Kara DuLac-Shields

It’s been a terribly sad week for us. Rick’s wonderful grandfather was diagnosed with a critical injury to his aorta, and due to problems with his kidneys and other vascular problems which he’d been dealing with for ten years, surgery to repair the transection, or tear, was impossible.

This horrible news left his family members anguished and stricken. Grandpa Plagens was a remarkably strong, brave, funny, caring, steady man who made everyone feel loved and appreciated. I hadn’t had my own grandfather since my mother’s father died while I was in my teens, but I was so fortunate to have him as my grandfather-in-law.

I wish I’d known him better, but like many of his generation, Grandpa didn’t put himself in the spotlight. A World War II veteran, he was the proprietor of Plagens Market in Wayne for about forever. He and Grandma were married for 67 years, and I can attest to the fact that they raised a wonderful family, of which I am proud to be a part.

I know that he liked to grill and watch or listen to the Tigers when they played. He liked to work in his yard and watch the wild birds that came to feast at their many feeders.  He liked dogs and loved his family, and was a generous man who did the right thing. I wouldn’t know where to start in listing all the kind things he’s done for Rick and I and others. I wish I’d known him better…

We did have an opportunity to run home last weekend to see Grandpa and tell him we love him. It wasn’t enough and I regret not having visited sooner. I was hoping (unrealistically, I know) that time would stand still while we were away, and that Grandpa would always just ‘be there.’

Grandpa left this plane of existence early Thursday morning, leaving a tremendous hole in the hearts of his family. He was a remarkable man who will be sorely missed by everyone who knew him.

Over the weekend my husband and I had to go home to Michigan and see his wonderful grandfather, who’s critically ill. It was a sad, strained, hastily-arranged trip, and as a result I found it necessary to communicate with several different people simultaneously.

Texting filled that bill to a ‘t’. It allowed me to update multiple people on our current location, via  short messages, all at the same time.

The most important part of that last sentence is “short messages.” I still don’t care for texting, and now I really know why. We all know brevity is not a defining characteristic for me, and that, combined with using a teeny little phone keypad to ‘type’, is what turns me off to texting. And SMS, or ‘short message service’ is exactly what texting was intended for, not the long-winded attempts at communication that I like to disgorge.

Express myself in 160 characters or less? Child, if I could do that, I’d have solved most of my life-long problems by now.

The Pumpkin keeps telling me that the tiny little flip phones we’re currently using are spectacularly unsuited for useful text communications. He says I would enjoy texting and web surfing tremendously on an iPhone or droid, but I think even typing on an iPad would be frustrating for me.

So I’ll admit that texting suited our needs this weekend, but I still don’t like it. I guess I’ll have to try it on an iPhone in January (when the iPhone comes to the Verizon network) and see if I like it better there.

A friend of a friend found a collarless, buff cocker girl alongside the road this afternoon. It was fortunate that he’d come upon her when he did, because she was scavenging among some garbage, and was gagging on a piece of plastic wrap that was stuck halfway down her throat.  Mygod. Just in time.

She’s a very pretty and happy girl, and looks to be freshly groomed, so she’s cared-for and hopefully someone loves and misses her a lot. Hopefully they’re trying feverishly to find her. My friend says they’re going to their vet to have Buff Girl scanned for a microchip, but noted that the dog was not wearing a collar.

Sadly, it’s not difficult for a dog to slip its collar, especially when startled or frightened. It’s even easier for the dog to escape when the collar doesn’t fit the dog properly, which is true in many, many cases.

For example, in order for a collar to fit securely, it should be snug enough to ride midway up on the neck. If the collar is so loose that it falls down and rests on the dog’s shoulders, it’s too loose. You should only be able to fit two fingers snugly between the collar and the dog’s neck, otherwise the dog will be able to duck his head and scoot backwards and squirt out of the collar.

It should NOT be tight enough to make your dog cough or choke or cause trouble breathing.

The collar itself should be appropriate for your dog’s size and strength: Puppies can wear narrower, lighter-weight collars, but as they grow, their collars should be upgraded as they become larger and stronger. If you have a smaller toy breed dog, you can get away with a fine, rhinestone studded collar that’s almost a piece of jewelry, as long as you know that your dog won’t be able to break it by pulling on it. Here’s a helpful link from Lupine explaining how to properly fit your dog’s collar. (As an added bonus, Lupine’s collars are just beautiful and my kids enjoy having many different patterns to choose from! :::grinning::: )

But if you’ve got a lab mix you need to find something more substantial until you can get to obedience class and learn to walk on a loose lead (both of you!). Hint, hint. You really should train your dog to walk on a loose lead, because it’s healthier for the dog and more enjoyable for you!

Also make sure that the collar and tags you choose for your dog are sturdy and safe, without lots of accessories that can catch on your pet’s fur or scratch their skin or snag their toenails during a good long scratching session. And of course use caution if you crate your dog, removing his collar to prevent accidental strangulation anytime he’s confined in a crate.

With regard to identification tags: There’s some discussion on whether to engrave your dog’s name on his tag. If someone finds your dog and learns his name by reading the tag, they can begin bonding with your dog by using his name, and that may delay your fuzzy’s return.

Your dog’s name being on the tag isn’t important, anyway–YOU know who your dog is, and he doesn’t care if his tag is monogrammed. What IS important on a dog tag is a clue to contacting YOU if your dog is found by a stranger. All our dogs’ tags say “Please call Mom & Dad” followed by our home telephone number and my cell phone number.

