Second Annual Chip High-Heat Ice Cream Wake

SUMMARY: This could become a tradition

Chip left us last year, on June 17. It's been really hard for me this week.  

Also I can't believe that I've gone an entire year without  a 2nd dog. Zorro just turned seven last week, and for the last couple of months, he hasn't been so cavalier about jumping up into his crate in the back of MUTT MOVER. I have to do things to give him extra space or gear to help him get up. 

But that's a different story.

Last year, on June 18, Zorro and I headed down the street to Baskin Robbins to have some memorial ice cream in honor of Chip.  In 100+ degree heat.

I don't know why blogger accepts videos, uploads them, and then displays what looks like a control pane--but it's just a PIC of a control pane. And then says video not available.
Sorry for now, folks.

So, this year, we did the same. In 108-degree weather. And so is born, ta-da:

Annual Chip High-Heat Ice Cream Wake

Wasn't going to leave Zorro in the car while I got ice cream unless (a) I could park in complete shade and (b) Baskin Robbins didn't have a huge line.  Turns out, yes! Full parking spot in the shade, and yes! no one else at BR! Freaky.

And then all this happened.

Empty Baskin Robbins! In this heat?

Still wearing masks to be safe. Plus my buttons saying I'm not one of the unvaxed.

It leaked all over my hand just walking back to the car, no matter how fast I licked.
Had to keep licking to try to take photos.
Now my phone/camera is sticky.

Rest assured, Human Mom ate almost all the ice cream.

I was glad that I kept his crate door closed and latched, because right about then a huge Standard Poodle trotted up from behind us and tried to stick his nose into our business.
Zorro was not pleased.
Owners did not have him on leash.

Biting through the wires is strenuous!

Fun with animated gifs, part 1
Wagging tail, hard-working tongue
(from 6 photos; need to figure out how to crop it more betterz.)

That was TOTAL nom-nom-noms!

Took the rest home because in the heat it was liquidating beyond  control.
(Fortunately only 5 minutes away.)

The last bite.

Fun with animated gifs, part 2 (from two photos).
Guess who gets to lick the bowl.

P.S. 

I do have a history of drowning my dog grief (or sometimes celebrations) in frozen concoctions that help me hang on. (No--not margaritas--) .--in addition to 2020 and this year-- at least the followings:

• June 2019
• April 2018 and 2015

Barkage

SUMMARY: Who says what to whom and why?

From FB 4/2/21: A comment I left on a friend's post about how their dogs' barking patterns changed depending on who was home, dog or human.

4/11/21: Just added another paragraph (tagged inline). 

Dogs are insane. 

Chip barked enthusiastically at the dogs next door (next door on both sides of the yard) through a solid wood fence (he'd look through knotholes until he saw them). Not quite in a fence-fighting way so much as tail wagging and fur not raised, but still very barky and I hated it. I ended up putting up a lightweight solid fence about six inches from the fence on one side to chill him down a bit. Worked fairly well--although only on that side.

Chip, peering through a knothole at the neighbor's yard and wagging his tail.

I adopted Zorro after Chip had been here for over a year and while the don't-bark fence was still up, and Zorro never barked at the dogs next door, and Chip was more minimal. For months and months after Zorro arrived.

Dog window in fence! Awesome!

Then, because I eventually took down the fence on that side because it was a nuisance and Chip's barking had calmed, Chip started barking at that side again as well as the other side. But Zorro--still months of nonparticipation.

The antibark fence along the side. It's black(ish) and behind things, so you almost don't notice it.

This is what it is: Construction "chickenwire" with water-resistant paper.
Eventually, the paper does deteriorate and it starts looking crappy. 
But it worked for no-bark!
(Can't see it, can't smell it up close: can't bark at it.)

And then one day when Chip was barking, Zorro plowed through Chip and took up ferocious fence-fighting barking, and from that day forward, it was Zorro who barked like crazy at the neighbor dogs, even if Chip weren't the initiator. (Chip would still do it, but Zorro would often push him out of the way and take over.) 

