An Ode To Dogs…and a Dog

Volumes have been written about how and why dogs became “man’s best friend”, and dogs are simply one of the wonders–and one of the best–we can choose to share this journey we call “life”.

Many people choose not to have dogs, and I respect that, unless the reason is one of the following:  it might chew up the couch cushions, it might barf on the carpet, and it doesn’t match your jewelry.  There are other good reasons for not having a dog, such as not being able to afford it and take care of it like it needs you to do.  If that isn’t a factor, then here’s a good reason not to get a dog:  you will outlast it. 

I think it may be my sister who sent me a quote that says, the only thing wrong with dogs is they don’t live as long as you do.  Barring fatal accidents and heart attacks and such on your part, that is absolutely the case.  From the time you get that cute little wriggly puppy, it’s on a date with Destiny–as are you, but it will get there first.  The question is, can you bear that?  If the answer is no, I can understand.  But you will deprive yourself of its company, and the joy it brings you.  It’s a trade-off that you have to weigh. 

I have very mixed feelings about dog breeders (the reputable ones, the puppy mill people should be nuked) and dog shows…but I always watch the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show every February.  I’m okay with the breeds being kept alive, because in reality, here’s what we’re seeing:  dogs are no longer useful for the most part.  Dogs long ago began going the way of newspapers and bank tellers. 

Dogs became our best friends because they helped us to survive by hunting, herding, transporting, guarding, and killing vermin, but with the possible exception of hunting and herding, we don’t need dogs for that any more.  However, way before that, our relationship with dogs began to change.  At Westminster, dogs are judged by standards that include whether or not they could still do their “jobs”, those they were bred for, even if they’re no longer required to do it.  But I think that dogs’ “jobs” changed long ago.  The first time someone curled up with a Husky to keep warm on a frigid night.  Now they are our companions, with no bigger job than that. 

This morning, my sister and her husband lost their 11-year old Scottish Terrier Bonny.  More accurately, they elected let her go humanely.  Bonny had been having seizures for some time, and this morning she began seizuring to the extent that it appeared they could not fully stop them. 

The best thing I remember about Bonny was that she and her compadre, their other Scottie Maggie, played Rabbit in the backyard with my dog Pippin (aka, the Beast).  Playing Rabbit requires that first you be the Hound and chase the Rabbit, then you reverse and become the Rabbit while the Hound chases you.  Bonny was the only dog Pippin has ever played with who got it.  Of course her main job was being a pal to her people, and she did that with all her heart. 

Today they buried her in the back yard where she was such a good Hound and Rabbit.  The context doesn’t really work but these words do:  Well done, Thou good and faithful servant.

Movie Review: Bolt

I don’t see a lot of movies, so my credentials as a movie critic are slim.  However, in my defense, I’ll say that I’m an avid (you might say “obsessive”) reader of fiction, and I consider myself to be a better than fair judge of what makes a good book.  A good book needs a plot, and it needs coherence.  In other words, there needs to be a beginning, a middle, and an end.  It needs to tell a story.  Side stories and digressions are fine, as long as they contribute to the overall story in the end. 

The story must have interesting characters, and there has to be time in the book/movie to develop those characters.  Not too much time–no droning on and beating your audience/reader over the head.  But plot without character development is empty and boring.  You might as well tell a story that goes like this:  There were three people, Sally, Joe, and Mary.  Sally shot Mary, then she and Joe got married.  The end. 

Character development need not take a lot of time, it’s just that you can’t leave it out.  Books have more time for this, but books also rely solely on the reader’s imagination.  Movies have the advantage of being able to engage you visually.  In Bolt, the character of Mittens the cat is explained in about one minute, through both her statements and her facial expression. 

Both and books and movies must elicit some emotional reaction.  You can’t make a good book or movie out of an algebra problem.    For kids, the story must be simply told, and yet be able to elicit emotions like love and fear (to an extent), and sadness, and relief.  And really, that’s enough to make a good adult film as well, even if we are able to tolerate and maybe even crave more nuance.  Who among you is so jaded that you don’t  cry when Bambi’s mother dies?  (If your answer is “Me”, please stop reading and go seek therapy.  As Jeff Probst always says to the losing tribe on Survivor, “Go back to camp–I got nothing for you.”)

