Dog Days

Christina and Vito chill out during the dog days of summer (Photo by Brian Pedersen)

            Annemarie and Vito will be on hiatus for the next ten weeks.

            During that time, Annemarie will channel all of her creative juices into her novel. Vito will do his part by behaving himself and lying quietly at her feet, as she quickly and effortlessly produces a bestseller.

            That’s the plan anyway …

Fur Ball

Vito guards his fur

“We're all born bald, baby.”

- Telly Savalas

            Vito is one serious fur ball.

            Some call this time of year the shedding season, but what happens to Siberian Huskies once or twice a year is far more ominous than an ordinary word like “shedding” could describe. Think fur explosion.

            The fur comes out in stages. First, the undercoat blows. White, lighter-than air tumbleweeds of fur roll over the floor. When you reach to pick one up, the nearly imperceptible wind generated by your movement causes the ball of fur to shift continuously out of your reach.

            Next, the darker undercoat falls out. The heavier, dark fur coats the carpet. It takes three or four swipes with a vacuum cleaner to pick it up.

            Finally, the outer coat goes. These hairs look like black and silver needles. They stick to upholstered chairs

            For 45 minutes one afternoon and then again a few hours later, I brushed Vito. I removed so much fur that he now resembles a dog more than some freak black and white polar bear.

            The fur pictured is from that long and hairy day.

Eat Me

“You ever think what a coincidence it is that Lou Gehrig died of Lou Gehrig's disease?”

- Christopher Moltisanti

The Sopranos           

            I read that a Downriver man was grateful his dog ate most of his toe while he was passed out drunk. Maybe he was thankful because he got to save on dog food that day. A human toe can be a good source of protein for an animal.

            The article continued that the man was grateful for the dog’s action because it helped uncover an undiagnosed diabetic condition and led to treatment that could save his life. Doctors found an unknown bone infection, and they amputated the rest of the man’s toe.

            The same thing happened to me. I was drinking a pitcher of margaritas to dull the pain of arthritis in my thumb. After about four tumblers, while splayed in the La-Z-Boy, I had an idea -- let’s me and Vito end this thumb pain forever. What the heck.

            “Vito,” I slurred, “Come over and eat this finger hangin’ off the side of my hand.”           

            Really, though, I don’t want Vito to diagnose any of my medical conditions. Every time I read one of those stories about trained dogs that sniff out cancer tumors in places like the prostrate, breast or lung, it makes me nervous.

            Vito is not big on respecting personal boundaries in the first place, and if it were up to him he’d spend about a quarter of his day with his nose jammed into a human body part.  I forbid this -- for several reasons –  because it freaks me out to think he would know more about my health status than I would know. What if he smelled an undiagnosed brain problem? How would he communicate this important information?

            Perhaps he could eat part of my head, which would certainly warrant a trip to the hospital, and lead to a diagnosis, I guess.

Wooly Bully

Hugo, taking himself on a walk

             I woke the other morning to find this Facebook message from my friend and fellow puppy owner Holly Gilbert, former features editor for The Oakland Press: “Don't give your dogs Nylabones. Trust me on this one. Hugo is fine now but it was a long night and an expensive trip to the vet.”

            Hugo is her very gorgeous parti-colored Standard Poodle, who is a couple of months older than Vito. Holly said Hugo had eaten both knobs off a chicken-flavored Nylabone, and then spent the next six hours throwing up. She and her husband Garry rushed him to the vet. Some $230 later, Hugo was deemed okay, but he needed medication for irritation from ingested bone bits.

            Quite a rollicking Facebook conversation followed Holly’s news. One woman wrote that besides Nylabones, pet owners are not supposed to give dogs rawhide bones or “greenies.” I have no idea what a “greenie” is, but it sounds like a doggie doobie to me.

            Another of Holly’s friends wrote: “I read Cesar Milan's (The Dog Whisperer) website and he suggested Bully sticks ... they stink to high heaven but my dog cannot seem to break off little chunks, he just chews and chews and when it is a nub we throw it away.”

            Yes, if you read a Dog Whisperer book, you know that Cesar Milan is a big fan of bully sticks. I don’t know if you are familiar with the things, but if you aren’t you may want to stop reading now, or at least set yourself up with a barf bag, because bully sticks are dried bull penises that are smoked and then cut to size. Who thought up that one? Dried bull penises, no wonder they stink!

            Anyway, after Hugo’s ordeal, I’m going to throw away Vito’s Nylabone. But I don’t know if I’m going to replace it with a bully stick. Vito loves to chew on bones, and I love Vito. But the thought of picking up the leftover chunk of a soft, soggy, chewed-up bull penis is farther than I’d be willing to go, even for Vito.

            That still leaves Vito needing something to chew on.

            Any of you dudes out there know where I can buy a greenie?

Shark!

I renewed my Valium prescription after overdosing on The Discovery Channel’s Shark Week. Did you see some of those shows? Monstrous sharks that skyrocket 15 feet out of the water to wrap their jaws around giant birds in flight. And how about those nuts, victims of a shark attack, who can’t wait to get back in the water with them?
Now I see man-eaters everywhere.
Check out this innocent and touching portrait of Christina and Vito on a Northern Michigan dock. Now look at the background.
Shark!

Mario and Luigi

            A devoted Veni, Vidi, Vito reader – okay, okay, it’s my brother Michael – recently commented that Vito always looks like he is having fun when he is with Nick.

            Nowhere was this more apparent than during their day at the beach, when I worried that their wild activities would land them on the next episode of that Animal Planet show, “Animal Cops: Detroit.”

