This week we had a pair of Newfoundland Retrievers at work. I had always wished I could own a Newfie, until I met these two. They were sweet and delightful, but shed so much that there was enough fur to make a pair of mittens on the floor of the yard by the end of the day.
Also, they drool like Saint Bernards. This means that every time they rub their heads on your leg with affectionate intent, you get slimed. And not just a strand of viscous spit - an entire swath of wet, gooey saliva.
Their personalities outweigh these considerations for a lot of people, though. And they have a really interesting history. They’ve got four different origin stories. My favorite is that they developed from the “bear dogs” the Vikings brought to Newfoundland in about 1,000 CE.
They are abundant in literature. The dog Nana in Peter Pan was a Newfie. They appear in a Byron poem. There’s a Newfie in Jane Eyre. In the summer of 1803, the Lewis and Clark expedition bought a Newfie for twenty bucks. That must’ve been a fortune back then. (The internet - unverified - says that $20 in 1800 would be $458.90 today).
In 1824 nearly 2,000 Newfies were working for their humans in St. John’s, Newfoundland alone. The U.K. Kennel Club says that 1,000 Newfies are registered in the U.K. every year.
Meanwhile, on a walk with Bonz this week - around a local lake - we saw enormous white birds with black-tipped wings. They flew so close to the surface of the lake we thought they could drag their feet in the water as they flew.
Turns out they were American White Pelicans.
I had no idea we had pelicans here - I thought of them as coastal birds. But, it turns out they breed in Canada and winter as far south as South America. They are one of the largest birds in North America, with a wing-span of nine feet.
There were three of them on the lake when Bonz and I were walking there. It turns out that they were actually herding fish to the shallow part of the lake where they’re easier to catch. They do drag their feet in the lake as they fly in order to herd the fish. If there had been more of them, they would’ve herded the fish while sitting in the water, forming a pelican barricade to push the fish to shore.
My favorite fun fact about American White Pelicans is that they actually squawk while still inside their eggs - before they’re hatched - if they become too cold or hot.
This seemed so unusual to me that I did a google search to find out if other beings made noise inside their eggs. I got a lot of info on why eggs make tiny chirping sounds when you boil them (air escaping). But then I discovered that crocodile eggs begin making cooing sounds about a week before they hatch. Crocodiles bury their eggs in the sand, so the cooing probably alerts their mom that she needs to dig them back up.
We had a lot of dogs who howl this week at the doggie daycare. I love the face they make when they howl - I don’t know if the face is just the result of the way they have to shape their mouths in order to howl, or if it’s expressive of how they feel.
Howling is a genetic remnant from wolves, who used it as long-distance communication. They kept the pack together and established territory by howling. Today all dogs can howl, but some breeds howl more than others. Dogs who alert humans to discoveries howl a lot. Beagles and Bloodhounds are two of that type.
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