Sneaky pet store proprietors

Tags

animal law, linjiang street tonghua night market, pet stores, puppies, shiba inu, taiwan, taiwan dogs

I currently live in Taipei by the Linjiang/Tonghua Night Market 臨江街通化夜市. On nearby Keelung Rd. 基隆路 is a concentrated strip of pet stores where the animal wares line up against the windows for a couple blocks.

I pass through the area frequently. And out of some semi-anthropological impulse and my longing for the Bows, I’ll often linger. I scan the windows and take note of presentation, cleanliness, apparent health and vigor of the puppies and kittens, etc.

Toy poodles, Corgis, Pomeranians, Chihuahuas, Mini Schnauzers, Pugs, Maltese, Shih Tzu, and Dachshunds are in — as they were, when I last lived here. I see fewer large breeds in the pet stores, thank goodness, but many can produce Lab, Golden Retriever, and Siberian Huskies on call, if not in the display windows. What seems relatively new to me is the popularity of French Bulldogs, a minor surprise because I can only imagine how brachycephalic breeds suffer in this heat.

And of course, every pet store has Shiba Inu.

Sometimes, I stand in front of Shiba windows and try to re-imagine that swell of desire that made us pick Bowdu out from the pile. This is not to tempt myself anew with another Bad Idea. Rather, I’m trying to identify that first spark of emotion that results in these puppies getting sold — as they do, day in, day out.

My feelings are far too mixed now to just succumb to innocent surrender, given what I’ve learned over the years. Yet, I do remember the lift of total transport, the moment you hold one of those puppies. And before the customer has the time to disperse those happypuppyclouds and think things through rationally, they’ve bought that wriggly ball of responsibility…

And so it happened to the brother of that Shiba pair born July 11th, pictured above, playing with one of the pet store clerks. Two days later, I passed by the same pet store and noticed that only the sister was left, and a pug had been plopped into the missing Shiba’s place. Even curiouser, the date of birth had been changed in a pretty half-assed manner, with a single line added to make it look like the birthdate was July 4th, a whole week earlier. That means on August 18th, when the second picture was taken, the Shibas were just a few days over six weeks old, if the latter date is to believed. If the first date was right, the first Shiba was just a few days over five weeks old when he was sold.

Either way, those Shiba pups were way too young to be taken home, and the fact that the pet store proprietor changed the birthdate on the window indicates that they knew and were trying to fudge perceptions. Not that there are any firm laws in Taiwan against the sale of young pups, as in some parts of the US. In Taiwan, pet retailer laws only stipulate that the animals should already be weaned, and have not been determined to carry any communicable diseases or illness that makes them unsuitable for sale at the time.

I’d be surprised if anyone’s actually been fined for selling underaged puppies. Chances are that the Shiba puppy didn’t die the next day (and if he did, he would have been speedily replaced by yet another underaged Shiba). The people got what they wanted, and all is, hopefully, well. Dogs are pretty hardy creatures, even the ones born and raised under less than ideal circumstances. But it’s precisely because these lives are so easy to produce that I feel like we have the responsibility to protect their fecundity.

And yes, sometimes that “protection” is rendered through reproductive control. More words about that some other time.

One last bit that I thought was interesting…

After the Shiba sister was also sold, this is the pair that replaced them in the window. They are advertised as “mixed blood” 混血 pups — combining Chinese 中 (Taiwanese) and Japanese 日 lines. What they’re emphasizing is the presumed authenticity of import lineage. Mostly I’m just amused by the idea that the dogs themselves possess nationality, such that the breeding combination results in a “mix” that nobody can see anyway.

Sighting: Black & tan tugou

Tags

formosan mountain dog, nantou, rabies, taiwan, taiwan dogs, tugou

Didn’t get a chance to post this gorgeous tugou encountered on a walk when I went down to Puli, Nantou County — the only land-locked county in the center of the island where my dad’s side of the family mostly resides.

I don’t often see black and tans that retain such a sharp mask and distinctive form.

You see why they often end up getting dubbed “Basenji” mixes when they arrive Stateside?

