A Guest Blog From RudyTheJack

Twice a day, I get my meds. The people giving it to me slather the little pill in peanut butter. I like Jif, but I’ll take any kind they got. During the last few months since this has been going on, I have become a PB connoisseur. And as such, I can tell you that connoisseur is French for a dog that knows his peanut butter. I looked it up. Unfortunately I looked it up on the day Wikipedia was shut down, but still, I found enough to back up my point. That point being: dogs are smarter than you think and even the French can see it.

Let’s be honest, you could probably hide the taste of anything in a dollop of peanut butter – pills, seeds, sparkplugs, an entire cat, you name it, peanut butter fools your tongue every time. Works better than bacon and isn’t so greasy. PB breath beats dog breath, right? That’s what I’m saying here.

While we’re talking about dogs and breath, I’d like to get something else off my tongue. Just because us dogs eat our own poop – or any poop for that matter – it doesn’t mean we have no taste, just the opposite. It means we have such refined taste that we can tell what a stranger ate a week ago. Bobby Flay couldn’t do that. But his dog could. Maybe his dog should be on Iron Chef. I think we know what the secret ingredient would be.

And don’t get me started on that tired old “licking our butts and drinking out of the toilet” argument. Been there, licked that. Doesn’t mean a thing. I’ve seen people lick stranger things than dog butts. Ever seen Fear Factor? Ever seen Andrew Zimmern on Bizarre Foods? Are we smelling each other yet?

I see carrots, beets, radishes and lettuce as evil food. So don’t hand me that. I’m not biting. Wrap that stuff in peanut butter, though, and boom, down the gullet, pronto. And toss in a broccoli spout.

Dog and peanut butter can solve a lot of household problems. Got a stain on the carpet? You don’t need that Oxy-something stuff they’re always advertising on TV. Smear a little PB on it and your dog will take that stain out in about 15 hard licks. Just make sure you pull your hound off the stain before he eats it right down to the sub-floor.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is this:

Okay, I can’t remember what I was saying because they just opened the jar of peanut butter over there and my concentration went to mush. Geez. Besides, who listens to a Jack Russell? Hmm, I guess if you’re still reading, you do.

He drapes his carcass on the backs of recliners and chairs and the couch for no good reason, as if anything else he does has a reason. Rudy is not a good cat imitator. Look at his face up there. You can tell his heart is just not in this thing. Yet he does it every day.

For nine years, he has chased cats and barked at them and run over at least one, hitting the scrapper like Brian Urlacher. Yet every time I turn around there is Rudy on the top of my old red recliner, almost purring.

Knowing Rudy’s personality and proclivities and snarly disposition towards any other animal with four legs, this strikes me as behavior three levels above odd, even for a dog who believes he can fly, climb trees, and make phone calls. Even the word ‘cat’ disturbs him. I once wrote C A T on a piece of paper and put it on the ground next to his water bowl and he growled at it for five minutes. I am not saying Rudy can read, but to punctuate his displeasure, he heisted a leg to it. Later, as a test, I wrote dog on a piece of paper and he walked over, sniffed it, then sat on it.

You hear me, Rudy? I am talking about you over here. Guess it is hard to hear much of anything when you’re all catted-up and licking your paws like Garfield on Valium.

“Could be he is just getting old.” says my wife.

Not likely. I found him practicing a meow the other day in front of the mirror. I swear. That is what it sounded like, a pathetic little lip-synced meeeeowww.

Rudy is smarter than a Congressman and twice as devious. He is trying to gain the cat’s trust. He has some plan in mind, I am sure. Since the cat looks in the window at least once a day, if not to torture Rudy, at least to flaunt his roaming-the-neighborhood freedom. Dogs have leash laws. Cats? Zip. They have full run of place. This injustice has always bothered Rudy.

