This is the fourth goodbye I’ve had to say since March of 2008.  It’s sad.  First, Charlie, my best friend from my morning jog.  And then Ishka, Jamie’s best pal, whom I only got to know a little.  And then Okie-Dokie, the wonderfull black cat who taught me more than I wanted to know about cats.  And, now, Samantha, Jamie’s best friend from Puppy Kindergarten.

Samantha was a lovely black lab.  She and Jamie got along really great right from the start.  I wasn’t there to know this; Jamie tells me from her special swimming and frisbee-retrieving place in doggie heaven.  Jamie liked Samantha a lot.  So did Barbara and Fred.  Actually, it was Samantha’s skill as a frisbee dog that prompted Fred to work so much, with me, on catching our “Chuckit” flying squirrel toy.

Samantha served as a therapy dog, visiting nursing homes in the San Fernando Valley, so she spent a lot of time cheering people up.  Goodbye, Samantha; Jamie and I will miss you.

Fred’s favorite web site for people who have lost their pets is the collection of poems at petloss.com.  Clink on this to see it.

His favorite, by Rudyard Kipling, is “Dinah Goes to Heaven.”

She did not know that she was dead
But, when the pang was o’er,
Sat down to wait her Master’s tread
Upon the Golden Floor,

With ears full-cock and anxious eyes,
Impatiently resigned;
But ignorant that Paradise
Did not admit her kind.

There was one step along the Stair
That led to Heaven’s Gate;
And, till she heard it, her affair
Was — she explained — to wait.

And she explained with flattened ear,
Bared lip and milky tooth–
Storming against Ithuriel’s Spear
That only proved her truth!

Sudden — far down the Bridge of Ghosts
That anxious spirits clomb–
She caught that step in all the hosts,
And knew that he had come.

She left them wondering what to do,
But not a doubt had she.
Swifter than her own squeal she flew
Across the Glassy Sea;

Flushing the Cherubs everywhere,
And skidding as she ran,
She refuged under Peter’s Chair
And waited for her man.

There spoke a Spirit out of the press,
‘Said: — “Have you any here
That saved a fool from drunkenness,
And a coward from his fear?

“That turned a soul from dark to day
When other help was vain;
That snatched it from Wanhope and made
A cur a man again?”

“Enter and look,” said Peter then,
And set the Gate ajar.
“If I know aught of women and men
I trow she is not far.”

“Neither by virtue, speech nor art
Nor hope of grace to win;
But godless innocence of heart
That never heard of sin:

“Neither by beauty nor belief
Nor white example shown.
Something a wanton — more a thief –
But — most of all — mine own.”

“Enter and look,” said Peter then,
“And send you well to speed;
But, for all that I know of women and men
Your riddle is hard to read.”

Then flew Dinah from under the Chair,
Into his arms she flew –
And licked his face from chin to hair
And Peter passed them through!

I keep thinking that dogs are smarter than we give them credit for, and science keeps telling me I’m wrong.  But I haven’t given up yet.  Call it smart, or call it “clever,” but there’s something going on in the minds of “man’s best friend” that ain’t dumb.

To understand this story, you have to understand how “Stinky” fits into Callie’s life.  Stinky is now one-half of a stuffed puppy.  The original 100% stuffed puppy was one of Jamie’s (the heroine of “My Doggie Says…”) toys, but not a great favorite.  Callie inherited Stinky when Jamie left us.  Actually, that’s when Stinky got named “Stinky,” because that’s what our granddaughters call their security blankets — for good reason.

After some aggressive puppy chewing by Callie, Stinky lost her back half and had to be re-sewn by the local dressmaker.  So Stinky is now the two-legged front half of a stuffed puppy.  But Callie loves Stinky more than any other toy.  She’s never very far away from Stinky, and she always seems to know where Stinky is.

Every evening, when it’s time to calm down and think about going to sleep, Callie runs to find Stinky.  Then she very gently nibbles and sucks on it.  Stinky is Callie’s pacifier.  Sometimes, Callie brings Stinky to me.  She ceremoniously presents Stinky to me, and then I give Stinky back to her, or we hold it together.

So here’s the deal (so to speak).  Yesterday, I was sitting at my desk and Callie walked over and presented her feathery chest for some scratching.  So, as I worked, I gave her chest a really vigorous scratching with my left hand.  Then I said, “OK, Callie, I just have to work for a while.”  Which Callie understands pretty well.  So she walked away.

The next thing I new, Callie had returned with Stinky in her mouth.  She presented Stinky to me, as she has other times, but this time, she wouldn’t take Stinky back.  She insisted that I keep Stinky.  She just stuck her chest feathers out again, saying, “Please scratch my chest some more!”

