Smokey, so he could be the real Smokey Bear.

After Smokey was all healed up, he got to ride in a Piper Cub airplane to the National Zoo in Washington, D.C.  He lived there for 26 years, and he was always very popular with the visitors at the zoo.  He got so much mail that the postal service gave him his very own zip code.  Smokey ate bluefish and trout every day, and he also really liked peanut butter sandwiches.

In 1961, Smokey got a girl bear to live with, and her name was Goldie Bear.  The zookeepers hoped that these two bears would make some little baby Smokey Bears, but they never did.  So in 1971, the pair "adopted" an orphan bear cub, who was named Smokey Bear II.








The first Smokey Bear died in 1976, and his obituary was in lots of newspapers.  It was even on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.  Smokey was buried in Capitan, New Mexico, at Smokey Bear Historical Park.  There is a plaque on his grave that says, "This is the resting place of the first living Smokey Bear...the living symbol of wildfire prevention and wildlife conservation."

Little Smokey II lived until 1990, and after that, there were no more live Smokey Bears.  But of course the cartoon character is still around.  This Smokey has been in books, comic strips, on radio shows, and in coloring books.  He has been made into a toy and lots of other collectible things.  All the royalties that Smokey earns help pay for teaching people about preventing forest fires.

A bunch of people in Colorado had their houses burn down, which is not a nice thing to happen.  The weather is very hot and dry in lots of places, so that makes it easier for fires to start.  Which means that Smokey Bear really has his work cut out for him this year!

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OLD TIME FARM SHEPHERD DOGS

Today is the Fourth of July, which means that it's time for me to write a nice, patriotic blog entry about some breed of dog that was invented right here in the USA.  So this year I have chosen the Old Time Farm Shepherd, which I have to admit I had never heard of before, and neither had Mom.  But now that I have done my in-depth research, I am ready to tell you all the interesting things I have learned about this sort of dog.

Back in the old days, like in the late 1800s and the early part of the 1900s, lots of Americans lived on family farms, and they often had a family dog that looked kind of like a border collie, but not exactly.  These dogs were mostly descended from shepherd dogs brought over from Scotland by immigrants in the mid-18th century, after the Battle of Culloden.  They were good farm dogs because they could herd sheep or they could hunt squirrels or they could be watchdogs or do whatever the family needed them to do.  But after World War II, people started leaving the farm and living in the city, and a lots of these people decided they wanted purebred dogs.

Heritage Majestic Shasta
from Little Boy Blue Farm

Anyway, in the early 1990s, a man named J. Richard McDuffie started wondering what had become of those good old farm dogs that everybody had when he was growing up.  And he decided to try to find some and start breeding them again.  So he advertised in a hunting magazine called Full Cry, and after a while, he found an old lady in Tennessee whose family had kept a line of these farm collies pure for many generations.  He went there and bought her last litter, which had 4 puppies in it.  Later, he found 2 females in western Tennessee, and with these 6 dogs, he started the Old Time Farm Shepherd breed in 1994.  He registered his dogs with the National Kennel Club.


If you don't want to say Old Time Farm Shepherd every time you talk about this breed, you can just say OTFS for short, or you can call them farm shepherds.  They are medium-sized dogs, with the males weighing 45-60 pounds, and the females 35-50 pounds.  Their height is usually between 18" and 24".  Farm shepherds have a coat that is moderate in length, and it can be either straight or wavy.  The usual colors are sable, tricolor or merle.  Tails can be long or naturally bobbed.  Bobtails are a genetic thing, and a pup has to have at least one parent with a bobtail in order to be born with one.

When Mr. McDuffie was developing this breed, he wanted them to be really good at hunting and treeing raccoons, squirrels, and opossums.  On small farms, the dogs may also be used for herding, guarding, and pest control.  And of course, they are good companions and fun dogs for kids to play with.


Here's what Mr. McDuffie himself said about OTFS dogs in a letter to Linda Rorem:

They have almost human intelligence – being able to figure things out and respond appropriately to unusual situations. They are very people oriented but distrustful of strangers. They are territorial and natural protectors of property. They are natural stock dogs (however, I do not allow mine to work any kind of livestock. I break them off all livestock because I hunt them among livestock and I don’t want them being distracted by it.) They are natural heelers but do not have the tight-eyed, crouching style of the Border Collie.

The breeding of Old Time Farm Shepherds was continued after J. Richard McDuffie's death by his son, Rick McDuffie.  The younger Mr. Mcduffie has carefully crossed some other breeds with the OTFS, but mostly he has tried to keep the working instincts of the farm shepherd as pure as he can.  Show dogs are never bred with farm shepherds because OTFS are meant to be bred for their working and hunting ability, and not for looks.  

Anyway, that is the patriotic story of a very American breed, the Old Time Farm Shepherds.  Mom and I were very excited to find pictures of these dogs because now we think that Bruno, the dog my Grandpa Claude's family had on their farm in Arkansas, was an OTFS.  I told you all about Bruno in a previous blog entry, and now I'm glad to finally know what kind of dog he is!

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