Of Black Bears and Poodle Breeds
Jeff Cravens
Many years ago, my wife and I bought 20 acres of land in Washington State. We actually bought 18 acres, but paid for 20. In retrospect, the land survey should have happened before the purchase. Before the ink dried on the deed, I was building trials for mountain biking.
I like my bike trails. Given the choice between cleaning the house and doing hard labor on my trails, swinging an adze beats flitting around with a duster. In case you have a hard time with reading between the lines, my house is dirty and my trails are awesome.
Today I went out on my favorite downhill run to see if it was too muddy for a spin, and of course it started to rain again. The creatures of spring were out. A western tanager flew by, a turkey gobbled, and a red tailed hawk floated on a thermal high above me. Oh, and there was a black bear.
At least the tracks of a black bear were there. He/she must have been close in front of me because the prints were so fresh no water had pooled in them. He/she must have liked my groomed trail, because I followed the prints almost all the way back to the house. I began to wonder if the bear might be hanging out on my patio making a brunch out of my cock-a-poo (that’s a dog) and using her pink collar like dental floss. Or, more likely, it might have its head stuck in the dog door trying to get at Tebby just to make her stop barking.
My cock-a-poo has a long history with bears. A few years ago, she decided to harass a couple of cubs until the mother bear decided to end the shenanigans, so she ran back to me! The big cinnamon colored black bear charged right up to within a foot of me before bolting off the road. I was still standing in the road bracing for the impact long after she crashed into the bushes. Another incident two years ago left Tebby with four puncture wounds from a bear who felt the need to encourage her to stop chasing him. Why he didn’t finish the job, we’ll never know.
On the last stretch leading to the house the big bear tracks turned off the trail and continued down the hill toward the turkey gobble. Back at the house, there was no Tebby, but no sign of a fight either. I rode up the hill and found her up at the neighbors house.
I’ve always thought that one of our resident critters would get Tebby. We’ve got bears, coyotes, a cougar, and now I’ve read that one of the wolf packs from the north of us has decided to roam down into our county. I have heard that wolves don’t like dogs. Perhaps I should dress Tebby up in a costume for when she’s roaming outside. Not a cat or goat, and definitely not a turkey. An armadillo costume sounds good. I bet wolves are indifferent to armadillos… who isn’t?
Okay, so you know about Hubriscomics.com, or you wouldn’t be here right now. And you might know that Hubris also runs on Comics.com, in a delayed-but-catching-up-horrifically-fast sort of way.
Occasionally, though, Hubris turns up elsewhere. Like HERE
I like that site. They guy reads deep, and seems to get my points, even if they’re buried in a silly sort of foreground.
Might be why he also talks a lot about editorial cartoons. You expect a little depth out of the cleverer editorial cartoons. Not all of them. Some are just silly drawings that say no more than “Everyone knows that politician is stupid because he’s not on our side!” If you assume I’m pointing a finger at either the right or the left, you’re wrong. If you assume I’m pointing a finger at various cartoonists on both sides, you’re correct.
Anyhow. Keep your eyes trained on THIS SITE, too, because Danielle Corsetto is running some guest strips for the next week, starting today. You might see Hubris if you’re paying attention. Of course, you’ll probably wind up reading a few hundred of her strips, once you get to know her characters. That is, assuming you’re not already reading her work, and you’re old enough to enjoy it. Kids, stick with Hubris for a couple of years… til you’re old enough to know why the opposite sex makes you nervous. ”‘Cause they’ve got cooties” is not the answer.
This is Danielle’s caricature of herself. I stole it off her site. She draws very well.
Anyone who’s had the misfortune of listening to me talk in the last few years knows that I don’t just draw Hubris, or even just Hubris and The Buckets. I do a lot of advertising cartoons and I do (and have done for years) caricatures of various types.
Caricature. Tricky word. My mom still can’t pronounce it, and I was first paid to be a caricaturist nearly thirty three years ago. She tries, though. When I was sixteen, a buddy and I actually used to set up at the entrance of the local WalMart (the manager had the idea that little fair/festival type things every weekend made the shoppers happier. He may have been right.) Once, a fella came in, looked at our table, looked at the sign, looked at the samples and said. ”Them’re pretty good. Too bad y’ misspelled ‘character’.” So, if you didn’t know it before now, here’s your word for the day- Caricature.
And don’t misuse it, now that you have it. I have ad agencies call up and tell me they need a caricature. I ask for details, and what they want is a character. Literally, a cartoon character that can be licensed for some client or other. Not the same. If the character needs to have the features of a person or a kind of person, it might be a caricature. If it’s a blue furball that sells cleaning services, it’s a character.