Rudy is pretty sure the cat will buy this new act. In the past all the cat sees is Rudy’s tonsils flailing as Purina breath slams against the glass door. Now, what the cat sees is Rudy, leisurely perched on the back of a chair, bored and calm – like a cat. It is pathetic.

Right now, the cat is out there looking confused. Perhaps it is cynicism? Could be trust, but I doubt it. False hope is a sad thing to see, and it is hard to tell whose hope will be false first, Rudy or the cat. In the meantime, Rudy is snoring on the chair, with one eye open, waiting, grunting a wannabe purr under his breath: “Here, kitty, kitty.”

Recently it has come to my attention that one of Big River’s fellow tenants called us “circus people.” Granted, this comment was heard by one of our “circus” people while sitting in a restroom stall playing games on an iPhone, but that is usually where the truth comes out. Circus people. Really?

To be honest, our office does not look like a regular business; I will give them that concession. We have a surplus of glass and steel and concrete and rough-hewn timber and chairs made of leather and bark and giant stumps for table bases and a big boat hanging from the ceiling and more food than a Montana survival cult. There is probably beer in an ice chest over in the corner and several VCU Brand Center students hanging out and a few motorcycle parts greasing up the floor. Those Star Wars Light Sabers and all those left-wing-counter-culture-square-pegs-in-the-round-holes Apple devices do not help our misfit notoriety, to be sure, especially if you are a Microsoft drone who spends all day whacking your Dell. Nor does the open door policy to anyone looking to think differently or strangely or not at all debunk our circus train stature.

Fred is on the couch sometimes in the main conference room (we circus people call it “The Lodge”) with his shoes off, possibly sleeping, possibly solving a problem, possibly watching a basketball game. So what? Scott plays his guitar when the mood hits him. It is not like he is swinging on a trapeze from the ductwork. My wall does sort of look like the closet of a serial killer, and there is Noel’s homemade, cardboard periscope and Geoff’s huge fruit fly genus poster and Marcel’s severed Spock ear and Jimmy’s Phish paraphernalia and Dee’s bourbon-of-the-month stash and Kim’s Playboy magazines (those are for a client, I swear) and Margaret wearing sunglasses all day. Jeff has been known to remotely control people’s computers and Jan, while small, is not circus small by any means. We talk loudly sometimes. Okay, it could be considered screaming if you were out in the hall near our front door, but still, circus? I saw Water For Elephants. We’re not even close.

I walked down and looked at their offices the other day, the offices of the people who called us circus people. Standard equipment. Compared to their space and the untrained eye, perhaps ours looks a little like the circus, especially to a person sitting in a cube farm crunching numbers.

To give the devil his due, it could be the way we dress that has given us this P.T. Barnum-ish moniker. I don’t know about you, but I get up every morning, stand in my closet gazing at the stacks of sweatshirts and denim and wonder, “What would Bozo do?”

Seriously, I have never seen anyone at Big River wear giant polka dots. Well, there was that one time, but who am I to question what women wear when they leave home in a hurry? Normally we wear jeans, t-shirts, athletic shoes and, okay, maybe my checked bedroom slippers are a bit circusy, but there are a lot of clowns in business wearing suits too. Then there is Noel’s hat up there in that pic. I cannot defend that.

I think our circus rep probably happened in the elevator. We have done some strange things in there, all of them legal, however. We did not leave that big wad of gum in there no matter how many times we were accused.

The aforementioned restroom may have also sullied our honor, although the guys from the other company could compete with any pack of elephants or chimps in there. One guy left a half-eaten banana next to a toilet. One dumped his drink in the stall and tossed a few squares of paper into the massive puddle and ran. One laid his Subway sandwich on the sink while he was otherwise occupied. I found a spreadsheet in there on the floor next to a cookie with one bite taken out of it. These are just a few of the printable observations. Let us just say that in the restroom, the circus is losing this game 100-17. Yeah, I admit we scored 17. We have adhered some interesting verbiage to the walls in there. But usually it is just mildly offensive or insulting or juvenile. Look, we do ideas for a living. No company would ever want us to balance their books.

