Fred, one of the dogs Parker knew from the morning group in the park, died from cancer last night. Fred was ornery towards other dogs but really sweet towards people. His owner reports Fred would have been 14 today.

At what point in Parker's cat-like tormenting of a junebug should I take the insect away from him? Apparently they're not very tasty, and they seem to fight back.

I never thought I'd actually have these kinds of questions before I got the dog. Odd.

I forgot to mention how Parker is feeling. The antibiotics (only one of which had to be re-inserted in his food after he spat it out) seem to have done their job. Of course, on the way to visit his friends Sam and Hershey last night, he got to eat his dinner a second time. (Yeah, ew.)

Here's the problem: there is no effective way to keep him from eating rabbit poop. He will get another crypto infection; and he'll have to be on heartworm pills year-round to prevent hookworm. He's not likely to grow out of it, either. But at least now that it looks almost certainly like parasitic infections and not something with his own plumbing, I can start re-introducing him to non-prescription dog food next week, and I don't need to worry as much about him eating sticks.

Finally, I promise, really I do, to post about other topics over the weekend.

Yeah, you the dog:

Today is the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in Loving v. Virginia, which established that the 14th Amendment prevents states from prohibiting inter-racial marriages. So I found it mildly amusing when my real-estate agent told me another agent had asked her "who lives in [your] building." That question isn't Kosher for the same reasons Virginia's miscegenation laws weren't.

I just spent two hours removing blog spam. I hate these guys.

I like rodents, generally. As a kid I had gerbils. My college roommate Sean's wife raises angora rabbits. They're fuzzy, small, and the subject of cartoons we all grew up with.

Rabbits, however, carry Cryptosporidium canis, a single-celled protozoan that causes bad butt. Parker, garbage dog that he is, finds rabbit poop as delicious as any other kind, and so he managed to give himself a lovely infection that has now cost me almost $100. (This figure includes the $10 the trainer charged me for cleaning up his dining room when Parker shared the experience with the entire day camp.)

You know, I feel bad for Parker, but I think somehow his life (and mine) would be more comfortable if he didn't eat rabbit poop. Now if only he had a working memory and could understand English...

I need a caption for this:

From Christopher Hitchens: "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."

Warm morning, park, big stick. Parker is happy:

I'm visiting my Ps, nowhere near Parker:

Princeton economist Paul Krugman, writing in today's New York Times, says Sen. Barack Obama's (D-IL) health care proposal has "a lot to commend" but "not as comprehensive as [he] would have liked:"

You can’t be serious about health care without proposing an injection of federal funds to help lower-income families pay for insurance, and that means advocating some kind of tax increase. Well, Mr. Obama is now on record calling for a partial rollback of the Bush tax cuts.

Also, in the Obama plan, insurance companies won’t be allowed to deny people coverage or charge them higher premiums based on their medical history. Again, points for toughness.

Best of all, the Obama plan contains the same feature that makes the Edwards plan superior to, say, the Schwarzenegger proposal in California: it lets people choose between private plans and buying into a Medicare-type plan offered by the government.

Now for the bad news. Although Mr. Obama says he has a plan for universal health care, he actually doesn’t — a point Mr. Edwards made in last night’s debate. The Obama plan doesn’t mandate insurance for adults. So some people would take their chances — and then end up receiving treatment at other people’s expense when they ended up in emergency rooms. In that regard it’s actually weaker than the Schwarzenegger plan.

From Bruce Schnier: "At least they're honest about it this time."