Another 2020 Gut Punch

 As I mentioned in a Facebook post, when you have a dog, or in our case dogs, you have to realize that you will experience great joy with their presence, but also awful heartache when they come to the end of their days. Barb and I have now experienced the latter twice in this horrible year. 

As most close to us know, we began the hobby of raising and showing Chihuahuas at AKC regional dog shows a little over 10 years ago. Our first show-quality dog, Woody, came down with a fatal case of stomach cancer in March and we had to relieve him of his agony.

Yesterday (10/28/20) started like any other day for us with our oldest female Blanca helping to wake us up. Since Woody left us, Blanca was our only dog to sleep in our bed. When we began stirring in the morning she would come nudge us and lick our faces to get us moving. After that, the morning routine included her barking and snarling at our four other dogs who sleep in kennels in our bedroom. She would fiercely protect her territory. Then off to potty time outside and doggy breakfast. Another day, same routine. But it would all drastically change without any warning. 

A little background -- We relied on the expertise and breeding skills of Gayle Essex in our early days of acquiring dogs for show. Gayle is a well-known and respected breeder who lived in Iowa a few hours north of Kansas City. Woody was a product of her kennel. So, when we realized it was time to acquire a female for starting our own breeding line, we called again on Gayle. She had several potential females for us to consider back in 2010 so we arranged a meeting along I-29 north of St. Joseph in northwest Missouri to look over the dogs she was making available. 

When we began working with Woody at the Belle-City Kennel Club in Belleville to show him the ropes of the dog show routine, he wasn't that interested. He was timid and didn't really enjoy the whole experience. Some dogs seem to like it. Others not so much. Barb and I thought that our guy was just not feisty enough, or confident enough, to take charge in the ring. So we were looking for a female with more self-assured qualities. 

When we met Gayle she brought out several female puppies who all looked great. But there was one in the group who seemed to have a "take charge" attitude. She didn't want the others to mess with her and she let them know it. I called Barb aside to discuss the situation and suggested that this was the dog that we wanted because of her coloring...but more so because of her attitude. We brought Woody along to meet his potential new friend, but he wasn't picky. We thought that spunk was the ticket if she was going to be bred with our boy back at home. So we decided on "little miss attitude". We decided to name her Blanca because of her mostly white coat.  

Rather than drive home after our meeting, we decided to stay the night in a hotel along the interstate. Memory doesn't serve on which hotel it was. But we couldn't determine if it was pet friendly before booking our room. So we did our best to not advertise that we had two little dogs in our room with us that night. Unfortunately, the attitude was on display fairly regularly during the evening and overnight. Blanca would occasionally bark at noises, and at Woody. But we made it through the night without being asked to leave by management. 

After some training and a few shows it became fairly obvious that Blanca wasn't going to be the show-dog star that we hoped for. She also had a few issues that judges weren't that happy about. For one, she had what is known in the show-dog world as a "snow nose". The coloring of most dogs does not extend into the black of their nose. Blanca's did. And so her nose was not as black as it is supposed to be. She also had confidence issues in the ring that would cause her to have her tail down and seem uninterested in being there. Not good for winning a judge's favor. 

So after a while, Barb and I decided to give her a break from showing. When she came into season, we would let Blanca and Woody make some puppies. That went well when it came to getting her pregnant. But when it came time to whelp, the difficulties of bringing small dogs into the world became all too clear for Blanca, and for us. 

Barb and I set up a special whelping pen in our spare bedroom when Blanca was close to delivering. We followed all the instructions that Barb could find on-line, in books, and from our friends in the Chihuahua show world. Blanca was huge. And when we had x-rays taken prior to the big day we were told to expect at least four, maybe five, puppies in this litter. 

When the big day arrived and Blanca went into labor, Barb was with her the whole time. We had our vet on stand-by if needed. Blanca started pushing out puppies and by the time the whole thing was over almost a day later, five puppies were born but only three survived. One of the three turned out to have a heart defect and only lived several weeks. Not unusual for a multiple birth in small dogs. Barb actually had to pull one of the still-born puppies from the birth canal. One of the little ones, Belle we called her, turned out to have some not-so-great traits for a show dog. So we found her a pet home. That's always a difficult decision, but we make sure the fit is right.   

The last puppy to be born was brought into the world with some medical intervention provided by our veterinarian at that time, Dr. Jeff Clinebell. The last one out of the chute was a little tri-colored boy we decided to keep. We named him Stanley. Blanca's birthing torture was finally over after about a full day of labor. Stan also turned out to not quite be star-quality for showing...but he has endeared himself to us. We had him neutered, and we still have him in our group at home. 

