How to train your human

I’ve known my share of “bad” dogs. My mental roster includes a robust Chocolate Lab that dragged whoever held her leash, a stubborn, overweight Golden Retriever that devoured a cellphone and a sausage of a Border Collie that never met a french fry she didn’t like. All are past or present members of the Winslow family.

Hailey & Barkley circa 1989

For years I’ve daydreamed about adopting the first dog of my adulthood, but I put off a serious search until this past autumn. By then, my husband and I had completed our “World Trip” and settled into our new West Coast home. So I told Matt I wanted a dog addendum added to our lease as my birthday present. He made it happen. And then I got to work. I signed up to become a “Dog TLC” volunteer with the Peninsula Humane Society in Burlingame. I researched online and borrowed library books on canine behavior. I took a part-time position with Benji’s Backyard, a small business that shuttles dogs from the Silicon Valley suburbs to Fort Funston in San Francisco for 3-hour romps on the beach. And what did I learn? All that exposure to dogs and dog experts essentially boiled down to one universal truth: Most “bad” dog behavior is not the fault of the dog but the two-legged creature at the other end of the leash. Consequently, it is with great humility that I recognize my contribution to the legacy of delinquent Winslow dogs.

My family had three dogs and three cats for most of my childhood, and although my sister and I were extremely fond of all our pets, we were selfish and lazy when it came to training them. It was our mom who singlehandedly housetrained Barkley, Jackson and Charlie, and she did an admirable job molding them into loving, loyal family members. They were still turds.

Scene of the crime

The first Winslow turd was Barkley, a miniature schnauzer mix my family adopted when I was about 6 years old. According to legend, my mom selected Barkley -- of all the dogs warehoused at the Broward County Humane Society –because he had the shrewd sense to jump into her arms as she entered his kennel. We named him for a “Sesame Street” canine with similar shaggy gray hair, and he demonstrated the appropriateness of our selection through his favorite pastime, which, of course, was barking.

The quintessential Barkley story involves a houseboat and a jet ski. In Barkley’s pea-sized brain, jet skis were roaring, menacing demons intent on destroying the sanctity of water-related excursions; his burden was to keep them in line. And so our 20-pound mutt exhausted countless hours of his 18-year life chasing jet skis up and down beaches, his frame morphing into a gray blur as he reached warp speed and all four legs left the sand at once. He barked and he barked and he barked. There was no calming him. His hatred for personal watercrafts was legendary, even comical. Yet none of us anticipated how his mania would culminate into sheer madness one weekend afternoon in the late 1980s.

Barkley in his golden years

In those days, it was customary for the Winslows to spend at least part of the weekend on my grandparents’ houseboat, the Loggerhead. On that particular weekend, the Loggerhead was ambling down the St. John’s River when a jet ski pulled up alongside. Enraged by this noisy interloper, Barkley began racing across the second story of the houseboat. Upon reaching the bow, he took a flying leap and belly-flopped 12 feet into the water below. He did not surface until passing beneath the entire length of the 55-foot boat.

My dad was not particularly fond of Barkley, but he did not hesitate to dive in after him. Somehow, Dad managed to swim back to the boat with the half-drowned dog flailing in his arms.

Barkley didn’t slow down until Hailey and I were in college. By then, cataracts had claimed his sight and advancing age had scrambled his brains. He often “stared” into corners and barked at nothing at all. He coughed up puddles of phlegm, presents Matt never failed to step in, and, if not monitored, would walk straight off second-floor landings (He did so on at least two occasions and, miraculously, suffered no discernible injuries, a clueless Mr. Magoo of a canine.). 

Charlie: The best dog I've ever known

Barkley, that incessantly howling, mailman-biting, phlegm-spouting, pee machine, was definitely on my mind as I conducted my search for a four-legged best friend. As much as we all (excluding perhaps Dad and Matt) loved that dearly departed dog, I was not in the market for another Barkley. And I happened to be in a unique position to be choosy; I met and interacted with adoptable dogs during each volunteer shift at the humane society. I also carefully observed the Benji’s Backyard dogs I took to the beach.

