Memory

Habibi has a phenomenal memory.  He seems to remember every person he has ever met since he was a puppy, and also in what circumstances.  Someone who is his friend is never forgotten and he is always thrilled to meet this person again.  Most people are not in the category of “friends”, but rather acquaintances; he remembers them well, but doesn’t feel that they have given him a reason to make a fuss.  He also remembers indelibly anyone who, for any reason that is relevant to him, is a “bad person.”  This could be someone who made a movement or gave him or me a look that he interpreted as threatening or simply not nice, or even someone who was wearing a hat that made him look strange.  Usually, men with facial hair go into this category;  however, Habibi will remember the man and the connection even if the hair is gone.

To convince Habibi that someone he has categorized as “bad” is really “good” can take a lot of time and effort on the part of the person.  Eventually, Habibi may be persuaded to put this person in the category of “acquaintances”, but there is always a remnant of suspicion when he meets him – maybe he is bad after all…

Of course, for Habibi, the basis of his memory is smell. He doesn’t really worry so much about what people look like, though he does notice.  His identification is by smell, and the differences are so clear to him that there is no remote possibility of him misidentifying or forgetting someone.  And though the appearance of a person will change, the scent never does.

I am really jealous of Habibi’s powers of memory.

I have never been good at remembering names – of people, in any case.  I used to be able to remember the names of all the dogs I ever met, and that is how I would identify their owners – “Oh yes, you are Spottie’s people! He was here three years ago in September.” 

I used to have an encyclopedia of dogs in my brain – I would remember all the dogs, and also their pedigrees – fathers, mothers, grandparents, siblings, children, remote relatives, all were there.  Nowadays, my brain seems to have become filled with all sorts of irrelevant junk and finding all of this information that used to be easily available has become very difficult.  It seems to be like a sieve – some of what you want is there, and some of it just washes away.

People do expect me to remember them.  Someone in his forties will come up to me and say, “Don’t you remember me? You taught me to ride when I was six!”  Well, sorry to say, you have changed since you were six, even though I am very flattered that you can still identify me!  Probably, even if you looked the same as you did at six, I wouldn’t be able to remember you…

I have met a lot of people over the years, and I have to admit that most of them were not particularly memorable.  I have developed a system of reacting.  The idea is to be noncommittal – “Oh hi! How are you?  What have you been doing lately?” in the hopes that they will reveal enough information for me to identify who they are, or at least from where I should remember them.  Or maybe meanwhile someone else will come along and address them by name…

I wish I had a great sense of smell like Habibi, and could identify people so easily and remember everyone. Or that Habibi could identify them for me and whisper in my ear about who they are.  But he can only look at me with pity…

Gadgets

When I was a child, while my friends were watching TV, I used to walk down the alleys behind the houses in my neighborhood and visit all the local dogs.  We communicated very well.  All of them greeted me as I came near, some danced around and wagged their tails, some barked, all of them were in eye contact, and I talked to them, told them what was new with me, and we all connected.  I was even on cordial speaking terms with the pair of Chows that lived in the big house on the corner.  Their owner would walk them with a riding crop in hand – whether to keep them away from other people and dogs, or the other people and dogs away from them, I was never sure, since he never used it. But I carried on long conversations with them when no one was around.

Nowadays, I see people walking down the street, talking into thin air, with their glassy gaze focused on nothing at all, and I really wonder…

I think I was born in the wrong century.  I find the world of technology daunting; I would have been much happier getting from place to place on horseback and talking to people face to face rather than through all the gadgets we are required to live with.

These days, it seems that all our communication is with gadgets – our car doors open when we press a button and the car beeps at us to say hello, I can operate the TV, video, CD, DVD, drapes on the windows, and lights all over the house without moving from the sofa and from one multitasking multi buttoned gadget.  I can have a bed that does all sorts of things at the press of a button.  And all of these gadgets talk to us, with a beep or ring or hum or some sort of musical note.   The phones are answered by machines that direct us to other machines and somehow we never seem to talk to a human.  We seem to be more interested in carrying on conversations with our various technological entities than with real people.

