Dog-Mother's Little Helper: The Kong

The other day at work, Boss called me “The Queen of Kongs,” which I really liked because it recognized my obsessive kong-stuffing in a positive light, and also I felt it was a nod to King Kong, which is the second best ape-run-amok movie ever made (Dunston Checks In is the first, if you were wondering)(we both know you were).

I’d like to tell you something about Scooter, which you may not realize - he’s super obnoxious when he’s bored. Shocking, I know, that a dog that barks like it’s his job and has temper tantrums if I won’t feed him what I’m eating would act out when bored. I’ll let you in on another secret - he’s not the only dog who acts out when bored.

I'm sad because of my own naughty behavior.

Dogs can’t just say “Hey, excuse me human mother, I’m bored. I would like an activity please.” So they try to get your attention in ways that they know work - such as barking - or they find things to do to occupy themselves - such as chewing things up. Or barking. There will be a future blog post on this as well, but this is when you have to be proactive, because if you're reactive here, you teach your dog that being again in the ass will get you attention. Dogs are brilliant. They are learning every moment. Make sure you are aware of what you are teaching them, and don't teach them stuff that fucks up your peace and quiet.

And even though I’m an amazing mother and Scooter is a prince among puppies and I’m happy to make him the center of my world, there are times when I just need 10 minutes of solitude and quiet. Like Jesus Christ, just 10 minutes.

I accomplish this by giving Scooter a stuffed Kong. Kongs are those red rubber dog toys that one could charitably say are snowman shaped. Less charitably, hey did you know there’s a web site called dog toy or sex toy? It’s hilarious. Kongs fit right in.

So anyway, you take the Kong and fill it with yummies, and then give it to the dog to get the yummies out of.  It keeps them busy and quiet, they dog is happy to be eating treats, and it makes them think and works their brain, which makes them tired, which means you get BONUS peace and quiet when they rest after they finish.

The reason I’m the Queen of Kongs has nothing to do with butt plugs, and everything to do with finding new fun things to stuff the kong with.

Our current favorite is dehydrated lamb lung - just a couple pieces, and make sure they’re bigger than the opening so your dog will really have to work to get them out. You can squeeze the Kong to make the opening oblong and put bigger pieces in that way.

Slightly more difficult than that, is putting in big pieces of lamb lung, then filling the remaining spaces with peas and carrots, which Scooter loves for some unknown reason.  I then glue the opening with a small blob of peanut butter.

I can make that even more challenging by then freezing it to make the peanut butter solid so he has to work to eat it.  

You can really fill the Kongs with anything. For beginner dogs, you can just put their kibble in there, so when they roll it around, kibble comes out. You can feed all meals from a kong if you want to.

In summer, we like to make cooling Kongsicles by mixing kibble with something soft and moist like canned food, or canned pumpkin, or yogurt, then freezing it. It takes quite a while to get all the food out. You can also just coat the inside with peanut butter and freeze it.

Don’t start too difficult or your dog will give up. At first, they need to get rewarded early and often. That’s why kibble is such a good starting point. It just falls right out, and it teaches them that it’s worth the effort to mess with their Kongs.  When you move up to more difficult things, like treats that are bigger than the opening, you can add some small treats in there so they will fall out easily and convince your dog to keep working.

Once he gets it all figured out, though, you can make it as difficult as you want. I have no idea how Scooter gets some of the stuff out of the kongs. I swear some of the ones I make him are actually impossible. But he does it. Dogs are miraculous when it comes to getting to food. I guess whatever magic allows wolves to get marrow out of long slender deer bones allows Scooter to get big chunks of frozen venison out of his kong.

You can also boil chicken and rice and put in the kongs and freeze them. The sky is the limit. Anything that is safe for a dog to eat can be crammed into a kong. We're fond of quinoa and mashed bananas.

When I tell people all this, I feel like I lose them right around “boil chicken and rice.” That sounds like a lot of time and effort, right? And if you’re going to freeze them, you have to plan and prepare them in advance.