“Jack Russell terriers are too hyper,” I said to Marie, Benji’s Backyard owner. “And I’ve met some sweet pit bulls, but I don’t think I’d ever adopt one. They seem unpredictable.”

I certainly didn’t have the energy for a boxer like the giant, high-strung beast I walked most days. Tommy* can be awfully sweet but he barks incessantly to demand I throw whatever I happen to be holding in my hands. He has a habit of torturing the overturned crabs that wash up on the shore, and his favorite game is lunging to rip legs off those I’m holding aloft to toss back into the ocean.

“We are not getting a male dog,” I repeatedly told Matt. “They have too much aggression and pee on everything.”

I knew what I wanted: a calm, mid-sized, adult female dog, preferably of the Border Collie variety. And it had to be a rescue. That got along with our cats.

Dad & Jackson (before he ate the cellphone)

“Do you eat kitty cats?” I asked Keesha as I took her picture for the PHS adoption website. The Queensland Heeler seemed to smile, and I took that as a favorable sign.

But as with every major decision I’ve made in life, I erred on the side of caution and waited. And waited. And waited. Months went by. Keesha the Heeler and Catorina the Dachshund and Phi the Australian Shepherd all went to other homes.

“I don’t know how you go to the humane society each day and not come back with a dog,” my mom would say whenever I called her during my drive to PHS.

I reminded her of all the canine troublemakers my family has sheltered over the years. Inevitably, Scrappy’s name came up.

Scrappy is the demon dog my mom adopted under the pretense of fostering him for her own local shelter. Three years later, he is still at her side and wrecking havoc daily: perfuming himself with carrion, lunging at much larger dogs, decorating the interiors of new cars with footprints, snagging sausage links from the kitchen table, running from his owners as they attempt to leash him in front of beach patrol officers. He is, however, pretty cute, an oddly proportioned terrier mix with pointy ears and wiry hair that somehow floats into most meals my mom cooks. Scrappy resembles Alf, that wisecracking extraterrestrial from the 1980s television show, and Mom wishes she had had the foresight to switch his name to “Alf” long ago, as she believes his original name inspires mayhem.

Ruby, Scrappy & Hailey in St. Augustine

Scrappy just might be Barkley reincarnated. His favorite pastime is perching on the bow of my parents’ Boston Whaler and angrily barking at -- and biting-- the boat’s wake. Unless leashed, Scrappy becomes so obsessed with eating waves that he plunges headfirst into the water. On one such underwater exploration in St. Augustine, Fla., Scrappy swallowed so much of the Intracoastal Waterway that he became sick the moment my dad plucked him from the waves. He expelled a terrific stream of diarrhea across the boat, causing its occupants, including family friends Michael and Diane Buchanan, to promptly became nauseous. (While video footage of that particular plunge is unavailable, here are clips of three other Scrappy boating incidents, including one in which Hailey pulled a "Dad" and dove in after him: "Scrappy Plunge, Part I," "Scrappy Plunge, Part II" and "Scrappy, a Slight Alteration.") 

Scrappy is a loyal dog that adores my mother and has become a never-ending source of comic relief for my family. But no, the Winslow Family dog roster did not need another wave-eating, dead-fish-rolling, Napoleon-complexed canine.

Sally, Scamp & Tess

Last Wednesday, I drove to PHS early to photograph adoptable dogs for the website before I began my shift in the wildlife department. I was a mere 10 feet in the door when I spied Scamp, a 7-month-old terrier mix tussling with his kennelmates. With crazy gray and black fur standing on end and a pair of floppy, antennae-like ears protruding from a tiny 6-pound body, he was easily the cutest of the four puppies.

But I don’t want cute, I reminded myself. I want smart. I want good. I want female.

Thanks to puppy mills and that ignorant segment of the population that fails to spay and neuter pets, San Francisco Bay Area shelters are flooded with Chihuahuas and pit bulls. PHS is no different. Young dogs that aren’t Chihuahuas or pit bulls are rare and highly desirable. Fluffy, white puppies are adopted so quickly the volunteer photography team often doesn’t bother photographing them; odds are, someone will adopt the pup before we have a chance to post his mug online. I’ve always scoffed at these puppy-obsessed adopters. Don’t they know all dogs grow up? Don’t they realize “cute” is fleeting?

