Kinski!

Are you reading KINSKI yet? You should be! The first issue is available digitally now from Monkeybrain Comics via Comixology, and the second is already up for pre-order. What's it all about? Well:

"Frustrated with his dead end career as a chicken feed rep, Joe is looking for something. Turns out that something is a four-month-old black lab puppy named Kinski. Joe is going to save this dog. What at first seems like a simple rescue mission escalates into a righteous crusade...but crusades don't usually work out so well, do they?"

By turns funny, poignant, and irreverent, Kinksi is, in my  opinion, the best way you could spend $0.99. And I'm not saying that just because I'm married to the creator either. Still not convinced? Check out this review from someone who doesn't work in a studio directly down the hall from Gabriel. And then gather up your closest canine companions, fire up your favorite electronic reading device, and spend some quality time with KINSKI.

National Dog Day

Camila

Today is National Dog Day. It's hard to tell around here since Camila makes sure pretty much every day is a dog day.

Camila is a rescue dog (you can read more about her story here) so you know that we are devoted to mutts.

Not as devoted as some folks though. Claudia, for instance, does more for the dogs of SoCal in a day than most people do in a year. She's especially keen for dogs that need extra help, like senior chihuahuas (remeber Pocita, who bummed a ride with us to San Francisco a couple of months back?) and pit bulls. Rescuing dogs like these takes hard work and can get expensive. But fear not, there's a way to help!

Claudia just opened The Rescue Shop and started selling super cute shirts. I ordered one right away and it arrived lightning quick. The shirts are good quality, fit great, and, best of all, $5 from each one sold goes to helping dogs like Pocita and Camila. Celebrate National Dog Day in style!

Operation Senior Dog Transport

Pocita's a little nervous at first

Los Angeles can be a hard place to be a homeless senior dog.  Shelters here are crowded and there are tons of lap-sized dogs available. So what's a dog to do if she finds herself without a place to call her own?

If she's lucky, she gets noticed by someone like my Facebook friend Claudia. I've "known" Claudia since a mutual friend "introduced" us a couple of years ago when we were looking for help with an abused dog that Gabriel had found near our house. But I hadn't ever met her in person until this Friday. She's a very dedicated animal rescuer, and I'm so happy that we were finally able to help one of her charges. Two years is a long time to owe someone a favor!

Earlier in the week I saw Pocita's photo on her wall, and that she needed a ride to Muttsville, a senior dog rescue in San Francisco. Coincidently, Gabriel and I were heading that direction to do some research for a comic book project we're working on. What luck! A couple of messages back and forth, and we were ready to take on our small passenger.

Starting to get interested in the trip

She was a bit worried at first. She'd lost her person to cancer and ended up as a foster at the age of 8 or 9. And here she was getting in a car with a couple of strangers after already traveling all the way from Long Beach to Los Angeles with Claudia! No wonder she was too nervous to eat breakfast.

She was too well mannered to whine or complain though, and after we'd been on the road for a little while she decided that my lap wasn't too terrible of a place to sit.

Life looks better with cheese

Then, after I bribed her with a tiny piece of cheese , she decided that maybe things would be okay after all and started to relax.

More cheese?

We stopped a lot more than we usually do on the LA to San Francisco run. Six hours in the car is a long time for anyone, let alone an elderly pup, but we still made it to the city in time to stop by the amazing Isotope Comics and meet James Sime, who sold us some very nice books and recommended that we visit Blue Bottle Coffee which did indeed have fabulous coffee. Many thanks to James for making us feel so welcome!

Either Pocita is very short or Gabriel is very tall

Before we got to Isotope we met up with Pocita's new foster, who couldn't have been nicer. Convinced that she was in good hands, we were free to travel the city and get the reference we needed for our new project. Happily, Ron Richards of iFanboy was nice enough to meet up with us and give us some tips. Without him we would have never been able to get everything we needed in just one afternoon. We also would never have found the bar we ended up at afterwards. Specs is in an alley right across from City Lights Books. Who knew? It's quite a fun place. I have to believe that only in San Francisco would Gabriel have been able to have a conversation about Tombo pens with a guy at the next table in a pub.

