We hear about stories in the news such as the hero dog from Afghanistan who foiled a suicide bomber’s attempts to blow up an American barracks, and was later adopted by an Army medic who had witnessed the dog’s bravery. The dog, whose name was Target, was flown to the U.S. to live with his new family in Arizona.

The happy ending was short-lived, however. Target escaped from their yard, was captured by the dog catcher, and euthanized by mistake before the family could reclaim him. Target had captured the hearts of millions and all around the world people who’d never met Target the dog cried for him.

For every dog story that makes front page news, there are dog stories which live only in the hearts and minds of those directly involved. One such story broke my heart. The only reason I know of this story is because I personally know the dog owners and have been following their heartwrenching tale on Facebook.

It is the story of a fireman, his beloved wife and children, and their three dogs: Charlie, Maggie Bean and Doolie. I have never before witnessed such love in a family as this family shares. When you read their conversations on Facebook you can feel the love that fills their home and you cannot help but smile. Theirs is a family full of love, light, and heroism.

The fireman has saved the lives of countless people in his career. He has saved homes from burning to the ground. He saved a stranded woman from drowning during the floods of 2009. He is a quiet hero, known only to his friends and family but not the world at large.

Their story began on a happy note as many stories do. The fireman and his wife had gone to the beach for a few days vacation with hearts of love floating all around them, as always. They were celebrating their wedding anniversary. The horror began when they came home.

All three of their dogs had gotten loose while they were on vacation. Someone had been watching the dogs for them and the dogs ran out the door while under the care of the dog sitter. It’s hard enough to go away and leave your dogs behind especially for the fear of something like this happening.

No matter how hard we try to keep our dogs in, sometimes they get out. There are so many ways a dog can get out despite our best efforts to prevent it.

Many moons ago before my husband and I got married, I had taken my dog Gypsy Rose to spend a weekend with my not-yet husband. I didn’t know it when I let Gypsy Rose out into the fenced yard, but the gate was open. I let my dog out, she found the open gate and off she went to explore.

A half hour later when I went to let her back in, my dog Gypsy Rose was long gone. I went all up and down the street looking for her, to no avail. I called and called but there was no sign of her. I went to the next street over, walking down the street and calling out to her. Nothing. Not a sign.

Being close to a major road I was beginning to panic. There were so many directions she could have gone in and so many cars barreling down that big road that could hit her. I didn’t know which direction to look and I felt like I was searching for a needle in a haystack. Being on foot my progress was painfully slow and I wasn’t making any headway.

As I was walking back up the street a pickup truck pulled up next to me asking if I was looking for a dog. I said yes and described Gypsy Rose. They had found her wandering around and put her in their fenced backyard. I had walked right past their house never knowing that my dog was in their backyard. She was a quiet dog and hadn’t made a peep.

They gave me and Gypsy Rose a ride back to the house and Gypsy Rose went on to live with me until she passed away at fifteen years old. Thankfully our story had a happy ending. It could so easily have been otherwise. I had never let her run loose intentionally and yet she got out. It happens.

And so it happened to the fireman and his family. All three of their dogs got out together. Like me, they went searching for their dogs and at first they were reporting their dogs as being lost. They kept searching and they finally found all three dogs, but their dogs did not have the happy ending that Gypsy Rose did.

Their dog Maggie Bean had been hit by a car and left by the road to die. By the time the fireman found her, their beloved Maggie Bean was dead. Maggie Bean had been a gift for their first wedding anniversary and thus held a very special place in their hearts.

The second dog, Doolie, was fine. Doolie’s feathers were a bit ruffled but otherwise fine. Doolie had escaped the wheels of oncoming traffic.

The third dog, Charlie, had also been hit by a car and left to die, presumably the same car that had killed Maggie Bean. Or perhaps Charlie had stayed close to the dying Maggie Bean to protect her and was hit by a different car. We will never know exactly what happened to the fireman’s dogs on that fateful night.

The fireman found Charlie severely injured and immediately took him to the vet. They’ve been trying to save his life ever since. All through the Thanksgiving holiday they battled for Charlie’s life and it looks like their Christmas will be filled with the fear of losing Charlie as well.

It’s been touch and go for their dog Charlie who is struggling with his many injuries. His face and eyesocket were injured. His legs and hip were injured. This fireman and his family lost one dog and are now facing the holidays with the battle to save the life of their other dog.

