pet connection

Nearly every morning Heather and I go get coffee. Or groceries. Or breakfast. She’s the queen here, and rank has its privileges. She trots to whatever car we’re test-driving that week for DogCars.com, I hold the door open for her and she jumps into the shotgun seat.

It’s my only exception to the rule that dogs be harnessed or crated, and I figure it’s a low-risk endeavor.

Little traffic at that time of morning, and we’re not going very far. Plus, there’s this: She’s closing in on 12, and her morning errand makes her very happy. And that makes me very happy.

A couple days ago about 7:30 a.m. , with the temperature around 55 degrees, she and I went to pick up a few items at the store. The sun was low, the parking lot shaded. I opened the moon roof and dropped the windows a couple inches, although honestly, it was plenty cool.

I came back to find a flier on my windshield.

“YOU ARE BREAKING THE LAW!” it screamed. “YOU ARE KILLING YOUR DOG!”

I look in the window. Heather smiles. Hmmmm.

I turn my attention back to the flier. The rest explains how in California, it’s illegal to leave your dog in the car “in hazardous conditions.” Yes, well, I know that, and I wouldn’t have taken her out if the conditions were hazardous. I didn’t need a law to keep me from doing it either.

Gawd, I hate California.

It’s not really a bad thing that it’s now specifically illegal to leave a dog in a hot car, but it was illegal before, in a more generalized way, under animal cruelty laws.

What bugged me was the smug superiority of the person who left the flier there, who thought I was a “bad” dog owner for … what? Making an old dog happy in a situation with little to no risk at all?

In fact, the conditions were pretty darn nice in front of the Whole Foods, where the yoga babes were coming in for their post-meditation goji berry juice and the lobbyists from the multimillion-dollar riverbluff homes were queuing up in the Starbucks drive-though in the parking lot.

I crumpled the flier. In a fit of civil disobedience, I was tempted to put it not in the bin marked “recycling” but rather in the one marked “trash.” But of course, I didn’t.

Dear Anonymous Nanny-State Ninny: Leaving fliers on luxury SUVs in an affluent neighborhood (Note: Not my car, not my neighborhood) at a time when the dog in question was not at all at risk marks you as a gutless worm with the common sense of a snail. (Apologies to worms and snails.)

Hey, maybe you should run for office!

… to announce that my dog McKenzie (a/k/a McKutie), last seen on this blog feigning innocence over a missing yogurt container, is now:

Ch. Windfall’s McKenzie.

Her show career is now over, and she can now get as stinking, muddy and wet as she wants whenever she wants, and the baths that follow will no longer be with the fancy soap followed by a blow dry and brushing. (Now, it’ll be more of a spray-off with the hose.)

Regular programming may now resume. That is all.

Oh, P.S. … McKenzie is named after Christie’s mom (whose last name is McKenzie) and her brother (whose first name is McKenzie). I had to come up with an “M” name and thought McKenzie was really interesting and distinctive. Later, my brother the high school teacher informed me he had no fewer than five girls in his classes named either MacKenzie or McKenzie. So much for distinctive, but I still love the name! (Even though I usually call her McKutie.)

The death toll in Myanmar may top 100,000. We don’t usually write about non-pet issues here, but … 100,000 dead, how can we not mention it?

Doctors Without Borders already had people in Myanmar, and that’s one possibility for your donations. Please feel free to add other links to relief groups you trust in the comments. Ilario says thank you, because he’s a caring kitten.

The chicken area within the garden is done, and the hens seem to be happy in it. Part of that surely is the fact that there are now two fences between them and the dogs, but also there’s more space and some dirt they love to roll in. In fact, the space is so nice and so large that there’ll be more chickens soon.

My friend and neighbor Judy is so in love with my hens — and their pretty, delicious eggs — that she asked if she could add a hen or two. I suggested she raise a couple of chicks, so she went to the feed store and came back with … five! After they feather out, they’ll join the flock: Two more Ameraucanas (those cool Easter egg hens), two Silver-Laced Wyandottes (one of the baby SLWs is pictured in Judy’s hand, which is dirty from her morning spent gardening) and one more Rhode Island Red. (I’m thinking of picking up a couple more young pullet Rhodies from the same person I got Beatrice from.)

Eggs, anyone? We’re going to have plenty.

They’re wonderful pets, too. My girls are friendly, curious and don’t at all mind being held (two of the girls actually seem to like it). The dogs never showed much interest in them, but you couldn’t convince the hens of that. Now that the dogs are definitely double-fenced away, the hens are clearly more relaxed and happy.

I get the rooster noise problem, but I honestly don’t understand why many places don’t allow people to keep a couple of hens. Flies aren’t a problem if you keep on top of the clean-up, and hens are much, much quieter than many a barking dog. (For one thing, chickens are completely quiet after dark, which I cannot say for my neighbor’s dog.)

Pictured above: The girls in their new home. Back row are the Ameraucanas:Isabella, Paloma and Viviana. In the front are Beatrice the Rhode Island Red, Charlotte the Barred Plymouth Rock and Agatha the Delaware.

Me: “McKenzie, the yogurt container disappeared off the counter. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
McKenzie: “Nope. Don’t know a thing about it, and why are you asking me? You can’t prove anything, anyway. White stuff on my nose? What white stuff on my nose? I bet it was the new kitten.”