I taught technical writing to graduate students for decades.  At first, I modeled my instruction on examples I had experienced over my lifetime.  More often than not, this meant at least one large document assigned near the end of the term.  What a pain.  Not for my students; for me.

Grading some of these manuscripts was easy.  In every class, there were students who wrote as well, if not better, than I did.  I would read through the best assignments to the end, make a comment here or there to show that I read the entire paper, then give top marks on the front page.  For every other submission, I would read for a bit, take a break, read for a bit more, take another break, and so on.  Along the way I would scribble comments and corrections while shouting expletives.  I wasn’t angry, just frustrated.  I knew that future steps for these students were going to be difficult.  In my office I displayed a large, and ever-growing set of empty red pens whose blood was spilled on these end of semester battlefields.  And I displayed them with mournful pride.

At some point I realized that there must be a better way.  I still needed to assign the big paper, but I decided to break its creation into manageable pieces.  This gave me several chances to provide feedback in smaller chunks to hone my students’ writing skills before they tackled the final boss.  I’m not sure that my students appreciated the extra work, for them or for me, but this new approach always started the same conversation.  How were they to know when they had written something well – before they turned it in to me? 

Of course, designing or outlining the paper before being written is essential, but the students were most often talking about post-production editing.  To that, my answer was presented in tiers.  The lowest tier, which everyone does naturally, is to read the work back to yourself.  This method will correct the most obvious flaws.  The next tier is to have someone else read it and have them share their comments and corrections.  This method has mixed results and depends heavily on the skills of the other person and your relationship to them.  Using romantic partners can be tricky here.  The third tier is to read it out loud yourself – an informal audiobook.  This exposes so many things reading silently can’t.  It’s an amazing and fun experience.  The final tier is to have someone else read your work out loud to you – a celebrity performed audiobook.  Nothing gives an author a better sense of rhythm, emotion, pacing, etc. than having a naïve reader cold-read the text out loud.  It can be quite the informative shock when the wheels come off.

When I tell people that my book is also available as an audiobook, they always ask who I got to perform the reading.  I just give them a judgmental stare until they realize they have insulted my budget as well as my acting skills.  I read my book out loud as I wrote it, taking my own advice; so, I was confident when the time came to create the audiobook recording.  I very much enjoyed reading the story for you, and I really hope you take the opportunity to listen for yourself.

Many years ago, I coauthored an article on Tibetan Mastiff coat color inheritance with Charlie Radcliffe.  I was fascinated with all the colors and color variations we saw in our dogs.  So early on in my Tibetan Mastiff journey, I learned a lot about coat color inheritance only to be thrown for a loop when Magnus and Blaze, both clearly black-and-tan, produced an all-black puppy, Latifa.  And I mean clearly all-black.  Given what we knew at the time, that was not supposed to happen. 

In 1997, black-and-tan, was thought to be the most recessive Agouti allele swimming in the Tibetan Mastiff gene pool.  This meant that both black-and-tan parents had only black-and-tan Agouti alleles to give, and thus all of their pups should have been genetically black-and-tan.  All-black was thought to reside on the same gene, but as the most dominant allele.  Thus, the only way to get an all-black puppy was from at least one all-black parent.  Oops.

That was not the first time this had happened.  A couple of years earlier, a beautiful all-black female named Iman was born to a gold sire and a black-and-tan dam.  Again, no all-black parent, and thus, our understanding of all-black coat color inheritance in those days was flawed.  Interestingly, Iman was registered as “black-and-tan” because the registration forms had yet to acknowledge a recessive path to all-black.  I remember people referring to her as a “muted” black-and-tan.

Current research suggests the existence of a “Black” gene – the K gene locus.  In this scenario, all-black is dominant and all other colors are recessive.  That is, if a dog inherits the dominant allele from either or both parents, then they are genetically all-black, and if they inherit the recessive allele from both parents, then the color generated by the Agouti gene is expressed (mostly).  Of course, the Brown gene can turn the black coat brown, and the Dilute gene can turn the black coat blue, and both in combination can turn the black coat purple.  Call it “Liver” or “Double Dilute” if you must, I prefer purple.  In other breeds, there are even more shenanigans, but this doesn’t help any.  If the K locus is the only path to an all-black Tibetan Mastiff, then an all-black puppy still needs an all-black parent.

