Mellow

“They call him Mellow Yellow…”

That’s the old Donavan song, but it didn’t work out that way for Mellow, who had the full “Mellow Yellow” name that never got used. He was just Mellow, a beautiful golden Labrador, and he was one of the sweetest dogs ever to walk the face of the earth.

My in-laws gave Mellow to their youngest son Mike as a birthday present, and the two were inseparable for years. He even took his senior school portrait alongside Mellow, which made for a unique photo session, to say the least.

But then Mellow got sick.

Mellow developed cancer in his lower body, which required that one of his legs be amputated. We all felt terrible for him, but Mellow took the whole thing in stride. He became Mellow the three-legged dog, and he was as active, cheerful, and friendly as he’d always been. The problem was that the cancer hadn’t gone away, and it claimed his life about a year after the amputation.

Animals have no pretense and make no attempt to hide their emotions. Dogs who suffer the way Mellow did usually become surly and angry as they struggle to survive. But not Mellow. He remained cheerful to the end – always happy to see you, always eager to play, never consumed by the difficulty of the challenges he faced.

Would that more human beings were able to follow his example.

Understanding Dog Memory

Yesterday was Christmas! But your dog probably doesn't remember that. 


The following is from VetInfo.com .


Scientific research on dog memory has lead to many questions as well as some answers. As a dog owner, you can make educated guesses about your dog's memory span including short-term memory and long-term memory. This knowledge can help in training and understanding a dog's reaction to separation from his friends.

Associative Memory Versus Real Memory

Dog memory can be best understood as primarily associative versus real memory. A dog remembers people and places based on associations he has with those people and places. If the owner puts on a specific article of clothing before taking the dog out for a walk, the dog will react with his usual excitement about going to the park when the owner puts on that coat. This will last for many years unless a new association to the coat is established. A dog is unlikely, however, to suddenly get excited about going for a walk without any sign of the coat, or the leash, or whatever reminds him of the walk.

Negative Versus Positive Associations

Associative memory can work towards the negative as well. If a dog has a traumatic vet visit after a ride in the car, he will react to car rides with fear until that memory is replaced by associating the car with getting to go out and play. The stronger the association, however, the harder it is to change the memory.

Dog Memory Span

Dogs have some real memory but it's only extremely short in its span. Most research indicates that a dog's short-term memory is about 10 to 20 seconds long. This means that if a dog poops in the house, for instance, and you scold him about it 5 minutes later, he won't associate the scolding to pooping in the house. He'll associate the scolding with you and pooping in general.


Dogs are clearly able to remember language and hand signals for many years. It's somewhat unknown whether this is associative or real memory but it is probably the former. A dog may associate the word "sit" with getting a treat so even if the treat is not present, he'll want to sit when he hears that word just in case a reward is involved.

Haiti, Mexico, and Rome

Today’s memories are not my own; they come from my sister and my brother, who worked on humanitarian relief efforts in Haiti and Mexico, respectively.

In Haiti, one of the greatest sign of devastation in the aftermath of the massive earthquake was the huge numbers of stray dogs who are wandering aimlessly, scrounging for whatever food they can find. My sister recalls the accidental spilling of a flour-based concrete, which resulted in a swarm of dogs licking up the flour off the ground in a desperate attempt to survive.

In Mexico, my brother was volunteering to bring homes and shelters in Tijuana up to livable conditions, and the first rule of the group they were with was “Do NOT pet the dogs!” Stray dogs in Mexico wander freely, too, and they traffic in all manner of diseases and infections. My brother and his two sons spoke of the pathetic, sad eyes and desperate faces of these animals that had no one to care for them.

The only comparable experience I recall in my own life took place on my honeymoon, when I was backpacking through Europe and toured some ancient ruins just outside of Rome. I was swarmed by dogs that were desperate for food, affection, or any kind of simple interaction.

I’m not sure what the moral of the story is, although “spay and neuter your pets” is probably a good one. We don’t have this kind of dog population problem in the United States, but experiences like this are grim reminders that abandoned pets live sad, desperate, lonely lives.

So tonight, when you get home, make sure you give your dog an extra hug and let them know how much they’re appreciated.

Call Him Ishmael

My first dog was named for the narrator of Moby-Dick, a wandering soul who boards Captain Ahab’s ship and chronicles his deadly obsession with the white whale. I’ve never read Moby-Dick, and, as near as I can tell, neither has anyone else. But it’s the only book I know of, apart from scripture, that has the name Ishmael in it. In my eyes, that alone is enough to make it cool – although not enough to get me to read it.

My Ishmael wasn’t any kind of a sailor. He hated water and the cleanliness that came with it. He was something of a wanderer, though, more like his Biblical namesake than the dude on the boat. In Genesis, Ishmael, firstborn son of Abraham, was cast off into the desert, unwanted and alone, much like the sad stray dog that my mother took in a couple of years before I was born. Mom was fond of taking in stray dogs and stray people over the years, but none of them captured my imagination like Ishmael – or Ish for short.

I was devoted to that unkempt, scrawny black lab mutt. I didn’t realize until many years after he died that Ish didn’t really like us very much.

Oh, I’m not sure if that’s entirely true, but there was no other way to explain his desire to bolt whenever he saw an open door. He was pleasant enough when the doors were closed, especially if there was food involved, but he never really took to the simple life. When freedom presented itself, Ish made a run for it.

