Wish They All Could Be California Girls

For Karen and me, not much good came out of Los Angeles in 1984. We'd moved there without a plan, with our two dogs, Lyric and Holden, and were soon overcome by a fear and loathing of the mass of humanity we found ourselves amidst. We decided that the logical reaction to our new found misanthropy would be to increase the canine to human ratio in our household. We decided to get a puppy.

There were two primary rationales for getting a puppy. Lyric, the Seeing Eye dog, was smart, young and strong, everything a German shepherd should be. Our other dog, Holden, was a fat, dim-witted, beagle mix, and he was simply not an ideal playmate for her. Often, in her fun, Lyric would send Holden sprawling, and we didn't want him to get hurt. We wanted Lyric to have as full a life as possible, and we thought that should include a relationship with a dog with which she could have some parity. Forcing her to play with Holden seemed like forcing Bobby Fisher to play chess with Sling Blade (look, he liked fried potatoes, OK?). It couldn't be very satisfying for Lyric.

Furthermore, Sling Blade…I mean, Holden, needed another dog, too, we believed. Though he may have been satisfied with Lyric as a playmate, since Lyric was a guide dog, when we went out, Holden would be left alone. Holden was a bad boy when left alone, prone to tremendous acts of destruction, and we reasoned that if he wasn't left all alone, but had a better behaved dog keeping him company, then maybe that would help him straighten up and fly right. We knew even then that was unlikely, but, who knows, maybe.

Let me say right now that both of the above rationales were based on false premises. After thirty years as a dogman, I'll say, with some certainty, that an intelligent dog does not need an equal for a playmate, and, with total certainty, that leaving a good dog home alone with a destructive one is much more likely to corrupt the good one than it is to mend the ways of the bad. But, back in 1984, we were at the beginning of our learning curve, and those two reasons for getting another dog seemed reasonable enough.

Anyway, Los Angeles sucked and we wanted a puppy!

We found an ad in the paper and decided to get a three month old, German shepherd/Australian shepherd mix, puppy. We figured this would be a dog that could keep up with Lyric and who might be smart enough to reform Holden. We got to the house, and met both the parents. The father, a German shepherd, was a very friendly, stable, fellow. The Australian shepherd mother seemed just a little "off," but to be fair a couple of strangers were looking over her puppies, so I guess she had every right to be.

There were four or five puppies, but we were instantly drawn to one little grey and white female who seemed more outgoing than the others. We named her Chelsea, and took her away in the car to begin her new life.

Chelsea was not only adorable, she was perfect. She was alert and interested, liked the car ride, and didn't cry for a second when separated from everything she'd ever known. She was infested with fleas, so the very first thing we had to do, before we even brought her in the house, was give her a flea dip.

It's easy to forget now just how awful a problem fleas used to be. Whatever horrifying odorless poison is in the Frontline Plus and other flea and tick products we use today is an absolute godsend. Back in 1984, the only way to de-flea a dog was to immerse it in a fluid that stunk like kerosene, let it dry, and then dip the dog again. When we first saw Chelsea, we thought she had some small scabs on her. On closer inspection, we saw they were flea colonies, massed so as to appear solid. The flea treatment had to be traumatic for a three month old puppy, but Chelsea went through the ordeal with a happy dignity.

I haven't thought about Chelsea as a puppy for a long time, and now the memory of her is flooding me with warmth. The pictures that appear with this article are not Chelsea, but they show basically what she looked like then. She was so smart, and happy, and bright-eyed, and eager to join her family.

Lyric and Holden both accepted Chelsea at once, and she was thrilled to have two other dogs to play and live with. Everyone was happy, at least for a while.

Lyric, Holden and Chelsea would live together for the rest of their long lives. Other dogs would come and go, but those three remained the core of the pack for their entire lives. Going to California might have been a bad idea, but when we left, we had our Chelsea, so, as it turns out, something good came out of us being in Los Angeles that awful summer of 1984.

© 2009, All Rights Reserved, Rich Sands

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Dug-Up Bones

This is my 24^th posting in as many days, and I've been very pleased and excited by the interest in and reaction to my blog. Since the Den opened 24 days ago, I have fiddled with the set-up and design, and added and subtracted counting widgets and such. I've had Statburner, Feedburner, Trendcounter, and several others that I have taken on and off my site since its creation. As a result, I don't have an accurate count of how many page views, or visitors, I've had, or what country these readers are from. However, preliminary estimates are most encouraging.

