I take umbrage

So Elvis Presley was the king of rock and roll. He sang a lot of songs, but he is well-known for his song 'Hound Dog'. As bassets, Rosco and I take umbrage with the choice of lyrics in this song. They are listed below.

You ain't nothin' but a hound dog,

cryin' all the time.

You ain't nothin' but a hound dog,

cryin' all the time.

You ain't never caught a rabbit

and you ain't no friend of mine.

You said you was high-class,

but that was just a lie.

You know you said you was high-class,

but that was just a lie.

You ain't never caught a rabbit

and you ain't no friend of mine.

Our complaints are myriad. First, hound dogs do not 'cry' all the time. If we do anything vocally all the time, it's howl. But even then we do have to sleep from time to time, so we can't make noise all the time. Plus, that bit about never catching rabbits? It's only because we can't run under fences like rabbits can. I could have caught rabbits if there weren't fences or leashes in the way. You don't get much more high-class than basset hounds. Finally, if I ain't no friend of yours, it's probably your fault somehow.

I think Elvis never owned a hound dog.

The Good Bone Phenomenon

As I write this, Rosco and Layla are currently helping my wife keep the couch from flying away.  Earlier this morning I witnessed what I refer to as the "Good Bone Phenomenon".  If you own dogs you know exactly what I am talking about.

We buy our dogs a few different kinds of chew bones.  Rawhides are nice because they last a long time and are cheap, but you do run the risk that they will eat part of it and have digestive tract blockage.  The dogs aren't always crazy about them, though - a good rawhide needs a few days of half-hearted chewing before it is fully seasoned to basset tastes.  Bully sticks - basically dried cow tendons - are the most highly prized, but they don't last long and stink horribly while being eaten.  Layla also tends to have some intestinal gas troubles when she gets those and we worry about bloat, so we don't get them very often.  They're also about 5 bucks for a 12 inch piece.  Busy bones are pressed chew treats that last approximately 30 seconds and make a terrific mess.  However, any new chew bones are met with a lot of enthusiasm by the dogs, at first.

Until the new bone phenomenon sets in.

We try and buy bones that are similarly sized, because our dogs will give us indignant looks if they feel that they are getting the short end of the stick.  But it doesn't matter.  Any bones that lasts longer than twenty minutes will eventually prompt the 'Good Bone Phenomenon'.  This occurs when one dog decides the other somehow got a better deal then them.  No matter how juicy, stinky, or delicious their bone may appear, they are certain that the other dog is enjoying themselves that much more.  And so they lay on the floor, their partially-eaten bone discarded next to them, coated in a sheen of basset saliva, and they watch the other dog eat what they believe to be the 'Good Bone'.  No amount of pouting can sway the other dog's attention though - our dogs have become masters at the art of bone-eating, to the point of deception and trickery to get the prize.  We could buy fifty bones that were machined to exact specifications, so that there was no significant difference in size, mass, or taste qualities, and there would be one bone among them all that was the epitome of what a chew bone should be.  Wars have been fought over less.

The deception is an interesting part of dog ownership that I never envisioned.  I have always assumed dogs were the most enviable of animals - cute, although lower on the intelligence scale than cats, with heightened perceptions, and a sense of loyalty that few humans can ever aspire to.  The deviousness and attitude were surprises.

For instance, if Rosco has the 'Good Bone', Layla may try to use his jealousy against him.  My wife may be laying on the couch watching a TV show, and Layla will pull herself up from her pouting session over getting the lesser of two bones.  She stretches, saunters slowly to the spot in front of my wife's position on the couch, and lets out a low whimper.  'Love me', this whimper says.  It's soft at first - she doesn't want to rush things - but after a few more tries, both the players in Layla's game are now fully engaged.  My wife, her affections for the dog now running at full capacity, will reposition herself on the couch to allow Layla some room for snuggling.  Rosco, meanwhile, his attention slightly diverted from the 'Good Bone' by Layla's theatrics, will pause for a moment.  Snuggling is a good thing.  Is Layla going to get some?  From Mama?  Without me being involved?  This bone is pretty good, but...  well, let's wait and see.  She isn't on the couch yet.  Back to the bone.