All of this suggests the existence of a recessive path to all-black.  But from where?  The existence of a recessive gene allele at the bottom of the Agouti stack has been known in other breeds since the 1960s.  Unfortunately, this cannot explain what we have seen in the Tibetan Mastiff.  Magnus’s parents were both gold and produced both gold and black-and-tan puppies.  Magnus and Iman shared their sire, Simba.  So, we have to suspect that Simba was a carrier of the recessive all-black, which was passed on to Magnus, but that recessive allele could not have been on the Agouti locus as Simba produced two other Agouti colors.  He didn’t have three parents.

In a more recent article, Charlie suggests the existence of an independent recessive black gene, different from the dominant black gene, where recessive all-black Tibetan Mastiffs inherit that recessive allele from both parents.  This would suggest that two not-all-black carriers would produce one-quarter all-black puppies, a recessive all-black parent with a not-all-black carrier would produce half all-black puppies, and two recessive all-black parents would produce all all-black puppies.  You dizzy yet?  Without more data or a genome map, I don’t think we can say anything for sure, but Charlie’s explanation is the best we have at the moment.  Still more to learn, stay tuned.  Pictured above is my all-black girl, Nika.  Her color was recessive, but her beauty was dominating!

I heard the breed name “Tibetan Mastiff” before I heard the breed type “Livestock Guardian.”  I’m not sure I cared much about the function of my dogs when I first learned of the breed.  I liked the way they looked and I liked the idea that my dogs would be large, athletic, dedicated to me, and willing to guard my sorry butt even though that was truly unnecessary.

All of my dogs were probably guardians in that they would have served their role had the need arose.  Only Blaze was clearly taking her responsibility seriously most of the time.  Magnus and Sindred were loving and goofy, Nika and L’acy were unsocial, and Kronos was afraid of his own shadow.  He looked the part though.  Above is a picture of the big guy in the snow.

That said, I was never sad that my dogs didn’t get a chance to fulfill their destiny.  They lived happy and socially active lives despite most of it occurring in a back yard where they guarded each other and the criminal elements were squirrels and magpies.  Funny thing though, whenever I hear about a livestock guardian dog living the life of a livestock guardian, I smile.  I really like that some dogs get to serve the function they were carefully crafted for.  Maybe this helps me rationalize wanting a pure-bred dog, and continuing to see value in pure breeding.  I’m such a snob.

This last week I saw two YouTube videos showing working livestock guardians.  I have followed both of these channels for some time, and neither is focused on dogs, but they both use them as guardians.  The first channel is Anne of All Trades.  She and her husband have a farm in Tennessee, and she shared the trials of training and incorporating livestock guardians into a farm situation with close neighbors.  Anne uses a developing breed called the Colorado Mountain Dog.  The second channel is Pack Goats.  Marc raises pack goats and provides their services to those who require their backcountry labor.  He uses Anatolian Shepherds to guard his goats.  Both of these videos made me smile and are well worth the watch.

When I started my doctoral program, I was told by my major professor that I didn’t write very well.  I was stunned – and hurt.  I had finished all of my coursework for my master’s degree in history (I was still working on the thesis), and I always did well on written assignments from the time I was in high school.  I had written quite a lot of stuff over that time.  What I came to learn, however, was that I did not write like an academic, and that is how he judged writing.

Over the course of a long university research career, I learned how to imitate an academic.  That’s how it felt.  I wanted to start sentences with the word “and,” and no one would let me.  Instead, I wrote introductions to papers, reports, and proposals fully grounded in Aristotelian logic, and I presented data using the longest sentences I could stomach.  I also trained graduate students to do the same.  It wasn’t until I left the university that I realized I could write anything I wanted – in any style I wanted.  So, I did.

