The White House has welcomed a new arrival.

President Bush and his wife, Laura, got a new pet on Thursday, a Scottish terrier puppy named Miss Beazley. The puppy, a gift to the first lady from the president for her 58th birthday in November, was born on Oct. 28. The puppy joins the Bushes’ other two pets: Barney, another Scottish terrier, and a black cat named India.

Two scotties, one cat?
Uh oh…

NBC5.com reporting from the Nevada State Fair:

“The dachshund 50-foot sprint is an annual event. This year, there were so many entries that sponsors held a trial heat before the finals. Once they separated the dogs from the puppies, the real racing began.”

They’re off!

“The winner got $250 and a trip for two — which includes the wiener — to San Diego to compete in the national finals.”

I’d add something here, but sometimes, you just can’t improve on the original.

For readers who may have noticed that I’ve been blogging a lot lately;

I’ve been staying rather close to home. Mom decided that one measly pup really wasn’t worth the trouble of making milk for.

Just arrived home this morning from our National Specialty in Calgary, Alberta. Started to fall asleep about 2 hours from home, and finally gave in and got a motel. Still too tired to type.
But, the Big Event was a success. We won…. well everything.
Pics in a few days, I hope.
But here’s a photo I took of the National Winner a couple of years ago, “Am.Can.Ch.Reggae Indulgence”.

Today was the day.

14 years ago this month, I spent a very long, tiring day and night tending to the birth of a litter of puppies. When it was finally finished, I had a male and female puppy to show for my efforts – efforts, as it turned out, that were just beginning.
The mother was an older dog, one I had leased at considerable expense from a breeder in New York. Things started out well enough, but after a few days it was clear something was wrong. The puppies refused to gain weight. Her milk had turned toxic and they had to be removed and raised on a bottle.
Bottle feeding newborns is round the clock work. Every two hours they require feeding, then burping and cleaning. Night and day. It means guarding their temperature carefully – they cannot control it on their own. It means packing them in a little beer cooler to take to work with you. And usually, it means some will not survive despite your best efforts. The male died when he was a week old.
The remaining female was thus plunged into the perfect storm of dog psychology – a hand raised “singleton”. No competition from littermates. No discipline from an experienced mother. No rough and tumble games to learn the rules of bite inhibition. A surefire recipe for creating a canine sociopath with no fear.
And, it goes without saying, absolutely no gratitude.
By the time she was 6 weeks old, “Frankie” was a beady eyed package of self-centered malevolence – utterly without respect or remorse, demanding instant gratification. A cuddle was as likely to draw teeth as it was a “kiss”. Attempting to discipline her into submission could send one to the emergency room for digit reattachment.

This was my type of dog. And she was beautiful.

She became officially known as Am/Can Champion Minuteman I Eat Tigers.
Frankie had a pretty respectable show career, ending up top female in the country in 1992. She was bred and had two top producing champion sons – she has descendants all over the world now. But, unlike most of my other show dogs, she was never placed in a retirement home, and has been the bane of my existence ever since.
She’s become especially baneful as of late.

A few days short of 14, she has long ago lost her springy step, her keen sense of hearing and her teeth. She sleeps 23 hours a day, waking only to eat and pee on my floor and occasionally, wander aimlessly about. On her bad days, I am the personal servant of a four legged ill tempered boa constrictor. On her good days, I am the personal servant of a four legged ill tempered boa constrictor – the only difference being the intensity with which her gums snap together in the air as she whirls around to strike.
In the fleeting moments that she is awake, she travels in stiff-legged, drunken, random bounds that do not always direct her in a meaningful direction. She gets stuck in corners, having completely lost reverse gear. She has become known as the “pinball pogo-stick dog”.
And she has forgotten how to get home.
Yesterday, I put her outside to enjoy a bit of sun in a warm part of the yard. The gate was closed, but the yard is not secure. I brought her in a little while later.
Or I thought I had. The hours rolled by into late afternoon, and it was time to feed the dogs. As I mixed bowls, I reached for Frankie’s and as I did, realized that I had not seen her for some time. Did I bring her in? I honestly couldn’t remember. A check of the yard revealed no old dog standing around in a daze, and two surveys of the dog run area confirmed I hadn’t put her out there.
Perhaps she had gone around the end of the garden and wandered down the sidewalk. It’s happened before.
I walked out to trace her usual path – she always wanders to the light pole at the corner to check out the smells, then heads north with the down slope of the street. Path of least resistance. How far north depends upon how long she’s left to wander. She’s not a fast mover. And if she encounters something solid, she will usually just stop and lean against it.
I searched up the street and the neighbor’s yard. No Frankie. No point in calling her name, as she either can’t hear, or doesn’t care to. Time for the bicycle.
I rode up and down the streets for at least an hour, down all the back alleys, along the golf course behind my house – slowly, checking in yards, under hedges, stopping to ask people on the street. Nobody had seen a thing. Finally, I decided that it was time to check back at the house in the improbable hope that she had turned back around and headed south to come in for dinner.
No Frankie. Time to get the truck out and have a proper look. As I walked through the kitchen to get my truck keys, something caught the corner of my eye.