Layla, meanwhile, will milk my wife's affections to their fullest extent.  She might feebly attempt to jump on the couch - her stumpy front legs barely making it to the cushion, making half-hearted attempts to hoist the rest of her body up there.  Nevermind that during the daily basset chase sessions that occur it looks like the dogs are extras in House of Flying Daggers, and appear to be able to jump over the coffee table to get onto the couch - at this point, Layla might not be able to lift her legs high enough to step over a folded washcloth, and jumping the 16 inches to get onto the couch is an insurmountable challenge.  My wife (or I) will give in and help lift her up onto the couch.  After a few moments of rotation and couch-pawing, she settles into a comfortable position.  Layla emits a content sigh.  Never has a dog been so content.

At this point Rosco realizes he is missing out on something big indeed.  Jealousy overcomes how good that bone tastes.  He rushes over to the couch, jumps up on whatever available spot remains, and looks at my wife, his puppy feelings hurt beyond measure.  His wounded heart is about to get another shock, for at this point Layla covers the distance from her resting position on the couch to the 'Good Bone' - left unattended by Rosco - in approximately two seconds, all signs of basset laziness long gone.  Rosco's face at this point is priceless, unable to believe how he has been duped.

This sort of thing happens all the time.  Treats, belly rubs, chasing cats - all things that can grab a dog's attention for a moment, all are used to remove the current owner of the good bone's attention.

All's fair in love and chew bone competition.

Late poster

So I haven't really put anything up on this blog yet. I usually don't have much to say, I'm a pretty laid back sort of cat.

But every so often I like to contribute. Lately though, I have been a bit self-conscious of myself. No idea why.

You might not have noticed but in the picture above there is a suspicious-looking electrical device off-camera. Turns out it is called a "razor" and they use it to shave animals. Results below.

So don't expect too much from me until all my hair grows back.

Lots of new things

There have been a lot of new things since I wrote last time. I see my brother and those cats have made a few entries. None of them were quite as important as my last blog though.

First of all, the newest thing is that we are in a new house now. It's much better than the old one! There are a couple of great things about this new place. First, it's HUGE. It's at least twice as big as the old one. The kitchen is big, which means I can eat my food and really spread out now if I want to. Second, there is carpeting, which means I can nap wherever I want and not have to lay on a hard floor. Third, the basement is sometimes open to me, which is completely different from the last house. I even get to play down there once in awhile. The backyard still has a fence, and there is a little girl who came into the yard and played with me while they unloaded all our stuff! Her name is Sophia and she brings me and Rosco treats. Sometimes she sneaks them through the fence if her dog Biggin is there. Biggin seems like an ok dog - not a basset but we can't all be perfect like me. We really haven't got to play with Biggin yet. Finally, there's an outdoor cat at this house. His name is Joey and I really want to meet him and sniff him, but the opportunity hasn't presented itself yet.

But I do miss my old house sometimes. This yard doesn't have a good squirrel tree, and there's no dirt to roll in. There are also more stairs - up stairs to get in and out of the house, up and down stairs to get into the basement - at the old house there were only 5 stairs to go up and down. I'm not fond of stairs, I always think I am going to fall down them. The basement stairs here have plastic on them and I have made a couple of unladylike slides! But it isn't my fault, we bassets aren't really made for stairs, especially the death-trap kind. I do miss my squirrels though. I also miss Joni, who came to visit us sometimes from You Go Pet Sitting. If you're ever in Springfield and need a pet sitter I really liked Joni, she was really nice. She also put my picture up on the internet as a good dog, so you know she has good taste in beautiful dogs.

I do not need another dog

We had to take Layla to the vet earlier today.  She has a small raised bump on the outside toe of her right rear foot.  She's had it since we got her in April - she just turned 2 in August - and it's always been pretty small.  However in the last 2 months it has gotten larger and uglier (a deeper purple color), and Heather and I finally decided to take her in and have it looked at.  She wasn't happy about the vet visit, even after a heaping portion of treats, and the vet had to take a small scraping of tissue to check it out.  Rosco was beside himself - he stayed in the car while Layla went inside.  Twenty minutes' worth of worrying later, the vet told us it was most likely an inflamed cyst from something like an infected gland or hair follicle that had ruptured, but that we could have it removed and tested to be certain.  As we are currently broke, and the spot doesn't bother Layla or slow her down in the slightest, we went with two week's worth of antibiotics as the cheapest/most prudent course.  If it looks any worse during that time we'll have to have her go in for surgery.  There was a lot of sniffing when Layla returned to the car.

I guess this was a timely reminder of how expensive owning a dog can be.  I've seen at least two bassets in our region lately that I would have loved to adopt - one was free and the other is cute enough to make me ignore the adoption fee - but two dogs are enough for the time being.  Still...  bassets have a way of working themselves into your heart.