Added April 11-- Just found this post from 3 years ago:

April 11, 2018: OK, for the nearly 3 years that Zorro has been here, he has not obsessively barked at the dogs next door. Chip has done that always given half a chance.  So--why this week has Zorro decided to take over that job?  🙁  (Chip the tattle-tale, was just in here letting me know that Zorro was misbehaving. Interesting dynamics around here.)

[I hope that I have photos of Zorro barking at the fence. Haven't found any yet, but I have *so many* dogs-in-yard albums without any tagging on the photos. But in the process I rediscovered an album with a ton of photos of Chip running through his tunnels. Which I then spent an hour editing and posted on Facebook. (No idea whether that link will work for anyone.) Not barking related, but such happiness!]

Since Chip died last June, Z has shown less and less interest in barking at the fence, and the few times when he does, it's for just a couple of seconds and then he's done. Was he taking care of Chip? Was he just trying to prove that he was tougher than Chip? Did he think that was a game for the two of them to play?

But he does bark to let me know if a dangerous entity is approaching my door, or parking in my driveway, or if a monstrous delivery vehicle (say, Amazon, UPS, ...) is threatening us anywhere on the street.

Dog minds are endlessly fascinating. 

Ears

SUMMARY: Random Chip. Because. So many things to remember.

Backfill: Originally posted on FB 6/28. Posted here July 2.

Showers

SUMMARY: Things one doesn't expect to hurt so bad.

Backfill: From Facebook originally June 25. Posted here July 2.

I dread getting out of the shower now. Every shower for 6 years, and now--nothing.

When Chip First Came Home--

SUMMARY: Remembering Chip. Rejects the World Sleeping Order.

Backfill: From Facebook June 23; posted here July 2

When Chip first came home, age 3, Tika and Boost were already sleeping on my bed. I wanted to (a) let the dogs become accustomed to each other's presence, (b) let Chip know that he didn't always get to sleep on the bed, and (c) confine him at night until I knew how well house-trained he was.
He scratched and bit at the softcrate, so I set up the x-pen next to my bed.

He'd have none of it. Repeatedly levitated from there onto my bed (no running needed, no floor required in between). I decided that (1) he definitely had the chops for agility and (2) I give up, he wins, I just wanted to sleep.

(Also mentioned March 31, 2014.)

Big Dog With Little Toys

SUMMARY: Chip wants to play. He's subtle.

Backfill: From Facebook on June 10; posted here July 3

Mr. Chip doesn’t always want to play, and he doesn’t play a lot, and he doesn’t play hard. And he likes his toys small and easy to squeeze. But he still might give you that little teasing side eye when he has a toy.

Gotcha Days and Birthdays

SUMMARY: Excuses for taco dinners

Started in an email discussion with an acquaintance today

I don't recall when I first heard about Gotcha Days.  I tend to celebrate my dogs' birthday milestones (even if they're just guesses) rather than the Gotchas, because that's what my family has always done. Might feel differently if I had been adopted!

BUT sometimes I do celebrate them.  And there are lots of opportunities coming up for something other than the normal kibble.

For their normal kibble, if I give them significant food other than that, I mostly eyeball it to reduce how much kibble they get that day. That has worked fine for Chip but Zorro for a while, but  “suddenly" Zorro put on 3 lbs (that’s 10% weight gain!) over the last year or so and so now I’m futzing with what kibble he gets to try to reduce that. If only he weren’t self-supplementing with the occasional lizard, rat, or squirrel. That’s hard to account for, since I likely don’t see him do it most of the time, and he won't write it down in his food log.

If I had been healthier and he had been more cooperative, I’d have just taken him for longer walks and thrown a frisbee for him more times a day. But, oh, well. I don't think he's ever even seen a frisbee being thrown. And he'll fetch a toy in the yard only a few times before he quits. That's on me, for not being more persistent and interacting with him more over the years. It's just been my persistent lack of motivation.

