Posts Tagged ‘dog’

This story alone rates a book in itself and is probably my most requested story. Whenever I’m with friends or family and they realize someone hasn’t heard it yet, they invariably plead, “Oh please, tell them the Toby story.” And I will and it goes something like this:

I was fortunate that whenever I had idle time I could be immediately and profitably absorbed into the work force at our family glass and mirror company known as Eastwood Glass. And during summers I worked there as a glazier-in-waiting, learning the trade and making limited contributions. On this particular day, August 11^th 1974 (which I simply refer to now as 8-1-1) I knocked off work around 5 and my dad dropped me off back home. He dropped me off because he didn’t live there. He lived in back of the glass works sleeping on a cot with a shotgun resting against an open dresser constructed of plywood and 2X4s where he stored his meager clothing (I kid you not). There were quarters.

 

In any event, leaving dad and entering our modest 3-bedroom 1 bath 1100 sq. ft. middle class home, I was eagerly greeted by our excitable Yorkshire Terrier named Toby. In his eyes, I’d returned from the hunt and he was welcoming me back to the pack. He proceeded to jump up and down demanding his slobbering dollop of canine attention. Standing there in the hot doorway, I wasn’t prepared to bestow any doggy love. Instead, on this steamy summer day I walked down the long hallway and lay down on my sister’s bed to stretch out and relax. This allowed the little yapper to jump up on the bed, surmount my chest and commence to give me a proper pooch greeting by furiously licking my face.

 

Now even though I was only 13 years old, it had been a long day and my fatigue was manifested in a glorious and well-earned yawn. The kind where your eyes close and your jaw unhinges as you fully articulate the yawn cycle. As my eyes lazily opened and Toby was frenetically slurping my face, I witnessed something no human being should ever have to see. Evidently that little Yorkshire Terrorist Toby, had just eaten his Alpo prior to my arrival and as he stood on my chest joyfully licking his master’s face it happened. Without any indication something wretched was about to occur, he forcefully jettisoned a freshly digested arc of slimy dog vomit into my gaping mouth, past my retracted tongue, off my dangling uvula and into the back of my throat where it rebounded forward until the offending chunks rested on my taste buds.

 

This got my attention. It was a million to one swish from 3-point range. I was helpless as the putrid steamy lumps passed unscathed right past my teeth and rained down into the inner recesses of my now violated pie hole. I know that Einstein was correct in his theories of time dilation because as I jetted to the bathroom at the speed of light to wash out my mouth, time actually did slow down and I was able to experience the event in slow motion. Now if there’s one thing to be learned from all this it’s that you’ve never really experienced life until you’ve felt hot chunky dog puke ricochet off the back of your throat and onto your tongue. To this day I cannot yawn without sealing both hands over my mouth.

Sadie and the Tramp

Two of the most famous animals in the field of experimental psychology were Schrödinger‘s cat Sadie and Pavlov‘s dog Tramp. But what most people don’t know is that these two pioneering pets met and fell in love when Drs. Schrödinger and Pavlov attended a conference at the pet-friendly Grand Budapest Hotel in Hungary – or as Pavlov called it “The Buddha Pets Hotel.”

 

Whenever these eminent doctors traveled they often brought their pets with them – Schrödinger his elegant cat Sadie and Pavlov his mutt of a dog Tramp. That two animals from such different walks of life could forge a loving relationship is testament to the adage “opposites attract.” Schrödinger’s cat Sadie was a prissy pussy from Paris and Pavlov’s dog Tramp was a mangey mongrel from Minsk. Legend has it that their romance may have been the inspiration for Disney’s The Lady and the Tramp which featured canine love from opposite sides of the tracks.

 

 

Brief Bios of the Bygone Beasts

 

Schrödinger’s cat Sadie, a dainty calico, was the instructive feline that catalyzed Dr. Schrödinger’s theory about the paradox of quantum superposition. In quantum superposition, Dr. Schrödinger reasoned, a hypothetical cat unobserved in a closed box may be considered simultaneously both alive and dead – and its location uncertain. This was big news in the1930s. Not so much nowadays with all the cat videos, but back then quantum superposition was a big deal and we owe Sadie a great debt of gratitude for getting into the box and germinating Dr. Schrödinger’s “Eureka” moment.

