Vito with David Bowie Eyes

                                                                               Photo by Chris Ryba

            David Bowie has one blue eye, and one that is green or brown, depending on the light.

            Vito also has two different color eyes.

            The right is solid brown. The left is a scrambled combination of brown, green and blue.

            It’s not uncommon for Siberian Huskies to have this trait, but still, I wonder if he sees all right out of the mixed-color eye. For example, he cannot catch a treat with his mouth. No matter how slowly and directly we toss it, Vito stands stiff and seems to look at, well, nothing. Then he wiggles his nose and sniffs the floor to find it.

            Farmington teenager Chris Ryba puppy sat one day. He snapped this photo that shows Vito’s bi-colored eyes.

             Chris is headed to The University of Michigan to study engineering. He's also an accomplished photographer.

            To view more of Chris’s photos, go to www.chrisryba.smugmug.com.

            The photos are quite good -- a feast for your eyes, whichever color combination they may happen to be.

Jackie Lambchops

“I won’t pay. I know too much about extortion.”
- Tony Soprano
The Sopranos

I have a pet peeve -- rich celebrities who won’t pay their bills.
Washed-up diva Mariah Carey is the latest deadbeat. Carey, who is pregnant with child, owes her veterinarian $30,000. The vet is suing her for nonpayment of “extraordinary services.” The dogs involved are Jack Russell terriers, Cha-Cha, Dolomite and JJ. Since then, Carey’s added another dog, Jackie Lambchops (I read that when she refers to Jackie Lambchops, she uses a Tony Soprano accent).
How could she owe a vet $30,000? What were the “extraordinary procedures? Did the dogs get nose jobs?
According to the lawsuit, the original bill was $38,000 (of which Carey still allegedly owes $29,559.) The vet, a Dr. Cindy Bressler from Manhattan, made a house call to Southern California, where Carey and two of the dogs were hanging out to promote her movie “Precious.”
While there, the vet supervised the birth of dog No. 3, Dolomite. Apparently, the vet took care of the new puppy, and the other dogs, for the whole month following the puppy’s birth.
If this is how Carey acts with her dogs, I wonder how she’ll be as a mother.
If I were Carey’s obstetrician, I would get her credit card number up front – and a forwarding address, in case she forgets to take the baby home.

Rich Dog, Poor Dog

F. Scott Fitzgerald: “The rich are different than you and me.”
Ernest Hemingway: “Yes, they have more money.”

Hemingway’s famous zinger is said to have never happened. But of the two great American writers, I have always liked the hunky Hemingway – rugged Michigander that he was – more than the fragile Fitzgerald. So, in my mind, the conversation stands.
The quote – real or not -- popped in my head as I read about Conchita, a thin, spa-loving, diamond-draped heiress that is in the middle of one of America’s most spiteful estate battles.
But Conchita isn’t your ordinary heiress. She is a Chihuahua, a dog that the late Miami Heiress Gail Posner elevated to the status of surrogate child. Once, Conchita nearly choked on a $15,000 Cartier necklace she wore as a collar. The dog also owned its own gold Cadillac Escalade.
Posner died in March and left Conchita, and her two other dogs, an $8.3 million mansion, plus $3 million in trust funds. Posner’s son, the bratty Bret Carr, who was once arrested for counterfeiting, has unsurprisingly disputed the will.
Posner’s servant, a woman named Queen Elizabeth Beckford, received $5 million to care for Conchita, and two other dogs and some turtles, at the mansion. Beckford has to do things like take care of the dogs’ four-season wardrobe and their diamond jewelry. She also takes them to their weekly spa treatments, where they get a mani-pedi on their claws. When Conchita and the other creatures die, the rest of the inheritance is supposed to go to charity.
Conchita has lots of material things, but I wonder if she is a happy dog. The servants put up with all this excessive nonsense because Conchita is the source of their huge paychecks. When Conchita dies, so does the gravy train. To Posner’s bitter son, Conchita is the symbol of his mother’s complete rejection. That’s a whole lot of human dysfunction for poor Conchita to carry on her teeny-tiny shoulders.
When I finished reading about the feud, I looked at Vito, who scratched at the window. With his paw, he batted down a fly, caught it in his mouth, and swallowed it. Satisfied with his snack, he sniffed his way to his toy tiger, which I bought for him at the dollar store. He proceeded to bite its leg.
Vito’s nails are a bit ragged. His collar is nylon. He doesn’t own a wig, but even so, he seems happy.
A fly to catch, a toy to chew, fresh water, healthy food, and a family of best friends: what more could a dog want?
Hemingway was right. The rich do have more money, but less sense.