Do it anyway.  I’m serious. It is a time investment, but how much time do you spend wishing your dog would settle down in the evenings? Is it a non-negligible amount of time? If so, just allot that time to preparing Kongs. Give the kong to your dog before they start acting up from boredom. You’ll be spending the same amount of time, just using it to prep kongs instead of to fuss at your dog, which I feel is a much better use of time.

I could say more. I could go on endlessly about Kong. I am their queen. I could write pages about how for shy or abused dogs, solving food puzzles gives them something to feel successful at and builds their confidence. I could write about other great food puzzles (My other favorite is The Pickle).

Scooter's not spoiled. Your mom is spoiled.

Instead I’ll just say the most important thing, which is that you can throw those bad boys in the dishwasher so they don’t make any extra dish washing work for you, and leave it at that.

Also I now have "Kong butt plug" in my google search history. What a time to be alive.

Unexpected Baggage: Nice People, Mean People, Dogs, and Me

A few years ago, I was bitten by a dog. It wasn't a bad bite at all and it definitely didn't change my feeling towards dogs. I had some bruising and a scrape from lateral movement of a tooth, and that was it. Well, ok, and a little pee came out. She bit me in two different spots on my forearm. She was a big dog, I remember very clearly, even in the moment, thinking "wow, this dog has amazing bite inhibition-" meaning she was extremely pissed off, since dogs usually only bite once and she bit me twice, but she didn't bite me hard. Her name was Missy (It wasn't. But I'm changing all the other names, so I figured I'll change hers too). I love her. We actually talked about adopting her, even after that. She was a very cool dog. I hope she got over her issues and went to an awesome family and is cherished for her whole life.

I'm in training to work at a doggie daycare now, and yesterday we learned about bites. A bite at dog daycare is a rarity, but also over a long enough timeline, an inevitability. So we were just learning about different types of bites, how and when they usually happen, and what to do about them.

I raised my hand.

"Are we in trouble if we get bit?" I asked, immediately wishing I had said bitten instead of bit, in case other people in my class found my adorable southernism stupid rather than, as I mentioned, adorable (A note for readers north of the Mason Dixon: When speaking, it's bit. And it's one word. Snakebit, dogbit, fleabit. In writing there's some flexibility, and the technically correct form, "bitten," is acceptable. But aloud, stick to the colloquial). I also noticed a quiver in my voice I had not at all expected.

The trainers seemed baffled. Some of the students were probably considering the possibility that I was a complete dumb fuck.

Yes, they said, if you somehow goad a dog into biting you by kicking it or hurting it, you are definitely in trouble.

"No, but obviously I'm not going to do that. I just mean in a normal situation, if a dog is overwhelmed or something and it bites me, will I be in trouble?" my voice was definitely wobbly, which was weird as hell. I felt the crying-prickly-feeling in the corners of my eyes. Totally unexpected wave of emotion. Weeeeeeird.

Of course not, they said. Things happen with dogs sometimes. If somebody gets bitten they will be tended to, if hurt, and have time to calm down and get over the scare, and they can decide if they want to work with dogs for the rest of the day, or go do office work and take some time, and another employee can work with the dogs. They said it like this was the most obvious thing in the world, like why would a person be in trouble for getting bitten.

The day Missy bit me was a really bad day. I got bit and then I got bitched out.

After class yesterday, I went home and cried. It felt fantastic. It was a really good cry where all this emotion I didn't even realize I had been carrying with me just came out. I didn't realize how worried I had been that if I ever got bit, I would be fired. Wouldn't that just be the worst? Bitten and then fired. Damn.

It had been causing me not to be willing to take risks. I'm not great at reading the body language of small dogs. I've just never been around them. I'm a champ with anything over about 40 pounds.  Then there's a gray area. Less than 20 pounds and I'm like, "what are you? Are you even a dog?" And I had been avoiding learning about small dogs, because as you learn there's always a chance of making a mistake, and that terrified me. After my cry, I thought, I'm going to ask if I can shadow a shift in the small dog room, and ask if I can watch the groomer groom a small dog, and and and - I had all these ideas and I was excited to go out and learn. That was such a good feeling that I got all moved and overwhelmed and cried some more.