To summarize, your dog’s collar should be sturdy enough to contain your pet during a moment of distraction, and it should be wide enough to avoid cutting into your dog’s neck and lessen compression of the trachea. It should also be snug enough to stave off “slippage”, but not too tight or restrictive.

If you have a dog who’s prone to panic and jerking backward on the leash, you might want to try using a martingale collar. This website nicely describes how a martingale works, but these collars like all others still need to be sized appropriately and checked regularly for necessary adjustments.

So even if this buff girlie’s petparent got her a lovely collar with an unique identification tag, it became useless when she scraped it off or slipped out of it or broke it. Hopefully she has a microchip and can be returned to her home.

Check your dog’s collars this moment–are they loose because you’ve recently started your summer fitness routine again, and your running buddy is losing weight right along with you? Or are you just back from a trip to the groomer’s, where a haircut really CAN make a client ‘lose five pounds’? Or do you just have a faulty collar that loosens up on its own? Adjust them immediately!

I’m at fault here, too. Just a few weeks ago, Riley and Belle had upper respiratory irritation most likely due to allergies, and while I was giving them Benedryl and doxycyclin (just in case it was an upper respiratory infection) I let them “go naked”, and hung their collars on the banister.

After chatting with my friend, I put their collars back on, and readjusted Belle’s collar so that it fit her properly. I don’t want to think about them shooting out the front door with no ID.

In the worst case scenario, you’ll want to make sure that your dog has ALL the possible means to help get him back home to you–keep collars and ID tags on your dogs at all times, make sure the collars are properly-sized and in good repair, and microchip your dogs in case the collar fails (or is removed).

Just in case, keep current photos of your dog, both face shots and whole-body/profile pictures on hand, as well as current vet records. And although no one likes to think about losing one’s best friend, it’s a good idea to study up on what to do before you find yourself searching feverishly for a lost pet, God willing that you never find yourself in such a predicament.

I love my toaster oven. I’d even go as far as to say that it’s an essential piece of kitchen gear.

It’s not often that I endorse a specific piece of kitchen equipment. Many tasks have been accomplished over the years using nothing more than a good knife, a sufficiently-large cutting board and basic cookery equipment. I’ve never owned a food processor, nor have I wanted one.

Yes, using a food processor can save you a lot of prep time. You could process all the potatoes for a batch of potato soup in a matter of SECONDS. But then the time it takes to break down and clean the food processor offsets that time saved. It’s so much quicker to keep a sink full of hot, soapy water and wash the knife and cutting board as you go.

We DID have a juicer, once. Once. But it was such a complicated travesty of parts and disks and doohickeys that to use and dissemble it to clean it was a multiple-hour task. We weren’t dedicated enough to the idea of juicing to continue to use it.

We do have a breadmaker that I’ve begun to use again, just for the joy of freshly-baked bread. If you’ve read any of my past blog postings, you may recall my battle to make bread from scratch–I really do feel this is something I should be able to do by myself, without the help of a machine…but I’m lazy. I’ll work on the bread skills later.

I don’t want to mislead you–we do have kitchen equipment with very specialized uses. Of course we have a coffee maker, which just makes coffee, and we have several slow-cookers, which only cook food very slowly. We also have a blender, which is used very seldom, and a Fry-Daddy, which is used more often than I care to admit.

But our toaster oven is the most-used piece of kitchen equipment we have. It warms left-over pizza much more appealingly than the microwave, and if we’re having pasta it heats up to crisp frozen garlic bread in seconds rather than preheating the entire full-sized oven, using much less electricity in the process.

Hot appetizers and baked sandwiches can happen in the toaster oven with much less fuss than the full-sized oven, and I can prepare a hot Westminster dip before dinner even though the oven temperature is different than what’s needed for the entrée.

And anytime we feel like a fresh biscuit, we can take some frozen biscuit dough from the freezer and bake one (or eight) up in a snap. I’ve heard that one can do that same thing with cookie dough, but I’ve always just baked the whole batch of cookies rather than putting some aside to freeze.

All in all, a toaster oven with temperature control is a fast, efficient way to bake small batches of baked goods and not use lots of electricity heating the big oven and then cooling the house. I would strongly recommend a quality toaster oven for every small household.

I got a haircut Monday, and it’s very short, even by my standards.  So when I was getting dressed for work, I decided to dig out some of the cool earrings I’ve collected over the years, and indulge in pretty danglies which could be shown off by my military-style hair cut.

I wear a nostril screw in the sidewall of my right nostril; my left ear is pierced four times in the lobe and partially up the rim, and my right ear is pierced once. My OCD demands that all the jewelry I wear in these holes in my head match, so if I deviate from white metal earrings, I must change my nostril screw as well. I confess, I’m lazy, and tend to wear the same set of earrings and leave the nostril screw in indefinitely. So even though I have many different and beautiful earrings, I tend to settle on one set and take them out at night and put them back in in the morning.

Yeah, it’s lame that this is less effort and therefore desirable to me. I get it.

Anyway, digging through my jewelry chest yesterday I found some of the beautiful earrings I’d collected made by designer Laurel Burch. Since I’m lazy and have been on a white metal kick since about 2001, I hadn’t worn them for quite a while, but I still love them dearly. Since they’re 14-karat electroplated, I had to change my nose stud to the gold one, and dig out the little gold hoops for the top holes in my left ear. Quite the change from the everyday little silver balls, eh?

Later in the afternoon, a lady comes through my cashier’s lane at Target and recognizes my earrings.