The puppies in dorm AD 145 were brand-new arrivals. It was 10 a.m. The public wouldn’t know about them for another hour, when the shelter’s doors opened at 11 a.m. I felt an unfamiliar wave of frenzy wash over me. Now was the time. I had to investigate.

The Wolfman

Scamp was the only male dog in the kennel, so I asked an adoption counselor about the others, Sally, Cherry and Tess*. The behavior logs for Sally and Cherry flagged them as “nippers,” so I visited with Tess, a sweet, all-black terrier pup.

Selecting any pet, a new family member that will spend decades at one’s side, based on a 10-minute visit is a bit asinine. Most people wouldn’t select a human best friend within 10 minutes because it’s impossible to sufficiently judge character in that time. Yet I spent 10 minutes with Tess in the PHS “Get Acquainted” room and made the kind of snap judgment required in that situation: Tess was indifferent to me. So the adoption counselor brought in Scamp. He jumped into my arms.

“Scamp” is now Wolfgang, a tribute to his lycanthropic features. He has Barkley’s gray coat and Scrappy’s disproportioned ears. He eats leaves and dirt and howls when housed within his kennel.

“’We are not getting a male dog,’” Matt has said repeatedly, mimicking me.

My husband is absolutely right. Wolfgang is everything I didn’t want in a dog: male, adolescent and tiny. And, since adopting him, I’ve done all those ridiculous things owners of small dogs so often do: carrying him into Walgreens, purchasing a special purse for him to ride in, pricing tiny knit sweaters to keep him warm.

But will Wolfgang be a “bad” dog? That’s up to Matt and I and how much time we’re willing to invest in his training. A dog behaviorist I recently met demonstrated just how important such training is.

Wolfie & Matt

Robert accompanied Marie and I to the beach on Friday so as to evaluate Tommy and his relationship with Billy, a pit bull that frequently lunges and snarls at him. Within 20 minutes, Robert had taught both dogs a “settle” command and had bewitched them into interacting peacefully.

Dog training is difficult because it requires the dog to suppress its natural instincts, Robert said. For example, a dog in the wild would starve if it wasn’t able to chase a darting rabbit, but domestic dogs are taught to ignore such a distraction.

Robert’s current big assignment is with a Mountain View beer garden; He’s been hired to teach the owner’s Bernese Mountain Dog to pull a cart so as to deliver drinks to customers. So far, the pup can comfortably haul 120 pounds.

I don’t see cart pulling in tiny Wolfgang’s future, but basic commands are forthcoming. He came “pre-programmed” to fetch, and Matt taught him “sit” within a single, 30-minute training session. It’s a start. Just to be safe, I’m thinking our next lesson should focus on perfecting “stay” in preparation for his inaugural Winslow boating trip.

*Names have been changed to protect the guilty

Skunk-ageddon

Most of us have, at one time or another, passed through a putrescent puff of skunk funk during a stroll in our neighborhood or perhaps a hike in the woods.

“Phew!” we may say to ourselves, noses twitching every which way. We hold our breath and pick up the pace until we’ve safely escaped the almost visible boundaries of the scent.

But when detonated from within closed quarters, skunk spray has the astounding ability to permeate through solid doors, tunnel through air vents and peel paint from walls. It’s powerful enough to make eyes tear up, as my fellow Wildlife Department volunteer Jennalee discovered on Wednesday.

Jennalee’s eyes began weeping not long after she and I commenced our vigil outside the double doors of the exam room.  I’d like to report we were engaged in some sort of important scientific observation of the activity underway within, but we were simply overcome by a perverse curiosity, something akin to rubbernecking on the highway. Well, at least I was.

Like fearless first responders sacrificing themselves to save others, Ashley and Gary had charged into that odiferous exam room to confront the sick skunk inside. Jennalee and I watched, mouths closed, as Gary held down the great beast and Ashley administered fluids. A healthy skunk would have fought and sprayed at our heroes, but this one simply leaked and oozed into the towel placed beneath him. Even from the opposite side of the doors, Jennalee and I could taste skunk funk on our tongues.