Like I said, she has no reverse.
Frankie isn’t going to be with me for very much longer. She has an aggressive mammary tumour and it’s grown to a size that can no longer be ignored, and that will soon become painful , so we are taking things day by day. Today was supposed to be the day, but I changed my mind.
Again.
I just thought I’d share her with you.

Just got home from a long weekend in Fargo, ND. I wish someone had told me the city was auditioning for the role of “Venice On The Red”
It started raining shortly after I arrived Friday night, and was still raining when I crossed the border back into Saskatchewan yesterday. I should have taken pictures, especially of the outdoor rings at the dog show. After two days, they were mud pits. So much so, that there were people showing in bare feet (shoes kept getting sucked off in the mud) and there was a hose available for people to wash the worst of the mud off before they came back into the arena (where, luckily, our little fluffy dogs were shown).
So, for Monday, the outdoor rings moved to the parking lot, and true to form, out they went in the pouring rain and wind to collect 12 cent ribbons, everyone soaked to the skin – 75 year old judges, included. I got sick just watching it. Seriously. I think I have consumption.
For this, we paid $20 per dog, per day. I think there may be a whole new field of psychoanalysis in there, somewhere.

See any cats, kid?

No pictures today.

The puppies are the result of a test breeding for an inherited eye defect – retinal dysplasia. A recessive genetic defect, the dysplasia can be severe enough to cause blindness through retinal detachments and is present at birth.
I had the misfortune to discover this gene had been quietly introduced into a previously clear line I had been carefully building for nearly 20 years. Because it was recessive, there were no clues as to what was happening. None of my original dogs carried the gene, so the puppies continued to be born with normal eyes, though more and more were genetic carriers. By the time the first affected was born, the damage was done. Most of my top breeding dogs were carriers, or offspring of carriers, including two who have nearly 30 Best In Show wins between them.
The only silver lining is that RD is present at birth, and that makes it controllable. We can ensure that no buyer is ever sold an affected puppy through a routine opthalmologists examination.
I agreed to participate in a formal research program at the veterinary college at the University of Saskatchewan to research the defect (it was previously unrecognized as a breed related defect) and to establish the mode of inheritance. Representational differencial analysis is being used to try to locate the actual gene responsible and develop a screening test.
But that doesn’t solve the immediate problem. Which dogs to breed? Carriers are phenotypically identical to clears. Most animals carry an average of 5 defective alleles (humans included) , and purebred dogs generally carry even heavier genetic loads due to their small founder base and closed gene pools. Simply discarding high risk dogs and starting over wasn’t a rational solution. The line was very healthy in other respects, and clear of some nasty health problems that are common in other families.
The goal became to eliminate the gene itself, over the span of several generations, preserving the quality and general good health of the animals. Short form – dump the gene, save the line. Or, failing that, save the line and control the gene by planning breedings that prevent its expression.
The actual sifting process involves test matings of normal eyed dogs to mates who are homozygous affected. (The affected test dogs live normal lives as house pets, and most are sighted.) A simple, autosomal recessive trait, retinal dysplasia “takes two to tango” . The puppy must recieve two defective alleles, one from each parent, to have the defect.
If so much as a single puppy is affected, it proves the normal eyed dog is a carrier and any breeding must be carefully controlled, if he/she is bred at all.
If the puppies are all normal eyed, a mathematical probability is assigned to the dog tested. A dog with 3 normal puppies from an affected mate has a 87.5% probability of being clear of the gene – a dog with 6 puppies has a 98.5% probability clear. By using dogs with a “high probability clear”, in favour of unknowns and retiring carriers, we prevent the defect is being spread into the gene pool.
Recessive defects are particularly damaging in a closed gene pool where it is possible for one dog to sire hundreds of puppies in a relatively short time. One carrier sire can turn a rare defect into a very common one in only a few generations, especially if a few of his sons become similarly popular at stud. So, while crude, and unpleasant, a litter of affected puppies can prevent the birth of many, many more, in generations to come.
At least, that’s what we tell ourselves.
The puppies were examined today, and of the seven, five were affected with retinal dysplasia. The laws of probabilities are not kind. A large litter can be a train wreck. With a guarded prognosis and little demand for test breeding males, I left two of the male puppies behind. Their retinas were harvested to provide additional RNA for dna studies. Small dead animals.
The two who are normal will go to pet homes, and will be sterilized. The affected male puppy is going to Maryland to be used to test breed several females in kennels in the US, one of the affected females is going to a loving pet home that has had previous experience with a blind dog. The third affected female’s fate is uncertain at the moment. She may have a future as a test breeding bitch, she may not.
Me? Me thinks I need a another drink.

Remember these guys?

They’ve done a little growing while we were gone.

Learning to swim …

And today! 5 weeks old.

Mom spends a lot of time trying to escape.