Remember, I hadn't even realized I was carrying this around with me. I knew I wasn't afraid of the bite itself, and I wasn't afraid of dogs, and with medium and large dogs I felt good about being able to read their cues and avoid a bite in the first place. So crying and being upset about a bite from four years ago that didn't even draw blood was totally bizarre.

There was more to it, though, and today I told my Wonderful Mentor the rest of it (her response was, "do you want a hug?" and she gave me a really sincere hug and I loved it).

The rest of it is, I had gone through a training course to be able to work with dogs, and at the time was volunteering for a dog-related facility. I'm going to be a little vague here because I'm actually thinking I would like to go and volunteer there again, and in general shitting where one eats is to be avoided. If you know me, you know the place. If you don't know me, the name of it isn't really relevant anyway. We're going to call it Nonprofit Dog Place (NDP). So I went through like 40 hours of training and then supervised activities and all this with NDP.

Within NDP, another non-profit kind of glommed on. This one's fake name is Traumatized Dog Rescue. The traumatized dogs would come live with the happy dogs and learn from them, and get rehabilitated and then adopted out. You had to get all this special permission to work with the traumatized dogs, but nobody did, so I didn't either.

I met Missy by accident. I was helping paint a puppy play room, and there was a note on Missy's kennel "please let Missy out to potty and let her spend time out of her kennel." Since there was no salutation on the note, I figured it was just for whoever was working in that room so she would get let out at various times. Right? Don't you think that if a note is for one certain person, you would put that person's name on the note somewhere? So this note must just be for anybody - which is not an uncommon thing at this place, just to find note, "if you're here on saturday please give Tobie a treat" or "Tobie needs to potty frequently, please take him out when you take your dog out" (It wasn't just for anybody. Somebody just doesn't know how to write a note)(dumbass). So I hung out with Missy a lot that weekend and we liked each other very much. We didn't really do anything. I painted the room and she laid on the floor. Sometimes she would come up to me and I would scratch her back. She didn't like other people that much, so the Traumatized Dog Rescue volunteer had me come work with her too. We worked on easy stuff like teaching her her name (her real name) and to come up to people to get a treat.

Then we were in a little sitting room just spending time with her so she could get used to being around people. She had a chew toy and we were all sitting on the floor, and she leaned toward me so I reached out to pet her.

Fun fact about dogs, sometimes when they lean toward you, they want petted, but sometimes when they lean toward you, they are claiming space to keep you away from their chew toy. I misread her and she bit me when I reached out to pet her.

I think I said "woah" or something similarly meaningless. The volunteer pulled her off of me by the leash. (She would have bitten more than twice if she hadn't been pulled away)

To the volunteer's credit, the first thing she said was "are you ok?" but the second thing was "you can't reach toward her when she has a bone." (you don't say.) In retrospect I think that's sort of horrible, and that five seconds after a bite, a person probably isn't in the frame of mind to receive coaching.

I went to scoot away from Missy to give her more space.

"You can't scoot away from her or she'll think she's dominant," said the asshole volunteer. At the time, that seemed reasonable (ask me now what I think about dominance theory. And about keeping a person in a situation where they are clearly miserable). So I sat there, trying not to cry from OMG ALL THE ADRENALINE, and a little fear, and definitely shame.

Shame? At this place there was a big belief that no dog bites without warning. Theoretically that's true. At the time I believed it completely. "I didn't see a warning," I said. "What did I miss?"

"She probably froze for a split second. If you had been paying attention you would have seen it."

After about ten minutes, she said I could leave.

After that, a lot of the rescue volunteers acted differently toward me. I was aware of my reputation of being bad at reading dogs. The regular volunteers acted differently too. Nobody wanted me to work with their regular (non-rescue) dogs, because they thought I would mess it up. Just like that, I had gone from being really, really good with these dogs, to being absolute rubbish and people talked about me and told me not to mess with the dogs. My husband and I were volunteering together, so when they talked to me about the dogs, it was suddenly all "get Husband to do this, have Husband take the dog here." Like he was the grownup and I was a child.