It is heartbreaking to read their tale of loss and their battle to bring Charlie back to health. Charlie has good days and bad days, and he’ll make progress forward only to lose ground and fall backward again.

During a recent backslide the fireman’s wife was beside herself with anguish. She said, “My Charlie is not doing well and I just don’t think I can handle the loss of another dog. He’s not eating, not moving, and we had to carry him to the vet. He hasn’t been the same since the accident. He just keeps getting worse.”

It broke my heart to hear her anguish. Her friends all rallied around her with attempts at comforting words but truly there is no comfort when you are battling to save a life. The vet said that Charlie was full of infection and put him on more antibiotics.

They’ve been struggling for words to answer the questions of their children. With one dog gone the kids have been asking about Charlie and their fireman father has no answer. A home that had been so full of love and light and laughter was now full of sadness and death. This family had lost one dog and was battling valiantly not to lose another, and Charlie began his fight for life traveling back and forth from his home to the vet.

I looked through the photos they’d posted of their three dogs. It showed a life of love with the dogs in the center of it right up there next to the kids. I saw a dog lying on the couch next to his daddy, dogs swimming in the lake, dogs playing fetch with sticks, and even a dog in the bathtub for a bath. These were not backyard dogs ignored by their owners or left to roam loose. These dogs were beloved family members who lived indoors with their family.

The bottomless pit of grief worsened for this valiant family when the vet discovered a horrific deed while he was working to restore this beloved dog back to health. The vet found a BB lodged in the dog. No one knows when the horrible deed occurred or who had done it. No one knows whether it was done as the dog laid dying in the road after being hit by a car, or whether it had been done an hour or week or months before.

This family who was battling to save the life of their dog had to live with the horrible knowledge that someone had shot the dog with a BB gun. What would go through your mind? Did the driver of the car who’d hit the dog attempt to finish the job with a BB gun? Did a later passerby attempt to euthanize the dog rather than calling a vet or animal control?

Or had a neighbor shot the dog long before the accident that brought the dirty deed into the light? The question would always hang heavy on your mind. You’d never be able to look at any of your neighbors the same again. This couple whose home had always been full of love and laughter would now look at their neighbors and wonder: Did one of them shoot the dog? I know I would.

Here is a fireman, a hero who saves lives, protects property, and risks his life for others, having to live with the knowledge that someone shot his dog with a BB gun while he was out saving lives. He has to live with the knowledge that while he and his brethren risk their lives to pull people out of burning buildings, someone left his dogs to die by the side of the road.

No one who loves their dogs as a family member deserves to live through the horror of losing a dog and battling for the life of another. After a several week battle to save Charlie’s life, they finally had to let go. Charlie was not able to recover from his injuries. They lost two of their three dogs just as they were supposed to be celebrating their wedding anniversary, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

The next time you see an injured dog, or worse, hit a dog with your car even if accidentally, consider the family behind the dog before you drive away and leave the dog to die.

Do not assume that the dog was just a stray wandering loose. Do not assume that the owner was lax in his ownership and allowed the dog to run loose. Stop and help the dog, give the dog a chance at life — his daddy may be the man who saves your life someday.

Tags: dog, dog by the side of the road, dog died, dog got hit by a car, dog got loose, dog got out, dog hit by a car, dog left by the road, dog left to die, dog shot with a BB gun, dogs, dogs got loose, dogs got out, fireman, fireman's dog, fireman's dog dies, fireman's dogs, firemen, firemen's dog, firemen's dogs, hero, hero dog, heroes

Category: Dog Tails of Adventure

Our Catahoula Leopard Dog is a cheap date. She recently turned one year old and we’ve had her since she was a puppy, so we’ve been through the puppy chewing phase with her. Whereas our other dog needed heavy duty rawhides to keep her teeth busy, and they never kept her teeth busy long enough, our Catahoula pup has never needed a rawhide to chew on. She prefers pine cones and pine straw that she finds in our backyard. Pine straws are needles from long-needled pine trees that are commonly bought in bales and used as garden mulch.

From her earliest days our Catahoula puppy would smuggle things in from outdoors, tucked inside her cheek like a hoarding hamster. You wouldn’t even realize she had smuggled something until she started chewing on it. Pine cones, pine straw, and rocks were commonly smuggled items. We immediately took the rocks away.

