Today the wind is roaring like a March lion, but yesterday — Super Tuesday — was a day when the sun smiled on Cambridge, drawing people out to vote and to walk around Fresh Pond Reservation without needing winter coats. Those out walking and jogging with and without dogs had an extra spring in their stride, as if the sun had momentarily melted their anxieties over the future of our democracy, the state of the economy, and the spread of a global pandemic. New England can be counted on to test our mettle with a series of false springs, and politically Super Tuesday was no exception for our hometown presidential candidate Senator Elizabeth Warren. The day began triumphantly with the sun warming hundreds of cheering supporters who turned out to greet her at her polling place, but it ended by delivering a blast of winter in the chilly election returns from outside of Cambridge and its ring of liberal cities (Somerville, Watertown, Arlington and Belmont). 

I will remember this Super Tuesday not for its unexpected sunshine or for Joe Biden’s surprising comeback, but as the day my husband and I woke to find that our dog Eddie had died beside our bed. We don’t know the cause; he had begun to seem disoriented and unwell as we went to bed, but we had no reason to think that whatever it was that ailed him would prove fatal by early morning. Born on Tax Day 2011, Eddie was almost nine, and his sudden exit from our lives leaves us sad, confused and lonely.

So much about Eddie will always be a mystery. He was not one of those uncomplicated dogs like Senator Warren’s Bailey that you can take anywhere and trust to be friendly. Photogenic as Eddie was (I lovingly documented his early cuteness on this blog), he grew up to become a “reactive” dog who was nervous around strangers and other dogs to the point where I could no longer take him to a dog park. I gave up trying to bring him on my walks at Fresh Pond once he started to refuse to even go in that direction. He set clear boundaries for our walks, but he never explained his reasons.

For Eddie, the best defense was a good offense. His bark was his warning to keep your distance, and outside he barked indiscriminately at people of all ages with and without dogs. He lunged at construction trucks, school buses and even bikes that passed too close; if I’d lost grip of his leash he’d have been run over any number of times. He barked when the doorbell rang, but once a visitor had been welcomed by a family member he settled down and sweetly accepted their pats. Mornings, he was a curly-haired lamb who snuggled with our cat in their favorite sunspot on the sofa. Evenings, he waited to eat his dinner until I was home so we could enact our ritual of me chopping some raw carrots to sprinkle on top of his food. Outside, he was hyper-vigilant, growling at holiday decorations and giving a wide berth to random objects left curbside on trash day. Indoors, he spent a good part of his time under the dining table chewing on bones, toys and and cat food cans that he pilfered from the recycling bin when we forgot to place it out of his reach. He only responded to “drop it” with the offer of a treat, and some days he even demanded a treat before he would go out for a walk. (I know, I know…he had us wrapped around his little paw.)

We Cantabrigians joke that we live in a bubble. Nationally Super Tuesday’s results left little doubt of that, and by the end of the day there few smiles among Warren’s many local supporters. The bubble had burst. If it were up to Eddie, our bubble would be hermetically sealed, a world populated only by family, a few of our close friends, and the handful of “nature dogs” he spent time with on group walks with his beloved Kip. Our neighborhood streets and sidewalks would be his alone to explore, so he could finally let his guard down without the constant threat of another dog approaching or a truck grinding its gears. The weather inside Eddie’s bubble would alternate between full sun and fresh snow, with no windy or rainy days. The yard in his bubble would feature a private swimming hole and a mud pit for wallowing on hot days. In his bubble there would be no thunderstorms or fireworks, and the newspapers and mail would be delivered silently. The front porch would be off limits to door-knocking candidates and unsolicited vendors. Every day would be Thanksgiving or Christmas because he was happiest when our entire family was gathered under one roof. We will miss him the next time we are all together and on the too-quiet days between.

A bubble wouldn’t have made Eddie immortal, and we know it’s risky to retreat into bubbles in a world that demands even greater connection and cooperation. Dogs can help pull us out of ourselves. Maybe what Eddie really needed was a dog of his own.

Cambridge Canine blogger and longtime resident Jan Devereux is a candidate for a seat on the Cambridge City Council in the November 2015 election.

