Presidents' Weekend Monday

SUMMARY: Big Sur and Monterey.

UPDATE: Tuesday Feb 22, 10:30 a.m. See below.

Set the alarm *again* (merely 7:00 this time) so that my seester and her husband could pick me up at 8. We drove down the Coast Highway (Hwy 1), loving the scenery, stopping to briefly explore various places, geocaching as we went; had lunch at a restaurant they like (Nepenthe) wayyy down the coast, then turned and beat feet back north, had hot fudge sundaes at Ghirardelli's on Cannery Row, then home again.

I am really really sore from yesterday's hike. Must. Get. In. Uphill. Shape.

Some brief highlights from the day:

We skimmed through the old Fort Ord, passing its decrepit buildings, trying to find our way to--

--the [relatively] new Fort Ord Dunes State Park. We got out, read all the signs, looked at the view and the ice-plant-covered dunes, and then continued south.

What better scenery could one imagine for geocaching in?

There wasn't yet a profusion of flowers, but small samples of what is to come could be found almost everywhere we stopped, like this Indian Paintbrush.

The Big Sur coast speaks for itself.

I mean, really, how many geocachers get this kind of view?

I mean, I really do, I really mean, how awesome is this for a geocaching background?

UPDATE: Really needed to show the Point Sur Lighthouse. It's no longer manned but still shines and its location on a dramatic outcropping of lava is amazing.

We even found one at Cooper's Cabin--the oldest remaining building on the Big Sur coast, UPDATE: (at Andrew Molera State Park) near Pacific Grove.

There, to our surprise and delight, we also found Monarchs fluttering everywhere! As one young kid explained to us with enthusiasm, these butterflies are trying to make babies.

The only California poppies we saw in bloom:

Is this the most amazing setting for a restaurant that you've ever seen? We sat at the table in the right bottom corner.

We had a tasty and filling lunch, browsed in their intriguing gift shop, drove an hour back up the coast , drove past Pebble Beach to Asilomar to round out our geocaches for the day to 10, then continued to Monterey and Cannery Row where we just HAD to visit Ghirardelli's for the usual.

Strolling back among the hotels and shops, we spotted this guy out in the water among the kelp--and of course I had left my 400mm lens in the car, so this is a very cropped in, crappy photo, but he is recognizable: California Sea Otter.

Then home again by sometime after dinnertime, and then work work work on photos, give up on finishing tonight, and post these three summaries. At some point in the future, there will be more photos from all the trips!

Geocaching With Dogs at Neighborhood Danna Rock Park

SUMMARY: Wordless Wednesday.

Want to see what others are doing for Wordless Wednesday or add your own? Go here: http://www.wordlesswednesday.com/newhome/

Food Rewards?

SUMMARY: Me no eat, me run.

There's an interesting article here about dogs who won't work for food. The author makes a provocative claim:

Food is something every dog has every day. Unless they are ill, there should be no reason for our dogs to turn down any snacks we offer them. But many dog owners claim their dogs won’t work for them for food treats as a reward. How can this be? Dogs are scavengers by nature. Could it be something we humans are doing that puts them off sometimes?

After reading the article, it becomes clear that he's really addressing muggles^* with dogs, not "dog people," most likely not people who compete in dog sports. And he does raise good points for that set of people.

However, he seemed to imply that all dogs and owners fall into the same category, and I felt compelled to respond after reading the article and the follow-on comments:

To continue with what a couple of people have started: I have had four dogs with whom I compete in Dog Agility. They all have taken almost any kind of food reward in low-activity situations--say, working on trick training, no matter how active the trick is. But insert running and toys into the equation, and my mixed-breed (Jake -- sheltie? BC?) would push food out of the way to get to the toy, and my current border collie (Boost) will not take food at all in these cases (say, for downing on the table or stopping in the contact zone). Even a high-value treat like meat, she takes only if I insist and often just holds it in her mouth, doesn't swallow it. "Me not stop eat food, me want go!" Apparently the only negative connotation for the food is that they have to stop long enough to take it and swallow it, and they don't want to stop. I guess.