The second dog I was ready to adopt (Ollie).

Not what I was going to write about

I was originally going to write about data used in claims by television advertising, but I couldn't find the right Easy, Breezy Covergirl commercial on YouTube, so that will have to wait.  So, instead of a light-hearted commentary on the pseudoscience that we have all come to accept in our daily lives, and its potential impact on the stupidifying of America, I am going to write about something far more important.

Songs that get stuck in my head.  There have been quite a few of them lately for my wife and I.  One of them was her fault.  I'm also going to be sharing these songs via YouTube videos below, because I feel pretty good about understanding the HTML code to make them show up in my blog (yay!), and because I don't want to be the only person suffering horribly after writing this blog.

Song #1.  Green Acres Theme Song

While working at the meat department the other day, my wife sends me a text message about how she has the Green Acres song stuck in her head.  This immediately infected me with the same problem, and I spent the rest of the day boning out pork butt shoulders while repeating the one or two lines to that dumb song that I could remember over and over again.  And now I've passed this gift on to you.  But at least you can benefit from the full version of the song and not only Eva Gabor's lines.



Song #2.  J.G. Wentworth commercial

God forbid I should ever have to use their services, but I think this commercial is actually a masterpiece of marketing.  Much better than some of their other commercials (think of the one with a bunch of people shouting about their money outside of their windows, and look on YouTube for a good spoof), they came out with this opera themed stuff at some point and struck a vibe (with me, at least).  Unfortunately, it sticks on your head like glue, but at least you can chuckle to yourself about it all day.  This couldn't have been cheap either - it's twice the length of a normal commercial - but I guess there are enough people who need their money now for old Mr. Wentworth to be able to afford this sort of advertising.



Song #3.  Stupid Ford Fiesta commercial

This one actually annoys the heck out of me, despite some really awesome choreography and original advertising.  But that background music!  Urgh!



Song #4.  Strangers in the Night

I might be alone on this one, but this song gets stuck in my head all the time.  I blame the movie Fletch, and the scene where Chevy Chase alters the lyrics to his own particular version.  It's funny, but then I worked with a guy in a butcher shop who liked to cut meat while listening to Frank Sinatra, and that pretty much encoded the lyrics into my DNA.  Now that I think about it, there is something kind of sinister about listening to Sinatra while dicing up meat...  Anyway, to go a little easier on you, I put up an apparently rare version of the song as done by the band Cake.



Song #5.  Hound Dog

This all just comes with the territory when you own basset hounds.  I can't really say anything bad about the king, especially after I found a video of him singing this song to a basset on TV.



Song #6.  Love Will Keep us Together

I'm kind of ashamed I even know about this duo.  Nevermind how I even learned of this song; the story is embarrassing and involves a cat.  For awhile there this song played through my head, despite my otherwise normal appearance, all the time.  It even got played on an episode of Lost.  But there is, at least, some potential here for a cute pair of dog costumes...



Song #7.  I Love a Parade

My family has a rather unhealthy habit of watching/listening to the same media ad nauseum during the holidays.  I think I can probably recite National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation from start to finish, given enough participating friends.  But this song comes from the original Vacation movie, where Clark is wandering lost in the desert with his pants tied around his head, after catapulting the family truckster through the Arizona desert.  It was humorous when I was 15; now I wish I could forget it.  The worst part is he only sings the first two lines.  That's not even a song stuck in my head, it's two lines!



Song #8.  Destati

Unless you played Kingdom Hearts, you might not know this song.  I did and I do; it's actually kind of cool, and another neat piece that has been performed by orchestra groups around the world.  Certain parts of this song end up stuck in my head from time to time.

It's great to be a hound

Life is good. I've got to go on at least one car ride a day in the past week. Let me tell you a bit about car rides. They used to happen once a week when daddy and I lived in the other house for awhile, but after we moved in with mama they happened a lot less. I was a sad hound. The only nice thing about it was that car rides always ended up at the park. I love the park, it is probably the best place on earth. There are lots of other dogs there, and lots of people who want to stop and pet me. And the smells! Such smells! I wouldn't even want to go for a walk, I'd rather just wander around and smell, but you know how dad is.

Anyway, lately I have been going on car rides to the park every day. Daddy goes to work now, which is kind of strange, but when he comes home we go for a car ride. The weird part is the cats come with us. They all go into one of our crates, with our bed in it, and then they go into the car. Then we "load up" and go for a ride. The windows get put down, which I love, because it lets me show everyone just how fast I can run. I run so fast in the car my ears stay flying behind me the whole time! And people in the nearby cars all check me out - just yesterday a whole bus of kids drove by and pointed and smiled at me. It's great to be a hound on a car ride.