Hi Readers,

I’m writing to ask for your #1 vote in this year’s City Council election. As a dog owner/lover and a strong advocate for the equitable sharing of the city’s limited open space resources, I would lobby for more dog parks to accommodate the growing dog population. Cambridge is experiencing a housing boom, and this growth creates an opportunity and an obligation to create more shared spaces where dogs can play safely off-leash and where dog people can enjoy each other’s company and build community.

You can read more about my other political values on my campaign website: jandevereux.org

If you would like a frisbee with my campaign logo on it, please contact me at cambridgecanine@gmail.com.

I hope I can count on your support in November! Remember, I need your #1 vote to win.

Jan Devereux

As residential development spikes and Cambridge’s human population climbs, so too does our canine population. In a city as densely population as ours, such rapid growth increases the potential for conflict between human and canine users of our limited open space resources. For the past several years the City’s Animal Commission (aka Animal Control) has been reviewing its regulations, fines and fees, while in 2013 an Off-Leash Working Group was appointed to study shared-use facilities. The Working Group supports the recommended changes to the ordinance, which were discussed and placed on file at the Council’s June 15th hearing.

All residents dogs are encouraged to review the proposed changes to the ordinance and the working group’s report. In the “stick” department fines for the failure to scoop, license, or leash all would be increased. In addition the Fresh Pond park rangers would gain the authority to enforce the stricter regulations. In the “carrot” department new shared-use hours will go into effect this summer at Joan Lorentz Park (Mid-Cambridge, 8-10 AM), Hoyt Field (Riverside, 6-9 AM), and Greene Rose Heritage Park (Area IV, 6-9 AM).

Off-Leash Working Group recommendations.

Proposed Changes to Animal Control Regulations.

Recently Cambridge Canine blogger Jan Devereux and her dog Eddie were interviewed for the “Coffee with a Canine” blog.

The interview includes a shout-out for a favorite local bookstore (Porter Square Books) and a plug for Jan’s recently declared candidacy for Cambridge City Council.

Unfortunately dogs do not have the right to vote, but March is the month when we all need to renew our Cambridge dog licenses. Please be a good citizen and license your dog.

Please consider donating pet food, treats, toys, blankets, collars and leashes to West Somerville Dental Associates at 124 College Ave. , Somerville (near Powder House Sq.). Call 617-625-0543 with any questions.

Last week I went to a local bookstore for a reading by the granddaughter of my favorite author and the inspiration for my other blog, Salutations!. An audience of about thirty people and five dogs (a trio of retired greyhound racers, a three-legged shepherd mix who, according to her companion, enjoys hearing Beatrix Potter stories read aloud, and a boisterous dachshund named for a large biting fly native to Africa) crowded in the back of the small store for the reading and the Q&A that followed. At several points the audience applauded enthusiastically and the dachshund barked loudly. It seemed to me that the smallest member of the assembled book lovers had a great deal more to say, so in the epistolary spirit of several of the selected readings I am sharing a letter she might have penned afterward to Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.

Dear Mr. Bezos,

I imagine you don’t get many letters from dogs — or many letters, period, anymore — and I have no illusion that you’ll reply, as I’ve heard that you’re famously private. But I have something I’d like to get off my chest, small as it is, so I do hope you’ll hear me out.

Recently I attended a reading by Martha White at Porter Square Books in Cambridge. Ms. White, as you may know, is the granddaughter of author E.B. White and the editor of a new collection of his writing, “E.B. White on Dogs.” The book’s title tells you why I was not asked to wait outside, where my vocal displeasure would have been far more disruptive than my barking applause was inside.

No one can enter a bookstore these days and not be aware of the far greater disruption your $125 billion company has wreaked on the publishing industry, and on bricks and mortar retailing generally. Porter Square Books is one of few small bookstores to have survived, even thrived, in the Amazon and Kindle era, and for that I am grateful because it would be a great pity if free, public readings by authors were another casualty of your renown “zeal for disruption.”

Granted, not every author enjoys an audience (as Ms. White remarked, “If my grandfather could have been here, he wouldn’t have been.”), but for those who are willing to step from behind the Oz curtain, bookstores are essential. Yes, libraries could, and often do, serve as venues for readings, but they are not in the business of selling books, and increasingly libraries are less about loaning printed books than about providing access to digital resources (thank you, Google books), so I fear that there will be fewer and fewer opportunities for readers to meet authors, and vice versa, if bookstores and printed books are disrupted to extinction.

