Dr. Allen B. Shoemaker, a veterinarian, once began to collect odd tales about dogs, which he knew were only myths instead of the truth. Eventually, he compiled quite a bunch of them, but probably never did write all of them down.

One he repeatedly ran across concerned the guy who owned a dog that just didn't have much energy. Since he really wanted a good watchdog, he supposedly cured the pooch and made him really mean by feeding him gunpowder.

That, said Dr. Al, always brought to mind a picturesque scene in the woodlands, where the tired hunter sits down for a few minutes to rest and smoke his pipe. He lights the pipe and absent-mindedly tosses the match over toward the dog, who immediately picks it up. A blinding flash and a tremendous explosion take place, and hunter and dog both disappear in a huge mushroom cloud, leaving only a blackened crater where they once sat.

No more truth to the value of feeding gunpowder to a dog to make it mean, than there is to calling another dog a "beetle hound," said the vet. It's a "beagle," and don't let anybody tell you differently.

Poisoners of dogs are the lowest form of human skunks, said Dr. Al. But those tales of killing dogs by feeding them ground-up glass in hamburger to do it are just so much fiction. He related such a case going to court, as one neighbor accused the other of "doing his dog in" via the ground glass route. The defending attorney calmly smashed up a water glass into tiny bits, then stood there munching and swallowing it. Case dismissed.

Veterinarians everywhere tend to become upset when female dogs are brought to the office and their owners ask to have them "sprayed." It is a strong-willed vet indeed who can resist asking: " W h a t color?" The term happens to be "spay," with past tense being " s p a y e d . " Write it out and it never comes out "spade," which is more like a shovel.

Should anyone have a problem remembering that, just ask to have the dog desexed or neutered if no puppies are wanted. Cats come under these same rules.

Dr. Al also pooh-poohed the idea that putting copper pennies in a dog's drinking water will rid the pooch of worms. All it will rid is you of a substantial amount of money to get the penny out of the dog's stomach when he swallows it and you have to take him in for surgery.

Some dog owners even refuse to give their dogs milk, fearing it will cause them to get worms. It should be easy enough to challenge that opinion, though. How many kids do you know who ever got worms from drinking milk?

Neither will dogs!