Totally animated movies (as opposed to hybrids like “Terminator” or “Lord of the Rings”) are mostly made for kids, and kid movies need certain components:  a hero, friends of the hero, a villain, obstacles the hero and his or her friends must overcome, and a happy ending.  Kids can see the same story over and over again without ever getting bored, but for it to be palatable to adults, the story has to be told in such a way that it isn’t just the names that have changed. 

Bolt has all the necessary ingredients to be a classic for both kids and adults.  A synopsis of the movie can be found anywhere online, so I’ll be brief.  Bolt is a dog who is adopted from a shelter as a puppy by his “person”, a little girl named Penny.  Penny and Bolt become TV stars, in which Bolt has amazing powers.  The problem is that the TV studio goes to great lengths to make Bolt believe it’s all real, so he has no idea that he’s on TV or that his powers aren’t real.  This is a total takeoff on “The Truman Show”, if Truman had been an animated dog   I suspect that had I seen more movies, there are other takeoffs later on that I would recognize.  Certainly in the middle of the movie there are similarities to “Homeward Bound”, since Bolt and two unlikely companions–the cat Mittens and the hamster Rhino–must make their way cross-country from New York City back to Hollywood. 

I was surprised to find that this movie was rated much higher than the movie The Tale of Despereaux, which was my second choice.  But on further thought, I recall another charactistic of good movies and books:  you have to be able to identify with the hero.  In today’s modern movie-making, the hero is never perfect, which I consider an improvement.  Often you have an anti-hero, whom you identify with in spite of yourself.  There are no more John Waynes. 

But as for the difference between Bolt and Despereaux, Despereaux is a mouse, and Bolt is a dog. Despereaux is a cute mouse, a heroic mouse, but Bolt is a dog, if you get my drift.  He has loyalty to his “person”, as his “person” has loyalty to him as well.  There is hilarity and danger and love and morality lessons (another necessary component of kid movies), and poignancy to the point of tears. 

That being said, I have a new movie rating system, which I just made up.  On a scale of 1-5, this is a 3-Kleenex movie.  You should see it.

Whose Idea Was This?

Our blog friend, Floridacat, has written a post entitled “Espresso Yourself!”:  http://floridacat.wordpress.com/2008/12/24/espresso-yourself/  Here she describes a type of Indonesian coffee called Kopi Luwak.  Here’s the method of harvest:  civets climb the coffee trees and eat the coffee berries.  The bean itself (the seed of the berry) passes through the civet’s system undigested.  People then comb through the civet droppings and extract the beans to make coffee.  The coffee is very expensive, which is understandable, since this is a very labor-intensive process, except on the part of the civet. 

But my question is, what human being first thought this was a good idea?  I mean, who first said, “Hey–I bet we could get these seeds out of civet poop, grind them up and make something we can drink?”  Alternatively, if they already knew about coffee, maybe someone said, “You know, this climbing trees for coffee berries is a pain in the ass.  Why don’t we just let the civets do it?  Siesta, anyone? ”

I have the same question about a variety of other foods.  Let’s take lobster for example.  I can understand eating anything if you’re starving, but where there are lobsters, there are fish.  Why not just stick with the fish?  I picture the first human being to think about eating lobster saying to one of his buddies, “I wonder if you can eat these?  Let’s bash one over the head with a rock and find out.  Ow!  Ow!  Watch out, those two front legs have quite a bite”. 

Then there are artichokes.  It’s a lot of work, even today, to eat an artichoke.   The best part, the heart, is hidden under the fuzzy, disgusting, choke.  With grasses and fruits and nuts around for the picking, who first said, “I bet we can eat this?” 

Of course there are snails.  Who first said, I’ll bet if we dug this thing out of its shell, washed off the slime, and put a lot of butter and garlic on it, and called it escargot, we could charge at least $7.50 a half dozen? 

Finally there are dates, which technically don’t count.  When you live in the desert, you’ll eat anything, like scorpions.  Although I wasn’t there, for Christmas dinner, Fakesister served bacon-wrapped dates as an appetizer, and I said, “Ick!”  She claims they are really tasty, even if pitted dates do look like, and I quote, “eviscerated cockroaches”.  Now there’s a mouth-watering recommendation for you.

