Sam the Dog Final Bark

I brought Sam the Dog home almost 10 years ago.  He looked like this:

Most of the time since then he looked something like this:

And this June he managed to fool everyone and look like this for a few seconds:

Mid-July he went off his food a bit.  By the end of July he simply wasn't eating anything but smidgens of scraps of chicken and steak, and was losing weight.   In the second week in August I had him in for an ultrasound which was inconclusive, and then a CAT scan which spelled out "Lymphoma".  My vet pushed the plunger for me on 8/16.

I sure didn't expect to have to deal with all that again so soon.  I know every dog is the best dog ever, but Sam was the best dog ever.

Once again, as with Joe the Cat, thanks to everyone who's helped me with Sam over the years.

Joe the Cat Final Meow

Today was Joe the Cat's sign off.  He had a great run (14 years) but in the end the combo of diabetes and kidney and spleen issues was too much.  He had another bad day and night yesterday so I made the call and took him in this afternoon.

Thanks to everyone who's fed him, scritched him, had their blood sucked by him, cooed over him, nearly been suffocated by him, had their lap warmed by him, rescued rubber bands from him, snatched dice away from him, or sneezed out dander from him over the 13 years he administered Fort Sam the Dog for me.  He will be missed.

"(2003) Hmm.  This dwelling may serve my needs for approximately 13 years after all..."

Things I Didn't Need To Know

From an article in the WSJ (membership required) about how great it would be to eat bugs. 

The average person consumes about a pound of insects per year, mostly mixed into other foods. In the U.S., most processed foods contain small amounts of insects, within limits set by the Food and Drug Administration. For chocolate, the FDA limit is 60 insect fragments per 100 grams. Peanut butter can have up to 30 insect parts per 100 grams, and fruit juice can have five fruit-fly eggs and one or two larvae per 250 milliliters (just over a cup). We also use many insect products to dye our foods, such as the red dye cochineal in imitation crab sticks, Campari and candies.

I was happier when I was ignoranter.

Behold, The Meat-Hound. All Hail, All Hail.

It was the way she sat, I think.

The other dogs at the shelter were leaping and barking all over the place. But she sat there calmly, ears up, taking it all in.  If it was possible for a dog to look placid and alert simultaneously, she nailed it.

Without belaboring the point too much, being both placid and alert is a vital pre-adaption to living in my house. Not so much because of me, but my children.

Squeaky (3, shown in pic to left) and Fang (6) are a handful. (We're training them too. Its an adjustment for us all)

Being placid would keep a dog from losing her sanity, and as to being alert --  the faster you see them coming with a Superman costume, a plastic pig nose, and a game of dress-up-the-dog on their minds, the faster you can hide in your crate.

Anyway, there she was, and something in my head said "that one." For a month, she lived in a shelter down in Dekalb County, Georgia that kills 85% of the dogs that go through it. I'm not sure how she made it to CT, but she did.

In the car home, we named her Max.

Debate rages on as to her heritage: Shepard, Akita (if you see her from the side, there's something about the ears) Sharpei. (I don't see it personally, but thats what makes this fun).

Anyone with good advice on how to make a 1-year old shelter dog adjust to a new home (with kids) quickly and happily, please post in the comments. Any and all advice accepted gratefully.

Our Imaginary Vegan Ancestors (Of Whom There Are None)

I elevated this from comments because I have a cogent rebuttal. (Astonishing as it sounds.)

In this fantasy pre-historic cave-man land that you all seem to think you know so well, meat would probably have been damn hard to come by. Most days, if you were lucky enough to eat, you'd be eating vegan.

Well, no. Vegans don't use any animal products at all -- that means no honey, no leather, no fur, no silk. I was once told (but can't be bothered to confirm) that many vegans won't drink certain brands of beer as some brewers use gelatin in filters during brewing. A vegan lifestyle for our prehistoric forebears is unlikely.

But if you just want to restrict your comments to food, well, you're still wrong. Our ancestors ate all the way up and down the food chain. We share about 98-99% of our DNA with chimps, and if they can eat termite larvae, so can we.

But the most powerful argument against prehistoric humanity living in some kind of vegan paradise comes not from archaeology or sociology but from mathematics. You simply can't eat only vegetables and fruit and ingest enough calories or enough protein to survive outdoors, especially in a place that has a winter. (Note: I'm talking about pre-cultivation history here. Once you settle down and plant rice or wheat, things change a little)

And if you want more evidence, you should look at the great die-off of animal species that happened everywhere that humans emerged from Africa and spread around the world.

In North America, dozens of species disappeared 12,000 to 13,000 years ago, after the arrival of humans, including mammoths and mastodons (both relatives of modern elephants), giant ground sloths, tapirs, a large camel, llamas, a large-horned bison, prong-horned antelopes, oxen, a type of mountain goat, a giant armadillo and the glyptodonts, large mammals covered with solid armor. Large predators such as the saber-toothed cats, dire wolves and some bears also died off.

Just to make it clear: they died off because WE ATE THEM. A LOT.

Can You Gimme An "Aaawwwwww!?!"

Little Green Footballs says it best. This is just frikkin' turbo-cute.