Genes

“It’s in his blood, this miserable existence. My rotten, putrid genes have infected my kid’s soul. That is my gift to my son.”
- Tony Soprano
The Sopranos (“Walk Like a Man”)

Vito is nearly flunking puppy school. He continues to stink at “heel.” He will not walk next to me. He’s always in front.
The teacher said he is trying to be the boss of me, and that I need to be firmer with him. When I deepen my voice to command him to heel, he does turn around and look at me with what appears to be a big, excited smile. Then he just pulls harder.
I have been depressed about this. Neither Vito nor I are ignorant, so why, I keep pondering, is this so difficult for us?
Then I saw this video of Nick and Vito. Everything became clear.
Walking next to me may not be in Vito’s DNA.

Russian Brides Caused My Breakup

Paulie Walnuts: (on Russians) “I don't even know why we deal with these people.”

Tony Soprano: “Wanna guess?”

Paulie: “They make us money.”

Tony: “Thank you.”

- The Sopranos

             It was only a matter of time before the break up. In the end, what good could possibly come from a Russian mail-order bride website? Because of the brides, I lost it all.

            The ads on my blog were removed because I violated terms of a virtual contract. I promised I wouldn’t click the ads on my own blog and artificially pump the numbers. Considering my high-degree of nosiness, I was fairly good at resisting the urge.

            Then I wrote a blog in which my son Nick and our Siberian Husky Vito performed a goofy “Russian” dance. That’s the day the Russian mail-order bride ads began. Via my blog, I clicked on a mail-order bride ad, and a dozen photos of Eastern European seductresses appeared. The pictures actually moved. Vera stroked her hair. Irina danced. I felt like a voyeur and quickly exited the site. But I yearned to visit the Eastern bloc beauties again. I clicked. Natasha wiggled. I was infatuated.

            Anna, with her “Hello Kitty” bikini top, winked at me. I poured a glass of wine and winked back.

            I read the romantic story of Ekatrina, who thought she’d “never find such a good man like my future husband Tommy.”

            I returned to the site to keep up with aspiring bride Olga, who sat tipped on her bar chair. Her future husband sat across from her, his hands and legs crossed. He looked sinister, like a Euro gangster. I began to worry about Olga. I thought she was moving too fast.

            “Dmitri came to Armenia for 18 days and we beacame (sic) engaged,” she wrote. “Now the sweetest word is his name and the greatest thing is his love … I hope in the quietest (sic) of the night, when I whisper out to you, you know just what to do. Darling, listen to hear my voice echoing how much I love you.”

            I checked …. click, click, click … for updates on Olga. Was she okay? Did Dmitri know what to do in the  “quietest” of the night?

            I appealed to get the ads back and lost. Apparently, my transgressions were too egregious.

            I hope Olga has more luck with Dmitri than I had with ads.

  

Circle of Life

Tommy: “Well, the poor thing, it got-- I hit him and this, uh-- We hit the deer and his paw -- What do you call that?”

Tommy's Mother: “The paw?”

Tommy: “The paw, the...”


Tommy's Mother: “The foot.” 


Jimmy: “The hoof.” 


Tommy: “Yeah, the hoof got caught in the grill and I gotta, I gotta hack it off.”

Tommy's Mother: “Ooh.”

Tommy: “Ah, Ma, it's a sin, I can't leave it there, you know.”

 - Goodfellas

            So far, we’ve been very lucky with Vito. He doesn’t eat stuff  -- not a shoe, a cupboard door, or a piece of furniture – until now.

            Vito recently discovered this knickknack, which I keep on sill of our kitchen bay window. I thought it was safe because while he often looked at it, he never made a move to touch it.

             I have always enjoyed this trinket because it told a story. I think of a farm mother who made a pie and set it on the window to cool. Then kitty got a whiff of the sweet treat, and snuck a bite.  After his mischief, the cat gave himself a bath with his paw.

            Like the kitty, Vito succumbed to temptation. He could not resist biting off a piece of the ceramic cat’s ear.

            The cat eats ma’s pie. The dog eats the cat’s ear. What's next?

            Vito better be careful. Somewhere there’s a lion curious about the taste of Siberian Husky.

It's a Dog's Wife

“I thought therapy was going to clear up the freak show in his head.”