That rascal was bribing me.  She gave me her most treasured possession, thinking the gift would induce me to scratch her chest some more.

Are dogs smart, or what?

I just lost my best animal friend — Okie-Dokie, the black cat.  She was just fine a few days ago, but then she had some serious kidney problems, and within a few days she was gone.  Poor Okie-Dokie.  She was a good pal to me — after teaching me some dog-cat manners.  I’ll miss her a lot.  I guess, though, that her 17 years were pretty good cat years.

Okie-Dokie adopted Fred and Barbara about 10 years ago.  She just showed up one day, in the front yard, hunting for gophers, a few of which had migrated across the street from the golf course.  She hunted gophers for a few days, and then she started to check out the front doorstep.  Eventually, Fred and Barbara put out some cat food, which the strange black cat gobbled down.  Next, she started to explore the inside of her house.  All in all, it took Okie-Dokie about two weeks to decide to adopt Fred and Barbara.

A few years earlier, Fred and Barbara had dinner at a restaurant in Cabo San Luca, Mexico, where their waiter was just always saying “Okie-Dokie.”  “Okie-Dokie, I’ll bring you another Pacifico.”  “Okie-Dokie, your enchiladas are coming right up!”  So they decided that they would name their next cat “Okie-Dokie.”

A few years later, Fred and Barbara learned the true story about Okie-Dokie.  Okie-Dokie, who was originally named Maxine, was a ferel cat that had been adopted by a  young couple that lived a few blocks away from Fred and Barbara.  When the couple had their second baby, Okie-Dokie decided she wasn’t getting enough attention, so she started scouting for a new place to live.  It turns out that some of the couple’s neighbors saw this happening, but Fred and Barbara didn’t learn about it for several years.

When Okie-Dokie adopted Fred and Barbara, Jamie (my predecessor Golden Retriever) was about two years old (which is what I am now!).  Here’s a photograph from “My Doggie Says… Messages from Jamie,” that shows Okie-Dokie and Jamie having their daily afternoon nap in the hallway.

When I arrived at Fred and Barbara’s house almost two years ago, Okie-Dokie was about 15 years old.  At first, Okie and I didn’t get along very well.  I was a fluffy little puppy, and I kept thinking Okie-Dokie would want to play with me.  But everytime I jumped at her, she swatted my nose.  I finally learned that Okie-Dokie was in charge and that we could play on her terms, not mine.  We didn’t actually “play” a lot, but we got to be very good friends.  We enjoyed sniffing noses.  Sometimes, Okie-Dokie would lick my face, or my coat.  Sometimes I would lick Okie-Dokie’s fur.  We never shared a nap in the hallway, like Jamie and Okie-Dokie, but recently we napped a lot on the futon in Fred’s office.  Sometimes, I used Okie-Dokie like a pillow.  She seemed to like that.

So that makes three really good pals I’ve lost in my two, young years.  Charlie, my Golden Retriever friend that I used to see on my morning jog.  And then Ishka, Karen’s (Fred and Barbara’s daughter) Golden Retriever.  And now Okie-Dokie.  Okie-Dokie is the toughest to deal with, because I spent time with her every day.  I’ve been making up for the loss of Okie-Dokie by spending lots more time with “Stinky,” my one-half stuffed puppy security object.  I don’t know what I’d do without “Stinky.”

Fred says losing a pet is really hard for people, too.  They love their pets very much, and it’s hard for them to understand that dogs and cats just don’t live as long as people usually do.  Here’s a collection of poems that have given Fred and Barbara lots of comfort when they’ve lost pets.

Goodbye, Okie-Dokie.  You were a great cat and a great pal, and I’ll always love you.

Callie

Until now, I’ve never had a dog that understood how wonderful pillows can be.  Jamie, the heroine of “My Doggie Says… Messages from Jamie,” didn’t need pillows.  She made her own by folding a front ankle backwards and using it like a pillow.  We called it “tired puppy paws,” because she usually did it when she was tuckered out after a long jog.  Here’s Jamie’s “tired puppy paws.”

But Callie has discovered the magic of pillows.  She’s really learned how to use them to make herself more comfortable.  Here she is pillowing out on the futon in my office:

And here she is using the arm rest of a sofa at Lake Arrowhead like a pillow.

She’s even learned about the pillows on our bed.  Jamie always slept on a corner of our mattress near the foot of the bed.  Callie usually starts out there, but once in a while, I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and discover that I’m sharing my pillow with a furry friend.

It’s fun to give a dog enough freedom that it make its own discoveries.

Does your dog understand how pillows work?

A dog’s behavior can be rich with messages. The challenge, sometimes, is to figure them out.

