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The
Biderman Dogs
Smidgen
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Smidgen is our oldest
dog. We found Smidgen on the median
of Amnicola Highway in 1992. The first time was saw him he was racing around
Lake Junior. Shortly after that he
headed directly to the highway where we picked him up. We
named him Smidgen because he weighed only 15 pounds at that time..
He’s gotten a little bigger since then.
He’s responsible, directly or indirectly, for all the dog bites we’ve
received. On the first or second day of his long stay with us, he
started growling at Willie, one of the dogs we had when we found Smidg.
Ted tried to break it up and Smidg bit him.
He’s bitten Mike on the leg twice, both times when fighting with
Hannah. And Hannah bit Mike when he
tried to break up a fight with Smigd.
Even in his old age, Smidgen enjoys harassing Hannah, threatening to bite her.
Hannah has been told in no uncertain terms that she’s to not fight
back. For the last couple of years,
she’s resisted the temptation. Smidgen has a few nicknames,
including Mr. Smidg, Baroo Boy, Curmudgeon, and Death Wish (because of the way
he continues to harrass Hannah).
Peter
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Peter came with
the house. He was a Fort Wood
neighborhood dog, wandering the FW area with Nelson, who lived next door.
This was before the Animal Control personnel were added to the Police
Dept. One day in January 1994, he
came into the house and lay for the whole day on a piece of insulation that was
to be put into the walls. Mike took him to our house in Brainerd and in the process of giving him a bath we
discovered that something was wrong with him.
We took him to Animal Clinic East, and they found he had a broken
pelvic bone, probably the result of being hit by a car.
We left him at ACE in a cage they use to have for “giveaway” dogs.
Fortunately, no one took him. Susan
named him Peter because he reminded her of a white bunny rabbit.
He moved into the house with us, along with Woofie and Holly, since departed
this life. For many years, he and
Mike ran a 2-mile route through the UTC campus, Peter dragging Mike up the 5th
St. hill.
He loves to lie on Mike's pillow, where he's shown in the above picture. Peter's nicknames include Lamby Pie, Peter Lumpkin, Lumkinmeister, and, after
he's had a bath, Snowball.
Serendipity
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Serendipity followed
Mike, Woofie, Peter, and Holly home from a walk on Oak St. in 1996.
She followed willingly but then balked at coming into the house.
Mike had to coax her and carry her into the kitchen. Susan had broken her ankle skate boarding and was in bed in
the master bedroom. Mike was able
to get her to follow him upstairs and where she then hid under Susan’s
dressing table for a couple of hours. She
continues to be our most mysterious dog. She
stays pretty close to Mike when he works at home.
In the picture, she’s in the basket that is beside Mike’s chair in
his office. Sometimes Hannah gets
into it first, and Serendipity is forced to lie on the floor behind his chair.
Every time he gets up from his desk, Mike has to check to make sure the
coast is clear behind him before scooting his chair back.
Shortly after we adopted her, she scarfed a really bad outdoor “thing” that
blocked her lower intestine and ultimately required extensive colon surgery.
Perhaps that’s why she’s so skinny.
She is the peacemaker of the dog family and has broken up many a skirmish
between other dogs (one of whom is often Smidgen), often by simply placing her
paw on one of the dogs. Serendipity also goes by Dipitydoo.
Hannah
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Hannah was a gift
from Susan’s boss. Phil and
his family live in the Highway 58 area. One
day in 1999 they heard a dog crying and found Hannah wandering the neighborhood.
They’re not “dog people” so Phil brought her to Susan, who brought
her home. As Susan was walking into
the house with Hannah in her hands, Woofie, Smidgen, Serendipity, and Peter
milled around her. In what can only
be viewed as a sign of things to come, Hannah growled and tried to “get”
them. She continues to be our most
volatile dog. She’s very strong,
and we walk her with a double leash to insure that she won’t break loose.
Other than Smidgen, she the only dog to have bitten any one of the
household, and that was in a fight with Smidgen.
Hannah is our most expensive dog to date. She
has osteoarthritis and has had three operations on the knees of her hind legs.
That was more than three years ago, and now she shows no sign of the
problem. (Thanks, Jamie Craven.)
Hannah's nickname include Hannah Bobannah, Bobannah, and Leena because of her
habit of sitting beside us and leaning into us to be petted or scratched..
Maxine
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Maxine was taken to
Memorial Hospital in 1999 by people from the Humane Society to visit with and
help cheer up patients. Susan
chatted with the person who had brought Max to the hospital and asked her what
would become of Max should none of the patients adopt her.
On hearing the answer, Susan immediately said that she would take Max if
no one else did. And now we have her. Maxine
is apparently part border collie, because she frequently herds the other dogs on
walks. Every time Mike or Susan
call at the dogs to get off someone’s lawn or out of the street, Max growls at
the other dogs and pushes them back onto the sidewalk. Often,
people we meet thinks she's growling at them, but it's always the other dogs
she's with. She’s the only one of the dogs who routinely asks to be petted.
She loves to have her belly scratched and will paw you if you quit
scratching.
We sometimes call her Maxine, Maxine the beauty queen, because she gets the
most attention from people who see her on the street.
Katie
Rose
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Katie is the
light of Susan’s life and surely the cutest dog in the world. In the picture
above, she's in her "cat" suit, shaved to keep her cool for the
summer. When her hair is
long she looks like the lion from the Wizard of Oz.
