Attention to Details

In addition to the wonderful coffee pot that Ken uses to make our breakfast coffee with whole beans, we have a Tassimo coffee machine that makes single cups of coffee. We use it for many kinds of hot beverages: regular coffee, decaf, lattes, tea, and hot chocolate. Every week we go to Canton to take groceries to Ken's parents and take them out to dinner. Almost every time we go, I make a cup of coffee for each of us to drink as we drive across Route 30. Both dogs know this.

They watch very closely everything we do and yesterday when I started the Tassimo, Rudy dashed to his crate. Making Tassimo in the afternoon must mean that we are getting ready to leave for Grandma's and Grandpa's and the dogs will have to go to their crates while we are gone. Some times it is scary how much the dogs notice and how they put these clues together.

I have just finished a fascinating book Animals in Translation by Temple Grandin . Dr. Grandin is a college professor who is autistic and she writes about both people with autism and about animals. In her book, she talks about animals being hyper sensitive to specific details in their environment. I think Rudy and the Tassimo is an excellent example of this.

Position A, Position B

Every morning at this house we have the same routine. Ken and Rudy get up first. Ken takes Rudy out and then makes a pot of coffee. About a half hour later, Emme and I get up. As soon as we come downstairs, Emme has to play "Go Get." I sit on the living room couch so she can jump up next to me and I can pet her. After a few minutes, I say "Go get Ken." Ken sits at his place at the dining room table and Emme dashes over to him and sits down in front of him. She is so excited that she wiggles all around. Ken reaches down to pet her for a while and then says "Go get Mary Lou." Emme dashes back to me, jumps on the couch and gets petted. Then we repeat this over and over until Emme is panting and too tired to jump back up on the couch. Then she gets Big Mama Gorilla for some quiet morning loving.

All this time, Rudy is with one of his lovies. But always in the same location. When we begin, he brings his lovie over by the couch where I am sitting and settles into "Position A." He ignores all Emme's crazy running, even when she dashes right by his nose or occasionally jumps over him. After Emme is done playing "Go Get" I go to my chair at the dining room table for a cup of coffee, my DS, Sudoko and the newspaper and Rudy goes gets up to relocate to "Position B" right by Ken's chair at the table.

Every morning, the exact same routine. Who's in a rut?

Coffee Breath

Emme often has doggy breath but for a while last weekend, she had coffee breath. I noticed one afternoon that she was chewing on something dark and hard. I thought that it was some mulch that she or Rudy had tracked in on their feet.

Both of them love to go into the flower beds and take care of business in the mulch. This makes me crazy because I think this spring I am going to have some deformed tulips or hosta from their deposits. But Emme and Rudy sneak into the flower beds as often as possible and often track little pieces of mulch into the house.

This time however the dark object was a coffee bean. We have a wonderful coffee machine that grinds coffee beans to make a pot of coffee. Every morning Ken makes a pot of this wonderful coffee and we really enjoy it. When we washed the coffee pot the last time, an unground bean must have dropped on to the floor. And Emme found it. I took it away from her, but she had already eaten about half of it. Her breath smelled like Starbucks. This was an improvement.

Two Treats

Emme loves to be up close to my face. When we come downstairs, she stops on the landing and I sit on the second step so my face is even with hers. She smells all over my face, especially my eye lids. I close my eyes and she sniffs my eyes and her cold nose just barely touches my eye lids. I call these barely perceptible touches, Angel Kisses. She also loves to smell my breath when I talk to her. Toothpaste, coffee, garlic, morning breath, all are good for her. She is in love with my breath.

But she never licks my face. She will often lick Ken's face when she climbs up on his lap but she seems to know that although I love being close to her, I don't like her to lick me. So she doesn't. Ken is always egging her on. He says to Emme, "Lick her lips. If you do, I'll give you two treats." But she doesn't; she only sniffs. Until this weekend.

We spent the night at the lake house and on Saturday because I had a commitment in town I left the lake early in my car. Later that day, Ken came home with the two dogs. I was lying on the couch in the family room when Emme came home. She jumped on top of me and was so excited to see me she licked my face. UGH. Dog lips. And to make matters worse, even though he has promised "Two Treats" for months, Ken never came through. Emme finally worked up to licking my face and got nothing for it. So much for "Two Treats."

Emme's First (and Perhaps Last) Marrow Bone

Over the weekend, I gave Emme her first marrow bone and it was a wonderful and an awful experience. We never give Emme and Rudy table scraps or bones. We have read that bones, especially chicken bones, shatter and can do major damage to a dog's throat and intestines. Years ago I read a dog book by Daniel Pinkwater and he said that the only safe bone to give a dog was a beef femur bone. If the bone is sturdy enough to hold up a cow, they are sturdy enough for a dog to chew. So occasionally I began to get marrow bones for Rudy. I would go to the grocery store and have the meat department cut up marrow bones about six inches long. I would take them home and following Pinkwater's instructions would boil them for 20 minutes to kill anything lurking in the raw meat and to make the bones even denser. Then I would wrap them individually in foil and place them in the freezer. Rudy loved these bones and after the initial chew, they would be a permanent addition to his toy box. They would be revisited and chewed again months and even years later.

When we got Emme as a little puppy, I stopped giving Rudy new marrow bones because I did not want Emme to get hold of one. I wanted to wait until she was all grown up. So two marrow bones waited in the freezer for the right time. Well, I decided this past weekend was the right time. Because the bones have a small amount of meat and fat clinging to the outside, I never give them to Rudy inside because of the carpets. I give them to him on the porch at Wooster or on the deck or out in the garage at the lake house. After he has chewed off the outside, they can come inside and they don't make a mess on the carpets.

So the weather was warm this weekend and we were going to the lake. I took these two old, long-frozen bones out of freezer and took them to the lake house. After they thawed, I took a table knife and scraped out the marrow because in the past, too much marrow has made Rudy's stool loose and I didn't want either dog to have a problem. There is still the taste of the marrow inside the bone, but a couple tablespoons of marrow which is essentially fat goes into the garbage.

Ken and I went outside on the deck with a bottle of wine for us and the two thawed, de-marrowed bones for the dogs. Both Emme and Rudy were delighted. They chewed for a long time and really enjoyed themselves. Emme didn't know about these treats and she was impressed with them. After about 45 minutes I picked up the bones, put them in a plastic bag and returned them to the freezer for a return trip when the weather was warm again and they could go out on the deck. Emme was distraught. While we were in the living room, she went to the counter in the kitchen, sat down and whined. She wanted the bone back. It took her a long time to realize that we were done with bones for the day.

As we were sleeping that night, I could hear Emme being very restless. She kept rearranging her blankets and pillow and couldn't settle down. I got up and took her outside to take care of business and then returned to bed. In just a few minutes, Emme got restless again and then went over by Ken's dresser and got sick three times. While I held Emme, Ken went for paper towels and stain remover. Even though I was cautious, the bones were too much of a good thing. Even with the marrow dug out, there must have been enough meat and fat to upset Emme's system. She is used to dry kibble, puppy biscuits, an occasional bite of fruit or vegetable when I am preparing meals and little else. The bone was not something her stomach was used to dealing with. After I cleaned up the bedroom rug, I took Emme to the love seat in the living room and we slept there for about two hours. After I got horribly uncomfortable and my legs were cramped and I was sure Emme was all right, we returned to the bedroom for the rest of the night.

I don't know if I will repeat the bones again. If I do, I will have the butcher cut pieces smaller, about three inches long for Emme, and hope for the best. Emme loved the bones, but I paid dearly for her enjoyment.