“Hey,” my wife, Renee, said to me on the phone, “I went to that new pet store in town.”
“Oh,” I said, while thinking to myself, “How much did this trip cost?”
“Diamond really likes this bull pizzle!”
“Do you know what pizzle is?” I asked.
“No.”
“Good,” I said, “I will be home soon.”
Not only did my wife not know what pizzle is, my spellcheck on the word processor doesn’t know the word wither, underlining it in red every time it is typed.As you may already know, pizzle is penis. If you are surprised to hear this, you should have seen the shock on Renee’s face, when I got home, and she was holding a handful of the sticks in her hand, “These things are not cheap, but the dogs love them, especially Diamond!
“Great,” I said, I will never keep her out of any pasture with a bull or beef steers again. She will be jumping as high as she can, and I will have to protect her from getting stomped.”
“What?”
“Bull pizzle is penis,” I said, imitating the vocal cadence of Charlton Heston when he said “Soylent Green is people!” In the movie “Soylent Green.” Apparently, she never saw the movie, and never saw a good impersonation of Heston before. “Damn you all to hell!”is my other Heston impersonation, from the end of “Planet of the Apes” when he realizes he has been on earth all along. I don’t know if Renee has seen that movie. Anyway, she stood there looking at Diamond gnawing away on her prize, and then looking at her hand, which held a half dozen pizzle sticks.
“The people at the store said that they were good for cleaning the dogs’ teeth. That doesn’t seem possible.”
“Well, they are very dehydrated.”
“I guess so,” Renee looked at Diamond, who was flattened out on her belly, holding the treat between her two front paws, and as happy as could be, “She has been working on this for almost an hour.”
“Well,” I said, “How did you like the new pet store in town?” I was hoping to get an idea how expensive the prices might be, and maybe what the total bill was for the venture.”
“I don’t care,” Renee shook her head, looking at Diamond, “I am still going to buy them…” she tossed the remaining treats down into the plastic shopping bag, hastily, as if she was playing a game of “Hot Potato” and the music was about to stop! Note: Hot Potato was a game that kids played back in the 1900s before we had handheld video games, cell phones, gaming systems, or money. You can google it.
At any rate, we have been doing our best to clean the teeth on our mutts ever since paying a lot of money for some extractions. As expensive as this pizzle might be, it an save money in the long run. It is pretty safe too—if made by a reputable manufacturer, because it is easily digested (unlike rawhide) and there are no splinters, like often happens with bones. They are caloric, and that may mean cutting back on kibbles on a day when they are utilized. If my dogs are running hard I don’t really worry about the calories, but in the summer I will monitor the food intake—I tend to run my hounds less in the summer months, not wanting to injure them in the higher temperatures. There are other ways, and less expensive, to look after the dental health of our hounds, and I use those snacks too.
I do feed bones to my pooches, though I will be honest, some dogs are not as interested as others. Many vets are apprehensive of bones, but I will use the knuckle bones as a way of removing tartar and keeping the gums healthy. I will get the store bought ones on occasion, but I also will get plain old soup bones from the grocery store too, which are cheaper. There is a place near me that sells pork bones for fifty cents! Trust me, that is cheaper than pizzle. I watch them and take away the bone when it gets too small. Whether is is pizzle or bones, I usually give them one per week, never more than two, When they are running hard, I will give them a bone to gnaw one night and maybe pizzle or even a pig ear on another night of the week.
Pig ears are also beneficial, but some of my dogs just go through them way too fast to get the cleaning benefit on the teeth, During the hunting season, I have had dogs that get one pig ear per day, when the constant chasing allows for the extra calories with ease.
“Want me to give your dog one too?” I asked a friend who was visiting my house with his lab, as I doled out the pig ears.”
“No, she can’t eat those, she gains weight. How often are you feeding those to your beagles?” He asked me.
“The retirees do not get them too much, but some of the dogs that go with me every day get one per day.”
“Really?” His eyes widened in disbelief, looking at a 25 pound beagle that was able to thrive on the extra calories because of the increased activity involved in being a rabbit dog that loves his job and gladly does it every day.
“Yep,” I said, “And it keeps the chompers clean!”
“Does that get expensive?”
“Depends, My wife is a good shopper, and can find great deals. She gets a bunch when we have a good price somewhere. She gets a lot of them online, often in bulk. That’s why we store them in a plastic dog food container with a screw top lid. Keeps them from going bad or getting broken into by a sneaky dog that gets to them.
That dental health translates to more than cheaper vet bills, and not paying for tooth extractions. Makes for a better nose too. Bad teeth can effect the sense of smell. Senses, and how they work, are a fascinating aspect in life. Butterflies see more colors than we do—they see runways on flowers that guide them to the nectar in the center. Predators, including humans, have binocular vision (our eyes are together on the front of our head), which enables the ability to time attacks, determine distance, and maximize the benefits of depth perception. Prey species have their eyes on the sides of their heads, and since we are all about the bunnies, it is not a surprise to any of us that a rabbit can see nearly 360 degrees around itself and also see above their heads too! Our binocular vision gets about 190 degree field of vision, and. Nothing above us.
When I get a stuffy nose, I like to eat hot spices on pasta, mustard on cold cuts, and horseradish on roast beef. Why? Because when it drains my sinuses, I can taste better. We have all had sinus congestion that makes food seem tasteless. Taste and smell are connected, and improved dental health keeps a dog’s sense of smell working optimally. Tooth decay wafts up to the nose and it may be that a dog loses some scenting ability as it ages.
There are lots of things about scent that baffle me. Moisture is good for scent, but some days a light rain that should increase the scent seems to hinder the pack (of course a deluge will often make scent worse but not always). Under certain snow conditions, I swear the scent smells better when it is old, as if the rabbit leaves a track and it stirs up the granulated snow to melt—and the older tracks have melted more than the freshest ones, and that melting gives stronger scent. People get all worked up about barometric pressure and what it may or may not do to the scent, and all of those things are fascinating and confusing to me at the same time.
One thing I do know is that dental care helps. Pizzle. Bone.Pig ears. I have bought those cow hooves stuffed with a rock hard cheese or peanut butter. I avoid rawhide, due to concerns of big bits of the rawhide causing blockages. It ain’t as digestible as the pizzle. Sometimes, when I need the dogs to be especially quiet while I am working, I will take them to my basement office and let them worry away a knuckle bone while I am on the phone. In the winter I will sit by the wood pellet stove down there in our subterranean den, and let the hunting house hounds enjoy the reward of a bone after a good hunt. I find myself listening to the muffled sounds of chewing and canine coos of contentment. I then think about the chase and the mystery of scent as those teeth are being cleaned. I am always happy to learn something new about scent.
One of the things I recently discovered was that having two nostrils isn’t a coincidence. When I learned this, it was suggested that I smell my coffee with one nostril only, pinching the other one shut. Then smell the coffee again with the other nostril. I will let you do that now. Did you do it? Ain’t that weird?! Two different scents! Wild, ain’t it? I bet you got the same look on your face right now that my wife did when she learned what is used to make pizzle sticks.
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