The recent car rides always end at the park. I thought there were squirrels in my yard, but there are TONS of squirrels at the park now. And they are so lazy! They sit there and taunt Layla and I, instead of running like they should. They're lucky dad holds us back or we would catch them and smell them and possibly eat part of them before dad caught us!

Something is afoot

I have noticed, with growing unease, that there are boxes in my house again. Boxes usually mean trouble. Sometimes, boxes are ok, because they indicate that a new human toy has been purchased (TV, desk, etc.), and the box will be put in the basement. Eventually boxes stack up and create towers, and towers are where I like to be. But these boxes are a different kind. They come in the house empty and leave filled up with stuff. This stuff is mostly human toys, and once all the human toys have been packed up in boxes and removed from the house, the human beds and sofas will go next. Then the paintings on the wall, the dishes, and all the other stuff humans need to make them happy.

Then they will chase me down. I run, I certainly make them work for it (they tore an entire room apart once to find me, they had the mattress up against the wall), but eventually they close doors systematically and trap me. Then they hold me - I scratch them for their efforts but the hairy one is stronger than me and doesn't mind that he bleeds in the end - and they stuff a pill down my throat. Like that will keep me from voicing my displeasure.

Then I go in my own little box, which goes in the car. We go for a ride. The longer the ride is, the better the chances are I will come out at grandma's house, where I get moist food every day and have a big house to run around in. But usually the boxes mean a ride that ends at a new house. My experience with this kind of box-car combination has not been very rewarding; I usually end up drugged and upset. But in the end, we are in a new place, with new places to explore. I just don't want to see all these boxes.

We're moving!

Good news everyone!  We'll be moving at the end of the month, because I was offered a position with the Missouri Department of Conservation!  That's right, after about 12 years of secondary education, I am now officially employable.  I'll be the wildlife biologist at Eagle Bluffs Conservation Area near Columbia, Missouri.  It's an area that is primarily managed for waterfowl and waterbird habitat and hunting, but it also provides lots of wildlife viewing opportunities as well.  As the wildlife biologist, I'll oversee two people and manage the area, as well as have the chance to do a few side projects of my own.  I'm really looking forward to it!  If you want to know more about where I'll be working, check this website out.  Right now my first few project ideas include helping department staff be eligible for the Wildlife Society's certified Wildlife Biologist program, trying to establish a bird-banding station at Eagle Bluffs, and trying to start a long-term turtle monitoring program that focuses on the effects of water level manipulation on turtle populations.

Of course, that means that I have a ton of stuff to do in the next few weeks.  Packing up everything we own and finding a place to live will be the first few challenges.  I also have to defend my dissertation on the 20th of this month, which means I need to get my defense talk put together and be prepared for questions that might come my way.  It sounds like I will have a pretty big audience at my defense.  Fortunately I just came back from the annual Wildlife Society conference, where I gave a very short version of my defense talk.  So it will just be a matter of expanding it to a longer talk (about 45 minutes).  Oh and I am also working part-time at a butcher shop until I move.  I'm going to be busy!

But moving should be fun.  We're just going to rent a big Uhaul truck and do it all on a weekend.  My parents offered to help (hopefully they will bring Casey along), and Zane and Melissa might help as well.  My grandparents will also meet us in Columbia to supervise the procedure.  Should be a nice, stress-free day.  Maybe.  Anyway, I know the dogs and the cats will be excited - a new place to sniff out, find the good hiding spots, and discover the best places to poop in the yard.  Bunsen will have a few more chances at some drugged victims for his affections during the trip out there.  I think I'll drive the Uhaul and let Heather deal with the amorous cats!

The waiting is the hardest part

I miss my dad. He's fun; he lets me walk on his shoulders, where I can look down on those dogs. He also fights with me, and we play Attack of the Shirt, which is where I jump at a shirt he throws over the back of a chair and kill it. I hope he comes home soon, he's on a mountain or something right now. Plus, my litter box needs cleaning. Also my food dish is getting less than 90% full.


He also sometimes lets me go outside. Outside is the best. That's where I met him and convinced him to bring me home. I even threw up on the seat of his truck on the way home to let him know he was mine. I know he appreciated it. But I'd like to go outside again.






I hope he comes home soon.