People walk down the street oblivious to the others around them.  The phone attached to their ear is so tiny that you can’t even tell they are talking into it, just that they are striding forward, talking away, with a blank gaze, impervious to whatever is around them. I also find it hard to understand why anyone wants to watch movies on his cell phone, or have five thousand applications of things to do with it, that I would never do anyway. It is no wonder that we have trouble communicating with each other and with our dogs.  People don’t look at each other; whenever anything that might be of interest is happening, they pull out their cell phones and start taking pictures – they never really look at or see the real thing.

Dogs do not understand technology.  They like to look us in the eye and read our faces, and they communicate back, with a look, a lick, a sideways glance, and many other ways of expressing themselves, but never with a “beep”.  Habibi wants to see my face and hear my voice, not view things through some technological object. He wants to respond directly and have my direct response to him.  And I agree with him!

I wonder what the world would be like if we had to deal with each other the way dogs do…?



My granddaughter when she was a baby, with the dog they had then, a Tibetan Mastiff



The Smartest Dog in the World

Lately I have seen a number of video clips of dogs that are being presented as the “smartest dog in the world”.  They know thousands of words, can identify endless objects by name, perform all kinds of clever acts like covering themselves with a blanket, opening the refrigerator and bringing a beer, putting the dirty laundry in the basket, balancing a cookie on their nose, and all performed perfectly to their master’s command.  And after performing these acts, the dogs stand there with a keen and alert look, asking, “What else can I do? Please, please, please!!!”

I truly admire these dogs and their abilities.  I admire even more the time, effort,  and commitment of someone who teaches his dog a specific name for each of a thousand different stuffed animals.  Wow!

But does this make him the smartest dog in the world?

Habibi understands every word that I say.  I have no doubt that he has a huge vocabulary, and if we include facial expressions and body language, his abilities are encyclopedic.  However, understanding everything does not mean that he intends to do everything I ask whenever I decide to request it.  He knows perfectly well what “fetch” means, but if he is comfortably ensconced in his basket with a bone, and I tell him “Fetch!” because I feel like playing right now, I get a raised eyebrow in reply and a look that says, “Do you seriously think that I should get up now and run after a stupid ball when I am busy???  Do it yourself!”

Should we be playing outside, and I accidentally, in my normal uncoordinated fashion, throw his rope toy into a puddle, you can forget about “Fetch!”, even though we had been happily playing before.  “You must be kidding!  You really think I am going to pick up that disgusting wet thing in my mouth?? Learn to throw properly!”

He understands instantly all the words that are relevant to important things in his life, no matter in what context or tone they are uttered – out, cookie, car, not now – and responds in what is to him a completely appropriate manner to get a result that is positive for him.  “What do you want?” will get the response that is relevant – standing by the door dancing from foot to foot, sitting at the refrigerator door ready to point at the sausages when it is opened, or twisting his head with an imploring expression to convince me “Yes, now”.   Words are of course not necessary; I think he can read my mind – I only have to think of doing something, and he already knows what the schedule is.  And he is extremely adept at communicating to me what he wants me to do and persuading me to do it, all without using words.

So I really wonder if we should believe that dogs that are so enthusiastic about following orders are the smartest, or if they are simply following orders that smarter dogs can’t be bothered with.

Habibi is certainly the smartest dog in the world.

Water Babies

I have a friend who some years ago had a dog that couldn’t swim.  Of course, we all know that dogs can swim – it is a natural thing.  But this dog, a Norwegian Elkhound (Norway, the land of fiords and other bodies of water – certainly swimming should be part of the ancestry) if he got into a body of water that was deeper than his chest, would simply sink like a stone and wait to be rescued.