At this point you may be be wondering, why is it so important for author and readers to be in the same room? Wouldn’t a YouTube video of the author reach a larger audience? Can’t people make do with books on tape if they are so desperate to hear an author reading aloud? Yes, certainly the technology exists to simulate the visual and audio components of a reading. But, surely, something would be lost if we relied solely on technology, and if I have to explain what, well, then you probably wouldn’t understand why the pleasure of being face to face with the person who has written or edited the words on the pages of a book you are holding in your hands is profoundly different. The thrill of meeting a beloved author, or even his granddaughter, is something only a true book lover can understand. And while I have not published a book, and likely never will, I hazard to say that even the shyest author must take a certain amount of pleasure in knowing that some of his or her readers care enough to sit in folding chairs and hear him or her read aloud words they could more easily have stayed at home and read to themselves, or listened to in their cars, as they ran errands. Though I suppose with everything and the kitchen sink now available for delivery on Amazon, the necessity of running errands soon will soon obsolete, too.

One last thing. I heard that you recently bought the Washington Post. Honestly, I don’t care if you continue to print a broadsheet publication, so long as you keep the Post’s newsroom intact, pay your reporters well, and stay out of their way, editorially. Newsprint gets all over my paws, and it’s no fun to chew on — I’d rather sink my teeth into a good book any day!

Sincerely,

Tsetse Dachshund

For the past several months my dog, Eddie, has been hunkered down under our dining room table, afraid to venture out into the maws of the Huron Village Big Dig. I have to bribe him to leave the house, and half the time he drags me back inside once we get to the end of the driveway, and he hears, smells, and sees all the construction activity. You’ve heard the expression, “That dog won’t hunt.”? Well, mine won’t walk. On top of his construction phobia, Eddie has been suffering from severe dermatological problems since last fall, so he wears a Thundershirt 24/7 to control his nervous scratching. Sadly, my hypoallergenic cockapoo is, himself, plagued with allergies.

So, I was stunned to get a call from the Cambridge Police last week, informing me that my itchy homebody of a dog was loose on a city street about three miles from my house.

“That’s impossible,” I insisted.

“Ma’am, your phone number is on the dog’s collar,” the police officer said. True, he had called me, after all.

“Are you sure it’s my dog? Is he wearing a shirt?” I asked. Maybe my phone number was on some other dog’s collar. It all had to be a big mix-up.

“Yes, ma’am, he’s wearing a shirt.” At this point, the officer must have been thinking “only in Cambridge”  — and probably not for the first time that day, either.

As it happened, I was on the way from my office to an appointment, and had just driven past the street where Eddie had been found. I still could not fathom how my timid dog had turned up all the way across town, but I made a U-turn and assured the officer I’d be right there.

As I rushed to retrieve my wayward dog, I phoned Eddie’s dog walker. Three days a week Eddie goes out with several other dogs on field trips to the countryside. They visit dog-friendly beaches, bucolic meadows, and wooded areas where they can happily romp off leash. In the evenings, after working to afford daycamp for my dog, I watch videos — shot by the dog walker on his iPhone — of Eddie and his pals bounding through fields, swimming in ponds, and trekking along forest trails. My dog is far better acquainted with the wealth of scenic destinations outside Boston than I am, not to mention in far better shape. Only in Cambridge, right?

Walker (not his real name) was hyperventilating when he got my call. When I told him I was on my way to fetch Eddie, he heaved a colossal sigh of relief, his emotion palpable over the cellular network. “Oh, thank god! Thank god, he’s alright.”

All those afternoons off leash in the deep woods, and Eddie had never gone missing. In fact, in the videos, Eddie was always the one bringing up the rear, the smallest dog in the pack, sticking close to Walker’s side for security. My Eddie is no trailblazer.

Upon hearing the name of the street where Eddie had been found, Walker realized what must have happened. It turns out that another of his client-dogs, Riley, lives in a neighboring unit of the multi-family house where Eddie was found. About 15 minutes earlier Walker had stopped to pick up Riley. As Walker was helping Riley (who has joint pain) into the car, Eddie squeezed through the narrow opening between the barrier separating the backseat from the hatchback, and jumped out while Walker’s back was briefly turned.

