I just got back from a week and a half in Germany, and from presenting at the International Symposium on Canine Behavior, sponsored by Animal Learn in Aschau, Germany. Three hundred people attended, and it was clear that Germans love their dogs as much as we do. (If not more… as is the case in much of Europe, dogs were allowed everywhere.) It was a joy to see dogs happily off leash in Munich’s equivalent of Manhattan’s Central Park. I asked several dog walkers about the dogs being allowed off leash in a city park, and they said, “Oh yes, of course, the dogs can be off leash.

So… how would you feel going into a pen with a wolf? I just got the opportunity recently, and I don’t mind telling you that thought I’d be nervous. After all, I’ve worked with aggressive dogs for twenty years, and have seen and heard about enough serious injuries to last a life time. And we’re not talking dogs here, we’re talking wolves, who, by the way, have muzzles as big as tree trunks. “Why Grandma, what big teeth you have!”)

Ah, there’s nothing like our love of dogs to motivate us to do strange things. What a shame they’re often not in our dog’s best interests. Two projects fitting that description are getting a lot of press lately, and I thought they deserved some attention.

The first is the work of an artist named James Auger on what he calls “augmented animals.” He has a book by the same name and an exhibit that includes the image of a dog wearing a gas mask. I’m the first to say that if I saw the image at a museum of modern art I’d be wowed… what a compelling statement about dogs, culture and our species. However, Auger is also involved in developing technologies to augment our lives and the lives of domestic animals, and is working (seriously) on gas masks that eliminate unpleasant odors for dogs, along with an “augmented dog hackle” that a dog would wear to scare other dogs away. Where do I start?

5 AM. I wake up to Lassie's nails clicking on the floor (wasn't I going to trim them last night?) as a boom of thunder shakes the farmhouse. Damn. Why is it that Lassie's slight discomfort of storms has become more serious as her hearing degrades? Surely it should go the other way around.