Focus into Action

Dover's dream comes true! Through intense fccus and his hynotic stare and the passage of several months, the tennis ball is transformed into a Santa Claus in a train and . . . moves!

The Dogs Wish You the Best for the Christmas Season and the New Year!

For some reason, the scanner converted blues to gray! So imagine light blue where you see gray in the drawings. Click a drawing see it fuller scale.

A trip and a half on Amtrak

I go by train whenever I travel across land. I love the slow pace of train travel, and I also like watching the country- and citysides go by, from the scenic vistas of marshes and plains to the graffiti artwork on abandoned buildings in urban areas.

I have just returned from a visit to Washington, DC, where I stayed three nights, two whole days and two half days with two cats and a friend. The trains were on time, user friendly, crowded, and, seemingly, uneventful. On the way south, once the sun rose and we moved from darkness to light (not that I saw the sun, just the light of day) the view from the window provided a bare and monotone landscape - we were riding through an old fashioned sepia drawing. Mostly, I read.

Likewise went the return journey. I had a new book and nicely silent and otherwise occupied seat mates. I had brought a sandwich so I didn’t even make my usual trip to the café car. No excitement. Six sevenths of the way home, the train emptied out, as usual, but, not as usual, hordes of grownups and children spanning all ages boarded. Noisily. They were sporting Santa hats and wearing big round pins with pictures of train engines with flashing red lights. Kids were excited; babies cried; one grown-up was scared when the train began to move; parents exclaimed to their children how exciting this first train trip was. They took pictures - it is like a lightening storm in the car. One kid lost his button but luckily only his parent seemed to care.

The conductor came by and said softly to each of the rest of us plain old passengers: "Folks - they are going to be singing Christmas carols but there is room in the next car up. You can move, stay and listen, or stay and join in. Your choice.” I stayed, as did my silent seat mate, engrossed in his computer work. A woman handed out packets of Christmas songs. One kid wanted to know “Where's Santa?” Apparently promises had been made. Another started to cry. And then – there was Santa, doing his thing with a bag of engineer hats for each of the kids. A man with a white, curly beard, a fake conductor suit ,and a lovely voice whipped out a mike and led the car’s inhabitants in an assortment of Christmas songs – I won’t call them carols as they were of the secular Santa-focused variety.

At a break, Santa started in on a long sermon on being good and kind. A little boy went up to him and told him that his brother was mean to him, he hit him and gave him nougies. Santa frowned and the brother was identified and stepped forward in his engineer cap, a sweet little guy with an innocent smile, who owned up with to his actions with a huge grin.

The train came into the station and we all got off, anxious to get home, including Santa. He disappeared down the fairly decrepit station steps with his pack on his back, muttering about elves. 

Give the Dogs Their Due

Where did I leave my bone?

The other morning as I ate my morning gruel and read the Daily Gazette, Dover, who had been lying on my feet, suddenly popped up with a purpose clearly in mind. He loped over to his toy basket, rummaged around deep under the chicken, the wombat, the camel with bells on, the sea skate and the dragon, found his bone, and settled back down at my feet, and gnawed away with gusto.


Dover had had a memory and an idea! He saw a clear path to bringing his idea to fruition, went to some trouble to carry it out, and enjoyed the fruits of his desire. I find that pretty impressive.

Another surprising demonstration of a dog's mind at work is "intentional thought", a very hot and controversial topic in animal behavior circles. If there is something Dover wants and thinks is his due (a morsel on the counter, a tennis ball under the sofa), he will stare intently at it, then stare pleadingly at me, and then look back again, repeating his question until he gets what he needs or I change the subject. Our previous dogs did this too, and it wasn't until I was teaching about chimps and the question of whether they self-medicate using local flora that I, an organic chemist, stumbled into the controversy about whether animals participate in "intentional" thought processes. In this case, I know my dogs are indeed telling me their heart's desire. I am convinced that Dover's behavior reflects a conversation, and have referred to this homey scenario in conversation and class.


So now, in addition, I have evidence that Dover, at least once in his life, planned! Hot and rabid skeptics who say otherwise, and equally hot and rabid partisans will yawn. But I saw it unfold and there is no doubt about it in my mind - Dover had a sequence of related memories and thoughts. Yikes. What next?