We humans have a huge curiousity about food, and it’s easy to understand how this is an evolutionary advantage.  The more variety in your food, the more vitamins and minerals you’re likely to get; plus, if one of your food sources becomes unavailable because of drought, or extinction, or because you moved somewhere else, you have something to fall back on.  From an individual standpoint, that curiousity doesn’t always work out.  Take for example, the first person who wondered if you could make a drink out of hemlock.  But from a species standpoint, it works, since everyone else around the table says, “I don’t think I’ll have any of that”.

Can White People Get a Break?

Subitled:  Race relations in the age of Obama.

Every year in Tallahassee, the City holds something called the Day of Dialogue on MLK Day, and I’ve never been, nor will I ever go.  It probably isn’t fair to do this, but I imagine it as being the same old people saying the same old things year after year.  In my imaginary scenario, black people excoriate white people for the sins of their ancestors, the white people apologize, and the black people say we forgive you, now make it right by compensating us for suffering of OUR ancestors.  Be blessed, go forth, and give money.  Which brings us to the topic of affirmative action, which is a topic for another day. 

Barack Obama hit the nail on the head when he said that white people, in times of anxiety, get resentful and cling to their guns and religion.  He later apologized, saying that was a dumb comment, which it was from a political point of view.  Never mind that it was true.  But he left out a whole category of white people, like me. 

I hate to even bring it up, but I was living in Memphis in April of 1968 when Dr. King was assassinated.  I’d been there less than a year.  The following year, I marched with the sanitation workers and thousands of other people in his memory. But things changed.  I submit to you the following word:  Whitey.  Whitey was the new term for Nigger.  If you were white and believed in justice and equality, you had less respect than if you had been an avowed racist.  The theory went that at least you knew where racists stood, whereas the rest of you were namby-pamby, wussy, guilt-ridden, impotent, bleeding-heart liberals.  The idea was, I trust you more if you try to shoot me, rather than try to be my friend.  It was a strange time, and I think I was more at the heart of it than some, living in Memphis. 

The effect of this move was that it turned you, if you were white, into a person whose only defining characteristic was the color of your skin.  OK then.  Haven’t you been there, done that?  Turnabout is fair play.  Guess that feels good temporarily, but I fail to understand how making enemies of your friends is a good diplomatic strategy.  That is the REAL change that Obama has brought about, in my mind.  The gun-clingers are not going to be big fans, but what he’s done is to bring disillusioned white people back into the picture. 

Because make no mistake, white people elected Obama.  There aren’t enough black people in the U.S. to have elected him, even if every black man, woman, and child voted for him.  That isn’t to diminish the struggle of black people for over 200 years to keep the idea of freedom and justice alive.  Maybe you think that if not for you, it would not have happened.  But I don’t think so.  Might have taken longer. 

Last night, I happened to catch the Tavis Smiley show on PBS.  Usually I’m not up that late, and also, I can’t stand Tavis Smiley.  Didn’t like him on NPR, don’t like him now, but at least he has good guests.  Last night it was Seal.  Seal has just come out with an album of covers of old soul songs.  First we were treated to a video of Seal’s cover of Otis Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long (Can’t Stop Now)”, then Seal singing live Sam Cooke’s song, “A Change Is Gonna Come”.  That song was recorded in 1963.  Think about the history and the timing of that. 

It took a while, but the change has happened.

Food Purism

Before I get into this topic, let me digress into the topic of Grocery Voyeurism.  This involves paying attention to what the person in line ahead of you is buying, and imagining why.  It really is only amusing  in the 10-Items-or-Fewer Lane.  In the regular lanes where someone has a full basket of stuff, it isn’t a challenge. 

So Friday afternoon in line, the guy in front of me had two cans of artichoke hearts.  That’s it.  My first guess was:  spinach and artichoke dip.  But how is that you have all the ingredients to do that except the artichoke hearts?  And it could have been many other things as well.  I had an almost irresistible urge to actually tap him on the shoulder and ask.  On one hand I thought, it’s the holiday season, when everyone is a bit friendlier.  And he might be amused by the quirkiness (translation:  freakiness) of my question.  What stopped me was picturing the following interchange: 

Me:  Excuse me, Sir, but I see that the only things you’re buying are two cans of artichoke hearts.  Do you mind telling me why?

Him:  Help!  Security!