Even as a puppy, my border collie wasn't excited about dinnertime for months; was more interested in watching my other dog eat or in wondering where her toy was.

My agility instructors have all given instructions on how you can teach a dog to take a treat as a reward, because there are cases (such as those mentioned above) where you want a calm reward, not an energetic reward, and it's basically the process of making taking a treat a trick that is then rewarded with the toy, so eventually the value of the toy reward transfers to the food reward. I haven't pursued this much, but I've seen it work for others.

So, these are not typical dogs or typical owner, but they don't seem to fall into the categories in this post.

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Tika, of course, places a higher value on food than on almost anything--she'll spend 30 seconds at the end of a dogwalk (in class) sniffing for microscopic pieces of food, or veer out of her way when running full tilt on course because some earlier human dropped a piece of kibble in the lawn somewhere.

What do the rest of you think? What's your experience?

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^*muggle, of course, being from the Harry Potter books and means specifically "a person who lacks any sort of magical ability and was not born into the magical world," but is gradually being adopted to mean "a person who lacks a [fill in the blank] ability and is not part of the [fill in the blank] world"--for example, geocachers refer to nongeocachers as muggles.

geocaching, well, that's a whole nuther thing.

Bits O Things

SUMMARY: International Jumps redux, updated Steph's post, hiking/wildflowers, AND geocaching.

Rather than make a whole new post on Jim B's cool new international-flavored agility jumps, I simply updated my previous post with more photos.

I knew I'd forget something important in Steph's post--I added a photo of hers and marked it.

This morning (Sunday) I took the dogs for a hike and found half a dozen geocaches and more wildflowers than I had expected. Maybe the late rains and cooler temps are keeping them around longer? The photos, with commentary, are on my photo site here.

I decided to put the geocaching photos into a separate album.

At the beginning of the hike, we switchbacked up the hillside pretty quickly. Here, the Merle Girls show how far below MUTT MVR has been left behind.

Near the end of the hike, Human Mom was still stopping to take wildflower photos but was getting tired of geocaching, so left some for another day.

Santa Teresa Park Hike

SUMMARY: Once again, hit our nearby park with a friend and assorted dogs and cameras.

This was supposed to be a day for practicing photo techniques on our dogs, but for an assortment of reasons, it turned into a light hiking and geocaching day. The wind came cold and hard, but it's always fun hiking with a friend and the assorted agility beasties. By the time made it to the top of Coyote Peak, we had worked up enough of a sweat to strip off our windbreakers and tie them around our waists:

And had to have our portraits done at The Usual Spot (note that I've now made that into its own special page that will have a permanent link above):

Saw a few birds within camera range--the egret was really too far away, so he's not shown here.

Wildflowers are already making their appearances:

And so is lots of that other stuff--pretty foliage, though.

Today's companion is another of my avid Geocaching agility friends, and of course she had her geocaching GPS unit, so we went a-huntin':

We quickly found a couple on the way down.

I tried some four-dog portraits with my new point-and-shoot to see how they'd turn out. As is usual when trying to get multiple dogs to be perfect photo subjects simultaneously, most of my shots turned out something like this:

But in one--synchronicity occurred! Herewith: Boost, Tika, Carson, and Steamer. (Look at those Border Collie head-down focused poses--)

So Much To Do--You Know the Drill

SUMMARY: --so little time.

I want to go to bed early tonight. I still have about 3 hours of billable work to do, best guess. I need desperately to go to the grocery store. I haven't printed the running order catalog/etc. yet for this weekend. Haven't packed my clothes. MUTT MVR is cleaned and packed with all the other things I'll need for this weekend (I think), so that's good.

We went for a good long walk and frisbee in the park this morning (and logged another geocache that I couldn't get to before because of too many muggles). So that's good.

Oh, yeah, and maybe a shower would be nice.

I'm running out of hours--

See you-all on Monday, unless you're going to be at Haute TRACS this weekend.