Dogs in Hats, Ticks, and Tee-Shirts

Several years ago, when a local bookstore was going out of business, I looked at the shelves to see what I might like to buy during the final sale days. There were three shelves of guide books, and I hoped to buy several "Golden Guides to [Insects, Mammals, Fish, Reptiles, Spiders, etc.]" for budding scientists among family and friends. Alas, I waited too long, and when I finally got back to the store the shelves were empty except for one lone, rather slim book: "A Field Guide to Ticks." After a moment of distress that I had failed Shopping 101, I picked up the book, paid for it at the register, and took it home. While i haven't consulted it too often, I do like to display it prominently on the living room bookshelf. In fact, I have brought several additional copies and given them as Christmas presents to friends with particularly tick-infested gardens and woods.


About fifteen years ago I drew a tee shirt for our Women n Science Program. There was a dog with a hat as the center piece, and with a nod to the multitude of biologists among us, the dog peers into a microscope at some unformed mass on the stage. The shirts went like the proverbial hot cakes, and gradually mine became thin and ragged and positively indecent to wear.

Time passed. On the occasion of a friend's retirement two years ago, I decided to reprint the shirts. The design, dog and hat stayed intact, but the second edition shirt places a tick on the microscope stage. What better research endeavor for a young dog scientist than to study ticks - and maybe provide some insight into how to thwart their efforts to creep out the world.

After the new shirts were printed and publicly presented to the retiring and slightly dazed colleague, I heard this story of what happened to one of our graduates during his time in graduate school out in LA.


One sunny morning, while riding the bus to his lab and planning his experiments for the day, his thoughts were interrupted when another rider started to ream him out because she objected to a woman in science being represented by a dog. And, a dog with a hat! After a few minutes of being the object of this public spectacle, he fled the bus. He mentioned this incident to his faculty mentor back home, who, the story goes, knew about "the problem," and that was why he had decided years previously to give his shirt away to a one of his students.


I love the shirt. Most people do. But now I am over-sensitized about the picture, and I honestly do not know what to do with eighteen new, lovely, women in science tee shirts, complete with dog, hat, microscope, and anatomically correct tick (using, of course, my trusty field guide to provide an up close and personal model of a tick).

Raging Grannies and the Pulaski Day Parade

Last weekend, the October holiday weekend, was colorful not for the leaves in the area, which had not yet turned, but in terms of people dressed in colorful outfits and having a rousing good time.

Coming out of church on Sunday we were greeted by a line-up of the Raging Grannies, a singing troupe that sings songs of peace, equality and justice, has a lot of fun doing it, and spreads good humor and joy in the process.

The next day Dover and I joined some friends downtown for the annual Polish parade in honor of Casimir Pulaski, a Polish nobleman and general who fought and died in the American Revolution, who saved the life of George Washington, and who was granted honorary US citizenship. This is a great parade with traditional costumes, the Hopkins Academy band, greetings in Polish flowing from marchers to spectators and back, and high spirits everywhere. The parade always ends in Pulaski Park, with speeches, the band again, tributes and singing.

The high points for Dover were first, being greeted by friends, and then, when marchers broke ranks to greet him. One marcher spotted him, pointed, and shouted:" Even the dogs are Polish!"

Dover practicing his look, hoping that someday he will 

be part of the royal court and ride in a sleek car like this.

Managing a Tennis Ball Collection

Night time photo: Lust for tennis balls never ends. Photo by Bridget

Maintaining the doggie in tennis balls is a mildly difficult proposition. First - I must collect them (from friends and from the woods outside the college tennis court fencing). Then my job is to whack them in the yard for Dover's entertainment and exercise routine - he races like a thundering herd from one end of the yard to the other in great glee and hot pursuit. Then, of course, I must regather them, invite friends to participate in games of Chase, Catch, Retrieve, and Release. Regathering is a job like that belonging to the poor gent who endlessly rolled the rock up the hill; they must be regathered over and over and over and over. The regatherer's job is never done.

Then they must be picked up before mowing the lawn or they get topped, and at some point, some must be thrown away because they are hopelessly beat up, or just vile beyond imagination. The end job is is to throw the grimey but still viable individuals into the washing mahine with the wash, but after the lovely days of downpour we have just completed, they are so mud-besplattered that I think the only thing to do is put them all in the washing machine. First, however, they have to be hand swished in a bucket to get the grit off them or we will become the plumber's dream. A friend to whom I sent an advance version of this essay was impressed: You wash loads of tennis balls!  Truly, a woman's work is never done.

 Dover is a very rich dog with lots of tennis balls in the bank and a good financial advisor to maintain his assets.

Washed tennis balls.