Poodle Bitch wonders about what life was like for Nazi dogs

Poodle Bitch briefly notes the presence of an article from TIME.com, via yahoo, in which it is claimed that Adolf Hitler, the former leader of Germany, attempted to create an army of superior dogs that would do his bidding for him.

In his new book Amazing Dogs: A Cabinet of Canine Curiosities, Cardiff University historian Jan Bondeson mines obscure German periodicals to reveal the Nazis' failed attempt to breed an army of educated dogs that could read, write and talk. "In the 1920s, Germany had numerous 'new animal psychologists' who believed dogs were nearly as intelligent as humans, and capable of abstract thinking and communication," he writes. "When the Nazi party took over, one might have thought they would be building concentration camps to lock these fanatics up, but instead they were actually very interested in their ideas."

Poodle Bitch isn't sure why a human who believed that "dogs were nearly as intelligent as humans" should be considered a "fanatic," but his comment has prompted Poodle Bitch to scratch Mr. Bondeson's new book off her summer reading list.

Poodle Bitch found The Sun's much less dry take on the story, in particular some specifics about a school that was set up to train the dogs, more entertaining than Time's:

Star pupil at the school near Hanover, Germany, was Aire- dale terrier Rolf. He tapped out letters of the alphabet with his paws and was said to have speculated about religion and learnt POETRY.

He reportedly asked a visiting noblewoman: "Could you wag your tail?" Another mutt was said to have uttered the words "Mein Fuhrer" when asked who Hitler was - while another imitated a human voice to bark: "Hungry! Give me cakes" in German.

Other ludicrous experiments saw so-called scientists test telepathic communications between humans and dogs.

Poodle Bitch doubts very much that Rolf was anything more than a very clever canine who found himself in a difficult situation and made the best of it in order to survive. She has found that humans who want to believe in something -- who desperately want to believe in something -- can be made to believe in that something with only the barest of outside help. Poodle Bitch cites the allegedly "guilty" dog, Denver, who recently sent the internet into a tizzy, and Sonny, the dog who could supposedly "read."

These dogs were playing along for the benefit of their human companions. Dogs like to make their human companions feel good. And, Poodle Bitch dryly notes, to get rewards. Because humans are basically good, this is a mostly harmless exercise. However, Poodle Bitch notes with sadness that there are those who, for instance, run dog fighting rings, who exploit this feature of the canine personality for nefarious ends. Then there are the so-called "drug sniffing dogs," who are wrong more than half the time about the presence of drugs, but are right 100% of the time in trying to make their human co-workers happy.

But back to the Nazis: Rolf et al had no idea that these humans were working toward malefic ends. They just wanted to make them happy; so they followed the cues they were given. The humans, in turn, were part of a dangerous, powerful movement centered around a murderously deranged man who was apparently "a well-known dog lover," (as the TIME article ludicrously puts it) and a "barking-mad pet lover" (as the Sun article absurdly puts it) and very much wanted his silly program to succeed. So there were powerful motivations all around to show some measure of success.

She feels safe in declaring that the Nazi attempt to create a race of super dogs who would help them run their concentration camps was essentially a non-starter.

Some dogs will do anything for a treat.

Poodle Bitch admires May, the young poodle bitch who fought off a vicious eagle attack

Poodle Bitch does not consider herself to be a particularly athletic dog. Certainly she enjoys the occasional gambol, and has been known to chase a squirrel or two. But she's not much of a romper, and she deeply abhors violence.

Poodle Bitch understands that she is a domestic animal, and as such, her life has been much easier than the life of an animal that must fend for him/herself in the wild. She does not judge other animals doing what they must to survive.

Poodle Bitch's own experiences with "wild" animals have been fairly limited. Aside from the aforementioned squirrels, she might on occasion chase a bird that has lit upon the ground. Otherwise, she is fairly content to let other animals go their way, just as Poodle Bitch expects to be allowed to go her own way, unmolested.

But she has often wondered what she might do in a situation in which she was confronted by a hostile, wild animal, and there was no human there to defuse the situation. Would Poodle Bitch have the intestinal wherewithal to extricate herself from, say, the talons of a vicious, hungry bird of prey?

It is for that reason that Poodle Bitch has taken what might be an obsessive interest in the story of May, a toy poodle who recently found herself in just such a situation.