“Are those Laurel Burch earrings?” She was pleased to have recognized them, and I was pleased to have made this unlikely connection with a total stranger. I said yes, and how I loved all her designs, and was wearing them to ‘celebrate’ my fresh haircut.

She said that she was a friend of Laurel Burch’s and had visited her at her home in Novato, California, just a few months before she died. She mentioned what an amazing person Ms. Burch was, as well as being a prolific and eloquent artist.

I was struck, first by the unlikely connection of a stranger recognizing the design of one of my favorite artists, and then by the news that the artist had died.

I hadn’t followed Laurel Burch very closely, but I did really enjoy her whimsy and love of colour at the time when I was still buying jewelry. Since I’ve not been shopping for art or jewelry in a great while, I hadn’t thought about it or her for a long time.

It was such a bittersweet moment, to establish a connection with a complete stranger who appreciates the same precious thing that you do, and then to learn that the creator of that precious thing has died. Turns out that Laurel Burch died back in 2007. Although I never knew her, I’m just mourning her passing today.

I’ve always been a fainter, but only realized that just recently. ‘Fainting’ kind of has a wussy ring to it, an unsavory ‘bodice-tied-too-tightly’ whiff that just doesn’t go with my own carefully cultivated self-image.

Just in case you’re curious, my own self-image has notes of Kate Jackson, Chuck Norris, Dixie Carter and Margaret Thatcher, all very self-sufficient, sensible, dependable people. Oh, and Buttercup of The Power Puff Girls. Probably more than a little bit of her. So tight bodices and fainting doesn’t really go along with that composite image.

But if you’re gonna faint, you’re gonna faint, and only through lots of training and self-discipline can you avert that–IF you can avert it. Fainting, or syncope, or a vasovagal episode, is an involuntary bodily reaction most-commonly caused by a drop in blood pressure and heart rate, and the resulting drop in blood flow to the brain. You get pale, you get weak, and everything fades out for a little while. People can experience syncope that’s triggered by extreme emotional distress, or from an injury or blood loss, from dehydration, from an abrupt change in posture (like standing up too quickly), and it often needs no further examination, unless it’s caused by one of several medical conditions requiring treatment.

If you faint and you’re out for a long time, like days, that’s called a coma and that DOES require further medical treatment. That’s my helpful PSA for today: “If you’re unconscious for more than a few minutes, seek medical help right away.”

There are methods by which you can practise keeping your blood pressure and your heart rate jacked up in order to avoid vasovagal syncope events, but I’ve never been prepared enough to put any of these methods into use in my moments of need. “But wait–” you ask, stunned, “How often does one lose consciousness in order to pre-plan ahead for moments of need?”

The other day I was thinking about how many times I’ve passed out, and was shocked and dismayed to tally them all up. To be fair, I’ve had some pretty good reasons to faint. Well, SOME of them are good reasons, anyway. But now that I’ve written them down, it’s kind of alarming how many times I’ve lost consciousness. And they go back pretty far into my childhood.

My very first ‘eyeballs-to-heaven’ moment was when I hit my head on a cupboard door. I might have been five or six years old (I think). The cupboards in my mother’s kitchen went right to the ceiling, and for us younger (shorter) kids, it was difficult to reach anything above the first shelf without some assistance.

We were TOLD to use a stepstool. Very often we didn’t waste time getting the stepstool from across the 15-foot-wide kitchen, we just boosted ourselves up onto the counter top so we could kneel or stand to reach what we were after. Little trout-mouthed heathens, we were.

Come to find out, our parents had a valid reason for forbidding us to jump up on the counters. They didn’t want us to fall or hit our heads when we were jumping up, just like I did.

I remember it distinctly: I was after the ice cream bowls. My Uncle Wally was visiting, and we were having ice cream. I was wearing footie pajamas, which made the jumping-on-the-counter move somewhat hazardous in a full-standing position, because the plastic foots were terribly slippery on the glossy countertop (white with a gold foil accent) so I was being pretty careful, even though I was excited about the ice cream.

I placed my palms flat on the counter top and jumped to get my knees up there, too–but THUNK–I got stopped in mid-boost and gravity pulled me back to the floor.

::::starsbrightnessOUCHwhathappened::::

The cupboard door above me had swung halfway open, and I had launched myself full-force into the bottom of it, whacking my skull right along my middle hair part. Not good, and not conducive to ice-cream-happiness, either.

I got thoroughly scolded for hurting myself (actually, I was probably scolded for disobeying Mom and Dad’s rule, but since I was still pretty buzzy from the head impact, I didn’t mind too much) and was set on Uncle Wally’s lap in the living room while Mom & Dad examined the cupboard door for damage (I’m joking). Sat there for a bit, watching the colours get brighter and darker for a few minutes.

Do you remember the trick that we used to play on each other in grade school, the one in which you’d simulate ‘cracking an egg’ on someone’s head and running your fingers across their hair to make it seem as though egg white was dripping down their head? That’s what it felt like when my scalp finally started bleeding from the laceration, about five minutes after I’d bashed it on the cupboard door.

At that point I didn’t know it was blood running over my hair, but I didn’t think Uncle Wally KNEW the ‘cracking an egg’ trick, and it certainly felt odd–and then suddenly I was flying through the air, but that was just Uncle Wally grabbing me under the arms and rushing toward the bathroom…and I don’t remember anything after that.

