Janet's Blog

The other day, I was walking with my dog, Jackson, when he stopped to sniff at a rather large pile of dog poop in the grass next to the sidewalk. Without giving it much thought, I said, "Jackson, we don't need to sniff other people's poop!" Jackson, a Shih tzu/Poodle mix, is pretty spry for 15 years old. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized how ridiculous I sounded. To start with, my words made no difference at all to Jackson, who was just doing what comes naturally for all dogs. Secondly, I wasn't joining Jackson in his sniffing, so the word "we" was completely inaccurate. And, of course, the poop he was sniffing was dog poop, not people poop. Yet that whole incident, trivial though it was, got me to thinking... Dogs sniff things, including random piles of poop, in order to learn something useful about another animal or a food source. Their noses are much more sensitive than humans' noses, so their sense of smell is a primary way fo...

When I was a little girl, it was so exciting to lose a tooth, because then I could expect a visit from the tooth fairy. My lost tooth, left in a glass of water on my dresser at bedtime, was always promptly exchanged for a single dime while I slept. A shiny dime was a reasonable amount of change back then; with it, I could buy a bottle of pop from the lobby pop machine, or two full sized candy bars, or two glazed donuts from the next-door bakery, with 2 cents to spare. A dime would also buy a brown paper bag full of penny candy or, if my sweet tooth wasn’t beckoning, even a comic book. By the time my oldest children started to lose their baby teeth, the tooth fairy left a quarter for most teeth. But, when Meagan was about seven, there was one time when the tooth fairy was extra generous. Our family, along with Bill's parents, his brother, Jim, and his sister JoAnn's family, was staying in a large cabin at Fort Robinson. Meagan had been wiggling her two loose front teeth for days...