American business talks about innovation constantly – until it runs into creative people in a restroom or elevator. Then it scares them. If you go to any of those tech startups we all read about in the Wall Street Journal or Wired or Mashable or in the New York Times, you will see people wearing shorts and sandals and sleeping on the couch next to their dog. I used to bring my dog, Rudy, to work. Then one day he pooped right in the middle of the front door. I guess his business manners fall on the circus side of the corporate divide.

Sounds like Rudy may be visiting the office soon.

Social media is constantly changing and adding new sites. If you have an extra 3 minutes in your day, social media will find a way to use 4 of them. Now there is a way to measure your influence across Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. It is called Klout. Get it? Klout is as addictive as all the other digital places you can rub your fingers across. After all, it is all about your score. It’s social media as sports. I know people competiting with each other over Klout scores.

Rudy, our Jack Russell, has a Twitter page (@rudythejack) and a Facebook page (he does not give out info on this one). Klout has him pegged at 47, otherwise known as a “Specialist.” You can be a Thought Leader, Feeder, Socializer, Networker, etc. The moniker depends on the focus of your conversations. The highest number is 100. Rudy has a ways to go.

Rudy, being a dog, has no idea he even has a score with Klout or the credit bureaus or anyone else. I think he may know he is chasing Guy Kawasaki up there near the top, however. You would have to get IM’s from President Obama or pics from Congressman Weiner or retweets from Ashton Kutcher to hit the big numbers. Rudy just talks about dog stuff mostly.

Klout breaks it down for you. Being a specialist means: “You may not be a celebrity, but within your area of expertise your opinion is second to none.”

I’ve been on the receiving end of Rudy’s opinion. It is, indeed, second to none.

Klout goes on to say: “Your content is likely focused around a specific topic or industry with a focused, highly engaged audience.”

Truth.

Rudy’s focused audience of highly engaged dogs, cats, birds, horses and a turtle named Louie stay in touch with him constantly. I’ve seen the conversations. They are deep and involve all kinds of butt-sniffing, furniture-soiling, carpet-dumping, poop-eating, squirrel-chasing conversations. Rudy is a specialist in all of those areas – hence his title. It gets better.

Klout analyses Rudy’s engagement and influence with charts, graphs and probabilities. They are as cool as any PowerPoint presentations I have ever sat through, and better than most, to be honest. You would have to splurge for the paid LinkedIn to get info this solid.

One chart describes how Rudy’s “high-velocity content” will be acted on. Another indicates his ability to capture influencers, and yet another measures his true reach. It is safe to say the chipmunk in our backyard can attest to Rudy’s true reach without using a chart. He has Jack Russell teeth marks on his furry, little Alvin-ish ass.

Rudy’s current top 10 topics are (in order of influence):

1. Dogs  (makes sense)
2. #RVA   (where he lives, so that seems reasonable)
3. Blogging   (he seldom blogs, so this one is a bit hard to grasp)
4. Puppies   (yup, got it)
5. Cats   (Rudy hardly qualifies as a cat expert, but he does know a lot of cats, especially in the UK)
6. #UK   (see above)
7. Pets   (duh)
8. Furniture   (perhaps there are things I do not want to know about this one)
9. Television   (absolutely, he loves TV)
10. Investing  (see below)

Investing? What the hell? If Investing made Rudy’s top topics of influence, this may explain the economic crisis.

This story is just one of thousands in the lives of sick people every day. Beyond the pain, fear takes a deeper toll on people struggling with illness. And few drugs can treat such fear in patients with cancer or heart disease or other brand name medical conditions. But there is a cure – with four legs, a wagging tail and a wet nose.

