The Naming of Dogs

When we knew a puppy was in our immediate future, we made lists of possible names. First was the list of names we liked, but, as it turned out, each of these was already claimed by a child or a dog already on the block. We eventually settled on Joey, and shortly thereafter, a big lumbering Newfoundland hove into view - and his name, alas, was Joey. We had gotten far enough along with Joey that I even had the name tags for his collar - little ones, as would befit a puppy; they sit on the shelf, unattached. I loved the name Mungo, but we had already had two Mungos, and the second one lives in infamy because he ate absolutely everything in sight - from grandchildren's sandwiches (low hanging fruit for Mungo), to pens, pencils, lemon tarts, boxes, homework, and, of course, socks.

Next I went through lists of saints names. Nothing appealed. I went to the internet. Boys names meaning light, hairy. sweet, speedy, and peace. On to fauna and flora, earth, air, fire, and water. Water. That's where I found it. Dover is a Welsh boys name meaning water. The name suits Dover to a tee. And there are no kids on the block called Dover, although there is a dog up the hill named Dozer. Dover and Dozer are friends.

Dover will gravitate to any water he can find - rain, the shower, the hose, the spigot, the sea, the pond. So it turned out to be a very fine name. It sounds great, people like to say it, it sounds soft and sweet, and when I announce supper time out the back door, no extraneous kids, dogs, or cats come running down the street to see what's on the table in our house. Only Dover ambles in from the fence up-back for his evening gruel and yogurt, with maybe a little egg or cheese added in as a special treat.

Dog-paddling with a friend.

Comparative April Landscapes

Late April in Western Massachusetts

Late April in Minnesota

 

Dover Does the Paper!

Purple and black

"When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple." So starts the well-known poem by Jenny Joseph. The poem caused me to take a second look at purple, an unfavored color for me up until a decade or so ago. I have now embraced it as a favored, but not my favorite, color, and I do wear it.

Lent, third from the left.

Purple is traditionally the color of royalty, bishops, and Lent. Checking out the Web, it also signifies wisdom, passion, good judgement, and generosity. And more.

The color is associated with royalty because the ancient dye was very dear, originating from the secretions of a small, predatory Mediterranean sea snail and obtained with difficulty and in low yield. The chemical structure of the dye is related to that of indigo, and one source of  royal blue dye came from a related snail, although indigo is more abundantly found in plants. Tyrian purple is the same compound as indigo except that it contains 2 bromine atoms in a shared chemical structure.

I recently read that black was the color associated with mourning because it was originally the most valuable dye. More valuable than purple?

Every kindergartener knows that blue and red crayons combine to make purple; cool blue and hot red mix to give the colors of royal purple. There is a chemical experiment that I have done hundreds of times with kids of all ages, where you take black felt tip markers and perform a simple separation experiment using filter paper, water, and, of course, a variety of black felt-tip pens. While most people know that when we are looking at a black material or object, that item swallows up the rainbow colors of the light that fell upon it so that none of the light reflects back to your eyes. Less well known is the fact that black inks are made up of various colorful dyes. The photo below shows different pens and the inks that, when combined, make black ink. Each company uses different signature combinations.

Taking black ink and seeing it separate into various colors is magical, and it never fails to draw a "Wow!" response from first timers and old hands. (Click photo for larger view.)

So here is Dover, then, decked out in purple. Is he showing the colors of royalty? Is he preparing for a stint in the house of bishops? Must be, because dogs don't do Lent.

Dogs of the season

Dottie says: These are MINE! 

Cisco says: Get me outta this thing.

Dover says: Whatever! Just throw the thing.

A blessing we like

Life is short, and we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those who make the journey with us. 

So be swift to love 

and make haste to do kindness. 

                                                           Henri-Frederic Amiel

                                        

The smell of sulfur

Not our real skunk.

We were sitting peacefully on the couch this morning, Dover and I, when he went eagerly to the door for his first foray out into the morning. I took a cautionary sniff, a necessity this time of year;  the air passed the sniff test, so I slid the doors open and let him out. He tore around the house, out of sight, and within  seconds I knew I had made a grave mistake. Organic sulfur compounds suddenly filled the air. It was only 6 AM, but I called Dover back in a commanding voice. Dover eventually returned back around the corner, looking sheepish and somewhat confused.

I sniffed him, but the outside aroma was so strong due to the surprised skunk that I thought the skunk had missed, but I erred in this judgment. Once Dover was in the house, I realized my mistake.

Tom and I went into action with peroxide, baking soda, and dish detergent. We were short on supplies, because we had recycled old, depleted peroxide in our home-made skunk-off kit but, being optimists, we had not yet laid in a new store. We put together the concoction as best we could with the supplies at hand, washed the repentant creature, followed by a trip into the shower for a further scrub down. The washing machine has been going all day and the downstairs is passable; we have closed off a few rooms upstairs, the ones to which he had repaired for a good roll around on beds and rugs before we understood the extent of this household disaster. He apparently didn't like the smell either, but that won't prevent him from future encounters of a sulfurous kind.

Contemplating his actions.
Repentant or plotting his next exciting encounter? 

Skunks, very cute to look at and reportedly quite appealing creatures to know, are notorious for their chemical defensive prowess. Doing laboratory research on skunk compounds does not endear a researcher to others in the lab area. One curious researcher went around collecting road kill to figure out the compounds in the skunk's defensive spray, but his lab mates forced him to turn to another line of inquiry. The predominant chemicals are now pretty well known to be a mixture of 6 organosulfur compounds and one nitrogen containing compound; the complex mixture also includes smaller amounts of other sulfur compounds. The up close and personal smell differs from the smell from further away for two reasons: dilution, as the compounds go off in their various directions, and chemical composition, which varies with distance because the volatility of some of the most offensive compounds. The compounds are both obnoxious smelling and detectable in very small quantities - it is estimated that we can detect 10 molecules in a billion molecules of air.

The only true remedy (other than time or distance) for a dog who has met a skunk is a mixture of 3% hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, detergent, and water; this mixture chemically changes the compounds. The new compounds don't react with the fur, and they are them more water soluble than those produced by the skunk. When this washing solution was first reported, the chemist had used 30% hydrogen peroxide, but he found that he had changed his chocolate lab into a yellow lab; he revised his recipe to use only 3% hydrogen peroxide. The ingredients must be mixed on the spot, because if they are mixed and stored, reactions will occur that form carbon dioxide and  oxygen gases, which will cause the bottle to explode.