If my calculations are inexact or my methodology questionable, I apologize, but, as of today, I estimate my web site has had over 3.5 million page hits from more than one million separate individuals! The results of my new flag counter, when combined with those of my old flag counter, reveal that these million-plus readers seemingly come from 3,657 different nations! I'm slightly humbled that my words are reaching so many, but, ultimately, I feel it's for the best.


Note: The Den of the Dogman had a very ugly banner, and a friend of mine who prefers to go by the nom de guerre, "Muse", who made me a great Entreecard, has said she's going to make me a nice banner. She started to, but it wasn't long enough! Now she says she'll fix it, and maybe she will, but for now, I have an idea! The first Den of the Dogman ™Official Contest! Design the Dogman's blog's banner! If you don't know what this means, you probably won't win the contest, so don't bother entering. 

Send your beautiful and appropriately sized banner art in today! The winner will enjoy the thrill that comes with being chosen, and will also receive a personal e-mail from the Dogman! (multiple entries are allowed!) Send in your "Dogman" banner .jpg today!




And now, a look back at some of my favorite's since this site's inception. If you missed any of these, read them now, and no one need know you didn't read it the first chance you had!

Labs, Monkeys, Pirates and the Essence of Fear: A funny story about Vinnie, a black lab Seeing Eye dog, and a few of the things that frightened him. Not unreasonable things, but genuinely scary stuff, like a monkey in the courthouse! And then there's the pirates!

"Look Out, Cat!!!™" It's every dog's favorite rainy day fun game! It's the exciting new craze that's sweeping the doggie countryside. Read all about it and get the official rules. Leagues are forming SOON! Funny, because it's true! (NO kitties are harmed during properly conducted games of "Look Out, Cat!!!™")

Meet Lyric, my late wife's first Seeing Eye dog, a beautiful, high-strung, brilliant German shepherd. An ultimately sweet and touching story, about the most intimate of dog-human partnerships – and how it all started with hate at first sight!

Let Us Sit Upon the Ground and Tell Sad Stories of the Death of Kings A very sad story about Karen's last Seeing Eye dog, Arthur. Perhaps the greatest of all dogs meeting perhaps the saddest of all ends. If you don't already keep Kleenex next to the computer, get some before you start reading this story. But read it, please. Whatever else, Arthur earned our attention.

Dreams of Dogs and Cats Levi and Erica discuss their dreams. A rare insight into the inner workings of our pets psyches! A light, funny, fantasy piece.

Come back to the den tomorrow for the beginning of a week of new stories.

© 2009, All Rights Reserved, Rich Sands

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Levi's Issues, Part 2

Part 1


One bright November day, Levi and Esmé went out to swim and hunt. Levi came home alone, obviously traumatized. We looked for a week, but never found her body. Given where we lived, we knew she hadn't been hit by a car, or stolen. The coyotes of the area, though, could be dangerous. 

Together, Levi and Esmé were big enough to deter an out and out coyote ambush. But if a group of coyotes, in the guise of playing, attracted one of them far enough away from the other, that puppy would have been easy prey. I'm fairly certain that's what happened to Esmé, and I'm also pretty sure Levi saw it.


Levi fell into a serious depression. Arthur was heartbroken, and in order to cope with his loss, took to punishing Levi more frequently and randomly.

Ordinarily, I would have been more on top of the situation, protecting Levi from his bully of a brother, but Karen was getting increasingly sick during this time, and my attention was more on her than it was on caring for Levi. I have no doubt that's as it should have been, but the result was Levi remained in what could only be described as an abusive home environment. Arthur never hurt him to an extent where vet care was needed, but he did what he could to see that Levi's natural high spirits were repressed.

Levi recovered from losing his sister and began to be a happy puppy again. There was an old woman who lived across the way from us named Ethel, who Levi would visit every day. She'd give him cookies, and talk to him, and let him graze cherry tomatoes off her plants. Ethel was Levi's grandma, and she helped him get over the terrible loss of Esmé. Since Arthur wouldn't leave the yard, Levi could visit Ethel by himself, and have an opportunity to feel confident and good about himself.


Ethel died suddenly and unexpectedly in December. Levi went to her house day after day, but grandma never came out to play with him again. His depression returned, and despite Levi's obviously damaged state, Arthur never let up on him for a second. Nevertheless, Levi carried on. He loved Arthur, I suppose in much the same way battered wives love their abusive husbands. Erica was a great comfort to him, and he adored his mom and dad. 

Then, in January, his mom died.