Moving now to the topic of food purism, this refers to an attitude I once had that nothing you bought already prepared could compare to what you made yourself from scratch.  But I developed that attitude at a time when the alternative was frozen dinners, and pay attention, Youngsters–those used to actually be called TV dinners.  TV was a thing that…oh, never mind. 

But gradually, preprepared or semi-preprepared foods began to improve dramatically.  Think cake mixes.  I could go on and on with examples, but today we will focus on one thing:  Cheese fondue. 

Fondue was a huge fad in the late ’60’s, early ’70’s, and like many things I first tried in restaurants, I was determined to make it on my own.  Cheese fondue is a dirt simple recipe on the surface.  Technically it requires a mixture of Emmenthaler and Gruyere cheeses (that’s Swiss cheese to you and me), wine, Kirsch or some other cherry brandy, a bit of garlic and a couple of other ingredients.  I could tell you what those are, but then I’d have to kill you.  Throw it all in a pot, melt it, and start dipping, right?  Wrong! 

It takes hours.  First, grate the cheese by hand.  You don’t get already shredded Emmenthaler or Gruyere.  Next, toss the cheese with cornstarch.  Next, add some cheese to the lightly heated wine in an amount roughly equivalent to the size of a helium molecule.  Stir a bit, but not too much.  Wait for it to melt.  Repeat.  It will be ready about the time they pry your cold, dead hands from the wooden spoon.  And don’t try to hurry up the process by adding more cheese at a time, or turning up the heat.  What you’ll end up with is a pot full of flavored wine, with a stringy clump of cheese in the middle that could easily double as a soccer ball. 

So imagine how thrilled I was to find that you can now buy already prepared cheese fondue.  Easy to prepare! says the box!  Heat and serve in just five minutes!  It has all the right ingredients to be authentic, and it tastes delicious.  If you like soccer balls. 

The problem is that the directions leave out a few things.  They do tell you not to use a microwave, but they omit the part about not heating too quickly or stirring too much.  I apparently thought I could skip those parts, which is another problem with prepared foods.  You think it was their job to have taken care of all the hard parts for you, and it turns out you still have to have a brain.  I just hate it when that happens. 

I ate the soccer ball for lunch yesterday anyway, and really, it was still good.  It went well with French bread and Macintosh apples (my favorites).  I’m thinking it might have been improved by a nice can of artichoke hearts.

Fakename Does Christmas

This year for Christmas, I’m doing…nothing.  Or almost nothing.  My two usual things to do are either to go visit Fakesister in the Atlanta area, or spend it on St. George Island.  This year I can’t afford to do either, and although I could do that rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul method of financial management, I just can’t justify it this year.

First of all, I have to board my dogs if I go out of town, and that’s about $60 a day.  Second, I got a bill from the opthamologist last week for $500 plus.  Oh, by the way…I didn’t get you a gift this year.  But I’m thinking of you, honest I am.  I’m thinking of the opthamologist too.  I wonder how he feels about the phrase:  “It’s the thought that counts”.

So this year, like many years in the past, I’m spending Christmas alone.  Alone at Christmas, or more dramatically, ALL alone at Christmas.  No family to share it with.  Can there be a more pathetic state of affairs?  Well yes, there could be.  It would be spending it with YOUR family.  I could barely stand my own family celebrations when I had them, why would I want to endure yours?  In the best case scenario, the men are in the den while football drones on endlessly, and the women are in the kitchen washing dishes.  What a treat!  I can hardly stand to miss it!

It never ceases to amaze me how many people say to me, “So, what are you doing for Christmas?”  “I don’t know yet”, works for a while as an answer, but eventually you will be pinned down.  It never dawns on anyone that “Nothing” might be your deliberate plan.  Don’t misunderstand me, most are well-intentioned, and want me to know I have a place to go if I want it.  I don’t mind this at all.  I do mind some invitations I’ve received that hint of charity (“We don’t really want you, but it’s my duty to ask”), or real pity.  I’m not The Little Match Girl!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Match_Girl

The funny part comes when the people who invite me forget that they told me about their own Christmas the previous year, what a disaster it was and how much they dread it this year.  Here’s theoretical example, which I am only partially making up.

In this scenario, you come from a strict religious background and alcohol is not allowed.  Non-alcoholic eggnog is grudgingly allowed, but is considered suspect since drinking it might lead to the hard stuff, kind of like marijuana leads to heroin.  If you’re truly pure, nothing will ever pass your lips other than sweet tea.  If you drink unsweetened tea, you’re a Communist. 