In 2010 the Dogs on Call program visited more than 500 patients and staff at VCU’s massive medical center in downtown Richmond, Virginia. The dog therapy program provides something many humans cannot: total, absolute love. And that is a powerful thing to kids with cancer and adults suffering from diseases most of us hope we never have to deal with. Dogs regularly go into hospitals, nursing homes and retirement facilities across America to visit patients in dire situations. Truth is, they do a lot more than that.

From an article in the Richmond Times Dispatch: ”We can’t meet the demand,” said Sandy Barker, director of the Center for Human-Animal Interaction. Ms Barker goes on to say: “One of the center’s missions is studying the relationships between humans and animals, and research has shown that dogs provide physiological and psychological benefits to patients. In short, they can help reduce a patient’s stress.”

One of the earliest stories of therapy dogs happened in World War II. During a combat mission in New Guinea, Corporal William Wynne found an abandoned Yorkshire Terrier he named Smoky. Smoky was adopted by the troops and even played parts in several dangerous missions for the Signal Corps. When Corporal Wynne went down with jungle disease, his buddies brought Smoky to the hospital to cheer up the sick soldier. Smoky cheered up the entire hospital. This miraculous cure did not go unnoticed by the commander, a Charles Mayo. Yes, that Mayo. By the 1970’s, Elaine Smith, a registered nurse, organized a formal therapy dog program after noticing the same thing Dr. Mayo saw: dogs helped people get well, cope and even overcome extreme disease

People who were afraid to face chemo and other treatments somehow find the strength and will to do it when a dog is by their side. Like many of you, I have some experience with canine therapy. His name is Rudy. I have written dozens of stories about our big-hearted little Jack Russell. When it comes to surgically removing stress and filling that wound with love, he is quite the skilled physician.

Religion and science teaches that humans are the most advanced life form on earth. I beg to differ.

Another lost animal encounter: Friday night, 8 P.M., Sonic Drive-In parking lot. A small cat is running and weaving through the cars in a wild-legged dance of death. Two Hondas and a Chevy barely miss the tiny rambler. A truck horn blows and the cat scrambles under a Hyundai. Rudy sits in the back seat of our car watching this cat using up its nine lives one after the other. Hair stands up on his back and his tail quivers as if he has an electric cord plugged in his butt.

A woman in a moo moo gets out of her car, trying to sweet talk the cat with a clump of popcorn chicken The feral cat freaks out, doing a backwards double-full and jumps into the shrubs, but not before snagging the chicken in mid air. Stupidly, the woman runs after the spinning cat and pokes her head around in the leaves and mulch, crooning, “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty.”

Where I grew up, a feral cat is not a kitty. It is the spawn of Satan dressed in a small, fur coat. The woman keeps rooting around, oblivious, brushing back the bushes. I want to say something, like “Hey, lady! You ever had a face-full of pissed-off teeth and toenails?” Then I see the cat doing an Elvis dance toward Jiffy Lube. Rudy, noticing this escape, moans in a way that sounds like metal scraping against wood. I’m not sure he wants to save the cat, kill it, play with it or steal its popcorn chicken – probably the latter.

We leave our parking space between the massive menu boards and drive around the building next to Jiffy Lube. There is the cat, waiting in the dark, its eyes glowing like demonic diamonds beside the Sonic sign. It has finished off the chicken and crouches at the sight of our car. A momentary stand-off turns into a Jack Russell meltdown.

Rudy leaps from the backseat, over the console and slams his face into the passenger window, leaving a saliva smear and bellowing a sound that might be dog cursing. The cat snarls at him. He howls into the roof and starts hassling.

I ease down the window, holding Rudy with one hand and toss out a tater tot with the other. Suddenly the cat is my best friend, not exactly a development that Rudy welcomes with charity as he cuts loose with another barrage of barking and yodeling. Rudy’s theatrics do not phase the cat. The tater tot disappears quickly and I toss another. It, too, is swallowed with little chewing. I end up throwing all of the tater tots out the window and the cat eats every one of them. Rudy is furious. The cat is as happy as an 8^th grade boy in the girl’s locker room. Then it hits me; this damned cat does not want to be rescued from Sonic. This little presentation is all and act. Why would a cat want to leave a place where people throw tater tots and fried chicken into its mouth? Upon closer inspection, it is not even feral. Little bastard is wearing a collar. Rudy looks at me like I am both a fool and a traitor.