Soon after that my brother died, and my volunteer certification lapsed, and I was grieving and busy with work and I didn't have time to renew my certification. Except I also think, when something is important, you make the time for it. I just didn't want to go back.

So of course I had been worried that a bite would end my career. Duh. I had every reason to think it would.

Here are some things I know now that I didn't know then:

1. I'm actually really good at dogs. But all that training I got? Those 40 hours? That was with GOLDEN RETRIEVER PUPPIES. It was unreasonable for me to expect myself, or for anybody else to expect me, to read a traumatized rescue dog.

1a. These rescue dogs had often been punished for showing teeth or growling, so their warnings were things like a split second freeze, or leaning forward to claim space. Canine behaviorists train for years so they can spot this stuff. My week of training was a joke for these dogs. They had been conditioned not to warn before biting.

1b. I hate the words that I said, "what did I miss?" I shouldn't have owned that. I wish I had said, "what did she signal?"

1c. The volunteer's wording, "she probably froze for a split second" means SHE DIDN'T SEE IT EITHER.

2. This is a big one I realized when I thought about this with my insurance brain: it was so against the rules for them to have me with Missy. It was a huge liability issue, and I wouldn't be surprised if they intentionally made me feel like it was my fault so I wouldn't tell the boss what had happened because they would be in Deep Shit.

3. It was not my fault - People get bit. My Wonderful Mentor has been bit. It doesn't mean you're bad at dogs. It just means dogs sometimes bite and people sometimes get bit.

IT WAS NOT MY FAULT

4. And the biggest, most important thing I know now that I didn't know then, is that these women were complete assholes. When we were talking about bite protocol in class yesterday, I was thinking "ok if SHE gets bit, she'll want to go somewhere quiet by herself, and if SHE gets bit, she'll want to dive right back in to keep her confidence up, and if SHE gets bit, she'll want to be with somebody and be emotionally nurtured a little bit..." Those are the kind of thoughts a normal human should have. If something bad happens to a colleague, even a volunteer colleague, the normal human response is to help them.

So that was a big deal for me. I went to work today excited to learn about small dogs. Their tiny little teeth still seem awfully pointy, but now I know that if I get a bite, it's just a bite and not a bite and a pink slip. And my bosses and colleagues will coddle me, or leave me alone, or get me a Sponge Bob band-aid, or whatever I need to help me succeed.

Those other people were assholes. I've found good people now.

So yeah. It wasn't a hard cry, which is good, because what you just read is the result of about four hours of introspection, and a hard cry for that long would give me the worst nightmare headache ever. It was just, like, dribbly eyes and emotional sulking. Bookended with solid steady cries.

And now I'm letting it go. It's done. Maybe I'll never get another bite. I hope not. They hurt. And there's paperwork. And I'm so much better at reading stress and aggression signals now. Who knows, maybe I can avoid a bite for the rest of my career. But it's nice to know that if I ever do it bit, it'll hurt, and there will be paperwork... and that's pretty much it.

Emotional Spoons, or why I can't go to the grocery store and spontaneously go to dinner with you on the same day

I’m going to be referencing spoon theory a lot here; if you aren’t familiar with it, please check it out. It’s brilliant and will help you understand any chronically ill people you may know. In a nutshell, spoons are shorthand for emotional energy. But seriously go read the original source material.

Read it? Great.

It’s really too bad the Matrix and the whole “there is no spoon” thing is kind of played out, because I’d like to fit that in here somehow too. Because my spoons aren’t physical. Like the played-out Matrix spoon, mine exist only in my mind. My spoons are things like serotonin, dopamine, gumption, confidence, and coping skills. And you better believe there is a limit on that shit. The good thing, though, is that I can also get spoons back much more easily than physical spoons.

So what are some things that cost me spoons? Last week I had to go see a new psychiatrist. Dreading it cost me spoons two days before. On the way to her office, I got lost, and while driving slowly I got honked at by the irritated driver behind me. That made me late for my appointment. At my appointment, I had to go through my whole emotional history, which is NOT EASY. So by noon, I had zero spoons for the rest of the day. If you wonder why depressed people spend the day in bed, this is why. It would not be possible for me to have done anything else.