Next:  Christmas dinner.  Your dad has to excuse himself from the table on several occasions to go check the air in the tires of his truck (translation:  there’s a vodka bottle in the glove compartment).  After the seventeenth trip, he comes back and announces that you will not, NOT be getting any Goddamn pumpkin pie if you don’t eat all your turkey.  And you’re 47 years old.  (Cursing is forbidden in your house too, but your Dad seems to have had some sort of memory lapse.)

Your brother, in a rare display of protectiveness, goes out to his Harley and brings in his pistol.  “Dad, you can’t talk to Alice that way!”  Whereupon he shoots all the lights out of the Christmas tree. 

Your Mom: “That does it!  Ain’t nobody getting any pumpkin pie this year!” (Takes pie, throws it down on the kitchen floor, stomps on it with both feet.  For good measure, takes pecan pie and does the same thing.)

So thanks for offering to share your family experience with me, but this year my plan is to sleep late and go to a movie.  I was hoping to see Gran Torino, the Clint Eastwood film which opens Christmas Day “in select theaters”.  “Select theaters” is a code for “Not where you live”.  So maybe The Tale of Despereaux, or Bolt–nothing is more fun than seeing an animated, kid-type movie during the holidays, although I like them any time.  That afternoon, I’m feeding the four dogs and one cat of a friend who will be out of town for the day.

Having said all this, I’m not a Bah Humbug sort.  It amazes me how many people think of the holidays as torture (which apparently, some would like to share with me).  I learned long ago that that you have to manufacture your own cheer.  You have to decline things which will cause you misery.  While it’s a cliche, being grateful for what you have and leaving it at that, leaves no room for guilt and stress and regret. 

In today’s New York Times, Judith Warner’s op-ed piece has the following quote:  “…without some belief in the possibility of happiness, without some willful suspension of our attunement to the dreariness of reality, the holiday season really is nothing more than a forced march of shopping wrapped in a laundry list of neuroses.”

So my Christmas wish for all of you is this:  Be of good cheer!  And go ahead, have some eggnog.

Race, Dancing, and Fundamentalist Religion

It was a requirement when I was growing up that I attend church weekly, and I did that until I was 17 years old and left home.  In the small town where I grew up, we moved there when I was 9. 

My mother was a devoted member of the Church of Christ.  Lucky for her, this small town in North Carolina we moved to had one.  The defining philosophy of the Church of Christ is the following belief:  we’re right, and we are the only ones who are.  The rest of you will burn in hell, and those of you who are Catholic have an especially hot area reserved for you. 

In Sunday school, I used to say, What about people who have other religions, are they going to hell?  My Sunday school teacher would say, it’s our duty to bring them to Christ.  I said, How?  He said, we have to give money, so that we can give it to missionaries.  And I would say, What if we don’t get to them in time?  Will God let them go to hell because we didn’t get to them in time or didn’t give enough money?  The answer was, Yes.  Tough shit.  Somehow, that didn’t seem exactly fair to me.  That was the beginning of my abandonment of church. 

In, I believe, 1963, when I was 13, my school was preparing to integrate.  My world was one in which home, church, and school were like separate planets with completely different rules.  At school, we were thrilled.  When I said so to my mother, she said, well, that’s fine, but what will you do if you’re at a school dance and one of Them asks you to dance?  (Note the capital “T”.)  I said, well I would dance, wouldn’t I? I thought it would be an improvement for anyone of any color to ask me to dance.

While I didn’t say so, I figured that was the least of my problems.  I had been to some dances already, and spent most of my time holding up the wall.  It wasn’t that I couldn’t dance.  Geez, I can remember the pain of those days, the longing, hoping that someone would ask me.  It wasn’t that I was ugly.  It was that I was new to a small town where people had grown up together since childhood, formed alliances that I wasn’t a part of, and plus I got a reputation as an egghead.  Kiss of death.  I figured if a dance was forthcoming, I would have had to ask Them, instead of them asking me. 

I understand that it’s different when your skin is a color you can’t hide.  But honestly,  it’s hard for me to believe that you can be any more isolated and reviled than I was when I first moved to this small town, through no fault of my own.

