Little Pup Lodge

Though not a parent, I do like to keep track of the child-raising techniques currently in vogue. The past decade or so has emphasized the importance of spending "Quality Time" with a kid. If a parent has spawned two or more kids, each one gets his or her own QT. Do something special, the experts suggest. My dad, a former Air Force pilot, took me  up flying in a glider one day many years ago. Our quality time was spent with me heaving my guts up. 

I now understand a parent's angst as they wonder if their little one is getting all the attention he or she needs. The hotel guests have been a source of stress for my beloved dog Oliver. I know the symptoms–barking more, pacing and scratching at non-existent fleas. Clearly, he needs more mommy-and-me time. One of the solutions has been to get up earlier and just hang out on the couch with him. The hotel guests don't seem to appreciate being tickled awake at 4:30am, so they snooze on as Oliver lies belly up, waiting for me to ruffle his fur.

Little Pup Lodge has a house full of boys tonight. Besides Oliver and Archie, Kermit and Mortimer have checked in for the week. Time for a stag party! For titillation, a widescreen TV showing an endless loop of cats and squirrels dashing about. A few rawhide bones and homemade dog biscuits scattered about for treats and a little chicken broth straight up with a water back. Let the fun begin!

 Mortimer modeling this year's hot trend - Brillo pads!

There's a Buddhist retreat center about 10 minutes from Little Pup Lodge. Located on 50 acres of redwood forest, Land of Medicine Buddha is  crisscrossed and surrounded by some of the finest running trails in the county. One trail winds along Bates creek, completely canopied from sunlight by towering evergreens.  Another circles through the Montessori school on site and past the main Temple. When I show up to run around 7am, nothing's moving but the colorful prayer flags that flutter in the breeze. Everyone else is either asleep or meditating.

My favorite run incorporates both of those dirt paths as well as the "Eight Verses Pilgrimage Trail." Signs–billboards actually–with the Dalai Lama's teachings dot the mile or so loop. Like, "Determined to obtain the greatest possible benefit for all sentient beings, who are more precious than a wish-fulfilling jewel, I shall hold them most dear at all times."   In case one doesn't get the hint to slow down long enough to ponder this, a bench facing the board has been thoughtfully provided.

Proving they are truly ecumenical, the good folks also included  a statue of St. Francis of Assisi amongst the many Buddhas stationed throughout the grounds.

Besides my paying guests, I always save room for at least one foster dog.  This last couple of months it has been Archie, a six-pound Chihuahua-something. He was saved from the needle by Animal Shelter Relief, a group that rescues dogs from various county shelters, dogs on Death Row because of overcrowding.

Archie was one of seven lucky dogs  pulled from the Hollister Animal Shelter that warm autumn day. Thirty-five others were euthanized the following morning. Kristina, the group's co-founder,  drove to Hollister to choose who could go and who would stay. I asked her how she decided which ones would be saved.   She said she just took her best guess  at who needed us most,  even though they all did.  Then she cried all the way back to Santa Cruz.

And people wonder why I get a little militant about getting dogs and cats spayed and neutered.

Anyway, there's a reason we call Archie "Big" Archie. To put it delicately, part of Archie's anatomy is way out of proportion with the rest of him. My beach-friend Sandy calls him Tommy Lee. But Archie is so much more than the sum of his parts. He's funny, personable, and affectionate–with fresher breath and a steady job, he'd make a perfect husband.

Archie rockin' his Santa parka.

Things could be much worse. The dogs and I hit the beach this afternoon and watched as other visitors strolled barefoot in the surf. Considering that the day after tomorrow will be the first of December, who could complain? My guest Sophie would have preferred  to be elsewhere, I think. The beach reminds her of her mom, with whom I get together every Sunday morning so our dogs can cavort while we visit. Irene will be out of town for almost two weeks, so Sophie kept glancing behind her, wondering where Mom was. This was one of the hundreds of times I wished I could be Dr. Doolittle. I would give anything to be able to reassure Sophie, to let her know that Irene will be back soon and she can take this time to let herself be spoiled.

I would tell Sophie about the time I went to Sonoma Mission Inn & Spa, which was as luxurious and expensive as it sounds. I wandered around the grounds in a thick, fluffy robe, treated myself to a pedicure and, in a moment of extreme decadence, watched Pam and Tommy Lee's sex tape on Pay Per View. (I'm really not a pervert, but I had to see what everyone was talking about.) Oprah calls times like this "me-time." Then I'd urge Sophie to get in touch with her needs, for a change. Want to grab an extra slice of weenie? Throw herself on her back and roll in the grass? Sniff dead seal carcasses on the beach? You go, girl!

What do dogs bark at? Ninety percent of the time I have no idea. Around here, the Pied  Piper of the moment starts and the rest of the hotel guests  happily follow suit, yipping and yapping at nothing in particular. No one is walking by, no cars driving by and as far as I can tell,  no intruders are lurking on the horizon. 