But then there’s the good part: I got home and my dog was happy to see me. There’s a renewed spoon (or like a hundred).

This face. So many spoons.

 I took a nap, with my electric blanket, which felt wonderfully decadent and cozy. So that gave me a couple more spoons. I ate an apple with peanut butter. So after all that, I had about five spoons for the rest of the day, which isn’t too shabby.

[Sidebar: getting spoons from food is risky, but pretty much a sure thing. The “reward center” in your brain is activated by eating things like sugar and fat. It’s all dopamine. So if I need a quick boost, I can eat a treat and get a spoon. It doesn’t have to be junk food. Peanut butter apples and anything crunchy like fresh veggies are great sources for spoons for me too. But I won’t lie, there are more spoons in cake than in a carrot. So I’ve gained 70 pounds since being diagnosed with depression, and that sort of sucks, but all this dopamine is nice]

[Some sort of pun about snuggling and oxytocin/ literal spooning and figurative spoons. I've given you the tools, write your own joke here.]

But wait, because unexpected things cost spoons. I came downstairs and saw the sink full of dishes. I immediately felt overwhelmed at the work I needed to do. I felt down on myself and called myself things like “lazy” and “slob.” So that’s one spoon deduction for the mess itself, and one spoon deduction for feeling like shit and wallowing in self pity.

One spoon deduction for feeling disappointed that TiVo didn’t record the American Experience about the Kennedies (if you’re a history nerd and not watching this show, you’re missing out). 

Add a spoon for the sense of accomplishment of cooking a great dinner for my family.

This is how my days go.  Always adding and subtracting spoons. Do I have it better than somebody with a physical disability? Probably, in some ways, because when I’m out of spoons I can often get some back. In some ways it’s worse, because people are less understanding of “I’m sad” as a reason to back out of plans.

The concept of accomplishment is as complicated as that of food – accomplishing something is a great way to get some dopamine in my brain. I make a point to accomplish five things a day (don’t be impressed; on some days these are big things like organizing the coat closet, but on some days I count brushing my hair as an accomplishment. It depends on my mood). So I know I can get at least one spoon from feeling good about an accomplishment, but what if I’m already at zero? Where do I get the gumption to even begin the task?

Here’s another difference between mental and physical spoons: I can put myself in the negative by using spoons I don’t have. “Negative spoons” can best be imagined as a complete and utter fucking meltdown. Going to the grocery store when I don’t have any spoons will certainly result in a panic attack, usually between the produce and the seafood section, but then a feeling of accomplishment. Cleaning when I don’t have any spoons results in such pathetic scenes as vacuuming or folding towels while weeping.

Another catch-22 type situation with spoons is that making a choice that I feel disappoints or irritates another person cost me a great deal of spoons; but always saying yes and failing to put myself first does too.

Sounds and sensory input such as the dog barking, a car alarm, the kind of thing that I believe mildly annoys, or sometimes greatly annoys regular people, can ruin my whole day.

What do I want people to take away from this? I would like people to realize that when I break plans, which is super rare because of my pathological need to never let anybody down, it’s very important to me to break those plans. If I showed up for our lunch date/shopping/party without any spoons, it would be unpleasant for everybody.

I would like people to realize that I am not messy because I’m lazy; I’m messy because I choose to allot my spoons elsewhere a lot of the time.

I would like people to realize that when I don’t answer a phone call but then immediately text back, it’s because talking on the phone – to anybody, even somebody I adore (mom) – is an interaction with the potential to cost a spoon. It may or may not. Sometimes I don’t have enough spoons in reserve to take that chance, and texting is always free. That’s why they call it free unlimited texting, I’m sure of it.

And last, I would like people to just be aware of invisible illness.  I know I make this look good. My medication is extremely well balanced, and I’m good at hiding the crazy. There are about five people who know how hard things can be for me; I don’t show that to everybody, and try as much as possible to make going about regular life appear effortless. You know, like a normal person who just goes to the grocery store and forgets something and doesn’t spend the rest of the day beating themselves up about it.