In 1999 she had been dumped in a yard where a small black dog was tied to
a tree. They became companions but
both were badly abused by the homeowner. In
fact, he had kicked Katie and broken her leg.
When Susan stopped in the neighborhood to take a coworker to work, she
noticed Katie lying in a pool of her own urine.
Susan ran into the yard and scooped her up and put her in the car and
took her to Animal Clinic East. There
they determined that in addition to the broken leg she had a type of mange that
is lethal if untreated. Susan left
her there for two weeks before bringing her home with the promise that no one
would ever hurt her again. By the
way, Susan also found a home for the little dog tied in the yard.
Katie is the least overtly affectionate of all our dogs, which of course,
endears us to her even more. But
we’re winning her over. In
the picture, she looks somewhat like she did right after having the mangy hair
shaved off just after Susan rescued her. Katie
goes by Katherine, Rose, Rose Bud, and Katherine Zeta Rose.
Pepper
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Pepper is the latest
addition to our family. He followed
younger son Ted home from a run in July 2003.
When Ted ran past our house we were outside giving Peter a bath.
Pepper noticed us and stopped in front of the house.
He stayed there after we took Peter inside, lying on the front porch or
in the Monkey grass by the sidewalk. We finally coaxed him into a cage on the front
porch that we
used for rescues, and within a week he was
sleeping between us. He probably
spent a year on the street before joining us.
Early on during our daily walks he would occasionally stop and lie in
Monkey grass, and he continually looked for grubs in the verge between sidewalk
and street. Needless to say, he
needs neither Monkey grass nor grubs any more.
Pepper
weaseled his way into our hearts and continues to weasel his way onto our laps
at every opportunity, whether another dog is there or not.
Pepper is also Pepperoni, Pepperoncino, simply Roni and sometimes Goober.
Feeding
rituals.
Feeding
a pack of seven dogs requires a certain amount of choreography. There are
several competing issues that must be reconciled, including the issue of who is
the alpha dog (Hannah), who is the oldest and most demanding (Smidgeon) and who
is the hungriest (Pepper). In the morning, each gets a milk bone. At
that time Smidgeon has been up for about a half hour before the rest of us,
"barooing" in the foyer downstairs. So Smidgeon gets his
first to shut him up. Then Pepper gets his because he wants it so
badly. The rest of the pack meander into the laundry one after
another. Katie won't take hers from the hand. Instead we must toss
it gently onto the rug on the laundry room floor where she eats it after we've
left. Serendipity is usually last in line. She invariably takes her
bone back upstairs and eats it on the bed. Hannah eats hers quickly and
then tries to menace the others to get theirs away from them. On any given
morning, Max will lie on the rug in front of the dog door that leads outside,
keeping whoever has gone through it into the porch out of the kitchen until Max has eaten her bone.
The
nightly feeding ritual is also tightly scripted. In the laundry room, all
bowls are filled with dry dog food with one large can of wet split evenly
between the seven bowls. The amount of dry in each bowl is determined by
age and size. First Smidg (who's most demanding) and Serendipity are given
their bowls - Smidge in the foyer and Seren on the deck by the bay window.
Then Katie's bowl is put on the rug in the laundry room. She and Serendipity
follow Smidg because they eat most slowly. After Katie begins, Max's and
Peter's bowls are carried to the kitchen, where Max is given hers by the sink
and Peter his by the dog door leading to the back porch. Finally, Hannah
is given hers in another part of the kitchen and Peter's is put on the ottoman
in the TV room. After all bowls are taken from the laundry room, the door
is closed because Katie eats very slowly - nearly a piece at a time. She
deposits the milk-bone-shaped pieces of dry food on the rug beside her bowl and
eats the other-shaped pieces first. Then, after having eaten all the food
in the bowl, she eats the individual milk-bone-shaped pieces. After that,
she nudges open the laundry room door to join the rest.
Walking.
We
walk the gang of seven in shifts. First, Mike takes Hannah, Peter, and
Max. , all three at one time. These are the "bad" dogs. They pull hard on the
leashes for the duration of the walk - about six blocks long. Hannah
spends the whole walk in a state of vigilance, looking for other dogs, cats,
squirrels, and even birds. She loves nothing better than to lunge at
whatever creature she spots. After the first three, Mike walks
Serendipity, Peter, and Katie. At the same time, Susan walks Smidgeon and
gives Peter a bonus walk. Serendipity won't let Mike put her leash on
unless Peter is there with her. If Peter happens to be upstairs or in the
back yard, Seren ducks her head as Mike tries to leash her. She continues
this until Peter has arrived. Only then can the walk of the
"good" dogs begin. This trio pulls much less and spends much
more time sniffing than the first three.
Walking
on a leash in a city is something a dog has to learn to do. The dogs must
remember to walk on our side of every tree or sign in the verge between the
sidewalk and the street. When we have gotten a "new" dog, our
first walks with that dog are punctuated by backtracking around trees and signs
until the newcomer has learned the ropes, so to speak.
Whenever
we walk, we take plastic grocery bags to "scoop the poop". You
simply can't walk seven dogs in a metropolitan area without doing so.
Interestingly, we now judge a grocery store not by quality of its food but by
the quality of its grocery bags. Nothing like scooping poop using a bag with a hole in it to
spoil a walk.
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