Not realizing Eddie had escaped, Walker drove off, making a pit stop at his own home about a mile away. Letting the dogs out to do their business in his yard, Walker noticed Eddie was missing and began a frantic search of the premises. A few agonizing minutes later, when he saw my number come up on his caller ID, he realized that someone must have phoned me about Eddie. (I am very glad I put my cell phone number on Eddie’s name tag; no one was at home to answer the land line. I am also glad Eddie has a 2013 dog license on his collar as a secondary means of identification and proof that his rabies vaccination is up to date.)

As I pulled up, I saw Eddie sitting on the front steps of the house surrounded by Cambridge Police Officer Chris Ponte, Animal Control Officer Alison Price, and the resident who had spotted Eddie loose in his driveway. Officer Price was holding a bag of beef jerky dog treats, which, she reported, Eddie had been consuming with gusto. No wonder. Since his allergies developed, Eddie has been on a meatless, grain-free, organic diet; he hasn’t tasted beef, chicken, or lamb in months, only salmon. Maybe he ran away in protest for the right to eat red meat and the freedom to go shirtless in the summer? Perhaps he’s just fed up with his “only in Cambridge” lifestyle?

Of course, being Eddie, he didn’t actually go anywhere before he was nabbed. A few minutes unattended in a stranger’s driveway earned him a belly full of savory treats and a cascade of relieved hugs from me and Walker, who returned minutes later to meet us. Eddie’s adventure alone on the mean streets of Cambridge was brief and uneventful. He is one lucky dog.

Many thanks to Officers Ponte and Price for their quick response to the neighbor’s call and their kindness to Eddie.

A Hole is to Dig by Ruth Krauss (Harper & Brothers, 1952) was one of my favorite childhood books. I still have the well-worn copy I pored over as a child. Only a small child would wonder, “What’s a hole for?”—and only a small child would be completely satisfied with the tautology of the title’s answer. The book’s lasting appeal lies partly in the knowing innocence of its narrative structure (subtitled A First Book of First Definitions, the text dispenses entirely with the questions and jumps Jeopardy-style right to the answers), and more so in a young Maurice Sendak’s drawings of children and dogs cavorting. Krauss opines, “The world is so you have something to stand on.”; “A lap is so you don’t get crumbs n the floor.”; “Toes are to wiggle.”; and “Dogs are to kiss people.”

Fifty years later, John Homans looks for more grown-up answers in What’s a Dog For? (Penguin Press HC, 2012). The longtime executive editor of New York magazine and the doting companion of a lab mix named Stella, Homans observes: “Today the dog world is in the throes of political and ideological convulsions of a kind not seen since Victorian times, when the dog as we know it was invented. Put simply, the dog is now in the process of being reimagined.”

Of course, it is we humans, not our dogs, who are doing the reimagining, and as Homans notes, “…the politics of dogs are a reflection, distilled and distorted, of the politics of people. They’re surrogates for our own conflicts, being fought by conservatives and radicals of many stripes, all trying desperately to put their own ideological stamp on the future of dog.”

With Homans as guide, we’re off on a spirited romp across the loamy fields of dog history, science, philosophy, and politics. Along the way the author digs into theories of canine evolution, cognition, behavior, and training, the codification of breed standards and the genetic perils of over-breeding, the emergence of the animal rescue and animal rights movements, and the modern frontiers of veterinary care. Homans unearths a trove of canine trivia and fun facts that make What’s a Dog For? a champion read for anyone interested in dogs, which I assume you are, if you’ve found your way to this blog.

In the book’s final chapter, Homans rues the inevitable heartbreak that comes with loving our dogs like children while knowing that they will not live past the age of a child: “It’s not that a dog accepts the cards it’s been dealt; it’s not aware that there are cards. James Thurber called the desire for this condition ‘the Dog Wish,’ the ‘strange and involved compulsion to be as happy and carefree as a dog.’ This is a dog’s blessing, a dim-wittedness one can envy.”

Returning to hearth and home at the end of his journalistic journey, Homans’s answer to the essential question is fundamentally no different than Krauss’s. For most of us—young or old—what a dog is for is to take us out of ourselves—to bestow kisses. The sloppier and wetter, the better.