But back to the dance issue.  My parents had separated when I was 11, but before that, dancing was one of their night-out dates away from me and my sister.  So it was natural that my mother would pose that question.  I decided to pose the question to my Sunday school teacher:  My mother wonders how should I respond if a Them asks me to dance?   

He replied:  WHAT!  This is a completely ridiculous question.  Doesn’t your mother understand that dancing is wrong?

Midnight Cowboy, The Movie

Yesterday I posted about the fate of a particular chimpanzee named Ron, who was sent to a sanctuary in Florida but was unable to adapt.  Having lived in a cage with a concrete floor and steel bars his entire life, grass and trees and open water were just too frightening for him.  I’m just not sure how anything can be sadder than that.  But it reminded me of the movie Midnight Cowboy, because Ratso Rizzo, played by Dustin Hoffman, dreams of moving to Florida, and I wonder, did Ron have the same kind of dream?

Midnight Cowboy the movie starred Hoffman and a young Jon Voight, who unfortunately these days is best known for being the father of Angelina Jolie, who isn’t speaking to him.  What is that about?  No one ever seems to tell.  Maybe it’s because he’s a Republican.  At the time MC was made, Jon Voight was quite the heartthrob, handsome and sexy, in spite of being almost a tad too pretty and boyish looking.  But that in fact made him perfect for the role. 

MC was the Best Picture Oscar winner of 1969, the only time an X-rated film has ever been nominated, much less won.  Both Hoffman and Voight were nominated for Best Actor, but both lost to…John Wayne, in True Grit.  MC has now been downgraded to “R”; not surprising when you have films like Brokeback Mountain taking away the spotlight. 

I once took a photography class, and the instructor was phenomenal.  One of his constant themes was that when you take a photograph, you should be mindful that nothing distracting takes away from the point you’re trying to make.  He was, for example, particularly hostile to power lines and chain link fences.  It takes your eye off the ball, so to speak.  Just in case you missed his point, when you got to class with the photos you had taken the week before, he would say, “Vat iz ze SUBJECT of zis picture!!!  All I zee is ze windshield of ze car you took zis picture through!  Vat were you thinking???”

Zat being said, oh my, I mean that being said, the subject of MC is not homosexuality.  It’s really about dreams, and friendship, and love, and making the best of the one life you have to live, which is easier said than done.  That would pretty much be a timeless theme, even though the movie itself may seem a bit dated now.  If you’ve never seen it, please do.  (This means you, Nick!  I insist, lol.) 

And thanks to blog pal Anarchist, I did indeed find a video on YouTube of the iconic song from the movie, which I thought was called “Echoes of My Mind” but in fact is called “Everybody’s Talkin’”.  You can’t hear the song or even read the lyrics, in my opinion, without a sort of spring making its way into your step, without a “Yes!  Been there done that” feeling, and without a sort of joy in spite of it all.  Here then are the lyrics, followed by a link to one of the many YouTube videos you can find of the song, in this case complete with the opening credits of the movie.  And Nilsson:  what a voice. 

Everybody’s talkin’ at me, I don”t hear a word they’re sayin’, only the echoes of my mind.  People stoppin’, starin’, I can’t see their faces, only the shadows of their eyes.  I’m goin’ where the sun keeps shinin’, through the pourin’ rain.  Goin’ where the weather suits my clothes.  Bankin’ off of the Northeast winds, sailin’ on a summer breeze, skippin’ over the ocean like a stone. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyfy66oXw8E&feature=related

Midnight Cowboy, Chimpanzee Version

I just watched a repeat of the program “Chimpanzees:  An Unnatural History”, a documentary which originally appeared on the program “Nature” on PBS in November 2006. 

The program documents the use of chimps captured as babies in Africa for the following purposes:  entertainment (movies and circuses), space travel (send them up in a capsule and see what happens when they come back), the pet trade, pharmaceutical research, disease research (deliberately injecting them with AIDS or hepatitis, then performing repeated liver biopsies), high-velocity test crashes, and medical device tests.  In one case, they removed a vertebrae from a chimp, replaced it with an artificial one, then removed the artificial one, leaving the animal with a gap in its spine.  To see what would happen. 

Many of the chimps had a triple whammy, starting out as a circus animal, becoming a pet or vice versa, then being sold to a lab for testing. 