 

The above is a quick cat’s claw sketch (as opposed to a thumbnail sketch) of darling Sadie. Tramp, on the other paw, was less refined and kind of an overly alarmist pooch – y’know, the dog who cried “woof.” By regularly pairing the ringing of a bell with a blast of meat powder on the tongue, Dr. Pavlov caused the poor slob to slobber like Niagara Falls. In fact, what Dr. Pavlov discovered was that even in the absence of food, Tramp would salivate like an open fire hydrant whenever he heard a bell ringing. This reinforcing psychological technique is called Classical Conditioning and for a time was the safest way to feed Mike Tyson.

 

Being born in the old Soviet Union, Tramp may have rightfully expected a short, brutish life – especially after being born the runt of the litter. And how fitting that was, since Sadie was also the runt of her kitty litter – so to speak. When Dr. Pavlov saw Tramp in the window of a “No Eat” animal shelter in famine-ravaged Minsk he knew if he didn’t rescue the lovable Tramp it would dog him forever. When the famine subsided “No Eat” shelters reverted to “No Kill” shelters. In any event Dr. Pavlov was attracted to the marvelous mutt and brought him home to his wife Seraphima, who took one glance at the bedraggled hound and exclaimed, “Great, dinner.”

 

“No, no,” countered Dr. Pavlov. “This animal will change everything we think about pairing conditioned stimulus (a bell) and an unconditioned stimulus (food) to produce a conditioned response (salivating). This conditioning is destined to become a classic. I can feel it.”

“So were not gonna eat him,” Seraphima asked? “OK. It’s borscht again.”

 

 

A Feline and Canine Entwine: Enter Zsa Zsa

 

Budapest resident and future glamor gal Zsa Zsa Gabor, then an 18-year-old underemployed Hungarian ingénue, was working at the Budapest Hotel’s Pet Day Care Center where she regularly superintended Sadie and the Tramp’s visits. The middle Gabor sister chaperoned and fed them with great care; even going so far as to conduct her own matchmaking culinary experiment. Zsa Zsa prepared and fed them a big plate of pasta consisting of a single long strand of spaghetti. She gave each of them an opposite end to chow down on. As they hungrily slurped and gobbled the spaghetti from each end it was only a matter of time till Tramp’s slobbering jowls met Sadie’s delicate whiskers. And when they did, it was kismet (actually it was more like kiss-met). When Sadie and the Tramp got to the end of their ropes his snout met her nose and after a moment of recognition, they nuzzled like long lost Eskimos. After Zsa Zsa’s romantic dinner Sadie and the Tramp were inseparable.

 

And there they’d happily commune. In the pet parlor of the Budapest Hotel where they would frolic with unbridled glee and mutual acceptance. Sadie would overlook Tramp’s torrents of slobber and Tramp would forgive Sadie’s penchant for being both dead and alive. Evidently location indeterminacy was no barrier to Tramp’s passion, and pools of drool none to Sadie’s. It seems when love is your unconditioned stimulus, it conquers all.

 

 

Incidents and Anecdotes

 

And in a curious sisterly coincidence, Zsa Zsa’s younger sister Eva (of Green Acres fame) would go on to do the silky, exotic voice of the bougee cat Duchess in Disney’s The Aristocats.

 

There was a noteworthy incident at the Budapest Hotel’s Pet Day Care Center one day when Dr. Schrödinger went to pick up Sadie and couldn’t find her anywhere. He was wracked with anxiety until he saw her little eyes just peeking out over the ö in Schrödinger. So cute he thought – there she was, hiding in an umlaut. Who else but Sadie could cloak herself in a diacritical mark? Amazing! Sadie was eerily adept at quantum superposition. In fact, Dr. Sigmund Freud, who was attending the same conference as Drs. Pavlov and Schrödinger, heard of the cat’s disappearance and wryly observed, “While it is possible Sadie may have been hiding above the ö, sometimes an umlaut is just an umlaut.”  

 

While being interviewed by Popular Quantum Mechanics magazine, Dr. Schrödinger was asked about Sadie’s little nighttime outfit resting there on the bed. He glanced over at them and replied, “Oh those? Those are the cat’s pajamas.” He pawsed and continued, “It kinda hurts me to talk about the cat’s pajamas. In fact, me ow.”