Does your dog do wierd or unexpected things some times? If so, there’s a pretty good chance it’s trying to tell you something. If you want to improve your dog-listening skills, look for these “why-did-my-dog-do-that?” moments. And, then, scratch your head and get busy trying to decode the message.

One of the first clues can be your dog’s breeding. What was it bred to do? Retrieve? Hunt? Run fast? Herd sheep or other animals?

A lot of Jamie’s “why-did-my-dog-do-that?” moments became pretty obvious when I reminded myself that she was a Golden Retriever and bred to retrieve. One of my favorites is featured in “My Doggie Says… Messages from Jamie.”

One morning, my wife and I were jogging home, with Jamie, and I was carrying several rolled up newspapers. Jamie kept looking back at me. At first, we couldn’t figure out what she was trying to say. My wife said, “She wants you to pay attention to her.” So I stopped and gave her a friendly ear scratch. But she kept looking back at me.

Finally, my wife said, “Maybe she wants to carry the newpapers.” I gave Jamie the papers, and that was it. She held her head up high and carried the rolled up bundle` the rest of the way home. But of course, she’s a retriever.

Another of Jamie’s “why-did-my-dog-do-that?” moments was to stop — as in “freeze!” — in the middle of our morning jog. Again, her breeding was usually (but not always) the clue. She was asking permission to retrieve a stick or a pine cone. Once we said “OK,” she would grab the object in her soft mouth and nestle it there until we got home — or until she got tired of it.

So next time your dog does something unexpected, ask yourself, “Why did he, or she, do that?” What is my dog trying to tell me? What was my dog bred to do? Maybe that’s a clue.

We’ll talk about other clues in future posts.

BTW, in case you haven’t noticed, we’ve been doing a lot of work on the site. Some of the interviews from the “My Doggie Says…” Radio Talk Show (KFNX 1100, in Phoenix, 8:00 p.m to 9:00 p.m. on Wednesday nights) are posted as MP3 files. Soon, we hope to have them set up as a podcast, so you can subscribe and hear the “My Doggie Says…” Show on your own schedule.

Why do readers of “My Doggie Says…” feel closer to their dogs? What’s unique about the “dogs’-actions-speak-louder-than-words” approach of “My Doggie Says…?” How did the behavior of Jamie, Fred’s Golden Retriever, lead Fred to write this unique book that is helping people improve their relationship with their dog?

As you can see on this page, “My Doggie Says…” has won four awards. The most recent is the “Mom’s Choice Award,” Fred Haney, Author of “My Doggie Says…” was recently interviewed by Tara Paterson, founder of the “Mom’s Choice Awards.” The interview answers these — and many other — questions.

Callie is now over 16 months old, and she’ calming down noticeably – in nice ways.

She’s always used her “Stinky” (small stuffed doggie), which is down, now (because of Callie’s chewing), to two front legs, and a head – no ears, no tail and no hind legs. But the remainder of “Stinky” seems to be pretty solid, after some serious repair work by the local dry cleaning people. Since the last repair job, Callie has been extremely gentle with “Stinky.” She seems to understand that “Stinky” can’t take any more hard chewing.

“Stinky” is still Callie’s preferred security object. Almost every evening, she tracks “Stinky” down and uses it to unwind from her busy doggie day. Here’s a recent photo of Callie with “Stinky.” Notice how totally relaxed Callie is.

But, in general, Callie is spending more time relaxing and less time bouncing off walls, chewing on rugs, or getting into trash. Check this out. Does this look like an up-tight dog?

I’ve noticed, down through the years, that dogs are about as good as people at using soft fluffy things, including pillows, like pillows. Callie seems to be especially good at it. Sometimes she uses her puppy pad as a pillow for her head, instead of as a bed. Other times, she uses a toy like a pillow. And sometimes at night I wake up to discover that I’m sharing my fluffy, down-stuffed pillow with Callie.

Here’s another photo.

I think Callie is more pillow-conscious than Jamie was. After all, Jamie invented “tired puppy paws,” which was her way of using her own paw like a pillow – much like you would if you lay down on the floor and used your arm like a pillow. Except Jamie turned her paw backwards to make a comfy little joint for her nose to rest. Here, from “My Doggie Says… Messages from Jamie” is Jamie doing “tired puppy paws.”

This article, from the North Kitsap Herald in the state of Washington, is a perfect example of what can happen if your dog sends a message and your can’t figure it out. It’s a story about dog trainer Dianne Canafax and her dog Roofus. Roofus woke Canafax out of her sleep one night with lots of loud whimpering and barking. Canafax didn’t figure out what Roofus was “saying,” until the next morning, when she found big clumps of bear hair stuck to a tree outside her window. Read the entire story by clicking here.