Despite her towering presence atop the column, she wasn’t that big, about 40 pounds. I’d be able to brush the top of her head and certainly her ears without stooping if she was beside me. Not that she offered a chance to get close.

Given the current rabies situation in Taiwan, I made sure to note the number of free-roaming dogs that I still saw during my trip down south. While I didn’t encounter groups of strays, as I have before, it was mildly surprising that many pet dogs were still given free rein. Rabies “hysteria,” as it were, is not so easy to observe from a casual perspective. One probably has to go to shelters and vets to get a better sense of heightened anxieties.

About a week after my country excursion, the first case of rabies affecting a pet dog was confirmed in Taitung, on the Eastern coast.

Public notice posted at the library when I first arrived in August, warning that “This KISS could be deadly!”

I know not what this portends. Taipei often seems a world away from the rest of the island, let alone further points abroad.

Sighting: Cutest tugou I saw today

Tags

puppies, taiwan dogs, tugou

Spotted shopping at the new Guanghua Digital Plaza: a tugou puppy in a pouch.

S/he was so precious, I approached the guy and asked to take a picture instead of stealing a creeper shot. He obliged, though he was definitely giving off Make it quick, freaky lady vibes.

Sorry if this canine fixation does get a little weird. NO TIME TO ‘SPLAIN.

Too few movements

Tags

insomnia, sleep, sleep cycle

It’s 6:30 a.m. on my side of the world. Sun’s been up for a while. I haven’t slept all night.

Insomnia has been hitting more often than I’d like since I’ve been out here. Even my Sleep Cycle app has been cautioning that sometimes too few movements have been recorded, indicating that I die a little each night and turn into a corpse, or stone… or the app just hasn’t been working properly for some reason.

The equipment I blame is the bed. It is stiff, I’ve been tense, and that’s an awful combination.

I’m missing the bedshifters who share my home space, those not-so-anomalous data manipulators. My sleep data collected in the past has inevitably included the Bows. Bowpi, specifically, can kick up quite a storm while pressed against bodies under the covers. A true night’s sleep as recorded by this app consists of their movements, too.

BOOK: Emma Townshend, Darwin’s Dogs

Tags

charles darwin, dog books, emma townshend, evolution

During the plane ride over from California to Taiwan, I plugged through one and a half dog books and even a dog movie, which I’m just getting around to blogging now.

“Small dog watching a cat on a table” — Polly, Darwin’s last dog, rendered by Oscar Gustave Rejlander and featured in Expressions of Emotions in Man and Animals

First is Emma Townshend, Darwin’s Dogs, subtitled “How Darwin’s pets helped form a world-changing theory of evolution” (London: Frances Lincoln Limited, 2009). Supplementing the explanatory tomes, this compact book tells a peculiar biography of Darwin through his life-long love of dogs. Townshend writes with rare sensitivity about Darwin’s family background, placing his upbringing in scholarly as well as domestic context. We know very much about Darwin as a Great Man, a naturalist who belonged to, was castigated by, and was eventually recuperated by learned societies. However, he was not merely a product of his institutionalized education and the scientific community. He was also part of the landed gentry, for whom home was a place from which to think, and to work.

And, as Townshend reveals, his home life consisted of many dogs who were, indeed, part of the family. Dogs were the Other Species that Darwin knew most intimately, from childhood to death. He possessed the mind he had because of his daily interactions with dogs. It is a pity that photographic evidence remains of only two dogs in the Darwin household, one being the terrier Polly above, whose drawing was prepared from a photograph. She died a few days after her master, following her favorite perhaps because she was his. (Darwin’s wife, meanwhile, survived her husband by 14 years, as Clive Wynne wryly pointed out in one of his 2013 SPARCS presentations.)