“Get the coffee in the locker!” Gary said.

Oh crap. He was speaking to us.

“Do you know what he’s talking about?” I asked Jennalee. She did.

But the coffee grounds kept in the supply closet for the express purpose of absorbing skunk stench were exhausted. So I booked it to the employee break room and ransacked the cabinets there. Armed with two single-serving packets of Colombian blend (fully caffeinated – decaf just wasn’t going to cut it), I returned to the double doors, sucked in a deep breath and pushed through.

Confined within that 8 by 10-foot room, the fumes were positively toxic and thick enough to induce coughing. It was the kind of stench you imagine you can actually see, squiggly green vapors suspended in the air. I’ve smelled burning corpses before. This was worse.

“Holy crap, that stinks!” I said, a tad louder than the situation called for. Our heroes shushed me, presumably to spare the patient any embarrassment.

In a motion not unlike ripping a pin from a grenade, I tore open the coffee packets and dumped the contents onto a large metal pan. Then I retreated.

“There’s a skunk in recovery,” I texted Matt. “Worst smell ever.”

“Poor skunk,” he texted back. “What’s wrong with it?”

“They don’t know. He’s just not very mobile. I think they’re giving him fluids. Ashley and Gary are going to reek afterward.”

Eager for a breath of fresh air, I decided this was an ideal time to visit the shelter gift shop and buy a kennel key from the cashier there. Business had been slow, and she seemed eager to chat.

“You’re in Wildlife, so you’ll appreciate this,” she said. “My husband fancies himself a wildlife photographer. He especially likes birds. So he drove 150 miles alone the other day to get these shots at a park near Gilroy.”

She handed me her smartphone.

“Just scroll down,” she said. “They’re long-eared owls.”

“Great shots. Where did you say he took these?”

The woman’s nose twitched.

“Have you been hanging out with a skunk?” she said, gasping for air and grasping for her phone.

I bent my head and directed my own nose to the collar of my favorite jacket.

“Oh man!” I moaned. I expedited my purchase and vacated the gift shop before the cashier asphyxiated.

Back in Wildlife, Ashley and Gary had settled the skunk into an outdoor kennel. His stench, however, still lingered throughout the department hallways. It would remain so for days.

“I got my key, but the cashier says I stink too,” I told Ashley. “So, how do I get rid of the smell? Just shower and shampoo and wash my clothes a few times?”

Ashley opened her eyes wide, smiled and shook her head back and forth.

“What? What does that mean? Am I going to have to burn my clothes?!”

“No, you’ll be fine,” she said, laughing. “Your car’s going to stink, though. My car always stinks after.”

“But I’m spending all next week in my car!”

“Well, maybe use your husband’s car.”

“We have just one car.”

“Oh. Good luck.”

I called my mom on my way home. She thought the situation was hilarious. And the fact she thought the situation was hilarious reminded me of the psychological torture she and my father subjected me to as a child.

While my parents, supposedly impartial role models, adorably referred to my younger sister as “Mouse” or “Sweet Pea” or “Twinkle Toes,” they called me “The Beast,” “The Godmother” and, worst of all, “Stinky.” And I was not, to the best of my knowledge, a dirty or disgusting kid! Nevertheless, my parents solidified my association with filth and putrescence throughout my childhood. When I was 8, they returned from a trip to present Hailey with a plush opossum (who doesn’t love a baby opossum?!) and me with a skunk, which I still own and which scares the bejesus out of my cats. During my twelfth year, my parents somehow managed to intercept my request for the nickname that would appear on the back of my youth soccer jersey and informed the coach it should read “Pig Pen.” And so it did.  You can imagine what a boon this was to my ranking on the middle school popularity scale.