May fought, and fought hard. And taught a nasty eagle that poodles are not to be trifled with.

She’s a vagabond toy poodle named May by SPCA staff after she fell out of the sky earlier this month and landed on the grounds of the Shorncliffe Nursing Home in Sechelt, B.C.

And how she came to be flying over the nursing home is explained by the deep talon marks in her back and sides, showing she was probably the unwilling passenger of a hungry eagle that had picked her up but eventually found her 18 pounds too much to hold.

May — her ribs broken and her body lacerated — was found by nursing staff on May 2 and delivered to the Sunshine Coast SPCA.

Poodle Bitch is filled with wondering admiration for this dear little bitch -- not merely because May fought her way out of the talons of a ravening beast (Poodle Bitch admits she has filled in certain holes in the story using her own imagination -- for some reason, no journalists have seen fit to interview May, and so the full story might never be known), but because May's life has apparently been that of a wayward urchin, a little vagabond bitch searching for a place to call home:

“She’s been a stray. There’s been severe neglect, and who knows how long she’s been out there,” said [BC SPCA official Lorie] Chortyk. “We estimate she’s six years old but her nails were growing into her pads and her teeth are badly decayed.”

Oh, this poor little bitch's life has apparently been harder even than that of Precious, as depicted in the novel Push.

Poodle Bitch would also like to note that the little bitch May also managed to make her way to a healing center where she might be able to receive the help she needs to recover. This healing center is a nursing home. Poodle Bitch has heard that such institutions often employ the services of Therapy Dogs, which help to raise the spirits of those humans who reside within them.

Poodle Bitch likes to think that May, the stray bitch, was on her way to the nursing home to apply for work as a Therapy Dog, when she was snatched up by the nasty eagle that attempted to murder her. Perhaps an enterprising journalist will take the time to actually ask May for the circumstances of her attack.

Although May has already received some medical treatment, the Sunshine Coast branch of the BC SPCA is soliciting donations for the $4,000 required for May's dental work (doubtless young May damaged her teeth as she used them to tear into the hard, leathery flesh of the cruel nightmare beast that attacked her -- again, Poodle Bitch embellishes). Poodle Bitch very much hopes that May's story moves humans enough to actually donate to what she considers to be a most worthy cause.

Poodle Bitch is unconcerned about "changes" to the Scrabble board game

To Poodle Bitch, most "board" games might as well be called "bored" games, although she does on occasion enjoy the camaraderie and fun engendered by some of them -- Trivial Pursuit, Beyond Balderdash, and Scrabble in particular. Games like these enable you to get a better sense of your friends' personalities by displaying their knowledge and interest in the world around them. Because Scrabble is one of her more favored games, Poodle Bitch has noted with interest that the game makers are adding 3,000 new words to its official dictionary.

The game's publishers say the additions make this the "most comprehensive Scrabble wordlist ever produced," but that's doing little to soothe some players' ruffled feathers.

"I don't like slang words at all, but if they are going to put them in we will have to use them," Jean Gallacher, of Scotland's Inverness Scrabble Club, told The Scotsman. "I think there is too much slang in the English language as it is, with the way young people are talking."

Poodle Bitch would like to point out that many words that we today take for granted as perfectly acceptable began their lives as "slang" terms that the "young people" used. In fact, she notes that very often attempts to keep "slang" terms out of wider usage were actually snobbish, veiled attempts to keep people of the "lower orders" in their place. Dictionaries are decidedly undemocratic, as they are put together by small groups of people who make decisions as to what words to include and what to leave out based on their own prejudices, and deference to what has been considered "proper" before. This mindset was put into words by Samuel Johnson in the preface to his Dictionary -- the first major dictionary and the standard dictionary from which all subsequent English dictionaries were based:

Of the laborious and mercantile part of the people, the diction is in a great measure casual and mutable; many of their terms are formed for some temporary or local convenience, and though current at certain times and places, are in others utterly unknown. This fugitive cant, which is always in a state of increase or decay, cannot be regarded as any part of the durable materials of a language, and therefore must be suffered to perish with other things unworthy of preservation.

For instance, regarding the word "shabby," which was originally defined by Dr. Johnson in his Dictionary as "mean; paltry," he wrote,

A word that has crept into conversation and low writing; but ought not to be admitted into the language.