Her favorite dog chew was a piece of pine straw. I kid you not, one single piece of pine straw that had fallen from our long-needled pine tree could keep our Catahoula dog busy chewing for three straight days. Talk about a cheap date!

After the serious business of keeping our Australian Cattle Dog/Husky mix (Ausky) busy with dog chewies, and retraining her not to chew up our house, we were prepared to use the same techniques in training our Catahoula puppy. Our Ausky dog had come to us as a semi-adult shelter dog with a lot of problems. We were successful in retraining her to be able to have full run of the house even when we weren’t home, without worrying about dog chewing or potty in the house. We shared her story and how we retrained her in the book Bad Dog to Best Friend which is available on Amazon.com.

After adopting the Catahoula puppy, we studied up on the Catahoula Leopard Dog breed and according to everything we read, serious training was a must for the Catahoula breed, as well as being ready to deal with dog chewing issues. We were totally ready, but our Catahoula puppy didn’t follow the chewing regime that our Ausky dog had gone through. A single piece of pine straw and she was perfectly happy, trotting around like a man with a toothpick hanging out of his mouth. That’s exactly what she reminded us of, too. Just like a person who chews on toothpicks, our Catahoula dog chews on pine straw.

Pine cones were another big dog treat in her life, though we did not accommodate them as readily as the pine straw. Our Catahoula dog didn’t actually eat the pine cones, she simply chewed them into little pieces making quite a mess in a short period of time. Pine cones and pine straw were cheap treats that our yard had in abundance, and it was preferable to allowing her to ingest large quantities of rawhide which can harm your dog. If a dog gets too much rawhide in their belly it can swell up and block their intestines. Dogs can die from intestinal blockage and our Ausky dog had given us a few scares during her chewing phase, so it was a relief not to have to worry about such things.

We were lucky that we never had to worry about our Catahoula puppy actually swallowing the pine cones. If a dog swallows anything big and chunky it can cause choking or an intestinal blockage. Allowing your dog to chew on pine cones from outdoors could also tempt them to chew on decorative pine cones in your home that may have been treated with chemicals that are toxic to your dog.

In addition, dogs eating quantities of pine cones and pine needles from outdoors can cause other issues. One concerns toxins that you use in your yard such as fertilizers, weed killers and insecticides. As we rarely use these in the backyard where our dogs play, this is not an issue for us. Pine tree oils and saps, however, can be problematic.

According to the ASPCA, Norfolk Island Pine (Araucaria heterophylla) can produce vomiting, depression, pale mucous membranes and a drop in body temperature in cats, and possibly similar problems in dogs (though their site is a bit fuzzy on whether the dog symptoms would be the same as the cat symptoms.) The Buddhist Pine (Podocarpus macrophylla), which is also known as a Japanese Yew or Southern Yew, can cause severe diarrhea and vomiting.

Oddly enough, the ASPCA recommends using shredded pine as a mulch rather than the HIGHLY toxic cocoa bean shells, which contain the chocolate ingredient that can kill a dog in high enough quantities. Instead of using cocoa shell mulch, they recommend “non-toxic alternatives” including shredded pine, cedar or hemlock bark. They do advise you to keep an eye on your dog near mulch of any kind, however.

Christmas tree varieties of pines contain pine sap and oils that can cause gastrointestinal irritation and affect the nervous system if ingested in large enough quantities. In addition, the needles (presumably of the short-needled variety though they did not specify) can cause damage to the soft tissues of the mouth and gastrointestinal tract.

As our Catahoula dog doesn’t actually ingest the pine cones or the pine straw, I do allow her to chew on them, though pine cones are not allowed in the house. Ever since I banned her from bringing pine cones indoors she has lost interest in them. The pine straw, however, remains a favorite treat for our dog to chew on and considering the dangers of some of the alternatives, we’re more than happy to allow the pine straw.

Dog humor on t-shirts, hats, coffee mugs and beer mugs, tote bags,
posters and more! Our Catahoula Leopard Dog and our Australian Cattle Dog/Husky mix are both featured on a wide variety of gift items.