It started with a blog for my consulting business.  I was still writing for educators, but I could tell stories and present data using colorful displays.  The Internet allows for a great deal of creativity.  That business came to an end, but the blogs I wrote at that time are now turning into published articles.  Three are coming out in the next few months.  Turns out, some academics like a good story.

I continued to write a blog every week on my music site (www.MJTaylorMusic.com).  Those entries were not very polished, but the practice helped when I decided to write this book.  When I finished the last chapter of Seven Dogs, I couldn’t wait to have an editor empty a red pen or two over its pages.  Since I couldn’t find an agent, and consequently a publisher, I didn’t have access to a professional editor.  So, I hired a graduate student from my university’s literature department to serve that role.  He turned out to be very helpful – and professional.

Of course, I expected him to tell me how perfect the first draft was and that I could publish the book right away.  But that’s not what happened.  We disagreed on a few things, but I paid attention to a number of stylistic changes that made sense.  And as a result, I had to rewrite nearly every sentence.  Twice.  It was a lot of work, but I am proud of the final draft.  In the end I think the book still reflects my original style while achieving the professionalism he demanded from me.  Editors are damn useful even after you have written professionally for more than 40 years.

From the start I wanted to have Seven Dogs translated into Mandarin.  I think this breed is dear to many people who speak Chinese.  I just didn’t quite know how to make a translation happen.

I started by contacting the language department at my local university to see if I could employ someone there to help.  I received an encouraging response, but it didn’t lead to any progress.  My next step was to contact the main office of the Mormon church.  The publication department to be specific.  The Mormon church produces a lot of written material for a worldwide audience, not to mention they send out missionaries to the four corners of the map, and if anyone knows anything about languages and translations it would be them.  Turns out, they use third party contractors for much of their translation work.  I asked them to share my name and project description with their contractors and that drew blanks.  I also contacted the Asian Association of Utah and had them share my name with people they thought might help.  Again, dead air.

I was beginning to think that I might be able to do it myself.  This is where arrogance is useful.  No, I don’t speak a word of Chinese, but Google does.  I did some basic research and found out that modern Chinese is organized in sentences and reads horizontally from left to right.  In other words, it has enough commonalities with English that I started to feel confident that I could make a first pass.  I had done translation work in my profession for decades, Spanish and Portuguese, and the methods I learned there would be very valuable.  The first pass would employ something called “translation-back translation.”  Each sentence would be translated into Chinese, and then that translation would be translated back into English.  If it returned to its original wording or meaning, I had a reasonable translation.  If not, then the original English had to be temporarily rewritten until it worked.  I learned quickly that this is a tedious and often frustrating process.  I soldiered on anyway.

What I needed now was a proofreader.  Someone who could take my translation and make it read like the book was written by a native author.  Out of desperation I identified every professor in the state that taught Chinese at a University.  I think I sent out fifteen or so emails describing my plight, and lucky for me, one of those professors forwarded my email to a graduate student who was perfect for the job.  And of all the luck, she lived about a mile from my house.

At some point during this process, I became aware of online translation services, but I was still of a mind that translating this book would take a whole lot more than “hand it over and get it back.”  I was right about that.  Aside from the words themselves, there are idioms, colloquialisms, popular culture references, movie and song titles, dog names and their spellings, and worst of all; every measurement either real or symbolic had to be converted from imperial to metric. As anticipated, there was a lot of back and forth.

And finally, the Chinese version had to undergo the same rigorous scrutiny that the English version did.  We needed readers to point out flaws in language and places where the story is confusing.  We are still in that process but hope to have a final translation very soon.  Publication in both languages is getting close.

I don’t want this post to sound morbid, but . . .  I was proud of my woodworking and thought I would show off one of my urns.

When I bought this house, the front yard had one tree; growing from the middle of the lawn, but obscuring my front porch view of the powerlines that run along the north property line.  It was a Mountain Ash.  Mountain Ash trees produce loads of red berries that cluster all over the tree.  The fruit soften and ferment during the fall and provide food for birds during the winter.  Well, food laced with alcohol.  It made the birds drunk, and loads of them would fly into my picture window on the front of the house.