BUT -- that aside,  they do still get occasional special dinners!

Zorro's Gotcha Day (his 5th) isn’t until early June; Chip’s is at the end of this month (his 6th). Then they have birthdays in May and June, too. Lots of imminent occasions for tacos for dinner. Or whatever. And no kibble for dinner that day.

Sometimes it's MacD, and I order a hamburger with no sauce or ketchup, no onions. But I like crunchy tacos from Taco Bell, so that's what we do most often.  I can hardly wait!

From Christmas 2015

Once when Tika and Boost got hamburgers

Related:

• Zorro's 4th Gotcha Day

... well, can't find other posts that I thought I had. You're welcome to search my blog yourself for whatever terms you want! (Hamburger, taco...)

Chip is a Very Good Boy

SUMMARY: And a tattletale. Which keeps Zorro safe.

        Posted on Facebook June 9, 2019, without photo

Dogs can convey so much with their voice and body language. If only we understood. Sometimes I succeed. I was sitting here quietly typing away, beautiful quiet morning, and heard Chip whimper in the front hall. Well, earlier he had said, "I just heard something and it was scary," so I figured it was more of the same.

But then he came into the kitchen in a little trot on his tippy toes, little whines, head and ears down like "something's wrong" but in a bouncy happy way, if you can picture it, like "something's exciting but different and I don't know if it's OK." I asked him casually, half paying attention, "Is there a cat in the front yard?", then >>sudden lightbulb!<< I leaped up, raced to the front door to open it, and sure enough, there was Zorro wandering around out front. I said HI! to him and he dashed into the house. Chip was very happy and I praised him enthusiastically.

Side gate was open. Latch apparently isn't working properly and needs repair. Thank you, Chip! I think I recognized the message because on a very few other occasions Zorro has been out front or accidentally closed in the garage (latter is not quite so exciting, but still concerning, apparently).

Buds playing, September 2015

Bite the Wax Tadpole and other Translations

SUMMARY: Accuracy of language translations

From Facebook: posted this morning (5/19/19)

Automated language translation has come so far! Used to be assumed that it could never be done well (even assuming that the translation software/device knew both languages). Still, I'm amazed at how well it does.

Five comments:

1. In the early '70s I heard that one attempt had translated "hydraulic ram" to some other language as "water sheep." Might be apocryphal, as I've not found a definitive reference.

2. Another story was that an early rendition of "Coca-Cola" in Chinese characters meant "bite the wax tadpole." (Apparently real enough: https://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/bite-the-wax-ta.)

3. Google Translate of text is surprisingly adept, almost always close enough to get the meaning. My first paragraph above, translated to Chinese and back, became
"So far, automatic language translation has arrived! I used to think that it would never do well (even if the translation software/device knows both languages). However, I am surprised by its performance."
(Note idiomatic challenge of "come so far" to "arrived", but it handled the last sentence OK.)

4. Even voice recognition is nifty nowadays (consider different voices' tones, vowel pronunciations, accents, slurring, etc.). Sometimes it writes the wrong thing as I speak but then corrects itself! But hard to understand why, when I said, "Chip whines, groans, moans," and I see it start out correctly (except "wines"... maybe chips go with wine?), it then changes it to "wine, ground, mountains..."

5. When Chip is super happy, he rolls around on whatever is soft nearby (bed, carpet, lawn) and makes happy little sounds while symbolically biting the thing. My built-in canine to human translation always comes out as "I bite the wax tadpole!" Clearly still needs some work.

Breakfast

SUMMARY: A new possibly Pulitzer Prize winning poem

[I posted originally on facebook]

Breakfast

Chip's dish is green,
Mom get caffeine,
Zorro eats some
Grass and plums
And everything's serene.


*well, dish is more like teal. But whatever.

Indulgence

SUMMARY: We're gonna have ICCCCE cream!