Then came the call to arms.

“Ish is out!” someone would scream, and then the entire house would mobilize for the rescue mission. Mom would drag us into the station wagon, and we would patrol the streets, following the trail of destruction in Ish’s wake as he ran furiously to escape the little kids who loved him too much to let him go. Eventually, he would be cornered or exhausted, and we’d haul him back into the car and back home, where he moped and shlumped his way through the indignity of domesticity. Sometimes, though, we would fail to catch him, and Ish would be seemingly gone forever.

It was in those moments, then, when Ish showed his true colors.

An hour or two after his disappearance, Ish would return of his own free will, bearing a peace offering – a dead bird, a dead rabbit, or perhaps even a dead cat, which did not endear Ish to any of our feline-loving neighbors. Mom was aghast, but I was glad to know that, underneath it all, Ish really did like us. Either that, or he was hungry after a few hours alone and liked to be fed. Either way was fine with me.

Comedian George Carlin once noted that, because of the relatively short life span of domestic pets compared to their owners, every dog or cat is a built-in childhood tragedy waiting to happen. Ish lived a long and healthy life, I suppose, but he died before I was a teenager. I was embarrassed by how much I cried when I found out, and I never thought I could love again. That changed drastically when I discovered girls a few years later, most of whom liked me even less than Ish did, but you never forget your connection to the first beast to barge into your life. And his veterinary-induced departure left a hole in my life that has mostly healed by now, but it still stings if I fiddle with it.

After all, what became of Captain Ahab after the white whale was dead? (Seriously, what became of him? I haven’t read the book. I don’t know.)

Gretel's Care Package

My mother refused to raise children in a home without a dog present. We had a succession of half a dozen canine companions throughout my growing-up years, beginning with Ishmael, ending with Cinder, and with Angel, Midnight, Gretel and Gremlin in between. Each of these guys had their own story worthy of several blog entries. There was also apparently a dachshund named Suzie who was before my time, so, in her case, I have no comment.

This memory focuses on Gretel, or, more specifically, on a Gretel by-product. Gretel, may she rest in peace, was a Bernese mountain dog and one of the most beautiful creatures ever to walk the face of the earth. She was also probably the sweetest and gentlest dog we ever had, and her time with us was altogether too short. She’s been gone for the better part of two decades, but I still miss her.

Back in the late 80s, I was living in Scotland for an extended period of time, and my mother would dutifully write real letters in that pre-Internet era and occasionally send a care package or two. On one occasion, I received a knitted scarf made by my mother’s own hand. Scarves were helpful in the cold Scottish weather, and I was grateful for the gift – until I smelled it.

The scarf was knitted out of yarn spun from Gretel’s sheddings.

Now don’t get me wrong. I loved that dog more than just about anything. But a scarf made out of dog hair still smells like – well, like dog hair. And in Scotland, where it rains every single day of the year and your scarf is bound to get soaking wet, the idea of having such an item that close to my nose was too horrible to contemplate.

There’s a reason that no perfume has been released under the label “Moist Dog Hair.”

I have no idea what happened to that scarf, and my relationship with both my mother and Gretel survived the exchange without incident. But the moral of the story is that if you want to send a care package to your son living overseas, I recommend cookies or breakfast cereal.

Newsprint and Dog Biscuits

Throughout my life, the dogs have always been awake before I am.

That’s not a huge accomplishment nowadays, but back in the early 80s when I was a freshly scrubbed paperboy delivering copies of the Los Angeles Daily News, I was out on the street at 5:00 AM. The paper route was initially small enough that I could walk the whole thing in about 45 minutes, lugging several dozen newspapers in a makeshift, two-sided gunnysack that was serviceable without being sexy.

I learned early in my career that delivering papers directly to people’s doorsteps instead of in their driveways made for really good tips at collection time. I even went so far as to pick up the copy of the far-superior rival newspaper, the LA Times, and bring that up to the doorstep with me.

That’s where the dogs come in to the story.

When you fling a paper on a driveway from a moving car, the dog generally doesn’t have an opinion on the matter. But when you’re tromping around in a big canvas bag to the front door, they tend to notice.

They notice, and then they bark.

I tried to avoid this by tromping more quietly, but I soon discovered that it wasn’t the noise; it was the smell. I had a distinctive inky, newsprinty, prepubescent paperboy odor that the dogs could sniff out from thirty yards away. Most of these dogs were outside, right behind a fence near the front door, and they began to bark like mad when I came into range. This was kind of unpleasant for the customers who preferred to sleep through their newspaper delivery process. I needed to fix this.

The solution? Dog biscuits.

All it took was a handful of Milkbones hurled across the fence upon my approach, and the barking stopped instantly. There was a lot more scurrying as the dogs went to collect their bounty, but I was usually out of there before any canines could get angry and start yelping for more. The one exception to this was the house with two mountain-sized St Bernards, who stared out at me and started slobbering upon my approach. I would hurl a biscuit across the fence, and then they’d catch in their mouths and swallow it whole. It was fascinating and disturbing at the same time.

Looking back, I’m not sure how happy the owners would have been had they known that their paperboy had become a significant component in their dog’s daily diet regime, but it didn’t matter to me at the time. All I cared about was that the dogs were quiet, the paper was delivered, and I got a big tip that month.

Besides, what did they care? They got to stay asleep!