We know of Polly because she was memorialized graphically in Darwin’s last book, in his liberal use of her behaviors as examples, and in the more personal stories documented and exchanged by family members. Recovering the traces of other dogs took a bit more work, and this is where Townshend’s research skills really show. Poring over his personal correspondence, Townshend takes seriously the tender exchanges between Darwin’s family members about their beloved pets. When he was away, “How are the dogs doing?” was a real question that demanded reflection, not small talk. His sisters conveyed news of the dogs as “a way of speaking intimately” to their absent brother (18), not so much as displaced metaphors, but emplaced affections. That is, their brother connected to his sisters because they all shared in their love for the family pets.

Luckily, Darwin did not have to travel that long, relative to the trajectory of his career. As a young boy, he was away for school, an experience that apparently had negligible impact on developing his intellect. His “dissipated” attention and supposedly errant “passion for dogs and hunting were completely to blame” (34) for his inability to focus on his medical studies. It is not that Darwin lacked focus; his interests drew him elsewhere, to forge the connections with the sportsmen and breeders who would, many years later, assist his research. After medical school, he was also abroad on the HMS Beagle for five years, from when he was 22 years old. During this globe-spanning, historical voyage, he collected enough notes and experiences to last the rest of his life… but only because he was able to return to the comforts of home and let it all stew for a good, long time.

I am fond of biographical accounts in which brilliance demands its own pace, and ideas are allowed to ripen under unhurried circumstances. Taking a queue from Charles Lyell’s conception of deep time, in which “the geological processes that shaped the earth’s surface were incredibly powerful, but terribly slow,” Townshend deadpans: “In a million years, a lot could happen” (59-60). Of course, Darwin didn’t take a million years, but he did allow himself time to sharpen his critical acumen. He read the same bestsellers that others were reading, yet extracted different conclusions to fit his own idiosyncratic questions. He was frequently willing to exceed the limitations of sanctioned knowledge, seeking expertise from “practical men,” especially breeders, when he needed and wanted to understand something new. He knew how to ferret out information, even if he didn’t always know what to do with it at the time. Through it all, he took copious notes in “secret” journals.

It was 1837, shortly after the conclusion of Darwin’s voyage on the Beagle, when he began compiling the notes that would become the Origin of Species in 1859 — 22 years later! He sketched his first outline of his theory in 1842. Along the way, he published much safer, less personally satisfying work on barnacles. That work earned him respect amongst the scientific community, but did not expose him as an iconoclast and heretic-in-the-making. Meanwhile, he continued to love his wife (a first cousin, by the way), produce children (lots of them — not all of whom survived), acquire dogs (bred by friends and family and sometimes with only casual pedigrees), and communicate with intelligent company who didn’t always agree, but who spurred his thinking.

One thing that Townshend was very careful to put into context: while Darwin understood that his work flew in opposition to the writings of Genesis, putting him severely at odds with more devout and conservative peers, he dd not intend his work as an anti-religious missive. His issue was not with the status of God, but the status of humankind as a “perfectly” pre-formed entity. He could not believe in preformation, and he wasn’t the only one. But he had his own systematized ideas to replace prevailing convictions: “God’s perfectly formed Creation has disappeared from this account; in Darwin’s vision, nature is simply one huge and incredibly skilled breeder” (79). Townshend reveals how Darwin thought with great complexity about many things, big and small, moving rather effortlessly from religion to dogs.

“The feeling of religious devotion is a highly complex one, consisting of love, complete submission to an exalted and mysterious superior, a strong sense of dependence, fear, reverence, gratitude, hope for the future, and perhaps other elements. No being could experience so complex an emotion until advanced in his intellectual and moral faculties to at least a moderately high level. Nevertheless, we see some distant approach to this state of mind in the deep love of a dog for his master, associated with complete submission, some fear, and perhaps other feelings.” (Darwin, Descent of Man, quoted in Townshend, p. 113)

He at least considered the mutual compatibility of religion and evolutionary theory, since the changes he imagined were themselves subtle, incremental, practically imperceptible differences. Thus, the science was not entirely in perceptible evidence, but also in what was imaginable with the benefit of knowledge and insight.

