Stuff you didn't know you didn't know.

So, there I was, browsing books at the local elementary school bookfair when I came upon a rather interesting find. Yes, the book was meant for ages 8 and up and was being sold at an elementary school, but I couldn’t help myself. It’s called “A Dog” by Paul Beck and it’s one of those “Uncover” books where a creature, in this case a dog, is displayed in 3-dimentional layers. In turning each page you are uncovering ever deeper layers of the dogs’ anatomy.

As a lifelong lover of dogs I knew there was a lot that goes on between tongue and tail, but golly! (I love the word golly and I am attempting, right here – right now, to bring it back from the depths of 1952). For instance, under the section labeled “Digestion” (ironically, after staring at this section in which one gets a good long look at the small intestine, one does not want to eat) I found out that there’s a reason dogs “wolf down” their food. It turns out that a dogs teeth aren’t meant for chewing? Huh? Yes, they have molars, but those are used mostly for chewing plant material (What? I have never seen my dog race towards my neighbors garden and take out a head of lettuce). But apparently plant materials make up about 20% of a wild dogs diet (who’s out there polling these wild dogs?). Instead a dogs teeth are set up for tearing off a big bite and tossing it down the old gullet. No chewing required. And all this time I thought my dogs lack of chewing was because be was ravenous at dinner time. At least that’s what he told me. I’m gonna confront him with the book.

I’ll have a whole new prospective when chow time rolls around again at Camp Bow Wow. While I stand there wasting my time chewing my food like a sucker, the campers meal is already well on it’s way to that pink-molded-plastic-looking-rope-thing on page eleven. I mean their small intestine.

See you at Camp!

“Dogs feel very strongly that they should always go with you in the car, in case the need should arise for them to bark violently at nothing right in your ear"
~ Dave Barry