Sadly, we had to head home after just 24 hours. The trip back was a lot less fun without our co-pilot, but I have high hopes that she will get a permanent home soon. And now, back to making comics!

Pocita's first look at San Francisco

Wordless Wednesday featuring Camila in the Yard

What We Found Under the House

No, not a body. Something much better! An ancient Matchbox station wagon:

It's a Mercury, to be exact:

But there's a bit of a mystery: apparently this type of Matchbox car was made only between 1955 and 1968. Our house was built in '78. Hmmm.

Anyway, it was manufactured in England, and has seen some pretty rough times by the looks of it. I think it's fabulous, all the way from its faded lime green body to its little molded plastic passengers: two happy canines peeking out the back. 

It already had a bath via the garden hose, but after a sounder scrubbing it's going strait into a display case. I dare you to prove that you found anything cooler under your house today.

If You're Working Labor Day and Making Overtime Pay...

It's true, dogs like windows.

A three day weekend... What's that? Now that I'm working freelance from home there is just no such thing as a holiday.

But that doesn't mean that I don't miss overtime pay. True, it always had somewhere to go, like towards the mortgage, but maybe I should have put some aside for the pets. I mean, just look at this brilliant idea: a little window, installed in your fence at dog-head level, so that your canine can see what's going on across the street. It's called a Pet Peek, and to be honest I would buy one of these in a minute if it didn't mean that we'd have to also build a fence to use it. I imagine the downside would be cleaning all the nose prints from inside the plexiglass bubble.

This is pretty cool too. A cat tree house. The leaves are fake, I gather, but I imagine my cats would chew on them anyway. It would take a bit more out of one's paycheck though, at $999.

Then there's this "Bowhaus" for a bit less, at $599. It's really sauve, but I'm picturing quite the disaster when that cute pup sees a toy, takes off running, flips the martini onto the white sofa, and spills his water dish all over the bamboo floor. Or perhaps I've just said too much about how my pup behaves?

Anyway, happy Labor Day, everyone. I hope you don't have to work too hard tomorrow!

Wordless Wednesday featuring Camila (4th Edition)

Frog Bag Photos Volume 3: The Many Faces of Camila

Wordless Wednesday featuring Camila and Emmett

Foxtails are the Devil

Foxtails really are the devil. Almost everyone knows this. And I, who have made a career out of working with animals for over a decade, should have known this too. But instead I had to learn it the hard way. Although, I must say, it wasn't as hard for me as it was for my dog Camila.

I had heard of foxtails prior to living with an adventurous mutt. I vaguely knew that they were some sort of weed with a scratchy detachable seedcase.  What I didn't know is how much damage they could do to a dog foolish enough to sniff one up her nose.

As it turns out, avoiding foxtails should be rule one for anyone who likes to hike with their dog in the Los Angeles area. Foxtails are EVERYWHERE when you start to notice them. And they don't just bloom and then disappear. Instead they dry out and become even more likely to freely float up the giant snout of any passing canine. 

Camila was lucky as it turns out. She was energetically sniffing around some bushes when she started violently sneezing. Here eyes squinted and teared, and she pawed at her nose. We took her to the vet right away, but by then she had stopped sneezing. We were sent home with some antihistamines and the hope that she had sneezed out whatever had been irritating her.

Several days later she still didn't seem quite right. So back she went to the vet, and this time she got the full work up: sedation and a scope up the nose. As it turns out, she had TWO giant foxtails embedded in her nasal passages. Why was this lucky, especially considering the fact that it cost more than a trip to San Francisco? Because it could have been so much worse. We knew that something was wrong, and that the culprit was something she had sniffed up her nose. We have learned since then that foxtails can and do get into ear canals, noses, mouths, and even eyes. They can work their way through coats, skin, and from there collapse lungs. A tech at the vet told me they can even enter the bloodstream and do terrible damage. 