Poodle Bitch notes with some amusement that Dr. Johnson wrote that such a low word "ought not to be admitted into the language"; not, "ought not to be admitted into my particular vocabulary."

Johnson was motivated to write his dictionary by a fear that people would be unable to read Shakespeare, or Victorian writers, because the words used in their works would fall into disuse. So his inclination was to "fix" the language so as to slow its natural progression, the change of which was often accelerated by the "fugitive cant." He wanted to emphasize what he considered to be "durable" -- for instance, words Shakespeare used -- and to marginalize that which he did not. Dr. Johnson was remarkably successful in this endeavor. Human language has evolved far less since he wrote his first Dictionary than it ever did before. As invaluable as Poodle Bitch considers Dr. Johnson's work to be, she cannot help but marvel at the venality of his motives.

Poodle Bitch wonders if it is the prevalence of this attitude that has led to the decline of interest in the dictionary as a tool of reference. These antiquated, quaint printed relics cannot keep up in an age in which, if Poodle Bitch has a question about a definition of a word, she is just as likely to check the Urban Dictionary as Merriam Webster online.

Poodle Bitch knows few children, but those she does know crack open their dictionaries solely because a teacher has specifically assigned it. And, as for Scrabble, Poodle Bitch is only a casual player, and only uses the "official" dictionary in online versions of the game.

As far as Poodle Bitch is concerned, the idea of an "official Scrabble dictionary" is as antiquated as the idea of "a dictionary." So it has added words such as "grrl" (why only two "r"'s, by the way?), "thang," "innit," and "MySpace" (there is a word that would have been relevant five years ago)? This will affect very few of us.

Poodle Bitch believes that is a good thing.

Blues-playing schnoodle has Poodle Bitch holding her ears

Poodle Bitch cannot decide if the schnoodle is half cute, or can't make up his/her mind to be cute. Naturally, Poodle Bitch admires all dogs equally, but cannot help feeling a sense of specific pride where her own breed, the mighty and noble poodle, is concerned.

Poodle Bitch is not so sure how to feel about Tucker, the piano playing schnoodle.



If in fact, as the uploader of the above video states, Tucker engages in this "piano playing" three or four times a day, Poodle Bitch is glad she does not live with him. Or, next door to him.

Then again, Poodle Bitch would not want to live with the comedic actor Ricky Gervais, either. But she does enjoy watching his antics on occasion.



So, play on, Tucker, wherever you are.

Poodle Bitch wonders if we would still love John Steinbeck today, if the critics of the time had done their jobs

John Steinbeck was a human American author who wrote several books that are famous. Poodle Bitch has only read a few of those books herself; she finds his works to be mostly pedantic and a rather unsavory mixture of sentimentality bordering on the maudlin, and romanticism of poverty ("Hooptedoodle," as Mack put it in the prologue to Sweet Thursday). Poodle Bitch believes one need look no further than the first sentence of his short novel Cannery Row to discover what she dislikes about his writing:

"Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream."

Ah, yes. Cannery Row contains multitudes. Poodle Bitch understands.

That said, Poodle Bitch does enjoy some of his works. Of Mice and Men was a fine book, and Tortilla Flat had some interesting details and genuine humor. And then, there is Travels with Charley.

Naturally, Poodle Bitch enjoys reading about a talented human writer spending time with a bright and cheerful poodle, even if that poodle is standard. Mr. Steinbeck clearly understands the bonds that exist between humans and dogs:
It is my experience that in some areas Charley is more intelligent that I am, but in others he is abysmally ignorant. He can't read, can't drive a car, and has no grasp of mathematics. But in his own field of endeavor, which he is now practicing, the slow, imperial smelling over and anointing on an area, he has no peer. Of course his horizons are limited, but how wide are mine?

And so Poodle Bitch was mildly disturbed to learn that the book Travels with Charley, which she had been given to believe was mostly nonfiction, might in fact be heavily fictionalized.

A huge commercial success from the day it hit bookstands, Travels With Charley in Search of America was touted and marketed as the true account of Steinbeck’s solo journey. It stayed on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list for a year, and its commercial and cultural tail—like those of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath—has been long and fat. For five decades Steinbeck scholars and others who should know better have not questioned the book’s honesty. But I had come to realize that the iconic American road book was not only heavily fictionalized; it was something of a fraud.