Years of therapy have softened the bitter sting of “Stinky.”  I think saddling Matt with the pet name has also contributed to my improved self-image (In exchange, I’ve agreed to endure the slightly less-offensive “Smelly). But I’m still sensitive to association with the fetid. So in the aftermath of “Skunk-ageddon,” I’ve showered twice and twice laundered my clothes. I think I’m officially stench-free, but as is commonly the case with B.O., it’s difficult to know for sure without shoving an armpit into a loved one’s face. Stinky should be home from work soon. I’ll make him smell me.

Rats, mealworms and smelt

It’s funny how the horror of snipping a wriggling mealworm in half suddenly becomes tolerable (at least for the one wielding the scissors) once you’ve progressed to segmenting a defrosted rodent.  I can now say I’ve done both as a Peninsula Humane Society & SPCA Wildlife Department volunteer, and, without a doubt, I prefer beetle larvae decapitation.

For months, I’d been dissecting live mealworms and cutting defrosted crickets with surgical scissors in order to accommodate the beaks of the smallest of the bird nursery fledglings. That was OK; Even halved, the mealworms kept up their writhing, and the little birds always seemed so thankful when swallowing the morsels. Then came a day when I was assigned to the courtyard shift, and I joined a college intern in preparing dinner for the raccoons and opossums. This proved an alien task for both of us.

Raccoons in recovery, it should be noted, eat a regimented diet of dry dog food, fresh produce and smelt, an appropriately named, small odorous fish. Each raccoon, depending on their size and age, is entitled to a certain amount of each of these ingredients, as stated within a “diet binder,” and that amount is then multiplied by the number of raccoons present in the enclosure with roommates sharing one or two colossal metal bowls “family style.” That particular day, we were dealing with six enclosures, each containing between five and eight raccoons.

The intern and I assembled the dog food and chopped carrots and apples into chunks to fill the bowls. Then she hacked away at a frozen block of smelt and I carefully counted and deposited the defrosted fish (or pieces of fish) she dislodged into each labeled bowl. I used my gloved hand to mix in the glassy-eyed stinkers, concocting a medley I hoped was both appetizing and pleasing to the raccoons’ palates.

This assembly line procedure went on for about an hour, and we had just managed to shove all the bowls into the fridge when we realized we had mistakenly followed the diet for adult raccoons – not juveniles whose diet requires less kibble and fish.

Out came the 10 or so dishes. And so commenced some frantic mental math as the intern and I recalculated each quantity of kibble and smelt, guessed how we had divided the original amounts among multiple bowls marked for each enclosure and then scavenged in the heinous piles to retrieve the extra. It wasn’t pleasant, but in the end, the raccoons had just the amount of grub they were supposed to.

I was about to leave for the day when I asked Patrick, the head of the department, about dining options for the opossums.

“Get a rat pup and divide it between the five of them,” he said.

I swallowed. Huh?

I found the rat pup in a bag in the freezer, his frozen white fur slicked back with ice. Attached to the fur were pieces of tiny pink rat hands that had snapped off his litter mates when they were individually detached from the frozen ball of rat bodies. 

Despite the extra appendages, our pup was pretty darn cute and looked more like a mouse than a rat.

The intern placed the rodent popsicle within a bowl of warm water, and we watched in silence as he floated around. Periodically, she would employ a gloved finger to dunk him into the warmth.

When the intern had deemed the body “soft enough,” I grasped the body with one hand and held it over a dish while the poultry scissors quivered in my other hand. I decided to start at the head and turned my own slightly to look away as I began to cut. The sinews were stringy and tough. I struggled to bring the blades together.

“Imagine you’re cutting fabric,” the intern said.

That advice actually seemed to help, and I successfully made it through all four cuts. The intern placed the five sections into five dishes and these we crammed into the fridge beside the raccoon dinners. I tried my best not to think about them when I ate my own that evening.

It's a dirty job

Lucy, Ashley & Gene the Birdman

As a regular volunteer for the Peninsula Humane Society & SPCA Wildlife Department, I’ve been blessed with the rare opportunity to perform hands-on care for a variety of species. This work has the ability to be both exceptionally rewarding and, at times, gag-inducing.