I must have been about 10 or 11 years old when I got my ears pierced, and I fainted then, too. I was very excited about getting my ears pierced like the big girls! The very nice woman who pierced them did it with a gun at Swan’s Jewelers in Rogers City, and she was very careful about marking my lobes so that my earrings would be even, although my ears certainly aren’t. She did the first piercing and even though it didn’t hurt at all, I went out like a cheap light bulb in the rain. Woke up laying on my back, looking up and arguing that I MUST have my other ear pierced because I’d be lopsided otherwise. I promised that I wouldn’t pass out with the second ear lobe, and I didn’t.

Another location in which I lost consciousness was St. Ignatius Catholic Church, on the morning of my graduating class’ commencement mass (go, RCHS Class of ’86!). It was a beautiful June morning, sunny and bright, and the church was warm. We were all very excited about commencement that evening and let’s just say that I had been paying more attention to celebrating that weekend than I had to sleeping or eating. At one point we were kneeling and the next I was out in the side parking lot between the school and the church. Thank goodness I’d keeled over while I was as close to the ground as possible.

The next time I lost consciousness was during a pre-surgery blood draw. I think I was 20 or 21, and the lab tech drawing my blood was a cutie named Tim. We were chatting and laughing and he was setting up all the tubes and vials necessary for the tests. I think at that point Tim’s impression of me was still favorable.

Then he began to draw blood, and I noted how dark and rich-looking the blood coming from my vein was. I had enough time to tell Tim that I felt odd, and I woke up laying on the floor with someone’s fingers laced behind my head, and several people peering down at me.

Tim said mournfully “That was my last clean lab coat for this week, and it’s only Tuesday.” Right then I knew he would never ask me out. So from that point on, I made certain to alert all phlebotomists of this little quirk of mine, whether or not they were potential dating material.

The weirdest aspect of my vasovagal syncope is that it’s only my OWN blood that makes me go all vasovagal and stuff. YOU can be pumping blood from an arterial laceration, and I’ll just run and get the materials for a pressure bandage and dial 911 if I can do it while keeping my phone clean, but if I am wounded, I must NOT look or you’ll be talking to yourself for a few seconds.

This occasion during which I lost consciousness was from a slip-and-fall resulting in a blow to the head, so it really doesn’t count as a plain old faint, but I’ll include it anyway because I’m tiresome like that. In 1998 we had just gotten our lab-mix Belle, and since she was an eight-week-old puppy we were in the process of house training her.

I’d just woken up and put on some driving moccasins to take her out to potty in the yard, and slipped on the deck outside. It felt like what happened every time Lucy snatched the ball away right when Charlie Brown tried to kick it–my feet went out from under me and I landed flat on my back, hitting the back of my head on the top step. (Rick says he wishes he could have seen it. Har har.)

I was out for exactly 15 minutes that time–it was 0832 hrs when I walked out the door, and it was 0847 hrs when I stumbled back in. Scared the daylights out of poor little Belly, too. The next-door-neighbor girl who was walking to the school bus, saw me laying on the front steps, but she didn’t stop because she thought I was taking a nap. Outside. On the sidewalk. At the beginning of March. With a screaming puppy in my senseless arms. IN MICHIGAN. *sigh*

At the house in Highland, I also passed out in the bathroom early one morning for some unknown reason. Maybe I really did just wake up too early to function, as I jokingly explained the incident away. I dropped like a BIG sack of potatoes and landed on my face. I had some of those really fancy eyeglass frames at that time, the ones that look more like jewelry than glasses frames, and bent those up pretty good during this incident.

By the way, that’s how you know someone really did pass out–they land on their face. If you just wipe out, or if you’re pretending to faint, you try NOT to land on your face or head.

Alarmingly enough, my wonderful hubby slept through the incredible din that I made when I fell, similar to someone dropping 180-pounds-worth of dead weight TEN FEET AWAY from the bed, but then again, he also sleeps through a ringing telephone. He’s a very sound sleeper.

I fainted once at our house in Saline, too. A week before November, we were getting out of bed and doing the morning routine. I was letting Belle and Kacey out to potty, and poor blind little Kacey looked like she was headed off the deep end of the steps, so I reached out to guide her back to the middle of the steps so she wouldn’t fall.

Clad in my standard PJs of t-shirt and panties, holding the storm door open with my right hand, I was bending over guiding Kacey with my left when a gust of wind caught the storm door like a sail on a sailboat. Unlike a sailboat, I didn’t glide gracefully. Off balance, I flew like a flying squirrel out the door and bounced down the cement stairs on my hands, knees, and stomach. Ice, cement and small rocks can do an enormous amount of damage to bare hands, knees and shins.

Rick was in the bathroom at that point, and since he was awake he heard me call out and came to my rescue. He said “It wasn’t a scream, it was more like a Tarzan yell, so I came running out to see what happened, and I find Kara laying on her belly on the patio.”

Crap. Crap, crap, crap, crappity CRAP that hurt. Rick helped me back inside and I lay down in the big fluffy recliner chair, panting and making some guttural noise that I didn’t know I could make until that moment. I told him I didn’t feel right and he told me to just stay there while he brought unguent and bandages. While he was rummaging in the bathroom, I passed out in the recliner. Vasovagal episode number umpty-umpth, in full recline. At least I couldn’t fall again.

Then that summer I tried to donate blood. I say “tried” because I don’t think I had a successful donation in any of three attempts. The first time I tried to donate, I was in a hurry to get out of the house before a showing (we were trying to sell the house, so I’d spent about an hour and a half rushing around cleaning like a maniac), then I threw the two dogs in the car and poured myself a travel mug full of orange juice and grabbed a slice of banana bread. I choked down my breakfast in the car on the way to the Red Cross office. Then, when I got there, the woman who was getting me set up couldn’t catch my vein in my left arm, not even after three tries.