So how often do our favorite pets go unheard? My guess is that this happens more than most of us would like admit. The problem is that dogs speak a different language than humans. We humans have to work pretty hard to understand what our furry friends are saying.

This is what my book, “My Doggie Says… Messages from Jamie: How a dog named Jamie ‘talks’ to her people” is about. Recognizing when a dog is communicating and trying to figure out what it’s saying.

If you need proof that dogs send subtle and hard-to-interpret messages, try this on for size. According to research done by Turid Rugas, dogs have about thirty “calming signals.” These are signals used in the wolf pack (back when dogs were wolves) to say “OK, guys, can’t we all get along? Let’s calm down.” One of these signals occurs when a dog quickly lips its nose with its tongue. This may be a sign that the dog is feeling some stress and is either trying to calm itself, or it is asking you to “cool it.” If you walk directly toward a dog and make eye contact, a dog might use this calming signal. Such a direct approach makes a dog nervous; they prefer more of a circular or sideways approach.

One of my favorite stories from “My Doggie Says…” illustrates how hard it can be to interpret a dog’s communication.

One day, on our morning jog, we ran past the local newsstand to buy four copies of a newpaper because it contained Barbara’s (my wife’s) picture. I rolled up the four copies and we started to run about a mile back to our home.

After a few minutes, Jamie looked back over her shoulder at me. She made eye contact, and it was clear that she was “saying something.” We talked about it, and Barbara suggested, “I think she wants you to pay attention to her.” So I stopped and gave her a big doggie ear-scratch. And on we went.

But Jamie wasn’t satisfied. We went through the doggie ear-scratch thing again, and then we looked at each other and said, “Jamie doesn’t just want attention; she wants to carry the newpapers!”

I gave her the roll of newpapers, and she ran proudly and happily the rest of the way home. After all, she was a Golden Retriever.

Our present Golden Retriever, Callie, sends lots of messages, too. Recently, she’s been using her voice to try to communicate with grunts and snorts. It’s almost as if she’s trying to talk people-talk. Sometimes, the message is pretty obvious — like saying at 2:00 a.m. “I need to go outside to pee.” But sometimes we just can’t figure out what she means.

I have a little list of Callie messages that I’m still trying to understand.

It’s great fun to try to understand your dog’s messages. Some are very subtle, like the calming signals. Some are pretty obvious like a wagging tail, or perky ears. But dogs send a lot of “action messages.” They do this by just doing something. You’ve probably seen your dog do this. Out of nowhere, it does something a little unexpected — or maybe very unexpected.

If it’s not obvious, you have to ask yourself, “Why did Rover do that? What’s he trying to tell me?” It’s fun to interpret these messages, and your dog will be very appreciative. It will probably be a better adjusted dog, too, because it knows your trying to understand it and meet its needs.

Callie, now a fourteen-month-old Golden Retriever, but still a puppy in many ways, works very hard at the “leave it” command. This command is not just intended to get her to “let go” of something. If you’re quick enough on the draw, you can use the “leave it” command to keep her from picking something up in the first place.

I’m really more interested in building my dog relationship with Callie than in beating commands into her, but “leave it” is important. It can be a lifesaver.

On our morning jog, a Golden Retriever has many temptations. There are some good things to be retrieved — like sticks and pine cones. But there are also some things better not retrieved — mostly stuff that occasionally flies out of a car window. Like a candy wrapper, a sales slip, or a packing peanut. Since some of Callie’s jogging is on a golf course, she’s also tempted frequently by a grass divot — a hunk of grass and dirt that got gouged out of the golf course by a swinging golf club.

She’s pretty good at “leave it,” if we see an offending piece of trash and yell “leave it” before Callie gets to it. But, much as we try to avoid this stuff, Callie still gets the jump on us sometimes. Occasionally, she sees some scrumptious looking piece of garbage before we do, and she’s learned to make a quick stab before we can react. So, we’ve also gotten pretty good at prying her mouth open and reaching way down into her throat to eliminate the hazard.

On Friday, she totally beat us to the “trash” with a lightning fast stab before anyone could utter the words “leave it!” But imagine our surprise when we reached down to the bottom of her throat and pulled out a nice, crisp five dollar bill! Who would have guessed?

How would you train a dog to only retrieve paper currency? Are there any one-hundred-percent indestructible dog toys that we can buy for five bucks?

BTW, “My Doggie Says… Messages from Jamie, the dog book I wrote about Callie’s predecessor, Jamie, just won its fourth award — a Silver Medal for non-fiction (Adult Books) in the Mom’s Choice Awards. There’s a nice review on their web site.