Stanley is now the last living example of our decision to pair Woody and Blanca for breeding.

Back to the present. -- Blanca began exhibiting a strange behavior around mid-day Wednesday (10/28). She seemed fine until then...but we could tell she was uncomfortable, unsteady, and just "not right". She didn't seem interested in her mid-day meal (not like her) and so we tried to make her comfortable by separating her from the other dogs and giving her as much comfort (padded bed and blanket) as possible. In early afternoon, things got rapidly worse. As Barb was doing some work nearby, she noticed Blanca gasping for breath. A few moments later, after a very frightened Barb picked her up to comfort her, our little girl stopped breathing altogether. Her life had ended in Barb's arms. 

We don't know exactly what took her. But the best guess is that she had a massive stroke and her brain shut everything down. She would have turned eleven years old on November second. 

These things are never easy. And we aren't taking it well. But we are sure that she had as good a life as any Chihuahua could expect. Plenty of love. Plenty of food, and other creature comforts. Hopefully, Blanca and Woody have become re-acquainted and are running and playing together in the place where all good dogs go. We can only hope. She was a great part of the last 10-plus years of our lives. 

2020 can't be over soon enough.

Do You Not See it?

Here we are in 2020. Pandemic. Presidential politics. Many other top-of-mind issues on which one can take sides. And almost everyone does. Many moderately-opinionated individuals, on social media, and elsewhere, are calling for civility and kindness to re-emerge from the ashes of hatred and "my-way-or- the-highway" belief systems. 

How have we come to this point where nobody is allowed to believe what they want without being told to shut up and change their mind? As someone who has lived almost seven decades, and who has worked in the communication business all of my adult life. It's clear to me where the acrimony originates. 

It's our wonderful, new, universal and portable friend--social media. 

Until the advent of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and all the other self-expression vehicles, many voices and expressions of position, no matter how valuable or unworthy, were not heard for lack of a platform. Additionally, the tools of the new reality in mass-communication provide the opportunity to put out anything, no matter how outrageous, without fear of physical confrontation or contradiction. 

At a public or private gathering, large or small, in the days before social "meania", one had to be prepared to back up an opinion with facts, or fists. But more often, decent people would listen to the opinions of other decent people and the two sides would agree to exist on some formulated middle ground. They might agree to disagree. They might say..."Oh, I never thought of that." Or, "I see what you mean". Can you imagine that in the current climate of "my opinion is gospel" on Twitter? 

Almost everyone who knows how to work a cellphone shares thoughts instantaneously, whether well-thought-out or not, for world-wide consumption...they hope. Sometimes, if the thought is outrageous or edgy enough, the thing will go viral. Isn't that the goal of most tweets? If that happens, the world tends to get a little dumber as the population consumes the statement as if it were fact...when it's really just click-bait or wildly-cogitated manure. Those who agree, nod in agreement. Those who disagree, start fuming and retaliate...usually with something even more worthless. 

Our only hope in all of this mess is that the populace becomes wise to what's happening. People of all races, political beliefs, religions, and social strata must raise their level of media literacy. In teaching Intro to Mass Comm at Southwestern Illinois College, a large part of our course is intended to help students understand how to evaluate all media as to their origins, intentions and veracity. In other words...Who is speaking?, How?, Why?, And is what they are saying truthful and valuable? Plus, What is the financial motivation for the message? Always follow the money!  

Hopefully, students come out of the course with a much higher understanding of media messages...i.e. a greater level of media literacy. This, hopefully, is how most everyone will someday come to a sensible view of incoming messages with which they are being bombarded. It's the only way to separate the diamonds from the coal...the champagne from the grape juice.  

Make no mistake, social media is the game-changer that we are all being forced to evaluate in 2020. When political candidates at the highest level find more value in communicating through social media and bypassing the gatekeepers in the traditional media, well, Houston, we have a problem. To be fair, traditional journalism has its problems too. But who, when they have an instrument of message mass-distribution in their hand, wants to deal with that filter? Right? 

I'm hopeful that more serious scrutiny of all messages, incoming and outgoing, will become the norm for us all to come to a more acceptable level of civility in the public discourse. 

Like it or not, our interaction, with social media leading the way, now includes everyone as a mass-communicator. We need to remember that not everyone is a competent and worthy influencer of opinion. But everyone is entitled to express one.   

It's a different world. It's our job now to learn to live in it.