She fetched another lady, who got it in my right arm in one, and I proceeded to squeeze real hard on the towel in my fist, and filled up that bag in 18 minutes. I guess it’s supposed to take much longer. Anyway, I started to feel odd again, and found out the good people at the Red Cross use paper toweling soaked in ice water to revive fainters. They were very concerned, even after I explained that I’d disregarded every single suggestion for a successful donation and that I wasn’t surprised at all that I’d gone to another dimension. Full bag of blood that they couldn’t use due to my case of the vapors.

A month to the day later, I tried it again. I ate breakfast AND lunch, stayed calm, and…it happened again. By now I’m disappointed with myself, and the ladies at the Red Cross are VERY concerned. “I don’t understand what’s going on, I donated blood while I was in high school and I didn’t pass out then, not even when I was grossed out by the feeling of the hot blood going through the tubing taped to my arm! I don’t know what the problem is!” I vented my frustration at one of the kind volunteers.

“Maybe you’re just feeling a lot of pressure right now,” she answered me soothingly. Then she made a note on my chart to put cotton between the tube and my arm during future donation attempts. “Don’t be too hard on yourself–lots of people don’t even make it through our door.”

So I tried again, one month later. I didn’t squeeze the towel too fast or too hard, I ate well, got enough sleep the night before, played happy, soothing music on the way there…and felt odd AGAIN. Woke again to the brightloudness and lots of ladies draping wet and freezing paper towels over my wrists, forehead and neck. Shoot.

Had a paper bag to breathe in this time, too. Started taking yoga breaths to calm down, and one of the ladies who had a blood pressure cuff on me said “What are you DOING? Just take deep breaths, slowly.” I said “That’s what I’m doing–it’s a yoga technique for relaxation.”

She replied “Well, it’s making your blood pressure and heart rate drop significantly. So DON’T DO THAT.”

The nice people at the Red Cross asked me not to try to donate blood again. Ever. I was sad. But I felt bad, too, at how worried they all were when I’d do my fainting goat impression, so I said “okay” and slunk back home.

There have been more incidents, maybe even a few which I don’t recall (and some of those most certainly for foolish reasons). There have been reasonable spells and not-quite-s0-reasonable spells, and after tallying up the ones I can recall, I’m afraid that I’m not the hardass I made myself out to be. I’m not even as cute as a fainting goat, just a delicate flower of womanhood, like Judy Tenuta, and don’t you be mean to me or I’ll pass out and you’ll be in trouble because you didn’t catch me before I split my lip open on the table.

Friends, it’s time again for another holiday at which gift-giving seems to be required. Bunnies and chicks appear to be the mascots for Easter, but please remember that these are ANIMALS, not toys.

Many well-meaning parents and grandparents (and aunts and uncles and neighbors and friends) give  children “Easter” rabbits and chicks, not realizing that these animals are complex and intelligent beings. Rabbits can have a 10-year lifespan if properly cared for, and chicks grow up to be egg-producing chickens–or ROOSTERS, which can have their own special qualities. I’m guessing that having a crowing rooster in your suburban or urban yard will likely inspire lots of animosity from your neighbors.

Rabbits can make amazing pets. They’re litter-trainable, clicker- and postitive-reinforcement trainable, and need to live in bonded pairs. They’re intelligent and funny, and they can eat all your houseplants in a flash. They can chew through a lamp cord in SECONDS and they’re afraid of falling or being dropped because their physiology includes a weak spinal cord.  If you hold a rabbit incorrectly, and they start to kick because they’re feeling insecure and frightened, they can actually break their own backs. And if they’re feeling insecure they can also bite really effectively (think of those big buck teeth) and they can kick the living daylights out of you, too.

Both rabbits and chickens need to be properly cared for, nourished and vetted–it’s our duty as their caretakers to give them what they need.  And our responsibility to these creatures extends well beyond the point at which the children lose interest in them. Even after the kids are bored with squeezing the stuffing out of the bunny and chasing the chick half-to-death, these animals still require our attention.

So please do not buy a living being as a holiday gift, and then end up “setting the bunny free” or letting the chicks run around loose and unsupervised in the backyard. These animals are domesticated breeds which are ill-equipped to survive on their own and they’re especially vulnerable to predators.

Sadly enough the phenomenon of gifting theme animals at holidays (black cats at Halloween, puppies and kittens at Christmas, rabbits and chicks at Easter) is surprisingly common. Working in dog rescue, I dread the applicants who say they want to “get a puppy as a Christmas gift for the kids” or “get a dog as a birthday gift.” First of all, do the recipients even want an animal? Secondly, people need to be aware of the length of commitment that they’re making to these beings–that dog/rabbit/cat/chicken will be around long after the novelty fades. Are they willing to properly continue to keep that animal as it deserves to be kept? And then there’s the fact that Christmas/Easter/birthdays are chaotic enough without the addition of a new, unfamiliar critter to the household: We need to consider the animal’s comfort and adjustment to its new home, too. Holidays are a singularly poor time to bring a new family member home.

Last, but certainly not least, is the fact that rabbits and dogs and cats (and sheep and chickens and horses and cattle and pigs) are all BEINGS. They’re not possessions, like a car or a purse, they’re living animals with needs and urges like companionship and clean water and food and shelter and warmth and exercise. Should we belittle them by treating them as prizes or inanimate things?