I also don’t want to overstate this. As I said, my meds are extremely well balanced. I have very good coping skills. There are days when I have just all the spoons in the world at my disposal. Just absolutely all of them, and changing plans and hearing loud noises and getting lost driving somewhere don’t even register with me. Those are the good days.

On the medium days, things like that register and cost spoons, but I can get them back with relative ease. I can motivate myself to go for a walk and get a little exercise and see some lovely sights around the neighborhood, and be ok for the rest of the day.

But there are also days when I keep my phone on silent because the unexpected sensory input of it ringing would send me to bed for the rest of the day, and it felt important to share that.

I believe we all have something. Ill or not. We all have things that lay us low or build us up. I’d love to hear from you in comments. What costs you spoons? What gives them back?

An Open Letter to Tracey at Q100

Yay, first post at the new blog! Welcome everybody, and thanks for reading. I want to tell you a little story (you'll find I do that a lot).

When I was 15, I noticed a mark on my leg. It looked like a very small strange bruise, but it didn’t hurt when I touched it, and it didn’t look like a bruise when I really examined it.  I asked my mom what it was.

“It’s a spider vein,” she said. “They’re normal. Look, I have some.”

I briefly wondered about it – it was 1996, so Google wasn’t really a thing – I wondered why it was called a spider vein, when clearly it was a capillary (presumably because spider capillary is incredibly awkward to say). I wondered if all the capillaries in my body looked like that, kind of just a tangle. I had always pictured them branching like a tree. That’s what the anatomy text books show. (I now know that your veins and arteries do branch like a tree, like you see in books, but a lot of your capillaries pretty much are just a disorganized snarl like that).

Then, for 17 years, I didn’t think of it at all.

Today I found out it’s ugly.

I know a lot of ways my body is unacceptable. Billboards, magazines, commercials, TV, movies, even kids’ toys tell me all the ways my body isn’t right. It’s too big in places, too small in others.  To wobbly and soft. Too much hair in the wrong places.  Not girlie enough - or is it too girlie? I never realized my spider vein was problematic.

I know it is, because of a commercial I heard on the radio.  Three times, Tracy on Q100 used the word ugly to describe spider veins.  Thankfully, I can pay my hard earned money to go to a doctor who will make my leg acceptable. I don’t remember which Atlanta Medical spa the commercial was for, and I’m glad. They don’t deserve a place in my mind.

So this is what I want to say to you, Tracey:

When you talk about ugly spider veins, you’re not just sending your words out into the ether. You’re reaching real people.  Real women, who are told every day that their bodies are a commodity, and how to make them pleasing. You’re speaking to 15 year old girls who just noticed they have a spider vein and don’t really have an opinion about it yet. You’re reaching me – a 32 year old woman who basically likes her legs (they get me where I need to go) and letting me know that I need to add one more thing to my list of things I think people judge me for. You’re reaching an octogenarian whose legs have walked her all over the country and danced to a thousand different songs, and telling her that’s not as important as how they look. Next time you record that commercial, please know you’re telling individual specific women that something about them is ugly.

And that surprised me coming from Q100. They’ve always seemed pretty female-friendly. Last week on the Bert show they were talking about how beautiful women are without makeup. I liked hearing that.

I know without sponsors, you can’t run a radio station.  I get that. I would love it if you dropped this sponsor. They make their money by making women feel like they’re not good enough – basically they fabricate problems so they can get paid to fix them.

If it’s not possible to drop that sponsor, I’d like to ask you to re-do the commercial with more neutral language.  What about, instead of insulting the women listening, you say that spider vein laser treatment is a service this spa offers, and then talk about how great the spa is, rather than how awful spider veins are? Surely the spa has something going for it that you could highlight – maybe it’s really clean or gets great ratings on Yelp or something. I know creating insecurity in a commercial is probably a more effective sales technique, but as an Atlanta celebrity, you reach a lot of people, and I am asking you to use your platform to put good out into the world, instead of negativity. Don’t add your voice to all the other voices telling women what they need to change.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.