February 22, 2005
dean koontz, dog owner & trixie koontz, author
I should be brushing Jarvis every single day and I've been slacking for a while. I've been doing better recently but as I'm a) not obsessive compulsive and b) a bit of a slob, I doubt I'll ever get to the dog grooming level of writer Dean Koontz:
Koontz is a neat freak whose canine companion, Trixie, is walked for exactly one hour every morning and then brushed for precisely 45 minutes (by Koontz or his wife, Gerda; they alternate days) and then brushed again for 10 minutes every night — all possibly an effort to prevent even one of her golden hairs from being shed in the spotless Koontz house.
That's almost an hour of brushing every day! I'm lucky if I even give my own hair a cursory combing every other day!
Trixie Koontz, who paid her dues in her former life as a service dog, has a book of her own out, Life is Good!: Lessons in Joyful Living.
All the proceeds go to Canine Companions for Independence, the organization that trained her. Now that's a good dog!
posted by lia at 12:54 PM
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February 04, 2005
can dogs think?
Natural History Magazine this month contains a review of a couple of new books: How Dogs Think: Understanding the Canine Mind by Stanley Coren, and If Dogs Could Talk: Exploring the Canine Mind by Vilmos Csányi. It's an interesting article, even if it doesn't answer the question any more than the books do. Can dogs think? Who knows?
The philosopher Daniel Dennett speculated about animal minds and the evolution of consciousness in his book Kinds of Minds: Towards an Understanding of Consciousness. I liked his idea that consciousness isn't something that you either have or not. Instead, there are different kinds and degrees of consciousness. It seems reasonable to say that a dog is sort of conscious and a little bit intelligent. Even if he eats poop.
posted by ranjit at 12:59 AM
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February 02, 2005
derek powazek is dog crazy
If you've been noodling around the web for any length of time chances are you've already run across one of Derek Powazek's many projects, like Fray, the magazine of true stories he's been running since 1996, or his photoblog Ephemera.
All of his work on there is beautiful, of course, but I find his dog portraits to be especially arresting, each one just bursting with the individual personality of the pup. I love this one of usually sassy Chieka Chiquita Banana Champ, caught unawares:
Ephemera has a special section called Dog Crazy, where you can purchase lovely full color calendars and even a book of his dog photos. If you live in or around San Francisco, he's available to shoot custom portraits of your four-legged friend.
posted by lia at 04:23 PM
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