Within a few months, Levi, Arthur, Erica and I began a kind of vagabond existence. We moved from the only house he ever knew into a small trailer with a friend in Taos. I worked as a waiter, and Levi and Arthur would spend the day together. When I would come home from work, Arthur was usually protecting his Frisbee, while Levi was running to the car to greet me. I can only imagine what their days alone together were like.


Then the pack moved from wild New Mexico to super civilized Scottsdale. Despite all the upheaval, Levi was becoming happy again. He'd become an adult, and there was much less corporal punishment delivered by Arthur, who Levi still seemed to worship. We started going to the dog park, where Arthur would, of course, obsess over his Frisbee, and where Levi finally had the opportunity to behave as a quasi-independent adult dog.


For about nine months, things at the park were fine. We spent so much time there that Levi began to see it as his territory. Once he determined that he was in charge of the park, he naturally assumed that keeping puppies in line was one of his responsibilities. I'm not saying Levi didn't enjoy the small cruelties he inflicted on the puppies (click for a short film of such abuse), and I'm not saying it was right. I'm just saying I understood.

Eventually, Levi started to be too bad to bring to the park anymore. This was hard on him, because he loved his large group of park friends, but I couldn't stop him from being a bully, so we stopped going. Arthur didn't care; he could fetishize the Frisbee in the back yard as well as anywhere else, but Levi's social circle was again reduced to insane Arthur. At least now he had Rocky and Chi-Chi as friends, as well as Erica, but his primary companion remained Arthur, who that good boy, Levi, still loved like crazy, despite everything. Then Arthur got bone cancer and died.

Soon after that, my father, who Levi had of course loved, had to be moved out of the house due to advanced Alzheimer's. Levi's grandpa died about a year later, though Levi had many opportunities to visit with him in the assisted living facility. When my dad couldn't remember what relationship he had with my mother or me, he never forgot how much he loved his dogs, Chi-Chi, Rocky, and now, Levi. Then grandpa was gone.


In the first year of life, Levi was abandoned by his original family, lost his sister, his "grandma," and then Karen, his mom. He was bullied by a much older, much bigger dog, who he nonetheless worshiped. He lived in four different homes. Additionally, during all this time, he had a dad who was going through hell, and wasn't in a good mental state himself. 

That Levi has survived, and turned out as well as he did, not only amazes me, but it inspires me, and helps me get through some of my own bad times. He's been my best friend, and my crutch, since Karen died, and I'm content to know that whatever road life leads us down, we'll travel it together.


So, there, Levi is not a perfect dog. I said it. Just be sure you don't say it. Nobody talks about my boy like that.




© 2009, All Rights Reserved, Rich Sands

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How to Breed the Perfect Dog

Levi is the finest example possible of a well bred dog. Note the classic line of his body, the expressive face. He weighs in at 70 pounds, as densely packed as a fireplug, yet he’s compact enough that his body only comes to my knees, with the exception of his head and splendidly carried tail. Observe that noble head, its perfect sense of proportion that completes this masterwork of canine engineering. Man may have bred a finer dog at some time, but I’d have to see it to believe it.

Levi is no recognizable breed, but he certainly looks like he should be.

Nor, however, is he an accident of nature and circumstance, as most mixed-breed dogs are. No, Levi is the byproduct of selective human intervention going back at least ten (dog) generations, perhaps many more.

Usually, with a mutt, you just don’t know what you have. You have a combination of half-dozen or more breeds, and when someone asks, “What kind of dog is that,” the only appropriate answer is, “I have no idea, but had I been present at his conception, I surely would have turned a hose on his parents." I’ve owned and loved a lot of dogs like that; this is not the case with Levi.

Levi is a product of Abeytas, New Mexico, perhaps the finest product ever produced by that tiny hamlet just south of Belen. Abeytas is inhabited primarily, if not totally, by the extended family of my friend, Rick Abeyta. Rick’s an impressive guy.  He built his beautiful house by hand, now takes care of his grandchildren, works as a senior investigator at the public defender’s office, and is just an all around good citizen. Aware of all these virtues, I still maintain that Rick’s finest achievement is the experimental dog breeding program that thrives on ancestral land that has belonged to Rick’s family since some time in the 1600s.

Rick probably won’t like it, but I am prepared to reveal the details of his breeding program, in the hope that his practices will be emulated by animal husbandry enthusiasts across the land, so more dogs like Levi will be born. Recognizing that my tone that could be mistaken for sarcasm, let me assure you that I am completely serious in my praise of Rick, and his family's, highly unconventional breeding program.

