What’s the mutter?

In the Bill Murray movie, “What About Bob?” Murray states that there are two kinds of people: those who like Neil Diamond, and those who don’t like Neil Diamond. And so it is with dogs.Here comes the neighbor with a new puppy. He is all over me, muddy paws and sloppy wet kisses. I meant the puppy. He is actually just licking me. Something about the salt on your skin. It also helps if you have just eaten a McRib sandwich. I am happy for the attention. My friend is not. He fends off the puppy’s leaps with both hands, but he cannot avoid the lightning tongue. He runs, panicked, hands flailing, horror etched on his face. Oh well … more for me.I have tried to explain that a little bit of dog spit is not going to kill him. I told him that a dog’s mouth is cleaner than a person’s. This is not actually true, although I did actually believe this up until someone recently showed me the data. Doesn’t the wounded Mounty let his faithful Husky lick his wounds so that the magic dog saliva can cure him? Surely this must be true. Well, it turns out that, like the concept that all sled dogs are big, furry Huskies, it is not. The cleanliness of a dog’s mouth is more about what he has been doing with it lately. So if your short- or long-haired, medium-to-large sled dog has been rolling in moose carcasses, you might want to stick with the first-aid cream.Confucius said, “Man who lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.” I think it was Confucius. Maybe it was the Bible. Anyway, I draw the line at fleas. Back in the old days fleas carried plague; nowadays, not so much. I am not taking any chances. Maybe it was the trauma. I once walked into a room that somebody left a few fleas in, and then went away for three days. I was immediately up to my knees in fleas. The entire floor was a mass of surging, leaping, black dots. I raced for the Raid, making crunchy-popping noises under foot, and sprayed my way out where I promptly had an attack of the heebie-jeebies and a coughing fit from the Raid.Fleas are pretty much under control these days. Now we use Top Spot, that liquid flea preventative stuff that goes between the shoulders. You have to part the hair so you get good contact with the skin. The only thing is it itches my back. Bill Abrams resides along with his wife and flealess dog in Pine Plains.