            See, there’s no danger of "Animal Cops: Detroit "Rescuer Aaron Miller sniffing out me with his white van. When I’m at the beach with Vito, I do nice activities, like I throw a stick and tell him to fetch it. Vito swims right past the stick, completely ignoring it and me. And I’m just fine with that because television cameras – and handcuffs – are an unlikely result of our small, boring activity.

             But, when Nick plays with Vito, they become completely interactive – like a real-life Mario and Luigi video game.

            On this particular day at the beach, Vito jumped into Nick’s arms, and Nick hurled Vito into the lake. Vito emerged from the water with a crazed smile on his face and begged to be tossed in again. More than happy to oblige, Nick threw him into the lake. This happened over and over.

             “Stop!” I yelled, but just like the stick I threw for him to fetch, Vito completely ignored me. He jumped back in Nick’s arms. Nick acted like he was laughing too hard to answer, but funny enough, he had the energy to toss Vito back in the lake, for the fifteenth time.

            Please don’t tell me if you happen to catch my son and dog on the next episode of  … “Animal Cops: Up North.”

            

Dirt Dogs

When Nick was about seven years old, he watched -- and watched and watched and watched -- “Iron Will,” a movie about a dog sled race. Since then, he’s been hooking up dogs to baby strollers, skateboards, roller blades, and now,  a dirt bike. Here he and Vito blast down the driveway at our northern cottage. 

The Namesake

Don Vito Corleone

“The name of a man is a numbing blow from which he never recovers.”

- Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980)

          It would sadden my mother to see that Frank Sinatra’s grandson -- the son of Frank Sinatra Jr., named Frank Sinatra III -- tried to commit suicide this week. Maybe at some point in the young man’s life the name Frank Sinatra turned from an advantage to a burden. The original Frank was a cool cat and his pipes were a gift from God. That kind of swag probably can’t be duplicated, no matter what your name is.

             I think it would bother my mom because – as far as I know -- during her life she was in love with only two men: my father and Old Blue Eyes.

            Everyone knew that Palma loved Frankie – as a singer, of course. But one day, when I was about 12, I made a chilling discovery.

             As I flipped through my mom’s telephone book, where she wrote the names and phone numbers of her friends, I saw it. I looked again, but there it was, in her very own handwriting:

            Frank Sinatra … TW3-3713

            My mother had Frank Sinatra’s personal phone number. She was having a relationship with Frank Sinatra!

            I confronted her. “What’s this?” I pointed to his name and number in the little black book. “Frank Sinatra! Is he your boyfriend?”

            I couldn’t believe her reaction. I had caught her in the act, but apparently she was so good at the art of deception, she acted nonplussed. Calmly, she held out her hand for me to pass her the book. I slapped it into her palm and awaited her explanation.

            “Yes, we know Frank Sinatra,” she said calmly and handed me back the phone book. “He lives by grandma and grandpa on Santa Rosa.”

            “Why do you have his number?” I accused.

            “He helped grandpa paint the back of the house, where the boarders lived. I kept it in case we needed a painter.”

            “The painter’s name is Frank Sinatra?” I just could not let this go.

            “The Frank Sinatra in my phone book is older than Frankie. He was Frank Sinatra first.”

            Deflated from the reasonableness of the anticlimactic explanation, I returned my mom’s little black book to her desk, and right then I decided not to name my future children after famous people. I think celebrities should follow that rule, too. Being named after an iconic relative is just too much pressure. 

            My advice is to name your loved ones something normal, you know, like we did with our dog, Don Vito Corleone Pedersen. 

Don Vito Corleone Pedersen

Bad Computer

“Log off, that "cookies" **** makes me nervous!”
- Tony Soprano
The Sopranos

I’ve been on a bad roll with computer technology. The most recent frustration occurred Sunday, when I tried to post a funny video of Vito fighting a water cooler.
Any regular reader of Veni, Vidi, Vito could testify that I occasionally post videos, and I have never had any trouble getting the suckers to upload. But yesterday, for some inexplicable reason, the blog gods refused to cooperate.
There’s a “help” button on the top bar of the blog, so I clicked it, but that lead to more questions than answers because “help” comes from a “forum” of other technologically challenged bloggers, who cry on each other’s virtual shoulders. The whole help-forum is like a monkey teaching a chimp how to drive a car -- nobody has any business being behind the wheel of that vehicle.
Then, two weeks ago, I woke up and checked my e-mail. There were 1,200 returned messages from Mr. Viagra-Cialis, which ended up in my computer mailbox, all at 4:25 that morning. While I may lead a boring life, suffice it to say that it’s not bad enough that I would spend time sending Mr. Viagra-Cialis 1,200 emails. To add insult to injury, I got a terse e-mail from AOL saying that I had misbehaved and had broken the Terms and Agreement contract I once signed. I wrote back and said that I am the victim here!
Before I knew it, AOL kicked me off -- no more email privileges.
Thankfully, AOL does have professionals that one can correspond with, and they detected I had been a casualty of a password-stealing hacker. Within a half hour, I was re-instated.
About six months ago, many of my Facebook friends got a message from me that offered colon-cleansing services. That was embarrassing. Once again, I fell prey to password-stealing mischief.
These hackers have become pests in my life. The only way it’s going to stop is if Mr. Viagra-Cialis finds the password-stealing hacker and gives him a good, old-fashioned colon cleansing.

Technical difficulties

Dear Readers,
Veni, Vidi, Vito is experiencing technical difficulties with video. Your patience is appreciated.