Tags: catahoula, catahoula dog, catahoula leopard dog, catahoula leopard dog puppy, catahoula leopard puppy, catahoula puppy, dog, dog chewing, dog chews on pine cones, dog chews on pine needles, dog chews on pine straw, dog eating pine needles, dog eating pine straw, dog eats a pine cone, dog eats pine cones, dog eats pine needles, dog eats pine straw, dog smuggles a pine cone, dog smuggles pine cones, dogs, dogs chewing, dogs eating a pine cone, dogs eating pine cones, toxic to dogs

Category: Dog Tails of Adventure

Live bugs are a delicacy in a dog’s diet providing not only a tasty morsel, but the thrill of the chase as well. Noisy, buzzy bugs and small, easy-to-catch animals were prime targets for our dogs, including poisonous toads and stinging wasps. Dead bugs didn’t hold as much interest, however, with sun-roasted dead bugs being the one exception.

Dakota found a big dead bug on the deck that turned out to be a cicada. She picked it up and bit into it, then promptly spit it back out making a face as if she’d tasted something very sour. That would have been the end of it but apparently, once it was roasted it became a highly desirable morsel to crunch on.

Humans eat cooked cicadas either fried or skewered, with roasted cicadas being quite the delicacy in some cultures. Our dog must have hailed from one of those cultures because after the sour dead cicada had sat roasting in the sun for two days during the dog days of August, she decided that the dead cicada was roasted to perfection and promptly ate it with a few loud crunches.

Dead cicadas are a multi-purpose dog magnet being good for much more than just a tasty dog snack. A single big, dead bug could provide quite a bit of entertainment for our two dogs: Dakota and Sierra. Two days after Dakota had eaten the sun-roasted cicada, both dogs were rolling in utter ecstasy in the grass. They eagerly took turns rolling on something that I knew must be thoroughly disgusting to create such orgasmic ecstasy.

Upon investigation, I discovered that it was another dead cicada. The bug carcass was nestled down in the grass and their rolling on it would not likely expose them to anything that would stick to their fur, so I stepped back to watch the dogs have fun. In addition, the dead bug shell was tough enough not to squish under their weight.

Apparently that was not good enough for our dog Dakota, who set out to squish the bug in order to access its pungent aromas for their rolling pleasure. She picked up the dead bug and bit on it just enough to weaken the shell, and then dropped it. She and Sierra took turns rolling on it a few more times, with Dakota biting it in between rolls to squeeze out any goo for the dogs to roll on.

The dogs were getting so worked up over this one dead bug that I decided to investigate further. Surely the dried up hull of a cicada couldn’t be THAT interesting. Much to my horror, the carcass of the dead bug had maggots on it and upon taking a sniff, the dead bug carcass had that nasty smell that the dogs acquire in between dog baths. I’d always thought dried up dead bugs were relatively stink-free in regards to dog rolling but now I knew better. Needless to say, Dakota and Sierra got sent up to the deck while I turned the dead bug into a photo opp.

The cicada turned out to be a Dog Day Cicada, also known as an Annual Cicada or Dogday Harvestfly of the genus Tibicen. There are many varieties of Dog Day Cicadas and ours may have been a Tibicen canicularis with the Latin Tibicen meaning flute player or piper and canicularis representing a big dog.

Cicada mating songs do not sound even remotely like a flute, however, being closer to the sound of a very loud buzz saw. From midsummer to fall you can hear the loud buzzing of the males looking for mates and their mating call can reach up to 100 decibels, which is the equivalent of a motorcycle or lawnmower.

Canicula is Latin for the Dog Star which is the star Sirius in the constellation Canis Major — Canis meaning dog and Major meaning large, big or greater. Sirius is the brightest star in the sky and when it rises at dawn, it signals the beginning of the dog days of summer which is that period in July and August when the Dog Star is prominent in the early dawn sky.

The ancient Egyptians discovered that the position of the Dog Star foretold of the rising waters of the Nile River, followed by sickness, burning fevers, malaria, hysterics and frenzies. Even the dogs went mad upon the rising of the Dog Star. The air became tainted with plagues and death, the seas boiled, the grass became parched, and the blasting winds brought pestilence to torment the people. The Dog Star was called the destroyer of life and the dog days of summer were an evil time of disease and pestilence in the old world.