- Carmela Soprano (on her husband Tony).

The Sopranos

            Dog Whisperer Cesar Millan and his wife are splitting after 16 years of marriage. I’m not surprised.

            Currently, I’m reading Cesar’s newest book, “How to Raise the Perfect Dog.”  I’m sure Cesar is absolutely correct about everything he preaches regarding animals, especially his ideas on doggie psychology.

            I am glad Cesar writes his books and makes his TV show, but I think he spends too much time in the dog world to be there for his wife, a woman named Illusion.

            While the couple announced their divorce this week, it seems Illusion has always struggled with Cesar’s alpha male personality. The following quotes from Illusion and Cesar appeared fours years ago, in a 2006 New Yorker story, “What the Dog Saw.”  

            “Cesar was a machoistic, egocentric person who thought the world revolved around him,” Illusion said of their first few years together. “His view was that marriage was where a man tells a woman what to do. Never give affection. Never give compassion or understanding. Marriage is about keeping the man happy, and that's where it ends.”

            Early in their marriage, Illusion got sick and was in the hospital for three weeks. “Cesar visited once, for less than two hours,” she said. “I thought to myself, ‘This relationship is not working out.’ He just wanted to be with his dogs.”

            To save the marriage, Illusion insisted Cesar go to couples therapy. She found a woman therapist, who took Cesar to task.

            The psychologist told him, “You want your wife to take care of you, to clean the house. Well, she wants something, too. She wants your affection and love.'”

            Illusion remembers Cesar scribbling furiously on a pad. “He wrote that down,” she said. “He said, ‘That's it! It's like the dogs. They need exercise, discipline, and affection.’” Illusion said she looked at him, upset. “Why the hell are you talking about your dogs when you should be talking about us?” she asked.

             Regarding the therapy, Cesar reportedly said to the New Yorker, “I was fighting it. Two women against me, blah, blah, blah ...”

            In his current book, in a chapter about walking a dog, here’s what Cesar said about his relationship with his Pit Bull, Daddy:

             “I credit much of my intimate, almost psychic relationship with Daddy to the thousands and thousands of perfect walks we have completed together.”

            He’s had  “thousands and thousands” of “perfect walks” with his Pit Bull?

            I wonder how many times he invited his wife on a walk?

Punk

“But Vito is only nine. And dumb-witted. The child cannot harm you.”

- Signora Andolini

The Godfather II           

            In four hours puppy class will be in session, and my stomach hurts.

             Because of Vito’s ridiculous behavior when we’re there, I now realize the two are related.

             I asked Brian to call the teacher and lie to her that Vito and I will be absent because I’m in the hospital with abdomen pains. I asked him to say that while the doctors aren’t sure what I have, they know I’ll be hospitalized past the remaining class dates.

            But Brian is one of those annoying ethical types. He said he wasn’t going to lie. He said I should talk to the teacher and tell her my concerns. I told him to get me a baseball bat so I could slam it into my appendix, bust the sucker, and give myself peritonitis.

            “Then you can call with a clear conscious,” I said in a huff.

            It’s not like the teachers are mean. They encourage. “Don’t judge your puppy against the others,” they say. “All puppies are unique and progress at their own rate,” they reassure.

            But I have eyes. I can see Vito – with his playful disobedience – is the class bad boy. Vito is quite nice at home, but when he gets around his peers, he becomes a punk.

            Even Mia, his Golden Retriever girlfriend and classmate, finds him annoying. Two weeks ago, he went too far with her. He had recently lost some puppy teeth, and his gums were raw. He jumped on her and his mouth bled all over her beautiful auburn coat. The instructors removed Mia from class and gave her a scrub down. Since then, Mia will barely look at him.

            At the beginning of class last week, we practiced “heel.” The first couple of times Vito walked next to me like a champ. But by Round 3, he got bored and acted up. While all the other dogs trotted next to their owners like they were conjoined twins, Vito either hung behind and nipped me in the butt or pulled ahead and yanked my arm.

            We had only been in class five minutes, and he gathered negative attention like a wolf at a gingerbread man convention. 

            The teacher pulled us aside.

            “In this class we don’t train your dog,” she said. “We train you to train your dog.” Basically, she said I was a wimp, and that Vito made himself the leader of our pack.