So this is what the neighborhood cats do for fun on a Friday night.

Saturday night, 10 P.M. Rudy scratches on the door to go outside. In a few minutes, he’s neck deep under the BBQ grill cover hoovering something so loud we can hear his breathing inside.

After pounding his snout against the door to get our attention, he goes back under the grill cover. We go out on the deck, lift the cover and find Rudy snuggling and licking two, tiny, pink, naked rat-looking animals. Squirrels. Babies. Rudy. We are speechless.

Rudy’s past does not lend itself to cuddling animals of any age or size – especially squirrels. Usually he is on the chasing end of the equation. Yet there he is, trying to keep them warm while we get them out and wrap them in towels. The mother has abandoned them after their nest blew out of a tree. She did all she could do: hiding them under the grill. Perhaps she had no idea that her old nemesis would save her babies from the cold and wind. Or maybe she knew him better than we thought. After all, he has never actually caught a squirrel. He just loves to chase them.

Bow-legged and eager, Rudy participates in an hour-long ordeal that involves driving 30 miles roundtrip to an all-night vet hospital where we turn over the baby squirrels to a doctor, sign some papers and drive back in the dark with a dog who is hardly happy.

Going to this particular hospital is a big deal for Rudy. It is the same hospital where he almost died a few months ago after falling off the deck and landing on a big rock while chasing a squirrel. Saving squirrels on a deck you fell off of and rushing them to a hospital you almost died in is known as “irony” in a Jack Russell’s dictionary. It does not seem to be lost on Rudy.

We go home, he runs back to the deck and the episode ends where it began, with Rudy spread flat, examining every inch under the grill. After he is sure there are no more squirrel babies, he walks to the couch, hops up and falls fast asleep between the pillows, dreaming of chasing those two squirrels when they grow up. He is snoring loudly. And smiling.

Anyone with a deep knowledge of arcane and worthless information knows that David Hassellhoff was a big star in Germany in the late 1980’s. If you didn’t know that, then you probably have a life and don’t own a TV.

Why would Germans have a fondness for Mr. Hasselhoff? His looks? His acting? As hard as this may be to believe, it was his singing. This is why the Germans lost the big war.

I asked a friend of mine who moved here from Germany in the mid 1980’s to please try to explain such a thing to me. She put it in perspective in one sentence.

“The late ‘80’s: Exxon Valdez, Chernobyl, Challenger explosion, AIDS, Ice-T, Geraldo Rivera, Donky Kong – and The Hoff.”

I pondered her response as I looked at the numbers on my screen. My dog, Rudy – a Jack Russell with a Twitter page – has over 400 followers. An extraordinary number of them are from England. Why would that be? Is Rudy like the British Invasion in reverse? I mulled it over for a few minutes. My wife says he’s just a cool dog. But why is he so cool in England?

I called him over. He just stared at me. Did not move. I said, “treat,” and he trotted up, arched an eyebrow and grinned. Was that a little John Cleese I saw in his expression, Mick Jagger, perhaps, Margaret Thatcher, Prince William, Joe Cocker? All of the above?

Sitting on the floor, I examined Rudy, looking into his eyes, feeling his head, rubbing his ears; he seemed pretty American, even his mouth. He has great teeth. There is no British accent in his bark.

I read over some of his tweets. No sign of why a carpenter in Hastings or a woman in Keswick or a bulldog in Wolverhampton would follow a Jack Russell in Virginia. Then I did something I have not done in eight years, I dug out his papers. There on the page, I saw the beginnings of an explanation. Rudy’s father was a Jack named Sir Winston Churchill. I’ll be damn. The old boy has deeper ties to the old country than most people.