Been feeling so sad lately about Boost and Tika. It's the time of year. Three years ago, Tika was recently gone and Boost will be gone in a couple of days.

I've been trying to stay away from sugar (well, except for some unfortunate incidents involving Easter candy), but yesterday afternoon I just couldn't stand it any more, plus I needed something to cheer me up.  So I decided to replay one of the excellent days from three years ago-- in June of that year, when Chip and I headed for the hills and came back with Zorro (known at the time as Luke).

On the way home back then, I stopped in a small town in a one-of-a-kind hamburger place for a hamburger--and they had ice cream cones! And it was a warm day! And so I got a cone. Ate most of it. Shared it with the new "brothers".  A joy, and a rare treat for the beasties.

So, yesterday... no, I didn't drive all the way back to that place... but I did drive down the street to here:

Yummmmmm-- my favorite sherbet! Colorful AND fruity!

If I'm going to share, better be a double scoop. Am I right?

Human Mom, whut iz GOT?! Is we getz owt of here? Walkiez meybe?

Do you see where I'm going with this?

No, seriously, I just sucked off a couple small bits of sherbet and ptooed them into the dishes.  Took a lot of convincing to get Zorro to look into his dish--too excited about having his door open--but when he finally looked...... ooooohhhhhh, yummm!  (Apparently cold ice cream doesn't have any particular odor, and hard to see into those no-spill dishes.)

Chip would NOT LOOK AT DISH NO ME GETZ OUT WHUT IS YOU DOING HUMAN MOM?

So I sat on the bumper and enjoyed most of the treat, then offered first licks to Chip--he had no trouble figuring that out!

Zorro got second licks after I said that Chip had had enough.  Rather, let's say, Zorro got second lick, and then--really, this licking crap is for wusses!

Oh--and that's when Chip discovered the bits of sherbet in his dish. Happiness all around.

AND in case you were wondering... that's about the way it all happened in June of 2015, too.

My favorite--chocolate dipped! That part not for doggers.

Oooh, Human Mom, whut iz??

Lick lick lick

Little lick...

...annnnnnnnd CHOMP!

Happy 6th, Chip! Here's a bed just for you!

SUMMARY: How can he possibly be 6 already?!

Zorro always takes possession of All The Things that are fluffy and large. I treated Chip cruelly a couple of months back by replacing my huge recliner with two smaller upholstered chairs that he finds uncomfortable.  As an alternative, I got him a big comfy bed for the living room.

Note to other supposedly experienced photographers: Always remember to remove the *$%#@ sun shade from the lens when using the *#%@^* built-in flash to avoid casting huge #(@$% shadows on your photos.

Note to other supposedly experienced photographers: Have the camera ready when you first give the dog the new bed so you can capture him rolling around in it and chatting happily while trying it out, not after he's done all of that bit.

Is reeely mines! Wooo!

Hmmm, what is me do with large and fluffy?

Me is bite, prove is mines!

Is bitey bitey bitey!

Come on, Chip, it's a bed, not a toy, no bitey please.

Me is gots big toy, maybe is pulls out the stuffingses!

Leave the stuffingses in there, please, Chip, really, it's a bed!

Is the hard workses, me is lye downs and chewy chewy the toy.

Ooooooh, Chipster Dudes! Is gots new toy is fluffy and large which is Alls My Things?!

Backs away, naughty Z, is Human Mom sayses is toy of Chip!

Fine. Me is chew on better fluffy and large All My Things.

Is chewy the hole in mine bigs toy for gettings the evil stuffingses.

Srsly, Chip, please do not destroy your new and pricey bed.

Srsly, Human Mom, is not tell ME no bitey bitey pulls out stuffingses!

No no Human Mom iz Chipses toy for bitey bitey no tell me no!

ME SAYSES NOS!

Oooh, me is sorry, Human Mom, is pleez don't take away the toy bed thing.

the end