Normally I find I can keep the dogs reasonably clean with routine brushing, but the day we stepped outside and the scent of skunk hung so heavily in the air that I could almost see it, I knew they would need a bath before the holidays. Just walking through that skunk-scented cloud instantly tipped their coats from acceptably dog-scented to a scent that would cause me find some reason to move in the opposite direction any time they approached. Although I’m sure neither of them agreed, the dye (or should I say “scent?”) was cast. Come hell or high water, they would get baths before the holidays.
In one of my favorite books, medical essayist Lewis Thomas has great, late night thoughts while listening to Mahler’s Ninth Symphony. The following mid-day and perhaps not quite so great end-of-the-year thoughts occurred to me while bathing my dogs.
Actually my first two thoughts were so ungreat as to rank among the utterly mundane. Still, they did make the task easier which I like to think inspired me to greater thoughts later on.
- If you need to bathe your pets in a standard human tub like I do, get one on those garden seats you can either sit on or turn upside down and kneel on. This will keep your knees from giving out halfway through the process in addition to giving you something stable to hang on to when you get up.
- Invest in a handheld attachment for your shower if you don’t already own one. These are relatively inexpensive, conserve water, and make it easy to rinse those hard to reach canine and feline areas between the legs where soapy residue likes to accumulate.Freed of the dual worries of getting down to bathe the dogs and not being able to get up again and of my dogs developing skin irritations due to incomplete rinsing, I could then concentrate on loftier thoughts.
- The more stressful human life becomes, the more people take one of three orientations toward animals. One group sees humans as the most important species on the planet and fulfilling human needs as paramount, regardless of the unsoundness of this view and/or how it affects the survival of all species, including humans, and the planet. Those in the second group align themselves with animals and sees all humans and everything they do as wrong. Members of both groups tend to be very intolerant of those who don’t share their views. Consequently, and as you might imagine, they spend a lot of time attacking each other. The third group uses knowledge and respect of all nonhuman animal species as a means to make sense of the aforementioned and other seemingly irrational human behavior.
- Not a new thought at all, but a recurrent one: The less sure we feel about our beliefs, the greater the need to defend them.
- The less confidence we have, the greater our need to control others. Those with even less confidence than those who feel the need to control other people will feel the need to control animals.
- The best artists, engineers, and healers reside in nature.
- The less genetic diversity, the less ability to cope given a wide range of variables. To ignore this fundamental biological reality is to condemn a species or breed to slow and painful death. While sophisticated science enables us to map the domestic canine genome and equally sophisticated gene-splicing techniques offer the possibility of repairing or replacing problem genes, these do nothing to address the real issue: Our purebred gene pools were pitifully small to begin with and capricious breeding of a few coupled with widespread sterilization of the many have limited them even more. All the razzle-dazzle science in the world won’t change that.
- The problem-oriented, specialist approach has resulted in a phenomenal amount of data. Now we need the greater vision necessary to integrate all that data into meaningful information. Until then we will remain as now, trapped in the old computer cliché in which we are starving for information at the same time we drown in data.
- People who become so involved in work or other human-made constructs that they don’t notice what goes on in the natural, i.e. real, world cut themselves off from life itself.
- While some people maintain that the more they know about people, the more they love their dogs (or other animals), others find that the more they know about animals, the more tolerant they become of humans.
- Anyone who can look at a newly born member of any species and not feel a sense of wonder needs to check his/her priorities.
- No doubt exists in my mind that the animal and human health, behavior, and the human-animal bond intersect at a specific point. If I am fortunate enough to discover that point in my lifetime, I know two things will happen. First, that point will be so simple, so elegant, and so beautiful that I will cry. Second, I will wonder how I could have missed it all of these years.
Thus concludes an even dozen of what passes for great thoughts when surrounded by the smell of clean, wet dog in the hills of New Hampshire.
My final thoughts—and wishes—stand alone: May you and yours feel as blessed as I do this holiday season, and may you respect this planet which gives us so much and asks only for our stewardship in return.
Normally I find I can keep the dogs reasonably clean with routine brushing, but the day we stepped outside and the scent of skunk hung so heavily in the air that I could almost see it, I knew they would need a bath before the holidays. Just walking through that skunk-scented cloud instantly tipped their coats from acceptably dog-scented to a scent that would cause me find some reason to move in the opposite direction any time they approached. Although I’m sure neither of them agreed, the dye (or should I say “scent?”) was cast. Come hell or high water, they would get baths before the holidays.
In one of my favorite books, medical essayist Lewis Thomas has great, late night thoughts while listening to Mahler’s Ninth Symphony. The following mid-day and perhaps not quite so great end-of-the-year thoughts occurred to me while bathing my dogs.
Actually my first two thoughts were so ungreat as to rank among the utterly mundane. Still, they did make the task easier which I like to think inspired me to greater thoughts later on.
Thus concludes an even dozen of what passes for great thoughts when surrounded by the smell of clean, wet dog in the hills of New Hampshire.
My final thoughts—and wishes—stand alone: May you and yours feel as blessed as I do this holiday season, and may you respect this planet which gives us so much and asks only for our stewardship in return.