An author called Bill Steigerwald set out to follow Mr. Steinbeck's original journey with his poodle companion, and cross-checked the claims made in the final printed version against not only a map of the United States, but early drafts of the manuscript, Mr. Steinbeck's letters, and newspaper articles. The results of his research?

The more I learned about Steinbeck’s actual journey, the less it resembled the one he described.

As it turned out, Mr. Steinbeck spent more than half of his journey in the company of not only faithful Charlie, but his own wife. He also spent a great deal of his time in rather tony hotels; hardly roughing it in the wilderness. He also would have had to have traveled at fantastic speeds impossible at the time to have made all of his stops.

Mr. Steinbeck's book was originally published in 1962. In that time, readers and scholars have had ample opportunity to check Mr. Steinbeck's work, and the claims made within. Poodle Bitch wonders why it has taken this long for someone to do so.

She didn't think to do so for herself, because she assumed that experts in the field of 20th century American literature, in particular those who specialize in Mr. Steinbeck's works, would have done so. Poodle Bitch is hardly an expert on his works herself -- she doesn't have enough enthusiasm for him (as she stated above) to delve too deeply into his oeuvre.

Poodle Bitch wonders if that is the problem? The only ones who are examining with deep consideration are those who are the most enthusiastic. The fanboys, to use the modern vernacular. And those people have no interest in suggesting to the public at large that their favored author might have been less than honest in his dealings with the reader.

Then again, perhaps the scholars took it for granted that readers understood Mr. Steinbeck's "dishonesty." As Mr. Steigerwald points out,

Steinbeck dropped hints in Charley that it wasn’t a work of nonfiction. He insisted, a little defensively, that he wasn’t trying to write a travelog or do real journalism. And he pointed out more than once that his trip was subjective and uniquely his, and so was its retelling.

And:

From what I can gather, Steinbeck didn’t fictionalize in the guise of nonfiction because he wanted to mislead readers or grind some political point. He was desperate. He had a book to make up about a failed road trip, and he had taken virtually no notes. The finely drawn characters he created in Charley are believable; it’s just not believable that he met them under anything like the conditions he describes. At crunch time, as he struggled to write Charley, his journalistic failures forced him to be a novelist again. Then his publisher, The Viking Press, marketed the book as nonfiction, and the gullible reviewers of the day—from The New York Times to The Atlantic—bought every word.

So this was a matter of marketing and of a critical establishment that acted more as cheerleaders for a work of art than as genuine, detached examiners.

Poodle Bitch will bear this in mind the next time she laments the fall of modern movie/literary/music criticism. It has always been thus. Perhaps if there had been a "Smoking Gun" website at the time of Travels With Charley's release, the book would not be remembered today. For the sake of the poodle Charley, that would be a shame.

Then again, if James Frey can have his own "fiction factory," for which he is very well compensated, perhaps even the Nobel Prize winning (in 1962 -- the year of Charley's release, Poodle Bitch notes) Mr. Steinbeck could have recovered.

Denver the guilty dog: Trained in shame, and manipulating a nation

Companion animals are popular subjects for online amusement. The humans who enjoy these "viral videos" and "funny animal pictures!" find comfort in the anthropomorphizing of the dogs, cats, and other animals with whom they live. Poodle Bitch would like to remind humans that animals are not humans.

Which brings her to the latest "viral video" sensation, "Denver the guilty dog."



"You know the routine," the human says, 1:50 into this manipulative monstrosity. Indeed, Denver does "know the routine." Make the expression. That expression that gets the reaction.

Poodle Bitch never feels guilty partaking of sustenance that the humans in her midst have left in an accessible place. If the human in this video, the one who shot the footage and then set it to the weepy background music (the one redeeming factor in the whole sordid mess is that the musicians behind the song are getting some publicity, even if Poodle Bitch herself doesn't particularly care for the song), truly hadn't wanted Denver to eat the cat treats, he would not have left them in such a place as they could be found. Poodle Bitch does not believe that Denver feels guilt, either.

The human should feel ridiculous, perhaps even stupid. But Denver? Denver ate a bag of treats. Denver should feel satisfied, and most likely does. And, perhaps, smug, at the casual way in which he both manipulates his human companion, and plays along with his fiction.

Poodle Bitch notes that just a couple of years ago, a study was done that suggested that it's humans interpretations of animals' expressions that lead them to believe their companions feel "guilt."