During the first of two squirrel “seasons” expected this year, I worked with orphaned and injured Eastern Gray Squirrels, which, interestingly enough, can be black in color if they carry a mutant pigment gene. My duties generally consisted of preparing and then administering formula via syringes outfitted with rubber nipples. The sickly sweet scent of Similac Formula reminds me an awful lot of vanilla Carnation Instant Breakfast – and not in a good way – but the squirrels don’t seem to mind. Watching them grasp the sides of the syringes with their pink little squirrel hands is pretty darn cute.

When squirrels are so young they can’t yet open their eyes (generally under 4 weeks old), feeding is straightforward because it’s permissible to hold them. It’s when they become rowdy juveniles and graduate to sharing a cage with several other rowdy juveniles that the task becomes tricky. By this point, your patients usually fall into one of two possibly categories: (1) they are nearly self-feeding and no longer desire formula, meaning you must chase them around the cage with the syringe or, (2) they are ravenous and steal each other’s food or suck on the syringe with such force that they can aspirate if you don’t hold back the plunger. Alas, the juvenile stage is also when they begin to bite, as I learned during a recent shift (Coincidentally, this happened to be the same shift I managed to squirt Similac into my eye).

With the PHS squirrel patient numbers dwindling, I’ve recently been assigned to the baby bird nursery. Between the nine incubators, handful of reptariums and countless mesh-covered laundry baskets, the nursery can accommodate between 20 and 30 birds at a time with each enclosure operating on a feeding schedule depending on the resident’s age, species and diet. Most of the birds are on the 30-minute timer, which means every staff member, volunteer and intern in the room abandons what they’re doing to feed them every 30 minutes when the timer sounds. With the exception of hummingbirds, which sip nectar from syringes, the feathery patients gobble songbird formula (administered by syringe), fruit and seed (in a dish) and defrosted crickets and live mealworms (administered with forceps). I sometimes feel sorry for the worms, especially when I have to snip them in half to accommodate a small beak. On the bright side, the birds are generally appreciative, gaping wide, flapping their wings and wiggling with excitement when they anticipate a morsel.  During my shift, nursery patients have included robins, starlings, mockingbirds, blackbirds, juncos, towhees, crows, jays and hummingbirds. Starlings, it should be noted, are incredibly messy birds that relish flicking formula across their enclosure. Otherwise, they’re good eaters and tend to shriek until their crops are full.

I’ve worked in the wildlife department courtyard a handful of times, a shift that generally includes scrubbing bird poop off wooden perches and raccoon mess from kennels. A few weeks ago, I had the great fortune of working the courtyard shift just before I was due to meet friends for dinner. On this particular day, the skunk kennel required cleaning with blasts of water and disinfectant from a high-powered hose, so I found a hooded white suit similar to the “bunny suit” John Kerry wore during his tour of the space shuttle Discovery – and I looked just as ridiculous, topping off the ensemble with giant rubber boots, surgical gloves and a face mask. But I remained clean!

Twice I’ve been assigned to Recovery, the section of the Wildlife Department that handles the intake of new patients and cares for raccoons, raptors, pelagic birds and opossums that for one reason or another cannot be placed in outside enclosures. On Wednesday, I prepared a kennel for a Northern Fulmar, a gull-like bird, observed the examination of a juvenile red-tailed hawk, cleaned up after a group of messy raccoons, defrosted 13 mice for the raptors’ dinner and learned how to use the centrifuge and read the results. It was also, unfortunately, a heavy day for euthanasia, with staff having to put down an injured coyote, an enormous skunk with a broken spine and a bat that interacted with a dog and must now be tested for rabies. Also of note, a local man found a baby opossum in his backyard and brought it in. The tiny opossum with his bug-eyed expression was cute, but Lucy, the 16-year-old cockatoo “Gene the Birdman” carried on his shoulder, fascinated me. Lucy is just one of 46 birds residing in Gene’s home, and he has trained her and many of her roommates to perform tricks for children’s shows and the like. He demonstrated how he flips her upside down to pick up items he drops and how he can cradle her in his arms like a baby.

Meeting remarkable Lucy marked the near-end of my shift, and, thankfully, I could “escape” before those frozen mice thawed and Gary, a colleague, could demonstrate his technique for skinning the rodents. Until next week!