If you truly need to get a special little someone an ‘Easter chick or bunny’ do the responsible thing and go to Build-A-Bear in the mall for an inanimate object that doesn’t depend on you for its life. Even better yet, why not sponsor a rescued rabbit in your special little ones’ names? Check out Great Lakes Rabbit Sanctuary’s activities, and maybe instead of contributing to the problem of unwanted, neglected animals, you can spark an interest in responsible consciousness. Here’s a list of ways you can help GLRS: How to Help. Maybe your little friend will get even more enjoyment out of volunteering to help a bunch of bunnies, than they would out of having their own. In the process, you’ll be able to reinforce the importance of our stewardship over our domesticated animals. Now that’s a sweet idea!

Happy Easter!

So a couple days ago I was in Big Lots, just kind of toodling through the store, finding lots more stuff than what I actually came in for (stick to your list, Kara!). I was wearing one of Rick’s Volunteer orange polo shirts, the one with the name of the home health care company he works for stitched on the upper left breast, and faded jeans, and sneakers.

And then a gentleman asked me where the pump sprayers would be displayed. I said I didn’t know, because I DON’T WORK HERE. Nothing on me said “this woman will know the answers to your questions, and if not, she has the authority to find out.” He mumbled something about how it looked like I was putting stuff on the shelves (yeah, my PURSE sitting in my shopping cart really contributed to that image).

In the past when Cocker Companions Rescue has been out and about as an official group, and we all had our “Cocker Companions Rescue Volunteer” name badges on, I’ve been mistook for an official of whichever store we were at: AgriFeed or Mast General Store, or any other establishment I’ve worn the name badge into. Doesn’t seem to matter that the name badge doesn’t say “AgriFeed” or “Mast General Store”, and people don’t seem to pay attention to that anyway. While appearing in CCR capacity, I’ve just given up trying to explain that I’m not a store employee, and try to point the customer in the correct direction anyway. In AgriFeed, I’m getting pretty good at it because I’ve spent a lot of time there.

But in Big Lots, I wasn’t wearing a name tag of any kind and Big Lots doesn’t seem to have a particular uniform that I’d inadvertently matched, as some other stores do. For example, if you’re just meandering into Target, you do not want to be wearing a red shirt and khakis. In Best Buy, don’t wear your royal blue polo shirt if you don’t wish to be pressed into service, and you get the idea from there.

But at Big Lots, I wasn’t stocking shelves or running a register, had no name tag of any sort…so what would make people think I worked there?  Maybe it’s behavioral. When I came in to the store, I stopped to look at some sweatshirts piled in a cart at the front of the store, and instead of rooting about through them like a pig through oak leaves in search of truffles, I neatly folded the shirts I had looked at. I have no idea if that’s what the gentleman wanting the pump sprayers had cued in on, and by that time I had been in the store for about 15 or 20 minutes when he approached me so I’m not sure that’s what he saw me doing, but I’m grasping at straws.

In Kroger a couple weeks ago, I was again lacking any sort of name badge or ID associating me with the store in an official capacity, when a lady approached me in the dairy department. She asked me why there were no ham steaks, only packages of cubed pieces of country ham on the display. I had to tell her I didn’t know, earning a filthy look in return, and then I pointed out an actual employee stocking eggs on the other side of the aisle. “Maybe he could tell you, ma’am.”

How often does this happen to you, Gentle Reader? With me, this is a pretty regular occurrence, sometimes as often as every week-and-a-half or so. I can’t imagine that I just look helpful and approachable enough that I draw people in need.

Eh. Then again, I definitely draw DOGS in need to me, so maybe that strange magnetism draws people as well.

The strangeness at Big Lots didn’t end there, either. While waiting in line at the register, I was minding my own business and texting my niece, Bethany. I don’t text very well. Typing with my thumbs is time-consuming and therefore annoying. I can hit 80 wpm + on a standard sized keyboard. So why would I want to piddle around making typos with my freaking arthritic thumbs on a cellphone keypad? I recognize that it’s a common and handy method of communication for the younger set however, so I will use it when appropriate. But keep in mind it is a sloooooow process for me, and I have to concentrate.

The line was moving very slowly at the register, so when a lady in back of me asked me to keep her place while she checked the price of something in one of the nearby aisles, I agreed. I didn’t really do anything, just kept texting and waiting for the line to advance. I finished and sent the text, which should give you an idea of the length of the delay in the line.

The lady returned to her cart, disappointed that the item was no longer on sale, and somehow this started a conversation. She leaned over to peer at the upper left breast of my polo shirt and said “Oh, you work in healthcare? What do you think about the healthcare bill?”

If she knew me, she wouldn’t have opened that can of worms. She would have looked into my black heart and realized that there’s NOTHING ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH THAT I WANTED TO DISCUSS LESS THAN THE HEALTHCARE BILL. And then she would have run off, screaming in fear.

I murmured that it was out of my hands and that I had no opinion, hoping to end this gambit where it stood. But no, she wanted to share her views. She commented that the bill would make insurance too expensive for everyone and that it would bring about the financial ruin of the country. I commented that the trillions of dollars worth of debt from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan probably wouldn’t contribute to the financial ruin of the country, and decisively turned away from her to end the conversation.

WHY do people do that? I am not an approachable person!  Or at least, I don’t want to be approachable. I want to appear as a confident, unremarkable person, to whom you’d apologise if you ran over their foot with your grocery cart, but otherwise ignore.