During the videotaped study, owners were asked to leave the room after ordering their dogs not to eat a tasty treat. While the owner was away, Horowitz gave some of the dogs this forbidden treat before asking the owners back into the room. In some trials, the owners were told that their dog had eaten the forbidden treat; in others, they were told their dog had behaved properly and left the treat alone. What the owners were told, however, often did not correlate with reality.

Whether the dogs' demeanor included elements of the "guilty look" had little to do with whether the dogs had actually eaten the forbidden treat or not.

Dogs looked most "guilty" if they were admonished by their owners for eating the treat. In fact, dogs that had been obedient and had not eaten the treat, but were scolded by their (misinformed) owners, looked more "guilty" than those that had, in fact, eaten the treat.

In the "Denver the guilty dog" video, we clearly see the human feeding Denver not treats, but cues. From these cues, Denver knows exactly what the human expects. "Why does he want me to act that way?" he probably wonders. "Who cares? I am an agreeable canine companion, and I want him to be happy. I will do it."

"You know the routine," the human says, tellingly.

Nearly 5 million views on YouTube, and a facebook page with more than 23,500 fans. Denver and his human have a routine, and now the human has made Denver complicit in the manipulation of humans all over the country.

Poodle Bitch believes humans should govern themselves

Given the current economic situations in which most humans now find themselves, Poodle Bitch doesn't blame them for wanting to vote for new political candidates who represent "change." She would be surprised, however, if humans looked outside their own species for those candidates. Humans are the most arrogant of species.

Actually, Poodle Bitch does not believe that is entirely true. She has heard bad things about dolphins.

Regardless, she was surprised to learn that a canine candidate had been elected to a position of authority, however small that authority may be, in a place called "Annandale."

Running for president [of the Hillbrook-Tall Oaks Civic Association], Ms. Beatha Lee was described as a relatively new resident, interested in neighborhood activities and the outdoors, and who had experience in Maine overseeing an estate of 26 acres.

Though unfamiliar with Lee's name, the crowd of about 50 raised their hands, assuming that the candidate was a civic-minded newcomer. These days, it's hard to get anyone to volunteer to devote the time needed to serve as an officer. The slate that Lee headed was unanimously elected. Everyone ate ice cream, watched a karate demonstration and went home.

Only weeks later did many discover that their new president was, in fact, a dog.

Ms. Lee is a Wheaten Terrier Bitch. Yes, Poodle Bitch capitalized Ms. Lee's credentials because she is both bemused and impressed by Ms. Lee's accomplishment, such as it is.

She was elected to lead a civic association composed of humans who did not even require their candidates to stand before them and present themselves for any sort of inspection whatsoever.

Poodle Bitch is reminded of the classic Alfred E. Neuman campaign slogan, "You could do worse; you always have." Poodle Bitch has no way of knowing what kind of job the previous head of the Hillbrook-Tall Oaks Civic Association did, but she doubts that Ms. Lee could do much worse. The Washington Post article doesn't mention much that is done by the Association -- there are vague references to "ice cream socials" (Poodle Bitch wonders if Annandale is still in the 1950s), grumbling about speed bumps (do they actually place the speed bumps, or grumble about where the speed bumps are placed by the city government?), "annual block parties" (do they really need to meet more than once a year?), and a (losing) "bruising zoning battle against a Montessori school."

In other words, this is a small group of people who feel like they should congregate, but will not do so without an excuse. This would seem to be borne out by the following:

[Mark] Crawford had served three consecutive terms as president and, according to association bylaws, could not run for the office again. For weeks leading up to the election, he begged, pleaded and cajoled neighbors to run for the often-thankless volunteer post. No one bit. Newer, younger families told him that they were too busy juggling work, long commutes and kids. And longtime residents ... said they'd already done their time.

Poodle Bitch wonders if perhaps this should have been a red flag to everyone involved in this civic-minded organization. Either change the bylaws (how difficult would that have been, really?) to allow Mr. Crawford (Ms. Lee's human companion, by the way) to again run for president, or dissolve the apparently unnecessary group. Sometimes it is too much to ask for humans to behave logically.

Human beings have caused their own problems. They should not attempt to rely upon canines to clean them up. Poodle Bitch says, Let them plan their own ice cream socials.