Corvette Vito

Brian brought home a ZO6 Corvette for a week as part of the General Motors Ambassador Program.
The program asks employees to drive new, cool vehicles, which helps them better understand the company’s cars. It also encourages them to become strong sales ambassadors for GM products.
Brian took the $75,000 car all over metro Detroit, including Ann Arbor, where Nick and Beth had the opportunity to drive it around campus.
Even 17-year-old Christina took a turn at the wheel. Brian said she did better than me. I’m not that great with a stick shift. When the light turned green at Grand River and Drake in Farmington, I shifted into first and tapped the gas. It was too much. I laid a patch and felt like an idiot.
All week, Vito watched from the front window as we backed out of the driveway and took off in the low, sleek automobile.
On the last day, after the people were all done with the Corvette, it was finally Vito’s turn to go for a ride.

Dad's Whiskey

Vito’s mouth looks like he’s sucked on a baby bottle of Mountain Dew night and day since birth.
In a few short days, he lost nearly half of his puppy teeth. Right now he’s missing all four canines and a bunch of molars.
Throughout the house, droplets of blood from his gums dot the floor. So do his teeth. We step on them and shriek.
Vito himself moans. He is in terrible pain as adult teeth break through his gums.
When my children were babies and lost their teeth, they would run a fever and cry. With the twins, the teething woes doubled. I bought lots of Baby Tylenol.
My father, who was born in the old country, didn’t like that I gave his grandchildren store-bought painkiller. He worried it would hurt them. He wanted me to do what his mother did when her babies were in teething agony.
“Rub whiskey on their gums,” he said. “Just a drop. It helps them sleep.”
His medical advice, which he gave freely, always scared me because my dad came from a small town where the barber doubled as the doctor. The barber could cut your hair and repair your punctured eardrum, all in the same visit.
I told him that here, in the new country, we had powerful chemicals to knock the pain out. Sure, if one accidentally happened to give a kid too much, it could cause liver failure, but that hardly ever happened.
My dad has been gone a while, and it’s been ages since my children lost teeth. My heart ached for Vito because it seemed like his mouth really hurt. I wanted to help him, but I realized we hadn’t had children’s pain reliever in the house for years.
Every time Vito cried in misery, my dad’s words ran through my head.
Finally, I could stand it no longer. There was an ancient bottle -- given to us by my dad -- of Seagram’s VO in the cabinet. I asked Nick to see if he could find the brown bottle. He located it, and I poured some in a shot glass, dipped my finger in, and rubbed it on Vito’s gums. The puppy seemed to smile. His body seemed to relax. It seemed to work. I dipped and rubbed Vito’s gums a few more times over the next couple of days, and it always seemed to settle him.
My dad would have been pleased with the way his whiskey worked. I wish he’d been here to see it -- and to meet his gummy-mouthed grandpup.

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.

            

Sea Kittens

Christopher Moltisanti; “Louis Brazzi sleeps with the fishes.”

Pussy Bonpensiero: “Luca Brasi! Luca …”

Christopher: “Whatever.”

-The Sopranos

 I like animals as much as the next human, but PETA is swimming up the wrong creek with this one. They renamed fish. They want us to call the scaly things “sea kittens.”

            According to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, we humans don’t seem to like fish. They’re slimy, and they have eyes on the sides of their head. Fish needed an image makeover, so that was why PETA renamed the whole species “sea kittens.”

            If we call a fish a sea kitten, PETA hopes we will stop catching them with hooks and eating them.

            I refuse to stop eating fish. They are loaded with Omega- 3 fatty acids, which are good for my heart. If I want to barbeque a salmon fillet, I’m doing it. And I’m certainly not going to refer to it as grilled sea kitten.

            But apparently PETA believes it has thought through the whole “sea kitten” revolution. They have created a “Sea Kitten” website where you can get all kinds of facts.

            For example, did you know that when a sea kitten has a baby, it’s called a “baby sea kitty?”

            The website also contains flash games, virtual books, and a store to buy sea kitten merchandise.

             I asked Vito what he thought. That was probably a bad idea, because now he was upset that PETA chose to call fish  “sea kittens” and not “sea puppies.” To calm him, I suggested we go to the website to “Create Your Own Sea Kitten.”

            Naturally, Vito wanted his sea kitten to look like a puppy. There were lots of sea kittens to choose from: flounder, tuna, salmon, mahi mahi. He picked the anchovy, because they tasted good on pizza. Choosing the right headpiece frustrated him because the ears that looked the most like Vito’s were brown, and Vito’s ears were black, white and gray.

            When we tried to pick a collar, Vito got really ticked. The only choice was pink, and Vito’s collar was blue, which made PETA seem anti-male. A lot of the sea kitten stuff did appear very Miley Cyrus-like.

            When it came time to choose a name for his sea kitten, Vito had completely lost interest.

            He let himself out to chase a squirrel …… excuse me … a tree kitten.