My dogs, as far as I know, all can swim, but most of them are not particularly enthusiastic about water.  Habibi does not like water at all; when I am washing down the yard in the morning, he perches on top of the dog house where not a stray drop can reach him.  When it is raining, or even when the patio is damp from a dewy night, he will sit on the step next to the door hoping that I am not serious about him wetting his dainty paws.  Desert dogs, remember? is his attitude.

Some years ago, I travelled with two of the Canaans to Switzerland for a dog show, and we went for a hike in the mountains.  They were absolutely stunned to see a little brook running through the rocks – they had never seen running water like that before.  They were very uncertain about stepping in it. “This water is making noises and bubbles, it must be dangerous!  Maybe it will bite!” It took a lot of false starts before they finally decided that they really could put their feet in it.

But every now and then, a mutation occurs and I get a puppy that is a water baby.  This is really not a characteristic that I appreciate having in the gene pool.  From the age that they can stand, these puppies are in the water dish, and as they grow, they seem to feel a need to redistribute the water all over the immediate vicinity. 

Buffy, who you have already met, is one of these.  The dogs here have very large water buckets, so that they will always have plenty of drinking water, and in the hopes that the size and weight of them will prevent them being knocked over and spilled.  Buffy is undaunted.  Although the bucket comes up to her shoulder, she climbs into it with her front feet and joyously manages to scatter most of the water in all directions.  “Aren’t I clever!!!” is what she is obviously thinking.

Jenny, my eight month old collie girl, is even worse.  From the time that this litter started running around the house and playing with toys, if I was looking for Jenny, I knew where I would find her – digging in the water dish.  She just can’t resist the opportunity.  The buckets in the yard are tied to the fence, because it is impossible for Jenny and a full bucket to remain together in the same space for more than five minutes.  She climbs in with her feet, but she also loves knocking the bucket over and splashing around in the water.  But what is even more interesting is that she stands the bucket up again.  I have seen her knock them over, but have not seen how she picks them up, but there is no doubt about it.  For a while, after refilling the bucket twenty times and coming out after a few minutes to find it empty, I thought that maybe it was leaking.  After all, it was standing upright in the same place.  But no, it was Jenny.   After I tied the bucket to the fence, it stopped “leaking”, although Jenny didn’t stop swimming in it.

Most collies are very concerned about keeping their pristine little white paws shiny and clean – not Jenny!  Wet is fun!  She and Chance, the maniac, also have decided that the stream of water from the hose, when I am trying to finish my morning work and wash down the yard, is much more fun to herd than sheep, and run after the water with bared teeth and tremendous enthusiasm.

Wet collies take a LONG time to dry….

Addiction

Dog shows are an addiction.  There is no other reason for me to spend so much of my free time and money on something that is so stressful mentally and physically, other than an overpowering addiction.  And there is no Dog Shows Anonymous!

I tell myself after each one that enough is enough, that I really need to quit. It is ridiculous to get up at ungodly hours so that I can finish all my kennel work, drive an hour or two (luckily in Israel the distances aren’t so great), drag all the dogs and equipment to ringside, sit waiting for hours, spend a few minutes running around in circles, and then load everything in the car to drive an hour or two home to do the evening kennel work in a state of total exhaustion and aching muscles.

And then I find myself contemplating the puppies and training them to stand and stare at a piece of sausage in my hand, while I am thinking, “Are they good enough?  Who will be in condition for the next show?”

Addiction!  No other answer!

I think I qualify as the world champion in fitting a large number of dogs, crates, and equipment into a small car.  My choice of car always depends on it being the cheapest car that is big enough to fit dog crates into.  I am extremely creative at how to stuff in the crates in ways that leave room enough for the dogs to sit.  I think one of the greatest inventions of the century are the mesh dog crates, light weight and easy to stack in the car, and soft enough for the dogs to sit on.  Another commendable invention was the hatchback with folding seats – I can fit a lot dogs and their equipment in those.