 

In Pavlov’s It’s a Wonderful Life world, every time a bell rang, an angel started to salivate. In Schrödinger’s “Wes Anderson” world every time a cat disappeared you didn’t know for certain if it was dead or alive. Could two animals from such different backgrounds bond together without driving each other crazy? No wait, that was the premise for Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple. Nope, it wasn’t that either. Their story was the basis for the unlikely pairing of another more recent Eastern European romance: The Lady and the Trump.

 

Dr. Pavlov was a Nobel prize-winner and was celebrated for being a self-made man. He had no choice. His parents never had sex. As the time passed Dr. Pavlov grew fond of Dr. Schrödinger and would tease his colleague by peering into Sadie’s litter box and observing, “Look! It’s Schrödinger scat.”

 

Years later when Dr. Schrödinger was asked about Dr. Pavlov’s experiments he famously responded, “Pavlov? Pavlov? The name doesn’t ring a bell.”

 

 

They Really Did Live Happily Ever After

 

Sadie and the Tramp were by now deeply bonded and this intense affection was recognized by Drs. Schrödinger and Pavlov who agreed to keep them together. They would summer in Minsk and winter in Paris. And although a litter of offspring was out of the question, it never stopped them from trying.

 

It was brave of Sadie and the Tramp to express their cat/dog love at a time when the mixing of the species was frowned upon. There were laws against this kind of co-mingling – especially in 1930s Berlin and the Deep South.

 

There was something greater at work here between Sadie and the Tramp. Something trite but true – that love conquers all. Now that may be a hackneyed phrase, but it also has the added virtue of being true. And I’m not hiding behind hollow clichés. If you’re looking for me, I’m hiding behind the é in cliché. I’m in a really good position. You might even say I’m in a quantum superposition.

1. Yorkshire Terrorist – Won’t stop yapping till they get their wet food
2. She Wow Wow – Sofia Vergara-influenced breed
   

   Don’t raise your eyebrows at me.

3. Lhasa Ipso Facto – Asian lawyers’ favorite dog
4. Angela Basset Hound – Ike Turner had something to do with its creation
5. Alaskan Mostlymute – Rarely barks
6. Uaintnuthin’butta Hound Dog – Found mostly in the South, Cryin’ all the time
7. Teacup St. Bernard – A contradiction in terms. Like jumbo shrimp.
8. Borderline Collie – Not quite a Collie, but close
9. Cocker Doodle Doo – Howls when the sun comes up
10. Chilean Sea Basset Hound – A sub-species of Dogfish. Sleeps on a bed of spinach.
11. Greenish Retriever – Not quite green, looks seasick, recycles
12. Nissan – Formerly Dachsund (Get it? Datsun became Nissan)
13. Hairless Sheep Dog – A frightening-looking animal. At least it doesn’t shed.
14. Mess Hall Chow – Featuring its trademark Blue Tongue Special
15. Belgian Airhead – (courtesy of Steve Martin)
16. Random Doodle – exists only on paper and, fittingly, does it on the paper
17. Jewish Shepherd – Enjoys Flocks and Bagels
18. Not-so-Great Dane – Underachieving Scandinavian canine.
19. Shih Tzu! – God Bless You.
20. Nikita – Nike’s corporate repurposing of the Akita breed. All Nikitas are named Swoosh.
21. Miniature Toy Chihuahua – Due to size challenges, must be raised under an electron microscope

 

It is often said that “dog is man’s best friend.” And although he’s recently been replaced by the iPhone, our faithful little buddy is still a very popular app. Their loyalty and devotion is unquestioned. We are humbled by a dog’s gratitude for the simplest of pleasures; like that plastic spaghetti spoon thing we use to launch a tennis ball a mile and a half with a simple flip of a wrist. Dogs possess a deeply embedded pack instinct, so it was no great surprise to Mission Control when Neil Armstrong’s dog Astro bounded out of the VIP grandstand enclosure at Launch Control and onto the Sea of Tranquility just as Mr. Armstrong was about to take his historic moonwalk. I mean is it really any wonder that when his master went for a walk, the dog would follow. Read the rest of this entry »