This, too, is what’s wonderful about Townshend’s biography. She reads closely and draws upon her stash of rich historical archives, but she pushes the material beyond its face value. There are really great analytical moments in her biography, but the insight she shares here is not necessarily her understanding of scientific theory, but of human personality. The ability to read people, especially from material text, is a rare skill that cannot readily be trained and not everyone enjoys.

Finally, I’ll add that I was pleased with the overall book design. Interspersed throughout are numerous animal illustrations and engravings pulled from the archives and Darwin’s published books, including most of the best ones with dogs. A flipbook dog trotting through the corners of each page animates the concept of individual creatures in motion. Clever.

Even though Darwin didn’t have all the answers, we can still learn from his inquisitive pursuits. Meanwhile, so much of our modern language and figurative speech is indebted to him. Progress itself is so often posed in evolutionary, developmentalist terms, with rather clear hierarchies marking “higher” and “lower” stages. He altered the way we think of change itself, a fundamental basis of existence. And of course, we can’t even talk about the history of dogs and engage in contemporary debates on breeding them without drawing upon the vocabulary provided by his work. The least we can do is turn back and take a good, close look at how he spoke of dogs in his own time.

Tugou-ing around Taiwan

Tags

formosan mountain dog, puppies, shiba mixes, taiwan dogs, tugou

I have so much to process on so many fronts, it’s hard to keep updated here. Meanwhile, earlier this week, there was a trip down to central Taiwan to visit relatives when my mom detoured through the island. It was lovely catching up with the aunties, and of course, their latest foster dogs.

Always with the dogs.

The little one, who was just found as a freshly-weaned stray, is at the stage where he demands constant contact with everyone and anything. He’s got the neotenous STARESTARESTARE down pat, though I’d hardly call him vulnerable.

The pretty yellow one is more reserved with her affections, and her warmth becomes evident with observation. She was found a while back having birthed a litter of pups, and has since been spayed.

I guess they’ve got each other figured out.

The cost of things: August 2013

Tags

budgeting, honest kitchen, pet finances

This is my third year of tracking our pet finances here at the House of Two Bows. This is an ongoing effort to get a practical sense of what it costs to keep two 20 ~ 30 pound adult dogs in an area of the US with relatively high costs of living. Previous posts in this series can be found under the category of finances.

Last month was quite the wallet wallop.

The Cost of (Pet) Things for August 2013:

• Food: $262 [previous month, $76]
• Treats: $47 [previous, $5]
• Grooming: $7 [previous, $0]
• Accessories and misc: $5 [previous, $0]
• Vet & Medical: $0 [previous, $289]
• TOTAL: $311 (running average for 2013 ~$189/month)

… yet, it was less than the total for July, since there were no August veterinary expenses to account for. At any rate, this is what it looks like when I attempt to stockpile enough food and treats to last the Bows four months, since I don’t expect RJ to do much shopping for them while I’m gone.

For food, I’m leaving them with 19 pounds of kibble (in addition to whatever was left in the tub when I left), 16 pounds of The Honest Kitchen dehydrated formulas (four boxes purchased on the buy-three-get-one-free deal at Pet Food Express: Embark, Force, Thrive, and Zeal), and the dozens of pounds of frozen chicken, organs, tripe, fish, etc. that was accumulated mostly last month. They get one more canister of The Honest Kitchen Sparkle to round out the summer. Besides all that, the only things I expect RJ to be picking up for the dogs is their morning yogurt and occasional eggs.

They still have a decent stockpile of treats, since this is the department that RJ knows how to handle by dehydrating chicken hearts. Meanwhile, I made sure to have a bunch of other edibles on hand that will hopefully help the Bows get acclimated to the new housemate occupying my absence.

Grooming expenses = a bulk of poop bags.

And finally, in miscellaneous expenses, a large water dish to help with the rearrangement of items in the house due to above-mentioned new housemate.

It’s tempting to call it a wrap at this point and just use these numbers to calculate the monthly average for the rest of the year. But honestly, I don’t know what the next few months hold by way of finances, pet or otherwise. At any rate, The House of Two Bows finances project is on pause for now. There may be occasion to check in later, but don’t expect anymore numbers until the the end of the year.