Unbeknownst to me, trees have life expectancies, and this one was reaching the end of its.  Over the course of a couple of years, large branches died, and eventually the tree exhaled its last oxygen.  The trunk of the tree was rather substantial and so I asked a local miller if he would resaw the trunk into half inch thick planks.  I wasn’t sure if Mountain Ash could be used for woodworking, but it was worth a go.  I thought pieces of that size could be used to make boxes and half inch thickness seemed appropriate.

I painted the ends of the planks with white paint to guide the drying process.  I stacked them in my shop and forgot about them.  That was over twenty years ago.

When my dogs passed away, I had them cremated, and the ashes were returned to me in sealed plastic containers.  They were nice enough, but they were plastic.  I had always intended to enclose the plastic containers in urns made from wood.  A serious upgrade.  I also thought that making the boxes from wood that lived and died on this property, like the dogs, was perfect for making their urns.  The years passed, but this winter I decided it was time to make good on my intentions.

Pictured above is one of those urns.  This one is for Kronos.  As you can see, the wood grain is spectacular, and the wood itself was very nice to work with.  Each urn had the same basic construction, but the columns that run up the corners are different for each dog.  For Kronos, I used smaller pieces of the ash to create quoins running up each corner of the box.  I think it turned out great.

I’ve lived in this house for over 25 years, and during that time I have accumulated a lot of stuff.  On a few occasions, I have tried to reduce the volume of stuff by half.  I never really throw out half the stuff, but I have tossed a lot of stuff many times.

The consequence of continual acquisition and dispossession cycles means some stuff gets separated from its collection and stays hidden in the spaces between for long periods of time.  I very recently found a video tape titled: Magnus and Family.  I have no idea how it found its safe space, but it had not only remained hidden for many years, it had also completely escaped my memory.

The ancient tape had video of Simba as a 5-week-old puppy, as a 7-month-old goofball, and as a 3-year-old giant showing his strut in the ring.  The tape also showed Magnus’s grandmother, Tsunami.  For the record, Magnus had only one grandmother.  I’ll let you do the math.

More importantly, the video showed two litter evaluations.  A video evaluation of a litter involves showing each puppy in turn as well as in side-by-side comparisons.  In the voiceover, the breeder discusses the pros and cons of each puppy while the video records both body and head footage.

The two evaluations, in this case, were Magnus’s litter at 8 days, and again at 5 weeks.  It was interesting to see him at that age, but more interesting to hear what the breeder was thinking at those times.  In the first evaluation, Magnus did not stick out much.  In fact, he was seen as less masculine than one of the females in the litter.  At 5 weeks, however, he was referred to at the big black and tan boy and was noticeably larger than his siblings.  I saw him for the first time at 8 and a half weeks, and the disparity in size at that point was even clear to me.

Pictured above is a screen capture of Magnus at 5 weeks.  The video shows him and his siblings at that time.  Magnus is on the far left.  Enjoy.

Everything was fine, right up until it wasn’t.

We x-rayed Lottie on day 55 and it showed one very large puppy taking up residence in most of mom’s body.  That news was welcome, but a tad bit disappointing.  Everyone was hoping for a full garage.  Of course, it’s one thing to be sad about only one pup, it’s another to remember that singleton puppies create a host of logistical problems.

Now, the stats might suggest that singleton puppies usually turn out okay, but you may remember that I went through this with Nika and L’acy, and that was everything BUT okay.  Puppies produce the adrenaline that initiates labor.  So, one pup means only one source of starter fluid.  The question is whether or not to allow for a natural birth, or to intervene with surgery.  Natural is preferred, and since Lottie was an experienced dam, we decided to trust her behavior as evidence for our decisions.

By day 63, the due date, Lottie seemed every bit unconcerned, and an ultrasound showed a vigorous puppy waiting for the show to begin.  Unfortunately, progesterone levels in Lottie suggested that labor was unlikely to begin for at least 24 hours.  So, we waited.  And it was an agonizing wait.  One I won’t forget any time soon.