And somehow I always end up entering a number of dogs.  I tell myself, this time, just one.  But then someone else has put on a nice coat, or needs only one more CAC, or would be lonely if she was left at home…So I end up with a full car.

My dogs do get accustomed to riding in the car from puppyhood, and most of them like going out.  But you can be sure that if someone decides to be carsick, it will be one minute before entering the show’s parking lot, and it will be well spread over the other innocent dogs sitting next to him.

The collies actually like shows. They love seeing a lot of people, and being admired and petted, they love getting the treats I give them in the ring. They do find it quite incomprehensible as to why, when other times I expect them to do something to get a cookie – to follow a command, to retrieve a ball, to sit in front, - on these occasions I want them to stand there and just look at the cookie for indefinite, long and boring periods of time, with ears up, neck arched, and not moving.  Some of them, out of boredom, being sure that there is some mistake and I really must want them to do something productive, will sit, give a paw, or even bark – surely that is better than just standing.  Of course, the moment that they decide to try a new behavior is exactly when the judge has turned to take another look.  They are also not quite sure why I really don’t want them to jump up on the judge and give sloppy kisses.

They also find it really hard to comprehend why I should be so happy, hugging and kissing them, when they have done nothing at all.  But if I want to, well, no objections…

The Canaans really do not like shows.  For them, this is definitely a useless waste of time.  Why on earth should I expect them to enjoy travelling to a strange place, full of strange dogs and strange people, and just sit there, except for a few minutes of running in circles around a ring and then letting a stranger come over, look at their teeth and put his hands on them?  This makes no sense at all.

In order to try and find a purpose behind this irrational human behavior, the Canaans have decided that this must be a new method of taking over new territory.  If we are sitting in a new place with our possessions – the dog show bag, which contains food, and the dog show crates, which are of course a home away from home – then this must now be our territory.  Therefore, it must be guarded.  So after five minutes of settling in and taking possession, I can feel the Canaans taking up their “this is my property, you had better watch your step” position, with a challenging straight in the eye look at anyone coming near. If it is strange dogs coming near, I can feel that vibration in the throat…

The dogs do all know that they are not allowed to do any serious guarding – real growling, barking, and threatening are not permitted by me, the pack leader.  But they still manage to communicate their feelings to the other dogs in the vicinity, that usually stop and back away, making a wide birth around our little island of conquered territory, accompanied by their owners who are too naïve to really understand why their dogs do not want to walk by just there. 

There are a few things, though, that simply cannot be tolerated, and have to be stopped with a growl or a bark.  Any dog who is stupid enough to think he can drink from our water dish…!!!!

If there was such a thing as a canine anthropologist (I suppose you would call it a canineologist?), that would be Habibi.  He sits next to me at dog shows watching all these strange behaviors carried out by humans, which might be worth some study but really don’t make sense.  Why should anyone want to stand a dog the size of a malamute on a table the size of a floor mat, spray water on it, and then spend an hour blowing warm air through its coat?  Or these little dinky dogs with their hair tied up in papers, braids, or barettes, with hours spent combing them out for five minutes in the ring, and then hours spent tying the hair up again.  And these huge lumbering things that smell like dogs but have jowls and skin hanging all over, and the fluffy furry things that look like stuffed toys…for Habibi, these are objects of interest in a neutral scientific way, they certainly have nothing to do with him.

While sitting and going over my accounts, I noticed how much entry fees are these days.  And the price of gas for the car has gone up twice in the past month.  Not to mention crates, show leads, grooming aids…I really need to save some money!  And along with the cost, whole days gone from doing other productive things…And the exhaustion when I get home from a day of hours of driving, dragging crates, dogs and equipment to and from the car, running around in circles…Enough!

But there is a show in two weeks with a really interesting judge…just one more time…

photo by Hila Hadat

Hair

In my life, dog hair is a fashion statement.

One of the major facts of life when you live with dogs is hair.  One has to be realistic – there is no way to live with dogs and not live with hair as well, unless your breed is Xolos.  What is important is to look at the positive.