Besides the obvious reasons dog bark–greeting, warnings, loneliness–there might be another reason: because they can.  They really have nothing to say, but it passes the time. Sort of like us and Tweeting.

There are a few stumbling blocks to attempting yoga here at the Lodge. The candles are lit, the New Age music hums in the background. All is serene except a handful of small, yappy dogs. Small, yappy dogs that are convinced I have come up with a new game for them. They tug at the yoga mat, prop themselves against my Lotus-twisted thighs and collapse belly up two inches away from my ground-level nose. My favorite pose, Downward-Facing Dog, perfectly mimics our friends'  paws-down, butt-up gesture that signals “let’s play!”

I do not want to play, I tell the guests. I want to do twenty minutes of something I really don't want to do. Yoga is  slow, methodical and focused, everything I am not. It keeps company with all the other things I don't want to do; teeth cleaning and colonoscopies, to name a couple, that must be done if we don't want our twilight years spent hunched, toothless and attached to  a colostomy bag. The guests ignore me when I explain this, too busy chasing each other around and under my Bridge pose. 

Half the time, the guests win out. I give up and tell them it's their fault if I need Boy Scouts to help me across streets  by this time next year.  They ignore this, too, since I'm now laughing and rolling around with them. This is what I call Doga, an exercise regimen that builds the heart and happiness muscles. I like it way better than all the Warrior poses in the world.

Like the rest of the low-brows in this country, I couldn't get enough of the Octomom story. I experienced the five stages of  emotion that follow inhaling a  juicy tabloid story like this:  Amazement  to hear that something other than a guppy could have eight babies at once.  Disgust upon hearing Nadya Suleman had another six kids stashed away.  Anger that she hit the government coffers (that would be my tax dollars), to keep her mini-army in diapers and cases of Gerber's. Depression that this drama would be with us for awhile. Acceptance that I was secretly glad of that. 

At feeding time, when I line up four or five bowls, I pretend to be Octomom. There's nobody watching but the guests, and they're too distracted whirling in circles and bouncing off the walls to pay me much notice.  I imagine the guests are a bunch of screaming children and I, Nadya, find  a  Zen-like peace in the simple task of filling the dishes. It bonds me to them, reminds me how much I love what I am doing. Though trying at times, my little charges count on me for their meals. And, like clockwork, I deliver.

Dogs have been bred over the centuries to work for us, in one way or another. Retrievers and terriers  like to hunt. The Akitas and their bouncer-cousins the Dobermans, Rottweilers, etc. are driven to guard and protect. Livestock owners needed their border collies and such to round up herds.

So where do  Pomeranians and Bichons fit in? Your three-pound Yorkie? Try as I might, I can't picture them keeping the sheep safe or helping out at the annual fox hunt. Obviously, there's another category; dogs as useful and attractive accessories. As I write this, it is 39 degrees outside (I know that's nothing to people in the Midwest, but here in California that might as well be 20 below zero. We're sensitive.) But, I'm warm as toast with Oliver pressing against me on one side of the sofa and hotel guest Lilli on the other. Oliver also doubles as an armrest, at least when he doesn't flip over for the belly tickle.

With sometimes as many as four dogs sharing the bed with me at night, the heating arrangements are almost endless. One crawls under the covers to snuggle around my feet. Another warms my back and the fabulous Oliver lets me spoon with him as we sleep,  just like some old married couple. Oh please. Like you don't have your own weird and socially unacceptable habits with your furry friend. I fully understand that this, combined with leaving my stilettos behind for ugly, comfortable shoes dooms me to spinsterdom (divorceé-dom?) for the rest of my life. I just can't see some guy coming between me and Oliver. Literally.

Anybody seen this movie? Made by Nickelodean (which tells you what age it aims to entertain), Hotel for Dogs had me at woof-woof (hello). The story of two foster kids and their friends who restore an abandoned hotel for the city's strays and homeless dogs, it was short on depth, but long on sentiment. In other words, I sobbed  like a baby. 

As a former criminal defense investigator, I worked knee-deep around some of society's most depraved acts–rape, torture, murder–you name it. In eight years, I didn't shed a tear for anyone's situation, no matter how bad the pain and damage. Yet, I choke up when I see missing-dog posters. The thought of a dog, any dog, suffering, rips me up at my core. I want capital punishment for animal abusers. Sometimes I think I could kill them myself, but that would mean I'd have to come out of retirement and hire myself to assist in my defense. Seriously, though, I believed I'm blessed to have this connection with animals, particularly dogs. It is why I changed careers from a private eye to running, well, a hotel for dogs.

Labradors love water. Give 'em an ocean, a river, a large puddle or your bathtub while you are in it - they're in heaven. So do most other retrievers, having been bred over the years to fetch ducks blown out of the sky and tumbled into the pond below.

