Sunday, March 1, 2009

Canine Chess






How many reasonably intelligent adults does it take to fool a dog?

Apparently, more than two.

As I sit here, typing away, I am holding two syringes filled with allergy serum. Our Irish Water Spaniel Joey, a rarefied creature from a small gene pool, is allergic to just about everything. Grasses, trees, mold, fungus, dust mites, you name it.

We discovered this several years ago, when Joey attempted to remove all of his hair by scratching it off. He also chewed incessantly at his feet, and rubbed his itchy snout on any rough surface that was handy, including my corduroy slacks.

Nothing makes your day like being used as a tissue by an animal.

So, doting pet owners that we are, we took Joey to the vet to have our wallets vacuumed, er, to have him allergy tested. Several hundred dollars later, the blood tests came back, and he was indeed allergic to pretty much every surface with which he could conceivably come in contact.

This is a creature for whom we had already shelled out an embarrassing amount of money to have cataract surgery. But he was suffering, in a way, and I was tired of being his personal hankie.

The solution to this latest malady was to administer allergy shots to Joey, starting out with a weak serum administered as frequently as every other day, and months later ending up with a stronger monthly dose.

Not surprisingly, Joey did not much like this regimen. Something about the concept of humans coming at him with sharp implements to impale him did not sit well with him. It took two of us to complete the job, one to distract him and one to shoot him up. I, of course, became the designated dog stabber, a role that I did not relish. But the shots did help, so we persevered.

And so it has gone, for about two years.

Dogs, however, have several advantages over humans, among them incredibly acute senses of hearing and smell. Add to that the fact that Joey is pretty smart even for a canine, and you have trouble.

He began to recognize the subtle signs that I was going to stick him, even though a month would go by between shots. The serum must be kept in the refrigerator; I use the butter bin on the door for this purpose. Somehow, even though I go to the refrigerator dozens of times a day, hundreds of times a month, something about my movements - a certain look I give him, the sound of the butter bin door opening, whatever - sends him right into his crate, where he hunkers down, sphynx-like, and looks at me as if to say, "Okay. Your move." And thus the delicate game of injection chess begins.

Norm and I have resorted to ever more intricate subterfuges to get the shots into him. I circle the downstairs with the syringes so that Joey doesn't see me; Norm, my pawn, gets out the lettuce and waves it around the kitchen (did I mention that Joey is a vegan?); I, the queen, stroll with elaborate casualness to the computer, saying the code words "Norm, I am at the computer checking my email." We wait for a half-hour, and still Joey is in the crate, the king in his castle, with that smug "Just how stupid do you think I am, humans?" look on his muzzle.

It has now been an hour since I took out the serum and filled the syringes. Joey is asleep in his crate, or at least pretending to be. I am about to admit defeat, for now, and refrigerate the syringes. It would seem Joey has me in a stalemate.

But I can be patient, too. The chess game continues.

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