First of all, dog hair is much, much easier to live with than cat hair.  I used to have house cats as well as house dogs; now my cats all live out of doors.  When there is a cat in the house, the hair is EVERYWHERE, and it is so delicate and fine that it is hard to see, and sometimes you only realize it is there when you find it in your mouth together with your food, or start choking because you have breathed it in. (Please, cat lovers, I have nothing against cats, I love them, but let’s be real about it…!)  With dog hair, I can see it is there, so I can pull it out of my food before I eat, and usually manage not to breathe it in.

I have given up imagining that I will ever wear an outfit that is not decorated with some hair.  So the idea is to wear clothes that are either the same color as the dog, so that the hair doesn’t show, or to wear colors that are complimentary to the dog, so that the hair gives them an interesting aspect, and to proudly feel that the dog hair is an aesthetic accessory and really makes me look better.  After all, it looks really good on my dogs, I have always wanted to be as good looking as they are…

Fabrics are chosen carefully. No matter how popular and in fashion something may be, if it collects all the hair from an area of a hundred meters, and that hair remains stuck on as if with superglue, that is not something you will find in my wardrobe.  Sleek, slippery fashions are good, the hair just slides off.  Jeans, which constitute about 90% of the items in my closet, are great – the hair doesn’t stick at all.  Mohair and various sorts of fuzzy things are great – if you are careful about color choice, no one can be sure what part of the fuzz is fashion and what part is dog.  And since those fabrics also shed, if you leave hair on the sofa at your friend’s house, no one can be sure whether to blame the dog or not.

Of course there are some additional fashion problems aside from hair.  Even though a lot of my dogs are close to white in color, it is rare to see me dressed in anything white, or anything from the waist down that is light colored.  The chances of me getting from the door of the house to the car dressed like that without collecting puppy footprints is infinitesimal.  Clothes in camouflage patterns are great…

The yard is a paradise for birds during nesting season. Unfortunately, there are not nearly enough birds around to make use of all this lovely warm fur, and nesting season is much too short.  Around here, if the birds nested four times a year, there would still be plenty to go around.  The yard here has this soft and fuzzy look, and there are fluffy tufts around the flowers.  I wonder if I could popularize a new sort of look for the garden…

I do like to have my house clean.  But I have to admit that I am not an obsessive cleaner – the parts of the house that I can see get cleaned regularly, but places that are hidden, like under the furniture, are usually ignored, on the principle of “If you can’t see it, it doesn’t exist.” 

I made the mistake last week of looking under the bed.  I think I was looking for a dog toy that had disappeared; what I discovered was a layer of hair that looked like some sort of animal living there.  Now that I had seen it, it couldn’t be ignored anymore.  Cleaning that was definitely not pleasant and completely filled the tank of the vacuum cleaner several times. I have been careful not to look under the sofa or the chairs – any dog toy that ends up there can stay there.

My consideration in buying furniture are very similar to those in buying clothes. Now that I think of it, my wardrobe and my house do match, and are very well color coordinated to the dogs.  Color coordinating is a good design principle, isn’t it?

People tend to have the idea that long haired dogs shed more than short haired dogs and that really short haired dogs don’t shed at all.  Well, sorry to puncture that bubble, but almost all dogs shed.  The worst I have experienced was a black Labrador that stayed with me for a few days, and left a trail of short black hairs everywhere.  Those short coated dogs also seem to shed all the time.  My collies and Canaans have what is called a double coat, which means that they have a lot of thick wool under the outer coat, and they both shed just as much, but not all the time, it is seasonal.  And it doesn’t matter if they are smooth collies, rough collies, or Canaans – when they shed, they shed…!  If I was into filling pillows, stuffed toys, or mattresses, I would do well.