I did some browsing. Rudy’s heart pumps the blood of the extinct English White terrier. To Jack Russell people, this is well-trod ground, but if you’re considering befriending one, you may want to understand what you’re getting into.

About 1819, in his last year at Exeter College, Oxford, England, Parson John Russell began the process that would eventually create a Jack Russell. He was looking for specific qualities and genetically nailed them all and then some.

As the story goes, Parson Russell bought a small, white female terrier he named Trump from a milkman in Elsfield. He then began the arduous process of turning the “animal of his dreams” into a beast that would become a nightmare for generations who thought they were getting a normal dog. Jacks are renowned for their abilities to balance extreme intelligence and fearless, goofball aggressiveness with loyalty that borders on obsession.

In that respect, Rudy is the perfect vision of his founder back in jolly old England. And perhaps this is why so many Brits communicate with him every day as if he is a long lost cousin. He is.

Right now, he is sitting at our table watching the creamy foam of a Newcastle roil into a perfect head in a pub glass shipped to him by a man in Moss Side, Manchester. Come to think of it, sometimes, when he smiles, he looks a little like Ricky Gervais.

Rudy will never be invited to the Golden Globes.

How he got into the bathroom is not as much of a mystery as I would like to believe. I had let him in, not thinking about his deviousness and skills. He whined, I caved, he watched me shave. And then, while putting on my socks, I forgot he was in the bathroom.

What happened: Rudy, our Jack Russell, walked right past the security gate we have erected to keep him out of the rooms where, as my wife says “he is not welcome.” She uses that phrase for places where Rudy has done mischievous things in the past – which would be every room in the house. The list is long and usually involves him eating something or peeing on something and not always in that order. Naturally, Rudy resents this rule, and when given the chance, he does both of those things just to show his dominance over my wife’s edicts.

He was in the bathroom perhaps four minutes without my direct supervision. That’s all it took. We found the chewed-up Kleenex first, then the pee on the bed while I got a shirt from the closet – just to get even with us for something we’ve forgotten, but he remembers. My wife walked into the bathroom and there was the toothpaste. Or what had been toothpaste a few minutes before Rudy’s arrival.

This is a good time to reiterate that we try hard to protect Rudy from his doggedness, his Jack Russellian tendencies, his plain old nasty habits. Sometimes we win. Today, we lost.

It seems that after pissing on the bed and chomping the tissues, Rudy hopped on the counter, somehow unscrewed the top off the tube of Crest and used his paw to squeeze out some paste. There was very little paste in the tube, but Rudy managed to squeegee enough to make a mess. Aqua-green paw prints dotted the bathroom, his hassling breath smelling like minty fluoride. My wife was not pleased.

He was standing on one side of the room, grinning, his pearly whites one step away from a cavity, his whiskers coated in paste. My wife was on the other side waving the crumpled tube at him. He looked like he had just won the Heisman trophy. She looked like she had lost the Grammy to Taylor Swift.

She had a conversation with him as if he and she were on the same page, which they seldom are. To him, peeing on things is a sign of great respect. Not so much for her. Eating Kleenex, well, that’s just a sick twist of a Jack’s appetite for prohibited items. Considering some of the disgusting things I have seen Rudy eat, however, the toothpaste was a good move, in my opinion. And I said so. Now she is pissed at us both. Until she calms down, he is sitting in my chair while we watch bowl games. His breath smells awesome. I hear that four out of five dogs prefer Crest.

A while back, our notorious Jack Russell, Rudy (http://twitter.com/Rudythejack), was injured and laid up in bad shape for several weeks. Here he is, back to his snarly self on Christmas Eve, with one of the many gifts from his friends. Rudy’s recovery is the best gift we could get.

Think about the gifts you got this year that will not fit in a box and came with no ribbon. Ours has four legs and is carrying around a rawhide bone the size of a “Shake Weight.”

Merry Christmas.