Chihuahuas and other small relatively hairless dogs, on the other hand, have been bred to sit in your lap. Or by your side. Or curled up under your electric blanket. They are not so fond of water. With this in mind, I watch the clouds build up and nervously check the weather report. Rain is on its way and with it, an Armageddon-worthy battle to get my tiny charges out the door to do their business. I see that look on their faces when I open the door. I read it to mean, "Why don't you just waterboard me while you're at it?" They're also good at preemptive strikes, leaving me clear messages to step in when I wake up and shuffle half-asleep to the bathroom. It is their way of assuring me I don't need to trouble myself on their behalf.

On the brighter side, however, inclement weather is a fabulous excuse to go back to Ross Dress for Less in search of rain coats and other outerwear. We showed up  bright and early (actually, overcast and early) to see what the big trucks brought in since our last visit day before yesterday. The secret is getting there when it opens, before you have to wade through piles of items discarded in the middle of the aisles. As luck would have it, I found a lovely red Parka trimmed in white fur,  just the kind Santa's lap dog would wear.  Pricey at $9.99, but worth it. Can't wait for our afternoon walk!

Archie, looking ever so fierce.

Our little friends' fascination with dirty socks and underwear, used Kleenex and carefully disposed-of feminine hygiene products makes perfect sense, when you think about it. Though none of us appreciates coming home to  hallways and living rooms  decorated with granny panties and the like, these items might as well be bottled and labeled Eau de Mom; Shalimar for the discriminating dog.

While Archie the foster Chihuahua also delights in airing our dirty laundry, his true pleasure is to masticate them. Since he doesn't quite have the discriminating palate of his peers, it is easy to substitute an old t-shirt or kitchen towel for one of his more loathsome treasures. He'll spend the next half hour or more chewing away amidst tiny grunts of pleasure. He doesn't tear or damage the material, just sucks out whatever errant strands of DNA he can find.

Ross Dress-for-Less recently sniffed out a new revenue stream and jumped in with all four feet - pet stuff! They expanded their once-paltry selection of Scooby-Doo decorated food dishes to a full aisle of doggie jackets, sweaters, funny tees and raincoats, not to mention toys galore and an inexhaustible supply of fluffy, decorative beds.

Needless to say, I now troll the store three times as often as I used to – great selection and cheap, cheap, cheap. Chihuahua-sized T-shirts normally seen in your upscale boutiques for 18 to 20 dollars sell for four bucks here. And then there are the toys. I don't cut corners or costs on dog toys, but, hey! Ross carries toys endorsed by none other than that little cupcake Cesar Millan as well as another line franchised by  the Humane Society of the United States. Would they put their logo on inferior crap? Of course not.  Cesar will sell you a plush squirrel, a DVD of how to play with your dog AND a little bottle of stuff you spray on the squirrel that will make your dog really, really want to tear it apart, all for $3.99.

The most intriguing newcomer to the pet-toy industry would have to be rapper/pimp-daddy/reality-show star Snoop Dogg. I picked up a furry  ghetto-blaster, squeezed it and heard Snoop's voice rapping, "Bow wow wow, yippee ai yippee yay."  Honestly, can you really claim to be an O.G. and  claim to represent your 'hood once you've lent your name to stuffed toys for the border collies of the world?

Snoop Doggie Dog's Dog toy. Buh-bye, street cred!

Of course I couldn't wait to fork over a few bucks for this treasure, which proved to be a colossal mistake. Ed loved it and quickly dropped his obsessive ball-batting for obsessive boombox pummeling. Each time he slammed it into the ground,  Snoop rapped his bow-wow-wow couplet. Perhaps 70 or 80 bow wows later, Ed managed to quiet for all eternity what had now become my least favorite rapper.

The Dog Whisperer knows his stuff. On top of that, he's so very hot for a short little guy, what with all that self-assurance going on. However, I doubt Mr. Whisperer would allow any of his dogs to teach him a new game. A new game that he would be forced to play for hour, after hour, after hour. And then a bit longer until his dog tired of it and decided he wanted a walk.

But, that is why the Dog Whisperer got stuck with a multi-million dollar business enterprise while I'm fortunate enough to run a boutique hotel for small dogs. I like to think of it as the Chateau Marmont for my four-footed friends, but without the drug-addled rock stars. As concierge, my job is to make their stay comfortable and enjoyable. I am at their beck and call. So when Ed the dachshund wants me to bat his tennis ball back to him repeatedly, I am there. Even though Ed prefers to roll this ball under the sofa, which requires me to crawl on my hands and knees with a broom handle to do my part. I dare not stop, since Ed will commence to whine until I return to home plate with my Louisville Slugger. My knees hurt. We're now moving into the third hour of this game. But, as long as Ed is contented, so am I.

The irrepressible Ed.