[Dailydrool] Weight charts

[Elizabeth Lindsey]

Back in the days when I was a reference librarian for a public  
library, one of the second-grade teachers in the township's  
elementary school used to assign a project that required children to  
find the weight of a Great Dane at the ages of six months and a year,  
and the six-month and year weights of a dog breed of their choice.

All the librarians hated this project because it was undoable. None  
of the reference books, regular books, or periodicals had this  
information (this was back in the early 1990s, before the Internet in  
libraries--I was still using an electric typewriter for book lists  
and catalog cards). Every time we ran across a review for a new book  
about dogs we'd check to see if it had this information. It never  
did. If it had, we would have bought it regardless of price and kept  
it under lock and key so it couldn't be stolen.

I wound up calling a number of veterinarians in the area, and they  
all said such information didn't exist, that within a breed the  
weights varied too greatly to make generalities about. A runt will  
weigh less than the others, a male may weigh more than a female, a  
pup may take after a parent who's unusually large or small for the  
breed, a pup who's sick may weigh less, and so on. There are just too  
many variables.

We tried to tell the teacher that this assignment needed to be  
scrapped, but it kept coming back, year after year. The result was  
that young children who were still mastering their reading skills  
were experiencing defeat instead of success when it came to using  
library resources. What a great first impression for them to get--the  
library can't help them and doesn't have the answer to their  
questions. Their parents weren't too impressed either. We tried to  
redeem ourselves several years later when the children came back as  
sixth graders needing to identify leaves for the annual leaf project.  
At least that one was doable.

To make this trip down memory lane somewhat basset related, I took  
our Elsinore and young Charlie to the vet to be weighed a couple  
weeks ago. Elsinore is a svelte 45 pounds and Charlie is a scant 31  
pounds. He has a very slight build, and we're keeping his weight as  
low as possible so that his deformed front legs and rather long back  
don't have to carry any more weight than is absolutely necessary.  
We're keeping Elsinore's weight down so that her sciatica doesn't  
flare up as often.

Elizabeth