Life in rural New Mexico provides unlimited opportunity for unplanned pregnancy of mongrel dogs. Dog generations back, Rick began to select breeding dogs based not on pedigree, but upon good, New Mexico, common sense. If Rover and Lassie (these names are for theoretical purposes only, of course) are both healthy dogs and each possesses the most important characteristic, the litter will have at least some puppies who combine the genetics of the parents into an even more perfect template of what a dog should be. Those puppies are then bred with other dogs that have been created using similar criteria, and, again, in their litters there will be puppies who equal more than the sum of the parts of their already superior parents.

I’ve witnessed Rick’s breeding program for years and have marveled at the results. For many years, Lolita, a relative of Levi’s from several generations back, lived in our pack. She was the most beautiful, jet-black, silky-haired, long-legged, shepherd I’ve ever seen. I say “shepherd” because she had a wolf-like shape, as does Levi. I don’t think anyone could pinpoint what she was really made of, where one “breed” stopped and another began.

I could, and one day will, write about the particulars of Lolita’s personality, but for now please accept that she was the most loving, good humored, spectacular dog that I’ve ever owned, purebred Seeing Eye dogs, and Levi, included. Her one downside was that she could fly. Literally. She could hop over a seven foot fence like I can step over a matchbox. Since we couldn’t keep her in a cage, like a parakeet, she often flew away, only to return when she felt like it. In this sense, only, Lolita was not a perfect dog.

Levi, carrying many of the same genes as Lolita, is a more refined version of his progenitor that irons out some of her kinks, mainly the “being able to fly” stuff. He has Lolita’s exalted looks and, more importantly, her splendid character. Lolita and Levi are the two smartest, kindest, and most thoughtful dogs I’ve ever been lucky enough to spend time with. In future entries in this blog, I’ll make my case for that, but for the time being, just accept it as fact.

To me, Levi looks like the ur-dog, like a dog “should” look, and did look, when their breeding habits were left to what some call "chance," but what is actually natural selection. It is whispered in the streets of Abeytas that there’s a touch of the coyote and the wolf in Rick’s line of dogs. I believe that. Levi and Lolita both have more cunning than ordinary dogs, more endurance, and, most indefinably, more pure and wild animal wisdom. Furthermore, the only dogs I've ever owned who required non-routine veterinary care have been the purebred Seeing Eye dogs. Levi and Lolita have never seen a vet for any reason besides vaccinations and a yearly once-over.

In a sense Rick is breeding backward, moving ever further from the pedigree. But the purebred dog, as we know it, is a relatively modern innovation, and what Rick breeds is something far purer than any such animal.

Purebred dogs aren’t natural. It’s been my experience that they are far more prone to disorders necessitating expensive veterinarian care than are mongrels. Given that my main experience with purebred dogs has been with Seeing Eye dogs, which might be the most carefully and scientifically bred dogs in history, I can’t doubt for a moment the proposition that the genetic diversity of mixed breeds makes them healthier and more vigorous than purebreds. All of my experience confirms this. I love purebreds, but I’m much happier with a genuine dog.

Rick is restoring the dog to its more ancient glory, to a time when man and dog had a symbiotic, and, to my mind, more vitally meaningful, relationship, to the time New Mexico was harsh and unforgiving, when both men and dogs had harder, wilder, lives than we do. Levi has that spark of the ancient in his eyes, that selfsame aura that permeates the mountains and forests and canyons of the Land of Enchantment. Though unofficial, Levi is the State Dog of New Mexico, and I’m more proud of him than I could be of any purebred that won Best of Show at Westminster, because, to my mind, Levi is Best if Species.

© 2009, All Rights Reserved, Rich Sands

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Rocky's Way

Say hello to Rocky.

Rocky is cute, but he might be the dumbest dog ever born. That doesn't matter, though, because, lack of brains aside, Rocky always tries really hard, whatever he may be doing, and he always shows a lot of character, consistently and proactively. It might not be the best character 100% of the time, but it's front and center. So while it's true that in a dog I.Q. test Rocky would be lucky to hit the low double digits, he perfectly illustrates the maxim (and if it's not already a maxim, I'm declaring it one now) that when you try hard, and you have a lot of character (of whatever nature), intelligence is largely beside the point.

Rocky is my mom’s dog, which makes him, legally speaking, my brother. Levi is my dog, so he is Rocky’s nephew, though they’re both the same age, eight. My thirteen year old cat, Erica, is Rocky’s niece, and my mother is known as “Grandma” to Levi and Erica, and as “Mom” to Rocky and Chi-Chi, the Chihuahua, who I will write about some other day. I assure you this sounds far more confusing than it actually is.

Continued