Habibi doesn’t shed a lot.  Most of the time, he really leaves almost no hair around.  In shedding season, though, of course there is plenty.  This is true of all the gang – their coats are healthy and shiny and they don’t shed a lot.  The problem is that they seem to have worked it out very carefully – there is no time during the year when at least one of them is not shedding.  How have they managed to plan things so well????

It’s okay. I like wearing jeans and fuzzy sweaters.



Shedding season - Habibi's sister Kiss



Birthdays

That time of year is here again. It is the middle of the winter, which is depressing under the best of circumstances – I, like my dogs, am a day person, and love long hours of sunlight.  Even though the weather here is not severe as in many other countries, and the days are not nearly as short as in northern Europe and such, (I find it hard to imagine living in a place where there are about 20 minutes of daylight per day), it still seems to be getting dark just when I am getting started doing something.  The dogs start their day at about 5 in the morning, since for them there have been quite enough hours of sleep in the dark, and now it is time to run and bark.  But it is still pitch black out, and will be for another two hours!  I want to stay in bed!  Habibi, get your nose out of my face, it’s too early!

What is worse, though, and what I would really like to ignore about this time of year – it is birthday time.

Dogs don’t care about birthdays, and don’t think about getting old.  As far as they are concerned, if you function, it doesn’t matter what your age is.  Turning gray is irrelevant, and if there are wrinkles, they don’t show through the hair.  Habibi’s great, great grandfather, Shachmat, my daughter’s personal pet and a very well known dog in his day, died at about 16, and until a few months beforehand, when he did start feeling his age and having trouble getting around, he held on to his position as king of the house dogs, and none of the others dreamed of telling him that he was too old for that.



Shachmat at 13 years of age

I have a very well developed internal image of myself.  I am not so delusional as to believe that I still look like I did at 25, but my internal self says I certainly must be a well preserved 45?  The passing of time is all in the mind, isn’t it? 

I have learned from the dogs not to look in the mirror.  For them, this image is an illusion – there is no sound, no smell, no touch, so that image that may appear to be a dog is obviously nothing and doesn’t have to be considered.  I know that what I see in the mirror, when I do happen to glance that way, is also an illusion – I don’t really look like that...



 

Once in a while I meet  friends that I have not seen for a long time, and I am quite amazed at how they look.  Wrinkles!  Bifocals!  Knobby hands!  They have gotten older!  How did that happen???  I see them in my mind as they were when I first got to know them years ago.  And then I hear this tiny voice in the back of my mind saying, “You know, you look that way to them…”  No way!  Not possible!

It works the other way also – when I meet a friend that really looks good, and young for his age, that little voice is saying, “I hope you look that good too!”

But one thing it is impossible to escape from is photographs.  I hate having my photo taken. I am very happy to have people photograph my dogs, but please, just focus on them!  I don’t mind at all having my head cut off!

When, unfortunately, I do find myself in the photo, it is very painful. That image does not look at all like the one in my imagination!  Do I really look like that? It can’t be me!

This week I was interviewed as part of a TV program that is being prepared about dogs.  There was no way to escape from the camera.  But since it was about dogs, some of the dogs were sitting there with me, and I tried my best to stay hidden behind them while encouraging them to sit on my lap, dodging the cameraman while he tried to dodge the dogs.  Wonder how that is going to come out…

It is not only a matter of looks.  Despite all my efforts to stay fit, I have discovered that I have muscles and joints which never existed when I was younger, and which don’t like to get out of bed in the morning and certainly don’t enjoy going up and down stairs – and stairs is something I have plenty of here.  

But then I look at the older dogs in the pack here, who love to run with the young ones.  When you look closely, they are not quite as fast and as agile, but they don’t sit and think about it – they run, as best they can, and enjoy being able to do what they still can do. They never think about how much better they looked in their younger days, or how it has become difficult to leap and bound up the hillside, they just do it.  And life is great!

Habibi doesn’t care about the wrinkles and the gray hair, he can see the young soul inside, and that is who he loves.