            After our talk with the teacher, Vito got worse. Even though he’s housebroken and had gone outside right before class, he urinated twice on the classroom floor during the session. He slipped out of his collar, which was attached to his leash, and he ran haywire around the room, which incited a near riot among the other animals.

            While this happened, I put in a 9-1-1 call to the Dog Whisperer. He didn’t pick up. No matter. I doubt even he could have gotten control of the situation.

            After we corralled Vito back into his collar, he barked incessantly. I couldn’t even hear what the teacher tried to say to me.

             We made absolutely no progress; in fact, we have probably gotten farther behind because now it seems that Vito thinks he is pack leader of the class.

            I have some advice for our teacher: get a fake illness and call in sick next week.

           

             

Baby Boomers and Their Pooches: Snapshots

            Pottery, jewelry, and paintings were the main attraction at Art on the Grand on Grand River in downtown Farmington Saturday.

            Business was good, and lots of folks strolled the booths with their four-legged friends.                       

  Alice, Dublin and Sligo

Sligo was found, with his siblings, in a garbage can. The three-week-old puppies were thrown away. Alice Antoniotti of Farmington Hills adopted Sligo, and he has thrived under her care. Her other dog, Dublin, is a 12-year-old Brittany, who is losing his sight. Five-year-old Sligo’s ancestry is unknown, but Alice thinks he looks like a fox. The dogs were named for towns in Ireland.

Cinnamon and Renita

Renita Mayberry of Wixom took seven-month old Cinnamon, a Jack Russell Terrier, to Art on the Grand to get the puppy used to people. She adopted Cinnamon because “nobody wanted her, so I said I want her.” Renita says Cinnamon “peps” her up. “I feel young again.”

LiveStatue

LiveStatue fooled me. At first, I thought he was a new piece of sculpture in downtown Farmington. Then I saw him blink. LiveStatue is really Robert Shangle of Sparta. He is an award-winning performance artist. LiveStatue’s dog is an UnAlive prop.

Hail Cezar!

            (Cezar and his owner Tom Gammerath help form the tunnel for the Wixom Wildcats. Photo by Joe Schiavi.)

            Cezar may have a few issues, but loving his family is not one of them.

            The two-year-old Alaskan Malamute has practically eaten through the inside of a truck door and crashed through a glass house window to get to his family, Tom and Bonnie Gammerath of Commerce Township, and their sons Zachery, 11, and Luke, 8.

            Cezar is also the No. 1 canine fan of Zachery’s and Luke’s soccer teams, the U-11 and U-9 Wixom Wildcats. After every game, Wildcat parents form a tunnel that team members run through. Cezar hikes up on his hind legs and becomes one with the tunnel. The Wildcats have even included Cezar in their team photos.

            “Cezar loves all the kids,” said Bonnie. “My two-year-old niece can take food right out of his mouth. But he has terrible separation anxiety.”

             Marley, the Golden Retriever in John Grogan’s best-selling book “Marley & Me,” has nothing on Cezar, said Bonnie.

            “One day I stopped at an estate sale and left Cezar in my Ford Expedition – a truck,” said Bonnie. “I stayed on the grass, in his sight. You could hear him screaming in the truck. I asked my son to run to the car to get my purse, and he came back and said, ‘Mom, you’re not going to like what you see.’ Cezar ate a huge hole in the door. In 15 minutes!”

            Another time, the family left Cezar home, in his crate. When they returned, they found that he had dragged the crate 15 feet, rolled it over, and shattered its bottom – all while he was still in the crate. Once, he ate an entire lasagna, and half the glass pan. What followed was an expensive trip to the vet.

            Recently, Bonnie pretended to leave Cezar, but she actually spied on him to discover exactly what he went through when he was left alone. First he began to tremble and then drool poured from his mouth

             “Dripping and shaking,” said Bonnie. “He just wants to be with his human pack.”

            Now, Connie takes him where she can. He’s a favorite at Luke’s elementary school bus stop. Cezar walks up the steps into the bus, trots down the aisle, turns around, and comes back. The kids pet him as he passes. Zachery’s middle school bus driver always has treats ready for Cezar.

             Cezar may be the king of half-eaten doors, broken glass, and drool. But he’s also a goodwill ambassador to his subjects –the soccer players, school kids, and tunnel builders -- who make up his empire.