I guess until I find my ideal job working by myself from home or from a desert island somewhere, I’ll continue to be helpful and polite in the meantime.

So the darling Baby Lady Grrl, Gigi, killed a rabbit early Sunday morning and ate a good part of it before party-pooper Momma came outside and took it away. Ick.

Hard to believe, too, if you’ve ever met my darling Gee.  But then again she does have a healthy appetite and is always on the lookout for food, or for things which can substitute for food, like the cardboard box the frozen garlic bread came in. She filched that from the paper recycling bag and ate a sizeable square. It looked like guinea pigs had ate at it, but Gigi doesn’t digest cardboard as well as guinea pigs.  We had several episodes of chucking up the undigestable remnants, identifiable because they were the same colour as the garlic bread package remnants.  Anyway, here she is, Lady Godiva in all her skinny-legged glory:

Yup. That's a savage killer, right there. If you're a rabbit or an olive, that is.

Tonight I was getting a few olives for a snack, green ones stuffed with pimiento, and I dropped one. Gee the Carnivorous was on it in a flash. She wasn’t certain she wanted it, though. She took it away and rolled it around in her mouth, setting it down on the carpet several times (of course).

She finally finished it and must have decided it was good, because a few minutes later she showed up, sniffing around the end table on which I had my dish of olives and glass of Kool Aid (yes, I have the sophisticated palate of a 12-year-old) and it was necessary to remind her that her food dishes are NEVER served to her on the end tables in the livingroom.

Now I’m wondering if she’s getting enough food. What dog would be nutso enough to eat an olive, for Pete’s sake? It’s not even a black olive, or a Kalamata. This was one of those hard-core little green olives, wasn’t even stuffed with blue cheese or anything lovely like that! So she’s gotta be seriously hungry.

She and her brother, Skipper, get 1/3 of a cup of California Natural Lamb & Rice kibble twice a day, with 1/2 cup of applesauce and a fish oil capsule. They and their other brother and sister share apples and bananas and carrots with me during the day, as well as enjoying an occasional Wellness bar as a treat. None of the dogs are malnourished–in fact, they’re all pretty much at the perfect weight, so I hate to mess around with the amount of kibble they’re getting.  Gee has approached porkdom in the past, and I don’t want her weight to seesaw up and down like her momma’s does.

I’ll have to start supplementing their kibble, applesauce, and fish oil caplets with something more substantial, like green beans and steamed carrots again, to give them a little more of a full-tummy feeling.

Recently the tragic death of SeaWorld’s killer whale trainer Dawn Brancheau flooded the news outlets. Many people commented that Tilikum, the whale, should be euthanised.

It’s very sad that Brancheau died while working with Tilikum, but what we all need to keep in mind is that no matter how well-trained he is, Tilikum is still a wild creature. He is a KILLER WHALE, and that’s what he does–or that’s what he would do, if he weren’t artificially confined in a space less than 1/25th the size of comfortable stomping grounds in the ocean.

I think Brancheau knew this, and accepted those risks as part of her career as a trainer.
From comments in the media about her dedication to her job, it seemed she loved working with the orcas to show spectators the majesty and capability of these creatures.

But no matter how many tricks Tilikum knows, no matter how much affection he seems to display to his human keepers, he remains a predatory creature with different motivations, language and desires from humans. Even though the trainers know this, and work together very closely to avoid mishaps, the potential still exists for tragic accidents.

This doesn’t apply just to killer whales or lions or elephants.  We need to be mindful that our own domesticated animals are still animals, too. They’re not little furry people running around on four legs with poor language skills–they’re ANIMALS, no matter how radically humans have changed their behavior from their cousins still living in the wild.

I got a vivid reminder of that this weekend.

Early Sunday morning, right around 4 a.m., I was getting ready to join the Wonderful Pumpkin in our cozy bed, so I let Gigi and Riley out to potty one last time.  Skipper was NOT going outside because it was a bit chilly, and Belle had been sleeping for hours and hours and wouldn’t wake up to go out for quite a while.

Riley went down and pottied, and came back up promptly.  I let him in and gave Gee a couple more minutes, but when she didn’t come in a short while later, I tried calling her.

You must understand that our children are essentially four sporting dogs.  Belle is a Labrador mix, Riley is an English springer spaniel fieldy, and Skipper and Gigi are American cocker spaniels. Even though they’re supposed to have specialities specific to their breeds, they don’t all exhibit the same zest for the hunt, and neither Rick nor I mind that.  We’re not hunters and we don’t expect our dogs to ‘earn their keep’ with a specific skill.

Belle likes to chase birds and rabbits, and she and her long-departed cocker sister Kacey Marie managed to bring down a baby possum in the backyard of our Highland Township home in Michigan. She’s quick, and true to the nature of most dogs, anything ‘moving’ in her yard offends her, and she will give fervent chase, but I don’t think she’s as dedicated to it as some dogs would be.

Riley is our handsome, darling boy, but for all his beauty he’s a little brainless when it comes to prey and how to deal with it. This is probably the reason he was deserted by a fishing hole up near Lawrenceburg, KY–handsome dog with promising bone structure and beautiful markings has no natural instinct regarding birds, i.e. “dog won’t hunt” and so “dog is history.”

Skipper-Dee-Doo-Dah (or “Poos” for short) is so completely a momma’s boy that he can’t stand to be outside for the time it would take to hunt something down and kill it and eat it. Now if Momma came out to help, that might be a different story.

