Walmart Customers, Dogs, and Giant Rats

Early this week I carried Willow to her groomer. Her nails needed cutting and even worse, she was beginning to smell like a dog.

She routinely goes with me to the post office to get our mail every day. Sometimes we go a different route to drop a movie at Blockbuster. When we go to Blockbuster we ride by her groomer. And she doesn’t seem to even notice.

However, the day I took her to the groomer, which is the same route as to Blockbuster, she started shivering and quivering as soon as I started the engine.

She knew she was going to the groomer. I noticed before when turning into the shopping strip the groomer is in she is shivering. It is not that she dreads going there, but she loves it. She gets to see other dogs, which she seldom does. It is a rare pleasure. When we get out of the truck I don’t drag her, she drags me inside.

I wonder what I do differently to tip her off that I am taking her to the groomer. I’m sure it is something and I think dogs are experts at reading body language and facial expressions.

Which brings to mind what Paul Roper and I talked about yesterday: Wild dogs in a pack. I watched on National Geographic- nature -type video features of wild dogs attacking a deer or something equally big or bigger. There is a plan; every dog has a certain position in the attack. There are ones who know which way to come in being aggressive and they know which way the prey will turn and run and that is where most the dogs are waiting, but there are others in positon all around ready in case the animal chooses another direction. Every intricate detail has been worked out.

It is like a coach explaining a football play to his players. But he can talk. He can make a diagram of little x’s and o’s on the blackboard how he wants the play to be carried out

How does the leader of a dog pack get across his play-plan? As far as we know they don’t have a spoken language. They communicate, probably better then we do by body language and facial expression and maybe a few growls and pissing off boundary lines. How does he inspire his team?

The reason Paul and I got into such an intellectual discussion was that I forwarded him a bunch of pictures under the title of “What Kind of People Shop at Walwart.” He called wanting to know what that plastic sack was hanging on a person’s leg. I more or less said, “The liquid is yellow an't it?"



Then he wanted to know what kind of creature that was someone had on a leash. While on the phone he apparently on line found out the name of the creature was Caplin Rous and it is the largest in the rodent family, getting as big as 65 pounds. He also read off that they are from South America. Then he read off how their teeth are shaped and how the teeth chew up its food. And then how it is then broken down and digested in the giant rodent’s stomach.

We both agreed that we now know more because we looked at the pictures of people that shop at Walmart.

Are we like a couple of research professors or what?