The story highlights the lives of several individual chimps, among them, Ron and Thoto.  Ron was an older chimp, 42 years old I believe, who had lived his entire life in a cage, at least since his capture.  He was living in a facility in Alamagordo, Mexico.  The people who took over that facility removed the walls between the cages–the best that they could do–so that the chimps could at least socialize with others.  And Ron made a friend–Thoto, who was much younger than he was.  The people in charge were working to move all the chimps at Alamagordo to sanctuaries, including one in central Florida.  Then Ron developed congestive heart failure.  The people at Alamagorda were determined that he be free again before he died, so his transfer was accelerated and they sent Thoto with him, to calm him.

At the sanctuary, they opened the window to Ron’s cage, the first opportunity he’d had in 40 years to feel grass on his feet or see the sky.  Just outside the window was a sort of sidewalk.  And he couldn’t do it.  He paced for a short while along the concrete of the sidewalk, then climbed back into his window. 

Then they let Thoto out.  He raced across the grass and climbed a tree.  That he could remember how to climb a tree is amazing.  That night, they could never get him to come back in.  He spent the night outside under the full moon. 

His friend Ron could not remember how to climb a tree, if he ever knew how.

Remember that in Midnight Cowboy, Ratso Rizzo’s (Ron’s) dream is to move to Florida.  He spends long nights in his alley (cage) dreaming of what life will be like for him there.  He makes a friend (Thoto), who eventually makes it possible for him, except Ratso dies on the bus on the way there.  You get the sense that the dream and the friendship, rather than the actuality, was the important thing for Ratso–as it is perhaps for all of us.  And that Ratso would never have made it in real life in Florida…just like Ron.

The Intelligence of the Basenji

There are lists you can find which rank the intelligence of dogs by breed.  German Shepherds and Rottweilers are always near the top, and Chows and Afghan hounds are always near the bottom.  But you have to ask, what exactly is an intelligent dog?  I have always maintained that what people mean by “intelligent”, usually just means “trainable”.  In the case of the Afghan hound, if you let it loose, it will immediately take off for parts unknown.  When you call its name, assuming it can remember its name, it’s already in the next county.  So I can make a case for that being “unintelligent”.  It would be in a dog’s best interest to stay close to the most reliable source of food, it seems.  On the other hand, there’s a big trade-off there.  You have to be confined and can’t run free.  Maybe you’re willing to take your chances on catching your own food.  Who are we to judge what is “smart” when it comes to another species?  In our case, smart usually means “doing what we tell you”.

It will be very rare that you’ll find a dog owner who says, “My dog is really dumb”.  Dog owners will fight to the death about the intelligence of Rocky and Fifi. 

But it never ceases to amaze me that the owners of the most untrained dogs on the planet will insist that they are very smart.  This happens when the dog has learned to do something on its own, such as open the kitchen cabinets with its paw.  Personally, I kind of admire these dogs, but is this a smart dog?  I really prefer well-behaved dogs, but have a secret admiration for dogs who say, I understand what you’re asking, I just don’t give a shit. 

Thus we come to the intelligence of the Basenji breed, which is kind of an oxymoron, like “military intelligence”.  Basenjis are hounds, originally from the Congo.  They don’t bark, although they can make a variety of other sounds.  Males weigh, at maximum, around 25 pounds, and females less.  I have a dog encylopedia which rates dogs on various characteristics, giving them a score of 1-5 on such things as energy level, grooming requirements, friendliness toward strangers or other dogs or other pets, cold and heat tolerance, etc.  And one of those characteristics is “ease of training”  (see, they don’t use the word “intelligence”).  Where a score of 5 is best, Basenjis are rated 1. 

Here is a picture of a purebred Basenji: 

Here’s a picture of my Basenji mix, whose tail is not quite as curled as the ideal, and who also barks.  One of the first things you’ll notice about him is that he’s standing on the picnic table.  Now this is something he “knows” he isn’t supposed to do, but…you guessed it, he doesn’t give a shit.  I will say this for him–what he lacks in intelligence or trainability, he makes up for in aggression.  I have a 70 pound Doberman and a 50 pound Pointer mix, but this guy is the one who has to be muzzled to get his annual vaccinations.  However, if I ever need a rabbit for dinner, he’s my man.  Assuming I can get him to let go of it.