A hole is to dig. A dog is to love. Just do it.

In a previous life, moving to Paris when the first of my three children was a month old would have been great fodder for a mommy blog – if only the Internet had existed in 1988. Back then, I knew even less about parenting than I knew about dogs when I launched this blog a little over a year ago as a way to keep busy during a stretch of unemployment. Time wasn’t the only thing I had on my hands – I also had a new puppy. I needed an organizing principle for my writing, so I stretched the old adage “write what you know” to fit my circumstances. In addition to teaching me how much I still have to learn about dogs, one of the benefits of hanging up my virtual shingle as a dog blogger has been the real-life connections I’ve made through Cambridge Canine with bona fide dog experts.

For example, I recently had the pleasure of meeting Adria Karlsson, an MSPCA trainer and fellow Cantabridgian. Adria holds graduate degrees in behavior analysis and elementary education and taught children with dyslexia before launching her Click ‘n’ Treat training business and blog. She had emailed me after noticing a link to Cambridge Canine on Wicked Local-Cambridge, and one Sunday morning we walked around Fresh Pond with our dogs. Rounding out our slow-moving pack were Adria’s husband, their two young sons (7 months and 22 months), and my friend Adele and her two dogs. Adele is a child psychiatrist, so our walk-and-talk bounced back and forth between child development and dog behavior.

Among the training services Adria offers are sessions geared to dog families expecting a baby and those with small children. Her blog also offers dog safety tips to new parents, such as why wearing a front-facing infant carrier may inadvertently frighten some dogs into aggression.

Just as important as making sure your dog can be trusted around children is teaching your children how to interact safely with dogs. Walking Eddie near my neighborhood playground, I am often approached by parents asking if their toddler or young child can pat him; I appreciate that they ask first, but it always make me a bit nervous if they tell me their kid “really loves dogs.” This is a sign the child may need to be “un-magnetized,” a potentially dangerous condition Adria writes about in another post:

“Think about a compass that always points north… a magnetized baby can usually be found hurtling towards any dog they see, while screaming “doggy” and charging in for a pet and/or hug.”

Likewise, approaching a dog too tentatively – for example, extending a hand for Eddie to sniff and then suddenly jerking it away and squealing – can be just as risky. Knowing how to approach an unfamiliar dog with the right balance of calm and confidence takes practice – many adults never quite get the knack of it, and then they wonder why dogs act standoffish, even aggressive, around them. “I guess your dog isn’t very friendly,” they’ll remark, blaming Eddie when, in fact, they’ve unwittingly sent him mixed messages. Adria told me she is developing a curriculum that could be used in schools to teach children good – safe – habits around dogs. Dog literacy may never make it onto MCAS exams, but in my book it’s a life skill every child needs.

With Hurricane Sandy bearing down on the Northeast today, most of us are hunkered down safe and dry at home. But not Snappy. The 4-year-old Weimaraner from Cambridge went missing in September while on a walk at the reservoir in Burlington.

The good news is that Snappy is apparently still alive after seven weeks on the lam. The bad news is that she has, so far, eluded a sophisticated search effort mounted by her distraught family. And now the hurricane’s approach has heightened everyone’s anxiety.

A renown K9 detective from Nebraska (Karin TarQwyn) has deployed a tracking dog to follow Snappy’s scent and has installed feeding stations with cameras (and yes, a trap) along her known route.

At last report, Snappy’s path loops through West Woburn, Winchester, Lexington and Arlington, taking her along utility line corridors, across conservation areas and golf courses and through residential neighborhoods (especially on garbage days). She appears to be circling and is likely trying to find her way home to Cambridge, where the gate to her family’s yard stands open.

To spread awareness and share updates, the family has created a Find Snappy Facebook page that has garnered 1,345 likes in just two weeks. The large, laminated flyers with her photo are ubiquitous and hard to miss. No stone has been left unturned, and yet Snappy has managed to stay one step ahead of her trackers.

Snappy is understandably frightened and skittish, so if you spot her do NOT chase her on foot or try to catch her. Instead, call her owner Anne at 617-256-8772. Also, do NOT post the locations of sightings on the Facebook page, as this may encourage well-meaning people to pursue Snappy and scare her into deeper hiding.

Snappy and family: we are all pulling for you to be reunited soon!