Day 64 passed and Lottie continued to act like nothing was wrong, and that labor was still a ways off.  On the morning of day 65, Lottie was taken to the vet with the intention of surgical consent.  We weren’t going to wait any longer.  Unfortunately, the preoperative ultrasound showed we were too late.  The puppy had passed away.  Later that day, and after several injections of Pitocin, Lottie gave birth to a beautiful black and tan girl.  Another L’acy.  I will mourn her loss for some time.

L’acy, pictured above, was born by c-section on day 65.  I can only think that I was lucky, and probably came to her rescue just in time.  But, it’s always easier to make decisions in the aftermath.  There is no one to blame here.  And although I am sad to think about what might have been, stuff happens and we learn to live with that.

Just a quick announcement: Lottie is pregnant!!  But . . . there is only one pup in the waiting room.

When I got the text from the vets’ office, I immediately experienced disappointment when I should have been screaming for joy.  Of course, I would have liked to have seen a larger number on my iPad, but one pup means that Magnus’s line is alive again.  And, in reality, that was the true goal.

Early next week, the details will start to coalesce.  When the puppy is born, we will know sex and color, and to some degree, confirmation.  What am I hoping for?  Fundamentally, healthy and constructed to continue Magnus’s legacy.  Of course, I expect all of Magnus’s faults to shine through, but his great attributes (e.g., head, muzzle, front assembly, temperament, dentition, longevity, feet, coat color and texture, etc.) are now available as pieces in the larger Tibetan Mastiff puzzle.  Oh yeah, and SIZE!

A quick note on color.  Lottie is heterozygous gold.  We know this because her parents were two different colors, her sire was black and tan, and her dam was gold.  Lottie is a very light gold sable, but she can produce either gold or black and tan.  What am I hoping for?  If you remember, I sat on the toilet lid waiting for Nika to give birth to L’acy and imagined an all-black male puppy.  Wrong.  I spent years dreaming of owning a gold Tibetan Mastiff, and Sindred, and later Kronos, fulfilled that dream, but at this point in my life, either is fine.  But wouldn’t it be provident if the puppy was a black and tan male just like dear old dad?

Pictured above is my favorite photo of Magnus.

Plan A has additional objectives.  First and foremost was the production of a Magnus son, but that son would need a mate.  A mate from a different litter that would complement his attributes.  Enter, the other woman.

All of my past pairings were assembled asynchronously.  That is, Magnus showed up in March 1996, and Blaze, six years old at the time, showed up later that summer.  Nika didn’t arrive on the scene for another two years.  L’acy was already there when Sindred and Kronos arrived.  All that is to say that I always had at least one dog on the property, and I never added more than one dog to the pack at any given time.  Until now.

Given my preference for at least two dogs in the yard, I would need to acquire two puppies this Spring.  Not one.  Part of Plan A was to produce the second puppy from a different litter.  Pictured above is Rocky Mountain Epic Evelyn; AKA Evie.  The other woman.  She is a beautiful black and tan whose pedigree also traces back to Nika’s brother Darth.  And all that overlaps to some small degree with Magnus.

The original plan was to couple her with another dog from history, Shang-Hai’s Jack the Bear.  Jack the Bear was a very successful show dog whose mother, Shang-Hai’s Mystical Medusa – Stretch – was the all-time winningest show dog in the breed during her day, and the reason I had to admit that Blaze was only the second winningest Tibetan Mastiff when she lived with me. 

Unfortunately, conducting a transcervical insemination using frozen semen depends on consistent progesterone production from the female.  Without that, the chance of timing it right is too limited.  As Evie approached her optimal moment, her numbers wavered to the point where a breeding with Jack the Bear was likely to be a waste of time and money.  Fortunately, there was an appropriate living stud available.  Shang Hai’s Kodiak the Bear.

The living Bear obliged, more than once, and again, we wait.  If Plan A works, I will introduce a pair of puppies to my home in the Spring.  Fingers are crossed.