And then there’s Lady Godiva, aka Gigi, aka ‘The Baby Lady.” Gigi, a chocolate cocker, is my darling. She’s my unabashed favorite grrl, endearing herself to me with her extreme shyness and timidity when she first came to us as a heartworm-positive foster back in September of 2008. (There–I SAID it. I have a ‘favorite’ dog. I feel like a parent confessing to favoring one child over the rest.) As she got to know and trust us more at home, she’s grown to become a funny, happy grrl who’s earned the nickname “Waterbug” because when she’s really excited she’ll jump around in full 360′s.

Gigi went from being so shy that she would just freeze when you reached down to pet her, to wrestling with Riley and jumping up to stand on your chest and smile down at you while you’re sitting on the sofa. And even though she’s no longer terrified and helpless around us, I still feel particularly protective and affectionate toward her.

And ironically, even though we see Gigi as our darling cuddly baby grrl who’s cuter than any danged button in the world, she’s our sportswoman.  She is fast and smart, an unapologetic hunter who doesn’t mind rain and cold and sparks the rest of the dogs into giving chase and really acting like dogs.

It’s awesome to watch them all charge out into the yard late at night (or early in the morning) with Gigi leading the vocally-silent assault on the unfortunate critter who happens into our yard. A rabbit chase is punctuated by the sounds of the dogs’ feet first thundering down the steps to the deck, and then back and forth in the yard below.  Most of the time, the chase ends with the rattle of the chain link fence signaling the just-in-time departure of the critter.

Occasionally it doesn’t end so well for the critter.  I can tell you that rabbits scream when they’re captured, a heartrending exclamation of horror that seizes my heart. Most often, it’s Gigi who’s quick and dexterous enough to have caught the prey, but I didn’t think she knew what to do with it.  Rick says he’s seen her staring at a bunny she’s pinned to the ground with her front paws, as if she’s amazed she caught it, while the other dogs milled around behind her.

Apparently she finally figured out what to do with the bunny once she caught it.

After Rye came in I gave Gigi a few more minutes, and then I went out on the deck and called her to come in.  She ignored me, which means she was hunting something.  I got the flashlight and tried to find her in the yard. Usually she circles the small utility shed toward the back of the yard, under which many small critters have tried to make their homes. No circles, and I couldn’t see her at all, but I did hear an odd ripping sound and suspected that she was tearing at the plywood that Rick used to barricade the underside of the shed.

If Geej is after something under the shed, she will NOT come in on her own–If I don’t want to wait for an hour or so, I’ll have to go out there and get her. Slipped on my shoes and grabbed the flashlight, and when I was down in the yard on my way out to the shed, I finally saw her–by the fence.  She was concentrating on something at her feet, and as I got closer, the flashlight illuminated the body of a young rabbit, which Gee had caught and partially eaten.

Aw, jeez.

It could have been lots worse–last summer, we were babysitting Karen’s five kids, and her golden retriever, Gretta, actually caught a baby rabbit in the backyard.  I was at work, so Rick had to deal with a mangled baby bunny who was tragically still alive.  He was on his way to the University of Tennessee with the baby when it died in the truck with him.  Heartbreaking.

Bear in mind that Rick and I are not only dog lovers. We love all animals, including rabbits and other wild and domesticated fuzzies, so it’s heartbreaking for us to see an animal become prey.

Most of the time, our kids enjoy the thrill of the hunt without ever ‘finishing’ it. But we have to remember that they are animals, and even though we feed them nutritionally-balanced meals on a regular basis, that there’s still a gene-level memory in them of when they had to feed themselves.

I couldn’t be angry with Gigi.  She’s doing what she was genetically programmed to do, which is to hunt and feed herself. I felt so sad for the rabbit, but I think it died quickly. Well, I hope that’s what happened, anyway. I picked Gigi up to carry her inside, because she really wasn’t ready to leave her prize yet.

Came back out and picked up the dead bunny with a couple of plastic grocery bags and put it in the trash can out front. Its eyes were just beginning to cloud over, but its body was still very warm. Went back inside and checked my darling little grrl for wounds and blood, and discovered that her ears and paws were very bloody and took her into the bathroom for a quick front-end bath. Mud and blood ran down the tub’s drain, and I kept up a very calm and loving patter while I soaped Geej’s ears and front paws and muzzle.  Ew, but this is what happens when a dog (even a darling, fuzzy dog!) kills another animal and commences to eat it.

Kept an eye on her on Sunday to make sure she didn’t suffer any ill effects from her hunt, but frankly I think the rabbit and I got the worst end of that deal. Obviously the rabbit is the overall loser in this story, but again, I can’t blame Gigi or scold her for this.

We need to remember this about all our companion animals, too, not just dogs. Many people who have sporting dogs like beagles and bird dogs have discovered that the prey instinct is very strong in their beloved pets, so strong that it’s not safe for the household to have a bird or rodent as another pet.

And as much as we love our companion animals and train them to live under our roofs with us, they’re still animals and are capable of acting out against us and expressing their fear, frustration or anger in animalistic ways. Your Mr. Poofy Pants Kitty might be pretty tolerant, but he’s still got sharp teeth and may hiss, growl, or even try to bite you if you’re doing something he doesn’t like. My Baby Lady might be adorably fuzzy and shy and funny, but she’s still capable of killing a small animal to feed. Let’s just keep that in mind.

Here's the Baby Lady. Doesn't look like a bloodthirsty killer, do she?