So there you have it. Foxtails are horrible, and I highly recommend staying far away from them if you are a dog. And if you are a human, take the time to check your canine companion for wayward seed cases after any summertime hikes. Remember, the devil is sneaky and filled with malice. 

Wordless Wednesday featuring Camila and Corinna (Easter Bonnet Edition)

A Day at the Dog Park

Most city dogs love dog parks. Given the chance, they like to socialize with other canines even more than with us humans. Sure, we feed them, pet them, buy them expensive squeaky toys... but we steadfastly refuse to sniff their nether regions. We also don't like it when they jump on our heads. But at the dog park? No problem! There are always plenty of other dogs that understand the mystique of nether-region-sniffing and don't mind having their heads jumped on. The need for dog parks seems like a no-brainer.

But, surprisingly, there was no such thing before 1979. Sure, there were areas where folks and dogs met up to play, but they weren't official. That means there were no doggie water fountains, rest areas, or double gates. So who do we have to thank for the modern miracle of dog parks? The credit belongs to a little bird called the snowy plover.

In the late 1970s snowy plover numbers were plummeting along America's Pacific coast. One big culprit seemed to be off-leash dogs running amok through their nesting areas. So the dogs and their people moved inland, and started using parks instead of the beach as their playground. Naturally this caused some friction with those that wanted their parks to be dogs-on-leashes only zones. A compromise was reached in 1979 when the Experimental Dog Park was opened in Berkeley. It was the world's first dog park. The concept was so new that many people stopped by to ask what kinds of experiments were being done there!

Since then almost 1,000 dog parks have opened across the U.S. The Experimental Dog Park has been re-christened The Martha Scott Benedict Memorial Dog Park. And the concept has spread around the world. Helsinki seems to have the most, and nicest canine playgrounds per capita. Sadly, the worst one is supposedly right here in Los Angeles. But that's okay. There are plenty to choose from. And our city dog prefers any day at the park to a day spent lounging on the couch.

Wordless Wednesday featuring Corinna and Camila (Birthday Edition)

It's an Emergency! Let's Panic!

Sometimes, working at a private zoo can be odd. The fact that the zoo is private means that there is a large house on the grounds. And in that house live people. Some of those people have pets.

And where zoo keeping and pet wrangling meet, communication trouble is sure to follow...

Take today for instance. I was calmly cleaning the squirrel monkey enclosure when I received an urgent message. Come quick, it said. One of the dogs is in trouble! Hurry, she needs to get to the vet right away! So of course I dropped everything and ran, clomping over the marble entry in my steel-toed rubber boots. The emergency? The pup is very fluffy and she had failed to adequately clean herself after her last trip outdoors. That's right, she had a poopy butt. The problem was quickly resolved with some wet paper towels. Okay, I'll admit that I had to use a pair of scissors too, but what she definitely didn't need was a trip to the vet.

But it made me think: lots of folks really don't know what constitutes an animal emergency. So here, for the canine good, is a list of things that really do require a trip to the doctor (as enumerated on about.com).

• Blue, white or very pale gums
• Labored breathing
• Collapse or loss of consciousness
• Dizziness, imbalance, or circling
• Inability to walk
• Extremely bloated abdomen
• Seizures
• Signs of acute severe pain (such as crying out very loudly and excessively)
• Body temperature over 104 or under 99 (normal is typically 100.5-102.5)

Of course there are many other reasons to consult a vet too, like vomiting that lasts for more than a day or two, lumps, wounds, snake bites, etc. Knowing your dog is key. If she is acting "off" it may be time to visit the doctor. But please, take it from an animal care professional. A dirty dog is not an emergency.

That said, my dog Camila would like me to add one more thing to the list. Apparently being forced to wear cute/comical headgear also constitutes a dog emergency. Treat it immediately with a dog cookie and a belly rub.

Wordless Wednesday featuring Camila, Fredo, and Cooper

Wordless Wednesday featuring Camila