But back to caricatures. Occasionally I get one that’s barely outside the usual request. Mostly, these days, I do the occasional party-style 4 minute caricatures for a few hours, or I do big 16X20 presentation caricatures that require a little paint and a lot of personal reference about the person I’m drawing. The person is usually retiring, or changing jobs, or moving to another town, and the corporation they work for is giving them a little send-off, including a big ol’ cartoon of themselves and the mess that used to fill their offices.
And now comes a Memorial. Kind of a sweet thought, that I would be asked to memorialize a customer’s friend who’s passed on. I hope I did him justice, and I’m not being irreverent by posting it here, but I was very pleased with how it turned out (Though the photo is kinda dark. It lost something when I lightened it, though). It’s not a caricature in the sense that I distorted anything in order to make recognition immediate. In fact, it’s more of a cartoon portrait filled with family and important things from a life.
So, just so you know that there is such a thing- Here’s a serious caricature.
So on the first hot hot day when you walk the dog down to the kids’ school, the dog stumbles into the bushes like he’s going to faint.
Whattaya do next? You give him some water (by using the contents of another parent’s water bottle and a grocery bag you brought in case of poop collection) and take him to the vet where you are reassured but told, as you’ve already decided to do, to carry water and a bowl around with you on hot days.
Next, you order the dog his own backpack, like you’ve been meaning to do for so long. Poop bags, treats, bowl, water, extra water, brush, and an allen wrench I found in the zoo parking lot. There’s more stuff that will wind up in this dog pack, but that’s it so far.
REI dog backpack on Roscoe
I had to buy the Large, as my dog is about a hundred and twenty-odd pounds or so, depending on the last vet visit. If you read the reviews online, the packs seem to run a little large, and lots of folks who thought they’d need a large are using medium sized packs. The Large is good for mine. I’ve got about two inches of play left in the rearmost strap. Aside from that rearmost strap, there are two other quick-release points to deal with. One of the quick-releases connects into a three-point harness on the dog’s chest.
The fit’s good, after some tinkering, but I wonder if I’ve done something wonky, as the rig tends to end up after a while slightly off on Roscoe’s left side. That might be because 1) he tends to walk on my right, and go off that direction occasionally to check out stinky things or squirrels. (right. OR squirrels. I bet they stink, too) and 2) I have the leash connected to the pack. I could have the leash on his collar, which would solve the pack shifting to the left, but there’s good reason NOT to do that. I’ll get to that.
So the pack has a good fit, three-point harness, three quick release buckles, and a clip-in for your leash. It also has a handle on the top. I’ve been asked if I could use the handle to pick up the dog. No. Roscoe is 125 pounds at the moment. I couldn’t lift him by a handle in the middle of his back. I can carry the pack around while Roscoe plays in the lake, though. Good handle. I have heard of some people who keep a similar pack on a little Daschund who couldn’t climb out of their canoe. The little dog wanted out of the canoe to follow their larger dog into the lake, apparently. And, apparently, the dog didn’t have anything in the pack that couldn’t get wet, ’cause they lifted the dog out and dropped him into the water with the handle. I was told this story second or third hand while discussing the handle on Roscoe’s rig. No idea what kinds of things were being left out of the story, or added. DId the dog look like he had little floaty wings on? Did the owners later say, “Oh, the ziplock on the dogfood in the pack wasn’t closed up very well. This looks like puke now.”
Back to Roscoe…We haven’t run out of room on either side of the pack, by any stretch of the imagination. Roscoe has all of his stuff, and sometimes carries the leash in there, too. He’s also has carried a frizbee, and my jacket. None of which packed the thing full up, even with a couple of water bottles, two bags of treats and a heck of a lot of those unecological plastic grocery sacks that work well for giant dog poops in civilized neighborhoods.
The clip-in for your leash at the front of the pack is nice. Without it, Roscoe tends to pull when we first start our walks. He’s ready to run, and my knees disagree with the right-out-of-the-gate method. The harness set-up in the pack seems to keep him from wanting to pull. It’s weird. You’d think that dragging against a collar around your neck would be a lot less comfortable than dragging against a chest harness, but there you go. A dog is not a horse. He won’t take off and strain at the leash when he’s in this pack.
He likes the pack too. From the start, it meant adventure, and let’s face it, he’s a German Shepherd. He likes the sense that he has another job to do. ”I carry the Pack.” He holds as still as he can (Excited to go! Going for a walk! Can’t stand to hold still! Whine! Yip!) while I pop the straps on, and he’s learned to hold still while I pop them off. When I lift on the handle after the pack’s loose, he ducks backward out of it and heads for the yard. Nice.
So these packs. Good stuff. And they’re on sale right now. Quit carrying your dog’s stuff around. He or she can do it themselves.
