Dogs are AMAZING: a guest post by Susan McCormick

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Those of you who loved Susan McCormick's last appearance here at JRW will be delighted to know she's back today, with pics of Albert the Newfoundland, some delightful dog facts, and most importantly, the third in her cozy FOG LADIES mysteries. The new book, THE FOG LADIES: IN THE SOUP, tosses the old dears right into it:

 "There was a man in the soup." When the Fog Ladies volunteer at a San Francisco soup kitchen, these spunky elderly friends plus one overworked young doctor-in-training envision washing and chopping and serving. Not murder. Now the soup kitchen is doomed, and the mysteries have just begun. Was the death rooted in a long-ago grudge? Can they save the soup kitchen? Will they find the killer? Could the Fog Ladies, too, end up "in the soup"?

 How can you not love that description? But you'll have to click on of our links to find learn about THE FOG LADIES: IN THE SOUP, because Susan is here to give us what we really want - a chance to win a copy AND talk about dogs!

 

A dog plays a huge role in my new cozy murder mystery, The Fog Ladies: In the Soup, so I am dedicating this guest blog post to dogs. The book also features a cat who spends his time lying in the sun and giving Frances Noonan suspicious looks, so I will not say much more about him. But the dog… Book 1 featured a high-strung Bichon Frise who yapped through the book and ended up saving the day. Book 3 has Boris, a small fluffy black thing, who has digestive issues and a hero’s heart. 

I am a dog person through and through, having loved Earl, an English mastiff, and Edward and Albert, two Newfoundlands. Dogs are amazing. Here are some fun facts.

 

People have 9000 taste buds. Dogs have 1700. This could be why they are satisfied with eating kibble.

 

A dog’s sense of smell is 10,000 to 100,000 times better than ours. Trained dogs in Seattle can smell orca scat in the vast waters of the Puget Sound. Alexandra Horowitz, a dog researcher at Barnard, says people might detect a teaspoon of sugar in our cup of coffee, but a dog can detect a teaspoon of sugar in two Olympic-sized swimming pools. This allows them to detect changes in our hormones to know when we are happy or sad and to detect changes in our body’s chemistry in the form of volatile organic compounds to warn us about low blood sugar or lung cancer or bladder cancer.

 

As far as sight, People have more color detecting cells (cones), but a dog has more light sensitive cells (rods) and a larger pupil to let in more light, so dogs see much better in the dark than people. Rods also detect motion, so dogs see tiny movements better.

 

In addition, like many animals, dogs have a layer of tissue behind the retina called the tapetum lucidum that reflects light back through the retina like a mirror, doubling the chances of the light hitting the eye’s photoreceptors. This is why a dog’s eyes glow in the dark.

 

Dogs’ guts seem indestructible, until they get a blockage. See my guest blog post last year about “Things MyDog Has Eaten” and all the replies to see just how indestructible.

A dog’s sense of touch is about the same as ours. So keep giving those chest thumps, those ear scritches, those tummy rubs. A dog lives for this.

 

 

 

Dogs have innate abilities, skills they were born with and can’t undo. Root out rats. Herd sheep and children. Chase birds. Retrieve balls, sticks, the occasional picnic basket. 

My dogs, Newfoundlands, are ideally suited for water rescue: they are waterproof, have webbed toes and swim a beautiful breaststroke, have large lungs to aid swimming, and have excess fur on their neck for the drowning victim to grab.

 

 

Dogs are amazing. The Fog Ladies, and Boris the hero-dog, think so, too.

What’s the most amazing thing your dog has done?

 

Susan McCormick is a writer and doctor who lives in Seattle. She graduated from Smith College and George Washington University School of Medicine, with additional medical training in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Susan served as a doctor in the U.S. Army for nine years before moving to the Pacific Northwest. In addition to the Fog Ladies series, she also wrote Granny Can’t Remember Me, a lighthearted picture book about Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. She lives in Seattle with her husband, two sons, and, until recently, her giant Newfoundland dog, Albert. You can find her on Instagram (with yes, more Albert pics) follow her on Twitter at @smccormickbooks and friend her on Facebook.