Such was the fear of the rising of the Dog Star that a special festival was held in the hopes of appeasing the angry gods. The god Typhon was associated with the Dog Star and in Greek mythology, Typhon was considered the father of all monsters and even the other gods feared him. Typhon was a winged fury who had the body of a snake topped with one hundred dragon heads and fire flashing from his many eyes. Typhon was not a god you’d want to anger.

In the hopes of soothing the wrath of Typhon who was believed to be responsible for the dog days of summer, the ancient Egyptians would sacrifice a red-haired person. The evil god Typhon himself had red hair and as most of the Egyptians did not, the sacrifice was most often a foreigner who was unlucky enough to be in Egypt during the dog days. The Greeks and the Romans soon took up the custom, substituting a dog for a red-haired person, dogs already being a favorite form of sacrifice.

In the Greek city of Argos, a dog-killing festival was held called the Cynophontis from the Greek cyno meaning dog, and phoneuo meaning to kill, slay or murder. During the dog-killing festival, dogs were slaughtered mercilessly. The Greeks, however, revered the cicada associating it with spiritual ecstasy and immortality. While the cicadas were being idolized, the dogs were being horrifically sacrificed. It is no wonder that a dog would thus take pleasure in the eating of a cicada with such a bloody history between them.

Today, cicadas are a food source for people, dogs, birds, rodents and other small mammals, snakes, lizards, fish and even wasps. There is a species of wasp which emerges during the dog days to prey upon the cicada. It’s called a Cicada Killer Wasp of the genus Sphecius, also known as a Giant Ground Hornet or Cicada Hawk. This is a VERY BIG predatory wasp that lives in the ground. Unlike most hive wasps, the Cicada Killer Wasp is a solitary wasp that rarely stings humans, which is a good thing as this wasp can easily reach an inch and a half long. Their sting is reputed to be much milder than most other bees and wasps and if you don’t bother them, they won’t bother you, so you can garden in peace even during the dog days.

The male Cicada Killer Wasp does not possess a stinger, leaving the female to hunt down and sting cicadas. The sting paralyzes the cicada, which is then deposited into the wasp hole for the wasp to lay an egg on. When the wasp larva hatches, it will feed upon the live cicada.

For each male egg that the female wasp lays, she will need to capture one cicada to provide food for the waspling. Female wasp eggs get two cicadas to feed upon when they hatch. A single female Cicada Killer Wasp will kill more than 100 cicadas in her lifetime, and as you’ll generally find colonies of the wasps in the same area called leks, a typical Cicada Killer Wasp colony can easily clear out 10-15,000 cicadas from the neighborhood in a single month. The adult wasps will feed on flower nectar.

While both dogs and Cicada Killer Wasps are known to feed on cicadas, an even bigger creature feeds upon the wasps: our dog Gypsy Rose. She was an accomplished wasp killer for all the fifteen years of her life, and such was her love of eating a wasp that she was willing to brave their mighty stingers to partake of the delicacy.

Dog humor on tshirts, hats, mugs, tote bags,
notebooks and more!

Tags: annual cicada, burrowing wasp, canicula, canicularis, canis major, cicada, cicada has maggots, cicada hawk, cicada killer, cicada killer wasp, cicada with maggots, cooked cicadas, cynophontes, cynophontis, digging wasp, dog, dog day cicada, dog day harvestfly, dog days, dog days of summer, dog eating a bug, dog eating a cicada, dog eating a dead bug, dog eating a dead cicada, dog eating dead bugs, dog eats a bug, dog eats bugs, dog eats cicadas, dog eats dead cicadas, dog killing festival, dog rolling in the grass, dog rolling on a bug, dog rolling on a dead bug, dog rolling on the grass, dog rolls on bugs, dog rolls on dead bugs, dog sacrifice, dog smells, dog star, dog stinks, dogday cicada, dogday harvestfly, dogs eats dead bugs, dogs rolling in the grass, dogs rolling on the grass, fried cicadas, ground hornet, ground wasp, harvestfly, history of dog days, history of the dog days of summer, origin of dog days, origin of the dog days of summer, roasted cicadas, sacrificial dog, sacrificial dogs, sacrificing a dog, sirius, sun-dried cicadas, sun-roasted cicadas, tibicen, tibicen canicularis, typhon, wasps that don't sting, when are the dog days, when are the dog days of summer

Category: Dog Tails of Adventure